From May 27 at sites in Sydney and Melbourne, the Children's International Film Festival (CHIFF) returns for its fifth year, showcasing a program filled with family friendly films. In 2023, all-age audiences will enjoy cinematic adventures high in the Himalayas, amongst the fascinating world of art, with friends old and new, and in both vivid live-action and stunning animation.
Screening at Ritz Cinemas, Randwick and in Melbourne at the Classic Cinemas, Lido Cinemas and Cameo Cinemas until June 12, the CHIFF program features 21 Australian premiere titles and one retrospective feature tailored to young filmgoers aged from 3 years old and up. The 2023 festival line-up includes films in English, as well as two French films with English subtitles.
"The high quality of contemporary cinema and television for kids these days is a huge motivating force behind the Children's International Film Festival,” said Festival Director Thomas Caldwell, “We are back with delights from all around the world to entertain, engage, and mesmerise children from 3-years-old to young teens. Australian children no longer have to miss out on amazing stories of alien visitors, fairies and trolls, and our old friends the Moomins."
Among the many highlights in this year's program is The Tiger's Nest, directed by Brando Quilici from Italy. This epic adventure, set and shot in the majestic Himalayas, tells the story of a young orphan boy, Balmani, who rescues a tiger cub from ruthless poachers.
Moominvalley: Lonely Mountain, directed by Darren Robbie from Finland and the UK, is another standout in the 2023 program. Based on Tove Jansson's beloved works, this Australian Premiere features three brand new episodes from the acclaimed series. With the voices of Rosamund Pike, Matt Berry, and Jennifer Saunders, Moomintroll and his daring companions take the audience on a series of exciting adventures.
Icarus and the Minotaur is a beautifully animated retelling of the myth of Icarus that was Luxembourg’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category of the 95th Academy Awards in 2023. Other noteworthy films in the festival include Maika: The Girl from Another Galaxy, a Vietnamese science-fiction comedy; Billy and the Cowboy Hamster, a series based on the popular books by Catharina Valck; and, Alma's Way, a U.S./Canadian animated series created by Sonia Manzano, who positively impacted the lives of generations as Maria on Sesame Street.
The program caters to kindy-age tots with fun international animations. In Hug Me-The Movie (pictured, top), Teddy and Papa Bear embrace change on a quest for honey in the Golden Land; in Rosa and the Stone Troll, fearful flower fairy Rosa overcomes her fears to rescue her adventurous butterfly friend Silk; and, Pim & Pom at the Museum (pictured, right) is a playful animation series consisting of 13 episodes that take children on a discovery journey through the fascinating world of art.
And back in cinemas after 25 years is George Miller’s Babe: Pig in the City. Upon its initial release, the sequel to the Oscar-nominated global blockbuster was considered a bit of a misfire. But subsequent generations have turned the film into a stand-alone beloved film with critical opinion now firmly on its side.
Ticketing and session details can be found at the 2023 Children’s International Film Festival Official Website.
Daring, unconventional, cutting-edge cinema is returning to Melbourne and Sydney with the 2023 edition of the Fantastic Film Festival Australia (FFFA). Running from April 14-30, FFFA has a panoramic celebration of new and provocative films locked in place for the more courageous filmgoer.
With a line-up of 27 features, the Festival is offering its biggest program yet. From animated cowboys to queer magical realism, s**t-stained deathtraps to outback horrors, this year's program of often weird, occasionally wonderful screening options will unfold alongside Q&A panels, live performances, a scratch-and-sniff movie experience, music video blind dates, and the bold and bawdy ‘nude session’.
According to Festival Director, Hudson Sowada, "This year's program pushes the limits of storytelling and challenges conventional notions of reality. We're excited to showcase such an eclectic range of films, and we encourage audiences to take risks and embrace the strange."
Opening Night honours go to writer/director Nida Manzoor’s Polite Society, a distinctive genre mash-up that premiered earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival. The crowd pleasing film follows Ria Khan (Priya Kansara, in a star-making performance), a martial artist-in-training on a mission to save her sister Lena from an arranged marriage.
