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A work of incredible cumulative power.

Fun Fact: this film is loosely inspired by a defunct Disneyland ride. And was originally going to be directed by Gore Verbinski.

The funniest part of this movie for me is that it’s called Mission to Mars, so you’re expecting the bulk of the film to be about the mission to Mars. But then the second scene is set on Mars. But then it goes back to Earth orbit and you’re like, okay, we’re gonna see the second mission to Mars - the bulk of this film will be about that mission to Mars. And then the next scene after that is set four months later and they’re like a day off from Mars.

For the most part this doesn’t feel much like a Brian De Palma movie, in the sense that he seems more like a hired hand, except for a few key moments. The best example is the scene on the section of their ship that uses centrifugal force - the single take as the camera follows characters at a different pace to them as they all twist around the frame is so cool, and it feels like De Palma riffing on Kubrick like he usually does with Hitchcock. 

I’m also a sucker for the sort of shit they pull in the last 30 minutes, though I prefer either less exposition (2001: A Space Odyssey) or a more direct appeal to what it means to the character (, Arrival). I do love that they kinda go for it with Gary Sinese’s life flashing before his eyes, but it’s 99% shots from the movie so it’s more like a little recap of the film lol

Had the honour of co-presenting this with the Brunswick Underground Film Festival. Such a beautiful audience which was lucky because I was so nervous as I think this is actually my first time speaking seriously about a movie that I love! And I really do love this movie.

For more in depth thoughts go to my last review of this and also my recent review of Grey Gardens. 

Worth noting that so many of the reviews on this website feature a quote. It’s so rare to have subjects in a documentary so acutely aware and articulate about their art and how it exists within the context of the world. It’s part of why every single line in the film is either iconic, profound or both. 

Also beautifully shot, and how lucky for this low budget documentary to have better costume, hair and makeup almost all narrative film.

Watched at Brunswick Underground Film Festival. I’ll give thoughts on each individual film, but one overarching thought I had was that 70s pornos had far too much rough handling of hairy unlubricated flaccid uncut penises for my taste. 

SEX AIDS AND HOW TO USE THEM - a great example of white coat sexploitation. In which pornographic films circumnavigated censorship by pretending to have an educational purpose. I particularly loved how all the vibrators had battery packs and cords.

STAGE - some beautiful imagery and actually quite a touching story about the complex lives people live outside of the 5 minutes we see them on stage. More than anything this was an amazing time capsule of Kings Cross and one of its strip clubs in the 1970s. 

WELL, MY DEAR! - this film featured an extreme close up of a man’s penis made to look like a bride using markers and a little veil, and then someone used little tiny teacups to make it look like the penis bride was having a little tea party. Truly hilarious.

Saw this at the Brunswick Underground Film Festival. If I was a betting man, I would buy some shares in director Avalon Fast! One to watch! etc etc

‘You never had a camera in my head!’

Love this movie. Top 50 all time for me.

Here’s some reasons I love it:

- Love that it’s so much more than just a satire of media and television (which would have very quickly dated it), that it talks to so many profound, philosophical ideas within such an easy and beautiful framework.

- One moment that I really loved on this rewatch is when the bus ‘breaks down’ meaning Truman can’t leave - everyone gets off the bus, then the bus driver goes to leave, turns to Truman and says he’s sorry. All without once showing a shot of Truman. It’s only after all of that that we then see a wide of the empty bus, with Truman sitting alone up the back. I don’t know why it jumped out, but it just stood out as a really masterful and assured moment of editing and directorial decisions in post. 

- The other thing that really stuck out was how universal Truman’s story is. The way that his life seems to be slipping away from him, the way that he is manipulated by the same things that manipulate us all (work and mortgages and savings and having a baby and all that). 

- Also love that it’s light and funny, that it is technically a sci-fi but it doesn’t look or feel like one.

- Love and intrigued by the story beats not being played as twists.

- Also love that the exposition dump happens an hour in, such an interesting structural choice that works really well!

- Aussie director and NZ writer!

Love that this film seems to function as a classic entry into its particular genre while simultaneously feeling like a parody and a revisionist take.

One scene that stood out on that front is the scene where Glenn Howerton‘s character walks into the meeting to sell the phone and does an incredible Aaron Sorkin-esque monologue which doesn’t play well at all; only for Jay Baruchel’s character to walk in and explain how the product will technically work and that’s a hit. It functions as the story beat while still critiquing the genre trope that would normally sit there. Lots of clever stuff like that. 

