★★★★ - STUFF  - A smart, genuinely funny and tightly written comedy of very bad manners -  In their smart and spacious apartment, Ana and Julio are bickering. Again. The couple have been together 15 years and we sense that arguing is the last channel of communication between them that might…

★★★★★ - MOVIE ARMY  - A young woman, traumatised by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against those who cross her path - Once a year I see a movie that shocks, perplexes, entertains and stays in my mind weeks after I’ve seen it. Last year that film was 1917. This year it's Promising…

★★★★ - ABC RADIO  Documentary filmmaker Laura Gabbert has struck (delicious) gold with her latest film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. For foodies and fans of reality TV cooking programmes, this is a no-brainer as the documentary follows some of the finest dessert chefs in the world as…

★★★★★ - STUFF  - Carey Mulligan stuns in this audacious, astonishing tale -  Melancholia, Under the Skin, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Handmaiden. Only a handful of movies in the past decade have left me awestruck by their originality, powerful storytelling, memorable characters,…

★★★★ - STUFF  - A worthy cinematic adaptation of Jane Harper's award-winning novel -  In present day rural Australia, a couple of hours north of Melbourne, the rain hasn't arrived for a year. The grasslands and wheat fields around the town of Kiewarra are a dustbowl. Cracked, baked clay ravines…

★★★★½ - STUFF  - Why this Frances McDormand-starrer is the perfect film for 2020 -  Sometime in late 2021 – perhaps – Chloe Zhao will become known as the director of Eternals, which is an upcoming Marvel studios behemoth starring Angelina Jolie and many others, no doubt prancing around the galaxy…

★★★★★ - STUFF  - Why this doco is unlike anything you've seen before -  Norwegian film-maker Benjamin Ree had long been fascinated by the subject of art theft and was actively looking for a story to tell, when he happened on an account of an otherwise unremarkable gallery heist in Oslo. The…

★★★★ - COMICBOOK.COM  - A Delightfully Strange Sequel That Outshines the Original -  You may not know it, but DreamWorks has made a sequel to the 2013 animated caveman movie, The Croods. And the film is an absolute blast.  The Croods: A New Age picks up after the events of the first movie, as…

★★★★ - THE GUARDIAN  - The superheroine 2020 needs -  Gal Gadot’s warrior queen strikes just the right tone of hope and dynamism in Patty Jenkins’s stylish, empowering sequel.  This long-delayed sequel to 2017’s hugely enjoyable superhero romp Wonder Woman was originally slated for release last C…

★★★★ - STUFF  - Dan Stevens evokes the Spirit of Noel in brilliant Blithe -  If you enjoy a well-executed and acted broad comedy, then this will be just the tonic you need to put you in the holiday spirit. For almost 80 years, Noel Coward’s supernatural souffle of a conceit, Blithe Spirit, has…

"A BLOCKBUSTER WORTH WAITING FOR" - NZ HERALD  - New Zealanders are a lucky bunch. Among the many positives of managing the COVID pandemic means we can all go see Wonder Woman 1984 in a cinema instead of having to watch it at home while the local theatre faces the prospect of bankruptcy. This is…

★★★★ - STUFF  - Sassy, satisfying reimagining of Roald Dahl's beloved tale -  Much like a certain other cinematic adaptation of a hotel-set novel, while audiences loved the 1990 version of this tale, the author loathed it. Arguably Roald Dahl’s reaction to Nicolas Roeg’s take on his 1983 book The…