Returning to Pandora after just three years, James Cameron’s third entry into his one-of-a-kind franchise, Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025), is closely linked to its previous chapter, Avatar: Way of Water (2022), giving the film its first sense of stagnation. But that is not to say Fire and Ash is a regression. The film is overwhelming and unwieldy, and in a normal year would be the best in a lacklustre slate of Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking with its incomparable visual style and boundary-pushing ingenuity that still convinces global audiences to leave the house and wear 3D glasses. But with the releases of Sinners (2025)and One Battle After Another (2025), two of the year’s films, should audiences start asking more from the stories coming out of Pandora?
Taking place one year after Way of Water, the Sully family is still mourning the loss of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), all in different ways. As a Na’vi, most are still in a mourning period, especially Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who feels lost in her grief. Jake (Sam Worthington), however, introduces the human concept of never addressing your feelings and pushing through in the hope of progress to the community.
There is little time to settle back into Pandora before the action starts. Spurred by the adults’ desire to remove Spider (Jack Champion, their sort of adoptive son and only human protagonist left in the franchise) from their community, much to the rage of the rest of their young and growing family, the Sully clan are ambushed by the Mangkwan clan, or Ash people, are they are known. A brutal Na’vi group headed by Varang (Oona Chaplin), a war chief who leaps off the screen and gives this long film the jolt it needs to sustain itself, even if we are constantly let down by a lack of development.
Oona Chaplin as Varang in Avatar: Fire and Ash.
While Varang is a viscous and instantly captivating antagonist, entering the canon of Cameron villains, we are constantly seeking more depth behind the violence and destructive tendencies. What does it mean for a leader of a seemingly nomadic group of Na’vi styled like the Comanche to so easily join the colonising oppressive humans, and what does it mean that these questions are not explored? While appreciating that screenwriters Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver explore different sides of their Native American and colonist sci-fi allegory, the lack of depth or curiosity in its own writing falls flat, underwhelming what should be an explosive final act.
With a script and thematic conceptions decades out of date and technological cinema spectacle decades ahead of its competitors, James Cameron’s Avatar films live outside of time, allowing us extended peaks at this bizarre yet captivating place. What has allowed these films to thrive after all these years is their commitment to elemental storytelling, and not just in its commitment to adding elements like its naming brother, Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005) (definitely adding an earth tribe next). The family dynamics are overwhelmed with melodrama, deeply intertwining friend and foe with children and lost families, all with a growing connection to the land and its creatures, the more time they spend there, to a point where the climax of the film is weighted equally to the Na’vi as the Tulkan (whale creature added in the previous film) Payakan.
Cameron’s franchise expands in surprisingly organic ways, closer to a sweeping fantasy novel series than a film franchise spinning its wheels and playing the hits. Heroes and villains remain as the story is almost solely fascinated by their evolution as characters in a shifting world rather than having an expanding world smash up against rigid, established characters. As a double-edged sword, however, this does mean that at a runtime of 197 minutes we are focusing a lot of time and resources on the story of Spider, a mildly interesting but repetitive character, and his two fathers, Jake and Quarich (Stephan Lang).
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully in Avatar: Fire and Ash
While the script and characterisations continue to lack, we still marvel at the film’s visual palette and stunning sound design. With its use of high frame rates, something that takes time to settle into, water and elemental scenes really soar, while the textured sound design grounds the world in the familiar, a delicate balance that allows each scene to grip you even if the storytelling falls away. Unfortunately the score by Simon Franglen still remains uninspired in these films, with preplanned swells that stir less emotion than is required for a film of this scale and craft.
Where films like The Creator (2023) seem designed to offer its cinematic approach to CGI filmmaking to future films in the genre, Cameron’s Avatar films strives for the visual Pantheon to be worshipped not emulated. We marvel, moment to moment at scenes of lush forests and dense reef ecosystems, fully immersed in a world of human creation, even as we get swept up in an expansive story about our need to protect and connect with nature. Like going to the aquarium and spending all day in the VR room.
But at what stage does it feel greedy to ask for more from a franchise now 551 minutes into its on-screen runtime? As we round the corner to home plate and the James Cameron payoff machine starts working its gears, it’s hard not to be hit by a pang of sadness that this fascinating cultural item at the heart of a medium in a state of panic doesn’t strive for something more human or poetic. Audiences may never stop returning to Pandora once invited, but they may begin to ask for something under the surface to sustain them.
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants preview screening provided by Paramount Pictures
It’s hard to believe that The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (2025) is the fourth feature in the iconic Spongebob Squarepants franchise (not counting the two spinoffs), one that is showing no signs of slowing down or being outgrown by modern audiences as it continues to be Nickelodeon and Paramount’s hottest property. As a polished extension of the animated series, Search for Squarepants effortlessly translates to the big screen and revels in all of the shows silliness and giddy pinballing from moment to moment, without respite.
That’s to say that Derek Drymon’s film is as innocent as its titular character whose biggest dilemma in this advenutre is how to build up the nerve to ride a roller coaster now that he’s a ‘big guy’ who has grown over the required height requirements to ride said rollercoaster. Minimal stakes are the backbone of anything Spongebob related, and they lead him to the depths of the Underworld where he finds himself undertaking a series of challenges alongside the Flying Dutchman (Mark Hamill) to become a certified swashbuckler. Of course, the extent of the danger with which Spongebob finds himself in, escapes him, as the Dutchman has ulterior motives: find a pure, giddy soul to help break his curse and set him free.
This sees him, along with his starfish buddy Patrick, ride through beautiful, visually mossy looking Underworld that is filled with everything from ship knot monsters, googly eyed beasts and skeleton fish creatures. Drymon, who worked with the show’s late creator Stephen Hillenburg in the early days, doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel like he did in Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022) which fell flat on its face, but leans into the silliness of butt jokes and one liners that are a hoot for children and adults alike.
Squidward (Rodger Bumpass), Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) and Gary (Tom Kenny) in The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants from Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon.
