The AI at the heart of Netflix’s latest sci-fi plunge opens up provoking questions of femininity and motherhood.
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Cinemascopes: Cancer
Be the Mom and embrace your sensitivity this season.
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Review: Parasite
Bong Joon-Ho’s slippery Palme d’Or winner is another sharp take on class conflict in modern day Korean society.
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Scars as a Work of Art: An Interview with Dirty God’s Vicky Knight and Sacha Polak
At the Sydney Film Festival, André Shannon talks to actress Vicky Knight and director Sacha Polak about tattoos, electronica, and making survivor films.
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Review: Monos
This chaotically evocative thriller is a sensory, obscure look at a unit of child soldiers set on a faraway Columbian mountaintop.
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Review: The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn deftly navigate conflict and compassion between two Indigenous women with unparalleled care and intimacy.
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Review: Jesus
Japanese director Hiroshi Okuyama’s debut looks at a religious experience through a child’s eyes.
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Weird the Whole Way: An Interview with Ladyworld’s Amanda Kramer
At the Sydney Film Festival, Ivana Brehas talks to writer-director Amanda Kramer about writing, weirdness, and womanhood.
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Review: Depraved
Larry Fessenden’s human tale of broken bodies updates the Frankenstein story for the 21st century.
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Find What Affects You: An Interview With RJ Mitte
Ahead of Standing Up For Sunny’s premiere at the Sydney Film Festival, Ivana Brehas spoke with RJ Mitte about mental health, the Australian film industry, and kung-fu movies.
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Revolt Against The System: An Interview with Slam’s Partho Sen Gupta
Ahead of Slam’s premiere at the Sydney Film Festival, Claire Cao talks to director Partho Sen-Gupta about racial microaggressions, the rousing power of Bankstown Poetry Slam, and the strength of mothers all over the world.
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Community and Country: An Interview with Emu Runner’s Imogen Thomas
At the Sydney Film Festival, Tansy Gardam talks to director Imogen Thomas about her debut feature, community collaboration, and filming in remote Australia.
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Review: Her Smell
Elisabeth Moss is a riot (grrrl) in a dizzying and exhausting portrait of punk infamy.
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Review: Animals
Animals plays out like a memory: within the wine-fueled haze of love won, love lost, and uncertainty, you might just find yourself.
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Review: One Child Nation
Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang transform the political to personal as they lay bare the effects of China’s one child policy.
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Review: The Heart Dances
Kiwi filmmaker Rebacca Tansley offers an empathetic look at the conflict between different cultural and artistic perspectives during the production of a ballet in New Zealand.
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The Spaces Between: An Interview with Imogen McCluskey and Béatrice Barbeau-Scurla
At the Sydney Film Festival, Michael Sun talks to first-time Aussie filmmakers Imogen McCluskey and Béatrice Barbeau-Scurla about Australian suburbia on film, queer narratives, and… James Charles.
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Review: The Miracle of the Little Prince
A documentary on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s beloved children’s classic thoughtfully breaks down language barriers.
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Review: Monrovia, Indiana
Veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman stitches together a covertly political portrait of a conservative town in rural America.
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Review: John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
This video-game-esque fight-fest gives Keanu Reeves a bunch of knives and puts him in opposition with the best and worst elements of its predecessors.
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Review: Up the Mountain
A visually immaculate look at those living inside a Chinese mountain village immerses itself in the pleasures of creation.
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Merchant of Melodrama: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Traumatised Characters
Zach Karpinellison examines the timeless brutality of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cinema.
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Cinemascopes: Gemini
Get weird, embrace your duality, and lighten up this season.
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Sydney Film Festival 2019: Top Picks
The Rough Cut team are here to help you compile the must-sees of the Sydney Film Festival, which have unveiled their biggest program yet.
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Review: Little Woods
Tessa Thompson and Lily James star as two sisters caught up in the cross-border smuggling trade of prescription drugs.
