TL;DR – Arrival, Opera House, Taronga Zoo via ferry, Sealife Aquarium, and fried chicken to end a long first day in Sydney.
Disclosure – I paid for my entry and everything you see purchased in this article.
Well, it has been a while since I jumped into the world of an Explore-It, and now is as good a time as any to explore a trip I took a bit ago to the most populous city in Australia [for the time being] Sydney
Continue readingTL;DR – A stronger start, but the jury is still out if it can rebound from a very mixed first outing.
Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this series.
Back in 2023, one of the few ambitious projects in the streaming era started. I mean, what is the point of having a global streaming conglomerate if you are not going to do something with it? Citadel and its Spyverse were going to be a worldwide streaming universe where different countries would add to the growing lore. Conceptionally fascinating, practically quite a mess, with Season One devolving into massive expensive reshoots, which didn’t help the promotion of the spin-offs Diana & Honey Bunny. But the series has been improving with each iteration, so it is time to see if the original series can continue the charge, or if this is the last hurrah.
So, to set the scene, everyone has gone into hiding after the events of Season One. But the reach of Manticore is large, and soon, nowhere is safe to hide. In England, a smuggler is enjoying a party only to have his entire security taken out by Hutch (Jack Reynor), for he is hunting for Paolo Braga (Gabriel Leone), who didn’t suspect that the item that was being smuggled was none other than Bernard (Stanley Tucci). Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.
TL;DR – A wild, chaotic, Canadian ride from start to finish, where you will not know where the film will pivot to next.
Post-Credit Scene – There is a post-credit scene.
Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.
There is one film this year that has been recommended by every single person who has watched it. I tried to catch it in cinemas, but the times never lined up. However, it is finally out on digital I have a roast cooking in the oven, and winter has hit so you want to be inside watching something wild. It is the perfect combination to see if my friends were right about this film or not.
So, to set the scene, 17 years after trying to play a gig by their band Nirvanna the Band at the Rivoli, Matt Johnson (Matt Johnson) and Jay McCarrol (Jay McCarrol) have finally come up with a plan to get the gig. It might involve jumping off the CN Tower to advertise their band to a baseball stadium, and they might not have told anyone about it, and no one at the CN Tower knows what is about to happen, or that they are filming a movie.
TL;DR – Who knew if you smashed Knives Out into Chicken Run, you would create something so profoundly charming.
Post-Credit Scene – There is a post-credit audio sting, but you don’t need to stay for it.
Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.
It has been a long time since a film charmed me to the core. However, that is just what happened today. Look, if you told me at the start of the year that a Hugh Jackman sheep film would be scoring high on my end-of-the-year list, I would have called you foolish. But the only fool would have been past-me, and present-me is already quite annoyed at past-me, so we can just add this to the list.
So, to set the scene, in the charming little English town of Denbrook, lives a farmer called George (Hugh Jackman) and his flock of sheep. George loves all his sheep equally and gave them all names, because they are all special. But he also feels that Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Sebastian (Bryan Cranston) are the most special. Everything was going swimmingly at the farm, bar all these weird grudges that seemed to have come out of nowhere. However, one night, after reading the sheep their nighttime story, Lily woke to find George lying in the field dead … murdered. Was it the besmirched innkeeper Beth Pennock (Hong Chau), the failed shepherd Caleb (Tosin Cole), the duplicitous priest Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith), the grumpy butcher Ham Gilyard (Conleth Hill), or the mysterious Rebecca Hampstead (Molly Gordon)? Whatever the case, the sheep can’t leave the case to local police officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun), because he is plainly useless. No, if someone is going to step up and solve this murder, it is going to be someone with four hooves, copious wool, and a penchant for baaing.
TL;DR – A bloody fun time, if you don’t think about the plot at any point during the runtime.
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.
Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.
I think it is safe to say that video game adaptations can be fraught. Indeed, even when we get a solid first entry, the follow-up can often flounder. Back during the height of COVID, we got this bombastic first entry in the Mortal Kombat series. However, it was missing something very important to the game: A Tournament. Well, they are back for round two, and they are ready to fix that omission.
So, to set the scene, in the days since the first film, everyone realised that they are down one champion after Shao Kahn’s (Martyn Ford) pre-emptive strike. This somehow did not break the rules of the tournament. There are 8 billion humans in Earthrealm, and for some reason, the Gods chose washed-up Hollywood actor Johnny Cage (Karl Urban). He thinks he’s having an aneurysm, but reality hits hard when Johnny is zapped off Earth to face Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), Shao Kahn’s adopted daughter, whose blades cut deep.
TL;DR – An interesting, if very convoluted, survival-horror film.
Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.
Warning – Contains scenes which may cause distress.
As horror still comes in leaps and bounds in 2026, there has been an uptick in the survival-horror space. Today’s film is absolutely playing in that space as it pits two of Hollywood’s biggest stars in a fight across the Australian landscape. And well look, as far as pitches for a film go, that is a solid one.
