UPDATE, January 29, 2021: The Dig is available to stream via Netflix. When Ralph Fiennes first trundles across the screen in The Dig, then starts speaking in a thick Suffolk accent, he's in suitably surly mode, as he needs to be. But, playing forthright, hardworking and under-appreciated excavator Basil Brown, the adaptable Official Secrets, Hail, Caesar!, Spectre and A Bigger Splash star also flirts with overstatement in his initial scenes. Thankfully, Fiennes settles into his role quickly. What starts out threatening to dissolve into caricature — not a charge aimed at the actor very often across his long career — soon becomes a measured, layered and earthy performance that's quietly weighty and moving. The self-taught Basil has spent a lifetime being judged by his voice, demeanour and appearance, and not on his talents and intellect, which Fiennes conveys with a firm but also delicate touch. As he finds his groove, not only while his character shovels dirt but in his conversations with those around him, this 1939-set drama about a real-life archaeological discovery also finds its rhythm with him. Hired by Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman) to burrow into what appear to be centuries-old burial mounds on her sprawling estate, Basil doesn't unearth any old junk. His kindly employer has always had a feeling about the small hills on her property, as she tells him in one of their friendly, leisurely chats, and her instincts prove more than accurate when they're found to contain Anglo-Saxon relics dating back to the sixth or seventh century. Basil initially dismisses Edith's suggestion about one particular mound; however, he swiftly realises that she too has spent her years being cast aside — due to her gender, not her class — by others. Their discovery on the site now known as Sutton Hoo is immense. It sparks national attention, including from museum head honchos who were barely interested when Edith first went asking for help excavating her property. Indeed, they cared so little about assisting Edith, and what her land might contain, that they fobbed off the job to Basil. The latter was well-recommended, and rightly so, but the way in which he came to be in Edith's employment smacks of men of authority, wealth or both who think they inherently know better than everyone, especially those they consider beneath them. Telling this tale, The Dig adapts the 2007 novel of the same name by John Preston — exploring Basil's work, Edith's fight to retain both recognition and the items buried deep in her soil, her increasing health woes, and the keen excitement of her primary school-aged son Robert (Archie Barnes, Patrick) as the excavation continues. It also follows the circus that arises when the British Museum's Charles Phillips (Ken Stott, The Mercy) insists on taking over once objects of value are found, and the love triangle that forms between his married employees Stuart (Ben Chaplin, The Children Act) and Peggy Piggott (Lily James, Rebecca) and Edith's airforce-bound cousin Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn, Emma). The latter is the film's least convincing and least necessary element, smacking of pointlessly adding a romantic subplot to ramp up the drama. Still, whether you already know Sutton Hoo's story or you're learning the details for the first time, The Dig nonetheless relays an astonishing chapter of history. The first half of the 20th century was a staggering time for unearthing the past in general, as the movie nods to when Edith and Basil mention the exhumation of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt just the decade prior. That said, spending time at an archaeological site mightn't sound like rich and riveting viewing — but this fascinating feature proves that notion wrong. While The Dig doesn't hone in on the scooping, shovelling and scraping too often, every shot that does leave an imprint. Such images also reinforce the film's broader contemplation of longevity, mortality and legacies, too. This is a movie that steps back into the past, chronicles an extraordinary historical discovery, and ponders the reality that time comes for all things and people. We all hope to leave a mark, to ensure that generations to come know that we once walked this earth, and to live on in the minds of those who follow after us, but the reality is that not everyone gets to. We can't all have our treasures dug up more than a thousand years after our deaths, or have our names etched in the history books for finding someone else's. We can all hope to be remembered by those nearest to us, those dearest to them and so on, though. As well as its true tale and its ruminative, melancholy undercurrent, The Dig benefits from two important decisions: the casting of Mulligan and Fiennes, and the involvement of Australian theatre director-turned-filmmaker Simon Stone. After the anger and raw energy of Promising Young Woman, Mulligan finds power in restraint here. Arriving back to back, her two recent performances are almost whiplash-inducing; that's how extensively they survey her range. Once Fiennes finds his knack as Basil, he's a source of stoic potency as well. Indeed, Mulligan and Fiennes' scenes together rank among the movie's best, although, making his first feature since 2015's The Daughter, Stone ensures that even the most routine of moments is never dull. The Dig abounds with sun-dappled imagery of Suffolk fields, their green and yellow expanse being carved into one spade at a time, but it's a gorgeously lensed picture in every frame. Stone and cinematographer Mike Eley (who also worked on The White Crow, which was directed by Fiennes) rarely shoot anything within view in the expected manner, resulting in a film that appears the handsome period part, yet also looks and feels fluid and lively. It has a sense of movement, of living, of truly engaging with everything within its view, rather than just peering on. And, while gouging into the land sometimes disinters valuables and sometimes just offers more dirt, this graceful movie proves a consistent gem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZQz0rkNajo Image: Larry Horricks/Netflix.
December is here, and we're sure the sound of jingling bells is well and truly lodged in your head — but if your TV isn't screening an endless festive movie marathon, is it really Christmas? This portion of year isn't just the prime period for gift-giving, lots of eating, and spending quality time with your nearest and dearest, but also for watching and rewatching all those flicks that make you feel merry. Or, if you're hardly the jolly type, to get a dose of Christmas with some offbeat, action-packed and/or darkly comic picks. Just what makes a Christmas film has been hotly debated. Some folks, like Last Christmas director Paul Feig, rightly believe that Die Hard counts. Others stick firmly to movies that weave in the season in a more overt way. Whichever category you fall into, and however you feel about the season, we have a list of suggestions for your Yuletide viewing pleasure. Pour yourself some eggnog, get cosy on your couch and start streaming. Home Alone (and Its Sequels) In 2021, a brand new Home Alone movie arrived to demand your attention. Yes, the 90s classic was remade — by Disney+, and with Jojo Rabbit's Archie Yates, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Ellie Kemper and Deadpool & Wolverine's Rob Delaney among the cast. Nostalgia might draw you to it, but the Mouse House's streaming platform is already serving up classic Home Alone delights, with the 1990 original, 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost In New York and 1997's Home Alone 3 all available (and also 2002's Home Alone 4, if you're a completist). Naturally, the original is the one that calls everyone's names whenever they're feeling festive. It was the highest-grossing live-action comedy at the US box office for more than two decades for a very good reason. Watch as Macaulay Culkin (Entergalactic) puts in a star-making performance, Joe Pesci (Bupkis) and Daniel Stern (For All Mankind) play bumbling burglars, and plenty of inventive booby traps get in the way. Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, Home Alone 3, Home Alone 4 and Home Sweet Home Alone stream via Disney+. Happiest Season Forget Twilight. Yes, it's the film franchise that Kristen Stewart (Love Lies Bleeding) is best known for, but her resume spans much further than sparkly vampires. And, courtesy of Happiest Season, it includes a festive rom-com that gives its well-worn genre a much-needed queer focus. Stewart plays Abby, the girlfriend of Harper (Mackenzie Davis, Speak No Evil). The former usually hates Christmas, but she's willing to give the usual trimmings a go for the latter. Alas, it turns out that Harper hasn't come out to her family, which cause more a few complications over the holidays. From the get-go, it's easy to see where the film is headed, but Happiest Season willingly sticks to a formula in order to update it. And, it's likely this LGBTQIA+-friendly dose of merriment wouldn't have found the right mix of festive familiarity and emotional substance with other leads. Happiest Season streams via Binge. Read our full review. The Nightmare Before Christmas More than a quarter-century ago, filmmakers Tim Burton (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) and Henry Selick (Wendell & Wild) served up one of the most-enchanting holiday films to hit the big screen — and one that doubles as both Halloween and Christmas viewing. It's Burton's name that everyone remembers; however, a pre-Coraline Selick is actually in the director's chair on The Nightmare Before Christmas, which charms with both its offbeat story and its gorgeous stop-motion animation. Burton came up with the narrative though, because Jack Skellington only could've originated from the Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands filmmaker's brain. Imaginative, original and engaging (even as it nods to Dr Seuss a few times), it still remains a festive treat for all ages. The Nightmare Before Christmas streams via Disney+. The Holdovers Melancholy, cantankerousness, angst, hurt and snow all blanket Barton Academy in Alexander Payne's (Nebraska) The Holdovers. It's Christmas 1970 in New England in this thoughtful story that's given room to breathe and build, but festive cheer is in short supply among the students and staff that give the movie its moniker. Soon, there's just three folks left behind: Angus Tully (debutant Dominic Sessa), whose mother wants more time alone with his new stepdad; curmudgeonly professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti, Billions), who's being punished for failing the son of a wealthy donor, but would be hanging around campus anyway; and grieving cook Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Only Murders in the Building, and an Oscar-winner for her work here), who is weathering her first Christmas after losing her son — a Barton alum — in the Vietnam War. The Holdovers streams via Netflix and Binge. Read our full review. Last Christmas Some Christmas movies — many festive movies, let's be honest — get the usual carols stuck in your head. Fancy a little George Michael whirling around your brain instead? That's what's on offer with Last Christmas, for obvious reasons. Just read the title and you'll already be humming the appropriate tune. This recent festive rom-com is both extremely likeable and very predictable. In other words, it's perfectly suitable feel-good Christmas in July viewing. The cast, which includes Emilia Clarke (Secret Invasion), Henry Golding (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) and Emma Thompson (Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical) are all an absolute delight, Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, A Simple Favour) directs with a light touch, and the George Michael hits just keep coming. Last Christmas streams via Netflix, Stan, Prime Video and Paramount+. Read our full review, and our interview with Paul Feig. It's a Wonderful Life It's been 78 years since Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life first warmed hearts, and started to become a festive tradition. The ultimate 'what if?' tale, the five-time Oscar nominee is also a shining example of a movie that didn't do well at the box office originally but has more than made up for it since. Featuring a pitch-perfect performance from the great James Stewart as the downtrodden George Bailey, the film's charms are many. It's sweet, optimistic but still willing to look at grim realities. That's what happens when Bailey has bleak thoughts one Christmas Eve, and contemplates ending it all, before a guardian angel shows him what life would've been like in his home town of Bedford Falls without him. It's a Wonderful Life streams via Stan. Eyes Wide Shut It isn't by accident that Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's last complete film and one of the masterful director's absolute best, takes place during the holidays. The late, great filmmaker plunges into a fraying marriage at a time of year that's either blissful or fraught in relationships, or seesaws between the two, with then real-life couple Nicole Kidman (The Perfect Couple) and Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One) as his leads. And, in the process, he has plenty to say about the institutions, traditions and expectations that society tells us will bring contentment — the wealth and romantic ideals that fall into the same categories, too — and the gaping chasm between those glossy notions and reality. When it hit cinemas, Eyes Wide Shut was marketed as an erotic thriller — 'twas the 90s — but despite the sex, masquerades and relationship games, that's only one layer of the feature. Following Bill (Cruise) and Alice (Kidman) Hartford as they navigate the festive period, complete with indulgent parties and strung-up lights aplenty, this probing film has zero cheer for Christmas' shiny facade, or the annual promise that forced jolliness will make anyone's lives better. Eyes Wide Shut streams via iTunes. How to Make Gravy Normally when it comes to watching Christmas movies, you can pick whichever day in December takes your fancy and press play. But How to Make Gravy is best watched on December 21, because that's the date that's been known as Gravy Day since 1996 thanks to Paul Kelly's classic tune 'How to Make Gravy'. Yes, this is a movie adaptation of the song, with musician Meg Washington and writer/director Nick Waterman behind it. And yes, it spins a story around the many characters that Kelly names in his track. The Royal Hotel co-stars Daniel Henshall (RFDS) and Hugo Weaving (Slow Horses) feature as Joe and Noel. The first hails from the tune — he's the prisoner who writes to his brother Dan (Brenton Thwaites, Titans) to kick things off — while Noel, a new addition to the tale, is a veteran inmate that he crosses paths with inside. With a cast that also spans Kate Mulvany (The Clearing), Damon Herriman (Better Man), Kieran Darcy-Smith (Mr Inbetween) and Kym Gyngell (The Artful Dodger), plus Titane's Agathe Rousselle in her first English-language film, How to Make Gravy charts the events that lead to Joe being away from his family come festive season, how they're coping without him and the underlying factors that he needs to face to spend next Christmas at home. How to Make Gravy streams via Binge. Read our interview with Daniel Henshall and Hugo Weaving. The Muppet Christmas Carol It's time to play the music, light the lights and see Charles Dickens' classic play out in felt — and with Michael Caine (The Great Escaper) as Ebenezer Scrooge. Any Muppets movie is ace seasonal viewing because they're all so warmhearted, but The Muppet Christmas Carol was obviously made for the merriest time of year. The movie follows Dickens's tale, with the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge given a change of perspective by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. Here, however, Jim Henson's beloved creations join in, with Kermit the Frog playing clerk Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit, Gonzo narrating the story as Dickens (with help from Rizzo the Rat), Fozzie Bear as Fozziwig and Robin the Frog as Tiny Tim. Other Muppets show up, because of course they do. The Muppet Christmas Carol streams via Disney+. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale Calling all festive horror fans — and fans of deadpan comedy. You'll get a bit of both with Finnish thriller Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, because sometimes, that's just what the season needs. Taking inspiration from the Joulupukki, a pagan and folkloric figure that's helped shape Santa Claus-centric stories, this creative film starts as all sinister tales do: with the unearthing of something eerie and perhaps best left forgotten. Here, after a British research team disturbs an ancient burial mound, the local reindeer become the first casualties. Twisted and off-kilter, eager to play with mythology and unafraid of gruesome imagery, this is the kind of Christmas flick that doesn't come around very often — all from Jalmari Helander, the filmmaker behind 2023's underseen Sisu. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale streams via iTunes and Prime Video. Tangerine Before writer/director Sean Baker gave the world 2024 Palme d'Or-winner Anora, plus The Florida Project and Red Rocket before that — each among the best movies of their year — he spent Christmas Eve with two transgender sex workers as one learns that her boyfriend and pimp has been unfaithful. Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is fresh from a 28-day stint in jail when she teams up with her best pal Alexandra (Mya Taylor, High Tide) to chase down her other half Chester (James Ransone, The Black Phone). While getting revenge on cheating spouses isn't a new topic on film, Tangerine is its own raw and delightful effort. Baker also shot the Los Angeles-set feature solely on iPhones, which proves quite the technical feat, and doesn't stop it from being visually inventive again and again. Tangerine streams via iTunes. Christmess "Happy holidays" might be two of the most-used words each and every December, but this time of year isn't jolly for everyone. With the gripping and affecting Christmess, writer/director Heath Davis (Broke, Book Week and Locusts) stares clear-eyed at the haunting regrets, aching loneliness and complicated family dynamics that are part of the festive season for many — and has his characters chat about the best Christmas movies, too. Fresh-out-of-rehab actor Chris Flint (Steve Le Marquand, The Twelve) is at this Australian dramedy's centre, as he tries to get his life back on track — a job playing a shopping-centre Santa included — while living in a halfway house with his sponsor Nick (Darren Gilshenan, Colin From Accounts) and fellow recovering alcoholic Joy (musician Hannah Joy). Christmess streams via Binge. Nutcrackers After a few years spent making horror movies — and building upon genre classics at that, thanks to Halloween, Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends and The Exorcist: Believer — filmmaker David Gordon Green has swapped scares for heartwarming seasonal hijinks. Consider that one of his latest feature's big returns. Opening the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival before making its way to streaming, Nutcrackers also gets Ben Stiller back in front of the camera (although he can be forgiven for his time behind the scenes given that he's been busy directing Severance). Long-term Stiller fans should spot echoes of Reality Bites, which he helmed as well as co-starred in, in his Nutcrackers character Mike Maxwell. Looking the corporate part and devoted to his job, he's not fond of the idea of shaking up his routine — or jeopardising his career advancement prospects. Then tragedy strikes, leaving him to find new guardians for his four rambunctious nephews who definitely don't want to go into foster care, and also have a creative take on classic ballet The Nutcracker that they're eager to stage. Nutcrackers streams via Disney+. White Reindeer If your attitude towards Christmas is 'bah humbug' or something similarly grinchy, then White Reindeer might just be the festive film for you. It starts with the festive season approaching, and with real estate agent Suzanne Barrington (Anna Margaret Hollyman, Sister Aimee) happy with her weatherman husband Jeff (Nathan Williams, Younger) — and super excited about the most wonderful time of the year. Then, tragedy strikes, and Zach Clark's (The Becomers) black comedy leans firmly into its genre. Tackling dark subjects, as well as the fact that Christmas isn't all presents, big hugs and glittering lights for everyone, this is a very funny, savvy and astute movie. It's also purposefully awkward, and remains a great example of low-budget indie filmmaking no matter the time of year. White Reindeer streams via YouTube Movies. Carol Carol falls into the category of films that, purely because they're set at the right time of year, automatically qualify as Christmas movies (see also: a few other flicks on this list). If that's the excuse you need to revisit Todd Haynes' (May December) aching romantic drama, then that's completely fine. Any excuse will do, really. The more eyeballs soaking in this sumptuous tale of forbidden love either for the first time or the hundredth, the better. Starring Rooney Mara (Women Talking) as a shopgirl who falls for Cate Blanchett's (Disclaimer) titular character, and based on Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt, the 50s-set drama fills the screen with emotion as the two women confront their feelings. Haynes' resume isn't short on highlights (Velvet Goldmine and Far From Heaven, for example), but might be his crowning achievement. Carol streams via ABC iView. Read our full review. Batman Returns Why so seasonal? No, the Joker doesn't say that in Batman Returns. In fact, that villain isn't even the Dark Knight's nemesis in this 1992 film. The sentiment still fits, though. Given the amount of times that Batman has graced cinemas, one of those movies was always going to be appropriate Christmas viewing — and Tim Burton's (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) second stint unpacking Bruce Wayne's alter ego, plus Michael Keaton's (also Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) second round of playing the titular character, is 100-percent that movie. Christmas provides the backdrop for Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Selina Kyle's (Michelle Pfeiffer, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) antics — aka The Penguin and Catwoman — in this sequel to 1989's Batman, and lights up Gotham City as its namesake endeavours to save the day. Again, there's never any shortage of Dark Knight flicks to choose from, including two more follow-ups in the 80s and 90s franchise, Christopher Nolan's trilogy, Ben Affleck in the cape and cowl and 2022's Robert Pattinson-starring The Batman, but 'tis the season for this one. Batman Returns streams via Binge. Elf Will Ferrell (The Boys) plays an elf. It sounds like the idea for a Saturday Night Live sketch, really. To the joy of Christmas-themed film fans everywhere, that's not the case with Elf — and even though it was written with Jim Carrey (Sonic the Hedgehog 3) in mind, and even though he went seasonal again with Spirited in 2022, this festive comedy ranks alongside Anchorman as one of the movies that Ferrell will always be remembered for. He's both amusing and endearing as Buddy, a human raised by Santa's elves who only realises that he's not like everyone else he knows when he grows up. It's a basic fish-out-of-water setup, but showered with humour, heart and festive goodwill. Also, long before he directed Iron Man, The Jungle Book and the photorealistic version of The Lion King, this is what actor-turned-filmmaker Jon Favreau served up. Elf streams via Binge and Stan. Gremlins Fun fact for Breaking Bad fans: Jonathan Banks, aka Mike Ehrmantraut, plays a deputy in Gremlins. He's not the star of the show, though, and nor are any of the movie's humans. No, that honour goes to its furry creatures that definitely shouldn't be exposed to water or sunlight, or fed after midnight. That's the warning that Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton, King Cobra) receives when he buys an unusual gift for his teenage son Billy (Zach Galligan, Midnight Peepshow) from a Chinatown store and, as Joe Dante's (Nightmare Cinema) upbeat, anarchic comedy demonstrates, it's advice that should be heeded. Another trusty tidbit that's worth remembering: no matter how old you are, watching Gremlins will make you want a mogwai for yourself. Gremlins streams via Binge. Black Christmas A fun, feisty remake with a female perspective and a refreshing sense of sisterhood, Black Christmas is a college-set slasher flick for the #MeToo era. The latter gets thrown around a helluva lot, but with this updated version of a 1974 cult movie, writer/director Sophia Takal (Always Shine) firmly leans into the term. Indeed, Black Christmas circa 2019 lives and breathes its #MeToo mindset, particularly in its story and characters. In this Imogen Poots (Outer Range)-led, Cary Elwes (Knuckles)-costarring effort, a masked predator stalks women as the festive season swings into gear, specifically targeting sorority sisters at a stately university. There's a mounting body count, but these gals aren't merely a parade of powerless, disposable victims. Black Christmas streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Die Hard Yippee ki-yay, fans of both action and seasonal hijinks (and of Bruce Willis crawling around in vents trying to fight off terrorists, too). It's time to follow in the footsteps of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Jake Peralta and love Die Hard unconditionally, because — by virtue of being set on Christmas Eve — this is a Christmas-appropriate film. The story, if you somehow don't know it, involves NYPD cop John McClane (Willis, Assassin), a Los Angeles building attacked by the nefarious Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, Eye in the Sky) and plenty of explosive antics. We know, we know, Rickman also features in that other, more overtly festive-themed favourite, aka Love Actually, but there's nothing quite like a couple of hours spent at Nakatomi Plaza. Die Hard streams via Disney+. In Bruges Before The Banshees of Inisherin, filmmaker Martin McDonagh teamed up with actors Colin Farrell (The Penguin) and Brendan Gleeson (Joker: Folie à Deux) on another darkly comic gem. In Bruges is writer/director McDonagh's first feature, in fact, and what a stunning debut it is, diving into hitmen chaos in Belgium over the Christmas period. McDonagh's whip-smart script only mentions the time of year a few times, but its titular setting is lit up for the occasion. Farrell's Ray is hardly thrilled, though; "For two weeks? In fucking Bruges? In a room like this? With you? No way," is his response to being holed up and hiding out with his mentor Ken (Gleeson) at the behest of their handler Harry (Ralph Fiennes, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar). Blackly comedic amusement springs from their predicament, and so does mayhem, melancholy and even hope. In Bruges streams via Netflix and Stan. That Christmas Richard Curtis is getting festive again. The screenwriter behind Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and the first two Bridget Jones movies — and a big driver of Hugh Grant's (Heretic) early career, clearly — will forever be associated with the jolliest part of the calendar thanks to Love Actually. Now he's added That Christmas to his resume, and a clip of his past end-of-year flick that everyone knows and has thoughts about even features in this animated all-ages-friendly affair. That Christmas springs from the page, from Curtis' books That Christmas, The Empty Stocking and Snow Day with illustrator Rebecca Cobb. On-screen, he's intertwined those tales, with Simon Hunter (A Tale Dark & Grimm) directing, Peter Souter (Married Single Other) co-scripting, and the film's account of home-alone kids both lonely and mischievous featuring voicework by Bill Nighy (The Wild Robot), Brian Cox (The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim) and more. That Christmas streams via Netflix. Bad Santa The sequel didn't stuff anyone's stocking full of laughs, sadly, but the original Bad Santa is a masterclass in seasonal misanthropy and utterly inappropriate humour. Now two decades since Billy Bob Thornton (Landman) first popped on the red suit to play the world's most begrudging Father Christmas — actually a professional thief that uses his gig as a department-store Santa as a cover to case the place — he's still one of the most memorable festive figures there is. Everything that can go wrong does for Thornton's character Willie, and every boundary that director Terry Zwigoff (Art School Confidential) and writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Jungle Cruise) can test gets pushed as well. Grinches, this comedy understands your Yuletide disdain and milks it — and finds hilarious uses for a sack full of the festive film genre's cliches, child sidekicks and all. Bad Santa streams via Prime Video. Scrooged Every Christmas, real or otherwise could use a dose of Bill Murray (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) — even when he's hardly brimming with festive cheer. So, back in 1988, Scrooged delivered just that in a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol. Murray plays arrogant, selfish TV executive Frank Cross. He doesn't share the same name as Charles Dickens' famous grouch, but he's just as lacking in feel-good spirit. Everyone knows how the broad story goes, with ghosts of Christmas past, present and future popping up to teach this cynical crank the error of his ways. When Murray is involved, though — and when he's also leading a sing-along — even what seems like the umpteenth adaptation of a well-known story doesn't feel routine. Scrooged streams via Binge. Carry-On What if Die Hard met TV series Hijack, but starring Taron Egerton (Tetris) and Jason Bateman (Air), and with Non-Stop director Jaume Collet-Serra on helming duties? That's Carry-On, 2024's addition to the festive thriller subgenre. Egerton plays a Los Angeles TSA officer with a newly pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson, Purple Hearts) and therefore fresh motivation to ask his boss (Dean Norris, Law & Order: Organised Crime) for a promotion, who's given a chance to show he's worthy of climbing the airport's corporate ladder on Christmas Eve. Baggage scanning duties await, then, as a test — but a trial of a different kind swiftly arrives. Via a voice speaking to him through an earpiece, Carry-On's protagonist is soon being told to let a particular piece of luggage through or face deadly consequences. Bateman is a treat playing firmly against type, in what proves a well-cast picture all round. And while it's easy to see where the story is going, the writing remains smart and the setpieces are lively. Carry-On streams via Netflix.
