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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 •

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...
Novastream •

Curry Barker’s feature debut 'Obsession' is a funny, horrific twist on getting exactly what you wish for | Novastream

The phrase “be careful what you wish for” warns that our desires can bring unintended consequences. The classic horror story The Monkey’s Paw from 1902 by W.W. Jacobs remains the definitive example: Mr and Mrs White’s wishes are granted literally, but at a cruel, ironic, or devastating cost for daring to tempt fate. In his feature debut, Obsession, writer/director Curry Barker pushes that idea to its most unsettling and darkly comedic extreme. When a shy music store employee uses a supernatural...
This Is Film - Conversations in Film and Pop Cultu •

A supernova of expensive animation can’t stop 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' feeling lost in space | This Is Film

When The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed $1.3 billion at the box office in 2023, it set a somewhat disappointing precedent for Illumination. The film’s success suggested that nostalgia, brand recognition, and a thin, surface-level script were enough to drive massive returns. By being essentially a handsomely made child-minder, it turned what felt like a flashy distraction for kids into a cultural juggernaut. Many audiences brushed off criticism with the familiar refrain that it was “just a Mario...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Ryan Gosling charts new career territory in 2026’s most unlikely and endearing hit, Project Hail Mary

Who would have guessed that the first blockbuster hit of 2026, and Amazon MGM’s biggest debut yet, would be a story about a man and a rock-shaped alien? Despite remaining culturally dominant through the Spider-Verse films, this is Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s first live-action directed feature since 22 Jump Street. With dazzling visuals, a hopeful narrative, and a greatest-hits remix of sci-fi’s most beloved tropes; Project Hail Mary is a rousing reminder that teaching, learning, and share...
The Curb | Film and Culture •

Less hiding, more hunting - Samara Weaving returns in a gory, high-energy sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come | The Curb

Co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have stayed busy since Ready or Not, helming both Scream V and Scream VI, as well as the vampire comedy Abigail. It’s been seven years since Samara Weaving’s Grace lit a cigarette in the aftermath of watching her Satan-worshipping in-laws go up in flames.The premise was a killer hook: survive a deadly game of hide-and-seek on your wedding night to earn your place in an ultra-wealthy and ultra-cursed family. The film became an instant hit, prai...
Novastream •

Primate Review | An uneven chimp-carnage horror with aspirations of Donkey Kong–level fun | Novastream

Considering director Johannes Roberts’ previous effort was the thoroughly detestable film Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, expectations for Primate were understandably low. While it offers a few dashes of tension, terror, and chimp-chilling horror, the film ultimately settles into a middling slasher, content to fluff around in tawdry B-movie thrills and questionable execution.
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