Some fans of the show might be disappointed to know that show favourites Plankton and Sandy take a back seat this time around (perhaps owing to them getting their own spinoff movies in the last year), but Mr Krabs, Squidward and Gary the snail make up for that as they venture into the Underworld to try and rescue Spongebob. Their own little adventure navigating deadly sirens and a three headed seagull brings its own joys and comedic relief.
While the narrative feels a bit loose and wishy-washy, Drymon’s film sticks to the soul of the series and leaves you with the basic but hearty reminder to see the strengths in yourself and not compromise who you are to try and prove yourself to the world around you. Spongebob ends up a bigger guy than the big guy he thought he had already become and it’s all through seeing just how big he already was, and I think that’s as big a life lesson as you should really have from Bikini Bottom’s finest.
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants opens nationally from Boxing Day.
An anxious romance with a pair of actors in total lockstep with the filmmakers, the impressionistic Die My Love (2025) aims to rattle your cage, making you uneasy and unguarded to the emotionality of a world unable to contain the breadth of human emotion. Lynne Ramsay is a visual poet with a scorpion’s tail. A middle ground between the Terrences, Malick and Davies, that sees the world clearly but is in constant search of its beauty through its humanity. After bursting onto the scene with one of the best modern debuts in Ratcatcher (1999), Ramsay has struggled in an industry that seems incapable of turning her one-of-a-kind visual poeticism into a marketable arthouse name. With the star-driven Die My Love, the world might finally be ready to catch up to her greatness.
How does one begin to describe the indescribable with this film. In a sense, Die My Love is a character study and an exploration in doomed romance, through a dissolving inevitability that does not ache with the sadness of a love soon to be lost. At the heart of it all is Grace, a true lightning-in-a-bottle cinematic character, embodied by never-better Jennifer Lawrence. A bipolar, feverish writer with an animalistic charm moves out of New York to the Montana wilderness with her partner Jackson (a layered and defeated Robert Pattinson), and quickly gives birth, expanding her family and her responsibilities while dissociating herself from the world.
This film is many things, just don’t call it a movie solely about postpartum depression (although the best writing on the film will come from great female writers). Grace is a great many things, but to narrow her down to a collection of symptoms would be reductive to the potency of Ramsay’s storytelling and ability to craft complex characters across a large screen. Her balance of poetry and clarity allows familiar story beats of Grace’s post-pregnancy malaise and outbursts to overwhelm with a sharp and violent energy.
Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson in Die My Love (2025).
The film owes a great deal to John Cassavetes’ film A Woman Under the Influence (1974), particularly the relationship between the central pair as they attempt to coexist alongside mental illness while living in constant fear of saying its name. It stands wholly on its own, however, through Ramsay’s singular eye and perspective on people, which have been consistent throughout her work. She is a filmmaker who builds a narrative through a single earth-shattering moment that fundamentally changes the characters. While at first glance the inciting incident is Grace’s pregnancy and birth, the more ground-shifting moment is the passing of Jackson’s uncle and the couple’s acquisition of his house in the Montana woods, allowing him to ease into a domesticity through convenience he secretly craves, even as he (and the audience) are enthralled by Grace’s charm and energy.
Enough cannot be said for Lawrence’s performance here. Her rapturous, physical energy quickly becomes the film’s energy, establishing its roaming camera into something out of a nature documentary. It is a rare thing for a lead performance like this to not completely overwhelm and ultimately topple the film, but Lawrence and Ramsay are in sync with the narrative’s unique rhythm. In a film that focuses on isolation and boredom for a character incapable of becoming listless, Die My Love uses Lawrence’s charm and screen presence to drag us from one impulsive thought to another.
Pattinson’s hangdog expression is used effectively here as an inoculating agent against the charming roars of Lawrence’s primal energy. Even as he is introduced, seemingly moving out of the city to the countryside to write music, and Lawrence’s character to write, Ramsey’s camera feels flippant and uninspired by his artistic dreams. As we are locked onto this old, decaying house highlighted by a fallen light fixture in the centre of the room, we are quietly told how to view the pair’s doomed environment and artistic goals.
Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love.
What allows that rhythm to glide from scene to scene is the tremendous weight given to linear storytelling, while never losing its ethereal, dreamlike temperament. Some moments feel like dreamscapes or whiplash flashbacks, but with its continued linear narrative, we become rooted to Grace’s interiority in a radical way. This high-wire act is a rare feat that will frustrate some viewers, but will deeply reward those who stay on the path.
Alongside her tremendous use of camera and editing, Ramsay uses music like the tip of a knife, sometimes in sight, ratcheting tension with its mere presence, or as a shocking stab seemingly out of the smoke. While Die My Love is an intimate, mental health family drama, the rapturous music alone requires the film to be seen in a cinema. With familiar story beats executed through her unique perspective as a visual stylist, Ramsay has reemerged after 8 long years without a film with a clear-eyed and emotive exploration of mental illness, with a powerful performance from Lawrence. While not a traditional star vehicle for an awards push, Ramsay and Lawrence have come together to craft one of the year’s best character studies and artistic statements.
With a powerful battle sequence between brothers on the Predator home world of Yautja Prime, Predator Badlands (2025) starts with an operatic bang. The two brothers, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), and the older Kwei (Mike Homik), are training relentlessly. Dek, much smaller than the standard warriors we see in these films, is desperate to prove himself to the clan, and his brother is desperate to help him survive their ruthless culture. After a dramatic confrontation between the brothers and their father, Dek escapes with a quest to hunt the Kalisk, a rumoured unkillable monster on the unforgiving planet of Genna.
Like a live-action version of Scavengers Reign (one of the best shows of the decade), Badlands is all about the environment and the evolutionary marvel of a stranger crash landing on a new planet. With its unique plant and animal kinds that Dek must learn to understand to survive, director and now franchise steward Dan Trachtenberg has developed the first Predator film that actually puts the shoe on the other foot of the Yautja. What allows the film to thrive and stand alongside the John McTiernan original is its exploration of the dense planet of Genna, which brings the story’s intimacy into focus.
