Review: Send Help

Few things are more satisfying to watch on the big screen than the tables being turned. Trouble is, on its own it's not quite enough to build a feature-length film on - and once you start adding in backstory and nuance and so on, you start to dilute the raw pleasure of seeing someone get their own back. The trick is to somehow complicate things in a way that builds on what we've come to see rather than water it down. As tricks go it's not an easy one to pull off.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is very good at her job. Unfortunately, she doesn't quite grasp - or care - that just being good at your job isn't enough to get you moving up the corporate ladder when you're mostly known for bad jokes, ugly shoes, and smelly tuna fish sandwiches. 

Still, her boss was willing to overlook all that and bump her up to Vice President... until he died and his smarmy son Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) took over. Being exactly the kind of bro you'd expect, he plans to show Liddle out the door - once she's outlived her usefulness, of course. There's a big overseas meeting coming up, so all he needs her to do is polish up some contracts on the flight over and then she's done.

One somewhat gory plane crash later and the two of them are washed ashore on a deserted island as the only survivors. Bradley has a busted leg; Linda has a newfound love of life, because as a wannabe Survivor contestant and all-round survival nerd, she's finally in her natural habitat. Building shelter, finding food, looking a whole lot healthier - she takes it all in her stride. Bradley's desire to keep on treating her as an underling? Not so much.

One of the many pleasures of this highly entertaining film is that both leads have a little more going on than you might expect. Linda is the heroine but like all oppressed nerds, she can take things a little too far; Bradley is a jerk, but he's not entirely stupid and it's possible he might learn the error of his ways. There's enough (unstated) chemistry between the pair to suggest another avenue down which things could go; both actors go all out whether they're lording it over the other or trying to make a human connection.

Director Sam Raimi (working from a script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift) is up to his old tricks (who else would throw a completely random rotting corpse into a jump scare?) and he cranks up the energy here to create a story that never feels like it's just two people hanging around on a beach. Mostly because there's also a crumbling path running along a cliff. Oh, and some poison berry bushes. And what's that noise coming from the forest?

But this is mostly a battle of wills between two mismatched characters who really shouldn't let their guard down around each other. It's never really a fair fight, but you don't get to the top of the corporate ladder without learning some tricks - unless you're a nepo baby who inherited your position, then you're pretty much screwed.

- Anthony Morris 

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

What life is left in the zombie genre? 28 Years Later had a few harrowing scenes involving those infected by the Rage virus, then left that behind for a thoughtful look at loss on both the personal and social level. The Bone Temple takes it a step further, suggesting that the only thing left of interest with the franchise's not-quite-dead is the humanity they may retain. Don't worry, brains do get eaten; it's just presented as something the zombies should grow out of.

When we last saw pre-teen lead Spike (Alfie Williams) he was being grabbed by a crazed gang of deadly Jimmy Saville fans. Now he's presented with a choice: if he wants in, first he has to take an existing member out. Overseen by the big boss Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell) - his name is not the only misremembering of the past the gang will commit - Spike does end up becoming the latest Jimmy, though he's not all that happy about it.

The gang is your typical bunch of post-apocalypse psychos, roaming the countryside preying on the more civilised, reminding us that the instant society collapses the only possible way to survive is to become a murderous killer taking what you want and relishing in sadism and torture. Only it turns out there's slightly more to them than that.

Sir Lord Jimmy is clearly a nutter, but he's also a Satanist, and his brutal belief system springs (somewhat logically) from the assumption that the carnage unleashed on Great Britain by the virus was the Devil claiming his territory. Acting in the usual way we expect apocalypse survivors to go about is here shown to be a ridiculous and deluded overreaction to events; despite what endless seasons of The Walking Dead tried to teach us, treating everyone you meet as your enemy is to see the world upside down.

Over in the other main plot, Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) keeps getting visited by the local infected Alpha - who he dubs Sampson (Chi Lewis-Parry) - because he's become hooked on the sedatives Kelson blow-darts him with to keep him from attacking. A strange friendship gradually develops, as the morphine mellows Sampson out and Kelson starts to wonder if other drugs could suppress other effects of the virus. In between getting high with his new stoner buddy, of course.

