28 January 2015
Hollywood loves a story of redemption, especially if it involves someone putting themselves through something that’s interesting to look at – say, hiking across a whole lot of beautiful wilderness. The trouble with these stories is that redemption through suffering is a pretty Old Testament idea; these days most of us tend to think that all suffering does is make you suffer.
27 January 2015
Everyone knows that “based on a true story” in no way means that everything in a film is true. But American Sniper, which is based on the memoir of real-life US SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, is in the difficult position of being faithful to a book that, by at least some accounts, is not 100 per cent accurate about Kyle’s war service.
25 January 2015
There are times when it feels like the most interesting things about Birdman are the things it’s not doing. For one, it’s not really an exploration of how superhero movies have distorted and overwhelmed pop culture: sure, the trailers play up the “Birdman” angle a lot, but once you get past the basics – Michael Keaton is Riggan Thomas, a now washed-up actor who once was a mega-star…
24 January 2015
The best that can be said about Dumb and Dumber To is that if it ain’t broke, they sure ain’t trying to fix it. Lloyd (Carrey) has spent the last twenty years in a coma, only don’t worry – it was all a prank played on his equally dim-witted buddy Harry (Daniels). It turns out Harry needs a kidney and his only surviving blood relative is a long-lost daughter. Road trip! Just like the first film.
22 January 2015
The guys behind the Taken series have never quite been able to figure out why the first film worked. You can’t really blame them; Luc Besson’s production company had been churning out fun but formulaic thrillers for years before Taken took off, and while it was easy enough to repeat the superficial elements, the precise circumstances that made the first film such a success were never likely to happen again.
28 December 2014
Adapting the much-loved Paddington Bear stories into a feature film is the kind of idea that’s both inevitable and yet really something to get excited about. Paddington is a fairly low-key character, and they don’t really thrive in a cinema environment. Yet so long as you’re willing to loosen your grip on the Paddington of the books, there’s a lot to enjoy here… even if it does at times feel a lot closer to a generic kids adventure film than the source material.
27 December 2014
The best – well, maybe not “best” – but most satisfying scene in Horrible Bosses 2 is when Jamie Foxx’s character Motherf**ker Jones informs our three heroes that they’re no longer nice guys in a tight corner – they’re criminals.
25 December 2014
The big surprise in Russell Crowe’s otherwise firmly unsurprising directorial debut, is that for a film about Gallipoli this turns out to be a film that really is about Gallipoli. That is, apart from a few opening scenes and a brief flashback or two, this is a film set entirely in Turkey, with a story that’s as much about the situation in Turkey in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire as it is about a grieving Australian looking for the bodies of his dead sons.
22 December 2014
We’re all grown-ups here; we all know how movie trailers work. They’re designed to take a full-length feature film and turn it into a 90 second commercial for how awesome the full length version is. The trouble with that comes when in telling you how awesome the full length version is, they forget to mention major elements of the full length version.
5 November 2014
In 1996 Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) was a reporter covering the drug trade for mid-level US newspaper the San-Jose Mercury News when he was approached by a drug dealer’s wife with some explosive information: the government had mistakenly released to her (as part of her husband’s trial) documents proving that a major drug importer had been working with the CIA.
3 November 2014
Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman) wakes up with no idea of where she is – or who the man in bed with her is. Fortunately, the man (Colin Firth) knows what to do: his name is Mike, he’s her husband, and she has a special kind of amnesia that means every night when she goes to sleep she forgets everything she learnt during the day. In her head she’s still in her early twenties; in the mirror, she’s clearly pushing forty.
3 November 2014
It’s World War II time yet again – it seems like only yesterday that Hitler was defeated, and yet WWII actually ended 69 years ago. Hollywood just can’t seem to let go, so it must be time to follow yet another unsung group of brave warriors as they face down the Nazis. Does anyone know who the “sung” heroes of WWII were?
26 October 2014
A Swedish family – Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their two children – are on holiday in the Alps when an avalanche (supposedly a controlled one set off by the ski lodge to control the snow on the slopes) gets out of hand. Snow billows over the lodge where the family are watching; the husband panics and runs, leaving his wife and children behind.