Good film!

Loved the art design - the beautiful ships and gorgeous mid century headquarters. 

Loved the fact that they used real actors for any close ups of the hands. Very funny.

Loved the dream sequence where the little blonde twink puppet imagines going to an outer space night club with the hot British lady puppet.

Struggled with the pace and the fact that none of the characters can emote because they are puppets.

Somebody do a welfare check on Paddington Bear

Your filmmakers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could create a CGI John Malkovich with long hair and a little goatee, no one asked if they should create a CGI John Malkovich with long hair and a little goatee.

I’m presenting screenings of this every night this weekend at Lido Cinemas (tickets still available on Sunday) and then in a month at Ritz Cinemas in Sydney.

This is one of the absolute best examples of pastiche I can think of but what really elevates it to be one of the great sitcoms is the fact that it is still a comedy first - the joke rate is so high and the sense of character is so clear. Most things that are this successful in their homage tend to drop the ball when it comes to the funny, or vice versa - the fact that this achieves both so throughly is inspiring.

Here’s some of the things that jumped out to me watching it last night:

- This show is people who are talented trying to make something bad on purpose, but it FEELS LIKE it’s made by people who don’t have the skills or resources but are trying to make something brilliant. 
- When people think ‘parody’ they can fall into a trap of thinking that every reference has to be known by its audience. I love that this show has a depth of references that go beyond what most viewers will know, I think that’s so important in order to create a style and tone that feels believable and whole.
- The use of ADR in this is so so funny. And probably the thing I’ve ripped off the most in Aunty Donna. Both the use of it to clarify plot points, and the uncanny vibe it creates when used over already spoken lines. If I could talk to the creators the one thing I would pick their brain about the most is how they went about it - whether it was all written in and planned, if they decided where to put it in during the edit, or a combination of both. Love it so much.
- Richard Ayoade’s bad acting is really funny. But the particular layer of bad cinema acting that he really nails (imho) is the feeling that they seem have pushed Dean into a slightly better performance in the close ups.

Now I’m not a Hollywood executive and I don’t know shit but I reckon instead of making one 250 million dollar movie and then spending 250 million dollars on marketing it even if it’s bad - I reckon what they should do is make twenty-five 10 million dollar films and then give the 250 million dollar marketing campaign to whichever gets the best CinemaScore.

The biggest documentaries now seem to be almost entirely focused on plot, but I think the most transcendent documentaries are much more focused on characters and the worlds they inhabit. 

A very special film, so glad to have finally gotten around to seeing it.

“It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It's awfully difficult.” - Little Edie

Watched this at a cinema that did hot food and I ordered a margarita pizza and a beer.

If you are the kind of person that thinks they might enjoy a movie called ‘Frankenhooker’ - then I promise you, you will really enjoy this film. If you are someone that doesn’t care for the title ‘Frankenhooker’ - then you might still enjoy the film. Really depends on what your issues are with the title. 

FYI this is screening at Brunswick Underground Film Festival in a few weeks.

My favourite genre is ‘Films Shot Next to Movie World’.

When Clint Eastwood retires, who’s gonna make movies for me to watch on long haul flights?

Watched on Tuesday May 6, 2025.

Some thoughts:

- Everyone always wants to talk about gothic, dark fantasy, expressionist Tim Burton - but no-one ever wants to talk about mid-century, Googie Americana Tim Burton. And I think that’s a shame.

- I rewatched for the trip down Emo lane, I was pleased to find a nihilistic yet nuanced exploration of how individual acts of kindness cannot hold against the tidal wave that is systemic prejudice. Kudos to writer Caroline Thompson.

- On that, too many “auteurs” now think they need to write their films. This film is proof that you can make auteur cinema with a distinct voice but get someone who is better than you at writing words and scenes to write the words and the scenes. 

- Alan Arkin’s Bill is the perfect satirical encapsulation of men of a certain age and generation. Literally perfect. Every line is perfect. Telling this little fuckin dude with scissors for hands he needs to get a bank loan is so funny.

- A sweet family friendly fairy tale with allusions to knife play, BDSM and leather is pretty wild.

- This came out the year after Batman, this is Burtons sinners. CASH THAT BLANK CHECK AND SHOOT YOUR SHOT!