The two plotlines eventually converge, though not in a way that you'd easily predict. These colliding worlds result in what is quite possibly the scene of the year, in which Kelson (for reasons), puts on an insane one-man show set to Iron Maiden's 'Number of the Beast' that is stunning to watch whether you're a near-feral teen who's never heard recorded music before or just someone watching it take place on the screen.

That scene alone is worth the price of admission; the rest of the film is a surprisingly low-key and thoughtful take on being caring in the face of destruction (plus some people are skinned alive). Director Nia DaCosta (working from a script by Alex Garland) keeps the visuals slightly more straightforward than Danny Boyle did with 28 Years Later; if it never consistently hits that film's manic highs, solid storytelling is nothing to complain about.

It's message is slightly blunter too, but as the middle film in a planned trilogy it needs to lay things out. The monsters here are those who see other people as nothing but prey; the infected don't have much choice in the matter, whereas choosing to be a monster turns out to be a pretty good way to be devoured by monsters in turn.

Also Sampson eventually puts on pants, which turns out to be an essential part of his character development. Guess civilisation does have its downsides.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Hamnet

How hard is it to tell a sad story about a young couple whose child just died? What about if it's also the origin story behind one of the most acclaimed English-language plays of all time? And it features two of the finest actors of their generation, especially when it comes to conveying inner pain and turmoil? If that sounds like a lot to take in, don't worry; director Chloe Zhao (Nomadland, The Eternals) will hold your hand every step of the way.

Agnes (Jesse Buckley) is something of an outcast in her rural Medieval community. Rumours suggest she's a witch; spending her spare time in the local woods with a hawk doesn't do much to dispel them. A Tutor (Paul Mescal) finds himself drawn to her. They share a kiss in a barn, and we all know what that means.

His family (mostly notably his abusive father) aren't keen on the marriage. Her brother, who is responsible for her by law, is also dubious but trusts her judgment. Despite their love, the Tutor's writing doesn't go well, and he decamps for London while she remains behind. She has twins; one is stillborn, but revives. Things go well for a time, then don't.

It's a 500 year spoiler to reveal that young son Hamnet dies; these scenes of disease and death are the high point of the film, largely because they involve things that are actually happening in front of us. When the Tutor goes back to London to work - because by now his family are living in the biggest house in town, Will got to pay the bills - Agnes is increasingly unhappy that he doesn't seem to share her grief. 

Then word reaches her that his latest play is not a comedy as she'd thought, but a tragedy titled Hamlet. Keen to correct her husband's spelling, she heads to London, where numerous falsehoods are dispelled.

One of the big advantages Hamnet has, and it takes full advantage of it, is that while most of its audience will have a rough idea of what Hamlet is about, it's not a Shakespeare play that's all that easy to see. There hasn't been a mainstream film version in decades (unlike, say, Macbeth), nor is there an obvious classic version that's readily available (Romeo & Juliet).

So when this posits that the play ends on a moment of mass emotional catharsis that's basically a group hug... well, it is an early performance, maybe Shakespeare changed a few things later on. And while the ending of Hamnet gets a lot of mileage from the play - so much so that it's reasonable to assume some of the clumsier moments beforehand are there just so the ending will seem all the more impressive - in the context of the film all Shakespeare's prose really means is "sometimes people grieve in different ways".

There are moments, mostly early on, where Hamnet gives its characters room to breathe and its story a chance to suggest more than the obvious. Buckley and Mescal are extremely good at their jobs, which here increasingly involves remaining plausible while undergoing extremes of emotion, and Buckley is fearless -though occasionally we're reminded that fear isn't always a bad thing. If this was merely the story of a young couple struggling through loss, there'd be plenty here to recommend.

Taking a classic and then revealing the "real story" of its origin can be thoughtful and entertaining, though most attempts usually settle for obvious and pandering. The drive is always to explain away rather than go deeper; it's not enough to enjoy The Lord of the Rings, we have to be told that JRR Tolkien fought in WWI... in holes... against sinister forces in black... you get the idea.

Hamnet is the kind of film that never refers to Mescal's tutor as Shakespeare, so for much of the run time maybe this is just the story of some other Middle Ages playwright - it's not like England had a shortage of them - but opens with some text pointing out that at the time the names Hamnet and Hamlet were functionally the same. It flatters the audience's intelligence, but makes sure nothing goes over their head.