So, to set the scene, deep in the grand mountains of the Troll Way of Norway, Sasha (Charlize Theron) and Tommy (Taron Egerton) are making their ascent to the summit. They are the sort of people who find it exhilarating to sleep on the side of a cliff. When the weather turns, they decide, with some reluctance, to head back down, but it is too late, and in the calamity, Tommy does not make it. Months later, Sasha is trying to move on from the tragedy in Australia, out where the terrain is tough, and the satellite signal is poor. Stopping off for supplies, a local, Ben (Taron Egerton), recommends a secluded camping spot, not as secluded as advertised. But worse, as Sasha goes deeper into the bush, she quickly realises that help might not be friendly, and there is something sinister hiding in the bush, something that will give her to the end of a song to run, and then the hunt is on.
TL;DR – While this is a profoundly weird and visually interesting film, the subject matter almost became a walking red flag, undercutting any progress the film could make.
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.
Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film.
Warning – Contains scenes which may cause distress.
I will always prefer a film that takes risks rather than playing it safe, like having one man battle Hundreds of Beavers or piercing the veil of nostalgic memory through old videos in Aftersun. However, when you make a big swing at doing something profoundly odd, sometimes you miss, and I feel that is the sort of film we are looking at today.
So, to set the scene, we open with Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) engaging in some immersion therapy, recounting the story of the time she met and then ‘met’ an ‘alien’ called Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci). Joey has been trying to move on with her life, but she keeps getting brought back to that night, bringing with it many conflicting memories. But when her and her roommate Craig’s (Jordan Gavaris) house floods from a non-water plumbing issue and becomes uninhabitable, she has only one choice left, to go back to Brian.
TL;DR – There is an interesting story here, if you are willing to sit through some of the more convoluted parts of the narrative.
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.
Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service to view this film.
It has been a while, but it is time to jump back into the world of Indian Cinema, with an interesting period sports film out of Tollywood. One of the things that I love about world cinema is seeing how different countries adapt themes that I have experienced in my local cinematic world. The differences and similarities, and it is that space that we work in today.
So, to set the scene, it’s 2003, in Hyderabad, India. Vikas “Vicky” Narayan (Sharwanand) is living with his wife Ananya (Malvika Nair) and son Ishaan (Shourya Chelemella). It is not a perfect life, as his son struggles in school, but it is one he loves. However, when the duplicitous Chairman of IGN, Indraneel Chirag (Atul Kulkarni), comes after Vicky’s estranged father Sunil Narayan (Rajasekhar/ P. Sai Kumar), Vicky must decide if he wants to save his father by jumping back into a world he had left behind: Motocross GP.
TL;DR – A complicated film about a complicated person that stops just short of having to draw any lines in the sand by creating an interesting framing device for its narrative.
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.
Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.
Warning – Contains scenes which may cause distress.
Warning – Contains scenes with flashing lights.
Ever since the onslaught that was Bohemian Rhapsody, the cinema space has been full of other musical biopics trying to recreate that lightning in a bottle, assuming you rate Bohemian Rhapsody highly in the first place. We had the fascinating Kneecap, the historically revisionist The Greatest Showman, and the shameless Oscar grab of A Complete Unknown, to name a few. However, there are always new musicians out there ready for their musical biopic, and today’s entry takes us to the complicated world of Michael Jackson. Now, given this is a movie about a real person’s life, someone who lived not that long ago, we won’t be as stringent with spoilers in this review as we would for a fictional work.
So, to set the scene, throughout the history of 20th-century music, few people have had the same reach and popularity as Michael Jackson (Jaafar Jackson). Even as a child, Michael’s (Juliano Krue Valdi) talent was clear to anyone who could see or hear. But talent can be a gift, and it can be a burden. It can lift a family from obscurity into the lounge rooms of every house in America and the world, and it can also rip that family apart.
TL;DR – It found its charm at times, but whether it was the short episode order or the passage of time, I just came away feeling a bit hollow about it all.
Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that aired this episode.
I came into the first episode of this new spin-off, My Return, with a touch of trepidation. Could a show like Scrubs find that same formula among the cast that worked for almost all its runtime? Can a show both reinvent itself for a modern audience without losing that pull of nostalgia and vibe that made it good in the first place? These are the questions I asked myself this season.
So, to set the scene, it has been a long time since JD (Zach Braff) worked at Sacred Heart hospital [which was not torn down, I do not know how that rumour got started]. However, while he spends his days being a concierge doctor for the wealthy, it is not exactly a stimulating profession. But as fate would have it, today he is back at his old stomping grounds, because one of his patients got admitted. It is a place of joy with old friends, Turk (Donald Faison) and Carla (Judy Reyes), old mentors, Dr Cox (John C. McGinley), and more recent ex-wives, Elliot (Sarah Chalke). But when JD gets an offer he can’t refuse, his life is about to do a complete U-turn. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.
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freelance film critic with an interest in multilingualism, feminist perspectives in cinema and crime dramas.
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