International features set for Australian Premieres include the biggest grossing film in Belgium last year, Zillion (pictured, above), chronicling the odyssey undertaken by a computer genius who creates the biggest discotheque in the world; Holy Shit!, a gross-out comedy and survival thriller set entirely in a Portaloo packed with explosives; and, the latest in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise, which will unfurl at a midnight showing.
Australian films in the 2023 line include The Survival of Kindness, an allegorical journey across a plague-ravaged wilderness by legendary filmmaker Rolf de Heer, who will be in attendance for a Q&A at the first Sydney screening; Sam Curtain’s Beaten to Death, a savage cat-and-mouse game set in remote Tasmania; Blur, a Giallo-style psycho-horror with supernatural mystery and ghastly practical effects from filmmaker Andrew Miles Broughton; and, Zac Cooper’s The End of History, which follows Australian techno producers Darcy and Pat's pursuit of creative greatness in changing and challenging Berlin.
Venturing beyond the traditional cinema experience is the world's first scratch and sniff session, called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Stink-O-Vision. Audiences are taken on a olfactory journey through the sewers of New York City, accompanied by a menu of bespoke scents; simply scratch the corresponding number on the scent card when the icon flashes on screen. The other key retro screening on the roster is Audition, cult director Takashi Miike's 1999 classic starring the unforgettable frightening Eihi Shiina (pictured, right).
And while details are remaining understandably vague, FFFA is rumoured to be screening a work, direct from its Toronto Film Festival premiere, that is so courted in controversy it can’t even be named in the program. This secret presentation of what FFFA is calling ‘An Untitled and Perfectly-Legal Coming-Of-Age Parody Film’ will give audiences a rare chance to be among the few people in the world to watch this film. The director will be joining for a series of in-person Q&As.
Closing the Festival in showstopping style is the modern exploitation film LION-GIRL, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film about the last defender of humanity against the ANOROC, a new species that emerged after a tsunami of meteors. Featuring character design by the legendary Manga artist Go Nagai, the film promises an outrageous and unhinged story, along with practical effects and gratuitous nudity.
FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL AUSTRALIA runs Friday, 14 April to Sunday 30 April 2023 at the Lido Cinemas, Hawthorn in Melbourne and the Ritz Cinemas, Randwick in Sydney.
Visit the event’s Official Website for session and ticketing details.
From March 31 to April 2, a selection of venues across Sydney’s vibrant inner suburbs will play host to an impressive roster of award-winning Australian and World premieres as part of the inaugural Inner West Film Festival.
“Sydney’s Inner West is one of Australia’s most creatively and culturally vibrant communities, a home to artists, musicians, writers, actors and filmmakers, and host to some of Australia’s best live music venues, restaurants, bars and cinemas,” explained Dov Kornits, co-founder/director of the Harbour City’s newest film celebration. “The only thing the Inner West was missing was its very own film festival.”
Premium venues such as Palace Cinemas Leichhardt and Dendy Cinemas Newtown will host over 15 special events, spanning a diverse range of genres, documentaries and live Q&As. Supported by Inner West Council, Inner West Film Fest will launch with the Sydney premiere of director Jub Clerc’s Indigenous coming-of-age story Sweet As (pictured, right), direct from an international film festival run that has seen it earn honours in Melbourne, Berlin and Toronto. The screening will be a free community outdoor event held at Marrickville Golf Club on March 31.
The World Premiere of the dance drama The Red Shoes: Next Step, co-directed by Jesse Ahern and beloved local actress Joanne Samuel, is a major programming coup for the new festival team, with the Juliet Doherty-starrer headed for general release Down Under from April 6. Other high-profile premieres include the first Australian showings for Camille Hardman’s and Gary Lane’s US doco Still Working 9 to 5, an entertaining look at the impact of the classic film comedy; Jason Wayne Trost’s CGI superhero fantasy/satire, FP 4EVZ; and, Georgian director Ioseb 'Soso' Bliadze’s acclaimed drama, A Room of My Own.
Along with such potent local indie cinema as Molly Haddon’s sibling saga The Longest Weekend, Susie Dee and Trudy Hellier’s all-girl nighttime odyssey SHIT and John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki’s underground cinema deep-dive Senses of Cinema, come fresh works from such diverse international film cultures as Ireland, Finland and Belgium (co-production entities on Klaus Härö’s My Sailor, My Love); The United Kingdom (Chris Foggins’ crowdpleaser Bank of Dave, with Hugh Bonneville); Switzerland, Ukraine and France (partners on Elie Grappe’s sports drama, Olga); and, Italy and Germany (bad-boy auteur Abel Ferrara’s religious biopic Padre Pio, starring Shia LeBeouf; pictured, below).
Other highlights include two retro screenings - Alan White’s 1999 drama Erskineville Kings (pictured, top), one of the few features shot in the inner-city and featuring early roles for Hugh Jackman and Joel Edgerton, which will screen from a 35mm print; and, a 4K restored version of Sergio Leone’s epic 1968 western classic, Once Upon a Time in The West, starring Henry Fonda.
Fellow fest founder and co-director Greg Dolgopolov says, “We want to bring the community in the Inner West together for an exciting celebration of film. We want to [acknowledge] not just the cultural richness of the Inner West, but the medium of film itself, and its ability to bring people together. We are so excited to kick off what will hopefully become an essential date on Sydney’s cultural calendar every year and will make one of Australia’s most vibrant artistic and cultural hubs even more exciting.”
Full program and session details can be found at the 2023 INNER WEST FILM FESTIVAL official website.
The life-affirming adventures of a dry-cleaning matriarch who discovers her inner multi-dimensional warrior has been smiled upon by Oscar. Everything Everywhere All at Once has topped the 2023 nominations with 11, including a history-making Best Actress nod for Michelle Yeoh - the first Asian-identifying nominee in this key category.
The Malaysian-born actress staked her claim as an international star with an A-list career in Hong Kong before landing her first Hollywood lead role in Everything… and is the sentimental favourite in the category by some measure. All eyes will be on whether she can ride that goodwill to a win and buck the trend to give the trophy to Cate Blanchett for Todd Field’s Tár; the Australian actress has swept all before her in the lead-up to today’s nomination announcement.
Also front-and-centre of the American film industry’s night-of-nights are two nations who only occasionally get AMPAS attention. Germany has a serious award-season contender in All Quiet on the Western Front (pictured, right), which has scored nine nominations, including Film, Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay. And Ireland’s small but vibrant film sector is triple-repped, with nine nominations befalling writer/director Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, a Best International Feature nod for Colm Bairéad’s arthouse darling The Quiet Girl, and a Best Live Action Short mention for An Irish Goodbye, from co-directors Tom Berkeley and Ross White.
Multiple nominations for box office blockbusters Top Gun: Maverick (9), Elvis (8) and Avatar: The Way of Water (4) suggest The Academy listened to complaints that popular opinion carries as much weight as critical plaudits come Oscar time (while detracting nothing from those film’s artistic credentials). In total, the 10 best picture nominees have grossed a collective $1.57billion in domestic ticket sales, ahead of the $1.52billion grossed by the previous record-holder, 2010 (a group that included the original Avatar).
Leading the notable snubbings in 2023 is Maverick himself, Tom Cruise for a Best Actor shot (though he earned a nomination as producer of the Best Picture contender); Margot Robbie for the much-maligned Babylon (which did earn three below-the-line noms); the department heads on Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, which surely figured in thinking for Costume, Cinematography and Art Direction at some point; pop songstress Taylor Swift, for her original composition on the Where the Crawdads Sing soundtrack; and, African-American representation, with The Woman King, Nope and Till all shut-out.
Also falling out of favour this year were the streaming platforms. One year after AppleTV’s CODA took Best Picture honours, only one film in that category is a streamer’s title - Netflix’s All Quiet on The Western Front. There’s a smattering of small-screen representation - Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio for Animated Film; Ana de Armas’ Best Actress mention for Blonde; an Adapted Screenplay nod for Glass Onion; and, Bryan Tyree Henry’s Supporting Actor shout-out for Causeway. But there was no love for Will Smith’s slave drama Emancipation; the Selena Gomez mental-health doc, My Mind & Me; or, Cooper Raiff’s charming rom-com Cha Cha Real Smooth.
The full list of 2023 Oscar nominations looks like this:
BEST PICTURE: All Quiet on the Western Front; Avatar: The Way of Water; The Banshees of Inisherin; Elvis; Everything Everywhere All at Once; The Fabelmans; Tár; Top Gun: Maverick; Triangle of Sadness; Women Talking.