24 October 2014
Locked up in a WA prison, JR (Brenton Thwaites) looks next in line for a whole lot of prison rape until his chess skills bring him to the attention of notorious armed robber Brendan (Ewan McGregor). Now part of the gang, he’s tasked with getting in touch with Brendan’s organised crime contacts once he gets out and helping put together an audacious breakout plan for the rest of the crew.
22 October 2014
When sleazy big city lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey, Jr.) takes time out from pissing on rival lawyers (in a toilet, of course) and snapping at his soon-to-be-divorced wife to answer his phone, he finds out his mother is dead. Rushing back to his small-town home, he’s not exactly surprised to find his father and local judge Joseph (Robert Duvall) still treats him with distain.
21 October 2014
Andrew (Miles Teller) is a nineteen-year-old who desperately wants to be the best jazz drummer in the world. He’s currently studying at a New York conservatory where he draws the attention of Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), a much-admired teacher who wants Andrew to be the best jazz drummer in the world.
20 October 2014
Remember the creepy doll from The Conjuring? Clearly Hollywood did: this spin-off starring her has hit cinemas before the official Conjuring sequel has. Presumably a movie based around a doll is a lot easier to knock out – especially when most of your story comes direct from the giant tome of horror movie stunts that Hollywood has locked in a crypt somewhere.
20 October 2014
The year is 1999 – yes, there are a lot of Y2K jokes here – and former NYPD officer Matt Scudder (Liam Neeson) is now an unlicensed private investigator. As he puts it, “sometimes I do favours for people, sometimes they give me gifts”. So when a man (Boyd Holbrook) from one of his AA meetings says his brother Kenny (Dan Stevens) wants his help, Matt goes along.
19 October 2014
You might think that the subject of Dracula has pretty much been done to death (seriously, what more was there left to be said after Dracula 3000?). Yet the actual origin of Dracula has been sadly neglected over the years, with the sinister vampire just generally assumed to have either been born bad or become a vampire through sheer force of evil will.
12 October 2014
The year is 1982, and while many would have you believe that punk is dead, in Stockholm teenage girls Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin) are doing their level best to keep it alive. Mocked at school for their boyish looks, they spend their spare time hanging out at the rec centre, where they discover they can piss off a bunch of long-haired teenage jerks by booking the band rehearsal room out from under them.
8 October 2014
It’s ’70s Detroit, and small-time crooks Ordell (Yasiin Bey – formerly known as Mos Def) and Louis (John Hawkes) have come up with a way to hit it big. They’ve found out that celebrity golfer Frank Dawson (Tim Robbins), who’s also a Detroit property developer, is on top of that making a whole lot of dodgy money via shady business practices. So they figure if they kidnap his wife Mickey (Jennifer Aniston) and hold her for ransom, with what they know about his earnings he’ll have no choice but to pay up.
6 October 2014
Donna (Jenny Slate) is a New York stand-up comic who’s made a career (well, regular appearances at one comedy club) out of putting her whole life out there up on stage. When her boyfriend turns out to not be a fan of this approach and reveals he’s been sleeping with her friend, she collapses in a heap. So when Max (Jake Lacy), a cute but square-seeming guy turns up at the comedy club (he’s there because one of his clients wanted to check it out), a whole lot of alcohol leads to a one-night stand.
4 October 2014
There are two kinds of action movies in the world. In one, our hero finds himself in a violent situation well out of his league, and the tension comes from his struggles to deal with the increasing carnage despite his clear inability to handle things. In the other, the bad guys make the mistake of stumbling across the ultimate killing machine, and the fun comes from seeing a variety of scumbags meet a ghastly fate at the hands of death incarnate.
3 October 2014
It was no surprise that director David Fincher was the one tapped on the shoulder to adapt Gillian Flynn’s best-seller Gone Girl: with his big-screen version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo he proved he was the go-to guy for hit novels with strong female leads (even if his film did pretty much seem to sink the Dragon Tattoo franchise for good). And hard-edged thrillers have always been a Fincher trademark going all the way back to Seven – though here it takes a while for the edge to make itself known.