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Review: Top End Wedding
An Aboriginal woman’s homecoming to the Tiwi Islands is the romantic comedy that Australia has been missing out on.
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The LEGO Movie 2 Wants You To Break The Cycle
Samuel Harris tracks back to his own childhood LEGO obsession to untangle the clever commentary that lies beneath the innocuous optimism of The LEGO Movie’s sequel.
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This Is It, We’re Finally Leaving Neverland
Matilda Dorman reflects upon the revived abuse allegations against Michael Jackson in 2019’s two-parter documentary, Leaving Neverland — through a personal comparison to the 2009 concert film This Is It.
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Review: 3 Faces
Jafar Panahi’s latest film bypasses explicit social critique for a more enjoyable, idiosyncratic journey through small-town Iran.
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Thank You For The Music: Coming Of Age in Muriel’s Wedding
P.J Hogan’s 1994 cult classic might just be the most honest Australian coming-of-age film ever made.
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Two takes on 1985: An empathetic and moving look at the AIDS Crisis
André Shannon and Debbie Zhou present two opinions on Yen Tan’s restrained and perceptive drama.
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Cinemascopes: Taurus
Luxuriate in earthly delights, but stay grounded this season.
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Review: Thunder Road
This off-beat tragicomedy could be retitled “Man on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”.
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Review: Transit
Christian Petzold’s wrenching melodrama is an aching journey of forgetfulness, forgiveness, and identity in flux.
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Within and Without: Poetry in Motion and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning
Claire White shares her lasting memories of Lee Chang-dong’s impressionistic mystery.
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The Halphabet: 26 Vital Parts of Hal Ashby
Eliza Janssen alphabetises the ‘shaggy humanism’ of Hal Ashby, in light of a release of a documentary on the prolific American director.
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Cinemascopes: Aries
Channel Aries’ headstrong energy this season.
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Making Bigotry A Thing of The Past
Why is Hollywood so obsessed with looking backwards, rather than addressing today’s injustices?
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Review: Us
Jordan Peele gives Get Out an evil twin with this loopier, looser horror follow-up.
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Review: Hotel Mumbai
Dev Patel and Armie Hammer star in a white lens fictional retelling of the 2008 Mumbai Attacks to disastrous, culturally insensitive effect.
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Focus On the Most Honest Thing: An Interview With Drew Droege
At the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Ivana Brehas talks to comedian Drew Droege about queer culture, artistic vulnerability, and being a big, loud, gay mess.
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Review: Captain Marvel
Marvel’s first female superhero flies straight into a well-worn template that lacks gusto.
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Review: Revenge
This mischievous survival film attempts to reclaim the complicated rape-revenge narrative.
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Review: High Life
Claire Denis’ ambitious first English-language flight into space is brought crashing down by glaringly conventional representational issues.
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Review: Everybody Knows
Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem reunite in Asghar Farhadi’s latest melodrama, where past merges with the present to unexpected results.
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Moving and Shaking: Embracing the Uncertainty of Teen Sexuality in Giant Little Ones
Michael Sun investigates the state of teen queer cinema after the feel-good optimism of Love, Simon.
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Review: Sink or Swim
A makeshift heptad form a syncronised swimming team in this wryly offbeat, exposition-filled French dramedy.
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Review: Celebration: Yves Saint Laurent
Any celebratory spirit is scarce in this observational documentary centered on enigmatic fashion icon, Yves Saint Laurent.
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Video Essay: ‘Last Year At Marienbad’ and The Doobie Brother’s ‘What A Fool Believes’ Are About The Same Thing
Eliza Janssen finds an unlikely connection between Alain Resnais’ 1961 arthouse drama and a 70s yacht-rock single.
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Torture The Form: An Interview with Vox Lux’s Brady Corbet
Jack Atherton and André Shannon talk to actor-director Brady Corbet about Sia, Oscar politics, and creating a perfectly imperfect picture.
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