The story is completely bonkers as it involves stitching a dog’s head to a human cop’s body to create a super cop. The only problem is they forgot to inform the budding Doctor Frankenstein of the particulars and the title character can only communicate via barking.

If the dog is the good guy, you have to know the baddie will be a cat and in this case, it’s Petey voiced by Pete Davidson. This malevolent feline is a perfect fit for the slacker ethic that Davidson does so well. It makes for an arch enemy that resides more in the comic vein than the outright evil category.

With its individual look and irreverence towards the stock standard ethos of “If it’s got animated animals it must be super cute and cuddly”, Dog Man impresses with an identity that is far from typical for films of this genre. There is much to enjoy for kids of all ages.
Rob Hudson
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From DreamWorks Animation—creators of the beloved blockbuster franchises Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon and The Boss Baby—comes the canine-crime-fighting film adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s New York Times bestselling literary phenomenon: Dog Man.

When a faithful police dog and his human police officer owner are injured together on the job, a harebrained but life-saving surgery fuses the two of them together and Dog Man is born. Dog Man is sworn to protect and serve—and fetch, sit and roll over.

As Dog Man embraces his new identity and strives to impress his Chief (Lil Rel Howery, Get Out, Free Guy), he must stop the pretty evil plots of feline supervillain Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson; Saturday Night Live, The King of Staten Island). Petey’s latest plan is to clone himself, creating the kitten Lil Petey, to double his ability to do crime stuff. Things get complicated, though, when Lil Petey forges an unexpected bond with Dog Man.

When Lil Petey falls into the clutches of a common enemy, Dog Man and Petey reluctantly join forces in an action-packed race against time to rescue the young kitten. In the process, they discover the power of family (and kittens!) to bring even the most hostile foes together.

Dog Man also stars Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers, Rango) as TV reporter Sarah Hatoff; Poppy Liu (Hacks, The Afterparty) as Petey’s assistant, Butler; Emmy nominee Stephen Root (Barry, King of the Hill) as Grampa; Billy Boyd (the Lord of the Rings franchise, Seed of Chucky) as Sarah’s cameraman, Seamus; and Emmy and Golden Globe winner Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras) as Flippy the fish.

Dog Man is directed by Emmy winner Peter Hastings (The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness), whose credits include the groundbreaking animated series Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. The film is produced by Karen Foster (Spirit Untamed), who served as co-producer on DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon.

Launched in 2016 by Dav Pilkey—the #1 global bestselling author and award-winning illustrator of the Captain Underpants books—the Dog Man Scholastic series now includes 12 books. The series has more than 60 million copies in print and has been translated into 45 languages. Cat Kid Comic Club, a spin-off of Dog Man launched in 2020, has also topped bestseller lists around the world. The most recent Dog Man book, Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea, was overall the #1 bestselling children’s book in the U.S. in 2023, across all children’s formats and ages. Pilkey’s newest book in the Dog Man Series, Dog Man: Big Jim Begins, is set to release on December 3, 2024.

DreamWorks Animation’s Dog Man will be distributed by Universal Pictures.
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Brokers on Wall Street use a technique called Short Selling where they bet on the decline of a company’s fortunes to make money. It’s based on borrowing a stock, selling the stock and then buying the stock back to return it to the lender. If the stock price goes down, then you’ll pay less to replace the shares and make a profit.

If that sounds dubious, it’s probably because it is. Dumb Money follows the story of Keith Gill (Paul Dano) a video blog host who helped to lead a group of investors who bought stock of an American retailer called GameStop. Some big money firms had bet that the company’s stock would decrease in value and saw a way to make money off this misfortune. Gill and the people who followed him turned that around.

Hollywood films can do a great job of making a complex issue understandable but not always without dumbing down the subject matter considerably. This film sidesteps that problem by trusting its audience to follow its narrative and pay attention. For those that do, it’s a riveting and entertaining yarn.
Rob Hudson
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Dumb Money is the ultimate David vs. Goliath tale, based on the insane true story of everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop (yes, the mall videogame store) into the world’s hottest company.

In the middle of everything is regular guy Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock and posting about it. When his social posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets rich – until the billionaires fight back, and both sides find their worlds turned upside down.

Dumb Money also stars Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley and Seth Rogen. Directed by Craig Gillespie, written by Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo, based on the book “The Antisocial Network” by Ben Mezrich.
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The Transformers films have always operated at a high level of visual spectacle and basic human endeavour and the new edition is no different. Things have improved notably now that they are casting humans with more real appeal than being just eye candy even though they give them very little to do.

Stakes have risen and it’s nothing less than the complete annihilation of planet Earth at stake. With the introduction of a new set of adversaries, the Terrorcons who are led by Scourge (Peter Dinklage) and answer to the planet-eating dark god Unicron (Colman Domingo), Earth might become his latest snack.

The amount of visual information present during some of the fight scenes can be almost overwhelming as the efforts by the computer animators to up the level of detail is impressive. It’s the film’s strongest trait and it’s needed as the storyline is minimal and the character development slight. As an example of where CGI is at present, it heralds a new world and that is both a good and bad thing.
Rob Hudson
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Returning to the action and spectacle that have captured moviegoers around the world, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ‘90s globetrotting adventure with the Autobots and introduce a whole new faction of Transformer – the Maximals – to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons.

Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, the film arrives in Australian cinemas June 22, 2023.
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Returning to the action and spectacle that have captured moviegoers around the world, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ‘90s globetrotting adventure with the Autobots and introduce a whole new faction of Transformer – the Maximals – to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons.

Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, the film arrives in Australian cinemas June 22, 2023.
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Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Tobe Nwigwe, Peter Cullen, Ron Perlman, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, Liza Koshy, John DiMaggio, David Sobolov, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Pete Davidson, Cristo Fernández, the film arrives in Australian cinemas June 22, 2023.
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Gleaming details from the advertising and trailers that the film is marketed as a horror comedy, you think to yourself I hope these youths start getting picked off and soon. Sticking with it does have its payoff in part two though.

From the midpoint on, it’s very funny and its social commentary is as deadly as its body count. The hurricane party becomes less the cause of the mayhem and more the backdrop for human maleficence.

By the film’s end, several scenes feature verbal exchanges that will have you rolling in the aisle. And in the grand tradition of work in this genre, the big reveal will have you going back in your mind to both tally the body count and see the film in a whole different light.
Rob Hudson
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With a hurricane bearing down, a group of rich 20-somethings hole up in a remote family mansion stocked with food, flashlights, and drugs, ready to party their way through the storm. Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) has brought her new girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova) to meet her childhood friend, David (Pete Davidson), his girlfriend, Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), and their friends Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) and Alice (Rachel Sennott), who’s brought her older (as in 40-year-old) boyfriend, Greg (Lee Pace).

As night falls, lines are railed, and simmering grudges re- surface, and the group decides to play one of their favorite games: Bodies Bodies Bodies. One player is designated the murderer, the lights go out, a victim gets tapped on the shoulder, and everyone tries to guess who the killer was. But when the house’s power is cut, and people start getting killed for real, the old friends must survive the night and find the murderer in their midst—if they can just get over themselves first.

Starring Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games, The Hate U Give), Maria Bakalova (breakout star of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Myha’la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), with Lee Pace (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Pete Davidson (Saturday Night Live), Bodies Bodies Bodies will be released in Aussie cinemas September 15!
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