Quickly into Dek’s journey through Genna, he stumbles onto and is rescued by Thia, a severed Weyland-Yutani synth played by the effortlessly charming Elle Fanning. Through the overly chatty Thia and the attempting brooding of Dek, the familiar trappings of the mismatched adventure duo, laid on top of the familiar story of the runt of the litter in search of validation from the clan, ground the storytelling. This allows the simple charms and filmmaking craft to flourish inside a franchise that never settled on anything outside of its central figures’ iconic imagery.
Elle Fanning, surrounded by cute and fascinating creatures, has the charm and humour to sustain an entire film herself. A longtime actor who has recently become one of the most in-demand actors in the industry, Fanning pulls double shifts here as Thia and Tessa, two synths exploring the planet and also seeking the Kalisk. Her boundless energy, as Thia, is played in stark contrast to her “sister,” Tessa, a cold and driven synth that plays the role of a killing machine, typically reserved for the film’s resident predator.
Elle Fanning as Thia in Predator: Badlands.
But this is not just a Fanning showcase. For too long, the Predator franchise has fallen flat in its characterisation of its iconic hunter. Until Dek and Kwei, we had not had a real conversation between Yautja, an outrageous failure of a franchise that never seemed invested in the science fiction genre that has allowed the Alien franchise to expand and evolve. By opening up the role of the predator as Dek finds his place amongst an unfamiliar world, Badlands is allowed a freedom to morph and change at will. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi does not have much facial real estate to exude personality to an audience, but the deep focus on him allows his fear and uncertainty to ground his journey in a familiarity rarely seen in the franchise.
Never before has the cultural bloodsport that is the heart of the Predator franchise been more sharply critiqued and illuminated as it is here, becoming quickly apparent why Trachtenberg felt there was so much left to say to rapidly pen a trilogy of feature films. A species of hyper-intelligent, hyper-athletic and advanced warriors so uninspired by their own cultural wealth that only the pursuit of a galaxy-spanning hunt can give them purpose. With a simple turn to have a Predator film centre a familiar narrative of the runt of the litter goes out to prove themselves to the pack, we finally see ourselves in the eyes of these once mythical, feeling creatures.
What allows the film to thrive is its cinematic integrity, focusing on a Yautja as a protagonist, staring intently at its face and eyes. Through those eyes, Badlands probes deeper into the worlds and cultures so rarely seen in a franchise a mile long and an inch deep. For too long, filmmakers have focused on the Yautja as an invisible hunter stalking prey, never probing into their real thoughts or struggles, or even giving them a language to communicate.
By striving for incremental IP world-building and narrative exploration over cinematic iconography, Badlands, like Prey (2022) before it, has quiet goals that it easily achieves. With a fully game duo in Fanning and newcomer Schuster-Koloamatangi, Trachtenberg, in a suite of films, takes his place as steward of the once flailing franchise. That he has achieved this not through IP management or navel gazing but by finding a unique balance between narrative exploration and genre entertainment is no small feat, something that should make fans, young and old, stand up and applaud.
A dark comedy satire about modern conspiracies that devolves into chaos, Bugonia (2025) is a perfect follow-up for Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’ uneven but fascinating 2024 triptych Kinds of Kindness. Based on Jang Joon-hwan’s too-early-for-the-moment film Save the Green Planet (2003), Lanthimos works with The Menu (2022) screenwriter Will Tracy, tapping into the moment of conspiracy and class-based desperation as the wealth gap opens into a chasm that flits between glancingly poignant insights.
Set around the outskirts of Atlanta, cousins Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbris in his first screen role) are conspiracy-addled loners living in Teddy’s family home, preparing to kidnap a nearby pharmaceutical CEO they believe is an alien hellbent on destroying the planet. The CEO in question, Michelle Fuller, played by now-regular Lanthimos collaborator and producing partner Emma Stone, holds this shaky film and script together with a powerfully committed performance that would command greater Oscar buzz if the film weren’t so off-putting, likely dissuading voters from admiring her work.
In quiet and chaotic scenes alike, Stone plays the cousins and audiences constantly, as we search for any clue as to whether Teddy is right about any of his ravings. While the film fluctuates in tone, never settling on a worldview of humanity that usually allows Lanthimos’ films to shine through the affectation, Stone is perhaps Hollywood’s most dexterous performer of tonality, with an ever-increasing ability to comfort and challenge an audience at a moment’s notice.
Jesse Plemons as Teddy in Bugonia (2025).
When the film is thriving, it bounces between satirical black comedy moments from Teddy’s conspiratorial ravings about aliens causing all of his personal problems and Michelle’s faux empathic conversations with her employees. By so heavily linking Teddy’s personal traumas to his conspiracies as well as his solution of convincing the aliens to spare Earth, we are drawn deeper into the spiral of empathising with a violent protagonist while never wavering in our scepticism. Teddy’s seeming displeasure with other people also has the audience questioning why his end goal is to save humanity, when he only appears to like his family and the bees he cares for.
Plemons and Stone have become so locked into Lanthimos’ sets that they become true extensions of the filmmaker that are worth the price of admission. Robbie Ryan’s 35mm Vistavision camera focuses so intently on faces during key confrontation scenes that complicate and enrich every fraught interaction between the three characters, playing out like an absurdist tragedy of modern nihilism and the cost of humanity in simple close-up.
(From Left) Emma Stone, Aiden Delbis, and Jesse Plemons in Bugonia (2025).
Even with its often bracing moments and artistic flourishes that have won and lost the Greek filmmaker’s fans over the years, Bugonia will go down smoother than recent entries due to its deliberately modern setting. With a pair of iconic needle-drops in Chappel Roan’s Good Luck, Babe and Green Day’s Basketcase, Lanthimos’ film stretches out past his own artistic bubble, offering a hand to a contemporary audience needing to be invited into his world that is richly rewarding.
