January
The art curator building bridges between China and the world
X Zhu-Nowell, the unconventional artistic director of a Shanghai cultural institution, is on the lookout for artists from the Asia-Pacific region.
October 2024
How a recluse became the world’s most popular contemporary artist
Yayoi Kusama always wanted to be famous. Now the hugely in-demand but cloistered artist best known for dots and pumpkins has a major retrospective coming to Melbourne.
Impractical Joker sequel will split the fans
Part musical, part prison saga, part courtroom drama, this ambitious follow-up to the 2019 hit about Batman’s nemesis may struggle to recoup its $300m budget.
No wonder Coppola had to pay for Megalopolis with his own money
This Roman orgy of a film, 40 years in the making, warns of end of days for America – but more likely just means the end of the director’s career.
September 2024
Margot Robbie’s ‘My Old Ass’ is a bummer
This lame coming-of-age story, produced by the megastar, is no Barbie. Meanwhile, 85-year-old Ian McKellen hams it up megalomaniacally in The Critic.
Demi Moore gives performance of her life in shocking ‘The Substance’
There’s a self-referential note to the ’90s superstar’s role in Coralie Fargeat’s fable about ageism, making it doubly compelling.
Art’s greatest couple get the biopic treatment
Pierre Bonnard, France’s most important 20th century artist after Matisse, painted wife Marthe hundreds of times. This film shows their deep and tumultuous bond.
July 2024
This biker-gang film centres on an unusual ménage à trois
The Bikeriders is based on Danny Lyon’s book of the same name, originally published in 1968.
Sexual pathologists would have plenty to say about this film
Director Yorgos Lanthimos has returned to his arthouse roots in Kinds of Kindnesses.
May 2024
Lessons in legacy-building from history’s most tenacious rulers
The NGV’s winter blockbuster will take a deep dive into what it meant to be pharaoh – and the complex power systems they needed to maintain their supremacy.
March 2024
Nature takes on Melbourne at the NGV
Swiss artists Franziska Furter and Julian Charrière both explore the wild elements in their large-scale installations at NGV Triennial.
March 2024
Four fatalistic picks for this year’s Oscar awards
The AFR’s film critic John McDonald is hoping to end an awards ceremony losing streak this year by joining the pack.
Hitchcockian Iranian thriller works wonders within strictures
Subtraction is a thriller, a mystery, a low-level horror movie quite unlike anything else from this nation of talented filmmakers.
February 2024
Auschwitz meets suburbia in film of Martin Amis novel
In its depiction of a Nazi commandant and his family’s life near a concentration camp, The Zone of Interest is a chilling depiction of humanity’s ability to compartmentalise.
How far would you push it to make your mark?
Perth-born Jacobus Capone is willing to clamber over glaciers in the Arctic Circle or bury himself for weeks in a Japanese forest to make art. Only, he wouldn’t call it art.
![The artist in his studio. He “needs to touch [flowers] every day, to keep the relationship alive”.](https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_0.5357%2C$multiply_2%2C$ratio_1%2C$width_378%2C$x_227%2C$y_99/t_crop_custom/c_scale%2Cw_160%2Cq_52%2Cf_auto/d759218639ce71262ab471a7d727500446f70552)
The man who listens to flowers (to world acclaim)
Artist and florist Makoto Azuma arranges, explodes and entombs blooms in resin in a never-ending quest to help them express their beauty.
December 2023
Here are 10 of the most entertaining movies of 2023
Our film critic nominates the cinema releases he most enjoyed this year.
This film will polarise viewers, some will walk out
Emma Stone plays a female Frankenstein’s monster in this tale about an infant in a woman’s body.
To be a winning artist, a little humour helps
It’s a philosophy that has worked for the most successful artist duo in the world. Now, the National Gallery of Victoria has acquired four of their installations.
November 2023
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a magnificent, flawed epic
Cramming his vast, complex life into one film is madness, so the best approach is to forget about the facts and marvel at the sheer effrontery of the fiction.