The 21st-century has not been kind to the vampire. Between Stephenie Meyer's sparkling high schoolers, the leather-clad killers of the Underworld series and whatever the hell those things in I Am Legend were meant to be, the once noble creatures of the night have been reduced by pop-culture to cringeworthy caricatures. Bela Lugosi must be turning in his grave. Enter Jim Jarmusch, director of Dead Man, Ghost Dog and Broken Flowers, to name just a few. One of the enduring figures of the American indie film movement, Jarmusch has made a career out of minimally plotted, post-modern genre subversions, and his latest work is no exception. Mixing traditional vampire mythology with the director's distinctively aloof brand of cool, Only Lovers Left Alive is a handsome, compelling, meditative take on the lives of the eternal undead. An appropriately gaunt and pasty Tom Hiddleston plays Adam, a centuries-old bloodsucker living on the outskirts of Detroit. A reclusive figure, Adam's only human contacts are a crooked hospital doctor (Jeffrey Wright) who provides him with fresh batches of O-negative, and a wide-eyed rock 'n' roll fan (Anton Yelchin) from whom the vampire buys vintage guitars. Aside from his music, the one thing Adam cares about is his wife, Eve (Tilda Swinton), with whom he is reunited not long after the movie begins. For a while, the immortal lovers live in peace, only to find their solitary existence shattered by the arrival of Eve's impulsive younger sister (Mia Wasikowska). Like many of Jarmusch's films, Only Lovers moves along at a languid pace, with large stretches of the movie unfolding in which very little actually happens. Nevertheless, viewers willing to give the film their patience will be rewarded by its rich, intoxicating atmosphere. Synonymous both with rock 'n' roll and America's crumbling economy, Detroit's empty streets and abandoned buildings are the perfect stalking ground for Jarmusch's silent camera, which finds an eerie kind of beauty in moonlit vistas of urban decay. Electronic guitar chords flow despondently across the soundtrack, ringing in perfect harmony with the images projected on the screen. The protagonists are drawn with fascinating detail. Late-night musings, on music, art, science and the various historical figures that Adam and Eve once knew, are underlined by a sardonic sense of humour, informed by centuries of bitterness and disappointment. Detached from the world around them, there's an air of tortured disinterest to the duo, like ageing rock stars, or unkillable hipsters (and isn't that a terrifying concept?) Emphasising mood over story, Only Lovers Left Alive is the cinematic equivalent of one of Adam's melancholic rock songs. It washes over you, absorbing through your skin. Jarmusch has brought dignity back to the vampire, in his own unmistakable style. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ycOKvWrwYFo
Knowing when to take the one-and-done route isn't pop culture's forte, as too many movie franchises and TV shows extending beyond their best days keep showing. The Tourist falls into the opposite category: initially planned as a once-off with its six-episode first season in 2022, the Australian-international co-production has found a way to return. The catalyst for that comeback isn't just the show's initial success, but teaming up stars Jamie Dornan (A Haunting in Venice) and Danielle Macdonald (French Exit) for a second time because it worked so swimmingly to begin with. Indeed, when The Tourist swiftly earned its season-two renewal, it was hardly a twist. Some on-screen collaborations simply demand more opportunities to keep shining, and Dornan with Macdonald is one of them. Same cast, new location, similar-enough scenario: that's the approach in this also six-episode run, as streaming on Stan in Australia and TVNZ+ in New Zealand since Tuesday, January 2. In season one, Dornan's Elliot Stanley awoke in the Aussie outback with zero memory and his life in danger. When it ended, he'd uncovered who he was, complete with a distressing criminal past, but was on the path to starting anew with Helen Chambers (Macdonald), the constable who helped him get to the bottom of his mystery. Screenwriters Harry and Jack Williams (Baptiste, The Missing, Liar) switch part of their initial setup in season two, moving the story to Elliot's homeland and turning Helen into the tourist. Remaining is the lack of recollection about the former's history, even as he actively goes looking for it. The travelling life has been far kinder to Elliot in the gap between seasons, with The Tourist first rejoining him and Helen on a train in southeast Asia. While not married, they're firmly in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. But the now ex-cop has a revelation for her boyfriend: he's received a letter from one of his childhood pals who wants to meet back home. Quickly, off to the Emerald Isle the show's main duo go. Trying to shave off his bushy holiday beard in a public toilet leads to Elliot being kidnapped, plus Helen playing investigator again. As he attempts to flee his captors (Outlander's Diarmaid Murtagh, Inspektor Jury: Der Tod des Harlekins' Nessa Matthews and The Miracle Club's Mark McKenn), she seeks help from local Detective Sergeant Ruairi Slater (Conor MacNeill, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), but any dreams that The Tourist's globe-hopping couple had about happy reunions or relaxing Irish getaways are sent packing fast. Disturbing discoveries; feuding families led by the equally formidable Frank McDonnell (Francis Magee, Then You Run) and Niamh Cassidy (Olwen Fouéré, The Northman); Helen's grating ex Ethan (Greg Larsen, Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe) hopping on a plane to Ireland in an effort to win her back, even as he's supposedly dealing with his oozing toxicity: they're all key factors in The Tourist's second season. So is doing plot-wise what the series' namesakes often embrace, aka veering here, there and everywhere. The obvious point of comparison has always been the Coen brothers and, in particular, Fargo. Its TV adaptation is currently working through its fifth season, and also hurtles through comic crime chaos as a madcap caper with thoughtful leads. Both have that anything-can-happen feel, and live up to it in their narratives. You betcha both are also well-cast. As Elliot endeavours to evade his abductors, Helen searches and worries, and frays going back decades are pushed to the fore, the Williams' brothers aren't afraid of tonal and storytelling swerves, or of jam-packing a tale that's taut and tense but also regularly amusing. Directors Fergus O'Brien (Happy Valley), Lisa Mulcahy (Lies We Tell) and Kate Dolan (Kin) don't shy away from stressing season two's setting, either. As also served their season-one counterparts Daniel Nettheim (who made the excellent 2011 Australian film The Hunter) and Chris Sweeney (Liar) well, the helming trio take their visual cues from their surroundings — with coolly bleached hues suiting someone with nothing to grasp onto in the show's initial run, and verdant sights lingering now that Elliot can't stop being confronted by his densely overflowing past. So follows car and foot chases among rolling hills, a Saw-esque stint, escaping an island, hanging off cliffs, Helen witnessing a murder, unearthed secrets and others that should be buried, escalating violence, and several folks wanting Elliot to reckon with events and choices that he can't recall, all dropping at a breakneck pace that makes binging the series as rapidly as possible the natural reaction. The Tourist is gleefully written to be moreish, yet never manipulatively so. The only misstep: giving Ethan such a prominent part again. In its jump to the other side of the world, bringing Helen's jilted former fiancé back feels like an attempt to ensure that there's more than one Aussie actor popping up — because it certainly isn't a plot necessity. There's no doubting that The Tourist prefers the rollicking over the realistic in everything that it throws Elliot and Helen's ways; however, Dornan and Macdonald are up to the job. He finds the subtleties and vulnerabilities in a man learning who he is more literally than most, and she gives Helen the perfect balance of kindness and determination. Together and with charisma to burn, they're clearly a pair to build a series around, as the Williams siblings have done twice now. Whether laced with laughs or overtly courting them, comedy suits Dornan — see: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar — but he brings as much dramatic nuance and depth to the role as he did in fellow recent highlights Belfast and Synchronic. If The Tourist will end with just two stamps on its passport is yet to be announced. Its driving forces patently hope otherwise, setting up a third season that hasn't yet been greenlit in season two's final moments, and showing that they're keen to keep shaking up their overarching narrative by always leaping in new directions. Regardless of whether more comes to fruition, Dornan and Macdonald have a highlight on their resumes, while viewers have a compellingly entertaining thriller-meets-dramedy that not only made the most of its arrival, but does the same with its 2024 return. Check out the trailer for second season of The Tourist below: The Tourist season streams via Stan in Australia and TVNZ+ in New Zealand. Read our review of season one.
Ever wondered what would happen if all the lights went out? No, we're not talking about boogeymen, babadooks and blood-sucking bats — we're older than that. But, transport yourself back to your teenage years and no doubt you got up to a bit of mischief. Like throwing a massive party with all your mates in a park, for example. At least that's what playwright Alexander Lee-Rekers would do in such strange circumstances. Lee-Rekers' play Lights in the Park won the Australian Theatre for Young People's (ATYP) Foundation Commission back in 2018 and now it's making its way to a western Sydney stage. The debut production, directed by Lucy Clements, will feature a youthful cast, with all actors aged between 14–17. There's the disgraced schoolgirl viral video star looking to maker her social comeback, two young entrepreneurs selling torches for a profit and, of course, those getting up to some innocent fun. Lights in the Park delves into the heart of what it means to be a teenager — from coming into your own skin to your first experiences of grief and rifts in friendships. Showing at Penrith's Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, it's suitable for audiences above the age of 14 — just don't blame us if your adolescent theatregoer-in-tow gets any party ideas. 'Lights in the Park' is an ATYP co-production with Q Theatre. It is showing from April 20–24. Head here for tickets.
When it comes to food, using fire is a gamechanger — it transforms humble ingredients into incredible flavours. And few are as skilled at harnessing flame for this purpose as Duncan Welgemoed. Welgemoed is the head chef of Africola, a North African-inspired grill and smokehouse that's so renowned, it alone is almost worth booking a trip to Adelaide to visit. A little extreme? Well, luckily, you'll soon have a chance to taste Welgemoed's lauded food right here in Sydney. He has teamed up with Red Rock Deli to host one of its upcoming Secret Suppers on Thursday, June 20. [caption id="attachment_724626" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Josh Geelen[/caption] So, what can diners expect from the chef behind menu items such as grilled smoked tongue, a 'tea sandwich' of crispy chicken skin and hot chicken dripping and wood oven cauliflower with tahini cream? Well, we don't quite know — yet. The menu will stay true to the event's name and remain under-wraps until the night. But we do know that it'll be inspired by Red Rock Deli's limited-edition flavour, flame grilled steak and chimichurri, and that fire will play a big role. "At Africola, we channel the smoke element of fire to be essentially used as a seasoning. And that's what I've done with my dishes for the event," Welgemoed said. That's some truly next-level, elemental seasoning. The raw force of nature flavouring your food? It's practically magic. As a man with a burning passion for cooking by fire (thanks to his South African roots), Welgemoed has a keen admiration for other like-minded chefs. So, in an effort to get more information on his upcoming menu, we asked him about some of his favourites. [caption id="attachment_522922" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Firedoor[/caption] Sydney's vibrant restaurant scene is home to some notable inclusions in this 'hall of flame'. One venue that stands out is the aptly named Firedoor, where smoke and flames are the conceptual theme throughout the menu. Welgemoed sings high praise of the 203-day dry-aged rib of beef. "Lennox Hastie at Firedoor is one of the best fire cooks in the world. His technique is second to none," Welgemoed said. And, while it's hard to pin down a favourite dish at the Argentinian barbeque and grill restaurant Porteño, he assures us you can't go wrong with anything cooked on the asado (fire pit). Of course, sometimes you want the comfort of a classic dish done just right, and that's when you should head for The Unicorn. Welgemoed loves the half Bannockburn barbeque chook with brown mushrooms and tarragon sauce — just the right balance of fancy and familiar. Then again, if you need your dining experience to be both firey and very fine, the wood-fired potato bread from Ester comes highly recommended. Welgemoed prefers it with dashi jelly, but Ester's latest menu refresh sees it intriguingly paired with kefir cream and trout roe for a zingy, salty lift. [caption id="attachment_658136" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Fred's[/caption] Fred's in Paddington strikes the balance between home comfort (you feel like you're in someone's luxurious open plan kitchen) and upscale city dining. Welgemoed's chosen dish reflects this perfect marriage of impressive elegance and honest, wholesome flavour — grilled rack of lamb with wine grapes, cime di rapa, fennel seed and rosemary. Like the other venues, Fred's exemplifies an approach to cooking similar to Welgemoed's own by letting the ingredients speak for themselves. So, what might we deduce about Welgemoed's secret supper menu from his Sydney sparks of inspiration? Expect delightful, yet unpretentious, play with fire and flavour, the comfort of familiar touches with innovative twists and a decidedly global approach to three flaming good courses. We'll leave that idea smouldering with you for now. Duncan Welgemoed's Secret Supper will take place across two sessions on Thursday, June 20. Top Image: Josh Geelen.
Showcasing everything from graphic design to performance poetry to music, ParraNormal is an artistic collaboration by 12 young Western Sydney artists aged between 16-25. You’ll experience six distinctive artistic responses to the people and places of Parramatta. Featured visual artist Harrison Earl describes his contribution as a kind of “melancholic love song” to his hometown. Produced by the Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) and facilitated by fabulous folk including performance artist/poet Candy Royalle and design duo Webuyyourkids, ParraNormal sounds like a good chance to witness how one creative medium can inspire another. It’s also an opportunity to encounter the talented voices currently emerging from Sydney’s west. The pop-up installation is there until the end of September, but if you want to see the artists performing live, then Thursday’s your chance. Can’t make it? You’ll soon be able to see all six works curated into an online graphic novel. Get a little taster here.
Attention, Wes Anderson enthusiasts: The trailer for his latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, has just been released. This follow-up to the wildly popular Moonrise Kingdom is giving us another project to look forward to, with all the oddities that resonate with Anderson fans. The story follows Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), a manager at the swanky Grand Budapest Hotel and his devoted lobby boy, Zero Moustafa. The suave Gustave is a hit with the mature lady guests, and when one of them dies, he is suspected of murder and theft. So he and his precious sidekick make a run for it, and the story unfolds into a whirlwind of adventure, mystery, romance and, of course, comedy that captivate us with Anderson's films. It looks like Anderson won't be abandoning his colourful, dreamy sets; dry, poker-faced humour; and eccentric characters anytime soon. The usual suspects in the cast include Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. Tilda Swinton, Jude Law and Saoirse Ronan are also thrown in, making The Grand Budapest Hotel one Anderson's most dynamically cast films yet. It is set to release in 2014. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1Fg5iWmQjwk Via The Verge.
Located just minutes from The Royal Botanic Garden, the Museum of Sydney will take you through the city's history. Housed in the city's first Government House, the Museum explores everything from the arrival of the First Fleet, first contact, colonisation and racial prejudice to the creation of the iconic Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge through videos, images, and crafted models. The Museum of Sydney is part of the Sydney Living Museums, a collection of 12 unique historic houses and museums that tell the stories — past and present — of the city. The Museum of Sydney is open from 10am–5pm, Thursday to Sunday.
Radiation is a scary word, but it's an ever-present thing. Yes, high doses of radiation have the ability to cause serious harm to the human body, but on this planet, in this universe, we are constantly being bombarded by small amounts of background radiation from space, the ground underneath us and the bodies around us (your own body is generating radiation as you read this). In Australia, large-scale maps of local radiation levels have been available for some time, but unlike other cities around the world, Sydney hasn't had a suburb-by-suburb radiation map until now. Dr Laura Manenti, experimental particle physicist at the University of Sydney, set out to change that after arriving in Sydney from Abu Dhabi and recording five times the background radiation count that she observed in Abu Dhabi. Recruiting two students, she set out to traverse the Sydney metropolitan area on foot and map the radiation in the ground, revealing some interesting insights into our city. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Sydney Morning Herald (@sydneymorningherald) In her study, published in full here, Dr Manenti reaffirms that this isn't cause to panic, writing "At its most basic level, radiation is energy travelling through space," and adding that the ground beneath our feet is the source of most of this radiation thanks to slowly decomposing deposits of elements like uranium, thorium and potassium. Dr Manenti and her students placed gamma ray detectors into the soil on the ground and took soil samples to measure the local radiation levels, and cross-referenced them against Sydney's inherent cosmic radiation, constantly raining down from space, by testing levels on Sydney Harbour — where water blocked the radiation from the ground. Going off the heat map created by Dr Manenti, Sydney's most radioactive suburbs are the cluster in the Glebe area, with slightly less hot-spots found in areas like Kirribilli, Erskineville, Leichardt, Cremorne Point and Kingsford. But Dr Manenti specifies that these levels aren't thanks to human activity — it's all down to geology. Sandstone and shale deposits, of which Sydney famously has several, often show higher levels of radiation thanks to the presence of uranium and thorium. But none of these levels are harmful. To put it into perspective: radiation is measured in millisieverts (mSv). The highest levels of ground radiation recorded in Sydney were 0.52mSv per year (averaging 0.24mSv per year) — it takes more than 100mSv to have effects like increased cancer risks, and medical scans like CT and X-rays typically generate just 1.7mSv — as Dr Manenti puts it, measuring radiation "doesn't make the world more dangerous – it makes it clearer." Read the full study by Dr Manenti on 'The Conversation'. Lead image: John Carnemolla via iStock
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. BROS Buy this for a dollar: a history-making gay rom-com that's smart, sweet, self-aware and funny, and also deep knows the genre it slips into, including the heteronormative tropes and cliches that viewers have seen ad nauseam. Actually, Billy Eichner would clearly prefer that audiences purchase tickets for Bros for more that that sum of money, even if he spent five seasons offering it to New Yorkers in Billy on the Street while sprinting along the sidewalk and yelling about pop culture. Thinking about that comedy series comes with the territory here, however, and not just because Eichner brought it back to promote this very movie. Starring and co-written by the Parks and Recreation and The Lion King actor — with Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the Bad Neighbours franchise's Nicholas Stoller directing and co-scripting — Bros both presents and unpacks the public persona that helped make Billy on the Street such a hit: opinionated, forceful and wry, as well as acidic and cranky. No one person, be it the version of himself that Eichner plays in the series that helped push him to fame or the fictional character he brings to the screen in Bros — or, in-between, his struggling comedian and actor part in three-season sitcom Difficult People, too — is just those five traits, of course. One of Bros' strengths is how it examines why it's easy to lean into that personality, where the sheen of caustic irritability comes from, the neuroses it's covering up and what all that means when it comes to relationships. The movie does so knowingly as well. It's well aware that Eichner's fans are familiar with his on-screen type, and that even newcomers likely are also. Accordingly, when Bros begins, Eichner's in-film alter ego is shouting about pop culture and being adamant, grumpy and cutting about it. In fact, he's on a podcast, where he's relaying his failed attempt to pen a script for exactly the kind of flick he's in. A mainstream, studio-produced gay romantic comedy that starts out riffing on the difficulties of making a mainstream, studio-produced gay romantic comedy? Yes, that's Bros. ("Am I going to be in the middle of some high-speed chase and all of a sudden fall in love with Ice Cube?", Eichner asks as the feature's protagonist Bobby Lieber.) A film about a gay man known for a biting and droll disposition, starring a gay man similarly known for that type of biting and droll disposition? Yes, that's Bros as well. It's also a movie that makes fun of Hallmark rom-com schmaltz while featuring one of the US network's go-tos — that'd be Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen, A Shoe Addict's Christmas, Christmas in My Heart and The Mistletoe Promise's Luke Macfarlane — and a flick blasting Schitt's Creek some scorn while charting a comparable queer storyline. So, it's a feature that wears its obviousness and its contradictions in tandem, purposefully and proudly. Eichner's Bobby is 40, just received an LGBTQIA+-community Best Cis Male Gay Man award and has a dream gig setting up America's first national queer history museum. Rom-com logic, which Bros heartily subscribes to, means he has to discover his seeming opposite in a memorable way: a gay dance party where he complains to shirtless probate lawyer Aaron Shepard (Macfarlane) and finds sparks flying. How Stoller and Eichner handle this scene says plenty about the film, and the authentic view of gay romance, dating and sex it's committed to. Neither man — Grindr-swiping, emotionally unavailable, hardly content as they both are — is anything but himself. For Bobby, that means awkwardly flirting, getting furious when Aaron disappears mid-conversation, tracking him down and telling him about it, but also being non-committal and even angry for being attracted to him. For Aaron, it involves continuing to breeze around the party like nothing out of the ordinary has happened; "I'm supposed to fuck him and his husband later," he tells Bobby about two other buff, sweaty guys on the dancefloor as they're chatting. Read our full review. THE WOMAN KING Since 2016's Suicide Squad, the DC Extended Universe has tasked Viola Davis with corralling super-powered folks, including villains forced to do the state's bidding (as also seen in The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker) and regular world-saving superheroes (the just-released Black Adam). In The Woman King, however, she's more formidable, powerful and magnificent than any spandex-wearing character she's ever shared a frame with — or ever will in that comic-to-screen realm. Here, she plays the dedicated and determined General Nanisca, leader of the Agojie circa 1823. This is an "inspired by true events" tale, and the all-female warrior troupe was very much real, protecting the now-defunct west African kingdom of Dahomey during its existence in what's now modern-day Benin. Suddenly thinking about a different superhero domain and its own redoubtable women-only army, aka the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Dora Milaje in Wakanda? Yes, Black Panther took inspiration from the Agojie. If you're thinking about Wonder Woman's Amazons, too, the Agojie obviously pre-dates them as well. Links to two huge franchises in various fashions aren't anywhere near The Woman King's main attraction, of course. Davis and her fellow exceptional cast members, such as Lashana Lynch (No Time to Die), Thuso Mbedu and Sheila Atim (both co-stars in The Underground Railroad); The Old Guard filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood and her grand and kinetic direction, especially in fight scenes; stunningly detailed costumes and production design that's both vibrant and textured; a story that still boasts humour and heart: they all rank far higher among this feature's drawcards. So does the fact that this is a lavish historical epic in the Braveheart and Gladiator mould, but about ass-kicking Black women badged "the bloodiest bitches in Africa". Also, while serving up an empowering vision, The Woman King also openly grapples with many difficulties inherent in Dahomey's IRL history (albeit in a mass consumption-friendly, picking-and-choosing manner). It's under the cover of night that Nanisca and the stealthy, feline-quick Agojie first show The Woman King's audience exactly what they're capable of, as camped-out male slavers from the rival Oyo Empire are swiftly and brutally dispensed with during a mission to free abducted Dahomean women. From that vivid opening, the female-led The Woman King on- and off-screen lets viewers know what it, Davis, Prince-Bythewood and their collaborators are capable of, too. Potent, ferocious, mighty: they all fit. When it comes to the film's protagonist, she's fierceness personified, yet also always nuanced. In a role that'll likely garner her award nominations at the very least, to go along with past Oscar nods for Doubt, The Help and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom — and her win for Fences — Davis is tremendous in the part, in battle and otherwise, exuding world-weariness, raw strength, and the kind of resilience that's only forged by navigating deep horrors. After the film's initial rescue gambit, the Agojie are down in number. Abandoned to Dahomey's King Ghezo (John Boyega, Small Axe) because she won't marry men who beat her, headstrong Nawi (Mbedu) becomes a new recruit. As the teen trains to become permanently accepted among them, including by the resolute and mischievous Izogie (Lynch) and Amenza (Atim), Nanisca endeavours to bend the ruler's ear about future battles and policies. The Oyo will keep attacking, and keep trying to trade Dahomey's populace into slavery. A Portuguese-Brazilian aristocrat (Hero Fiennes Tiffin, After Ever Happy) knows that he can profit off the Dahomey-Oyo tensions, and gain slaves to hawk along the way. Also, Dahomey itself isn't above selling Africans into subservience themselves. Nanisca has other concerns, too: getting revenge over a heartbreaking chapter of her past, the pain and sacrifice she still bears as a result, and instilling the Agojie's brand of sisterhood in Nawi. Read our full review. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on July 7, July 14, July 21 and July 28; August 4, August 11, August 18 and August 25; September 1, September 8, September 15, September 22 and September 29; and October 6, October 13 and October 20. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Thor: Love and Thunder, Compartment No. 6, Sundown, The Gray Man, The Phantom of the Open, The Black Phone, Where the Crawdads Sing, Official Competition, The Forgiven, Full Time, Murder Party, Bullet Train, Nope, The Princess, 6 Festivals, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Crimes of the Future, Bosch & Rockit, Fire of Love, Beast, Blaze, Hit the Road, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Orphan: First Kill, The Quiet Girl, Flux Gourmet, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Moonage Daydream, Ticket to Paradise, Clean, You Won't Be Alone, See How They Run, Smile, On the Count of Three, The Humans, Don't Worry Darling, Amsterdam, The Stranger, Halloween Ends, The Night of the 12th, Muru, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, Black Adam, Barbarian, Decision to Leave and The Good Nurse.