Teddy is a beekeeper and blames Michelle’s company for the death of the countless bees (bees feature as prominently here as in Jason Statham’s bizarre 2024 film The Beekeeper), as well as the death of his mother, clouding the audience’s perceptions of whether this kidnapping is mostly an act of personal vengeance. The title Bugonia comes from an ancient Mediterranean ritual based on the belief that bees are produced from a cow’s carcass. This spiritual concept of rebirth, blossoming from an integral part of the ecosystem through the death of another being, is woven throughout the film, most clearly in its final images. Unfortunately, the rest of the film’s zippy nihilism clouds these fleeting ideas, never reaching above a wry smirk or passing glance towards a future it believes in.
The Greek auteur’s work can too often feel disconnected from our world, much like his clear idol, Terry Gillem, striving for the work to be seen and appreciated outside time rather than exist alongside it. In Bugonia,however, we live in an achingly dissolving world of Teddy’s conspiracies and Michelle’s jarring CEO ruthlessness, echoing much of the world in our mid-2020s in a similar vein to Ari Aster’s divisive Eddington (2025).
But in a current climate of political violence and peak conspiratorial thinking in positions of power, what does it mean to centre a violent conspiracy theorist in a contemporary movie? Kudos to Tracy and Lanthimos for adapting Jang Joon-hwan’s 22-year-old film into this fraught moment, but do they truly reckon with that decision? A film that plays with your ideas of truth and fiction, Bugonia lands in a certain vein of deterministic nihilism that questions why bother asking the question in the first place, leaving us with a satisfying movie but a bizarre aftertaste. Turning to conspiracy as a direct result of tragedy is an evocative core at the heart of a contemporary story, but are you willing to turn inwards and face that ugly humanness that is uncovered?
One Battle After Another preview screening provided by Universal Pictures
Even as I found myself slouched into the cinema seat, still having not adjusted to the timezone after a recent overseas vacation, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) woke me up, slapped me around and reminded me why I spent a year researching his work. There are few working directors who have stayed as true to form as PTA has, and even fewer who have dared to push quirky, unpredictable narratives and irreverent characters at such a scale out to audiences; One Battle After Another might just be the quirkiest, most unpredictable film he’s ever made, and easily one of the rare few that a studio has decided to back, with such a big budget.
While One Battle After Another, at least on paper, has all of the elements of a PTA film —themes of surrogacy, a focus on damaged male characters and dialogue that has you think twice and then twice more— it also feels like his most relevant film to date and not because of smart phones or modern mustangs, but because it isn’t a period piece, it isn’t looking back in ways that There Will be Blood (2007) or Inherent Vice (2014) were. This film plays like it’s very much a forward-looking, foreshadowing of what’s to come if we let forces greater than us hunt us down in the little spaces we’ve carved out for ourselves in a world that feels like it’s already getting smaller around us.
And it’s immediately apparent from the opening sequence that this isn’t going to be your stock standard PTA flick, with a harsher, almost street-like quality to the cinematography. We open with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), a revolutionary who is scouting an immigration camp before we’re introduced to Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), and other grungy looking revolutionaries who are looking to cause calculated havoc in similar encampments and eventually, across banks and other establishments as well. The political undertones of the film are clear, but the whirlwind that’s to follow is unimaginable.
It doesn’t take long for things to shift to fifth gear as narcissistic leader of said camp/s, Steven J. Lockjaw (a career best Sean Penn and shoo-in for supporting actor), someone who detests African Americans but in being humiliated by Perfidia, falls head over heels for her (hey, everyone’s got a kink), is on a mission to hunt down every revolutionary involved in these acts of defiance. While he does hunt/kill most of them, Bob and his daughter Willa (played in youth age later by Chase Infiniti) are extracted to a safe haven while Perfidia, finding herself in witness protection, escapes to Mexico.
LEONARDO DI CAPRIO as Bob Ferguson in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release.
A time jump to 16 years later caps off a first act that is as balls-to-the-wall as any PTA has attempted (with 1997’s Boogie Nights coming in at a distant second). It’s telling that like Bob, who goes into hiding with his daughter while others hunt him down in this almost cat and mouse plot at the centre of this film, PTA has (in a way) almost been doing the same, or at the very least, trying to find a version of himself who’d warm up to the idea of being more in touch with the immediate world as it unfolds. While PTA can never be accused of playing things safe —in fact, his framing of thematic interests has only shifted as he’s aged and as he’s had his own children— he’s at his most abrasive, rampant self here.
For starters, PTA doesn’t attempt to play to the good vs evil, right vs wrong binary tendencies that so many weaker political thrillers tend to. Instead, he uses this strange love triangle (if it can be called that), between Bobb, Lockjaw and Perfidia, and a focus on character, to let any surrounding commentary seep in from. Ultimately this is a film about a father/daughter dynamic that’s complicated by an equally complicated lunatic whose motive (without spoiling) in hunting them is far more nuanced than simply getting rid of them.
What ensues is an electrifying, chaotically focused, yet hearty film that never slows down but keeps you on your toes until its classic finale that’s already entered legendary status. To get to that point, Johnny Greenwood’s edgy, almost chimey score keeps the tension flowing and builds on the unnerving aura of not knowing what’s around the corner. This is coupled with the equally unnerving performances of Penn, DiCaprio and Infiniti, with the former having a duality and complex that feels insane to have been pulled off, while Leo has a hipster edginess that’s underpinned by a desire to be didactic yet his paranoia is leaving him out of sorts (this pairing between PTA and Leo is a match made in heaven).
Like the characters in this film, PTA is a revolutionary but of a different cause: the preservation of cinema. In shooting One Battle After Another, he decided to bring back VistaVision (a dying breed of film format). It speaks to his desire to find meaning and breathe life into things often deemed unworthy or better left to fade with time, and this desire is almost felt on the screen with a character like Bob who’s brought back from the brink, from a place where he’s almost lost sight of himself and who he was, and risks fading away into someone that once meant something to so many people but doesn’t anymore. In this way, One Battle After Another inextricably ties PTA so closely to its characters and their plights (both of which always take precedence in his films ahead of commentary) which makes its daring finale and all that Bob finds he really stands for and that his daughter hopes to stand for in her own place in the world, feel so deeply personal.
