Director Antoine Fuqua exploded on to the Hollywood scene a decade back with the critically acclaimed Training Day, which is often considered one of the quintessential cop/crime dramas but ever since has struggled to follow up that hit, releasing a string of mediocre films that never broke out at the box office (see King Arthur, Shooter).

While his latest offering doesn’t necessarily reverse that trend it does at [...]

Cairo Time is a nod and a wink to women of middle age. Contesting western attitudes, the gentle and understated film reveals there are escapades, challenges, and dark exotic men to be had by women on the wrong (or let’s say greater) side of fifty. The lead female is aptly named Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), as writer director Ruba Nadda’s (Sabah: A Love Story) film summons Shakespeare’s theme of impossible love; a romance between ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers’.

Tomorrow, When the War Began is Australia’s answer to the Hollywood blockbuster, boasting an attractive young cast, thrilling action set pieces, impressive special effects, and — just in case you start to think you are watching a Hollywood film — a scene where Vegemite is devoured straight from the jar. Next to riding Skippy to school, that’s about as Aussie as it gets.

Step Up 3D director Jon Chu is, to lesser acclaim, a modern day Busby Berkeley; he’s not a storyteller, he’s a choreographer.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking; another year, another remake of a Hollywood slasher film. A trend that I would say started back in 2003 with the generation Y version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it definitely seems that Hollywood has run out of new things to explore in the genre. As such, they’ve reverted to the needless rehashing of the classic films that helped to define the genre all those years ago. But really, what’s the point?

Going into this remake of Wes Craven’s 1984 hit A Nightmare on Elm Street, I was thinking exactly that. In fact, I still am. But it could be worse; although director Samuel Bayer’s take is not exactly ground-breaking, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were still some fright-filled fun to be had in Freddy Kruger’s return to Elm Street.

From Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner and Cary Elwes, we’ve seen the story of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest portrayed numerous times; a cinema favourite because of its endearing display of human nature – robbing the rich to feed the poor. The wonderful world of Disney gave us a comical and less morally correct animated version, while the recent BBC series had bounds of wit and charm. With that said, Ridley Scott definitely had a lot to live up to in successfully bringing a more dramatic side to the outlaw on screen.

Let’s start off with the good news: Iron Man 2 is just as good as Iron Man. But don’t celebrate just yet, as I haven’t told you the bad news: I never thought much of the original.

Most will be quick to disagree, but I found the first to be a middling superhero film, lightly entertaining for sure, but unforgivably formulaic and extremely anticlimactic. Arriving in the same year as the ground-breaking The Dark Knight, it also didn’t take long for Iron Man to feel like an out-dated model. However, the one thing the film certainly had going for it was, of course, Robert Downy Jr. His charming and wry personification of billionaire Tony Stark oozed a unique and entertaining quality the rest of the film simply couldn’t match.

Australian film fans, cover your eyes! Yes, the whole three of you out there are in for a bit of a shock. Sick and tired of our own flailing industry and determined to kick the yankees out of our state of the art facilities at Fox Studios in Sydney, Aussie short filmmaker Andrew Lancaster has directed his feature film debut in Accidents Happen, although unfortunately proves that yes, sometimes they really do.