Before the pandemic, when a new-release movie started playing in cinemas, audiences couldn't watch it on streaming, video on demand, DVD or blu-ray for a few months. But with the past few years forcing film industry to make quite a few changes — widespread movie theatre closures will do that, and so will plenty of people staying home because they aren't well — that's no longer always the case. Maybe you haven't had time to make it to your local cinema lately. Perhaps you've been under the weather. Given the hefty amount of titles now releasing each week, maybe you simply missed something. Film distributors have been fast-tracking some of their new releases from cinemas to streaming recently — movies that might still be playing in theatres in some parts of the country, too. In preparation for your next couch session, here are 13 that you can watch right now at home. Wonka Which cravings does Wonka inspire? Chocolate, of course, and also an appetite for more of filmmaker Paul King's blend of the inventive, warm-hearted and surreal. The British writer/director's chocolatier origin story is a sweet treat from its first taste, and firmly popped from the same box as his last two movie delights: Paddington and Paddington 2. Has the helmer used a similar recipe to his talking-bear pictures? Yes. Was it divine with that double dip in marmalade, and now equally so with creative confectionery and the man behind it? Yes again. While it'd be nice to see King and his regular writing partner Simon Farnaby (also an actor, complete with an appearance here) make an original tale again, as they last did with 2009's superb and sublime Bunny and the Bull, watching them cast their spell on childhood favourites dishes up as effervescent an experience as sipping fizzy lifting drinks. It's as uplifting as munching on hover chocs, too, aka the debut creation that Wonka's namesake unveils in his attempt to unleash his chocolates upon the world. Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet, Bones and All) has everlasting gobstobbers, golden tickets and a whole factory pumping out a sugary rush in his future, as Roald Dahl first shared in 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, then cinemagoers initially saw in 1971's Gene Wilder-starring all-timer Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Wonka churns up the story before that story, and technically before 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Tim Burton (Wednesday) as led by Johnny Depp (Minamata) — but the less remembered about that most-recent adaptation, the better. There's no on-the-page precedent for this flick, then. Rather, King and Farnaby use pure imagination, plus what they know works for them, to delectable results. What they welcomely avoid is endeavouring to melt down Dahl's bag of tricks and remould it, and also eschew packing in references to past Chocolate Factory flicks like a cookie that's more chocolate chips than biscuit. Wonka streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Dream Scenario Gushing about Paddington movies, channelling Elvis, screaming about being a vampire, swooning over Cher, kidnapping babies, fighting cults, battling demonic animatronics, driving ambulances, flying with convicts, swapping faces, avenging pet pigs and milking alpacas, Nicolas Cage has gotten himself lodged in many a moviegoer's brain before. Dream Scenario takes that idea to the next level, not with the screen's most-inimitable star as himself — this isn't The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent — but in a film that works as well as it does, and as sharply, because he's its irreplaceable lead. Although writer/director Kristoffer Borgli didn't write his third feature (after DRIB and Sick of Myself) with Cage in mind, there's pure magic in matching his tale of pop-culture virality, fame and its costs to the man born Nicolas Kim Coppola. Who else could play someone so ubiquitous in the collective consciousness that everyone knows him, has deep-seated feelings and opinions about him, and can't stop thinking about him? Albeit for different reasons, it as much a stroke of genius as enlisting Being John Malkovich's namesake. Dream Scenario wears its comparisons to Spike Jonze (Beastie Boys Story) and Charlie Kaufman's (I'm Thinking of Ending Things) masterpiece better than anything else between 1999 and now, other than their subsequent collaboration Adaptation — as starring none other than Cage — and the Kaufman-penned, Michel Gondry (Kidding)-helmed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. David Lynch (Cage's Wild at Heart director) and Ari Aster also come to mind while watching Borgli's film, which blends the surreal and satirical, and also spins a nightmare where dread paints every frame. Aster produces, lending a hand on a movie that pairs well with his own Beau Is Afraid, aka another flick where a schlubby, awkward and unhappy middle-aged man has his life upended in no small part thanks to his own anxiety. Dream Scenario isn't attempting to ape its predecessors, or Borgli's own Sick of Myself, another musing on celebrity, attention and the fact that almost everything about 21st-century existence has become a performance. Rather, the Norwegian filmmaker's latest plays like its title suggests: the product of slumbering while having all of the above swirling, twirling and dancing in your synapses — and with Cage always lurking, of course. Dream Scenario streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Iron Claw The Von Erich family's second generation of wrestlers was born ready to rumble, regardless of whether they wanted to or not. After diving into a cult's thrall in Martha Marcy May Marlene, then the idea that money and status can buy happiness in fellow psychological thriller The Nest, writer/director Sean Durkin adds another exceptional and gripping film to his resume with The Iron Claw — a movie that draws upon elements of both, too, as it tells its heartbreaking true tale. Unpacking the weight carried and toll weathered by brothers locked into one future and way of life from the moment that they existed, this is a feature about the shadow cast by power and dominance by those caught in its shade, and the cost of doggedly chasing one concept of triumph and masculinity above all else. The Zac Efron (The Greatest Beer Run Ever)-voiced narration pitches it as a picture about a family curse as well, but the supernatural has nothing on an authoritarian force refusing to let anyone flee his grasp. The Iron Claw introduces the IRL Von Erich sporting dynasty with patriarch Fritz (Holt McCallany, 61st Street) doing the grappling, busting out the trademark grip that gives the movie its name, as his wife Doris (Maura Tierney, American Rust) and two of his boys wait outside. When they all come together after the match, it isn't just the pledge that Fritz will bring the National Wrestling Association's World Heavyweight Championship to their brood, which he's certain will fix their struggling plight, that lingers. Equally inescapable is the unyielding fixation burning in his steely glare, a look that will rarely falter in the film's 132-minute running time — and how his adoring sons (first-timers Grady Wilson and Valentine Newcomer) are already trained to see this world of rings, frays, throws and belts as their home, career path and destiny. With Harris Dickinson (A Murder at the End of the World), The Bear's Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner Jeremy Allen White, and Stanley Simons (Superior) joining Efron in the cast as grown versions of those two boys and two of their brothers, seeing how Fritz's obsession ripples through his family is crushing. The Iron Claw streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Ferrari Michael Mann makes movies like a man haunted. From his 1981 debut Thief to his latest release Ferrari, it's no wonder that his films linger with viewers. Mann's work whirrs with the pursuit of professional greatness, and with the pressures of balancing that relentlessly revving chase with personal ties and desires — quests and woes that aren't his own in his narratives, but always feel intimate. Heat, 1995's Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)- and Al Pacino (Hunters)-led crime-thriller that the filmmaker will forever be known for, has proven a spectacular example for nearly three decades. While the skilled burglar and dogged detective caught in its cat-and-mouse game are both experts in their realms, that doesn't make juggling their on-the-job and at-home realities any easier, cleaner or less chaotic. Using that very notion as its road, Ferrari is clearly the product of the same director. Perhaps Mann is speeding down that exact path after all, then, navigating the complexities of getting a film onto screens — his last was 2015's underseen Blackhat — on a mission to master his favourite themes. Mann has helmed several model features already in Thief, Heat, The Insider and Collateral, with Ferrari a worthy addition to his resume. Wheels spin on and off the track in the elegantly and exquisitely crafted slice-of-life biopic, many literally but others via its namesake's personal life. Based on Brock Yates' book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine, as adapted by screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin (the OG The Italian Job) to cover events in the summer of 1957 only, Ferrari is always hurtling — even when it's as patient as cinema in Mann's hands has ever been. The collision between single-minded goals and the messiness of existing constantly gives his pictures urgency, no matter how steady the gaze and stoic the character. And make no mistake, Adam Driver's (65) gravitas-dripping portrayal of race car driver-turned-sports car entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari (and Italian-accented but speaking in English, just as he did in House of Gucci) is as serious and determined as Mann's protagonists get, too. Ferrari streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. The Holdovers Melancholy, cantankerousness, angst, hurt and snow: all five blanket Barton Academy in Alexander Payne's The Holdovers. It's Christmas in the New England-set latest film from the Election, About Schmidt and Nebraska director, but festive cheer is in short supply among the students and staff that give the movie its moniker. The five pupils all want to be anywhere but stuck at their exclusive boarding school over the yuletide break, with going home off the cards for an array of reasons. Then four get their wish, leaving just Angus Tully (debutant Dominic Sessa), who thought he'd be holidaying in Saint Kitts until his mother told him not to come so that she could have more time alone with his new stepdad. His sole company among the faculty: curmudgeonly classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti, Billions), who's being punished for failing the son of a wealthy donor, but would be hanging around campus anyway; plus grieving head cook Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Only Murders in the Building), who is weathering her first Christmas after losing her son — a Barton alum — in the Vietnam War. The year is 1970 in Payne's long-awaited return behind the lens after 2017's Downsizing, as the film reinforces from its opening seconds with retro studio credits. The Holdovers continues that period-appropriate look in every frame afterwards — with kudos to cinematographer Eigil Bryld (No Hard Feelings), who perfects not only the hues and grain but the light and softness in his imagery — and matches it with the same mood and air, as if it's a lost feature unearthed from the era. Cat Stevens on the soundtrack, a focus on character and emotional truths, zero ties to franchises, a thoughtful story given room to breathe and build: that's this moving and funny dramedy. Christmas flicks regularly come trimmed with empty, easy nostalgia, but The Holdovers earns its wistfulness from a filmmaker who's no stranger to making movies that feel like throwbacks to the decade when he was a teen. The Holdovers streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Anyone But You Greenlighting Anyone But You with Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as its leads must've been among Hollywood's easiest decisions. One of the rom-com's stars has been everywhere from Euphoria and The White Lotus to Reality of late, while the other is fresh off feeling the need for speed in Top Gun: Maverick. They both drip charisma. If this was the 80s, 90s or 00s, they each would have an entire segment of their filmographies dedicated to breezy romantic comedies like this Sydney-shot film, and probably more than a few together. Indeed, regardless of his gleaming casting, Anyone But You director and co-writer Will Gluck makes his first adult-oriented flick in 12 years — since Friends with Benefits, with Annie and the two Peter Rabbit movies since — as if it's still two, three or four decades back. The gimmick-fuelled plot, the scenic setting, swinging between stock-standard and OTT supporting characters: even amid overt riffs on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, they're all formulaically present and accounted for. So is the fact that Anyone But You's story always comes second to Sweeney and Powell's smouldering chemistry, and that most of its obvious jokes that only land because the pair sell them, as well as the whole movie. Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell) meet-cute over a bathroom key in a busy cafe. That first dreamy day ends badly the next morning, however, with more pain in store when Bea's sister Halle (Hadley Robinson, The Boys in the Boat) gets engaged to Ben's best friend Pete's (GaTa, Dave) sister Claudia (Alexandra Shipp, Barbie). Cue their feud going international at the destination wedding in Australia, then getting a twist when Bea and Ben pretend that they're together. They're trying stop their fighting ruining the nuptials, get her parents to back off from pushing for a reunion with her ex (Darren Barnet, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story) and make his own past love (model-turned-acting debutant Charlee Fraser) jealous. Every expected narrative beat is struck, then, while nodding to other rom-com wedding flicks — My Best Friend's Wedding co-stars Dermot Mulroney and Rachel Griffiths play Bea's mum and dad, with the latter also a Muriel's Wedding alum — and getting cheesily Aussie via koalas, endless shots of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, and Bryan Brown (Boy Swallows Universe) and Joe Davidson (Neighbours) playing the stereotypical parts. And yet, Sweeney and Powell ace their performances and rapport, and also couldn't be more watchable. Anyone But You streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. Bottoms The first rule of making a movie about a high-school lesbian fight club is that there are no rules, other than embracing the concept and giving it your all. So punches Bottoms, a film where the gleefully cartoonish energy is always as important as the plot, and a feature that knows it's entering a big-screen ring that wouldn't even exist if Heathers, Clueless, Bring It On, Mean Girls, But I'm a Cheerleader, Easy A and Booksmart hadn't hopped over the ropes first. Three years after Shiva Baby, writer/director Emma Seligman and actor Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies) reunite, with the pair collaborating on the script this time around. Also crucial: bringing in The Bear's Ayo Edebiri, a friend from the duo's student days, to co-star. In a picture that values being stronger together, Seligman, Sennott and Edebiri make a knockout team. Bottoms' vibe could only spring from IRL pals, too, playing it loose and ridiculous like this crew is simply hanging out. The setup: Sennott and Edebiri are PJ and Josie, who return to Rockbridge Falls High School after summer break keen to finally turn their love for popular cheerleaders Isabel (Havana Rose Liu, No Exit) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber, Babylon) into sex and romance. The best friends know that their social standing is anything but high — "gay, untalented and ugly" is how they describe themselves — but two queer girls can dream that this is their moment, then do their utmost to make their fantasies a reality. So, when the semester starts with PJ and Josie still stuck as outcasts, they conjure up a plan. Their gymnasium-based group is officially known as a women's self-defense class and is sold to their teachers as an act of female solidarity; however, no matter what they tell the principal (Wayne Pére, Your Honor), as well as the history teacher (Marshawn Lynch, Westworld) that they convince to be their advisor, there's really only one aim: not feminism and support, but getting laid. Bottoms streams via Prime Video. Read our full review. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom The DC Extended Universe is dead. With Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the comic book-to-screen franchise hardly swims out with a memorable farewell, hasn't washed up on a high and shouldn't have many tearful over its demise. More movies based on the company's superheroes are still on the way. They'll be badged the DC Universe instead, and start largely afresh; 2025's Superman: Legacy will be the first, with Pearl's David Corenswet as the eponymous figure, as directed by new DC Studios co-chairman and co-CEO James Gunn (The Suicide Squad). Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ends up the old regime about as expected, however: soggily, unable to make the most of its star, and stuck treading water between what it really wants to be and box-ticking saga formula. Led by Jason Momoa (Fast X), the first Aquaman knew that it was goofy, playful fun. Its main man, plus filmmaker James Wan (Malignant), didn't splash around self-importance or sink into seriousness. Rather, they made a giddily irreverent underwater space opera — and, while it ebbed and flowed between colouring by numbers and getting entertainingly silly, the latter usually won out. Alas, exuberance loses the same battle in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Having spent its existence playing catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DCEU does exactly that for a final time here. As with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there's such a large debt owed to Star Wars that elements seem to be lifted wholesale; just try not to laugh at Jabba the Hutt as a sea creature. 2018's initial Aquaman used past intergalactic flicks as a diving-off point, too, but with its own personality — no trace of which bobs up this time around. Wan helms again, switching to workman-like mode. He's co-credited on the story with returning screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (Orphan: First Kill), Momoa and Thomas Pa'a Sibbett (The Last Manhunt), but there's little but being dragged out with the prevailing tide, tonal chaos and a CGI mess on show. Now king of Atlantis and a father, Arthur Curry has another tussle with Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ambulance) to face, with his enemy aided by dark magic and exacerbating climate change. Only Aquaman teaming up with his imprisoned half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson, Insidious: The Red Door) will give the world a chance to survive. Even with an octopus spy and Nicole Kidman (Expats) riding a robot shark, a shipwreck results. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. One Life Nicholas Winton's "British Schindler" label wasn't invented for One Life, the rousing biopic that tells his story; however, it's a handy two-word description that couldn't better fit both him and the film. In the late 1930s, when the then-Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland was occupied by Nazi Germany, the London-born banker spearheaded a rescue mission to get children — mostly Jewish — out of the country. After being encouraged to visit Prague in 1938 by friends assisting refugees, he was so moved to stop as many kids as possible from falling victim to the Holocaust that he and a group of fellow humanitarians arranged trains to take them to England. The immense effort was dubbed kindertransport, with Winton assisting in saving 669 children. Then, in the decades that followed, his heroic feat was almost lost to history. In fact, it only returned to public knowledge in 1988 when his wife Grete Gjelstrup encouraged him to show his scrapbook from the time to Holocaust researcher Elizabeth Maxwell, who was married to media mogul Robert Maxwell. Smartly, One Life captures both remarkable aspects to Winton's story, flitting between them as it tells its powerful and stirring true tale. The film's jumps backwards and forward also allow room for two excellent performances, enlisting Anthony Hopkins as the older Winton and Johnny Flynn (Operation Mincemeat) to do the honours in his younger years. With The Two Popes, his Oscar win for The Father, Armageddon Time and now this, Hopkins has been enjoying a stellar run in his 80s. If matching one of Hopkins' great portrayals in a period filled with them — a career, too, of course — was daunting for Flynn, he doesn't show it. As with Kurt and Wyatt Russell on the small screen's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, they're playing the same man but also someone who changes, as everyone does, through his experiences. Accordingly, a lively Flynn captures Winton's zeal and determination, while a patient Hopkins wears the haunted disappointment of someone who has spent half of their life thinking that he hasn't done enough. When he finally realises the full impact of his efforts, it's a devastatingly touching moment in a potent feature that looks the standard sombre part, but also knows that flashiness isn't what leaves an imprint in a story as important as this. One Life streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Migration It mightn't seem like Migration and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget should be twin films. The first is Illumination's latest non-Minions effort. The second is the long-awaited sequel to 2000 claymation favourite Chicken Run. But this pair of animated movies is definitely the newest example of the long-running cinematic déjà vu trend. Past birds of a feather have included Antz and A Bug's Life, Deep Impact and Armageddon, Churchill and Darkest Hour, and Ben Is Back and Beautiful Boy — and oh-so-many more — aka pictures with similar plots releasing at around the same time. The current additions to the list both arrived in December 2023, focus on anthropomorphised poultry, and initially find their clucking and quacking critters happy in their own safe, insular idylls, only to be forced out into the scary wider world largely due to their kids. Chaos with humans in the food industry ensues, including a life-or-death quest to avoid being eaten, plus lessons about being willing to break out of your comfort zone/nest/pond. Famous voices help bring the avian protagonists to the screen, too — Elizabeth Banks (The Beanie Bubble) and Kumail Nanjiani (Welcome to Chippendales) are the parents in Migration, for instance, and Thandiwe Newton (Westworld) and Zachary Levi (Shazam! Fury of the Gods) in Dawn of the Nugget — although that's long been the industry standard in animation in general. If you've seen Chicken Run's return, then, Migration will instantly feel familiar. This is an instance of two studios hatching near-identical films that both have their own charms, however. With Migration, a voice cast that also spans Awkwafina (Quiz Lady), Keegan-Michael Key (Wonka), Danny DeVito (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Carol Kane (Hunters) brings plenty of energy. As the key behind-the-camera talents, director Benjamin Renner (Ernest & Celestine) and screenwriter Mike White (yes, The White Lotus' Mike White) know how to enliven the narrative. That tale tells of mallards Mack (Nanjiani) and Pam (Banks), one nervous and the other adventurous, who follow another family from New England to Jamaica via New York City with their eager ducklings Dax (Caspar Jennings, Operation Mincemeat) and Gwen (first-timer Tresi Gazal), and cantankerous uncle (DeVito). But the Big Apple brings a run-in which a chef, after initially falling afoul of a flock of pigeons, befriending their leader (Awkwafina) and endeavouring to rescue the homesick parrot (Key) who knows the way to their sunny winter getaway. Migration streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Wish Hitting cinemas in 2023, the year that Walt Disney Animation Studios celebrated its 100th birthday, shouldn't have meant that Wish needed to live up to a century's worth of beloved classics. And it wouldn't for viewers, even with the Mouse House's anniversary celebrations everywhere, if the company's latest film didn't bluntly draw attention to Disney hits gone by. Parts are cobbled together from Cinderella, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. Not just fellow animated efforts get referenced; alongside shoutouts to Bambi and Peter Pan, Mary Poppins earns the nod well. Overtly elbowing rather than winking, directors Chris Buck (Frozen and Frozen II) and Fawn Veerasunthorn (head of story on Raya and the Last Dragon) plus screenwriters Jennifer Lee (another Frozen alum) and Allison Moore (Beacon 23) ensure that their audience has the mega media corporation's other fare in their heads. It's a dangerous strategy, calling out other movies if the feature doing the calling out is by-the-numbers at best, and it does Wish no favours. No one might've been actively thinking "I wish I was watching a different Disney movie instead" if they weren't pushed in that direction by the flick itself, but once that idea sweeps in it never floats away. While the importance and power of dreams is Wish's main theme, the film forgot to have many itself. If it hoped to be a generic inspiration-touting fairy-tale musical, however, that fantasy was granted. Ariana DeBose (Argylle) and Chris Pine (Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves) star as teenager Asha and all-powerful sorcerer Magnifico, respectively. The latter created the kingdom of Rosas as a sanctuary to protect people's wishes, which hover in his castle — but he's stingy with granting them. When Asha discovers that the land's sovereign isn't as benevolent as he seems, then wishes on a star that becomes her beaming friend (and makes her goat Valentino talk, sporting the voice of Peter Pan & Wendy's Alan Tudyk), she decides to topple his rule and free the deepest desires of her fellow townsfolk. West Side Story Oscar-winner DeBose brings her best to the movie's songs, which would've fallen flat and proven forgettable in anyone else's hands, but they're the most vivid part of a film that starts with the storybook cliche, leans too heavily on chattering critters and can't match its classic look with an instant-classic picture. Wish streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Night Swim James Wan didn't direct Night Swim, nor write it. Instead, the Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring and Malignant filmmaker is one of its producers alongside Get Out, Five Nights at Freddy's, and the recent Halloween and The Exorcist revivals' Jason Blum. So, the pair haven't quite gone the M3GAN route given that Wan earned a story credit on that 2023 hit — but surely the Australian had a hand in one specific detail. Marking the feature helming debut of writer/director Bryce McGuire, the Baghead scribe who adapts his 2014 short film with Rod Blackhurst (Blood for Dust), Night Swim includes a school named after Harold Holt. It's a movie about a haunted swimming pool that namechecks the Aussie Prime Minister who disappeared and has been presumed dead since failing to return after a swim in the sea in 1967. The cheeky early reference is a portentous Easter egg, not that ocean paddles are a part of this tale. Other than stars Wyatt Russell (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) and Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin) trying to do what they can with the predictable material, including the former nodding to his family's baseballing history (his father Kurt and grandfather Bing, each also actors, both played), it's one of the movie's most notable aspects. Russell steps into the shoes of Ray Waller, who has retired from doing the only thing he's ever loved due to illness. That move away from professional sports sends the ex-athlete, his wife Eve (Condon) and their children children Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) and Elliot (Gavin Warren, Fear the Walking Dead) in search of a new home — and Ray feels a particular pull towards one specific abode and its groundwater-filled pool, even after tumbling unexpectedly into it. The paddling spot is meant to be helpful for his ailments, too. As viewers already know before this big decision, courtesy of a girl (Ayazhan Dalabayeva, Miracle Workers) having a traumatic splash in the 1992-set prologue, this isn't just any old backyard place for a dip. The evening pool scenes are fittingly hauntingly shot, but this is a movie where close to every element wades in from other flicks — The Shining, Poltergeist and The Ring among them — and sparking a sinking feeling about how derivative it is isn't the same as being suspenseful or scary. Night Swim streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. The Beekeeper In the Jason Statham cinematic universe, all that a movie needs is a profession as a moniker, its star scowling fiercely and the flimsiest of narratives propping up routine action scenes. So goes The Transporter, The Mechanic and now The Beekeeper (Crank doesn't quite fit, because the title doesn't describe Statham's character's job). The lead actor shared by all of these films can do and has done better. The Autopilot could be a name for his mode here, then. Directed by Suicide Squad's David Ayer, written by The Expendables 4's Kurt Wimmer and crediting Statham as a producer with them as well as a star, The Beekeeper doesn't attempt to get its main man doing anything that he couldn't do in his sleep, in fact — well, that and put him in a John Wick-esque scenario if it was written as a Gerard Butler (Plane) flick instead. Statham plays an ex-secret operative from a clandestine group called The Beekeepers, who is now literally keeping bees in his quiet life, but gets drawn back in after the kindly retired schoolteacher Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad, Creed III) that he rents a barn from is scammed by a ruthless operation. The Beekeepers are all about justice. In its pursuit, they're also not beholden to the usual law. In fact, their remit is swarming in to protect the hive when the legal forces that everyone knows about don't do their job. (Plenty of bee nods and puns are also The Beekeeper's remit, unsurprisingly, even as it manages never to be intentionally amusing for a second, or show any desire to want to). So when there's no satisfactory resolution to the swindle and its aftermath, including with Parker's daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman, The Umbrella Academy) an agent on the case, Statham's Adam Clay gets a-stinging. Wimmer has indeed scripted Gerard Butler movies before, but his lead here can't make this more than a woefully clichéd mess that screams to use his knack for comedy, yet doesn't. Looking grimly trashy aesthetics-wise, working in oh-so-rote conspiracies, roping in Josh Hutcherson (Five Nights at Freddy's) and Jeremy Irons (The Flash) as well as Minnie Driver (Uproar): none give this any trace of a buzz, either, or turn it into B- (or bee-)movie honey. The Beekeeper streams via YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Looking for more viewing options? Take a look at our monthly streaming recommendations across new straight-to-digital films and TV shows — and fast-tracked highlights from January 2024 (and also January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023, too). We keep a running list of must-stream TV from across 2024 as well, complete with full reviews. And, we've also rounded up 2023's 15 best films, 15 best straight-to-streaming movies, 15 top flicks hardly anyone saw, 30 other films to catch up with, 15 best new TV series of 2023, another 15 excellent new TV shows that you might've missed and 15 best returning shows.