One Battle After Another opens nationally from September 25
“Life could be pretty boring if we didn’t make it funnier.”
Eight years have passed since Australia, and the world lost legendary satirist John Clarke, a New Zealander whose comedic alter-ego made him a national celebrity, before he made the trip across the Tasman, called Melbourne home and delighted another whole country with his distinct brand of humour. His death in 2017 was met with the kind of despair our brethren generally reserve for athletes, movie stars or royalty; praise came forth from all quarters – journalists, thespians, second-rate critics and the very individuals he so often lampooned, politicians, all effusively praising his wit and drawing attention to his huge body of work in written, aural and visual formats.
No figure is better placed to tell the story of this Kiwi multihyphenate than his eldest daughter Lorin, who emulates his diverse artistic talents by performing the manifold roles of director, producer, writer, interviewer and narrator of the very documentary that bares his name: But Also John Clarke (2025). Through monologues, conversations, anecdotes and a treasure-trove of archival footage – including home-videos, and Lorin’s own conversations with her father before his untimely death – viewers are presented with a captivating and amusing portrait that cordially pays homage to its eponymous focal point.
Much of the narrative’s first half is spent (as is often the case with stories of a biographical nature) exploring Clarke’s younger days in his mother-country, detailing a tumultuous upbringing that saw his creative spirit very nearly stymied by an oppressive boarding school, and a court blame him for the failed marriage of his parents rather than the more logical explanations of “irreconcilable differences” or “emotional trauma stemming from the horrors experienced in the Second World War”. Such torment would have broken an ordinary man, but not John Clarke, who overcame this animosity by way of several failed university courses, a brief sojourn to Europe and applying himself to the scene of theatre. This, of course, begat the persona we know as Fred Dagg.
Our attention is soon diverted to happenings in Australia, where John raised his family, refined his craft and began making allegorical waves via supporting roles on ABC Radio’s Science Show – despite having virtually no knowledge of any scientific pursuits – and ABC TV’s The Gillies Report, on the latter programme earning recognition as the globe’s foremost authority on farnarkeling. Then came sketches with Bryan Dawe on A Current Affair, in which Clarke masterfully impersonated political dignitaries and those of a comparable persuasion through the simple act of bearing their name and emulating their mannerisms, followed by the equally-innovative mockumentary series The Games.
Shaun Micallef (left) is one of several talking-heads acquiesced for But Also John Clarke
Parties from Clarke’s homeland and adopted nation lend their voices to the film on a pro rata basis, ranging from his theatrical contemporaries to the funnymen he himself would go on to inspire, and some fellow NZ expatriate by the name of Sam Neill (we’re told he’s quite famous). As director, editor et al, Lorin utilises their insights to craft a story warm and moving without succumbing to the egregious crime of saccharinity that all too often befalls personality-driven documentaries. More impressive still is her compelling argument put forward that Fred Dagg, and by extension John not only gave birth to New Zealand’s comedy scene, but also helped to foster an irreverent, self-deprecating sense of national pride.
Faults in the picture are few and far between, especially when viewed on a cinema screen via digital projection. A more discerning eye may be saddened by the lack of consideration given to Clarke’s international standing, with an opening remark from Britain’s Stephen Fry being the only moment to suggest he had any influence outside of the Antipodes; others will be left to ponder why nothing is said of him providing his vocal talents to Wal in the Footrot Flats movie, The Dog’s Tail Tale (1986).
One element certainly not lacking is a steady provision of humorous clips from John’s frequent and plentiful appearances on the stage and screen during his lifetime. Some of these extracts are four or even five decades in age, yet timeless in terms of their amusement value – at the Melbourne International Film Festival screening this reviewer attended, hearty laughs were often elicited from audience members young and old. Most hilarious of all proved to be a very early sketch involving a Fred Dagg precursor named Farmer Brown, the punchline of which had yours truly succumbing to fits of tittering long after the credits had rolled.
Countless luminaries have dreamed of being the subject of a critically-acclaimed documentary that bears their name in years gone by; now, they’ll be hoping such a production is as earnest, mirthful and brilliantly told as what Lorin Clarke has put together in honour of her forebear. But Also John Clarke is a more-than-fitting tribute to a man of infinite jest who meant so much to so many people, not least his ever-talented daughter.
But Also John Clarke is screening in limited release now.
Another year, another chaotic year of MIFF. With some dizzying heights and impressive debuts, cinema feels in good hands as we march headfirst into the tail end of the 2020s (a wild thought). The festival is the highlight of the cinematic calendar for the city, defining the landscape as it shifts towards awards season, with a tremendous work of curation and bold decisions as addressed below that make August the best month of the year.
Twinless (2025) – James Sweeney
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A proper dramedy with a complicated but compelling pair at its core, Twinless is a charming and confident debut not weighed down by its writer, director James Sweeney’s decision to also star in the film. Following a pair of twins who have recently lost their other half and meet at a support group, Dylan O’Brien’s Roman (and Rocky) and Sweeney’s Dennis fall into a quick friendship as they look to fill the void.
Would make an interesting double feature with Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship (2024) as a perceptive and darkly funny look at the pursuit of modern male friendship, with many screwball moments in Sweeney’s film feeling like I Think You Should Leave (2019) pitches. Sweeney excels in wrongfooting the audience into a charming dramedy that gives space to both sides of the genre mash.
The Mastermind (2025) – Kelly Reichardt
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
No one is operating on Kelly Reichardt’s small but vital level. With an autumnal romp that makes way for a surprisingly poignant introspection into one’s relationship to political change, Reichardt’s period heist mood piece captures you in a breathing world, and will linger on you long after you leave like the smell of last night’s smoke break.