The film as a whole has never been my favourite of Luhrmann’s for a few reasons BUT both the "Elephant Love Medley" and the “Roxanne” scenes have such an intense, this-is-what-cinema-is-capable-of energy to them that is so hard to deny. Truly magical sequences imho. 

Watched this for an episode of The Mish & Zach Podcast.

A couple of years ago my favourite video essayist Big Joel released a video called ‘We Must Destroy What The Bomb Cannot’.

The video opened with the point that, despite what everyone says, the original Godzilla can’t just be a metaphor for the atomic bomb - in part because characters in the film directly discuss the impact of literal atomic bombs in the story. You can’t have the metaphor and the thing it’s a metaphor for within the same film. He then goes on to discuss other works in order to express a much more complex idea of what Godzilla represents.

A lesser film maker would have made the supernatural elements of this film directly analogous to the Ku Klux Klan. Instead, Coogler paints a much more complicated picture of racism, cultural appropriation, homogenisation, the way that victims can become perpetrators, that the colonised can become colonisers, and so much more. This is a film that is full to the brim, with more ideas than I can possibly parse out of one viewing. 

Also, what a thrill it is to see a period film with a budget in this day and age. I love production design, and to see millions of dollars of sets and costumes and cars up on that screen was so great.

It’s also beautifully shot - genuinely thrilling to see a film with so many unapologetically trashy genre elements, that owe a lot to films like ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, shot on 70mm and IMAX.

Lastly, great to see horniness back in studio films.

You can watch this in Australia on Dolay: https://www.dolay.com/shows/no-other-land
You can rent it online or organise a screening in North America here: www.nootherland.com 
You can watch in the UK here: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/no-other-land

Watched on Tuesday April 22, 2025.

“Other worldly” is the expression that first came to my mind when looking for a way to describe the imagery in this film. Which is funny because actually it’s quite the opposite - the footage that the Kraffts captured is so much more fundamental to this world, it’s creation and its nature than the streets and buildings and urban settings I see every day. 

I think that’s a perspective that Herzog has more than any other filmmaker - how profoundly awesome, alien and savage the natural world is compared to the order that humanity has created around itself.

This 30 minute television special, seemingly a simple spin-off of the Ice Age media franchise, is in fact a provocative dismantling of current anthropological thinking.

‘Ice Age: The Great Egg-scapade’ posits the deeply controversial theory that many of the traditions and celebrations inherent to the Easter cultural holiday predate both the Judea-Christian beliefs and the Anglo-Saxon Pagan spring rituals that were previously understood to have originated much of what we now know as Easter. In fact, this television special proposes that Easter pre-dates all sedentary agrarian human societies. Instead, theorising that the holiday was started by a collection of super intelligent fauna in the Pleistocene epoch. While there are no attempts to explain how and when these traditions were ed on to our early human ancestors, the work opens up a number of interesting questions that will hopefully be explored in more rigorous detail in further works. 

Watched as part of Leguizamarama. A podcast where my friend Mish and I are watching everything starring our favourite character actor John Leguizamo.

You were all so obsessed with your little Fatboy Slim fun fact that you forget to tell me that this is a Kathryn Bigelow directed, James Cameron scripted, genre defining cyberpunk masterpiece that tackles all of the great moral questions of the last 50 years while making you fall in love with Angela Basset, finally understand a) why that Qantas hostess risked her entire career for 10 minutes with Ralph Fiennes and b) why your older cousin was obsessed with Juliette Lewis. 

You just completely failed to mention that aesthetically this is quite possibly the most on point movie ever. That you may never see a movie nail what it’s going for better.

And that as soon as I’d see this it would go right to near the top of my list of movies set in LA.

Shame on you.

Okay, yeah it was cool when she said ‘Right here! Right now!’

Rewatched this before my screening of it tonight as part of ‘Fun Time Film Club’ at Lido Cinemas. (Tickets still available if you want to come along)

I love this film. It’s legitimately so fun. Such a fun film. Very fun. I think it will play really well in front of an audience. 

I love that the plot of this film is kind of just the psycho/deep blue sea/1917 twist happening again and again and again.

Also love the Martin Short seduction scene. 

Lastly, what a cast!

Good stuff. Thanks for reading my review.

If, in around 1995, you met Tom Cruise’s character in this and asked him about Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia, I reckon he would say that while he doesn’t agree with everything he says he does think that he has some really good ideas. He’d also try to tell you all about his bitch ex-wife who’s trying to get full custody of their twins.

The best use of location shooting until they went to the Quantum Realm to film the last Ant Man movie.