The Pyrmont Festival has been a highlight on Sydney's culinary calendar for over a decade, showcasing the best of New South Wales produce, talent, and culinary expertise. As the festival prepares to celebrate its 12th year, it promises another weekend of gastronomic delights, wine, and local art at Pirrama Park on Saturday, May 18 and Sunday, May 19. This community-run event bridges the gap between city and country, with an impressive lineup of winemakers, brewers, and distillers from across the state. With more than 20 vendors participating, attendees can expect to sample the latest offerings from renowned producers such as Elbourne Wines and McKellar Ridge. [caption id="attachment_949752" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Tim Pascoe[/caption] Beyond premium beer and wine, you'll find a diverse selection of food trucks, including Asian street food from The Star's Fat Noodle (home to the legendary 20-hour fat pho noodles), Sudanese fast food from Pharaoh BBQ, and fresh Sydney Rock Oysters straight from the Fish Market. Expect live music and art exhibitions from local talent, food and wine courses, art classes, and more when you head to Pirrama Park, Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont. The locally adored festival has free entry — check out the full program here. [caption id="attachment_949754" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Photo Tim Pascoe[/caption]
Yet another ridesharing service is throwing its hat into the ring in Sydney, with China's DiDi platform set to launch across the city next month. The move comes almost two years after the platform first landed in Australia, launching in Victoria back in May 2018. It has since expanded to Newcastle, Perth and Queensland, and is finally heading to the Harbour City on Monday, March 16. The new app promises locals "a safe, reliable and value-for-money rideshare service", as DiDi goes head to head with the likes of Ola and Uber. It'll launch in Sydney with two of its services — Express and seven-seater Max — but not its carpooling service, Share. Uber has that covered, though. And it's sweetening the deal with some pretty tempting launch incentives, for both riders and drivers. Riders who sign up to the service before March 16 will enjoy a tidy 50 percent discount on all DiDi rides for four weeks, and will receive a $20 credit every time they introduce a friend to the platform. If you're a driver and you sign up two or more friends as fellow drivers before March 11, you'll get to keep 100 percent of trip fares for four weeks. The company's promising 24/7 support to both drivers and riders, an itinerary sharing feature for those riding, and a strict driver vetting process. And, it's saying trips can, on average, be up to ten percent more affordable than other Sydney rideshare services. DiDi Chuxing launched in China in 2012 and has quickly become a huge player in the global ridesharing game — it has since bought out Uber's Chinese operations and has stakes in numerous companies, including Ola, Taxify, Lyft and Grab. It'll be interesting to see how its services stack up to what's already on offer and how many drivers will be available at any one time. The DiDi app is now available to download from the app store, with services starting on Monday, March 16. Don't forget to sign up before then if you want to snag a month of half-price rides.
If a horror movie sports a killer premise, more films are always likely to follow. So, when A Quiet Place gifted cinemas just that back in 2018, giving it a sequel and then a spinoff didn't come as a surprise. Neither does the latest news about this hit saga: after 2020's A Quiet Place Part II and 2024 prequel A Quiet Place: Day One, A Quiet Place Part III has officially been locked in. You'll be watching the next flick about trying to survive post-apocalyptic times by being as silent as possible — because the extra-terrestrials that've invaded the earth get brutal when they hear a noise — in 2027. And, you'll be viewing a film with John Krasinski (IF) behind the lens again. The actor-turned-director helmed both the OG A Quiet Place and Part II, and is returning for Part III after Michael Sarnoski (Pig) did the honours on Day One. So far, all that's known about A Quiet Place Part III is a release date — Thursday, July 8, 2027 Down Under — and that Krasinski is directing, writing and producing, as per Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. So, just what the narrative will chart and which characters will be the focus haven't yet been revealed. Also unknown so far: if there'll be any familiar faces, including whether Emily Blunt (The Fall Guy), Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) and Noah Jupe (Lady in the Lake) will be back. So far, after life as we know it ended thanks to aliens that leap upon any and every sound, audiences have already seen what happened on day 89, days 471–7 and, in a couple of different ways, on the day that started it all. Add when A Quiet Place Part III is set to the list of details that haven't yet been advised, however. When the first A Quiet Place made its way to the big screen, it did excellent things with its mostly dialogue-free premise and gave films about otherworldly attackers a creative spin, quickly proving a box-office sensation as a result. Again, more movies building upon that success was to be expected. So are more sequels now, given that we're living in busy horror franchise times — as 28 Years Later, Final Destination Bloodlines, I Know What You Did Last Summer and M3GAN 2.0 can help attest in 2025 so far, and as Black Phone 2, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, The Conjuring: Last Rites and The Strangers: Chapter 2 are also set to demonstrate this year. There's obviously no trailer for Quiet Place Part III yet, but check out the trailers for A Quiet Place, A Quiet Place Part II and A Quiet Place: Day One below: A Quiet Place Part III is set to release on Thursday, July 8, 2027 Down Under. Read our reviews of A Quiet Place, A Quiet Place Part II and A Quiet Place: Day One. Via Variety / The Hollywood Reporter.
Bluesfest is as old as I am, and in the period of time in which we've both been in existence, Bluesfest has grown from an idealistic little Easter weekend in Byron Bay to one of the most highly-awarded, innovative and internationally acclaimed festivals Australia has to offer. In that time I mostly just grew taller and formed an inability to function without coffee. This year marks one of the most exciting Bluesfests to date. Feverish attention has been given to the headliner, Bob Dylan, the rock 'n' roll saviour of the 1960s who inspired generations of brooding young men to don dark glasses and take up the guitar. But the excitement also extends to the rest of the lineup, rounded out by the bespectacled troubadour Elvis Costello, blues legend B.B. King, and the androgynous musical powerhouse who launched a thousand haircuts, Grace Jones. The six day lineup features many more acts, including Ben Harper, Michael Franti, The Blind Boys of Alabama, as well as Australian acts including Washington and Kate Miller-Heidke. Add to that camping in beautiful surrounds, market stalls, carnival rides and generally chilled atmosphere, you have a particularly awesome Easter to look forward to. Tickets are selling fast, and while you'll find it hard to get a whole-weekend ticket now if you haven't already got one, there are still some tickets available for the Thursday and the Tuesday, when Bob Dylan will be playing. Get in while you can.
Imagine that someone from the year 2007 or earlier — anyone who existed before May 2008, for that matter — suddenly reappeared today, happily oblivious about everything that's happened since, and immediately asked what was doing big business on the big and small screens. To answer that question, you'd need to explain the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which kicked off 14 years back with Iron Man and has shown zero signs of stopping from then onwards. The MCU hasn't just kept on keeping on over ever since Robert Downey Jr introduced the world to Tony Stark. It has grown and sprawled and taken over not only cinemas, but streaming queues as well. And if you're wondering what's coming next — after a busy 2022 already, which has seen Moon Knight, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Ms Marvel and Thor: Love and Thunder arrive so far — Marvel just unveiled its plans for the next couple of years at San Diego Comic-Con. 2022 still has two MCU titles to come: She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which stars Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) as a lawyer who learns that it isn't easy being green, and the eagerly awaited Black Panther sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The first starts streaming from August 17, the second hits cinemas on November 10, and both dropped either new or initial trailers, too. And, they'll round out the Marvel Cinematic Universe's phase four, because this non-stop saga is broken into chapters that split its enormous story up into smaller parts. [caption id="attachment_862313" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.[/caption] Obviously, this means that phase five is on its way. Marvel has also dubbed the story from the phase four through to the end of phase six 'the multiverse saga'. Given that everything from Spider-Man: No Way Home to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has been dropping that m-word, that's hardly surprising. The MCU's fifth phase has 12 titles in store — some already announced, some newly confirmed. Come February 16, 2023 Down Under, the third Ant-Man flick — Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — will continue the pint-sized superhero's story (and bring more Paul Rudd to the MCU). Alongside that, hitting Disney+ sometime during autumn 2023 in Australia and New Zealand, is Secret Invasion. It focuses on Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury, and will also feature the return of Ben Mendelsohn (Cyrano) as Talos, as well as Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night in Miami), Emilia Clarke (Last Christmas) and Olivia Colman (Mothering Sunday). On May 4, 2023, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 will reach the big screen, while The Marvels — which teams up Captain Marvel (Brie Larson, Just Mercy), Ms Marvel (Iman Vellani) and WandaVision's Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris, Candyman) — arrives in cinemas on July 27. In-between, newcomer Echo, a spinoff from Hawkeye focusing on Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), will make its way to streaming in winter 2023, as will season two of Loki. [caption id="attachment_862338" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.[/caption] November 2, 2023 heralds the return of Blade, with the half-vampire vamp hunter played by Moonlight and Green Book Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali this time around — and sometime that spring, Disney+ series Ironheart will drop, too. First, that character (played by Dominique Thorne, Judas and the Black Messiah) will feature in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. During the summer of 2023–24, Agatha: Coven of Chaos will magic itself into streaming queues as well — giving the delightful Kathryn Hahn her own witchy WandaVision spinoff series, as first revealed in 2021. And, in 2024, phase five will also see a new 18-episode Daredevil series starring Charlie Cox (King of Thieves) and Vincent D'Onofrio (The Unforgivable) hit in autumn. They return to the roles of Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk following the 2015–18 Netflix series, and this go-around is called Daredevil: Born Again. [caption id="attachment_799400" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2020. All Rights Reserved.[/caption] Similarly arriving the same year: a new Captain America movie, called Captain America: New World Order, focusing on Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) with the cape and shield — on May 2, 2024. And, fellow flick Thunderbolts will release on July 25, 2024, wrapping up phase five, and focusing on a new team of characters. As for phase six, it currently has three titles in the works, with more to come. They're all massive, though, given that they start with yet another Fantastic Four film on November 7, 2024 (with no cast yet announced) and end with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars on May 1 and November 6, 2025, respectively. Just announced in Hall H: Marvel Studios' Fantastic Four, in theaters November 8, 2024. #SDCC2022 pic.twitter.com/z4j7tsfKl9 — Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) July 24, 2022 For more information about Marvel's upcoming slate of films and TV shows, head to the company's website. Top image: Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2020. All Rights Reserved.
The Rocks' Blak Markets are back, bringing together artwork, jewellery, textiles and food from Australia's Indigenous communities. The markets will once again take place on Gadigal land — setting up shop on the Tallawoladah Lawn in front of the MCA for two days from Friday, March 4 through Saturday, March 5 (10am–4pm daily). Throughout the weekend, more than 20 stalls will sell goods made exclusively by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and makers. Artworks, skincare, jewellery, body oils, clothes, homewares and magazines will all be on sale. In between wandering the stalls, you can check out the program of performances and workshops throughout the weekend. Both days will kick off with a Welcome to Country and a smoking ceremony. You can then catch traditional dancers, singing and kids' storytelling, as well as attend weaving workshops with Ngumpie Weaving and Magpie Song Healing. There will also be an Indigenous-owned coffee van serving up cappuccinos and ice cream if you need your morning caffeine hit or a snack while you're exploring the market.
Before Monday, March 28 comes to a close Down Under, Hollywood will have anointed a new batch of winners. After months of chatter — almost two since the nominations were announced, in fact — and even longer still of speculation, the Academy Awards will shower accolades upon its 94th round of recipients. Sweeping revisionist westerns, heartwarming animated hits, sci-fi spectacles, history-making documentaries: amid the gorgeous gowns, snappy monologues and sweet speeches that'll inevitably come with 2022's Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes-hosted ceremony, they're all in the running. Yes, the list goes in. And, in a bonus for movie lovers in Australia, you can watch 36 of this year's nominated features right now. Some are showing in cinemas, others are streaming, and a few give you options for either big- or small-screen viewings — and here's your pre-Oscars binging rundown on where to see them all. ON THE BIG SCREEN: BELFAST Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Kenneth Branagh), Best Supporting Actor (Ciarán Hinds), Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench), Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Our thoughts: Warm, cosy, rosy, charming, feel-good: typically when a film spins its story during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, none of these words apply. But with Belfast, Kenneth Branagh has made a movie set in its eponymous city when the Protestant-versus-Catholic violence was a constant sight, and also helmed a Jamie Dornan, Caitríona Balfe and Judi Dench-starring feature that's about a childhood spent with that conflict as a backdrop. Where to watch: Belfast is currently screening in Australian cinemas. Read our full review. CYRANO Nominations: Best Costume Design Our thoughts: Love can spring quickly, igniting sparks instantly. Or, it can build gradually and gracefully, including over a lifetime. In the sumptuous confines of Cyrano, all of the above happens — and, with director Joe Wright helming a handsome, detail-laden, rhythmic piece of cinema starring a fantastic Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett and Kelvin Harrison Jr, this musical adaptation of Edmond Rostand's 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac truly sings. Where to watch: Cyrano is currently screening in Australian cinemas. Read our full review. DRIVE MY CAR Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Best International Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay Our thoughts: Forget Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy, American Oscar-applauded films similarly about drivers, passengers and unexpected camaraderie — Drive My Car is in a lane of its own. Filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi takes his central pair and his audience on a patient, engrossing and rewarding trip that cuts to the heart of dealing with life, love, loss, pain, shame and despair, and also sees how fickle twists of chance unavoidably dictate our routes. Where to watch: Drive My Car is currently screening in Australian cinemas. Read our full review. FLEE Nominations: Best International Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature Our thoughts: Pairing animation with factual storytelling is still rare enough that it stands out, but that blend alone isn't what makes Flee special. Writer/director Jonas Poher Rasmussen has created one of the best instances of the combination yet, all to share the story of an Afghan refugee who was once a kid in war-torn Kabul, then a teenager seeking asylum in Copenhagen, and now talks through the astonishing ups and downs in his tale. Where to watch: Flee is currently screening in Australian cinemas. Read our full review. LICORICE PIZZA Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Original Screenplay Our thoughts: Paul Thomas Anderson's ninth feature births two new on-screen talents, both putting in two of the past year's best performances and two of the finest-ever movie debuts. In this sublime tale of friendship, romance, hanging out and navigating the 70s in San Fernando Valley, that's evident from the first grainy 35-millimetre-shot moments, as Alana Haim (of Haim) and Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) do little more than chat, stroll and charm. Where to watch: Licorice Pizza is currently screening in Australian cinemas. Read our full review. PARALLEL MOTHERS Nominations: Best Actress (Penélope Cruz), Best Original Score Our thoughts: Parallel Mothers is classic Pedro Almodóvar, but nothing about that description ever simply unfurls as expected. Once again, he puts Penélope Cruz at the centre of his frames, paints with the vibrant-toned costume and set design that make his movies such a blissful sight for colour-seeking eyes, and focuses on mothers of all shades navigating life's many difficulties — and the result is one of his best films so far. Where to watch: Parallel Mothers is currently screening in Australian cinemas. Read our full review. IN CINEMAS OR AT HOME: DUNE Nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Our thoughts: A spice-war space opera about feuding houses on far-flung planets, Dune has long been a pop-culture building block. It's always been something special, too — but as he did with Blade Runner 2049, writer/director Denis Villeneuve has once again grasped something already enormously influential, peered at it with astute eyes, built it anew and created an instant sci-fi classic in the process. Where to watch: Dune is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies and Prime Video. Read our full review. ENCANTO Nominations: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Score, Best Song Our thoughts: Five years after Lin-Manuel Miranda and Disney first teamed up on an animated musical with the catchiest of tunes, aka Moana, they're back at it again with Encanto. To viewers eager for another colourful, thoughtful and engaging film — and another that embraces a particular culture with the heartiest of hugs, and is all the better for it — what can the past decade's most influential composer and biggest entertainment behemoth say except you're welcome? Where to watch: Encanto is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Disney+,Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. HOUSE OF GUCCI Nominations: Best Makeup and Hairstyling Our thoughts: For the second time in as many movies, Lady Gaga is caught in a bad romance in House of Gucci. Yes, she's already sung the song to match. The pop diva doesn't belt out ballads or croon upbeat tunes in this true-crime drama about the titular fashion family, unlike in her Oscar-nominated role in A Star Is Born, but she does shimmy into a tale about love and revenge, horror and design, and wanting someone's everything as long as it's free. Where to watch: House of Gucci is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. KING RICHARD Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Will Smith), Best Supporting Actress (Aunjanue Ellis), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing Our thoughts: Stepping into Venus and Serena Williams' childhood as aspiring tennis stars, King Richard mostly lobs around smaller moments — and it's a tale about imperfections, struggles and contradictions in the pursuit of excellence, too. It spies the sporting greats' formative years through their father (Will Smith), but still steps through life-defining events for the entire family — and the end product is an easy win, though, rather than an all-timer Where to watch: King Richard is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. NIGHTMARE ALLEY Nominations: Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design Our thoughts: Don't mistake the blaze that starts Nightmare Alley for warmth; in his 11th film, Guillermo del Toro gets chillier than he ever has. A lover of gothic tales told with empathy and curiosity, the Mexican filmmaker has always understood that escapism and agony go hand in hand — and here, in a carnival noir that springs from William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel and previously reached cinemas in 1947, he runs headfirst into cold, unrelenting darkness. Where to watch: Nightmare Alley is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. SPENCER Nominations: Best Actress (Kristen Stewart) Our thoughts: Spencer joins Kristen Stewart's resume after weighty parts in Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper, Certain Women and Seberg, and has her do something she's long done magnificently: let a world of pain and uncertainty seep quietly from her entire being. The new regal drama should do just that, of course, given its subject — but saying that director Pablo Larraín has cast his Diana well, pitch-perfect head tilt and all, is a royal understatement. Where to watch: Spencer is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Prime Video. Read our full review. SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME Nominations: Best Visual Effects Our thoughts: Spider-Man: No Way Home isn't without its charms; Tom Holland and Zendaya's chemistry still sparkles, it's a definite treat to see Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina back in the fold, and, as blasts from the pasts keep popping up, director Jon Watts cleverly juggles the varying tones of all three different web-slinging franchises. But this spider-sequel is always happiest when it's trying to catch the audience's claps and cheers just like flies. Where to watch: Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. WEST SIDE STORY Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Supporting Actress (Ariana DeBose), Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Our thoughts: Tonight, tonight, there's only Steven Spielberg's lavish and dynamic version of West Side Story tonight — not to detract from or forget the 1961 movie of the same name. With this swooning, socially aware remake of one of cinema's favourite stories about star-crossed lovers, the veteran filmmaker pirouettes back from the atrocious Ready Player One by embracing something he clearly adores, and being unafraid to give it rhythmic swirls and thematic twirls. Where to watch: West Side Story is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD Nominations: Best International Feature, Best Original Screenplay Our thoughts: Capturing the relentlessly on-the-go sensation that comes with adulthood, as well as the inertia of feeling like you're never quite getting anywhere that you're meant to be, The Worst Person in the World is filled with running scenes that paint a wonderfully evocative and relatable image. Those are apt terms for Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier's latest gem overall, actually, which meets Julie as she's pinballing through the shambles of her millennial life. Where to watch: The Worst Person in the World is currently screening in Australian cinemas, and is also available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. VIA STREAMING: ASCENSION Nominations: Best Documentary Feature Our thoughts: Starting with factory recruitment on the streets, then stepping into mass production, then climbing the social hierarchy up to the rich and privileged, Ascension explores employment, consumerism and the everyday dream in China. Observational to a mesmerising degree, it lets its slices of life and the behaviour, attitudes and patterns they capture do the talking — and what a smart, telling, incisive and surreal story they unfurl. Where to watch: Ascension is available to stream via Paramount+. ATTICA Nominations: Best Documentary Feature Our thoughts: Half a century after the infamous Attica uprising at the New York jail — which ended with 33 inmates and 10 correctional officers dead, all most all at the hands of law enforcement — this intelligent, compassionate and powerful documentary asks prisoners who were there to share their stories. Entwined with archival footage, it isn't an easy watch, but it's not just grim and infuriating but gripping and essential during every second. Where to watch: Attica is available to stream via Paramount+. BEING THE RICARDOS Nominations: Best Actor (Javier Bardem), Best Actress (Nicole Kidman), Best Supporting Actor (JK Simmons) Our thoughts: If Aaron Sorkin's name is attached to a project, film or TV alike, plenty of talk always ensues. That's no different in this Sorkin-written and directed biopic about Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) — which focuses on a difficult time in their marriage, and in their sitcom I Love Lucy, but largely just makes viewers wish that they were watching that television series and the real-life Ball instead. Where to watch: Being the Ricardos is available to stream via Prime Video. CODA Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Troy Kotsur), Best Adapted Screenplay, Our thoughts: CODA, the sophomore feature from writer/director Sian Heder (Tallulah), takes its cues from 2014 French hit La Famille Bélier — and it's a rare example of the remake bettering the original. Following 17-year-old Ruby Rossi's (Emilia Jones, Locke & Key) struggle to balance her commitments to her family, all of whom are deaf, with her dreams of attending music school, it's filled with warmth, naturalism, engaging performances and a welcome lack of cheesiness. Where to watch: CODA is available to stream via Apple TV+. Read our full review. COMING 2 AMERICA Nominations: Best Makeup and Hairstyling Our thoughts: Coming 2 America might make knowing jokes about pointless sequels made decades after original hits, but that winking attitude doesn't make this 33-years-later sequel to Coming to America any better. This time around, Eddie Murphy's Prince Akeem of Zamunda has to grapple with becoming king, finding out he has a 30-year-old son and realising that his country's patriarchal traditions need dismantling, and laughs are thin from start to finish. Where to watch: Coming 2 America is available to stream via Prime Video. CRUELLA Nominations: Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling Our thoughts: A killer dress, a statement jacket, a devastating head-to-toe ensemble: if they