Josh O’Connor’s niche as a dirtbag charmer continues with his best Elliot Gould here (absolute cinematic catnip for me) as an art school washout living in suburbia with a wife (an underused Alana Haim) and two kids who have a side hustle-slash-obsession with art heists. While not on the level of O’Connor’s recent classic La Chimera (2023), this cool, warm-hued hangout film will only expand as the months go on, where I would not be surprised if it lands on end-of-year lists and amongst Reichardt’s most beloved films.
Blue Moon (2025) – Richard Linklater
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A frenetic script by novelist Robert Kaplow and a high-level performance from Ethan Hawke allow Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon to shine through its humble boundaries as a film that should’ve been a play. Set against the background of the opening night of Oklahoma! On Broadway in 1943, Hawke plays the famed but troubled songwriter Lorenz Hart, who is stewing at Sardi’s, the bar soon to be the venue for the show’s party.
Hawke is flanked by a terrific cast who bounce off and counter his manic energy wonderfully, including Bobby Cannavale, Margaret Qualley, Andrew Scott, and Patrick Kennedy as an array of famous names the film nods to. Thankfully, Linklater’s love and curiosity for these artists and individuals dance energetically around the screen, allowing even those with no Broadway knowledge to understand and appreciate the film.
Sirât (2025) – Oliver Laxe
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
In a year of great horror and thrillers, there is no more visceral or dire theatre going experience than Óliver Laxe’s Cannes Jury Prize winning film Sirāt. Aided by the festival’s bold decision to screen this anxiety ridden, grim family nightmare at IMAX. We follow father and son Luis (Sergi López) and Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) into the Moroccan desert in search of their daughter and sister Mar, leading them into an EDM festival where they are briefly liberated from the bounds of society. With its pounding techno score and 16mm film stock, Sirāt is a sensory marvel that pulls you into its world and commands you to walk desperately into the desert and into the unknown.
With a political undercurrent and bare-boned family drama, Sirāt uses the visual language of the immortal William Friedkin fever dream Sorcerer (1977) to illustrate an Odyssey-like adventure in a world quickly becoming unrecognisable. This is a film that will take days to process, asking unique questions of yourself and to what extent you’ll chase exhilaration in your own life and in an experience on screen.
Exit 8 (2025) – Genki Kawamura
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
No experience illustrates the power the festival has over the city than the sold-out IMAX screening of Genki Kawamura’s Exit 8, a chaotic and mesmerising Escher painting of a horror film about being trapped in a loop in Shinjuku station. With a dozen references to The Shining (1980), Kawamura focuses on mood and engagement with a game audience to draw us along its short and concise runtime. We are given just enough narrative to fill a feature, trapped in a propulsive active viewing experience, a wonderful feeling in a sold-out crowd. In a great year for horror, this is not one to miss when it enters theatres.
Resurrection (2025) – Bi Gan
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
What to say about the film that has everything. Bursting at the seams with plots in miniature and arthouse bravura, Bi Gan’s follow-up to the extraordinary Long Days Journey into Night (2018) is the cinematic odyssey Resurrection. An undefinable tapestry that wears many genre hats as a sci monster powered like a projected as the line dreamer in a world that has learnt the secret to eternal life, so long as they don’t dream. Or something like that. While Gan’s previous film is expansive but intimate in its storytelling scope, Resurrection operates as basically six short genre pieces that have the density and plot to inhabit for its entire 160-minute run-time. That is a testament to Gan’s visual style and conceptual scope, even if he can get caught up in its own luxuriating to succeed as a narrative.
An interesting film to compare this expansive odyssey with is Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (2023). Both grand-scale odysseys following a pair of characters that can’t help but pursue one another, across time or across cinematic dreams. The key distinction is that Resurrection is a work of sentiment told across cinematic history, akin to Babylon (2022), whereas Bonello’s film operates as an incisive look at relationships through the lens of their pair.
With wonderful performances by Jackson Yee and Shu Qi, played across many genres including silent film, noir, and a gangster vampire romance shot as a 30 minute oner on New Years’ Eve 1999, Resurrection can and will show you its whole heart if you’ll let it, overwhelming you with ideas and concepts rooted in the undeniable truth that the cinematic dream is irreplaceable.
Dreams (Sex Love) (2025) – Dag Johan Haugerud
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
A delicate exploration of teenage love and obsession that treats it with sensuality and respect, while allowing space for realism and reflection. The third part of Norwegian Dag Johan Haugerud’s collection of films on love and desire made in quick succession, Dreams (Sex Love) centres on a teenage art student Johanne (Ella Øverbye) who pines for her new teacher Johanna (Selome Emnetu), eventually pouring her feelings and desires into a book she gives to her poet grandmother.
The film shifts in unexpected ways while still following Johanne’s emotional journey that resonates with the fresh wisdom of a good teen romance novel. The prolific nature of Haugerud’s work does not diminish the literary quality of his films, which leave room for many poignant interpersonal conversations that span generations. I was only able to catch this single entry in the collection, but I will endeavour to complete the trilogy by year’s end.
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions (2024) – Kahlil Joseph
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Kahlil Joseph did not set out to make a documentary. Expanding on his two screen art installations of the same name, Joseph explodes his vision of an intertwining Black past and future through an extravagant reimagining of history and form with a frenetic energy that bounces from lush Afrofuturist narratives with some of the best production design of the year to reaction memes.
With cinematography from the great Bradford Young and a pulsating score by experimental artist Klein, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions sees beauty in the interplay between sweeping science fiction storytelling with dense, academic dialogue and modern internet culture, something rarely seen projected on a large screen. While not an easy film to grasp or comprehend in real-time, Joseph and his writing collective have crafted a dizzying piece of art that will hopefully inspire new nonfiction visual artists to explore their craft in inventive and genre-breaking ways. The film of the festival for me.
Cloud (2024) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A cynical master storyteller returning to the twisty world of revenge cinema through the lens of a modern huckster dirtbag trying to turn a quick buck as an online reseller, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud forces us to confront our relationship to ground-level late-stage capitalism in unexpected and darkly comedic ways. Unaware of the mild carnage he leaves behind him as he attempts to secure a comfortable life on his own terms, Masaki Soda’s Ryôsuke Yoshii is just smart enough to spot an opportunity to coldly swindle desperate people out of their undervalued goods, but not smart enough to avoid danger and risk.