The final episode, particularly the last half hour, really stuck the landing for me. Britain has such a rich history of social realist theatre, film and television. Better than any other country, I think, they make dramas about working class people in a way that doesn’t look down on them, that is about human beings with rich inner lives rather than their status. Stories about working class people - not about the fact that they are working class.

This show is at its best when it taps into that history of story telling, when it explores greater contemporary social issues but through the domestic interior lives of its characters. I was expecting an interestingly shot police procedural, the fact that I got something within the lineage of kitchen sink dramas and in-yer-face theatre was a pleasant surprise.

I haven’t watched any films for a while because I’ve been performing mine and Alexei Toliopoulos’s show ‘Refused Classification’ at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. When I’m in that sort of creative space I tend not to be able to watch anything too in depth - so it’s been pro-wrestling, Star Trek Voyager and YouTube. But the show has really settled in so I finally feel ready to get back into it.

As someone currently performing a multi-media theatre documentary comedy piece about a very specific time, very funny that the first film I chose to watch was a multi-media documentary comedy about theatre made during a very specific time. 

A lot to say about this film so I’ll just pick a couple of thoughts:

- the first act of violence made me laugh so hard
- I think the choice to keep the film entirely contained to within the game surprisingly created a better sense of isolation and claustrophobia than if we’d cut to the real people locked in their houses
- the way that this was shot at times like a social realist drama was inspired. Getting documentary style pickup shots of impoverished NPC’s in a fake version of a crime riddled LA made by an Edinburgh based game developer for your documentary about middle-class theatre makers in London has so many layers of irony I can’t even begin to unpack it. V clever.

Good film, recommend it. Made me properly laugh.

Very interesting experiment in form and exploration of how to tell stories in ways that embrace and fit their means of distribution. I was surprised it was on Letterboxd tbh, because this is very much a web series.

If anyone knows of other examples of similar works or interesting explorations/experiments of online forms of storytelling (or creepypasta that isn’t naff). I would love your recommendations please!

As someone who travels a lot for work I’ve played a few really beautiful mobile games in my time, my favourite probably being ‘Monument Valley II’. Every time I’ve played them I’ve felt like I would love to see that tone and style in a cinema. ‘Flow’ has that - from its music, to its art design, to its simplicity, to its familiar but fantastic setting.

A really beautiful, soft, simple but not easy or obvious film.

I don’t think you could create a better pair of villains than a racist cannibal rock spider landlord and his child abusing racist Karen landlord sister that call each other ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’. 

Truly S-Tier pieces of shit.

Had a lot of fun with this. Really enjoyed it. Here’s some thoughts:

- took me a beat to get on board with the rhythm of the writing, but once I did I really enjoyed it.
- loved that it was a very stylish, heightened espionage thriller that featured certain domestic realities (home cooking, going to the movies, etc). 
- loved the moment where he got sauce on his sleeve and he went and changed it. These films are usually so effortlessly slick, I liked that it showed that these was not just aesthetic but also in world character choices.
- loved that it was 90 minutes. Perfect length for this story.
- loved that characters didn’t really explain and who they are and what they do, it just sort of throws you in the deep end and you figure out who they are and what they do and what all the words mean over the course of the first 30 minutes or so.

One of my favourite bands when I was a teenager was ‘The Polyphonic Spree’. I loved them not just because they were relentlessly positive and uplifting, but because they projected that world view not through fantasy or ignorance, but by writing lyrics that acknowledged the challenges of life and saying it’s gonna be okay, by saying ‘life can be hard, but you’re not alone’.

Hold me now, don't start shaking
You keep me safe, don't ever think you're the only one
When times are tough in your new age. 

- “Section 12: Hold Me Now”, The Polyphonic Spree, 2002

I still have so much space in my heart for stuff that does that and ‘Bob Trevino Likes It’ does that real good. This is not uplifting because it is a fantasy or an escape, it’s uplifting because it says ‘life can be hard, but you’re not alone’.

“We’re all a bit broken, and you know what? You’re gonna be fine.”

- Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo)

The bit where Parker Posey says ‘Come on girls, sit down, we’ll gossip’ and then does the little X with her arms should be added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

My friend Mish spent $45 to get a DVD of this because we’re gonna talk about it on an episode of our podcast about John Leguizamo. Even though it was a Region 2 DVD it played on my PS5 which is pretty cool.