truly match their descriptions, they stand the test of time. Set in 70s London as punk takes over the aesthetic, live-action 101 Dalmatians prequel Cruella is full of such outfits — but if the Emma Stone-starring affair was a fashion item itself, though, it'd be a piece that appears fabulous from afar, but can't hide its seams. Where to watch: Cruella is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. DON'T LOOK UP Nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing Our thoughts: On paper, Don't Look Up sounds like a dream. Using a comet hurtling towards earth as a stand-in, Adam McKay parodies climate change inaction and the circus that tackling COVID-19 has turned into in the US, spoofs self-serious disaster blockbusters and enlists a fantasy cast. But he's still simply making the most blatant gags, all while assuming viewers wouldn't care about saving the planet, or their own lives, without such star-studded and glossily shot packaging. Where to watch: Don't Look Up is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE Nominations: Best Actress (Jessica Chastain), Best Makeup and Hairstyling Our thoughts: Not for the first time, the eyes have it, but then they always have with Tammy Faye Bakker. The second film called The Eyes of Tammy Faye to tell the 70s and 80s televangelist's tale, this biopic, frequently puts its namesake's OTT and instantly eye-grabbing peepers in focus. That's apt, given the Jessica Chastain-starring flick hones in on perspective; however, it'd be a better film if it pondered what she truly saw, or didn't. Where to watch: The Eyes of Tammy Faye is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. FOUR GOOD DAYS Nominations: Best Original Song Our thoughts: Based on a true tale and coming to the screen via a Washington Post article, Four Good Days isn't subtle — but Mila Kunis and Glenn Close's performances still hit the mark with power and empathy. They play a mother and daughter, the former a ten-year heroin addict trying to get clean for the 15th time, the latter her long-suffering mother, and both wading through a lifetime of woes in search of a brighter future. Where to watch: Four Good Days is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. FREE GUY Nominations: Best Visual Effects Our thoughts: Free Guy is a big-budget, star-led movie that primarily exists to answer two not-at-all pressing questions: what would The Truman Show look like if it starred Ryan Reynolds, and how would that 1998 classic would fare if it was about massive online video games instead of TV? In the process, it's firmly Hollywood's equivalent of mass-produced soft furnishings emblazoned with self-help platitudes and designed to sit on as many couches as possible. Where to watch: Free Guy is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE HAND OF GOD Nominations: Best International Feature Our thoughts: The Hand of God isn't a Diego Maradona biopic; however, Paolo Sorrentino's film takes its name from the soccer star's move during a 1986 World Cup match, where he used his hand to score a goal and helped win the game. Based on the filmmaker's own youth, it also tells of a time when the player was a deity to the not-yet-movie-obsessed future Italian cinema great — and the life-changing personal dramas that occurred with that soccer worship in the background. Where to watch: The Hand of God is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. THE LOST DAUGHTER Nominations: Best Actress (Olivia Colman), Best Supporting Actress (Jessie Buckley), Best Adapted Screenplay Our thoughts: Watching Olivia Colman play a complicated woman is like staring at the ocean: it's never the same twice; it couldn't be more unpredictable, no matter how comfortable it appears; and all that surface texture bobs, floats, swells, gleams and glides atop leagues of unseen complexity. The Lost Daughter is the latest example, and it's exceptional, with actor-turned-filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal making a bold directorial debut bringing Elena Ferrante's novel to the screen. Where to watch: The Lost Daughter is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. LUCA Nominations: Best Animated Feature Our thoughts: Even when Pixar makes a minor delight, like Luca, its usually swims well beyond most of the other family-friendly fare that gets pumped in front of young eyes. Set in Italy over a resplendent summer, this coming-of-age tale might be the closest that Pixar ever gets to making a Frankenstein movie. Forget the whole coming back from the dead part; instead, teenage sea monsters Luca (Jacob Tremblay) and Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) just want to belong. Where to watch: Luca is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES Nominations: Best Animated Feature Our thoughts: Fighting the robot apocalypse has rarely been as fun on-screen as it is in this feel-good, family-friendly (and family-loving) animated delight. Artificial intelligence takes over, the world's technological gadgets enslave humans, and it's up to a film-obsessed teenager and her quirky family to save the day, work through their baggage and ensure that humanity has a future — all of which makes for smart, funny, warmhearted and savvily playful viewing. Where to watch: The Mitchells vs the Machines is available to stream via Netflix, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. NO TIME TO DIE Nominations: Best Original Song, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Our thoughts: James Bond might prefer his martinis shaken, not stirred, but No Time to Die doesn't quite take that advice. While the enterprising spy hasn't changed his drink order, the latest film he's gives its regular ingredients both a mix and a jiggle. The action is dazzlingly choreographed, a menacing criminal has an evil scheme and the world is in peril. But, there's more weight in Daniel Craig's performance, more emotion all round, and a greater willingness to contemplate the stakes. Where to watch: No Time to Die is available to stream via Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. THE POWER OF THE DOG Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Jane Campion), Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actor (Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee), Best Supporting Actress (Kirsten Dunst), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Our thoughts: Jane Campion has never helmed anything less than stellar, and she's immensely capable of unearthing rich new pastures in well-ploughed terrain. With The Power of the Dog, the New Zealand director is at the height of her skills trotting into her latest mesmerising musing on strength, desire and isolation — this time via a venomous western that's as perilously bewitching as its mountainous backdrop, and is also teeming with stunning performances. Where to watch: The Power of the Dog is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON Nominations: Best Animated Feature Our thoughts: Featuring a vibrant animated spectacle that heroes vivid green and blue hues, a rousing central figure who is never a stock-standard Disney princess and lively voice work, Raya and the Last Dragon boasts plenty of highlights. It embraces southeast Asian culture with a warm hug; it's always detailed, organic, inclusive and thoughtful, and never tokenistic; and it benefits from the pitch-perfect vocal stylings of Awkwafina as the playful, mystical half of the film's title. Where to watch: Raya and the Last Dragon is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS Nominations: Best Visual Effects Our thoughts: In Marvel's 25th film, Simu Liu anchors a film about history and destiny, too — one that's about breaking free from the past and committing to the future — and he heartily embraces the occasion. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings itself flits between offering up a lively picture that strives to carve out its own space in the series, and simply serving up more of the usual Marvel template but in enticing packaging, however, but it's always entertaining. Where to watch: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. SUMMER OF SOUL (...OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) Nominations: Best Documentary Feature Our thoughts: Much of Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) involves stunning archival footage, as recorded more than five decades ago and never seen since, capturing live performances by an astonishing lineup of musicians at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Directed by Questlove, consider this glorious documentary an act of unearthing, reclamation and celebration, then. It's a gift, too — and a phenomenal one. Where to watch: Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is available to stream via Disney+, Google Play, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Read our full review. TICK, TICK... BOOM! Nominations: Best Actor (Andrew Garfield), Best Film Editing Our thoughts: Lin-Manuel Miranda's filmmaking directorial debut, Tick, Tick… Boom! charts theatre composer Jonathan Larson's (Andrew Garfield) path to the autobiographical one-man-show that shares its name — before he went on to make a little production called Rent. It's a loving ode, albeit an inescapably overexcited one. And it's also clearly a case of art imitating life, with Larson's enthusiasm for the art form he cherished so feverishly coming through strong. Where to watch: Tick, Tick... Boom! is available to stream via Netflix. Read our full review. THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH Nominations: Best Actor (Denzel Washington), Best Cinematography, Best Production Design Our thoughts: Bringing Shakespeare to the big screen is no longer just about doing the material justice, or even letting a new batch of the medium's standout talents give their best to the Bard's immortal words. For everyone attempting the feat (a list that just keeps growing), it's also about gifting the playwright's material with the finest touches that cinema allows — and this version of Macbeth, directed solo by Joel Coen, bubbles not only with toil and trouble but with all of the above. Where to watch: The Tragedy of Macbeth is available to stream via Apple TV+. Read our full review.
Australia's annual week-long celebration of the history, achievements and diverse culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is back this July. Running from July 7–14, this year's festivities are centred around the theme of 'Voice. Treaty. Truth.', coinciding with the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages. During the week, the city will be united with fairs, art shows, parties and performances showcasing Indigenous Australian culture and highlighting the strength, power and importance of its past, present and future. And many of them are free — from lunchtime screenings to public installations — so it's a great chance to enjoy our country's diverse culture without spending a cent. The celebration of Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander culture isn't just restricted to this week, either. To continue learning about, and celebrating one of the oldest cultures on the planet, you can watch shows and documentaries on SBS's National Indigenous Television, join the conversation at Aboriginal-led website Common Ground and visit local Indigenous art centres.
Across the first few months of 2025, HBO is bringing back both The White Lotus and The Last of Us — and if you feel like you've been waiting a while for the two hit shows to return, then you mustn't be a Euphoria fan. 2022 closed with the second season of the US network's vacation anthology. 2023 began with the debut run of its game-to-TV smash. It was before all of that, at the start of 2022, that Euphoria last dropped new episodes, though — and its third season isn't expected to arrive until 2026. Here's the good Euphoria news, however: HBO has finally started production on season three of the award-winning favourite. And, while there's still a wait to see how it pans out, a first-look image of Zendaya in the new season has also arrived to give viewers a sneak peek. View this post on Instagram A post shared by euphoria (@euphoria) The show's cast haven't been sitting around doing nothing for the past three years. Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer, Colman Domingo and company have been busy — and our screens have been full of movies and TV shows to prove it. Challengers, Dune: Part Two, Saltburn, Priscilla, Reality, Anyone But You, Madame Web, Immaculate, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Cuckoo, Kinds of Kindness, The Color Purple. Drive-Away Dolls, The Madness: they're just some of the projects that've featured Euphoria stars since 2022, and the list goes on. Elordi has been back in Australia making miniseries The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which hits streaming in April — and will also be seen as Frankenstein's monster for Guillermo del Toro (Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio) before 2025 is out. Domingo was nominated for an Oscar for Rustin, then scored another nomination for Sing Sing. Storm Reid won an Emmy for The Last of Us. Maude Apatow has been doing voice work on Pantheon, Alexa Demie popped up in Fantasmas, Dominic Fike was in Earth Mama — and played Laneway 2024. Season three of Euphoria has experienced delays for a heap of reasons. Back in 2024, it was reported that scripts were still being worked on, but shooting had been pushed back. "HBO and Sam Levinson remain committed to making an exceptional third season. In the interim, we are allowing our in-demand cast to pursue other opportunities," a HBO spokesperson told Deadline and Variety in a statement at the time. Apparently the idea of doing a movie instead of a new season was floated, but obviously isn't the plan that's moving ahead. Given the passage of time — come 2026, it will have been four years since season two — there'll be a time jump within the narrative in season three and the show's main characters will no longer be in high school, Zendaya has mentioned in interviews. There's obviously no trailer for Euphoria season three yet, but you can watch HBO's 2024–25 roundup trailer below: Euphoria season three doesn't have an exact release date yet, but is expected to arrive in 2026 — we'll update you when further details are announced. Images:HBO.
Beer's great for a hot day and whisky for a cold night, but few alcoholic drinks are as versatile as the botanically complex cure-all: gin. If you have a base understanding of distilling, you know it's actually a relatively simple offshoot of vodka, but it's a spirit that has a lot of depth, both for itself and the drinks it produces. If you love a gin and tonic, martini, negroni, gin fizz or even just a dram of the base spirit, you ought to hit up this year's Botanica Gin and Spirits Journey. Hitting North Sydney from Thursday, May 8 to Sunday, May 11, this weekend celebration of gin (and spirits) is taking over a 150-metre tunnel complex inside the Coal Loader Centre for Sustainability with a tasting trail through 25 participating distilleries. Expect award-winning gins, vodkas, whiskys, rums and liqueurs from boutique distillers like Brix Distillers, Ester Spirits, Bathurst Grange Distillery, Gindu, Manly Spirits Co., Hickson House Distilling Co., Renegade Spirits and many more. The event goes beyond simply enjoying what's in the glass, though, shining a light on what these drinks all have in common: native Australian botanicals. To that end, you'll also come across more than just drinks. Throughout the corners and hallways of the Coal Loader tunnels, you'll also encounter native-inspired delicacies, including sensory stations to learn about, feel and sample the base native botanicals that help craft the liquid flavours you know and love. For $95 per ticket, you can book attendance for a two-and-a-half-hour session, either 3.30-6.00pm and 6.30-9.00pm on Thursday, May 8; 12.00-2.30pm, 3.00-5.30pm and 6.30-9.00pm on Friday, May 9; 10.00am-12.30pm, 1.00-3.30pm, 4.00-6.30pm and 7.00-9.30pm on Saturday, May 10; and 10.00am-12.30pm, 1.00-3.30pm and 4.00-6.30pm on Sunday, May 11. Each ticket includes tastings, a free tote bag, an event map, a tasting glass and other Botanica goodies. And of course, you'll be able to purchase bottles of spirits to take home.
While you may mostly associate The Grounds of Alexandria with its daytime happenings — coffee roasting, bread baking, flower selling, pizza making (the list goes on) — the multi-faceted venue turns it on at night, too. This week, it's farewelling summer with a night of after-dark live music on Thursday, February 28. For the one night, the garden will be filled with bands, booze and (of course) food. Sit back with a buttermilk chicken burger and a frosé and enjoy tunes by guitarist and hip-hop artist Milan Ring and Portugal-born singer Inês the Iny. While the music kicks off from 8pm, The Garden Bar will be slinging its much-loved woodfired pizzas, spritzes and boozy shakes from 7pm. Seating will be limited so be sure arrive early to get a prime posi (preferably on one of the comfy lounges).
Level up the irreverent camp this Mardis Gras at The Winery's Bottomless Drag Brunch. With two 90-minute sessions held every Saturday until March 8, there's no shortage of opportunities to get down with your pals for fun-loving drag performances alongside bottomless drinks and a tantalising shared brunch menu. With a different pair of queens leading the laughs each week, a host of familiar names like Kalin Klein, Dammit Janet, Dominique Topp, Jacqui St Hyde and Sia Tequila will make sure each session is as raucous as you'd expect. Plus, if you're looking to celebrate on Parade Day, the venue will feature a jam-packed schedule with five sessions kicking off from 11.30am. Priced at $99 per person, the leafy surrounds of The Winery are the ideal spot for this audacious bash. Just sashay your way along Crown Street's rainbow road to make your arrival.
When January 2022 arrives, it won't just mark the welcome start of a brand new year after the past couple have been so chaotic. Also rolling around when 2021 slinks off into the past forever: the return of Sydney's beloved Westpac Openair Cinema. Come Thursday, January 6, Mrs Macquaries Point will once again play host to the most spectacular big screen in the city — and to quite the impressive list of flicks that'll play with panoramic views of the city, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge as their stunning backdrop. Across its 48-night season until Tuesday, February 22, big names, big potential award-winners and big recent favourites are all set to flicker across the outdoor cinema's 350-square-metre screen. Westpac Openair will kick off for 2022 with a preview screening of the Will Smith-starring biopic King Richard, where he plays the father of tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams — and other brand-new highlights include Spencer, with Kristen Stewart stepping into Princess Diana's shoes; Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley, his first film after The Shape of Water; and Pedro Almodovar's Parallel Mothers, aka the movie that won Penelope Cruz the Best Actress prize at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. There's also the Australian premiere of Death on the Nile, which sees Agatha Christie's famed detective Hercule Poirot return to the big screen in the follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express — and, as well as playing the sleuth, Kenneth Branagh also has his latest directorial effort Belfast, as based on his own childhood, hitting Westpac Openair as well. Or, if you haven't yet caught new Bond flick No Time to Die, it's showing multiple times. Plus, other films that'll play Westpac Openair after hitting regular cinemas include Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence-starring comet comedy Don't Look Up, sci-fi spectacle Dune, Jane Campion's exquisite western The Power of the Dog, fashion drama House of Gucci, Steven Spielberg's new version of West Side Story, Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza and the fourth Matrix flick The Matrix Resurrections. Because the films and the location are only part of the fun here, Westpac Openair will also be slinging cocktails, serving up food by Kitchen by Mike and its chef Mike McEnearney — this time with a Mexican barbecue twist — and enlisting FBi radio's DJs to spin pre-film tunes. Tickets go on sale from 9am AEDT on Wednesday, December 8, with pre-sales from 9am AEDT on Monday, December 6–5pm AEDT Tuesday, December 7. Images: Fiora Sacco
Australia's festival scene keeps delivering heartbreak, with Mona Foma the latest major event to announce that it's no longer going ahead. 2024's fest has already taken place, running back in February, but it will now go down in history as the last-ever Mona Foma. Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art, aka Mona, has called time on its summer festival after a 16-year run of showcasing music and art — and giving Dark Mofo a sunny counterpart — during the Apple Isle's warmer months. Mona owner and founder David Walsh revealed the end of Mona Foma in a statement, bidding farewell to the event because "it's been magical, but the spell has worn off". [caption id="attachment_784488" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image courtesy of the artist and Mona Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia[/caption] "At Mona Foma — Mofo — at the Peacock Theatre, we joined the Zen Circus, and Italian punk came to live, rent free, in my head," starts Walsh's missive, which begins by running through past festival highlights. "In 2023 Peaches turned us all on with her sexy songs, but the thing that turned me on the most was the sign language interpreter signing 'peg'," he continues. "Guy Ben-Ary in 2017, wiring living neurons to speakers and cajoling them to scream. Gotye playing the ondioline. Robin Fox's beacons. David Byrne and Philip Glass. Wire and Cale. The Saints and St Vincent. Dresden Dolls and Dan Deacon. Sun Ra and Neneh Cherry. Kate Miller-Heidke and Vieux Farka Touré." "And the finches playing guitar. From Here to Ear. That was the first one, in 2009. We bought that work, but we've never shown it again. It was too much the first time." [caption id="attachment_880158" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Mona/Rémi Chauvin. Image Courtesy Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.[/caption] "Mona Foma took us around the world. But it ends here. Maybe the end started at COVID. Maybe it's because the last festival was a poorly attended artistic triumph. But those aren't the reasons I killed it," Walsh notes. "I know that we live for experience but, more and more, I seek permanence, a symbolic immortality. At Mona, I'm building this big thing, hopefully it'll be a good thing, but it's a costly thing. I'm addicted to building, and my addiction got out of hand. Some things have to go before I'm too far gone." "Mona Foma is one of those things. It's been magical, but the spell has worn off. Only these words, from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, remain: 'live by the Foma that makes you brave and kind and healthy and happy.'" [caption id="attachment_832077" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jesse Hunniford, Mona[/caption] Ending Mona Foma is the latest big change for Mona's festivals. As announced in 2023, Dark Mofo is taking a breather in 2024. A number of the latter's regular events, such as Winter Feast, the Nude Solstice Swim, Night Shift and the Mona Gala are still happening this year, however. With Dark Mofo, the plan is to press pause for 12 months to take stock and come back even better. "The fallow year will enable us to secure the future of Dark Mofo and its return at full force in 2025," said Dark Mofo Artistic Director Chris Twite in 2023. The Mona Foma news comes after both Splendour in the Grass and Groovin the Moo cancelled their 2024 festivals mere weeks after announcing their lineups. Falls Festival took summer 2023–24 off, Summergrounds Music Festival at Sydney Festival was cancelled and This That hasn't gone ahead for a couple of years now. [caption id="attachment_926552" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Amy Brown, image courtesy of Street Eats @ Franko Hobart and Mona Foma.[/caption] 2024's Mona Foma featured Queens of the Stone Age, Courtney Barnett, TISM, Paul Kelly, Mogwai, Shonen Knife, and Cash Savage and The Last Drinks, for starters — and Holy Fuck, Wednesday, Michael Rother and Friends (playing Neu! songs), and Lonnie Holley with Moor Mother and Irreversible Entanglements. The lineup goes on from there. "Gratitude to all of you that came. And to those who didn't, a silver lining: you'll no longer suffer from FOMO for FOMA. And anyway, repetition is regimentation. And regimentation is ridiculous," said Walsh in his announcement. "Greatest gratitude to those who helped put it together. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me." [caption id="attachment_830704" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Remi Chauvin, Mona.[/caption] Mona Foma's last festival took place in February 2024. Head to the MONA website for further details. Top image: Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image courtesy of the artist and Mona Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
It may not end with a fade to black, with questions hanging over its characters' fates, or the revelation that it's all been a dream — but, however it happens, Atlanta is definitely wrapping up. Since 2016, the Donald Glover-created series has been one of the best things on TV; however, it's about to say farewell with a fourth and final batch of episodes. That isn't new news — Atlanta's end was revealed earlier this year — but that last go-around now has a trailer. In typical Atlanta style, it's cruisy and a tad surreal, and also still full of anxious and probing situations. This is the show that just had Alexander Skarsgård (The Northman) pop up and masturbate furiously, ventured into cannibalism and also delivered a wild Amelie parody in its third season, after all. That last round of instalments only arrived earlier this year, airing from March–May, after a four-year wait since season two. Clearly, the gap this time is vastly shorter — so if you're sad about the series ending, at least it's going out with a huge double dose. Exactly what creator and star Glover, who frequently writes and directs the series as well, has in store for his on-screen alter ego Earnest 'Earn' Marks isn't revealed in this first sneak peek at Atlanta's endgame — but Earn says he's in a good place, work-wise. Along with his ex Vanessa (Zazie Beetz, The Harder They Fall), rapper cousin Alfred 'Paper Boi' Miles (Brian Tyree Henry, Eternals) and Nigerian American pal Darius (Lakeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah), he's back in the titular US city after the last season followed the group around Europe. But, being the show it is, coming home won't be simple. Exactly how Atlanta follows up each and every season — all of them insightful, exceptional and unafraid to take big leaps — is always a thrill to discover. As it ventured around Europe, the show's third season went all in on white bullshit, and also on the way that the white-centric world will forever be haunted by how it still treats and has historically treated people of colour. What comes next will arrive for the final time in mid-September, with the show due to start its last run on Thursday, September 15 in the US. It streams via SBS On Demand in Australia and Neon in New Zealand, and will hopefully hit day and date Down Under, so on Friday, September 16, as season three did. Check out the trailer for Atlanta's fourth season below: The fourth season of Atlanta will release in the US on Thursday, September 15 — with the series streaming via SBS On Demand in Australia and Neon in New Zealand. We'll update you with an exact date Down Under when it comes to hand. Read our full review of Atlanta season three.
