Movies
Samuel L. takes to provocative roles with attitude
Andrew Purcell Best known as Quentin Tarantino's leading man, high-grossing actor Samuel L. Jackson almost didn't get the part that changed his life.
Latest reviews All the latest movie reviews
Spotlight
PAUL BYRNES True story of The Boston Globe's investigation into child sex abuse by Catholic Church a worthy Oscar contender.
Carol
PAUL BYRNES An immaculate movie in which Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara take us inside a story of desire and retribution that's both satisfying and disturbing.
The Hateful Eight
JAKE WILSON The new Tarantino conjures up a western, a murder mystery and a horror film.
The Big Short
JAKE WILSON For all its liveliness, it can be heavy going: the dialogue remains weighed down with jargon, and the storytelling gimmicks distract more than they clarify.
Goosebumps
CRAIG MATHIESON It may not inspire the nightmares R.L. Stine's novellas can still elicit from young readers, but its commentary on creation and cause is bang up to date.
Cemetery Of Splendour
PHILIPPA HAWKER Set in a hospital for soldiers suffering from sleeping sickness, this Thai film blurs the boundaries between waking and sleeping, dream and memory.
The Revenant
JAKE WILSON Birdman director's latest is a star vehicle that assumes our willingness to take the suffering of the white male protagonist more seriously than anything else.
Sisters
CRAIG MATHIESON Inspired comic chemistry from frequent collaborators Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Point Break
SANDRA HALL Remake of the famous action movie is in the same vein, but comes with a few modern embellishments.
All movie stories
How Australia's landscape sears into our movies and inspires Looking for Grace
PAUL BYRNES 11:15pm The Australian landscape frequently inspires cinematic terror but there is another side to it.
Australians out in force
Mariah Carey flaunts engagement ring with James Packer at G'Day USA gala
MICHAEL IDATO 4:37pm Mariah Carey, the newly minted bride-to-be of Australian casino billionaire turned Hollywood film producer James Packer, made a stunning debut on the G'Day LA red carpet in Los Angeles. But the 45-year-old New York-born singer was upstaged in dramatic fashion – by her own engagement ring.
Australian director Gillian Armstrong damns Hollywood execs
Darren Cartwright 2:45pm The Australian film director says "12-year-old executives" are running movie studios now.
Robert De Niro's journey from serious actor to broad comic
Robbie Collin 10:03am He's gone from being an acclaimed Oscar-winning serious actor to making a string of broad, sometimes crude comedies. What's going on?
When in Rome
Leonardo DiCaprio meets Pope Francis
9:26am Leonardo DiCaprio is used to being the biggest star in the room, but even he was humbled when he met Pope Francis.
Contentious
Joseph Fiennes 'shocked' at Michael Jackson role in Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon
NICK GALVIN 7:22am Actor Joseph Fiennes admits he was "shocked" at the controversial decision to cast him as Michael Jackson in an upcoming TV movie.
You're the one that I want
Grease nearly starred Carrie Fisher instead of Olivia Newton-John
EBONY BOWDEN 7:52am It's the film that catapulted Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta to fame. But what if casting for Grease had gone differently?
Do Oscar winners need the write stuff?
Glenn Whipp The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road led the Oscar nominations but neither earned recognition for its writing – and few films win best picture without that.
Cruise booked?
Top Gun: Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer tease about sequel
NICK GALVIN Some 30 years after he first took to the skies in Top Gun, Tom Cruise is apparently once more feeling the need for speed.
What's the secret of a great film score?
Ivan Hewett Two veteran composers nominated for Oscars show their fellow nominees how it's done.
Big deal
Stan snares Twin Peaks in Showtime deal
MICHAEL IDATO The streaming platform Stan has signed a multi-year deal with Showtime in the US that will bring its programs to the service, including exclusive rights to the highly anticipated return of Twin Peaks.
Backlash after Joseph Fiennes cast as Michael Jackson in Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon
JOSEPHINE TOVEY As the entertainment industry continues to grapple with the backlash over a second year of all-white nominations at the Academy Awards, a new casting announcement has provoked fresh criticism about the lack of diversity on screen and preference for white actors even when telling stories of people of colour.
Films: Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa explores meaning of life and identity
STEPHANIE BUNBURY Charlie Kaufman's films centre on the uncertainty of identity, within lives that we cannot escape.
Looking for Grace: sadness, comedy and the spaces between
PHILIPPA HAWKER Looking For Grace is about space, quiet and mystery, about what's said and unsaid, revealed and concealed, a measured embrace of the bleak and the comic.
Disney princesses outspoken by males in Frozen, The Little Mermaid, research shows
AAP Female characters in the new wave of Disney animated films are being significantly outspoken by the men, research has found.
Abe Vigoda, best known for The Godfather and Barney Miller, dead at age 94
Abe Vigoda, best known for The Godfather, died on Tuesday after spending three decades jokingly refuting rumours of his demise.
Filmmaker forces UK censorship board to sit through 607-minute film of paint drying
NICK MILLER The disgruntled director revealed that 'to my great shame, I have not watched the film in its entirety'.
Le Tigre
Heidi Klum almost steals spotlight from Ben Stiller at Zoolander No. 2 premiere
Amy Croffey Zoolander No. 2 has a star-studded cast, and the purple carpet for the Sydney premiere at the State Theatre on Tuesday was no different.
