Reviews

Reviews

Indigenous Artists Reinterpreting Culture Through Modern Forms and Media

Reviews: Marramarra: Indigenous Artists Making History Visible, Brook Garru Andrew and Jessica Neath, Newsouth and The Art of Kaylene Whiskey, Natalie King [ed], Thames & Hudson The idea of Indigenous art may call to mind more traditional artforms, but Indigenous art continues to evolve. There are many Indigenous artists reinterpreting culture through modern forms and […]

Nick Mattiske · 15 November 2025

Reviews

Out of Many, One: Faith and Disconnection in Plur1bus

Note: This commentary on the first two episodes of Plur1bus contains spoilers. Apple TV’s Plur1bus begins with an unnerving paradox: a world unified in perfect happiness, and one woman left outside that joy. Vince Gilligan, best known for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, trades moral corrosion for existential isolation. The brilliant opening two episodes “We Is Us” and “Pirate […]

Adrian Drayton · 13 November 2025

Reviews

The Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster Revives An All-Time Great

Review: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Final Fantasy Tactics is a game I’ve wanted to play for a long time. The original, released in 1998 in the US for the PlayStation, never made it over to Australia; there was a remake for the PSP too that was also released on iPhone, but I never […]

James O'Connor · 11 November 2025

Reviews

Back to the Future

Review: Future Boy, Michael J Fox (and Nelle Fortenberry), Headline This year sees the fortieth anniversary of the making and release of Back to the Future. Michael J Fox’s book comes piggybacking on the anniversary, and centres on the fact that during the filming Fox was inhabiting parallel universes – making a TV sitcom during […]

Nick Mattiske · 10 November 2025

Reviews

A Story of Grace Beneath the Rubble 

Review: Roofman Based on a true story, Roofman (2025) brings together Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in a quietly gripping drama about crime, isolation, and unexpected grace. Directed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines), the film follows Jeffrey Manchester, a former U.S. Army Reserve soldier whose unusual method of burglary (entering McDonald’s restaurants through […]

Aditee Vora · 8 November 2025

Reviews

Scott Derrickson: A Christian Director Quietly Reshaping Hollywood

Scott Derrickson is an odd fit for the tidy categories Hollywood likes to sell. He’s the man behind mainstream, effects-driven fare such as Doctor Strange (2016) and tough, intimate horror like The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Sinister (2012) and The Black Phone (2021). He’s also an openly professing Christian who talks about faith as formative for his work – not as […]

Adrian Drayton · 4 November 2025

Reviews

Ecological Wisdom from the Serpent’s Tale

Review: Snake Talk, Tyson Yunkaporta and Megan Kelleher, Text Publishing In the Jewish-Christian scriptures the snake gets a bad rap. In other spiritual traditions, the snake is more celebrated, the Rainbow Serpent being one example. Tyson Yunkaporta’s latest book, written with his wife Megan Kelleher, is something of an attempt at reptilian reputation rehabilitation, but […]

Nick Mattiske · 4 November 2025

Reviews

Sonic Racing Speeds Into Second Place

Review: Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has released within a few months of Mario Kart World – the first new Mario Kart game in 11 years – and it’s hard to imagine that Sega isn’t feeling some pressure to perform against it. Mario and Sonic are not the bitter rivals they were during the […]

James O'Connor · 25 October 2025

Reviews

The Rock’s New Biopic Could Stand To Hit A Little Harder

Film review: The Smashing Machine The Safdie Brothers rose to prominence in 2017 – a decade into their careers directing together – with Good Time, perhaps the film that established the exciting potential of a post-Twilight Robert Pattinson. Their next film, 2019’s Uncut Gems, was even more seismic: the growing contingency of folks who stump […]

James O'Connor · 21 October 2025

Reviews

Finding the Beauty in Horror

Game Review: Silent Hill F After 2024’s successful Silent Hill 2 Remake, the future of Konami’s long-running psychological horror franchise looks to be much brighter than the game’s traditionally foggy settings. In Silent Hill f, the series goes to a new location for the first time, taking the horror from the titular town into 1960s […]

Jonathan Foye · 21 October 2025

Reviews

Ningaloo – ‘desert with its feet in the sea’

Review: Ningaloo: Australia’s Wild Wonder, Tim Winton and Cindy Lane, Fremantle Press Tim Winton is well known for his passion for the marine environments of Western Australia, through his fiction and his conservation work, for which he has been awarded an Order of Australia. In this book for young readers he, along with illustrator Cindy […]

Nick Mattiske · 17 October 2025

Reviews

Making Moral Points About Difference and Welcome

Reviews: After the Great Storm, Ann Dombroski, Transit Lounge & The Theory of Everything, Yumna Kassab, Ultimo Press Here are two Australian novelists pushing the boundaries of fiction, playing with format and narrative, but also using fiction’s flexibility to make moral points about difference and welcome. Ann Dombroski’s book has some similarities to recent dystopian […]

Nick Mattiske · 9 October 2025

Reviews

One Battle After Another Is The Defining Film of 2025

Film Review: One Battle After Another In the opening scene of One Battle After Another, members of a revolutionary group break into a Californian detention center, rescuing immigrants held in cages while subduing, restraining and humiliating their captors. It’s a clear statement of intent from the movie, establishing a clear political position while also being […]

James O'Connor · 2 October 2025

Reviews

Brilliant Minds Shows Us That True Vision Isn’t About Eyesight

Review: Brilliant Minds  Medical dramas have long thrived on heightened tension—emergency room chaos, impossible diagnoses, and the occasional moral crisis. At their worst, they fall into formula: a “disease of the week” resolved by a heroic doctor just in time for the closing credits. HBO Max’s Brilliant Minds, starring Zachary Quinto, could easily have landed there. Instead, […]

Adrian Drayton · 30 September 2025

Reviews

America’s Religious Recession

Review: Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, Christian Smith, Oxford University Press In recent decades there have been many books arguing not only that religious beliefs are misplaced, but that religion is not good for culture and should be made obsolete. This is not one of those books. It is […]

Nick Mattiske · 26 September 2025

Reviews

The Rabbit Hole of Sovereign Citizens

Review: Conspiracy Nation, Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson, Ultimo Press The recent events in Victoria with the manhunt of (alleged) police killer Dezi Freeman, as well as continued protests in our cities, have again put conspiracy theorists into the spotlight. This book from journalists Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson, who go down the Australian rabbit […]

Nick Mattiske · 19 September 2025