To its credit, Hamnet doesn't pretend that Hamlet can be boiled down to a play about a dead child written by a grieving father. Here, Shakespeare has turned his loss into one aspect of his multifaceted art; Anges, on the other hand, turns her loss into an unforgettable tortured freak-out while seeing a performance of that art. 

It's either a powerful statement on the depths of grief, or something that suggests she has never seen a play before and has no idea how they work. Which seems unlikely because her husband is William Shakespeare so let's go with the first one.

This is a film that gradually locks everything down, leaving nothing to chance or interpretation. Some subjects require this level of hand-holding: something as universal as grief, not so much. It ends up feeling both obvious and oppressive, peeking through a window at people pulled to and fro like puppets. All the world's a stage, as someone once said.

- Anthony Morris 

 

 

Review: Christy

One of the questions that doesn't get asked often enough about movies is: who is this for? While it's often obvious that the path to success lies in having a rock solid answer - the Avatar movies might not be for you, but they're obviously for someone - it's surprising how much time and money and effort gets spent on films where you leave the cinema wondering why the film makers bothered.

Christy is a based-on-actual-events movie about Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney), the woman who single-handedly (in this telling at least) turned female boxing into a profitable sport in America in the 90s. She was also a closeted lesbian for much of that period, married to her trainer James (Ben Foster) in a relationship that became increasingly exploitative. So there's a lot going on, and it's not hard to imagine a version of this story that hits hard for one audience or another.

What we get here though, is a bit of a mess. If you are a fan of boxing, the fights here are nothing to write home about. If you're looking for a story where a woman fights against numerous personal obstacles to become her true self, there's about ten minutes of that right at the very end of the film - and it requires you to spend a very long time with a number of increasingly loathsome characters, all of whom receive next to no on-camera punishment despite deeply deserving it.

Sweeney clearly took on the role hoping to establish herself as a serious actor, which means she spends large chunks of the film looking unglamorous. Her performance is pretty much all that holds this together, though it's uneven at times; Sweeney is at her best playing characters with agency, while much of Christy's story - in this film at least - is about how those around her deny her that.

Not to mention she's playing a character who must have been pretty abrasive in real life for much of her career because even the watered down version is pretty harsh at times. Fortunately her husband is even worse, played by Foster largely as a blank-faced robot just waiting for someone to flip his switch to kill mode. Are these enjoyable people to spend time with? No. Fortunately the fighting scenes are thrilling enough to oh wait no they're not.

Instead of steering into literally any aspect of this story that might have made it entertaining, this comes across as a project handed to people who assumed somebody else was providing the element that would make this take off. Individually the elements are well-crafted - director David Michod knows his stuff - but none of those elements steps forward to become the reason to watch this film.

There are fights but they're not great, her career here skips over the comeback that anywhere else would be the whole point, she's gay but the film almost entirely focuses on people being shitty to her and is more interested in her (male) gym team accepting her than her finding love; the end crawl is basically "you remember that minor character she had one conversation with? That's her wife!". 

As a sports biopic it's rote, yet the elements that would make it stand out are largely downplayed. Christy starts out flat on the canvas and never gets up.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Best and Worst Films of 2025

What a year in movies! Is the kind of thing I would say if it had been a good year in movies. Not that it was an especially bad year unless you paid money to see Bride Hard, which starred Rebel Wilson so you only have yourself to blame there.

It's not exactly new news to point out that all taste is subjective, and it only takes a handful of films you really connect with to turn an average year in movies into a great one. Would I have been hailing 2025 as a triumphant return to form on the silver screen if I'd enjoyed The Order, a film seemingly tailor-made for my tastes but which I found generic and uninspired? I'm going to go with "perhaps". 

(to be fair, Sovereign covered much of the same ground in a more thoughtful fashion, so it wasn't exactly a bad year for fans of US rural nutcases coming up with wackjob beliefs to justify messing around with lethal weapons. Which also kind of describes Wicked: For Good if you think about it)

Then again, what do I know? Four of my best films of the year were sequels or installments in a series, which isn't usually seen as a sign of quality. And a few of the best were more like "best of" in various categories; I saw a lot of dirtbag noir out of the US, often with female leads, and Night Always Comes was easily the best of a relatively bad bunch; at least Scott Adkins' Diablo was a return to arse-kicking form.

One way in which 2025 was undeniably sub-par was in the world of criticism, as once again the already tiny number of paid outlets for Australian reviews and film writing shrank. RIP the review pages in The Big Issue, though as they refused to put any reviews online they kind of cut their own throat there.

The result of all these cutbacks is that if you want any kind of status (let alone money) as a reviewer these days then you basically have to write as much as possible for as many outlets as possible. It's a requirement that doesn't automatically lend itself to sharp insight and thoughtful discussion.

The dwindling market for local film coverage, combined with increasingly patchy distribution for anything that's not a mainstream blockbuster - let's not even get started on Netflix putting a random few of their films in cinemas for a few weeks - made it difficult to even know when a lot of decent films became available to watch out here. Some of the best films I saw this year I stumbled across by accident; some of the worst ones were heavily promoted (and sometimes heavily praised).

There's also a number of supposedly decent films coming up that I haven't yet seen, whether through laziness or lack of opportunity. Am I ready for Marty Supreme? Are any of us? All I can say was that I was not ready for Hamnet, and not in a good way.

 

In no particular order, here's twenty films from 2025 I liked:

*Conclave

*The Brutalist

*Companion

*Sinners

*Dangerous Animals

*Ballerina: From the World of John Wick

*28 Years Later

*One Battle After Another

*Sisu 2

*Happyend

*Lurker

*The Lost Bus

*Night Always Comes

*Sovereign

*K-Pop Demon Hunters

*Friendship

*Julie Keeps Quiet

*Last Bullet 3 (it’s titled Last Bullet 3!)

*Tornado

*Diablo

And here's ten films I did not:

*Mickey 17

*Snow White

*Bride Hard

*Ella McCay

*Ice Road: Vengeance

*A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

*Spinal Tap 2

*The Electric State

*The Gorge

*Play Dirty

 

 

Review: The Housemaid

Making quality trash requires commitment. If you don't hold your nerve, you'll either slide into overt parody, or start thinking your audience wants you to get serious - both of which are usually fatal. Keep the story moving, play it straight, don't worry about any of it making sense, and you'll have a decent chance of coming up with a winner.

If would-be housemaid Millie (Sydney Sweeney) seems too good to be true, that's because she is. Her application for a job as a live-in servant is a work of fiction, leaving out such vital details as "currently lives in car" and "is on parole for murder". At least she got $20 travel money for turning up for the interview... oh, and then she gets a call: she's got the job.

As bosses go, Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) seems pretty much perfect too. She's charming and approachable, the house is massive and spotless, and while her daughter isn't exactly a bundle of joy, who cares when you can use the massive TV room any time you like? Millie has finally landed on her feet, roll credits, well done everyone.

Then Nina turns out to be a complete psycho, with moods that come and go on a whim, demands that are way over the top, and orders she later pretends she never gave, seemingly just to make Millie look bad. Millie can't afford to lose this job, but the conditions are pushing her out the door - only Nina's husband, the hunky and cashed up Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) provides any relief from the abuse.

Meanwhile, there's a brooding gardener (Michele Morrone) who seems to know more than he's letting on, Nina's "friends" are all backstabbing bitches badmouthing her the second she's out of the room - supposedly she's got a history of mental illness and Andrew's a living saint for not kicking her broke ass to the curb - and Andrew's interest in Millie seems to be moving beyond the professional. And what's the deal with the tiny soundproof upstairs bedroom Millie sleeps in that only locks from the outside?

It's no spoiler to reveal that things are Not What They Seem, though this does do a decent job of scattering red herrings around so it's never all that clear what twist is coming next. And the big twist is a little wobbly; while clearing one character of bitchiness in one direction, they turn out to still be pretty nasty in another way, though eventually they get around to righting that wrong as well.

Sweeney is fine, though she struggles a little with a character who's required to be fairly passive for long stretches early on - the less she's doing, the less interesting she is. Seyfried does a lot of the work here, chewing the scenery hard early on before having to dial it down a bit later on to give a slightly more subtle but still interesting performance. Basically, there's always someone worth watching here, with Sklenar doing a good job as the fantasy stud who turns out to have a little more going on than it first seems.

Director Paul Feig (A Simple Plan) plays this adaptation of Freida McFadden's novel pretty much note-perfect, slowly ramping up the campy thrills and taking this from a relatively straight thriller - aided by Seyfried's at times unhinged performance - to something a lot wilder and smarter. There's even some legit sexiness mixed in as well, which is not something you expect to see in a mainstream US film in 2025.

Special shout-out to Elizabeth Perkins, in the small but pivotal role of Biggest Bitch Alive, aka Andrew's mother. This kind of story doesn't have to have an awful mother who's horrible for no reason lurking around somewhere, but it's always a sign of quality when they do. Generational trauma can be murder - but then again, so can pretty much everything else.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Avatar: Fire and Ash

The third of James Cameron's Avatar movies is pretty much the story of Spider (Jack Champion), the sole human member of the Sully family currently on the run on the planet of Pandora. Other characters are often in the spotlight: some, like Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Nash), reincarnated in a Pandorian body but still firmly committed to the human military and his need for revenge against Jake (Sam Worthington), even get some character development. 

But it's Spider who's story is being told here. Which is a problem, because who really cares about Spider?

After their big victory at the end of the last movie, the Sully family is still grieving the loss of eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters). Neytiri (Zoe Salanda) follows the old rituals; Jake is more of a "stoic silence" guy. Both agree that now Quaritch knows that Spider is his son he'll be back, and they decide to send Spider back to the rebel human base in high country (a floating rock) for his safety. 

Spider, sensing this is more about them wanting to ditch an unwanted "pink skin" human, protests, and his adopted siblings - brother Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), younger sister Tuktirey (Trinity Bliss), and clone of Sigourney Weaver's character from the first film played by Sigourney Weaver Kiri - demand the family stick together. Okay then, they'll all go.

Their trip back on a living blimp boat is quickly cut short when they're attacked by Mangkwan raiders. The blimp is shot down, Neytiri is wounded, the family is scattered, and Spider - who's been slack about making sure he's got a spare mask with him, which is important because humans can't breathe Pandorian air - soon finds himself gasping for air with no supplies at hand. Kiri calls on the planet's spirit Eywa for help, then sorts it out herself with a kind of symbiotic growth that fills his lungs.

One problem solved, but now there's a bigger one. If humans find a way to breathe the air, they'll see Pandora as more than just a source of the space whale juice that makes people immortal. Now Spider is the most valuable item on the planet, and his father - that'd be Quaritch - has just teamed up with the Mangkwan raiders and their witchy leader Varang (Oona Chaplin) to get him back.

They're the only new element here, and unlike previous depictions of Na'vi they've turned their back on Eywa thanks to a volcano trashing their homeland a generation ago. They're mostly just creepy and murderous rather than a new way of living, and there's a sense that Cameron - who previously seemed obsessed with every tiny aspect of life on his fantasy planet - just needed some new bad guys to spice things up.

(which they definitely do for Quaritch: his exploration of the possibilities of a closer bond with the dominating Varang, combined with what seems to be actual concern and admiration for his human son, rapidly makes him easily the most nuanced and interesting character in the film)

There's a lot more going on here, most notably Lo'ak and his mates swimming around with the space whales trying to help whale Payakan on his mission of vengeance against the humans (his culture is a pacifist one, so his kill-crazy rampage has him on the outs). Unfortunately, this stuff largely feels like a retread of the events of the previous film; where the first stood alone, and the second built on that with Cameron's underwater obsession, this mostly circles back to revisit old territory while the characters struggle to deal with what's already happened.

All the virtues of the previous Avatar films are still present, though the originally ground breaking CGI visuals are maybe a little more mainstream these days. Cameron is still strong when it comes to action; the story might hit many of the same beats but it still moves fast, and there's plenty of lingering around to take in the wonders of Pandora (though ironically, it's mostly when the action shifts to the human's industrial plant base that things pick up).

Focusing the story on a nothing character like Spider would be more of a weak point if not for the fact that strong compelling characters aren't really this franchise's strength. As someone situated between both worlds / sides (Jake picked his side a long time ago), Spider is both macguffin to be fought over and the big hope as far as bringing the two cultures together - only the humans are almost all bad (the scientists are largely sidelined this time around), so dumping them in the bin is the popular choice.

The only serious problem, which will probably seem like less of one in the future when audiences are watching these films back-to-back, is that for the first time an Avatar movie isn't a parade of new situations and wonders. It's the kind of story that escalates rather than innovates.

For once, Pandora doesn't seem like a place where there's something new around every corner. Even the most magical getaway eventually loses its luster.

- Anthony Morris