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Film, Theatre and Television Articles

all mostly written for commercial film criticism under the name 'Kahn Duncan' , as well as featured podcast appearances

This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

'The Social Reckoning' is engaging in the moment but undeserving of the like or reshare button | This Is Film

When The Social Network debuted in 2010, it became a critical, cultural, and financial success because of its ability to combine Aaron Sorkin’s razor-sharp screenplay with David Fincher’s signature directing. It arrived at the perfect moment in the zeitgeist where the digital age was rapidly expanding. Blending corporate intrigue with human drama, it told a story of unbridled ambition, loyalty, and the treacherous origins of Facebook (now Meta). Its genius lay in watching Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Verity knows it’s not high art and revels in camp

When do you surrender to a work that knows exactly how shallow and gawdy its premise is? Director Michael Showalter makes it fairly easy with the trash-tastic Verity, a film that embraces its own ridiculous melodrama early on. The latest in a growing line of Colleen Hoover adaptations, including It Ends with Us, Regretting You, and Reminders of Him, the star-studded thriller about two authors caught in a precarious entanglement is funny in all the wrong ways. And you know what? That might not be...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Heart of the Beast is a simple and touching ode to the animals that stand by us | The Curb

Heart of the Beast is a straightforward survival thriller and a sincere love letter to man’s best friend. Directed by David Ayer from a screenplay by Cameron Alexander, the movie follows a retired military officer and his loyal companion after they get stranded in an Alaskan mountain range. Although the pacing is stilted and the story predictable, the film is elevated by the emotional connection between Brad Pitt and his loveable canine co-star. Forced to battle their limits and their environmen...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

"People have the power to change things": Mhammad Babai on the necessary documentary Human Animals | The Curb

Human Animals is a confronting but necessary documentary that examines the asymmetrical realities experienced by Israelis and Palestinians. Directed by David Wachsmann in collaboration with Palestinian filmmaker Mhammad Babai, the film contrasts a series of Israeli interviews with troubling on-the-ground footage of civilians trying to survive in Gaza. Their previous film, Two Kids a Day, won the Best Research Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival and the Grand Prix Japan Prize.Their...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

South Korea’s most expensive cinematic gamble pays off in the mighty, monstrous, and multi-genre 'Hope' | This Is Film

Hope is as much an epic sci-fi thriller as it is a maximalist, high-concept action film. It may be repetitive, and it may oversell itself, but there are enough exhilarating, original thrills here to justify its indulgent and frankly insane sensibilities. When a village police chief is forced to defend his local community against a violent and mysterious creature, so begins an ever-escalating tale that reminds you why genre filmmaking in South Korea is in both careful and crazed hands.
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

Ridley Scott makes the end of the world tired and forgettable in 'The Dog Stars' | This Is Film

Ridley Scott seems to believe that enough self-aggrandising about his own recent filmography can convince audiences that these are good movies. This delusion has caused nothing but diminishing returns for his catalogue the past decade – House of Gucci, Gladiator II, and the notably laborious Napoleon – with Ridley getting particularly good at wasting a big cast and an even bigger budget. 


With the exception of The Last Duel, Scott’s latest post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama, The Dog Stars, joins t...
Novastream •

MIFF 2026 - Martin Mckenna’s 'Wilderness' fails to listen to its environment | Novastream

Written and directed by Martin McKenna, Wilderness is a baffling and mishandled film that chooses to focus more on suburban woes than ecological reverence. When a Melbourne doctor spirals toward a midlife crisis and reunites with her erstwhile best friend, a bizarre trip to the Victorian Alps struggles to make sense of their splintered relationship and shared past. With stale performances and a graceless script, not even the gorgeous vistas of Victoria’s High Country can save the film from feeli...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

Eli Roth gives us a triple scoop of AI slop in the woefully tasteless 'Ice Cream Man' | This Is Film

Ice Cream Man is a morally repugnant mess. It masquerades as a high-concept slasher when it is nothing more than an AI-infested excuse for Eli Roth to amplify his kink for extreme violence. If you’re looking for the next Art the Clown from Terrifier, prepare to be both disgusted and disappointed. With writing, performances, humour, and direction this bad, it won’t come as a surprise when it competes with Citizen Vigilante for the worst film of the year. 


The premise of Ice Cream Man, a soft r...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

Jane Schoenbrun's surreal, sensual, and sensational Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a metatextual feast | This Is Film

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a metatextual celebration of horror’s unique capability to confront and via cathartic release give comfort to its audience. Jane Schoenbrun’s psychosexual slasher is hilarious, camp, romantic, and gorgeously complex. Take the rule book of everything you’ve come to know about teen slashers and prepare for a bloody and beautiful deconstruction.


Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma marks the final entry in what Jane is calling their “Screen Trilogy.” Their...
Phrasemaker •

MIFF 2026: Nino finds Théodore Pellerin wandering the streets of Paris in Pauline Loquès' moving, humanist debut feature | Phrasemaker

Pauline Loquès’ feature debut Nino is an aching slice-of-life French drama. With an obvious nod to Agnès Varda’s French New Wave opus Cléo from 5 to 7, the film follows a young Parisian man over one weekend after he receives a life-altering diagnosis. Winning awards at both Cannes Critics’ Week and the César Awards, Théodore Pellerin anchors this intimate, real-time unravelling with both shock and humanity. He imbues Nino with equal measures of tragedy and humour, trying with varied degrees of s...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

Grief, hedonism, and self-discovery collide in Sam Haynes’ chaotic coming-of-age debut 'Pools' | This Is Film

Figuring out what to do in life is rarely a journey ventured in a straight line. In Sam Haynes’ tender coming-of-age debut feature Pools, that uncertainty is captured through a group of pleasure-seeking summer school students. Leading them is Odessa A’zion’s impulsive college slacker Kennedy, distracted by the recent death of her father and the estrangement of her friend Delaney (Ariel Winter). Kennedy would rather keep her head submerged underwater rather than buried in a textbook. 


Drawing...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

2026’s 'Moana' proves Disney’s originality has sunk to the bottom of the ocean | This Is Film

Disney’s so-called live-action remakes of their beloved animated films have always felt mis-marketed. For the most part, they are still heavily animated – instead of cartoon animation, they rely on photorealistic CGI. There are usually some real humans acting in these digital spaces, but the overall exercise has been a nostalgia mining cash grab. They lobotomise these animated classics in the name of making them modern, “real” movies. The latest surgically engineered offering, Moana, feels despe...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Milly Alcock tries her best to salvage the super generic Supergirl

When James Gunn took over the DC universe, many fans delighted in his decision to do away with the murky and dour sensibilities of Zack Synder’s ‘DCEU’. The ‘Snyderverse’ fans may have been grumbling, but last year’s Superman provided a much needed sense of hope and comic book flair to the superhero film. While Superman wasn’t perfect by any means either, it provided a bright tone and introduced audiences to David Corenswet’s puppy-dog-personified Superman.In Craig Gillespie’s disappointing foll...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

Adrian Chiarella’s confident debut feature 'Leviticus' makes it hard for love to resist hate | This Is Film

There is a particular heartbreak in seeing those you love to turn seemingly against you. Someone you thought was a pillar of love and safety becomes a wall of hate and rejection. For a young queer person in regional Australia finding a romantic equal already feels rare enough; so, to have that connection denied, demonised, and reverse-engineered is an all-too-real horror. In Adrian Chiarella’s unnerving debut feature Leviticus, that fear is realised as two teenage boys are forced to confront the...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Pixar’s Toy Story 5 embraces familiar warmth to tackle childhood in the digital age | The Curb

By the time a franchise reaches its fifth entry, it’s rare for it to maintain the quality and innovation needed to sustain and satisfy its audience. Flop blockbusters such as Ice Age: Collision Course, Terminator Genisys, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, prove certain stories reached their natural conclusions multiple entries earlier, ending up presenting tired ideas and rehashed methods into new realms of diminishing returns. For the rare exceptions that rise above this, th...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Jaume Claret Muxart journeys along the Danube in the beautiful, beguiling and bewildering Strange River | The Curb

Strange River (Estrany riu) is a sensual coming-of-age drama that depicts queer awakening through picturesque lyricism, often favouring porous imagery over dialogue or conventional narrative. Following a family of five on an idyllic holiday along the Danube River, Jaume Claret Muxart’s debut feature is as alluring as it is elusive, blending reality and fantasy into a ponderous journey of desire, frustration, and familial reshaping.The film follows 16-year-old Didac (Jan Monter), a moody, sensiti...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

'Backrooms' is a unique but frustating sci-fi horror debut | This Is Film

Backrooms began as a creepypasta posted to a 4chan thread in 2019: a simple, slightly tilted image depicting a yellow-soaked, carpeted room that felt both uncanny and detached from reality. After years of forum discussion and lore-building came Kane Parsons, a YouTuber who, in early 2022, began a semi-anthological web series expanding on the extradimensional mythology of the Backrooms. 


Set in the 1990s, the series followed members of the research institute Async as they attempted to document...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Star Wars returns to the big-screen with The Mandalorian and Grogu, an exercise in galactic-scale entropy | The Curb

Since Disney acquired Lucasfilm, the Star Wars brand has rapidly become more of a corporate product and less an imaginative space opera. After countless TV series, both animated and live action, five feature films, and enough action figures and merchandise to fill a continent’s worth of landfill, the once-magical “galaxy far, far away” is now a tool of consumerist expansion. Despite a few diamonds in the rough, namely Andor and the final season of The Clone Wars, it feels like an age ago that St...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

David Lowery’s Mother Mary is a unique yet imperfect spiral of devotion, resentment, and artistic possession | This Is Film

Death is not the only way to grieve someone you love. Sometimes the deepest sorrow comes from living alongside the absence of someone still alive; through broken relationships, betrayals, or simply the quiet drift of wayward souls growing apart. There is a particular ache in caring for someone you feel deeply wounded by: once inseparable in each other’s lives, now distant and unreachable. Mother Mary, David Lowery’s beguiling, seductive, and obvious meditation on fame and friendship is determine...
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