One of the curious dichotomies of Katy Perry is that she can be an incredible pop star while contending with the fact that she is kinda boring. Star can command a stage, but in 2026 lacks the ongoing curiosity factor that is so important for anybody two decades into a
The thing with E. Jean Carroll is that she was plenty worthy of a documentary about her life long before she took Donald Trump to court. Acclaimed journalist; author and editor; successful magazine columnist; Emmy-nominated comedy writer; and cable television host at the height of the 1990s daytime talk
Sometimes a filmmaker does something with a musician biography that isn’t just the usual that I have to admire it even if I don’t necessarily like it. You know what I mean? At least that’s what I felt when watching Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s Broken
In 1986, Whitney Houston sang that, “I believe the children are our future,” on her hit single, "The Greatest Love of All". “Treat them well and let them lead the way.” Depending on your feelings about the youth of the day, such a line could be read as
Back in 2013, merely weeks into having moved from Melbourne to the United States, I was accepted onto the FIPRESCI jury for the San Francisco International Film Festival. I had briefly spent some time there with an old friend while on a week-long stopover from Australia to my final
Sometimes the conversations at film festivals are awfully highfalutin. Lots of discussion that runs into the academic or the high brow. Which, don’t get me wrong, is often part of the fun about film festivals; being able to navigate a story or a character or an image with others
I once read that Michael Haneke made The White Ribbon (Das weiße band) in black and white because that is how contemporary eyes have always viewed that period of time. Whether through photography, the silent cinema of its age or even the black and white of ink on paper, the
Some years ago, Michael Moore was on one of those award season roundtables and spoke, as he is want to do, about how documentaries don’t always need to be the vegetables of cinema. Sometimes, people would like to go and see a documentary on a Friday night and not
I recently (well, nearly a year ago now!) turned 40. I told myself, “I don’t want to be 80 kilos when I turn 40.” So, I put in some hustle and made it work. It felt good. I’ve never really thought my body was all that impressive in
I will be honest and say I was not all that familiar with the Chicano culture at the heart of American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez. I went into David Alvarado’s biography documentary of the titular Luis Valdez—a man whose political and artistic achievements are synonymous with
It can always throw me a little to see a major studio’s ident at the start of a festival film. Especially a documentary. And especially the Universal logo, with its bravura fanfare and grand scale vision of a twirling globe. It made much more sense rather quickly with Mohammed
Like the best house gathering, Once Upon a Time in Harlem evolves and shifts throughout the affair. Guests effortlessly veer from one subject to another—before you even realise you’re no longer listening to a conversation about one thing, you’re engrossed in another one altogether. Some of the