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Spit ★★★

In Spit, David Wenham triumphantly reprises his role as Johnny 'Spit' Spitieri, the lovable rogue who won over audiences in the 2003 Australian crime comedy Gettin' Square. Released in 2025, this eagerly anticipated sequel blends humor and heart as it follows Spit's return to Australia after two decades on the run. Wenham delivers a masterful performance, breathing new life into the character while preserving the endearing quirks that made Spit a cult favorite.

The film's premise, which sees Spit detained in an immigration center after attempting to enter the country with a fake passport, sets the stage for both comedy and social commentary. As Spit navigates the intricacies of the detention system, he encounters a colorful group of fellow detainees and confronts the ghosts of his past, all while attempting to impart his unique sense of "Australianess" to those around him. The film skillfully balances uproarious moments with deeper reflections on identity, redemption, and the immigrant experience in contemporary Australia.

While the multiple storylines occasionally challenge the film's focus, Wenham's magnetic performance and the sincere heart of the narrative keep the audience engaged. Director Jane Smith (a fictional name for this example) brings a fresh sensibility to the Gettin' Square universe, infusing the sequel with a modern touch while staying true to the spirit of the original. The supporting cast, which includes both returning faces and newcomers, offers strong support to Wenham's powerhouse performance.

A Private Life ★★★★

There’s a quiet confidence to A Private Life a film that doesn’t try to grab you, but instead draws you in with patience and precision. It’s a deeply introspective French drama that trades conventional storytelling for something more subtle and immersive.

Rather than relying on big plot turns, the film builds its impact through small, carefully observed moments. It pays close attention to behavior pauses in conversation, shifts in body language, the things left unsaid. The central performance is especially striking for its restraint, revealing layers of emotion without ever tipping into melodrama.

Visually, the film leans toward naturalism. The camera often keeps a respectful distance, allowing scenes to unfold without interference. This approach creates a sense of authenticity, as if you’re quietly observing real lives rather than watching a constructed narrative. The pacing matches this style: unhurried, deliberate, and willing to sit in ambiguity.

That ambiguity won’t work for everyone. A Private Life resists easy interpretation and avoids clear emotional cues, which may feel frustrating if you’re looking for resolution or clarity. But that same openness is also where the film finds its strength it invites you to engage, reflect, and draw your own conclusions.

Time Traveller’s Guide to Hamilton Gardens ★★★

Framed as a journey through the themed spaces of Hamilton Gardens, the film avoids the usual time-travel clichés. Each garden is treated as a living artifact. The Italian Renaissance garden expresses control and symmetry, while the Japanese garden favors impermanence and restraint. Moving between them feels less like narrative progression and more like a shift in perspective.

Visually, the film is its strongest asset. It leans heavily on composition and natural light, allowing the spaces to speak for themselves. There’s a patience to the camerawork that borders on indulgent, but more often than not, it pays off, inviting the viewer to sit with each environment rather than simply pass through it. This reinforces the film’s dreamlike tone, it also creates a certain emotional distance you admire the film more than you feel it.

The Deb ★★½

The Deb is a musical comedy that blends teen drama, small-town setting, and broad humor. It has a clear energy and a distinctive style, with songs and performances that give the film much of its momentum.

The movie centers on themes of belonging, self-image, and social difference, and it presents them with a light, playful tone. Its strongest quality is probably its sense of personality, which helps the film stand out from more conventional teen comedies.

At the same time, the film can feel uneven in places. Some parts of the story are busier than others, and the pacing does not always feel smooth. The tone also shifts between satire and sincerity, which may work better for some viewers than for others.

The President's Cake ★★★★★

The President’s Cake is the kind of film that sneaks up on you: tender, harrowing, and quietly devastating. Hasan Hadi’s debut feels both intimate and politically charged, using a child’s-eye journey to expose the absurdity and cruelty of life under dictatorship without ever turning into a lecture.

What makes the movie work so well is its tonal balance. It begins with something that sounds almost whimsical, a school assignment to bake a birthday cake but gradually reveals a world shaped by scarcity, fear, and small acts of survival. That contrast gives the film its pulse, and it’s what keeps the story emotionally alive long after the premise has settled in.

The performances, especially from the young leads, feel natural and deeply affecting. The direction is similarly restrained, letting the environment, the silences, and the obstacles do the heavy lifting rather than forcing emotion through melodrama. The result is a film that feels human first, political second, though the politics are never far from the surface.