There’s no greater feeling in the theatre than when Kurosawa is moving through his spider web plots with the tension of a vintage paranoia thriller. When a true master of form and craft is still interested in the modern world and can critique and perceive it in compelling ways, we can’t afford to ignore it. Especially when they’re this enjoyable in a crowd.
Brand New Landscape (2025) – Yuiga Danzuka
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Danzuka’s debut feature made waves as the youngest Japanese director ever to be featured in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, beginning with an extended Ozu-like exploration of a family in quiet crisis. Brand New Landscape wears its compelling, if slightly clouded themes proudly of a shifting Tokyo, and more specifically Shibuya, as a space aimed to accommodate a younger generation, even if it harms its current occupants.
The film displays the ripple effects from an unimaginable event that fractures a familiar family structure alongside the construction and evolution of several key spaces in the famous Tokyo area. Brand New Landscape never reaches a triumphant peak of dramatic storytelling, but it does leave you with both a unique perspective of Tokyo and of your own experiences in your own city and neighbourhood. A rather remarkable feat for a young filmmaker to garner.
Sorry, Baby (2025) – Eva Victor
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The most assured and confident debut of the year, Eva Victor writes, directs, and stars in a playful yet poignant dramedy on the lasting impacts of trauma that finds new ground in the familiar lane of modern storytelling. As a liberal arts grad still living near campus and on the verge of starting a full-time teaching position while still processing and working through deep trauma, Agnes (Victor) feels stuck while her closest friend Lydie (Naomie Ackie) returns to tell her she’s pregnant.
A film about the adult anxiety of never being sure of the right thing to do or feel in any situation, Victor is perceptive with a sharp eye for when to be kind and when to be cutting. Sorry, Baby has such a strong command of a difficult tone throughout that the audience quickly settles into the hands of a commanding filmmaker, a rare feat in a first feature. There may be no better scene in indie cinema this year than the jury duty scene in this film with its ability to float between wry humour, female camaraderie in unlikely situations, and quiet character storytelling that announced Victor as am impressive filmmaker and performer.
The End (2024) – Joshua Oppenheimer
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
A film about a family resolute in their self delusion, unflinching in their avoidance of personal reckoning after a climate apocalypse they helped create, played out as a musical, the genre defined by its characters constantly reckoning with their own feelings and decisions through song.
A remarkable ensemble that elevates the film above an impressive academic genre experiment, particularly George Mackay, who, after starring in Bonello’s The Beast (wow, two nods in one festival for this film), has more than proven his bona fides as a young star able to breathe life into some art cinema trappings. Oppenheimer clearly has a lot on his mind with the ability of the most powerful people in the world to craft self-delusions to survive within and what happens when others encounter and potentially destabilise those delusions, a throughline that ties his totemic documentary films to The End. The decision to mine new thematic ground in a wildly different way may go down as a defining cinematic decision of the decade, and while this film does not reach some of the transcendent moments of The Act of Killing (2012) or The Look of Silence (2014), The End is certainly worth your time and hopefully not a final foray into narrative film.
It can be daunting being the first. The first people in space. The first superheroes in the world, uncertain of the responsibility their power demands. The first child. Crossing that uneasy bridge from the familiar into the depths of the unknown. This was once a core aspect of superhero storytelling, but after thirty-seven entries in the compounding Marvel enterprise, it feels impossible to return to. Even the recent release of James Gunn’s Superman (2025) — a new frontier on the DC side of larger storytelling building blocks, while successful in its storytelling — had notes of this and still couldn’t help itself surround their central figure with larger but unnecessary chatter.
But this is where The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) succeeds and earns its colonised titling and a real throwback to why the MCU has built a legacy on quality films. Set in an alternate Earth from the familiar stomping ground of the MCU, and heavily focused on its famous foursome and not its larger worldbuilding, director Matt Shackman has crafted a brisk and entertaining sci-fi-focused ride that will leave you wholly satisfied; a feeling Marvel films used to give us.
the Fantastic Four, led by Reed Richards and Sue Storm, brought to life better than ever by Pedro Pascal and Venessa Kirby, and flanked by Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), arrive on screens in an Jetsons-themed alternate reality giving them the freedom of not needing less compelling super friends to give passing screen time too. Portrayed with enthusiasm and sincerity that reflects outwards into the whole film while still avoiding a saccharine mawkishness, making this Fantastic Four entry feel like a delightful throwback.
Four years into their journey, that is just settling in until the unexpected arrives both in-house and extra-terrestrially; the surprising pregnancy of Sue and the arrival of the Herald of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), The Silver Surfer (played with a pride and melancholy by the great Julia Garner), spelling doom for the Earth.
Joseph Quinn and Pedro Pascal in The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Building a competent film around these four characters has proved difficult in the past (this is the fourth go around for the crew in cinema, maybe they needed the luck?), but writers Eric Pearson, Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer have found success by properly centering the four actors, allowing plot and CGI battles to whizz past their family sci-fi soap opera. Told with sincerity and a deep love of the characters strengths and weaknesses, Shackman is allowed to stretch out and tell a full story, showing the potential from his directorial work on WandaVision (2021), perhaps the only successful Marvel TV show post Daredevil, even if it relied on a lazy final battle to conclude its story.
By centring two terrific performers who have shown the ability to operate in an old Hollywood mode, Pedro Pascal (in full Clark Gable mode) and Venessa Kirby jump off the screen with a chemistry and guile built from the characters out. Even as the world around them monumentally shifts with the arrival of a new child and a new Earth-destroying threat, we constantly see them lock eyes and respond to each other with a depth of understanding and empathy that wouldn’t be amiss in an awards season marriage drama. Pascal is at his best as a supportive scene partner, an invisible hand that allows others to shine instead of absorbing the audience’s attention.
