Australian Book Review

Philippa Hawker Australian Book Review Feb 12, 2026 2/5 [Fennell] demonstrates no engagement with the extra-physical dimensions of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship, sidelining both the idea of the supernatural and the persistent intergenerational haunting that define the novel. Go to Full Review Wuthering Heights (2026) 57% - -

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Sep 2, 2025 3.5/5 The strength of Sorry, Baby is its unpredictability. The film is amusing in places where other directors might have chosen seriousness, and then suddenly full of dread, its veering tone mimicking Agnes’s interior state. Go to Full Review Sorry, Baby (2025) 97% - -

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Jul 29, 2025 2.5/5 A film adaptation of a book should be judged on its own merits, and unfortunately for co-directors and screenwriters Scott McGehee and David Siegel, their film is mediocre: watchable, yet totally forgettable. Go to Full Review The Friend (2024) 84% - -

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Sep 17, 2024 2/5 It’s a film that takes place in a nowhere made of other films; for all the cavities on show, it is depthless, and its violence is both numbing and fatuous. Go to Full Review The Substance (2024) 89% - -

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review May 9, 2024 3.5/5 The film’s ensemble cast is uniformly strong, including tiny Dzada Selim as kindergartener Mia, raucous yet wise beyond her years. Go to Full Review Housekeeping for Beginners (2023) 94% - -

Debbie Zhou Australian Book Review Feb 8, 2024 2.5/5 Ultimately, the film can’t shake off the weight of its unsmiling, earnest police protagonist. Go to Full Review Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024) 66% - -

Philippa Hawker Australian Book Review Dec 1, 2023 2.5/5 The Napoleon-Josephine relationship sits awkwardly alongside moments of spectacle, physicality, and dramatic scale. Go to Full Review Napoleon (2023) 58% 59%

Philippa Hawker Australian Book Review Nov 4, 2023 4/5 It is a story of murder, manipulation, and survival, an engrossing, deliberate work that also has expansive, unexpected moments and disconcerting juxtapositions. It is packed with vivid cameos and has three striking performances at its centre. Go to Full Review Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) 93% 84%

Philippa Hawker Australian Book Review Sep 14, 2023 2.5/5 In dispensing with Christie’s plot, Green and Branagh haven’t really brought anything strong or surprising to the narrative. It’s all ambiance and angle. If they are planning another Poirot, they need to rethink their approach. Go to Full Review A Haunting in Venice (2023) 75% 77%

Philippa Hawker Australian Book Review Jul 20, 2023 4/5 In French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning (Un beau matin), books play a significant role: as physical objects, gifts, talismans, sources of connection, works in progress. Above all, books can represent a life. Go to Full Review One Fine Morning (2022) 93% 61%

Philippa Hawker Australian Book Review Jul 20, 2023 3/5 The central performances are strong. Go to Full Review Dalíland (2022) 43% 95%

Keva York Australian Book Review Nov 4, 2021 4.5/5 [A] ravishing adaptation of Jack London's 1909 Künstlerroman. Go to Full Review Martin Eden (2019) 88% 70%

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Nov 20, 2019 2.5/5 The sense that we're watching events occur outside a real time or place distances us from them. The film's main achievement is in visual design. Go to Full Review Judy & Punch (2019) 77% 59%

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review May 17, 2019 3/5 Like so many American stories, Little Woods is a drama about personal agency, but it's also a dramatisation of what it means, in material terms, to have very little agency to exercise. Go to Full Review Little Woods (2018) 95% - -

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Jan 11, 2019 2.5/5 ...why render it all over again, especially when the whole scenario is left to fizzle out, and is never revived? Go to Full Review Loro (2018) 79% 59%

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Dec 1, 2018 3.5/5 Plummer plays the part with an emotional discipline that belies his youth. Go to Full Review Lean on Pete (2017) 90% 74%

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Sep 6, 2018 3/5 You Were Never Really Here feels much more remote and unreal in its scenario, and though it has been compared several times already to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), I'm not sure that the comparison holds weight. Go to Full Review You Were Never Really Here (2017) 89% 64%

Anwen Crawford Australian Book Review Aug 15, 2018 5/5 Some viewers may feel that Lee is being didactic, or literal, but I think that BlacKkKlansman is a vital film arriving at a critical moment. Go to Full Review BlacKkKlansman (2018) 95% 83%

Eloise Ross Australian Book Review Jul 10, 2018 3/5 Looking For Grace has a touching dnouement, moving but unsentimental - one of Brooks's specialties - but it comes too late after the uneven dialogue and the flat humour. Go to Full Review Looking for Grace (2015) 44% 21%

Jake Wilson Australian Book Review Jul 9, 2018 3/5 This imperfect but unusual film suggests understanding might finally be out of reach - to the point where it is hard to draw any certain moral. Go to Full Review Joe Cinque's Consolation (2016) 73% 64%