Ben Stiller reveals sadness behind selfie-laden Zoolander sequel featuring Justin Bieber, Anna Wintour and more
SARAH THOMAS Famous names are lining up again to join the fashion-focused sequel - but there's a tragic twist in Zoolander 2's creation.
Still in hospital
Molly Meldrum has a dislocated shoulder, cracked ribs after fall
An update on the music industry icon's condition shows how serious his fall in Thailand was.
Short Cuts: Australian filmmaker Benjamin Gilmour hits out at Hollywood war porn
GARRY MADDOX A new film set in Afghanistan aims to answer the likes of American Sniper and Zero Dark Thirty.
'Get real Hollywood and catch up with the wider world': A trans woman's view of The Danish Girl
Cerise Howard Much as the disability community can find able-bodied actors "cripping up" an excruciating, offensive spectacle tantamount to blackface, we trans folk are likewise aggrieved when our complex struggles are reduced to mannered gesturing as shorthand for stereotypical gender behaviours.
'Do white people not think?'
Brief social media storm sees Kristen Stewart wrongly branded racist
The Twilight star's comments on gender diversity were initially reported as being about the hottest topic in Hollywood - diversity.
All a-Bard!
Ian McKellen to host London bus tours for Shakespeare film season
Eminent thespian and star of TV and film Sir Ian McKellen has landed perhaps the strangest role yet of his stellar career - hosting a series of literary bus tours of London.
Best sex-free first date
When Barack met Michelle: warm reviews for movie Southside With You about their romantic first date
GARRY MADDOX An American filmmaker has charmed with a romance about the future US president falling for his wife over a meeting, a movie and ice-creams in Chicago.
Anu Singh breaks silence ahead of release of film Joe Cinque's Consolation
A former ANU law student who drugged and killed her boyfriend has criticised the makers of a film documenting her case.
The Big Short tops Producers Guild of America Awards
The Big Short has suddenly got serious momentum heading into the home stretch of the Oscars race.
Dead weird
Sundance 2016: Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe stars in Swiss Army Man as farting corpse
NICK GALVIN A bizarre indie film starring Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse with supernatural powers that turn him into a flatulent jet ski has left audiences at the Sundance Film Festival perplexed.
Oscars: Academy pledges to double its membership of women and minorities by 2020
Piya Sinha-Roy Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces ambitious plan that includes stripping some older members of voting privileges.
Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling: Diversity outcry is 'racist to whites'
Kelly Lawler Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling is adding her views to the growing controversy about the Oscar nominations, claiming that the campaign to boycott the February 28 ceremony is, in fact, racist to white people.
Oz so white? Diversity on Australian screens
PHILIPPA HAWKER It's not only in Hollywood that non-white faces barely get a look in on big and small screens.
Mad Max, Katniss Everdeen, Fallout 4 and the lure of the apocalypse
Jake Cleland In books, on film and on gaming consoles, dystopia is the new utopia: we just can't get enough of the bad times. Is life really that good?
Competition
Irrational Man: win a new TV and a DVD pack
Fairfax Media and Entertainment One are giving you the opportunity to win a brand new Samsung TV to mark the release of Woody Allen's latest movie on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital HD.
Columns
Simon Baker closes in on cast for Breath, his Tim Winton movie
Simon Baker is close to casting the two central roles of thrill-seeking teenage surfers in his film adaptation of Tim Winton's novel Breath.
Why Hollywood movies are so bad
Hollywood has abandoned high-quality, artistic drama in favour of big-budget, action-based, computer-generated, cookie-cutter movies featuring robots, men in capes, and giant scary machines.
Trailers
Joy
The true story of the woman who rises to become founder and matriarch of a powerful family business dynasty.
Hail Caesar!
A Coen brothers comedy about the kidnapping of the star of a 1920s movie, and the Hollywood 'fixer' sent to retrieve him.
Born To Dance
An ambitious young man from Auckland dreams of being a professional hip-hop dancer.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (trailer 3)
Director JJ Abrams picks up the story 30 years after the events of episode VI (film three, 1983's Return of the Jedi).
Downriver
Release from prison, James tries to find the body of the boy he was accused of drowning, for his sake and that of the boy's grieving mother.
The Daughter
A man returns to his hometown after a long departure and discovers the costs of uncovering deeply-buried family secrets. The Daughter opens in Australian cinemas on March 3, 2016.
The Hateful 8
In post-Civil War Wyoming, bounty hunters try to find shelter during a blizzard but get involved in a plot of betrayal and deception.
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse
Three scouts and lifelong friends join forces with a cocktail waitress to become the world’s most unlikely team of heroes when their peaceful town is ravaged by a zombie invasion.
The Crow's Egg
Two children from the slums of Chennai, India go to extreme lengths to taste some pizza.
The Finest Hours
The remarkable true story of the greatest small boat rescue in US Coast Guard history.
Our Brand Is Crisis
Feature adaptation of a documentary about the use of American political campaign strategies in South America.
Point Break
A young FBI agent infiltrates a team of thrill-seeking athletes suspected of carrying out a spate of daring crimes.
A Month of Sundays
One night Frank Mollard gets a phone call from his mother. Nothing out of the ordinary. Apart from the fact that she died the year before.
