My name is Chris. I live on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia. I love film, television and books (and lots of other things too!) and I love writing about them! This is a simple site designed purely to share my writing with whoever is interested. Hopefully you are inspired to immerse yourself in the magnificent media that I write about. Maybe you get a good recommendation or two. Maybe you will disagree with my views. Overall, I hope you enjoy!

My Favourites

To get to know me and my tastes a little, I thought I’d share some of my favourite movies, tv shows and books.

⇒Film

Oh boy do I find picking favourites hard! There are just so many amazing films but I will try and put a cap on myself and give you five. And I know, not a lot of ‘classics’, I’m working on it!

La La Land (2016) dir. Damien Chazelle

This was the film to do it for me. I remember exactly where I first saw this in theatres. I remember how it made me feel like I was floating when I left the cinema. Like my eyes had been opened to some magical world. This movie spurred my love of film, it made want to write and talk about movies. The music is absolutely euphoric, the cinematography is gorgeous, the on-screen chemistry between Emma and Ryan is off-the-charts. It’s why I want to go to the movies!

My Neighbour Totoro (1988) dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Miyazaki is a master. I didn’t particularly connect to his films at first, but now I think they are stone-cold masterpieces. My Neighbour Totoro is just beyond special. It captures childhood unlike any other film. It is just a beautiful, emotional and stunningly animated film that I will treasure forever. I mean did I mention the animation, and the music?! Just off the scales good!

Parasite (2019) dir. Bong Joon Ho

Again, I will never forget how I felt watching this movie for the first time. This film rightly set the world on fire and became the first foreign language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. It is perfect. It is vicious, bold and angry. It is superbly constructed, astoundingly acted and contains some of the best sequences you will ever see.

Oppenheimer (2023) dir. Christopher Nolan

Recency bias aside, this might be Nolan’s best film. It might be the best film of the 2020’s so far. As that absolutely soul-crushing and brilliant ending faded to black I thought “That’s one of the best movies I have ever seen!” How Nolan turned a dense autobiography of Oppenheimer’s life that involved 20+ years of research into an immersive fast-paced thrill ride without compromising the integrity of the real-life history is genuinely incredible. The cast may be one of the best and largest ever assembled, the non-linear storytelling is insanely well executed and this movie looks and sounds BIG in the best way.

Past Lives (2023) dir. Celine Song

Another 2023 release that knocked my socks off in a different, more subtle way. Celine Song’s love triangle romance is one of the best written films of the decade. She crafts a realistic story infused with one overarching question, “What if?” What if you were my soulmate, not my husband I married in America? What if we had met in a past life? Are we meant to be together? This movie creeps up on you and then hits you emotionally like a freight train. The performances are just utterly perfect, and no one in the story is made out to be a villain – a common trope in rom-coms or love triangles. Just brilliant.

⇒Television

Lost 

I love Lost. I love the ending of Lost! I know, controversial! This show is just sci-fi television at its finest. Do the promised pay-offs all satisfy by the end? Not quite. Does the show go a bit off the rails towards the end? Maybe. However, if you just let this show take you with it, it is so so worth it. The characters are just incredible, and there are truly some awe-inspiring and jaw-dropping moments of science-fiction that fans of the genre will just absolutely love.

The Office (US Version)

I just adore good television comedies. They have seen me through many seasons of life and revisiting them feels like catching up with an old friend. There is a reason this is a cliched favourite, because it is that good! The cast are just superbly funny and there is also just so much heart to this show. The emotional connection to the characters is what drives you through the seasons.

Arrested Development 

This show (and I mean the first three seasons only) is one of the most underrated tv shows. It might be the best written comedy tv show ever? The sheer amount of layers of the joke-writing, the way that jokes can pay off episodes later, the absolutely perfect cast and the most ridiculously immeshed plot lines make this such a pleasure to rewatch.

Breaking Bad 

Again, this show is a cliche because it is that good. The performances of Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn and Giancarlo Esposito rival any television performance in history. The writing, the writing! The five seasons of Breaking Bad are all spectacularly consistent. This show is just drama dynamite an worth every piece of praise and trophy it has ever received.

⇒Books

Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarity 

This was the novel that made me a Liane Moriarity fan for life and subsequently read every novel she has ever written. Moriarity is a master of interiority. She can make a story of some kindergarten mothers as thrilling and immersive as any high action crime or thriller novel. She has such a knack for writing real characters, intensely flawed human beings capable of the absolute worst yet searching for love and human connection like we all do. I don’t know how she can write with such razor-sharp accuracy, it’s difficult to remember that these are fictional characters. Plus the story is a barn-burner too!

A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles

Amor Towles is one of the best writers working today. He doesn’t miss. A Gentleman in Moscow shot him into the stratosphere and this is just such a superbly written book that you want to live in it and never leave. Towles adds vibrancy, richness and specific detail to his stories, bringing texture to his prose that is hard to find in other novels.

Lola in the Mirror – Trent Dalton

Trent Dalton has emerged in the past few years as one of Australia’s most brilliant story-tellers. Boy Swallows Universe was a revelation, a literary debut that was absolutely masterful. Yet I think his latest novel is even better. The use of the drawings of the main character Lola interspersed throughout this novel is a stroke of genius and adds so much depth to the story. However it’s Dalton’s magical realism that he weaves through his tale that expertly balances hope, romance, despair, cynicism, joy, heartbreak, devastation and the totality of life. I actually don’t know how he pulls it off yet he does. At times this book made me feel like I was flying. It’s that good.

Hyperion – Dan Simmons

I think you can tell I really like science fiction! Hyperion is a novel I will never forget reading. I will never forget how it made me feel. Like the words were being driven into my skull. My heart thumping wildly in my chest. Feeling horrified and excited at the same time. The writing is so propulsive and vivid and the sci-fi concepts are so dazzling and unique. I try to pretend the sequels don’t exist because they don’t match the heights of this novel.

1984 – George Orwell

I was prescribed this book in the last year of high school. I was absolutely enthralled by it, the ending rocked me to my core, so I was eager to go back to school and talk to everyone about the book. Alas, only one other student in my whole grade actually read the thing and didn’t just ‘Sparknotes’ it. Regardless, Orwell is on another level here and what he crafted is just as visceral and terrifying today as it was in 1948.