BEST DIRECTOR: Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness; Todd Field, Tár; Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once; Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin; Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans.
BEST ACTOR: Austin Butler, Elvis; Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin; Brendan Fraser, The Whale; Paul Mescal, Aftersun; Bill Nighy, Living
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, Tár; Ana de Armas, Blonde; Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie; Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans; Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin; Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway; Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans; Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin; Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Hong Chau, The Whale; Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin; Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once; Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Todd Field, Tár; Tony Kushner & Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans; Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once; Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin; Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Edward Berger, Ian Stokell & Lesley Paterson, All Quiet on the Western Front; Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery; Kazuo Ishiguro, Living; Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig & Justin Marks, Top Gun: Maverick; Sarah Polley, Women Talking
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE: All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany); Argentina, 1985 (Argentina); Close (Belgium); EO (Poland); The Quiet Girl (Ireland)
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio; Marcel the Shell With Shoes On; Puss in Boots: The Last Wish; The Sea Beast; Turning Red
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed; All That Breathes; Fire of Love; A House Made of Splinters; Navalny
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Volker Bertelmann, All Quiet on the Western Front; Carter Burwell, The Banshees of Inisherin; Justin Hurwitz, Babylon; Son Lux, Everything Everywhere All at Once; John Williams, The Fabelmans
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: Ryan Coogler, Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna & Tems, “Lift Me Up,” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Lady Gaga & BloodPop, “Hold My Hand,” from Top Gun: Maverick; M.M. Keeravaani & Chandrabose, “Naatu Naatu,” from RRR; Diane Warren, “Applause,” from Tell It Like a Woman; Ryan Lott, David Byrne & Mitski, “This Is a Life,” from Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front; Roger Deakins, Empire of Light; Darius Khondji, Bardo; Mandy Walker, Elvis; Florian Hoffmeister, Tár
BEST EDITING: Eddie Hamilton, Top Gun: Maverick; Mikkel E.G. Nielsen, The Banshees of Inisherin; Paul Rogers, Everything Everywhere All at Once; Jonathan Redmond & Matt Villa, Elvis; Monika Willi, Tár
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Christian M. Goldbeck & Ernestine Hipper, All Quiet on the Western Front; Catherine Martin, Karen Murphy & Bev Dunn, Elvis ; Florencia Martin & Anthony Carlino, Babylon ; Dylan Cole, Ben Procter & Vanessa Cole, Avatar: The Way of Water; Rick Carter & Karen O’Hara, The Fabelmans
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Jenny Beavan, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris; Ruth Carter, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Catherine Martin, Elvis; Mary Zophres, Babylon; Shirley Kurata, Everything Everywhere All at Once
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: All Quiet on the Western Front; The Batman; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Elvis; The Whale
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: All Quiet on the Western Front; Avatar: The Way of Water; The Batman; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Top Gun: Maverick
BEST SOUND: All Quiet on the Western Front; Avatar: The Way of Water; The Batman; Elvis; Top Gun: Maverick
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT:An Irish Goodbye; Ivalu; Le Pupille; Night Ride; The Red Suitcase
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse; The Flying Sailor; Ice Merchants; My Year of Dicks; An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: The Elephant Whisperers; Haulout; How Do You Measure a Year?; The Martha Mitchell Effect; Stranger at the Gate.
The 95th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 12, 2023, at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and will be televised live on ABC and in more than 200 territories worldwide.
As I read through the final draft of this 2022 wrap-up, the year’s most anticipated film has just hit cinemas. Avatar: The Way of Water needs to land with a big splash, and not just for the Disney/Fox merger, who have billions riding on James Cameron’s eco-epic. The entire industry is desperate for a four-quadrant global hit.
Mid-budgeted horror has helped keep theatre doors open this year - Scream, Smile, Barbarian, Halloween Ends, The Black Phone, X and Pearl all performed to or above projections. But adult-skewing prestige pics underperformed (Don’t Worry Darling; The Fabelmans; Tar) or outright bombed (Bros; She Said; Amsterdam). Cash-cow properties stiffed (Pixar’s pricey Lightyear) or petered out (D.C.’s Black Adam; M.C.’s Black Panther Wakanda Forever); niche audiences grew increasingly tough to impress (festival faves EO, Aftersun and Neptune Frost found little traction). So, Avatar: The Way of Water could not arrive at a better time (yes, I have seen it; no, it’s not amongst my year’s best; yes, it’ll be huge).
