Film

Trump’s monster film tariffs unspool a disaster for movie-making

Donald Trump’s plan to impose a 100 per cent tariff on ‘any and all’ movies made in ‘foreign lands’ carries significant economic and cultural consequences.

MIKE SEYMOUR

★★★★Culture

Ocean with David Attenborough in cinemas May 5.

Ocean with David Attenborough: All aboard for must-sea doco

This documentary is the least beautiful film the British biologist, natural historian, conservationist, broadcaster and filmmaker has made. This is intentional.

Stephen Romei

TV REVIEWTelevision

Asher Keddie and Emma Lung in Strife S2. Picture: Binge

‘They couldn’t stop me if they wanted to’

She may be playing a ‘blindly optimistic’ character, but Emma Lung can clearly see it was a punt she took on herself which led to a plum role starring opposite Australian television royalty.

Joseph Carbone

film reviewsCulture

A scene from Crocodile Dundee. Paul Hogan as Mick in new restored version of the film

Dundee has been sanitised but it’s still a good movie

Some frames involving Mick and a cross-dresser are among those that have been deleted from Crocodile Dundee: The Encore Cut, the restored and edited 4K cut of Australia’s most commercially successful film.

Stephen Romei

PR challengeCulture

US actress Blake Lively attends the 2025 TIME100 gala at The Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, April 24, 2025. TIMEâs annual TIME100 Next list recognizes 100 individuals who are defining the next generation of leadership â Artists, Phenoms, Leaders, Advocates and Innovators â poised to make the climb and in doing so, make history. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)

Blake Lively has a new movie – promoting it is a minefield

The actress has done minimal publicity for ‘Another Simple Favour,’ when experts say any wrong move could be used against her by Justin Baldoni and his attorneys

Allie Jones

REVEALING DOCUMENTARY:Culture

Stills from the 2024 Documentary Riefenstahl. Featuring German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl and Nazi's.

Uncovering a filmmaker’s lies about Nazi atrocities

A new documentary draws on previously unreleased archival material to challenge Leni Riefenstahl’s claims she knew nothing about the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities.

Rosemary Neill

The Final ReckoningCulture

Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, Pom Klementieff plays Paris, Greg Tarzan Davis plays Degas, Simon Pegg plays Benji Dunn and Hayley Atwell plays Grace in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.

The actress giving Tom Cruise a run for his money in Mission: Impossible

With roles that demand both discipline and danger, Pom Klementieff has trained with wolves, boxed for parts, and learned to skydive on Tom Cruise’s recommendation.

Geordie Gray

national identityCulture

The Last Post played at dawn on the bugle. Anzac Day dawn service at Hobart cenotaph, 2017. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

Culture of Anzac: Dawning of the ‘fair go’ nation

Australia’s World War I legend still informs the Australian mind and identity, in mysterious and compelling ways.

John Carroll

★★★½Culture

Tina review — a tested format lifted with warmth

Samoan-born Miki Magasiva’s bittersweet debut follows a grieving teacher and a ragtag choir on a redemptive journey.

Stephen Romei

★★★½Culture

Hysteria review — a tense exploration of immigration

In Mehmet Akif Buyukatalay’s shrewdly-plotted film an accidental Koran burning on a film set ignites a taut ideological thriller.

Stephen Romei

FILM REVIEWSCulture

‘I ended up with no sex and a penguin’

Steve Coogan is at his wry best in The Penguin Lessons, a comedy-drama set on the eve of the 1976 Argentinian coup.

Stephen Romei

Film biopicsCulture

Rami Malek as the rock icon Freddie Mercury in a scene from the 20th Century Fox/New Regency Queen biopic film BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

With movies about Michael Jackson and Madonna on the way, do we really need another biopic?

There’s an avalanche of music biopics coming our way, but summing up an artist’s life in a few hours can be tricky business.

Ed Potton

★★★★Culture

This image released by A24 shows a scene from

‘The battle scenes in Warfare are brutal and merciless’

This visceral film follows a group of US Navy SEALs over the course of one day in Ramadi in western Iraq and is based on the memories of the soldiers who were there.

Stephen Romei

The SphereThe Wall Street Journal

Google used AI to generate new pixels to enhance the resolution of the original 1939 film. The new version on the right is compared with the original on the left.

Kansas to Vegas: AI the new wizard of Oz

Google invented techniques to enhance resolution and generated new character performances to bring the 1939 film to the giant screen.

ISABELLE BOUSQUETTE

★★★★Culture

Richard Roxburgh in a scene from The Correspondent supplied for Review

Inside a journalist’s nightmare story of detention

As I watched Richard Roxburgh’s understated performance, I wondered if the internal strength Peter Greste needed to survive was one of the traits that made him an award-winning war correspondent.

Stephen Romei

FilmThe Times

Douglas Hodge, MeeWha Alana Lee, Viola Davis in G20. (Photo Credit Ilze Kitshoff/Prime Video). Ã‚Â© Amazon Content Services LLC

Play the president? Hell yeah!

Viola Davis has won every major acting award, but how will she fare in an action film set at the G20?

Ed Potton

★★★★Culture

Pierre Niney and the Count of Monet Christo

The Count of Monte Cristo review – an absolute pleasure

This spirited adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 novel is almost three hours long yet passes in a heartbeat.

Stephen Romei

Review: Reel amourCulture

Souleymane's Story showing at the 2025 Alliance Francaise French Film Festival. Picture: Alliance Française French Film Festival.

Asylum-seeker’s award-winning role as illegal delivery driver imitates real life

Abou Sangare’s prize-winning turn in Story of Souleymane is just one of the highlights of the 2025 Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, the biggest showcase of Gallic movies outside France.

Rosemary Neill

★★★½Culture

Cillian Murphy in Small Things Like These. Picture: Lionsgate

Small Things Like These review — trouble in the convent

Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy plays a man who witnesses Ireland’s now-notorious Magdalene Laundries in this quietly powerful adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2021 novella.

Stephen Romei

filmCulture

Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.

Actors playing The Beatles in Sam Mendes’ biopics unveiled

The Oscar-winning director will bring the Fab Four back to the big screen with The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, an ambitious multi-part biopic touted the first ‘binge-able theatrical experience’.

Geordie Gray

★★★★★Culture

This five-star gift of a film made me weep

With incredible performances by Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and Australia’s Jacob Elordi, this film had a profound effect on me. When it ended I needed to sit in the cinema for quite a while to gather myself.

Stephen Romei

Life & TimesThe Times

Singer fromer member of band The Beatle John Lennon with wife Yoko Ono in Central Park, from book Sometime in New York City, by photographer Bob Gruen.

Revolution of John and Yoko

Not just ‘another Beatles film’, a new documentary looks at John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and their post-Beatles life in America.

Ed Potton

Are we not entertained?Culture

Ancient world adaptations; are you not entertained?

Epic fail? Interrogating cinema’s ancient history problem

Christopher Nolan is set to tackle Homer’s epic on the big screen but one academic says the film will only succeed if it adheres to one theme.

Robert White

★★★Culture

A scene from the set of Crocodile Dundee, where arguably its most famous scene is being shot

The one thing missing from Crocodile Dundee doco

While it deals with the famous knife scene, Love of an Icon fails to capture these important details of Paul Hogan’s personal life.

Stephen Romei

one star reviewCulture

This image released by Disney shows Rachel Zegler in a scene from

Believe the anti-hype. Disney’s Snow White really is that bad

Drama? Story? Character? Nope. These are, it seems, decadent tools of the oppressor. The new Snow White movie is a new low — and a crisis point for Disney.

Kevin Maher

EUROPECulture

French actor Gerard Depardieu leaves during his trial in which he is accused of sexually abusing two women during a film shoot in 2021, at the Paris criminal court in the Tribunal de Paris courthouse, on March 24, 2025. Depardieu, 76, who has made more than 200 films and television series, has been accused of improper behaviour by around 20 women but this is the first case to come to trial. The two plaintiffs -- Amelie, 54, a set dresser, and Sarah (name changed), 34, an assistant director -- allege sexual assault during the filming in 2021 of

Depardieu stands trial for alleged sexual assaults on film set

The French actor is facing charges of sexually assaulting two women on a movie set, in a case seen as a potential watershed for the #MeToo movement in France.

Sylvie Corbet and John Leicester

entertainmentFilm

**Fees Apply**Must Credit Backgrid**One time use only** No News.com Yorkshire, UNITED KINGDOM - *PREMIUM-EXCLUSIVE* - PREMIUM EXCLUSIVE - MUST CALL FOR FEES ALWAYS: From Barbie To Bronte: Margot Robbie swaps Malibu for the Moors as Cathy in new 'Wuthering Heights' production! Margot Robbie stuns in a white wedding dress which shimmers in the wind and looks in stark contrast to the

From Barbie to Bronte: Margot swaps Malibu for the moors

Australian superstar Margot Robbie has been spotted on the set of her latest movie, a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.

Lily McCaffrey

The Last AnniversaryCulture

Liane Moriarty, Nicole Kidman, Bruna Papandrea

Nicole Kidman brings Hollywood home with latest show

The Oscar winner’s lifelong mission has been realised with the release of her new show. Could her collaboration with powerhouse forces Liane Moriarty and Bruno Papandrea spark Australian TV’s own Big Little Lies?

Bianca Farmakis

film reviewsCulture

(L to R) Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse and Cate Blanchett as Kathryn St. Jean in director Steven Soderbergh's BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.

Hollywood says this film is in the ‘dead zone’. Soderbergh doesn’t care

The Oscar winner made his name with films like Erin Brockovich and the Ocean’s trilogy – but now he’s gambling with a new spy drama.

KEVIN MAHER

Film reviewThe Times

Disney ruins its crown jewel – and reputation

Rachel Zegler is watery and ineffectual while Gal Gadot attempts to vamp it up in a sanctimonious reboot of Snow White that marks a new low. It opened on Thursday in Australia. Bring a sick bag.

Kevin Maher

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/film/page/6