Here's some news you won't read in Lady Whistledown's latest pamphlet — and a reason to frock up like you're in Regency-era London, too. In February 2023, for one day and night only, Sydney Town Hall is playing host to party that'll whisk you back in time: the wholly unofficial but still appropriately themed The Ton Ball. If you're keen to be the talk of the ton, mark Saturday, February 25 in your diary — and prepare for the social soiree of the season. If you've binged your way through two seasons of the Netflix hit already and you're excited about more (and a Queen Charlotte prequel), consider this your chance to pretend you've stepped right into the series. On the agenda: dancing to tunes played by a string quartet, tucking into four hours of food and booze, playing games of chance, doing some life drawing and (probably) gossiping in corners while looking fabulous. Sydneysiders can do just that from 7–11pm, with tickets costing $209 per person. The best way to prepare: watching Bridgerton, of course. Although, surely The Ton Ball won't involve powerful families trying to marry off their children and scandal sheets getting everyone a-tutting. It will let you party like you're a duke or duchess, though. Images: Melissa Hobbs Business Photography.
Been there, done that, repeating it all over again: in cinemas and among direct-to-home movies alike, that's sequel territory. Not all second efforts, or third or fourth or 15th, retread the first flick. Some expand the initial story instead. Others take the OG concept in completely different directions. If there's a way to jump back into a hit — or even just capitalise upon a well-known movie name — however, then someone has tried it. With a handful of such films, Monster Fest Weekender III Part 2: The Spawning is celebrating the art of the sequel. As the event's 2025 name makes plain, it's having fun with its chosen theme this time around, too. Monster Fest Weekender initially popped up a few years back, giving fans of genre cinema a second chance to enjoy Monster Fest each year — and yes, the film festival itself is a sequel as well. Monster Fest's main festival will still return later in 2025 — it took place in October in 2024 — but this'll help tide you over until then. From I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Return to Oz to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Robocop 2, the three-day Monster Fest Weekender III Part 2: The Spawning is jam-packed with follow-up flicks, all playing in Sydney at Event Cinemas Burwood from Friday, April 4–Sunday, April 6. You can also check out Return of the Living Dead Part II, Phantasm II, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh and Re-Animator 2: Bride of Re-Animator.
Everyone has seen a TV show about renovating homes, buying real estate, blitzing backyards and building dream houses, even if they're not your preferred kind of viewing. But no one has watched an entry in the home renovation genre quite like The Curse, a spoof arriving this spring that gets Emma Stone (Cruella) and Nathan Fielder (The Rehearsal) playing a couple hosting their own home improvement series — and having some bad luck. Unsurprisingly, Fielder doesn't just star but also co-created, co-writes and co-directs. And, also to the astonishment of no one, the end result looks like far from your average series. A home makeover show, but eerie: that's the vibe in the just-dropped first teaser trailer for The Curse, complete with unsettling tunes to match. There's also Stone's opening line in the sneak peek at the ten-part series: "did you know you can put out fires with the sun?". Spoken with the cheery tone that's only ever used by people hosting TV shows, those 11 words are as disquieting as the score by the Safdie brothers' collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never. And, yes, not just the talent that made Good Time and Uncut Gems sound so unnerving but the sibling filmmakers behind them are also involved in The Curse. Benny Safdie (Oppenheimer) co-stars, co-created, co-writes and co-directs, with Josh Safdie an executive producer. Fielder and Stone play Asher and Whitney Siegel, who host a show on HGTV — American pay TV network Home & Garden Television — called Fliplanthropy. Newly married, they're trying to have a baby, but find their plans disrupted. Cue The Curse's title, obviously. [caption id="attachment_920385" align="alignnone" width="1920"] (L-R): Emma Stone as Whitney and Nathan Fielder as Asher in THE CURSE, Season 1. Photo Credit: Beth Garrabrant/A24/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.[/caption] Benny Safdie plays their producer, with Barkhad Abdi (Little America), Corbin Bernsen (White House Plumbers) and Constance Shulman (Search Party) also featuring. Like everything almost everything of late, it seems — Close, Beau Is Afraid, You Hurt My Feelings, Past Lives, smash-hit Australian horror movie Talk to Me, fellow TV series Beef, the return of iconic Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense to cinemas, the Nicolas Cage-starring Dream Scenario — The Curse hails from A24. In Australia, it'll stream from Saturday, November 11 via Paramount+. Check out the first teaser trailer for The Curse below: The Curse will stream from Saturday, November 11 via Paramount+. Images: Beth Garrabrant and John Paul Lopez/A24/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
The Hills district loves its food trucks — so much so that it dedicates a free two-day festival to the best of the bunch every year. Park Feast is returning to Bella Vista Farm on Saturday, September 8 through Sunday, September 9. You'll find 30 of Sydney's best-loved food trucks parked over the weekend. Think ice cream-filled pastries, deep-fried calzones, barbecue ribs, paella, pulled pork burgers, elaborate dessert shakes and Nutella-filled doughnuts. Some of the big names you'll encounter include Happy as Larry — slinging its A-plus pizza — Nutie and its vegan and gluten free doughnuts, StroopBros' Stroopwafels and Frank's Original Philly Cheesesteak & Dogs. You can check out the full lineup here. When you're not busy eating, there's an amusement park and 'inflatable zones' for all ages and live music throughout the day and night — all for free. It's dog friendly, too, so bring your fur baby if you wish. Park Feast runs from 12pm–9pm each day.
At this three-storey space on Glebe Point Road, local creatives design, make and exhibit their work. It functions as a cafe and coworking spot, as well as a pop-up shop where designers can showcase their wares. This is the spot to hit for some truly local wares with everything from jewellery, shoes and environmentally conscious activewear to prints, greeting cards and screen-printed totes to vegan soaps and hand-poured soy candles. With an ever-changing roster of local artisans, each visit will bring something new to the table (and probably your home).
When Sydney Film Festival unveils its complete lineup in May each year, it lets Australian movie lovers know which features are on the way to the Harbour City just before the cinema-adoring world turns its eyes to Cannes. Consider the Aussie fest a cure for film FOMO, then. Plenty of the movies that are set to wow audiences in France this month will head Down Under next month. SFF always adds more such titles just before it kicks off, as late additions to the program, but 2025's roster of flicks already boasts 15 entries in the direct-from-Cannes camp. Here's a few, all playing between Wednesday, June 4–Sunday, June 15: Josh O'Connor (Challengers) and Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza) in heist-thriller mode in filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's (Showing Up) 70s-set The Mastermind; It Was Just an Accident, the latest feature from acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi (No Bears), who is also the subject of one of SFF's 2025 retrospectives; and Dangerous Animals, hailing from Australian helmer Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones, The Devil's Candy) and telling a tale of a shark-obsessed serial killer on the Gold Coast. Musing on its eponymous author as only filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) can, Orwell: 2+2=5 is also taking the Cannes-to-Sydney route. So is coming-of-age story Enzo from BPM (Beats Per Minute)'s Robin Campillo; Mirrors No 3, which sees German director Christian Petzold reteam with his Transit, Undine and Afire star Paula Beer; Nigeria's My Father's Shadow, the first-ever movie from the country to be selected to play on the Croisette; The Secret Agent, led by Wagner Moura (Dope Thief) for filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho (a Sydney Film Festival Prize-winner for Aquarius); and Vie Privée with Jodie Foster (True Detective: Night Country). Some of the aforementioned titles are vying for this year's SFF prize, in the competition's 17th year — where opening night's already-announced Together, a new body-horror by Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks (The Wizards of Aus) starring Alison Brie (Apples Never Fall) and Dave Franco (Love Lies Bleeding) is also in contention. A few movies that the festival announced back in April, when it started giving sneak peeks at its 2025 lineup, are equally on that category. Will DJ Ahmet, a Sundance-winner after collecting its World Cinema — Dramatic Audience Award, emerge victorious? Or will that honour go to 2025 Berlinale Grand Jury Prize-winner The Blue Trail? They're in the running, with The Narrow Road to the Deep North filmmaker Justin Kurzel, one of his recent stars in Thomas Weatherall, the latter's Heartbreak High co-star Rachel House, plus Hong Kong-based producer Winnie Tsang and Marrakech International Film Festival director Melita Toscan du Plantier all doing the judging. What features Tom Hiddleston's (Loki) newest performance as well, with The Life of Chuck directed by The Fall of the House of Usher's Mike Flanagan and based on a Stephen King novella? What also boasts Jacob Elordi (Oh, Canada), Daisy Edgar-Jones (Twisters) and Will Poulter (Warfare) in queer romance On Swift Horses, plus Richard Linklater's (Hit Man) Blue Moon with Ethan Hawke (Leave the World Behind), Margaret Qualley (The Substance) and Andrew Scott (Ripley) — alongside Carey Mulligan (Spaceman) in music-fuelled comedy The Ballad of Wallis Island, the Dylan O'Brien (Saturday Night)-led Twinless and Pike River with Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) getting its world premiere? This year's Sydney Film Festival. Which event is adding to its screening venues in 2025 in a spectacular way by showing films at Sydney Opera House, too? And which fest has 201 movies from 70 countries on its lineup, with 17 world premieres, six international premieres and 137 Australian premieres among them? The answer is still the same. How does long-term Sydney Film Festival Director Nashen Moodley characterise this year's program, the event's 72nd? "The 2025 Festival offers a bold and expansive view of cinema today, with films that confront the urgent realities of our world, while also revelling in the power of imagination and storytelling," he advises. "From astonishing Australian debuts to daring new works by global auteurs, this year's program is a celebration of creative risk, personal vision and artistic resilience. We invite audiences to explore this thrilling lineup, connect with filmmakers from around the world, and share in the transformative joy of cinema." Other 2025 highlights include Berlin's Golden Bear-winner Dreams (Sex Love); Aussie effort Death of an Undertaker, the directorial debut of actor Christian Byers (Bump), who uses an IRL Leichhardt funeral parlour as his setting; Dreams, with Jessica Chastain (Mothers' Instinct) reuniting with her Memory helmer Michel Franco; satire Kontinental '25, from Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn's Radu Jude; and What Does That Nature Say to You, the latest from South Korea's prolific Hong Sang-soo (In Our Day). Or, there's the near-future Tokyo-set Happyend, the Luca Guadagnino (Queer)-produced Nineteen, Tibetan-language anthology State of Statelessness (the first ever, in fact), Naomi Watts (Feud) and Bill Murray (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) in page-to-screen dramedy The Friend, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar collaborator Kahlil Joseph's BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, and Vicky Krieps (The Dead Don't Hurt) and Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things) tackling grief and possession in Went Up the Hill. Among the standouts on the festival's documentary slate, Jennifer Peedom (River) turns her focus to the quest to make the world's deepest cave dive by Thai cave rescue hero Dr Richard Harris in Deeper, 20 Days in Mariupol's Mstyslav Chernov works bodycam footage from the Ukrainian frontline into 2000 Metres to Andriivka and All I Had Was Nothingness features unused material from iconic Holocaust documentary Shoah 40 years on. Plus, Floodland is focused on Lismore, Journey Home, David Gulpilil charts the iconic actor's journey to be laid to rest, Prime Minister shines a spotlight on Jacinda Ardern and trying to open a Tokyo restaurant is at the heart of Tokito: The 540-Day Journey of a Culinary Maverick. Fans of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, take note: it's up for discussion in Chain Reactions from Alexandre O Philippe (Lynch/Oz). If you miss the video-store era, Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell) understands, and has made Videoheaven about it — a film essay solely comprised from movie and TV clips. A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar director Elaine May earns SFF's second 2025 retrospective, while the fest's lineup of restored classics includes the Aussie likes of Muriel's Wedding, Somersault and Mullet, plus Angel's Egg from Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii. For viewers of all ages, the live-action How to Train Your Dragon is also on the program. SFF's 2025 announcements until now were already impressive, so there's not only more joining the above flicks courtesy of the full program — they already have great company. Barry Keoghan's (Bird) new Irish thriller Bring Them Down; the Australian premiere of homegrown animation Lesbian Space Princess; music documentaries One to One: John & Yoko and Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao e Rua — Two Worlds; Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door)- and Michael Shannon (The Bikeriders)-starring post-apocalyptic musical The End; intimacy coordinators getting the doco treatment; Ellis Park, about Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds collaborator, Dirty Three founder and frequent film-score composer Warren Ellis: they're on the lineup, too. So is the one-film movie marathon that is 14-hour picture Exergue — on documenta 14, which is set inside the 2017 edition of the documenta art exhibition in Germany and Greece. Audiences will watch it in four- to five-hour segments — because, if it wasn't already apparent, there's no such thing as too much time spent in a cinema at Sydney Film Festival. [caption id="attachment_1002690" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Photo by Christian Schulz/ Schrammfilm[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1002697" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Screenshot[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1002698" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Greg Cotten[/caption] Sydney Film Festival 2025 runs from Wednesday, June 4–Sunday, June 15 at cinemas across Sydney. Head to the festival website for further information and tickets.
Ok, so you've finally managed to get the courage to talk to that food obsessed guy in your office, or that indie girl in your art class and have even scored their digits. So what now for the date? Well, luckily for you, we've had a think about it and have set ourselves the task of giving you daters out there some direction. With our top dinner and drinks date combos, you can rest assured that there will be no mysterious phone calls to friends or thoughts about impending runners. Here's what Concrete Playground recommends for some good old fashioned fun. The Business Date Food: China LaneDrink: The Baxter Inn Conveniently located in Angel Place, China Lane is a stone's throw away from any CBD office and offers hazy dark corners to gaze into each other's eyes. The old school Sahnghai glamour will add a slither of Mad Men chic to your date and after dinner why not gaze up at those birdcages that hang above and envisage them as mistletoe. It's time to make a move. And if your smooth moves haven't worked yet? Try the Baxter Inn. Here you have low lighting, exposed brick and booths. Not to mention the whisky, oh the whisky. And if things aren't going great guns with your date by now, there's always the eye candy behind the bar. China Lane: 2-12 Angel Place, Sydney; 02 9231 3939; chinalane.com.auThe Baxter Inn: 152-156 Clarence Street, Sydney; thebaxterinn.com The Foodie Date Food: SepiaDrink: Rockpool Bar and Grill You'll begin your meal with freshly shucked to order oysters served with a rice wine and lime vinaigrette, followed by yellowfin tuna sashimi with jamon iberico and a stable of edible artworks to follow. The food alone will be your conversation centre piece if nothing else is flowing. Sepia with its modern, seafood heavy, Japanese-inspired menu, is the ultimate place to take a foodie. Dessert, such as the famed Japanese Stones, will hopefully have each of you spooning the contents into each other's mouths to make for an almost cringe-worthy night of romance. And nightcap wise? You'll need an equally dramatic and impressive bar to have a few beverages at. Rockpool Bar and Grill, with its exceptionally polite and discreet service, art deco styling and extensive wine list is just the ticket. The menu's 'house rules', such as "best manners and temperance are expected at all times" should help things run smoothly on your date, and have men acting like Don Draper while the women swoon. Sepia: 201 Sussex Street, Sydney; 02 9283 1990; sepiarestaurant.com.auRockpool Bar and Grill: 66 Hunter Street, Sydney; 02 02 8078 1900; rockpool.com The Inner City Date Food: 121BCDrink: Button Bar If you like the element of danger in attempting to have a first date at a place that can't guarantee you a table, and is quite tricky to find, then 121BC's gold. Part of the Vini and Berta family, this tiny bar has a casual menu of Italian style share plates, perfect for bumping hands over, dressed in your best flannel shirt and skinny-legged jeans. This dark, wood-paneled hideaway bar will set you and your date immediately at ease. It also has an inconspicuous façade, and cosy leather booths to settle into, with up-cycled glass light shades hanging overhead. There's plenty of candle light to set the mood as you drink pirate themed cocktails. 121BC: 4/50 Holt Street, Surry Hills; 02 9699 1582; 121bc.com.auButton Bar: 65 Foveaux Street, Surry Hills; 02 9211 1544; button-bar.com.au The Inner West Date Food: Guerilla Restaurant and BarDrink: Madame Fling Flong Picture a big two-storey Glebe terrace with mismatched lounges that feels just like home. Now picture some locally sourced organic casual nosh. There will be great music. You'll also be quaffing from a list of Aussie and Kiwi wines. Can't get much more indie than Guerilla. You can even chat to the owners about their musical backgrounds while bunked down on the outside seats listening to a live Sunday sesh. Next, head over to Newtown and up some stairs to Madame Fling Flong. With oodles of armchairs, intimate lighting, and a relaxed vibe, this is the perfect finish to your date, where you can chat away about gigs till your heart's content. Guerilla Restaurant and Bar: 207 Glebe Point Road, Glebe; 02 8957 0652Madame Fling Flong: 1/169 King Street, Newtown; 02 9565 2471; madameflingflong.com.au The Students Date Food: Eathouse DinerDrink: The Fern So you're a student. You live somewhere near Sydney Uni campus, and you've met someone interesting from your Contemporary American Film class. Where to take them when strapped for cash? Eathouse Diner. Why? Because there's hip '50s kitsch decor, a painting of a budgie holding a fork, nudie pics in the toilets and it's super cheap, with loads of atmosphere. To polish of the night, head over to the Fern. With op-shop style furniture in an old terrace just minutes from where you had dinner, this place is the perfect option for a drink. Go with My Fern Mule, which comes tiki-style with a flaming lime on top. The perfect fire to fuel your date. Eathouse Diner: 306 Chalmers Street, Redfern; 02 8084 9479; eathousediner.com.au The Fern: 4 Pitt Street, Redfern; 02 8399 0070; thefern.com.au The East Date Food: The ApolloDrink: The Roosevelt For an eastside date, try out Jonathan Barthelmess and Sam Christie's Greek goods at The Appollo. Think big plates of food that are just begging to be shared in an urban '30s style building, with exposed concrete and unclothed tables. A tad loud, yes, but there's no better excuse to lean in towards your date and whisper sweet nothings. If a luxury drinking joint is your date's kinda thing, then the Roosevelt will tick all of their boxes. Created by the gang behind Eau de Vie, this bar also has a touch of old world class. It's one of those bars where you can impress your date with cocktails made at your table. And did we mention they serve a cocktail in a glass gun called the Mr Sin? A little bit of inspiration perhaps? The Apollo: 44 Macleay Street, Potts Point; 02 8354 0888; theapollo.com.auRoosevelt: 32 Orwell Street, Potts Point; 0423 203 119; theroosevelt.com.au The Theatre Date Food: Cafe Sopra Walsh BayDrink: The Bar at the End of the Wharf Located across the street from the Walsh Bay theatre precinct, you can't look past Cafe Sopra at Walsh Bay. It's the fresh, seasonal Italian fare that we all know and love Fratelli for, and is perfect to fill up on before a long show. You and your date can stroll through the fresh produce while you wait for your meal and maybe pick something up to cook on your next date, well here's hoping. Perfect for when you come out of your evening's performance and want to settle in for a drink or two. The views over the Harbour will take your date's breath away, as you oh so casually slip your arm over their shoulders. Go on, you know you want to. Shop 8/16 Hickson Road, Walsh Point; 02 8243 2700; www.fratellifresh.com.auThe Bar at the End of the Wharf: Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay; 02 9250 1761; sydneytheatre.com.au/visit/thebar
Featuring some of Golden Age Cinema's favourite "classics, cults, creepies and cheapies", Hollywood Nights is that perfect date idea you've been waiting to spring on your secret crush. Combining our favourite boutique cinema experience with the fried and fabulous food of the Nighthawk Diner — as well as live music, drinks and the pure joy of sitting in the great outdoors — your night is sure to be one to remember. You could even call it a classic. On as part of new arts festival Spectrum Now, Hollywood Nights is held at garden hub Spectrum Playground in the Domain. The films programmed are a journey through time — both in when they were made and when they were set (which explains some of the double dates you see listed below). The series kicks off in the '50s with musical classic Singin' in the Rain, quickly followed by the 1955 American drama, Rebel Without a Cause. Week two features some favourites from the '80s and '90s — with everything from Back to the Future to Picnic at Hanging Rock, Ghostbusters and Hairspray — before heading into the 'future' with 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Nighthawk team have matched their menus to the movies. It's your chance to feel at one with the cinematic world of your choosing. Here's the full program: Wed 11 March – Singin’ in the Rain (1952/1927) G, 8pm Thurs 12 March – The Philadelphia Story (1940) PG, 8pm Fri 13 March – Rebel Without a Cause (1955) M, 8pm Sat 14 March – Back to the Future (1985/1955) PG, 8pm Sun 15 March – Breathless / À bout de souffle (1960) PG, 8pm Mon 16 March – Hairspray (1988/1962) PG, 8pm Tues 17 March – Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) PG, 8pm Wed 18 March – Ghostbusters (1984) PG, 8pm Thurs 19 March – Labyrinth (1986) G, 8pm Fri 20 March – Reality Bites (1994) M, 8pm Sat 21 March – The Big Lebowski (1998) MA15+, 8pm Sun 22 March – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968/2001) G, 8pm
