Dating the Enemy (1996)
Aug 13, 2002Gender Exchange Comedy
An Australian variant on the bodyswap comedy in which couple Guy Pearce and Claudia Karvan end up in each other's bodies resulting in some likeable if predictable comic mishaps
Guy Pearce
Ravenous (1999)
Mar 27, 1999Cannibalism
Film about the soldiers at a fort on the American frontier who have descended to cannibalism. A good set-up falls apart due to a comedy treatment
The Time Machine (2002)
Apr 9, 2002Time Travel/H.G. Wells Adaptation
Remake of the classic H.G. Wells novel that comes with the novelty of being directed by Wells's great-grandson. More disappointingly it prefers to merely remake the 1960 film rather than return to the book
Bedtime Stories (2008)
Dec 28, 2008Bedtime Stories Come True Comedy
An unfunny Adam Sandler film in which he plays a guy whose bedtime stories come true. Sandler regards himself as the funniest guy in the room and doesn't even seem to be making an effort.
The Road (2009)
Nov 30, 2009Grim Post-Holocaust Survivalism
The extraordinary poetry of Cormac McCarthy's novel about a man trying to retain his humanity amid the harsh struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world is necessarily weakened in being translated to screen but the film still does a fine job of capturing the essence of the book
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)
Aug 27, 2011House of Goblins
Guillermo Del Toro produced cinematic remake of a 1970s tv movie, this creates a good deal of creepy mood and atmosphere with Katie Holmes as a mother who finds goblins in the cellar, but never pushes any of it in a way that jolts audiences in their seats
Lockout (2012)
May 5, 2012Future Orbiting Prison/Action
Luc Besson written action-prison film that blatantly borrows from Escape From New York. An entertaining comic-book of a movie, even if its depth exists no further than Guy Pearce tossing off flip one-liners
Prometheus (2012)
Jun 9, 2012Alien Prequel
Ridley Scott's promised prequel to Alien. The first half creates epic mystery but the answers provided are not nearly as interesting as promised, while the latter half disappointingly settles for doing the Alien standard with decidedly lesser effect
Iron Man Three (2013)
May 3, 2013Comic-Book Superhero
A major disappointment. Stripping the superhero of the show of his suit makes for no more than a regular action hero, while the film's reduction of Iron Man's No 1 villain to a cardboard threat ranks down alongside a Batsuit with nipples
The Rover (2014)
Jul 5, 2014Socially Collapsed Near Future
Impressive Australian film that recalls the Mad Max films. Rather than action spectacle, this feels like Mad Max as rewritten by Cormac McCarthy wherein a collapsed future echoes a beautifully written exploration of the soul of a man in a violent world
Equals (2015)
Jul 17, 2016Dystopia
Dystopian film about a future where emotion is forbidden – this owes much to George Lucas's THX 1138, right down to the blinding white-on-white look. The film is also hobbled by a non-acting Kristen Stewart
A Christmas Carol (2019)
Dec 25, 2020Miser's Redemption/Dark Adult Retelling
A tv mini-series that offers a dark, adult and definitely not family friendly version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale that reinvents the original in quite astonishing ways
Bloodshot (2020)
Apr 11, 2020Augmented Super-Soldier/Comic-Book Adaptation
That starts out seeming a standard mindless action film in which Vin Diesel is resurrected as an augmented super-soldier only for everything we assume to get turned on its head in interesting ways
Zone 414 (2021)
Oct 30, 2022Future Film Noir/Androids
Very much informed by Blade Runner, this features Guy Pearce as a futuristic detective on the trail of a missing girl in the android zone
The Shrouds (2024)
Jun 21, 2025Grave Camera Technology
At age 81, David Cronenberg is still on great form with this perversely fascinating work about the development of a technology that places cameras inside graves to observe corpses as they decay