My Top 10 suggests great movies are still being made for theatres; three were streaming premieres, though came to home viewing platforms via festival acquisitions or reworked distribution agendas. As long as global filmmakers strive for originality of vision, there is hope that big screen audiences (thought to have become overly attuned to home viewing through the pandemic) will return. Let's count 'em down...
10. DON’T WORRY DARLING (Dir: Olivia Wilde | Stars: Florence Pugh, Chris Pine, Harry Styles | U.S. | 123 mins) The most daring studio-backed feature of the year, Olivia Wilde’s sophomore directorial effort offered a confounding, compelling mix of metaphorical fantasy, gender conflict and dazzling starpower. Some critics called it ‘overly ambitious’, which sounds like a compliment to me; Pugh is being ignored as the award season fires up, which I find bewildering.
9. SHE SAID (Dir: Maria Schrader | Stars: Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan, Patricia Clarkson | U.S. | 129 mins) An instant entry into the list of great films about the integrity and drive of investigative journalism, German director Maria Schrader, making her U.S. feature debut, and stars Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan capture the incrementally small but sociologically seismic emergence of the Weinstein abuse and subsequent #MeToo movement.
8. CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH (Dir: Cooper Raiff | Stars Cooper Raif, Dakota Johnson, Evan Assante | U.S. | 107 mins) In the wake of 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine came a wave of ‘feelgood Sundance’ films that gave the sub-genre a bad name. Thanks to multi-hyphenate Cooper Raiff’s deceptively rich and adorably cheerful Cha Cha Real Smooth, the ‘meaningful friendship’ comedy/drama is back; the chemistry he shares with Dakota Johnson makes for 2022’s sweetest cinematic confection.
7. THE NIGHT OF THE 12th (La nuit du 12 | Dir: Dominik Moll | Stars: Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners, Lula Cotton-Frapier | France | 115 mins) Based on a shocking thrill-kill that remains unsolved, Dominik Moll’s drama hides a study in alpha-male dynamics and the fragility of self-belief within a traditional police procedural. As the head investigator whose inability to crack the case becomes a soulful burden, Bastien Bouillon provides a great study in anxiety and fractured ego.
6. LYNCH/OZ (Dir: Alexandre O. Philippe | Stars: Rodney Ascher, Karyn Kusama, Justin Benson | U.S. | 108 mins) The latest in his series of deconstructionist deep-dives into filmmaking, Alexandre O. Philippe (Doc of The Dead; 78/52; Leap of Faith) explores the influence of The Wizard of Oz on the work of David Lynch. Doesn’t skimp of the strangeness of Lynch’s interpretation and reworking of the fantasy classic, but also acknowledges how the sweetness and base values have inspired cinema’s oddest auteur.
5. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (Dir: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Schienert | Stars: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis | U.S. | 139 mins) This year’s little-film-that-could, The Daniel’s dazzling multidimensional flight of fantasy proved a revelation for audiences timidly venturing back into cinemas after 18 months on their couches. A mash-up of Matrix-style visionary inventiveness, a Rubiks Cube-like narrative unpacked with clarity and conviction and performances from a trio of mature-age performers who know they may have been handed the roles of their careers.
4. TOP GUN: MAVERICK (Dir: Joseph Kosinski | Stars: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly | U.S. | 130 mins) Already dubbed ‘The Film That Saved 2022’, the sequel none of us knew we needed emerged as the pop-culture film event of the year. As the last true movie star on the planet, Tom Cruise played the ‘ageing hero’ card to perfection, his mere presence providing the perfect bridge between the nostalgic bravado of the late Tony Scott’s 1986 original with the clean-cut, chiselled millennial ambitions of Joseph Kosinski’s squadron of new top guns. Most importantly, it demanded to be seen on the big screen; those fully immersive flying sequences brought the patrons back in droves.