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to watching anything, we're here to help. From the latest and greatest to old favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from June's haul of newbies. BRAND NEW STUFF YOU CAN WATCH IN FULL RIGHT NOW BO BURNHAM: INSIDE Watching Bo Burnham: Inside, a stunning fact becomes evident. A life-changing realisation, really. During a period when most people tried to make sourdough, pieced together jigsaws and spent too much time on Zoom, Bo Burnham created a comedy masterpiece. How does he ever top a special this raw, insightful, funny, clever and of the moment? How did he make it to begin with? How does anyone ever manage to capture every emotion that we've all felt about lockdowns — and about the world's general chaos, spending too much time on the internet, capitalism's exploitation and just the general hellscape that is our modern lives, too — in one 90-minute musical-comedy whirlwind? Filmed in one room of his house over several months (and with his hair and beard growth helping mark the time), Inside unfurls via songs about being stuck indoors, video chats, today's performative society, sexting, ageing and mental health. Burnham sings and acts, and also wrote, directed, shot, edited and produced the whole thing, and there's not a moment, image or line that goes to waste. Being trapped in that room with the Promising Young Woman star and Eighth Grade filmmaker, and therefore being stuck inside the closest thing he can find to manifesting his mind outside his skull, becomes the best kind of rollercoaster ride. Just try getting Burnham's tunes out of your head afterwards, too, because this is an oh-so-relatable and insightful special that lingers. It's also the best thing that's been made about this pandemic yet, hands down. Bo Burnham: Inside is available to stream via Netflix. THIS WAY UP At the beginning of This Way Up, Áine (Aisling Bea, Living With Yourself) is being checked out of a London mental health facility by her older sister Shona (Sharon Horgan, Catastrophe). Her complaints about the lack of a spa are just jokes, but they're also one of her coping mechanisms. She wears that sense of humour like a shield as she steps back into her usual routine — teaching English to folks learning it as a second language, trying to avoid spending too much time at home and attempting not to think about her ex (Chris Geere, You're the Worst). There's shades of Catastrophe in This Way Up, unsurprisingly, and also echoes of Fleabag, Back to Life and Breeders, too. In other words, it has been a great few years for acerbic UK shows about people struggling with all the baggage, expectations and responsibilities that come with being adults — and this addition to the fold, which the always-charming Bea also wrote, continues the trend. Also evident in This Way Up's fellow comedies, as well as here, is a strong focus on women who don't have it all together, or even pretend otherwise. Áine's exploits involve everything from trying to hook up with a fellow rehab patient and getting a crush on Richard (Tobias Menzies, The Crown), the father of a French boy she tutors, to constantly being the third wheel in Shona's relationship with her boyfriend Vish (Aasif Mandvi, Evil), and she stumbles and puns her way through all of it. A second season of her antics is on the way, too, which this first batch of episodes will leave you hanging out for. The first season of This Way Up is available to stream via Stan. STARSTRUCK When Rose Matafeo last graced our screens, she took on pregnancy-centric rom-coms in 2020's Baby Done. Now, in Starstruck, she's still pairing the romantic and the comedic. In another thoughtful, plucky and relatable performance, she plays Jessie, a 28-year-old New Zealander in London who splits her time between working in a cinema and nannying, and isn't expecting much when her best friend and roommate Kate (Emma Sidi, Pls Like) drags her out to a bar on New Year's Eve. For most of the evening, her lack of enthusiasm proves astute. Then she meets Tom (Nikesh Patel, Four Weddings and a Funeral). He overhears her rambling drunkenly to herself in the men's bathroom, they chat at the bar and, when sparks fly, she ends up back at his sprawling flat. It isn't until the next morning, however — when she sees a poster adorned with his face leaning against his living room wall — that she realises that he's actually one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Yes, Starstruck takes Notting Hill's premise and gives it a 22-years-later update, and delivers a smart, sidesplittingly funny and all-round charming rom-com sitcom in the process. When a film or TV show is crafted with a deep-seated love for its chosen genre, it shows. When it wants to do more than just nod and wink at greats gone by like a big on-screen super fan — when its creators passionately hope that it might become a classic in its own right, rather than a mere imitation of better titles — that comes through, too. And that's definitely the case with this ridiculously easy-to-binge charmer. The first season of Starstruck is available to stream via ABC iView. Read our full review. LUCA Unlike Studio Ghibli, Pixar can make bad movies. The main culprit: the Cars franchise. They're a rarity among the Disney-owned animation studio's output, thankfully — because even when it makes a minor delight, like Luca, its usually swims well beyond most of the other family-friendly fare that gets pumped in front of young eyes. Set in Italy over a resplendent summer, this coming-of-age tale might be the closest that Pixar ever gets to making a Frankenstein movie. Forget the whole coming back from the dead part; instead, teenage sea monsters Luca (Jacob Tremblay, Doctor Sleep) and Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer, We Are Who We Are) just want to belong. But, even though they can't help the fact that they're sea monsters, they'd be shunned by the village they decide to call home if anyone ever worked out that they aren't human. The pair cross paths in the water, but when Luca follows his new pal to the surface, he disobeys his parents' strict warnings. They bond over a Vespa, which they both want. Next, they befriend an ordinary girl, Giulia (first-timer Emma Berman), in a quest to win a race to nab their very own moped. The story is straightforward, but the themes still float along meaningfully in this feature debut from director Enrico Casarosa (Pixar short La Luna) — and the sun-dappled seaside animation is a dazzling treat. Luca is available to stream via Disney+. THE AMUSEMENT PARK In 1968, George A Romero changed cinema forever. Night of the Living Dead, his first film, was famously made on a tiny budget — but it swiftly became the zombie movie that's influenced every single other zombie movie that's ever followed. His resume from there is filled with other highlights, including further Dead films and the astonishing Martin, but one of his intriguing features didn't actually see the light of day until recently. It was also commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania to preach the evils of elder abuse, which isn't the type of thing that can be said about any other flick. The Amusement Park is incredibly effective in getting that message across, actually. As star Lincoln Maazel explains in the introduction, it aims to make its statement by putting the audience in its ageing characters' shoes, conveying their ill-treatment just for their advancing years and showing the chaos they feel as a result. That's the exact outcome as Maazel plays an older man who spends a day wandering around the titular setting, only to be constantly disregarded, denigrated, laughed at and pushed aside as hellishness greets him at every turn. Romero's film is grim, obvious and absurd all at once, and it's a powerful and winning combination in his hands. The Amusement Park is available to stream via Shudder. NEW AND RETURNING SHOWS TO CHECK OUT WEEK BY WEEK PHYSICAL On a typical early-80s day, San Diego housewife Sheila Rubin (Rose Byrne, Irresistible) will make breakfast for her professor husband Danny (Rory Scovel, I Feel Pretty), take their daughter to school, then run errands. She'll also buy three fast food meals, book into a motel, eat them all naked, then purge. Physical can be bleak — about the pain festering inside its bitterly unhappy protagonist, her constantly fraying mental health, the smile she's forced to plaster across her face as she soldiers on, and her excoriating options of herself — but it also finds a rich vein of dark comedy in Sheila's efforts to change her life through aerobics. Add the series to the list of 80s-set shows about women getting sick of being cast aside, breaking free of their societally enforced roles and jumping into something active. GLOW did it. On Becoming a God in Central Florida did, too. And now those two excellent series have a kindred spirit in this sharp, compelling and often brutally candid show. Byrne is a force to be reckoned with here, in one of her best performances in some time (and a reminder that in everything from Heartbreak High to Damages and Mrs America, she's always done well on TV). Also entrancing, engaging and difficult to forget: Physical's desperate-but-determined tone, and the way it seethes with tension beneath the spandex, sequins and sunny beach shots. The first three episodes of Physical are available to stream via Apple TV+, with new episodes dropping weekly. LOKI With WandaVision, Marvel gave the world a nodding, winking sitcom that morphed into an engaging but still quite standard entry in its ever-sprawling on-screen realm. With The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it opted for an odd couple action-thriller that hit every mark it needed to, but rarely more. Loki, the third Disney+ Marvel series to hit streaming this year — and the third to focus on characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe — stands out from the crowd instantly. Having Tom Hiddleston (Avengers: Endgame) step back into the God of Mischief's shoes will do that. Loki's charms don't solely radiate from its leading man, though. He's as charismatically wily as ever (as he's always been in his scene-stealing big-screen appearances in the Thor and Avengers films), but this series is helped immensely by its willingness to have fun with its premise, and also by the great cast surrounding its star. Teaming up duos is obviously currently Marvel's thing, but Loki pairs its eponymous trickster with a time cop played by Owen Wilson (Bliss), gets them palling around in buddy cop-meets-science fiction territory, and also throws in Sophia Di Martino (Yesterday) as a character that best discovered by watching. Here, come for the usual Hiddleston mischievousness, stay for everything this quickly involving series builds around him as Loki is forced to face the consequences of his past actions. The first four episodes of Loki are available to stream via Disney+, with new episodes dropping weekly. RICK AND MORTY Five seasons in, Rick and Morty has long passed the point where its premise is its main drawcard. That setup is stellar, of course, and always will be — as you'd expect of a series that takes it cues from Back to the Future, but swaps in a dimension-hopping, drunken, cantankerous grandfather and his nervous teenage grandson. What keeps viewers coming back, and also eagerly awaiting each new batch of episodes, is the show's constant ability to twist and morph in different directions in each and every new instalment. That, and its cynical-meets-absurdist sense of humour, its ability to weave in more pop culture references than should be possible while never feeling like the mere sum of its influences, and its deeply melancholic musings on life, happiness and connection. All these traits are on display in Rick and Morty season five so far, even just two episodes in. Co-creator Justin Roiland might now have another animated sitcom about an unconventional family demanding his attention — the also excellent Solar Opposites — but his first stab at the genre shows no signs of waning. Rare is the show that proclaims that existence is meaningless with such gusto, while also celebrating life's small wins and moments. Wubba lubba dub dub indeed. The first two episodes of Rick and Morty's fifth season are available to stream via Netflix, with new episodes dropping weekly. LISEY'S STORY The list of Stephen King books that've made the leap to screens big or small is hefty. The number of those on-screen projects that the author has had a hand in himself is far smaller. That alone gives Lisey's Story an air of intrigue, with every episode of this eight-part adaptation of King's 2006 novel penned by him. As the series follows Lisey Landon, the widow of a famous author, King isn't actually the MVP, though. His presence is felt — which, depending on how much of a fan you are, isn't always a good thing — but this show has plenty of other talent to assist. Firstly, the always-great Julianne Moore (The Woman in the Window) plays the titular character. Secondly, exceptional Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (Ema) directs the whole show. When Moore dives deep into a role, as she's clearly given the room to here in one of her rare TV parts, she makes the figures she's playing feel as if they could walk right off the screen and into reality. When Larraín lets audiences see the world through his eyes, every frame he creates is utterly magnetic, and yet also probes and ponders everything it is peering at at the same time. It's these two traits that make Lisey's Story a must-see, although a cast that also includes Clive Owen (back on TV screens after the astounding The Knick), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Possessor), Dane DeHaan (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), Joan Allen (Room), Michael Pitt (The Last Days of American Crime) and Sung Kang (Fast and Furious 9) more than helps. The first five episodes of Lisey's Story are available to stream via Apple TV+, with new episodes dropping weekly. CLASSICS TO WATCH AND REWATCH PLANET TERROR + DEATH PROOF The year is 2007. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez team up on two films that pay tribute to 70s exploitation flicks — and they make their movies, dubbed Grindhouse, as two parts of a double feature. That's not always how audiences have been able to watch Planet Terror and Death Proof, either then or since, but this pair of memorable flicks is well worth viewing back to back exactly as the directors intended. In the first instalment, Rodriguez serves up an OTT zombie film that revolves around a go-go dancer named Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan, The Sound). In the second chapter, QT gives the world one of his best movies ever, all thanks to the psychopathic Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell, Fast and Furious 9) and the group of women (Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)'s Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Zombieland: Double Tap's Rosario Dawson and seasoned stunt performer Zoë Bell) he tries to stalk with his supposedly indestructible car. Both directors play with familiar stories, and with narrative conventions, but that's a big part of the point. Watching them each deliver the most lurid features of their careers (which, in From Dusk Till Dawn director Rodriguez's case, is saying something) is a delight. And from its perfect casting to its nervy mood and tense car scenes, Death Proof is a flat-out wonder. Planet Terror and Death Proof are available to stream via Stan.
When Sydney Film Festival looks backwards in 2025, as it does every year with a featured retrospective, it'll be following in its own footsteps several times over. The work of Iranian director Jafar Panahi has graced its screens again and again over the fest's history. More than a decade ago, in 2011, a retrospective just like this also highlighted some of his movies alongside those of his compatriot Mohammad Rasoulof, in fact. Long may this trend continue; a filmmaker this bold and daring should always be in the spotlight. Panahi's body work speaks for itself — and also speaks to his ongoing fight to chronicle contemporary Iran and the reality of life for its people, a battle that he's kept waging despite repercussions regularly coming his way. By his nation's ruling regime, the writer/director has been banned from filmmaking, and also from travel. He's been arrested and imprisoned as well. Indeed, it isn't just his movies that send a message of resistance; his quest to make them, to retain the right to do so, and the pursuit of freedom that goes with that ceaseless campaign, is also a statement. SFF's 2025 Jafar Panahi: Cinema in Rebellion program is celebrating its namesake with a program of all ten of his features, all screening across the festival's dates of Wednesday, June 4–Sunday, June 15. From 1995's The White Balloon to 2022's No Bears, audiences can witness Panahi's progression as a filmmaker — and how his exploration of existence in Iran, especially for women and others suffering oppression and censorship (including himself), has evolved and solidified over almost three decades. With every one of his titles, SFF attendees will also watching be award-winning pictures. The White Balloon gave Panahi his first Cannes accolade, for best first film. Then 1997's The Mirror took home the Locarno International Film Festival's Golden Leopard, 2000's The Circle nabbed Venice's Golden Lion, 2003's Crimson Gold earned an Un Certain Regard prize back at Cannes and 2006's Offside collected a Silver Bear in Berlin. More Cannes love came for 2011's This Is Not a Film (the Carrosse d'Or at the Director's Fortnight) and 2018's Three Faces (for best screenplay), plus more Berlin recognition for 2013's Closed Curtain (another Silver Bear) and 2015's Tehran Taxi (the Golden Bear), and more again from Venice for No Bears (a Special Jury Prize).
In a beachside suburb like Manly, an Assembly Label store is pretty a given. But the Pittwater Road shop is extra nice — it's been fitted out with sleek wooden counters and minimal white aesthetics by Manly's own interior designers Mr & Mrs White. The simplicity in the store's fitting is mirrored in the fashion it houses: Assembly-branded tees, linen pieces, swimwear and a few pairs of sandals. You'll probably see a lot of locals wearing this stuff. There's also cafe in-store with coffee by Allpress to boot.
It feels as though Sydney is on the brink of a new era; plans have been announced to revive the city's nightlife and more cutting-edge venues are exploding onto the scene each day. Not to mention the burgeoning food and wine meccas, like Steam Mill Lane, Spice Alley, Tramsheds and Barangaroo. The city seems like it's slowly getting its mojo back and we couldn't be more pleased. But amid the flurry of new bars and eateries, it can be kind of difficult to keep up. Perhaps, you've got a long list of venues you want to try but no idea where to start. We get it — so much to eat, so little time. Well, we're here to help. We've pulled together some of the best restaurants that opened around Sydney over the last few months to try on your next night out. From unconventional Indian fare that breaks all the rules to canned cocktails and top-notch charcuterie, these eclectic eateries are pushing the boundaries in all the right ways. So, grab your crew or a table for two, it's time to get acquainted with the new kids on the block.
The clip for Matt and Kim's single 'It's Alright' begins with some half-naked horizontal dancing and ends with a pillow fight. What happens in the interim might teach you "a few things", according to the New York-based dance punk duo. Quite a few people must've been gaining an education, given that the single's LP, Lightning, debuted at No.1 on the iTunes Alternative Chart. What's more, Matt and Kim's Twitter account has been receiving an abundance of responses to their #itsalrightxxx campaign. According to lead singer/keyboardist Matt, who chatted to Channel V, it's all about "trying to spread the word (of how to spice things up)". Fortunately for Antipodeans looking for some tips, distance won't be a barrier for too much longer, with Matt and Kim coming out to play Groovin' the Moo as well as headline shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The scary thing is that their live performances are reputed to be even more explosive than their recordings. Look out.
Her Banana's delicate handmade jewellery is the perfect way to treat yourself — or gift a friend, if you have the self-control. The small boutique store and studio focuses on minimalist designs that have a timeless quality, showcasing a collection of reasonably-priced rings, earrings and necklaces made of stirling silver and 14k gold. This is the sort of understated jewellery that will transcend seasonal trends. There's also the alluring opportunity to personalise your own piece, through lettering, length, engraving — or just about anything else you can think of. Visit the King Street shop and studio to purchase your own dainty design; or bring your special someone and not-so-subtly peruse the custom-designed engagement ring section together. Whatever your intention, staff go the extra mile to ensure you walk out the door happy.
They've changed the home entertainment landscape and monopolise our couch time, but streaming platforms still like to keep everyone guessing. Surprise drops have become the latest trend, especially when it comes to blending movies and music — such as Beyonce's Homecoming documentary and The Lonely Island's Unauthorised Bash Brothers Experience on Netflix, and Donald Glover's Guava Island on Amazon Prime. And that's just this year. Announced this week and hitting your queue in mere days — on Thursday, June 27 — add Anima to the list. It too has a significant pedigree. Sharing the same name as Thom Yorke's third solo album, which'll drop on the same day, it's scored by the Radiohead frontman and directed by Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. Netflix is calling Anima "a short musical film" and a "mind-bending visual piece" which is "best played loud" — and considering it also stars Yorke, it's safe to consider it a 12-minute music video. In the just-released teaser, the film is dubbed a "one-reeler", which the clip then goes on to define as "a motion picture, especially a cartoon or comedy, of 10–12 minutes duration and contained on one reel of film; popular especially in the era of silent film". Check out the trailer below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNYJ_BJJbzI This isn't Anderson's first Radiohead-linked collaboration, with his films There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread all featuring scores composed by the band's lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. He also helmed 2015 documentary Junjun, about the making of Greenwood's album of the same name, and directed Radiohead's 'Daydreaming', 'Present Tense' and 'The Numbers' videos. Yorke has also been working in film lately — on the score for last year's Luca Guadagnino's 2018 remake of Suspiria. Anima drops on Netflix on Thursday, June 27. Images: Netflix / Darius Khondji.
Sketch Manly, hidden to passing vehicles in the mix of parked cars and retail storefronts of Pittwater Road, is one of Manly's most unsung heroes. The team prides itself on putting locals above luxury, soul over silverware, and doing so with a mix of southeast Asian food and cold drinks. "Sketch has always been about people first, our team, our locals, and our food stories," says founder Kabir Arora. "We just cook what we love, pour what we'd drink, and make sure everyone feels part of it." With eight years of quintessentially Northern Beaches attitude in the rear view mirror, the team keeps things fresh for regulars and locals with a rotating specials menu inspired by seasons, stories and the cultures of the staff. But two mainstays: peppery butter chicken and mushroom korma, both recipes from Arora's mum, Sukh, simply can't be missed on your first visit. If you swing by in the morning, it's specialty coffee or Indian Masala Chai with Parle-G biscuits instead. Fresh additions to the food menu include Nepalese chicken momos and street food-style chapli kebabs from North India. And a dessert that's quickly earned fame among Manly locals, the Chai-misu, an Indian twist on a tiramisu dreamt up by Arora's partner, Ivy. If you can't handle your spice, crack open one of the aforementioned craft tinnies; there's a rotating menu of 20 or so options to choose from, or cocktails like the Lassi Milk Punch and Curry Leaf Cooler. Easily walkable from the ferry terminal or the 199 bus stop, there's no time like the present for a curry and a cold tinnie, no? Images: Supplied
Maybe your monthly payday has finally rolled around. Maybe a surprise bonus dropped into your lap. Maybe you won second prize in a beauty contest (a steady source of income generation, we've been raised to believe). Whatever the source, if you're feeling flush, it's time to treat yourself. We've partnered with American Express to round up some solid-gold places for you to go to in Sydney when you just want to splash some cash. These aren't your stuffy, 18-course degustation venues; these are joints you can head to with your mates, splurge on that Burgundy you've been lusting after and have a good time with some quality eats. They all accept Amex too — so you can stock up on points. Got yourself in another dining situation and need some guidance? Whatever it is, we know a place. Visit The Shortlist and we'll sort you out.
