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Film Review: Camino Skies
★★☆☆☆ Camino Skies tracks six pilgrims from New Zealand and Australia as they embark on the historic five hundred mile pilgrimage that winds across Spain to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The gruelling pilgrimage – known in English as the Way of St. James – across the top of Spain has been…
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Film Review: Ema
★★★★★ When Pablo Larraín took the helm of Jackie, it was the first time the Chilean director had attempted two things: a story set outside of Latin America and one with a female protagonist. With Ema, Larraín is back in his home country, weaving a tightly-controlled narrative of family and female empowerment around its magnetic…
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Film Review: Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
★★★★☆ At an age when, for most, a trip to the bathroom would count as the most strenuous task of the day, ex-pat champion of authentic Mexican cuisine Diana Kennedy is still excitedly on the hunt for that most elusive and unforgettable of tamales recipes. Something of a national treasure in her adopted country, we…
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Film Review: The Assistant
★★★★☆ Australian director Kitty Green’s fourth feature may be her first fiction film – after documentaries Casting JonBenet, Ukraine is Not A Brothel and The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul – but it is undoubtedly rooted in reality. Quietly raging, The Assistant is a bleakly precise study of complicity in workplace abuse. Movie producer assistant Jane’s (Julia Garner) day…
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High stakes: classic card games on-screen
Classic card games never go unnoticed in cinema. They’re a perfect catalyst for creating pivotal plot points and as film fans, we know to pay attention whenever there’s a deck in hand. But, just how do writers and directors turn a simple card game into a scene-setting scenario? What’s really going on in the creative…
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Film Review: Moffie
★★★★☆ In the grip of apartheid and the long-running border war with Namibia (then South West Africa), the South African regime forces all white boys over the age of 16 to perform national service. South African writer-director Oliver Hermanus adapts André Carl van der Merwe’s novel about a closeted gay conscript brutalised by a system…
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Film Review: Astronaut
★★★☆☆ Richard Dreyfuss stars in Astronaut, Shelagh McLeod feature film debut, in which she also doubles up as screenwriter. It’s a low-key affair that made its World Premiere at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. In many ways, it has the look and feel of a TV drama, which is not necessarily a bad thing.…
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Is gaming defeating Hollywood?
For over a century, Hollywood has seen itself as the king of entertainment, riding out challenges from both television and home video. However, after years of waiting in the wings, the gaming industry is now starting to blur the lines between cinema and video games. Tentpole releases now have budgets rivalling – if not eclipsing…
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Film Review: Ghost Town Anthology
★★★★☆ The reverberations of loss in a small town awaken the spirits of the recently deceased in Denis Côté’s chilling adaptation of Laurence Olivier’s Répertoire des villes disparues. Occupying a peculiar space between life and death, arthouse and genre, Ghost Town Anthology isn’t a horror story exactly, but a portrait of a place where the…
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Eight essential films for film students
Writing and cinematography have a lot in common. At the end of the day, they both have the same objective, and that is to tell a story. Essays on books have always been a staple in most educational institutes. However, with time, teachers slowly realise the potential of films to narrate excellent stories as well.…
VENICE 2026