Fred Willard and Jim Piddock as the commentary team is possibly the best observational comedy, best improvisational comedy and best straight guy dynamic comedy of any film. Every olympics I hear that dynamic play out. I’m obsessed with it.

“We both love soup” is the best line in any comedy except for maybe ‘He’s absolutely right!’ in Zoolander.

Also, every man Cookie has slept with having male pattern baldness is the best casting choice ever.

Many other bests in this film, which is one of the best comedies ever imho.

Love this film.

Screened it as part of ‘Fun Time Film Club’ at Lido Cinemas. Next month I’m doing ‘Mars Attacks!’

Also, just realised how many times I say best in this review, I swear to god that wasn’t a deliberate play on the title.

‘Halloween H20: 20 Years Later’ meets ‘Scream 2’ meets ‘American Pie’ meets ‘Series 7’ meets ‘EDtv’

Okjas

This film says a lot of things, but I think what really struck me, and I’m being genuine here, was the importance of letting men know that it’s okay to be silly.

Watched on Monday March 3, 2025.

Watched on Monday February 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday February 24, 2025.

Watched on Sunday February 16, 2025.

One time while on tour with my comedy group Aunty Donna we were on an Air New Zealand flight, and we bumped into Tony Starr (The Boys) who was also on the flight, and then when we got on the plane John Lithgow (Conclave) was also on board. I sat a few rows back from him and tried not to stare but I did notice he was learning his lines the whole flight and it was really impressive to see a proper actor learn their lines. He also ordered an ice cream at one point.

I can’t think of a way to tie this back to Conclave but it just felt like a good opportunity to bring it up.

this movie is fucked

Screened this as part of my monthly ‘Fun Time Film Club’ at Lido Cinemas. 

I talked about all the fun and silly things in my intro, so will use this review to discuss a couple other things I like about this film:

- in a genre that is almost always suburban and middle class, I like that it’s a slasher about working class people
- characters are really well realised and time is given to their interpersonal drama - something that is vital but rare in slashers 
- the killer is really quite iconic. The mask, the pick axe as weapon, the whole vibe is S-tier - and if this had become a franchise I could really see him sitting alongside Ghostface and Micheal Myers in the canon.
- quite bold in how likeable many of the characters are and inversely how nasty their deaths are, really pushes an audiences empathy

I’m doing a screening of ‘My Bloody Valentine’ tonight at Lido Cinemas in Hawthorn (because it’s Valentine’s Day today).

To promote it I am watching as many Holiday themed slashers as possible before the screening. So last night I invited some friends over and we watched the most self aware of the genre - Thanksgiving.

I had a lot of fun for most of the film, it felt very much like a film that is driven first and foremost by a frustration that other holiday themed slashers don’t embrace the iconography of their respective holiday enough. This film is drenched in thanksgiving imagery from roast dinners, to pilgrim hats, to inflatable turkeys, to Black Friday sales, to corn on the cob and more!

That being said the links ARE all very much aesthetic. And I do feel there was an opportunity lost to sub-textually engage with some of the darker aspects of the history of the holiday itself. Not heaps, just a little, just a tiny teeny little bit of subtext.

A list of some of the films of thought of while watching Adolecence.

• This Is England
• We Need to Talk About Kevin
• Elephant
• Russian Ark
• Billy Elliot
• Snowtown
• Closer
• Trainspotting
• River's Edge
• London Road

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My friend Mish encouraged me to do a list of my Top 25 favourite films. I rounded it up to 28 though so it would fit the Letterboxd grid. I didn’t put a lot of thought into this so don’t hold me to it.

• Mulholland Drive
• Zoolander
• Paris Is Burning
• Roadgames
• Waiting for Guffman
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Scream
• The Florida Project
• Once Were Warriors
• Brokeback Mountain

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 12 Films I rewatched in 2024

• Paris Is Burning
• Waiting for Guffman
• Best in Show
• Donnie Darko
• Babe
• Heavenly Creatures
• May December
• La Jetée
• Two Hands
• Philadelphia

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 12 films I watched for the first time in 2024

• Mysterious Skin
• Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
• Lake Mungo
• Battle Royale
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• Revenge
• Paris, Texas
• Hard Boiled
• Mystery Train
• Heat

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Batman & Robin
• Jingle All the Way

• A Ghost Story
• Lake Mungo

• Darkman
• Spider-Man
• Spider-Man 2

• Wonka
• Oz the Great and Powerful