Nitram (2021 movie)

Category: Biographical drama.

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Nitram is produced by the same person that brought you Snowtown, Justin Kurzel. So you know it's not going to be a rom-com.

Even if you're not overly familiar with large swathes of Australian history, you probably already know about the Port Arthur Massacre, Australia's worst instance of firearm deaths and the catalyst for our world-famous gun laws. And just like with Snowtown, this movie is a 90% retelling - it tells the overall story, but changes some details.

Nitram (played by Caleb Landry Jones, and based off of the real-life perpetrator Martin Bryant) lives with his mother (Judy Davis) and father (Anthony LaPaglia) who clearly love and dote on their son, but his intellectual disability affects how he interacts with people and the world around him. And given this is the 1970s and 1980s, not much in the way of social support is given - you were expected to tough it out and hope for the best.

We see various interactions between Nitram and his parents that clearly show the struggle they go through to keep him out of trouble and them onto their sanity, as well as Nitram's father's attempt to secure a bank loan to buy a bed and breakfast on the Tasmanian coast that he plans to retire to.

Immaculate (2024 movie)

Category: Nun horror

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If you asked me even last week if I'd be eager to see Sydney Sweeney in a film, any film - let alone a horror - I'd have laughed you out the building. I mean, after her performance (if I could call it that) in Madame Web, who would have thought a nun-horror film would be the thing to sway my opinion?

But sway my opinion it did, and while I'm nowhere near becoming a Sydney Sweeney fan-boi, I can see her becoming an top-level actress if she can make some minor improvements to how she goes about her craft (something I will expand on later).

So the plot of this movie isn't TOO deep and meaningful, but interesting nun-theless (see what I did there?):

Like all good nun-horror films, we start with a flashback to a scene however many decades prior where a young nun in her convent/abbey/cloister sneaks into the bedroom of her Mother Superior and steals a set of keys. Said nun then runs towards the front gate and fumbles the keys as four hooded figures bear down on her. The nun is able to unlock the gate, but that gate is also chained and the chain has just enough slack to squeeze her body through. But right as she gets out, she slips and a hooded figure grabs her leg, pulls it back through the gate and gives it a twist to (painfully) ensure the nun isn't able to run anywhere in a hurry.

Dragged Across Concrete (2018 movie)

Category: Crime drama/thriller

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They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but I'm sure Hollywood big names like Harvey Weinstein and Mel Gibson would disagree. And so we come to one of the biggest conundrums I felt when I hit play on this movie: despite all the horrible things Mel Gibson has been recorded as saying and has been sued for as well as any number of other things, can we still appreciate his work as an actor?

Well, you better, because you're going to miss out on a LOT if you let your personal feelings about Mel Gibson get in the way of what is an outstanding performance in the 2018 crime drama, Dragged Across Concrete.

This movie is actually three stories that eventually weave in to one:

South Park: Joining The Panderverse (2023 Animated Film)

Category: Animated comedy/social commentary

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South Park are an acquired taste, even for people of my generation. I remember when South Park first hit the screens in the late 90s and while all the uni kids loved the low-brow humour, the older generation made sure that South Park made the news for its ability to offend. And the church I was in at the time may or may not have had a thing or three to say about it as well.

But you have to give Trey Parker and Matt Stone credit. Where The Simpsons have gone on to die a slow, painful death after bowing down to the deity of political correctness, Parker and Stone have been able to keep the creative juices flowing BECAUSE they don't tow any line and let EVERYONE cop a serve.

So if you like offensive comedy as much as I do, this will be right up your alley.

There are two plots running side by side in this movie that eventually tie up. The minor plot is that Randy, Stan's father, needs his oven door fixed. However, because very few people know how to actually fix things anymore due to the proliferation of electronic entertainment devices, the only two handymen in South Park are able to charge what they want and become very rich. Randy attempts to buck the duopoly created by the handyment by going to a hardware store to find an illegal immigrant who will do the job for cheaper, but all he ends up finding are more professional men like himself who also need things fixed.

The Hate U Give (2018 movie)

Category: Race-relations/social commentary drama

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It takes balls to create a movie revolving around black-on-black crime and still think that it's white people that need to take notes. Maybe the people behind this movie went to the same school of logic as the people who made Candyman.

And it takes even more balls to be half-Dutch half-American actress from Los Angeles, consistently get work as you grow up, become a trained violinist but somehow still say your people are opressed and that "white people crying was the goal!". Seriously - get over yourself!

My children had to watch this movie as part of a school project, which they liked it enough to make me watch it. And look, as a movie, The Hate U Give (based on the book of the same name) is not bad - the story is easy to follow, pulls at the heartstrings in all the right spots, all that stuff.

But there's a reason why fictionalised drama is just that - fictionalised.

Longlegs (2023 film)

Category: Supernatural crime drama/horror

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I'm glad to see Nicolas Cage get some good press for the first time in a long time. He seemed to have gone through a period where he became known for taking part in low-budget/low-quality productions, for giving performances that reflected said production values, and also for issues in his personal life that drove him to become a caricature of himself. As someone who thought Con Air was the coolest movie for an extended period of time in the 1990s, it's good to see Cage be recognised for a role that generates some positive press about his name once again.

And who would have thought that a satanic panic horror film would be the thing that gets his career back on track? 

Let me run through the plot before I go into my thoughts on the matter:

Longlegs revolves around Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a junior FBI agent who displays precocious clairvoyancy and a knack for cryptology, who is brought in to help solve a series of murders in which numerous families have been found dead after the father of the family violently kills the rest of the family, then himself, and the only clue is a cryptic letter signed by Longlegs found at each scene.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991 film)

Category: sci-fi action

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I think categorising Terminator 2: Judgement Day merely as "the best sequel ever" doesn't do this movie justice - I personally think it's in contention for "the best film ever". Far from suffering from sequel-itis (the condition when a smash-hit original movie has a completely lousy sequel) it's not hard to conclude that Terminator 2 is better than the original Terminator movie.

Having come out in the 1990s, Terminator 2 was the talk at my high school for months on end - cool lines from the movie would get quoted, various scenes would get re-enacted, inopportune screams of "YOU COULD BE MINE!!!!" from the try-hard rock kids, and chuckles about what mischief we would get up to if we had the shape-shifting capabilities of this movie's antagonist. In short, Terminator 2 wasn't a movie - it was a social phenomenon!

In fact, when Channel 9 (the TV station with the local broadcast rights to T2) wanted to spoil ratings for a rival TV station - for example, if they were broadcasting a sporting final or a season finale - Channel 9 would screen Terminator 2 as a way of denting the other station's ratings - a testament to this movie's pulling power.

And the result of that policy was that it gave me ample opportunity to record the movie on to my VHS for both myself and my friends. I watched this movie NUMEROUS times on the old CRT TV off of my VHS tape recording, and even then, the visuals were groundbreaking. 

But what made T2 so good? Let's get in to that after a run-down of the plot: