Two of Australia's big movie reviewers to retire

After almost three decades of bickering over cinema, on-screen movie reviewers Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton will this year call it quits – while their program ‘At The Movies’ will also end. The ABC has announced that the show’s final episode will air on December 9, and that with Margaret’s and David’s decision to retire, ‘At The Movies’ will not return in 2015.

Pomeranz and Stratton’s on-screen partnership began in 1986 when they co-hosted ‘The Movie Show’ on SBS, seeing it air successfully for 18 years, and then moving to the ABC in 2004 to host ‘At The Movies’ for a decade.

Since their “accidental pairing” in the mid-1980s, the duo have evolved into two of Australia’s most notorious movie critics, often going at loggerheads with one another, he loving a particular flick while she ardently despised it, or vice versa.

Says David, who turned 75 last week, “Working with Margaret, whose enthusiasm, commitment and passion has been amazing – and only occasionally irritating – has been a joy for over a quarter of a century, but I look forward to less pressure and more opportunities to enjoy the movies I love in the years ahead.”

Adds Margaret, rather more amicably, “My gratitude goes to David who gave me credibility just by being prepared to sit by me and discuss film when I am just a film enthusiast, not the great walking encyclopaedia that he is. He’s a grand person, a most generous, decent man, even if a little stubborn at times.”

Well, almost completely amicably. But then it wouldn’t be a discussion between or about Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton without a little bitching…  Antonino Tati