The scariest moment in a 2019 film comes six minutes into Lady and the Tramp, when my world got shattered and any god I believed in turned out to be myth and legend. At this moment, the last moment I could call myself a sane person, a dog started talking. Maybe it’s something about the…
Autobiographical films are like a form of artistic therapy, and often their value is dependent on the audience’s ability to connect their own personal experiences with those being portrayed. Some are engrossing, like this year’s The Souvenir, where Joanna Hogg presents semi-disconnected moments of her life that play out like an elliptical collage of memories.…
Sue me, it’s sweet. Netflix’s 2019 drunken shout into the void to say “listen up chucklefucks it’s Christmas time,” Let It Snow, following four interconnected stories of high schoolers trying to navigate love and the future on Christmas Eve in a small town, is the sort of movie that ends with Joan Cusack’s narration saying…
Whether it’s due to a unique plot twist or some controversial subject matter that deserves further exploration, the Spoiler Room provides a place for our authors, and you readers, to discuss a film’s details outside of our regular spoiler-free reviews. NOTE: This Spoiler Room also discusses the ending of The Shining, both the adaptation and…
When it comes to cars, my knowledge basically stops at knowing how to drive them. The case could even be made that my knowledge doesn’t extend that far as I am unable to drive stick (I hope you’re reading this dad!). So even with the talent involved in Ford v Ferrari and a general excitement…
Trey Edward Shults is quickly making a career out of absolutely shredding his audience’s nerves. With Waves, he takes his experience with psychological thrillers and applies it to a family drama. It’s his most ambitious effort, both in narrative and form, and while it mostly pays off, the result is unfortunately uneven. Bolstered by a…
Investigative journalism films directly appeal to me, mostly because I love movies about everyday people being good at what they do for a living – the first horse training sequence in The Rider brought me to tears, for instance. I was excited for The Report, because it bears most of the genre’s conventions, but also…
I don’t think I’ll be breaking any hearts by saying that Playing with Fire, also known as “Keegan-Michael Key Really Wants a Summer House: the Movie”, isn’t very good. In fact, it’s downright awful, and exactly the sort of movie you’d expect from the director of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. Billing itself as the…
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve“. Like a Grumman TBF Avenger riddled with bullet holes, Midway, Roland Emmerich‘s (Independence Day, The Patriot, Stargate) latest attempt at history, just barely maintains its glide above wreckage. While not necessarily considered a remake, it is…
Over the Halloween weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Fangoria x Monster Fest, Australia’s premiere cult horror movie festival. Each year, Monster Pics tours a slew of fresh international and domestic cult films across our major capital cities, and this year’s slate was particularly enticing. I managed to fit seven films into my…
Cinema Etc. 