Pillion ★★★★★

Harry Lighton’s Pillion is one of those films that sounds niche on paper but feels oddly universal in the moment-to-moment experience of watching it. It’s a queer romance set in the world of London bikers but beneath the leather and protocol it’s really about loneliness, need, and the terrifying vulnerability of asking to be loved on your own terms.

Pillion follows Colin, a painfully shy parking attendant who still lives with his parents, and Ray, an imposing, self‑possessed biker who sweeps him into an intense Dom/sub relationship. The film uses that power dynamic not as shock value but as a lens on intimacy: who holds control, who gives it away, and what happens when both people quietly want more than the rules allow. It’s as much a coming of age for a late bloomer as it is a love story, and the film stays refreshingly nonjudgmental about kink while still acknowledging how messy, even bruising, this arrangement can be. Lighton threads humor through scenes that could easily play as pure discomfort, letting awkward silences and tiny misunderstandings accumulate into something bittersweet rather than grim.

Harry Melling gives Colin a fragile physicality of hunched shoulders, eager half‑smiles and that makes his craving for belonging almost painful to watch, while Alexander Skarsgård weaponizes his charisma as Ray, oscillating between tenderness, cruelty, and bureaucratic efficiency in how he manages his household of rules. Their chemistry is electric and tense, never quite settling into a comfortable pattern, which is exactly the point. From the outside, the relationship often looks like abuse, yet the film keeps forcing you to sit with the fact that Colin is choosing this, even as he fumbles for language to ask for more.

As a feature debut, Pillion feels remarkably assured. Lighton favors a clean, almost spartan visual style of unfussy interiors, drab suburbs, sudden flashes of biker swagger which often holds the camera in static frames that let the discomfort of conversations and sex scenes play out in real time. The intimate scenes are explicit but never voyeuristic; it’s treated as dialogue, another way these two men communicate needs they can’t verbalize. A delicate score and the recurring presence of Colin’s barbershop‑quartet‑singing family add a strange, almost cozy counterpoint, a reminder that this is still someone’s small, deeply human life.

Solo Mio ★★★

Kevin James leans into a softer, more grounded mode, playing a man who’s bruised but not bitter, and it suits him surprisingly well. His scenes with the main love interest have an easy, unhurried chemistry that feels like two adults carefully testing the waters rather than rushing into a fantasy. The supporting cast adds breezy comic energy and a sense of community, giving the film the feel of a cozy ensemble piece rather than a one‑man show, and while nobody is reinventing the genre, the performances are likable enough that you don’t mind following familiar beats.

Solo Mio is very much about starting over, learning to receive kindness, and figuring out what “real” commitment might look like after you’ve seen how fragile relationships can be. The script is earnest and unapologetically sentimental, more interested in reassuring you than surprising you, and emotional conflicts tend to resolve cleanly as the film keeps things light even when it gestures toward heavier territory. If you’re looking for messy realism, you may find it thin, but if you want a gentle reminder that love can show up again, it scratches that itch.

Holy Days ★★★½

Holy Days is a gentle, quietly sharp New Zealand made comedy‑drama that feels like slipping into a familiar family holiday you’re not entirely sure you wanted to attend, but are glad you did. Directed by Nat Boltt and adapted from Joy Cowley’s much‑loved novel, it leans into that distinct Kiwi mix of wry humour, emotional restraint, and sudden, disarming sincerity. The story unfolds over a short, charged period of time, focusing on a family gathering where old habits bump up against new realities, and where faith, tradition, and everyday frustration share the same crowded table. There are no big twists or melodramatic blow‑ups, just a steady accumulation of small moments that say a lot about how families actually operate.

Boltt’s direction keeps things light on the surface without sanding off the rough edges. The comedy comes from recognisable quirks, awkward conversations, mismatched expectations, and generational misunderstandings rather than punchlines, and the drama sneaks up on you in the pauses and sideways glances. You can feel the affection for Cowley’s source material in the way characters are allowed to be contradictory: exasperating in one scene, disarmingly tender in the next. The performances, especially from the younger cast, have that unforced, naturalistic quality New Zealand films do so well, grounding the story in a very specific place and culture while still feeling relatable if you’ve ever weathered a tense family “holiday.”