3. HELLO DANKNESS (Dir: Soda Jerk | Australia) The Adelaide Film Festival, in conjunction with the Samstag Museum gallery space, commissioned a new work from those maestros of montage, Soda Jerk, whose Terror Nullius rocked everyone’s world in 2018. The result is the mini-feature Hello Dankness, a satirically savage recutting of hundreds of film, TV and multimedia sources to reflect upon the madness that was American politics, 2016-2021. Take your pick of its virtues - an enormously ambitious art installation; a surreal perception of U.S. democracy in downfall; the laugh-out-loud funniest film comedy of the year. The Germans get it; Hello Dankness is Berlinale bound in 2023.
2. BLONDE (Dir: Andrew Dominik | Stars: Ana de Armas, Bobby Carnavale, Adrien Brody | U.S. | 167 mins) I get that those who adore what Marilyn Monroe has come to represent in our culture don’t want to see her as a victim of systemic and cyclical abuse; that Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Joyce Carroll Oates’ fictionalized account of Monroe’s journey was, in some eyes, exploitative and unnecessarily brutal. But if any figure in pop culture can, even should, embody the misogynistic horrors of a Hollywood that grinds young, spirited artists into the ground, ought it not be the most famous starlet ever? Dominik’s direction is artistically fearless and technically profound; as Marilyn, Ana de Armas enters the upper-tier of film acting talent.
1. PREY (Dir: Dan Trachtenberg | Stars: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro | U.S. | 100 mins) “Seriously?”, I hear you ask. The umpteenth reboot of action cinema’s most defiantly troublesome franchise is your best film of the year? Dan Trachtenberg tears all the rotten residual meat off the Predator series bones and pares it back to the smashing survival thriller/monster movie premise that made John McTiernan’s 1987 original a brawny classic. That he also launched the best action heroine since Ripley in Amber Midthunder’s Naru and provided a Comanche language version of the film on the Hulu/Disney+ platforms only makes this commitment to the spirit of the source material every bit as breathtaking as Arnie’s original.
THE NEXT TEN:
SISSY (Dir: Hannah Barlow, Kane Senes | Stars: Aisha Dee, Hannah Barlow, Emily De Margheriti | Australia | 102 mins)
SMILE (Dir: Parker Finn | Stars: Sosie Bacon, Jesse T. Usher, Kyle Gallner | U.S. | 115 mins)
HATCHING (Pahanhautoja | Dir: Hanna Bergholm | Stars: Siiri Solalinna, Sophia Heikkilä, Jani Volanen | Finland, Sweden | 91 mins)
SELENA GOMEZ MY MIND & ME (Dir: Alek Keshishian | Stars: Selena Gomez | U.S. | 95 mins)
X (Dir: Ti West | Stars: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson | U.S. | 105 mins)
YOU WON’T BE ALONE (Dir: Goran Stolevski | Stars: Noomi Rapace, Alice Englert, Carloto Cotta | Australia, United Kingdom, Serbia | 108 mins)
THE BATMAN (Dir: Matt Reeves | Stars: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Colin Farrell | U.S. | 176 mins)
MILLIE LIES LOW (Dir: Michelle Savill | Stars: Ana Scotney, JIllian Nguyen, Chris Alosio | New Zealand | 100 mins)
BARBARIAN (Dir: Zach Cregger | Stars: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long | U.S. | 102 mins)
Tuesday, May 2, 2023 at 4:19PM 
"The high quality of contemporary cinema and television for kids these days is a huge motivating force behind the Children's International Film Festival,” said Festival Director Thomas Caldwell, “We are back with delights from all around the world to entertain, engage, and mesmerise children from 3-years-old to young teens. Australian children no longer have to miss out on amazing stories of alien visitors, fairies and trolls, and our old friends the Moomins."
Icarus and the Minotaur is a beautifully animated retelling of the myth of Icarus that was Luxembourg’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category of the 95th Academy Awards in 2023. Other noteworthy films in the festival include Maika: The Girl from Another Galaxy, a Vietnamese science-fiction comedy; Billy and the Cowboy Hamster, a series based on the popular books by Catharina Valck; and, Alma's Way, a U.S./Canadian animated series created by Sonia Manzano, who positively impacted the lives of generations as Maria on Sesame Street.