Forget cheeseburger stuffed crusts and meal deals with 5 litres of Pepsi Max; visiting a soulless pizza chain in Sydney is a mortal sin. There are so many places that have mastered the art of the fine Italian dish, it's only a question of picking one. Here are our ten favourites that keep us coming back for stretchy Buffalo mozzarella, pillowy bases and perfect toppings. Da Mario It’s easy to devour an entire pizza to yourself here — and unashamedly so. The Mario crew has built a solid reputation in Surry Hills with Pizza Mario, and although the Rosebery branch offers a more extensive menu, the pizza's just so good it'll sabotage your ability to try anything else. Housed in a former cannery, it's a large and open space — possibly selected to house the big red oven. Toppings are minimal yet deliciously paramount. Take, for example, the gorgonzola con radicchio ($21.50) or the full-flavoured Calabrese with salame, mozzarella and olives ($23). Traditionalists will love the Margherita, while calzone fans should opt for the Salame — oozing with soft ricotta, melted mozzarella and black pepper. It's all stupidly delicious. 36 Morley Ave, Rosebery; (02) 9669 2242; www.damario.com.au Da Orazio Pizza & Porchetta This could get messy: Orazio recommend that all their dishes are best shared. We recommend however, that dining solo is a better option so as to enjoy these exceedingly brilliant 32cm pizzas all to yourself. Handmade and cooked the Neapolitan way in the enormous wood-fired brick oven, it’s like Naples has landed in Bondi. They’ve nailed modest topping combos with crusts that yield a good amount of puff and blistered burns, causing jaws to drop left, right and centre. The Pagnuttiello ($22) is topped with ricotta and fior di latte to soften a fiery salame and black pepper; the Friarielli ($24) has smoked mozzarella, sausage, broccoli rabe and chilli and will have tongues wagging. But the apple of our eye is the Siciliana ($20) with eggplant, ricotta and tomato — we warned you, dine alone or bring your whip. 3/75-79 Hall Street, Bondi Beach; (02) 8090 6969; www.daorazio.com Gigi This south King Street pizzeria was a pleasing addition for the Newtown locals, after venturing to Norton Street became a bit tiresome when you just wanted a decent pizza. Pizzas at Gigi are authentically (and lawfully) made the Napoletana way: hand-kneaded, laden with traditional toppings and cooked in a woodfired oven. Sheer dedication equals sheer deliciousness. Purists can sate a craving for a true Margherita ($17), laden with their homemade tomato sauce and basil so fresh you’re expecting to see soil. Truffle oil devotees will devour the Patate ($19), where it's lightly drizzled over potato, Buffalo mozzarella, fresh rosemary and just enough garlic to keep the vampires at bay. But we’re forgetting about the 4 Formaggi ($19.50) — the pride of the kitchen and a cheesy, melting disc of pure heaven. And because you’re in Newtown, quench your thirst with a beer at one of the many drinking holes nearby. 379 King Street, Newtown; (02) 9557 2224 Rosso Pomodoro No half-half. No ham and pineapple. Only Italian mozzarella. Only Italian toppings. It might sound like you’re back in the classroom, but dining at Rosso Pomodoro is an authentic Italian experience that tops any biology lesson — the lengthy queues a sheer reflection of why. The restaurant is small and in typical Italian form can be a tad noisy. Nonetheless, it’s all about the pizzas that are reassuringly crispy and slightly blistered. We could go on and on about all the delicious pizzas at Rosso, but absolute standouts would have be the bresaola with rocket and parmesan ($22) and the calzone with salami and olives. Vegetarians will be delighted with the Funghi ($19), but it’s the Della Casa with Italian sausage, hot salami, baby spinach and parmesan that takes the cake (or pizza?). 91/24 Buchanan Street, Balmain; (02) 9555 5924; www.rossopomodoro.com.au Caffe Moretti Oh Moretti, how we adore thee. Set back from Leichhardt's busy Norton Street hustle, 17 years on this strip is saying something. That authentic pizzeria air hits you the moment you’re in there and it’s like some sort of voodoo. You’re half expecting to start speaking fluent Italian. But we shan’t get too carried away: we’re here for the pizza (although other mains are equally as tempting). Crunchy and thin throughout — not even a raised border in sight, the focus is on the toppings. Pizza bianche (white base) options are aplenty: opt for the Trastevere ($24.50) if you fancy Roman sausage with potato and rosemary, or Oscar ($24) with mascarpone and prosciutto. Get the napkins out if you’re ordering the rosse (tomato base) — the saucy discs are even more dribble-worthy. We got Spagna ($24.50) with garlic, prawns, artichoke hearts, basil and chilli and a Jema ($24.50) with chorizo sausage and heaven-sent Buffalo mozzarella. Whatever you choose, don’t forget you’re as close to Italy as you'll be for awhile, so make room for their famous tiramisu ($14.50). 47 Norton Street, Leichhardt; (02) 9568 1354; www.caffemoretti.com.au La Disfida Enoteca La Disfida is an institution. It even makes the pizza scholars of Sydney weak at the knees at the sheer mention of the street name. Pizzas with minimal toppings are swept in and out of the fiery oven in swift succession, and the place is routinely humming. And they’re all humming for one thing only: pizza. To get straight to the point, La Disfida do an outstanding rendition of the Margherita ($22): the smattering of tomato, mozzarella and basil lay the perfect foundations for a charming classic. Yet it’s the Tartufa ($26) that keeps them coming back. It's not the most beckoning of titles for a pizza, but honestly, when they've put wild mushrooms, prosciutto, mozzarella and truffle on a round of dough that’s been woodfired to perfection, are you really going to call the name police? And just quietly, should you decide to whet the appetite with some starters, the polenta chips with gorgonzola sauce ($17) are gob-smackingly delicious. 109 Ramsay Street, Haberfield; (02) 9798 8299; www.ladisfida.com.au Vacanza Another one where you have to stick to the rules — but this one is a matter of life and death, apparently. Requests for changes and modifications for your pizza at both the popular Surry Hills and Bronte pizzerias will be 'politely declined'. You needn't worry though, as Vacanza plays by the rules; that old Italian philosophy that less is more. And it's all hideously simple and scrumptious. Think roast pumpkin, triple smoked ham, ricotta and sage; pork and fennel sausage, fior di latte, garlic and broccoli; or even Swiss roasted mushrooms, truffle oil and grated pecorino. The cult favourite — Il Pizzaiolo del Presidente Diavola with hot Calabrese salami, fresh chilli and olives — is a must-order. However, in the interest of maintaining friendships post-meal, it’s best to declare the no-sharing rule from the start: you’ll want this one all to yourself (alternatively, dine solo so you can sinfully scoff one to yourself). 261 Bronte Road, Waverley, and Vacanza in the Hills at 414 Bourke Street, Surry Hills; (02) 9090 2089; www.vacanza.com.au The Clock Hotel Ok, so it may not be the quintessential pizzeria, but you can forget any tacky surf 'n' turf here; the rectangular pizzas are just too good to pass up. The bases are faultlessly chewy, toppings are simple and tasty, and you can even down it with a tempting cocktail or craft beer. Special mention goes to the vegetarian pizza bianche — it’ll surprise any keen carnivore with mushrooms, pumpkin, zucchini and Treviso radicchio. Other varieties include pork and fennel sausage with artichoke, or a sopressa, eggplant, peppers and roast onion combination (all $18). The Clock is certainly proof that you don't need an Italian waiter serving you pizza for it to taste damn fine. 470 Crown St, Surry Hills; (02) 9331 5333; www.clockhotel.com.au Via Napoli Pizzeria As far as dining experiences go, this one can be a bit stressful; they pack in a horde of people here, with waiters in headseats frenziedly serving them all. But people are here for a reason; the pizza is stellar. And if you're in a big group, you can get a one or two metre pizza, which is basically as good as life gets. 141 Longueville Road, Lane Cove; (02) 9428 3297; www.vianapolipizzeria.com.au Pizza Birra The adoration of Pizza Birra, one of the first bastions of the Surry Hills dining scene, hasn’t waned. This Crown Street operation still packs out every night, with both creatives and businessmen arriving to satisfy their craving for a genuine pizza complemented by an all-Italian wine list. The Frutti di Mare ($25) is a seafood lover's delight and spice fiends love the Lucifero ($22) and Diavola ($22) — both pepped up with chilli and salami. The vegetarian choices are laden with everything from your mum’s veggie patch, and calzone lovers unite: you will not be wanting to share your Classico ($23). Oozing with three different cheeses, it’ll be an embarrassingly rapacious consumption, but totally worth it. 1/500 Crown St, Surry Hills; (02) 9332 2510; www.pizzabirra.com.au
Parramatta will be stuffed full of the finest food and drink this October at the annual Parramatta Lanes festival — and, boy, do they know how to throw a party out west. The award-winning festival will take place across 12 themed laneways and squares around Parramatta, with over 50 food stalls and five bars. You'll be kept entertained by numerous live music stages (including a set by only Western Sydney DJs), lashings of sweet and savoury treats, roving theatrical performances and plenty of scattered art installations. Food-wise, we can't list everything here — we'd end up writing out a novel of so many good eats — but we will say that you can expect talent from Surry Hills sneaker/fried chicken dispensary Butter, Neil Perry's immensely popular Burger Project, wood-fired pizzas thanks to Happy as Larry, those tasty Middle Eastern street eats from Thievery and many other dishes from Jamie's Italian + Bar, PappaRich and about 40 to 50 others. For dessert, KOI Dessert Bar (run by former Masterchef favourite, Reynold Poernomo) will be dishing out sweets beside other local businesses such as Adora Handmade Chocolates, StroopBros, Sweethawk (from the team behind Nighthawk Diner), Paleteria ice cream and many more. Gin masters Archie Rose will showcase their tipples, in addition to local bar Uncle Kurt's, who will be doing a collaboration with Darcy Street Project to create boutique espresso martinis and gourmet, double smoked, NY-style hotdogs for the opening night. And of course, there will be a food truck depot.
If you've ever felt a little hungover or lazy in the last few years, you'll know exactly how incredible online ordering systems likeDelivery Hero are. Shopping online for pizza is a thing of beauty, and the fact that it can come straight to your door, already paid for with minimum human contact is a marvel of modern technology. But now they've gone one step further: Delivery Hero are introducing the same service for your pets. Currently only available in Sydney, Doggy Bag is an extenuation of the service you know and love that offers a range of "gourmet takeaway meals for pets". No, your dog won't be subjected to the greasy Pad Thai and pepperoni pizza you were planning on gorging on. These dishes will be made to sufficient nutrition standards with minimum seasoning — your loving pet really shouldn't be punished for how lazy you are. Ranging from $5-9, Doggy Bags are currently available from 10 Sydney restaurants including Erskineville Turkish Pide & Kebabs, Micky's Cafe in Paddington and Millennium Pizzeria in Darlington. The menu options will include penne in a meat sauce with chicken, zucchini, carrots and pumpkin; and boiled chicken fillet with tumeric and garden vegetables. "Everyone we approached was very excited to develop meals for pets," said Delivery Hero marketing executive Guillaume Papillion. "The restaurants were all briefed with what ingredients they should and should not use. Onions, for instance, are toxic to dogs." The owner of Taste of India in Double Bay even consulted a vet on whether dogs could eat tumeric (they can). Though it's only been available for a few days, the service looks promising. Delivery Hero claim they already have plans to expand the reach of Doggy Bags across Sydney and the rest of the country. So, look out: there's a good chance your pets will be eating better than you in the coming months. Via Good Food.
It has finally happened again, Sydneysiders. The city's projectors remained silent, its theatres bare and the smell of popcorn faded during the city's almost four-month-long lockdown; however, Sydney's picture palaces are now back in business. When stay-at-home restrictions are in place, no one is ever short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made over over the last year or so, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent more time than usual in the past 18 months glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that. And, after checking out the best new movies that you could only see on the big screen when picture palaces reopened, we've now rounded up, watched and reviewed the new movies that have just arrived in theatres this week. HALLOWEEN KILLS They can't all be treats. That's true each time October 31 hits, sending children scurrying around the streets in search of sweets, and it's true of the film franchise that owns the spookiest time of year. Since debuting 43 years ago, the Halloween series has delivered both gems and garbage — and off-kilter delights such as Halloween III: Season of the Witch — but its latest and 12th entry carves a space firmly in the middle. Halloween Kills ticks plenty of boxes that a memorable Halloween movie should, and is also a horror sequel on autopilot. Somehow, it's also a Halloween movie lacking purpose and shape. It has The Shape, of course, as Michael Myers is also known. But it's more an exercise in spending extra time in Haddonfield, in its boogeyman's presence and in world inhabited by franchise heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, Knives Out) than a compelling slasher flick on its own. After giving the Halloween realm its second-best chapter in 2018, it's easy to see why returning writer/director David Gordon Green (Stronger) and his frequent collaborator Danny McBride (The Righteous Gemstones) have taken this approach. When you've just made a classic follow-up to a stone-cold classic — again, only John Carpenter's iconic franchise-starter is better — you keep on keeping on. That's not quite how Halloween Kills turns out, though. It picks up immediately where its predecessor left off, lets Michael stab his way through small-town Illinois again, and brings back Laurie's daughter Karen (Judy Greer, Where'd You Go, Bernadette) and teenage granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak, Son) from the last spin. It also pads things out with a vengeance storyline that endeavours to get political, yet proves about as piercing as a butter knife. In the last film — called Halloween, like the flick that started it all — Laurie faced the man who turned her into a victim back when she was a 17-year-old babysitter. She unleashed four decades of rage, fear and anxiety during a moment she'd been preparing for across all of that time, and it proved cathartic for her and for viewers alike. This saga was always going to add another sequel, however. As the second part of a trilogy under Green and McBride's guidance, Halloween Kills will also gain its own follow-up in a year's time. When it arrives in 2022, Halloween Ends won't actually live up to its name. No horror movie lover would want it to. Still, it already haunts Halloween Kills — because, like the townsfolk that the latex mask-sporting, overall-wearing Michael just keeps stalking, it feels uncertain about where it should head. First, Halloween Kills sends its three generations of Strode women to hospital, riffing on 1981's Halloween II. Sadly, it also replicates one of the latter's missteps, leaving Laurie there as her nemesis keeps slicing — and splitting its attention around Haddonfield. Here, both Karen and Allyson have also had enough of Michael's nonsense. So has Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall, The Goldbergs), one of the kids that Laurie babysat on that fateful night all those years ago. So, he rallies a mob and transforms the grieving and scared locale into a haven for vigilante justice; "evil dies tonight!" is their cheer. Read our full review. PASSING Locking gazes across the room, staring intently with a deep fascination that feels fated, seeing oneself in the sparkle of another's eyes: when these moments happen in a movie, it's typically to fuel the first flushes of romance. When they occur early in Passing, however, it's because former childhood friends Irene (Tessa Thompson, Westworld) and Clare (Ruth Negga, Ad Astra) have spied each other in a swanky Manhattan hotel. The pair peer back and forth, intrigued and attentive. That said, it isn't until Clare approaches Irene — and calls her Reenie, a nickname she hasn't heard in years — that the latter realises who she's been looking at. It's the immaculately styled blonde bob that fools Irene, as it's meant to fool the world. As becomes clear in a politely toned but horrendously blunt conversation with Clare's racist husband John (Alexander Skarsgård, Godzilla vs Kong) shortly afterwards, Irene's long-lost pal has built an entire life and marriage around being seen as white. Passing's eponymous term comes loaded not just with meaning, but with history; adapted from Nella Larsen's 1929 novel of the same name, it's set in America's Jim Crow era. This introductory scene between Irene and Clare comes layered with multiple sources of tension, too, with Irene only in the hotel because she's decided to flirt with visiting a white establishment. Still, she's shocked by her pal's subterfuge. When she initially spots Clare, the film adopts Irene's perspective — and its frames bristle with a mix of nervousness, uncertainty and familiarity. Irene rediscovers an old friend in a new guise, and also comes face to face with the lengths some are willing to go to in the name of survival and an easier life. Friendships can be rewarding and challenging, fraught and nourishing, and demanding and essential, including all at once, as Passing repeatedly demonstrates from this point onwards. Irene can't completely move past Clare's choices and can't shake her fears about what'd happen if the vile John ever learned Clare's secret; however, she's also quick to defend her to others — to her doctor husband Brian (André Holland, The Eddy), who swiftly warms to Clare anyway; and to acclaimed white novelist Hugh Wentworth (Bill Camp, News of the World), who's her own entry point into an artier realm. Indeed, in household where talk of lynchings is common dinner conversation, Irene recognises far more in Clare's decision than she'll vocally admit. Almost everyone she knows is pretending to be something else as well, after all, including Irene in her own ways. Largely confined to Irene and Brian's well-appointed Harlem home and other parties in the neighbourhood — after that first hotel rendezvous, that is — Passing is an economical yet complicated film. It may seem straightforward in charting Irene and Clare's rekindled acquaintance, but it's exacting and precise as it interrogates both societally enforced and self-inflicted pain. Its Black characters live in a world that pushes them aside and worse merely for existing, with its central pair each internalising that reality. Their every careful move reacts to it, in fact, a bleak truth that actor-turned-filmmaker Rebecca Hall (The Night House) never allows to fade. That's one of the reasons she's chosen to shoot this striking directorial debut in elegant, crisp and devastatingly telling monochrome hues: both everything and nothing here is black and white. Read our full review. RIDERS OF JUSTICE Few things will ever be better than seeing Mads Mikkelsen get day drunk and dance around while swigging champagne in an Oscar-winning movie, which is one fantastic film experience that 2021 has already delivered. But the always-watchable actor is equally magnetic and exceptional in Riders of Justice, a revenge-driven comedy that's all about tackling your problems in a different and far less boozy fashion. In both features, he plays the type of man unlikely to express his feelings. Instead of Another Round's mild-mannered teacher who's so comfortably settled into his adult life that his family barely acknowledges he's there, here he's a dedicated solider who's more often away than home. Beneath his close-cropped hair and steely, bristly beard, he's stern, sullen and stoic, not to mention hot-tempered when he does betray what's bubbling inside, and he outwardly expects the same of everyone around him. Mikkelson excels at transformational performances, however. He's also an exquisite anchor in films that dare to take risks. No matter what part he's playing, the Danish star is gifted at conveying subtlety, too, which is ideal for a character, Markus, who slowly realises that he needs to be more open with his emotions. And, while Mikkelson is usually expertly cast in most entries on his resume — the misfire that is Chaos Walking being one rare outlier — he's especially in his element in this genre-defying, trope-unpacking, constantly complex and unpredictable film. With a name that sounds like one of the many by-the-numbers action flicks Liam Neeson has starred in since Taken, Riders of Justice initially appears as if it'll take its no-nonsense central figure to an obvious place, and yet this ambitious, astute and entertaining movie both does and doesn't. After a train explosion taints his life with tragedy and leaves him the sole parent to traumatised teenager Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Pagten), Markus returns home from Afghanistan. Talking is her method of coping, or would be if he'd let her; he refuses counselling for them both, and opts not to discuss the incident in general, because clamming up has always been his PTSD-afflicted modus operandi. Then Riders of Justice's writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen (Men & Chicken) and screenwriter Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) send statistician Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, The Keeper of Lost Causes), his colleague Lennart (Lars Brygmann, The Professor and the Madman) and the computer-savvy Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro, The Kingdom) knocking at the grieving family's door. They're a trio of stereotypically studious outsiders to his stony-faced military man, but they come uttering a theory. Mathematically, they don't think that the events surrounding the accident add up, so they're convinced it wasn't just a case of pure misfortune — because it's just so unlikely to have occurred otherwise. The nervy Otto, who was on the train with Mathilde and her mother Emma (Anne Birgitte Lind, The Protector), has even started to narrow down possible culprits with his pals. Markus, with his action-not-words mindset, is swiftly eager for retribution, but again, this isn't like most films of its ilk. Narratives about seeking justice often ride the expected rails on autopilot, getting from start to finish on the standard vengeance template's inherent momentum; this attentive and layered gem questions and subverts every usual cliche, convention and motif along the way, including by putting its characters first. Read our full review. ANTLERS When daylight nightmares infiltrate the horror genre and expose humanity's fears to the sun — in 2019's Midsommar, for instance — viewers tend to take notice. That isn't the case with Antlers, a film that's as gloomy in appearance and mood as an unsettling movie can be, whether it's finding darkness in mining shafts, neglected homes or the memories that haunt teacher Julia Meadows (Keri Russell, The Americans) upon returning to her home town after fleeing as a teen decades earlier. This is a grim and bleak feature in every way it can be, in fact, but it also throws sunlight upon troubles that too often go unmentioned. Writer/director Scott Cooper (Black Mass) uses Antlers' brooding hues and tones to lurk in the realm of myth, to confront domestic abuse, and to muse on the persecution of and violence against America's First Peoples and their land — and, as grey as this creature feature always proves, it wields its colour palette like a spotlight. Antlers can be blunt and blatant, traits that don't bode well for a film about a ravenous beast out of Indigenous American folklore that's biting back at its oppressors. It can be delicate and savvy as well, though, especially when it explores how Julia and her student Lucas Weaver (feature debutant Jeremy T Thomas) both grapple with childhoods no one could ever dream of. Julia has only come back to live with her brother Paul (Jesse Plemons, Jungle Cruise), who is now the town's sheriff, after their father's death. She still sees her younger self cowering in fear wherever she looks, and she can't help but gaze with yearning at bottles of liquor in the local store. Lucas, a slip of a boy, is nervy, jittery and defensive. He looks at the ice cream parlour with the same desire, wanting to lose himself in something fleeting but soothing — a sugar rush, in his case. It was never going to take long for Julia to notice that Lucas is also victim; however, in adapting Nick Antosca's short story The Quiet Boy, one of the smartest things that Cooper, Antosca and their co-scribe Henry Chaisson do is to make the connection via a lesson on storytelling. Julia informs her class about the importance and function of spinning tales. Then, only because he's called upon, Lucas shares his own illustrated version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears that's definitely no fairytale. Antlers may too often opt for the obvious route as it tracks the horned creature stalking the town, as well as the illness that's overcome Lucas' father (Scott Haze, Minari) and younger brother (Sawyer Jones, Modern Family) — two things that are linked from the movie's very first scene in that aforementioned mine shaft-turned-meth lab — but in baking the way we use stories to cope with life's horrors into its frames, it's also devastatingly astute. When Antlers is at its best, it echoes with unease, longing, guilt and sorrow. As both Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace have shown, Cooper is no stranger to the latter trio emotions — and as both prior movies also demonstrated, he's at his finest when his cast is up to the task of conveying all three. Russell and Thomas each fit the bill here with a sense of trauma that's always haunting. Their respective characters tussle with threats both external and internal (and supernatural and domestic), and weariness and tension seeps through their every move. Antlers perceptively makes that malaise pulsate in a broader sense as well; it's the malaise of people and towns, and of a culture and a land subjected to far more than it should have to bear. And, in its gore, ooze, horns and crunched bones, it ensures that pain feels visceral. Cooper can't always find the right balance from scene to scene, but when Antlers pierces, it wounds. RON'S GONE WRONG In Ron's Gone Wrong, an internet-enabled R2-D2-style kids' gadget starts operating beyond its standard programming. Illegally sold to Barney Pudowski's (Jack Dylan Grazer, Luca) father (Ed Helms, Rutherford Falls) and grandmother (Olivia Colman, The Father), who are desperate to get the pre-teen the belated birthday gift he wants, the damaged robot sports an off-kilter personality and is nowhere near as concerned with mining the details of its owner's life for corporate data as it's meant to be. The same can't be said of this family-friendly animated film, unsurprisingly. It's a tech-focused all-ages flick straight out of the box, and designed to sell merchandise to its target audience. It's sweet, lively and bouncy enough, but also thematically problematic; stressing the importance of individuality and switching off while also positing that everyone needs an online device and social media to make friends and unlock their best will do that. Ron (voiced by Zach Galifianakis, Baskets) is a B-Bot; "your best friend out of the box" is the marketing slogan. When Facebook-meets-Apple style tech giant Bubble releases the product, every student at Nonsuch Middle School soon has one — except Barney, who gets teased about his rock collection instead. The peer pressure to get his own robot soon gives way to disappointment when he learns of Ron's idiosyncrasies; however, in its broad strokes, Ron's Gone Wrong tells a story of acceptance. After Bubble learns that one of its products has gone rogue — including pushing around Rich (Ricardo Hurtado, Malibu Rescue), the prank-loving bully making Barney's life hell — it decides to claim Ron back and crush him, but an entire grade's worth of children come to discover that that's not how you treat a friend. As spirited as Ron's Gone Wrong repeatedly proves, there's still a strong and inescapable sense of disconnection between its cavalcade of conflicting messages, which include: be yourself; be authentic; love your friends for who they are; don't try to change people; appearances don't matter; everyone has something in common; let technology help you find pals by showing what you all share; connect with others via your gadgets; and living your life online will lead to your best self. As a result, the film plays like a colourful mechanism for turning young viewers into eager consumers — of the Ron-shaped toys they'll now want immediately, and of social media — especially given how weakly it satirises big tech. When it's just about Barney, Ron and the joys of having a best friend, a warm-hearted thread of human-AI buddy comedy does manage to lurk inside writer/director Sarah Smith (Arthur Christmas), co-directors Jean-Philippe Vine (Shaun the Sheep) and Octavio Rodriguez (The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants), and co-screenwriter Peter Baynham's (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan) film. Much about the movie's parodies of technology's insidiousness and the way mobile phones have changed our daily lives balances both truth and humour, too — but not enough to make the overall formula, soulless product-spruiking and Ron's Gone Wrong glossy #sponcon Instagram post-esque atmosphere go right. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in cinemas, check out our rundown of new films released in Sydney cinemas when they reopened on October 11, and what opened on October 14 and October 21 as well. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of movies currently screening, such as In the Heights, Black Widow, Nine Days, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Old, Jungle Cruise, The Suicide Squad, Free Guy, Respect, The Night House, Candyman, Annette, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Pig, The Killing of Two Lovers, Nitram, A Fire Inside, Lamb, The Last Duel, Malignant, The Harder They Fall and Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.
