Lately it seems as though Mel Gibson, the actor, has been replaced by Mel Gibson, the publicly drunken and anti-Semitic nutjob. One would suspect that’s why Jodie Foster’s The Beaver has been collect dust on the shelf for the last year, waiting until all the hullaballoo has died down and audiences start to rediscover Mel Gibson, the actor, once more.

The irony here, however, is that it’s because of Gibson’s personal [...]

If you can’t beat them, join them. That’s the approach sensationalist documentarian Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?)  takes in his latest project, a film all about advertising and product placement. The gimmick this time around is that the entire film was funded by, and is brimming with, product placement and advertising. Revelling in its own ridiculousness, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever [...]

There’s something about the 70s and 80s that brought out the best in Australian cinema. Perhaps it was the way we celebrated and shared our various idiosyncrasies with the world, be it the outback in Mad Max, mateship in Gallipoli or larrikinism in Crocodile Dundee. Or perhaps it was just those unseemly short stubbies that made no effort whatsoever to conceal a man’s meat and two veg. Whatever it was, [...]

In this sweet and very funny coming of age story from Norway, we are introduced to thirteen year old Jo, played by young actor Ask von der Hagen. Prone to elaborate and extremely pessimistic flights of fancy – often spurred on by his overprotective mother, or after receiving ‘special attention’ from the school bully – Jo’s life is thrown into further turmoil with the arrival of Mari, a pretty young [...]

A tale so outrageous, unjust and unbelievable that it could only be true, Give Up Tomorrow is a jaw-dropping tale of corruption in the Filipino courts. Documenting the trail – if such a term can even be applied – of Paco Larranaga, a man, amongst seven others, sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, director Michael Collins chronicles the investigation, prosecution and the decade long quest for [...]

The war correspondent is given pride of place as the unsung hero of modern warfare in Renny Harlin’s 5 Days of War, a fictionalised drama set during the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. Aiming to entertain as much as edify, Harlin (Die Hard 2) follows the example Paul Greengrass’ Green Zone and Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond by using Hollywood heroism to shed damming, albeit biased, light on a contemporary conflict.

From [...]

Remember back in 1983 when the fated, final clash between two sparking sabres – one green, the other red – evoked the kind of wide-eyed wonderment that now, nearly three decades later, still manages to send a tingle down your spine?

I don’t. I was still six years away from being born. And as much as I have come to appreciate the Star Wars saga in the years since, its pleasures [...]

Sure, the Norwegian mock-doc The Troll Hunter begins almost identically to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, but I can assure you it’s not your average found-footage movie. Just give writer/director André Ovredal a good twenty minutes to find his own voice, and before you know it, you’ll be knee-deep in one of the most enjoyable and amusing movies to ever involve shaky camerawork, terrified documentarians and things that go bump [...]