The Chestnut Man

It might feel like a premise you’ve encountered before, but in the way Scandi-noir works, it is anchored as much in domesticity as it is...

An engrossing and surprisingly touching addition to a genre already bursting with splashier, more extravagant and more overtly sentimental tit...

Penna takes a mission to Mars and unfurls it on a direct and intimate emotional level. We always feel the characters could be us.

Nothing is being sacrificed for the sake of storytelling, no patronising over-explanation, just the realities of an agonising scenario, unfolding a...

Empathy and compassion aren’t vulnerabilities in this narrative. They’re resources, with which you can defy the cold cosmos – thou...

The ending will frustrate as much as it satisfies. But, really, like any two-year mission to Mars, it’s the journey that counts. And this one...

Just about every confusing plot point is overcome by a powerful human moment.

Collette, who makes rare use of her native Australian accent, is especially good. There’s a hardness to her performance that speaks not...

Stowaway, it turns out, is just as intricate and immersive.

[Penna] maximizes a simple premise by spinning it into an intriguing story about the difficult decisions that need to be made when best laid p...

Such a tightly written and engaging character piece that it overcomes an unconvincing premise.

So that mixture of an artful veneer and an oversimplified brutal mystery underneath turns out to be its biggest hook, as well as the thing that kee...

Moral crisis in space!

Stowaway pulls plenty of pages from the generic space-movie handbook, but it still builds a mood of dread and contemplative ennui…

The strength of the ensemble helps give the proceedings further dramatic resonance, with the performers providing subtle emotional depths that keep...

In the end, Stowaway becomes a full-fledged weepie, acknowledging the vast emptiness into which its characters have either willingly or accide...

It’s a clever take on a familiar genre with a terrific cast, but the slow burn may be too slow.

Penna and his co-writer Ryan Morrison handle this existentially challenging material with grace, and Kendrick, Collette, Kim and Anderson deliver e...