Rounding out the team is Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn who have an easy banter built on warmth and care that adds to scenes. Quinn in particular is given a full story that is surprising and compelling, improving on the reductive framing we often see of the Human Torch.
A refreshing turn in the superhero genre that is potentially in its death throes, The Fantastic Four: First Steps focuses on an older sci-fi genre package with longer dialogue scenes, fewer action moments with a passing amount of care and attention to story, and a visual language that mostly grounds itself in its own reality (several scenes still feel deeply 2020s which the film seemed intent on avoiding in its first hour).
Pedro Pascal in The Fantastic Four: First Steps
With special effects that actually looked like the VFX team was given time to fully render and actualise ideas from scratch, The Fantastic Four: First Steps withheld the action at the centre of the story in place for a simple but emotive narrative built on a new, emerging family. Even Galactus, once portrayed as a large cloud in a film too embarrassed by its own sci-fi story, is given a tactile nature and a quality performance by Ineson, perhaps the best voice in the industry. In few words, Ineson displays a menace to his words but a clarity in character motivation one wouldn’t expect from an enormous villain desperate to consume planets. It’s not just that Shackman found space for the key six characters to show dimension and character through considered relationship work within a sci-fi framework; it’s that we could achieve this while wrapping up the film in under two hours.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a fast-moving train that has a real destination in mind, an aspect of American genre storytelling we took for granted and allowed to bloat and stagnate, too satisfied with its own navel-gazing to realise they were left as the only people looking. With a recent run of superhero films, Thunderbolts* (2025), Superman, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, we are potentially rounding the corner into the enjoyment and craft that built this genre into the cinematic tentpole that it strives to hold onto.
By giving these characters a fully rounded narrative that satisfies more than stringing you along with the promise of a larger experience in the future, Shackman and co have achieved what was supposed to be the goal of cinematic genre storytelling; something familiar and something new, contained in an entertaining and sometimes emotional time at the movies. Where James Gunn’s Superman stretched far and wide to populate his emerging franchise venture, making for a fun but frustrating experience, The Fantastic Four: First Steps focuses on a small collection of characters where the biggest spectacle is the arrival of a new family member, the largest event in most audience members’ lives as well.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in theatres now.
Superman preview screening provided by Universal Pictures
When Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) hit screens some eleven years ago, there was a shift in the superhero movie paradigm that up until then was often focused on darker stories and more mature themes, most of which went hard on action but stepped away from the jovial playfulness that animated shows often captured so well. That shift is owed in large part to James Gunn who managed to find a nice middle ground between getting you your dose of power ups and battle scenes with the humanity and flaws behind these heroes. He also (unintentionally) set off a chain of events for superhero films that would see them sway too much towards silliness and cheesy one-liners that they eventually became devoid of any uniqueness or balance.
In the time since his original Guardians film, Gunn has gone onto deliver two more for Marvel before being headed up as Co-chairman and Co-CEO of DC Studios in a bid to try and turn the tide DC’s way — after all, their catalogue of heroes is much stronger than that of Marvels. While The Suicide Squad (2021) represented his first real foray into the DC universe, it’s his long awaited reinvention of Superman (2025) that has felt like the true starting point that is supposed to set the tone for what is to come.
To do so, Gunn has opted to throw the whole ‘origin story’ approach out the window and instead, throw viewers right into the thick of things. Superman (a perfectly cast David Corenswet) is three years into his Superman reveal, with all of the crash landing and coming-to-terms-with-his-powers backstory, left implied. It’s a bold choice from Gunn but it makes sense as it gives him the room to cram more into the plot rather than tread old ground.
Whether the cramming tickles your fancy or not, is another question. There’s a lot going on in Gunn’s film, much to the detriment of building out a cohesive plot. Gunn is at once interested in diving into the humanity behind the God figure and hitting him with countless obstacles and side quests, with the result being glimmers of deeper interrogation —one occurring early on as Superman in his Clark Kent guise, chats with his fellow reporter girlfriend Lois Lane (an equally fitting Rachel Brosnahanin) in an impromptu interview— but an overall surface level exercise.
(L to r) NICHOLAS HOULT as Lex Luthor and DAVID CORENSWET as Superman in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN”
And that’s before we start talking about the wider plot which includes Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) trying to get dirt on Superman so he has justification to kill him, a trio of ‘Justice Gang’ sub-heroes who pop in every now and then to aid Superman and (really) fill-in during his absence, a weird middle-eastern conflict that threatens to boil over but that Superman is embroiled in, and a wonky love-story between Luthor’s side-piece and a a journo helping to get dirt on Luthor. In other words, it’s a stuffy room with little air left to breathe, which at best gets you a little laugh and at worst, an eye roll.
But while Gunn might not be focusing on Superman’s origin story, he’s definitely focusing on his own, taking his learning’s from his time at Marvel and Marvel-ising them here. No one can accuse Gunn of making something that’s boring, after all, the ethos of Superman has always been built around a level of silliness and charm that starts right from his vibrant, cartoonish costume. Gunn understands that in order to make this version of Superman any different from past iterations, he would have to cut the preamble and focus on the wonder that comes from seeing frost breathe, laser eyes and flying while keeping it as lighthearted as possible — keep the message simple and ensure the goofiness is there, even if the stakes never feel like they match up.
I have to admit, while I’m not a Zack Snyder shill, I appreciate the darker tones and comic-book wham’s and pow’s he brought to Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and his version of the Justice League (2021). Gunn’s version has gone a completely different direction and I can respect the decision to do so since the other approach wasn’t putting bums in cinema seats. Whether or not this film sets the tone for this new DC universe though, is hard to tell, especially with Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022) feeling more akin to what would have existed in the old universe (I’m sure we’ll see Cornswet’s Superman and Robert Pattinson’s Batman cross paths in some way — though I smell tonal whiplash from a mile away). Regardless, Superman is imbued with the same level of goofiness as Gunn’s other films, and while it probably would have felt fresher had it been released eleven years ago, it still packs an entertaining punch.
Rating Frames 