21 September 2015
This was the film that first introduced me to Carrey. Here he played a pet detective trying to find the kidnapped Miami Dolphins mascot, in what has been referred to as the launching pad for his career.
19 September 2015
How’s this for a high concept: aliens, having somehow encountered the video games of Earth circa 1983 and decided they’re a hostile act, have attacked our planet using those same video game icons against us. It’s the kind of dumb movie idea that pretty much sells itself. Trouble is, it’s also an Adam Sandler vehicle, and big special-effects heavy blockbusters are not his natural environment.
17 September 2015
In the mid ’80s friends O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (played by his real-life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Andre “Dr Dre” Young (Corey Hawkins) are would-be musos whose big chance to break into the music business arrives when friend and local drug dealer Eric “Eazy-E” Wright (stand-out Jason Mitchell) agrees to finance their first single.
16 September 2015
The big problem a lot of young adult series face is that they don’t plan ahead. All the effort goes into the first book because if that bombs there won’t be a second, but if it’s a hit often there’s been no planning for what comes next and “next” is coming in a hurry to make sure they keep the momentum going from the first book.
12 September 2015
Robyn (Rebecca Hall) and Simon (Jason Bateman) are a young couple who’ve just moved back to LA for a range of reasons, some good (Simon’s up for a big promotion at work), some not so good (Robyn had a miscarriage). They’re barely settled in when they run into Gordo (Joel Edgerton, who also writes and directs), an old school buddy of Simon’s – or at least, he’s acting like a buddy, while Simon is a bit more wary.
11 September 2015
Nancy Meyer’s latest film is not exactly one for people who like their movies to have a story.
8 September 2015
Every now and again Hollywood coughs up a movie where a bunch of old guys set out to have a good time and prove they’ve still “got it”. Considering prime examples of this genre are films like Wild Hogs and Last Vegas, it’s hardly surprising it doesn’t get a whole lot of respect.
6 September 2015
Based on a classic piece of Australian memoir that’s become a touchstone for a generation of gay men (and Australians in general), director Neil Armfield’s adaptation had a lot to live up to. And live up to the source material it does; while it may not be quite as strong a movie as it could have been, it gets so much right that it feels churlish to complain about a few bum notes.
5 September 2015
The trick with teen tear-jerkers is that, unlike with the grown-up variety, is to make it seem like the point of the exercise isn’t to make the audience bawl their eyes out. Adults don’t really care: they come to tear-jerkers to cry and so long as the film does that they’re happy.
4 September 2015
Frank Martin (Ed Skrein) is The Transporter, a man who’ll drive anything anywhere: for a price. So being hired as a getaway driver for a group of sex workers looking to get out of the prostitution racket by robbing their enslavers blind (and maybe killing them in the process) is all part of the job. Only this time, they’ve kidnapped his dad (Ray Stevenson) to keep him in line, and Frank doesn’t like that one bit.
3 September 2015
If you remember screenwriter Diablo Cody’s film Young Adult, then you have a good idea what to expect here: a woman who has failed to conform to society’s expectations is drawn back to the world where her failure seems most acute, there to find a way to get the respect of the past she’s never quite been able to shake.
30 August 2015
The time is now, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at Malcolm (Shamelk Moore) and his friends: hardcore devotees of ’90s hip-hop, they walk the walk and talk the talk, which makes them stand out on the mean streets of South Central L.A.
26 August 2015
Philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) arrives at a small Rhode Island university, only to find that his rakish reputation proceeds him. The reality of this one-time womaniser and firebrand is bleaker: he’s a bloated, washed-up drunk who flirts with suicide and reeks of despair.
24 August 2015
In a year that’ll see at least three Bond-style spy movies (does your spy movie involve an extraordinarily handsome man in a suit? It’s a Bond movie), you really need to do something to stand out from the pack.
21 August 2015
There are a lot of reasons why the latest Fantastic Four movie doesn’t always work, but perhaps the biggest is that the Fantastic Four themselves just are all that strong as characters. That’s not to say they can’t work on the big screen (they just haven’t yet).
20 August 2015
Not every movie exists because it has a story to tell. Movies are made to show off special effects, to hammer home a point, or – in the case of Southpaw, a movie where the only surprise is how surprise-free it is – to win acting awards. Billy “Great” Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the [middleweight champion of the world]. He fought his way up out of a Hell’s Kitchen orphanage to a New York mansion, with his childhood sweetheart (and fellow orphan) Maureen (Rachael McAdams) by his side.
19 August 2015
Twenty years ago a high school play went horribly wrong when an accident resulted in one of the cast being hung live on stage. Seriously? Who sets up a working gallows on stage for a play?
18 August 2015
Broken Hill taxi driver Rex (Michael Caton) tends to keep to himself. His relationship with his neighbour Polly (Ningali Lawford) is kept at arms length and his mates down the pub are just people he has a drink with.
18 August 2015
Over the years the Mission Impossible franchise has honed itself into one of the more sure-fire franchises in 21st century Hollywood. Yes, much of the appeal comes from the chance to see Tom Cruise running around in both a suit and casual wear, but there’s more going on here than that.
17 August 2015
Despite Amy Schumer being the big draw here – which is hardly surprising, as her sketch show Inside Amy Schumer (and more specifically, a handful of sketches from it that have been shared across the internet) have made her a massive star in a very short stretch of time.
4 August 2015
The Insidious movies are about as basic a horror movie as you can get: someone messes around with ghosts, they get possessed, then it’s exorcism time. The only real twist across the three films is that the exorcism stage involves people actually travelling into the spirit realm to rescue the possessed person’s soul, which is why this is a prequel – psychic Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) died in Chapter 2 and without her there’s nothing to distinguish this series from, say, The Conjuring (made by the same team of James Wan and Leigh Whannell).
3 August 2015
The year is 1947, and it’s been 30 years since Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) last solved a mystery. Now retired and keeping bees in Suffolk with his grumpy housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her idolising son Roger (an excellent Milo Parker), he’s decided to finally tell the story of his final case in his own words (Watson, who wrote and fictionalised all the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, being long gone).
31 July 2015
There’s two ways a brain-swap – or if you prefer, body-swap – movie can go: either the actors being swapped ham their characters up so much it’s obvious when one of them is playing the other, or the actors both just play themselves (well, their characters) and leave the whole “same body, different mind” side of things to take care of itself.
26 July 2015
It was fairly easy to see the appeal of John Green’s first big-screen adaptation, The Fault in Our Stars: a teen romance where everyone had a terminal illness, the combination of jokey banter (to mask their pain) and teen mythology (these guys were certain to live fast, die young, and leave good-looking corpses), it was the kind of hit that makes a career. And with Paper Towns, so it has proved to be.
