March 14, 2025 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

(courtesy Alliance Francaise French Film Festival) OOOO OOOO

AFFFF25 movie review: All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!)

(courtesy Alliance Francaise French Film Festival) OOOO OOOO

Every path has a price: The Last of Us drops a bleak, horror-filled but compelling full trailer

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOT“You can’t stop this.” After a global pandemic destroys civilization, a hardened survivor takes charge of a 14-year-old girl who may be humanity’s last hope. Five years after the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie are drawn into conflict with each other and a world Continue Reading

Oscars catch-up movie review: A Real Pain

(courtesy IMP Awards) Much as we like to think we are up and close and personal with real life, that we are intimately and bruisingly acquainted with the slings and arrows of grave fortune, we are, for the greater part protected and inured to the horrors that simply being alive Continue Reading

Break out of your role: Thoughts on Interior Chinatown

(courtesy IMP Awards) How powerful are the stories we tell ourselves, individually and as a society? Pretty damn powerful if Interior Chinatown is to be believed, a streaming show based on Charles Yu’s book of the same name that takes meta (the idea, not the company, thank you) to a Continue Reading

Left to their own devices … Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight trailer

(courtesy IMDb) SNAPSHOTIn the midst of the first millennium, Rome is desperate to conquer the last independent village in Gaul — the home of Astérix and Obélix. The secret to the Gauls’ battle superiority is a magic potion, but when the potion master is struck by amnesia, the villagers are Continue Reading

Fire up the streaming algorithm! Two new shows for your viewing delight – The Studio and Government Cheese

(via Shutterstock) The bounty of streaming continues! True, finding the time to watch it all is a challenge – I’m not sure when TV went from escapist fun to a timetabling-intensive pursuit but here we are – but with so many great shows to watch, it’s the kind of challenge Continue Reading

Book review: Death Valley by Melissa Broder

(courtesy Bloomsbury.com) One of the qualities most lauded among people under stress is the ability to go on face of incalculable and often heavily wearing odds. And while resilience in any form is to be admired, what is frequently missed when we are admiringly placing people under great duress on Continue Reading

Grab the popcorn! It’s time for another mini-mass of movie trailers – Night of the Zoopocalypse, A Nice Indian Boy + Bullet Train Explosion

(via Shutterstock) A mixed bag at the cinema this time around but who doesn’t love some eclectic popcorn and choc top-accompanied visual entertainment? Bring it on and let’s giddily switch between animation and rom-com and action, a genre expansive romp through the movies which can only do us good. Well, Continue Reading

AFFFF25 movie review: Souleymane’s Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane)

(courtesy IMDb) When did compassion become a dirty word? In our modern age of plenty and digital connectivity when we should be feeling that we are more of a community than not, humanity is pulling up the drawbridge and staring stonily, and often with bristling, cruel hatred, at those looking Continue Reading

Book review: Never Ever Forever by Karina May

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Falling in love is really quite delightful. Stating the obvious there I know, but sometimes when you dive into a rom-com that’s not exactly humming along on all rose-petal fueled cylinders, you could be forgiven for wondering if it’s worth all of the misassumptions, toing-and-froing and Continue Reading