Film Review Round Up 26th September 2014

Just two this week that I managed to catch. Both films really entertaining and worth seeing. Enjoy!

THIS WEEK'S PREVIEWS

(My movie Pick of the week)

The Skeleton Twins ✪✪✪✪½

Opens in Australia:               25^th September 2014

USA: 12^th September            UK: 7^th November, 2014 

Other Countries:                   Release Information

Perth:                                   Luna Palace Cinemas

OUR THOUGHTS

Estranged twins Marv Milo (Bill Hader) and Maggie (Kristin Wiig) both cheat suicide attempts on the same day in this tightly scripted mix of dark comedy and family drama. A timely film, indeed, after the untimely death of Robin Williams. The Skeleton Twins highlights beautifully the complexity of human beings and human relationships.

When Milo agrees reluctantly to come back and live with Maggie and her husband after his failed suicide attempt, he becomes the third wheel in their household. Inadvertently, he becomes the catalyst for Maggie to question why she is unhappy when she seemingly has everything going for her.

Director Craig Johnson, takes his time revealing why the siblings hadn’t spoken in a decade, but there is nothing slow or uninvolving in the way he leads us to this revelation.

Wiig and Hader give nuanced performances, and this film might put to rest the expectation, after Bridesmaids, that Wiig can only do comedy. She does drama very well, thank you.  Hader is also incredibly heartwarming and real as the gay sibling struggling with the disappointments of life.

Luke Wilson, as Wiig’s ever-enthusiastic husband, adds the comic charm that his own real-life sibling, Owen Wilson, seems to have lost by over-playing the same character in every film.  Ty Burrell, in a small but key role, also breaks out from the comedic expectations placed on him after his Modern Family success.

This small ensemble cast has pulled together an involving, emotional journey pinned around the idea that the human condition, no matter who you are (and I’m thinking of Robin Williams again here), is complex and challenging. It reminds us that what is assured is life’s ups downs and that hanging on tight to those you love might just help.

See The Skeleton Twins because it’s funny and sad and thought provoking, and because it will make you hug your sibling or your loved ones a little tighter because love shouldn’t be taken for granted.

STUDIO BLURB

When estranged twins Maggie (Kristen Wiig) and Milo (Bill Hader) feel they're at the end of their ropes, an unexpected reunion forces them to confront why their lives went so wrong. As the twins reconnect, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship. (c) Roadside Attractions

The Equalizer  ✪✪✪✪

Opens in Australia:                        25^th September 2014

USA: 26^th September 2014              UK: 26^th September 2014

Other Countries:                             Release Information

OUR THOUGHTS

It’s Denzel, okay. So its stylish, albeit highly improbable. But, hey, so is the Bourne trilogy, and Mission Impossible, and they’re still fun. The end sequence, which is incredibly violent, reminds me of a grown up version of the Home Alone scene where the robbers get their just desserts. The Equalizer is by the numbers, but with Denzel there, it gets an extra star from me. Denzel is just so damn cool that anything he’s in is elevated beyond its sum of parts. Watch with popcorn.

 STUDIO BLURB

In The Equalizer, Denzel Washington plays McCall, a man who believes he has put his mysterious past behind him and dedicated himself to beginning a new, quiet life. But when McCall meets Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young girl under the control of ultra-violent Russian gangsters, he can't stand idly by - he has to help her. Armed with hidden skills that allow him to serve vengeance against anyone who would brutalize the helpless, McCall comes out of his self-imposed retirement and finds his desire for justice reawakened. If someone has a problem, if the odds are stacked against them, if they have nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer. (c) Sony

If you’ve enjoyed these reviews, please share with your friends and followers on social media and I will be very grateful. I love new readers who love film.

Film Review Roundup 21st September 2014

This week, another great independent sci-fi film. This one really surprised with its script. A Young Adult (YA) book to film adaptation that I did like, a comic book film conversion that I shouldn’t have liked, but I did, and a crowd-funded film that I wished I wasn’t there to watch.

THIS WEEK'S PREVIEWS

(My movie Pick of the week)

The Infinite Man  ✪✪✪✪½

Opens in Australia:               18^th September 2014

USA: Various film festivals    UK: Festivals

Other Countries:                   Release Information

Perth:                                   Luna Palace Cinemas

This is probably the strangest film I’ve seen all year. Quirky. Yep, real quirky. So odd and unsettling to start with that I honestly considered walking out of the preview.  It seemed, well, kind of corny and the setting very basic, and I thought: Why should I sit here any longer, it can only get worse? Like they nearly always do, and I always wish I’d left when I thought to leave.

Wrong!  Boy was I glad that I stayed because after about thirty minutes when Dean, the main character of only three characters, travels back in time and starts getting tangled up in the time line, it gets good, really good. The kind of good that has you thinking about it days later. In fact, a week later, I love it even more now than when I saw it.

It’s clever, and did I mention quirky? You should see it. Really, please go see it, and don’t make up your mind while watching until it starts playing out. Did I mention that it’s quirky?

The film’s Facebook Page for news on where it’s showing is https://www.facebook.com/TheInfiniteMan/timeline. Try and catch it. There’s never been anything quite like it.

STUDIO BLURB

A man's attempts to construct the ultimate romantic weekend backfire when his quest for perfection traps his lover in an infinite loop.

The Maze Runner  ✪✪✪✪

Opens in Australia:                        18^th September 2014

USA: 19^th September 2014              UK: 10^th October 2014

Other Countries:                             Release Information

OUR THOUGHTS

This one didn’t thrill me to see. The trailer was meh, and I think for those of us over

seventeen, we’ve just about had our fill of young people killing and being killed in films adapted from bestselling books.

So find me pleasantly surprised by this thrilling little number. It’s a tad cliché, but then again I’ve read a lot of books and seen a lot of films, so you do get used to plot weaving and the beats that films and books need to meet. Did you know there’s a formula they teach in screenwriting school? Yep, there are beats to hit at certain points in a film (and many miss them).

The Maze Runner, though, is well done, and even though I kept thinking this is a modern day Lord of the Flies (so I can’t call it original), it feels fresh.  It’s also part of a trilogy, I presume, because the books are a trilogy. So another one to look forward to. I’m going to read the book. I can’t wait for the film. It ended on too much of a cliffhanger.

 STUDIO BLURB

When Thomas wakes up trapped in a massive maze with a group of other boys, he has no memory of the outside world other than strange dreams about a mysterious organization known as W.C.K.D. Only by piecing together fragments of his past with clues he discovers in the maze can Thomas hope to uncover his true purpose and a way to escape. Based upon the best-selling novel by James Dashner. (c) Fox

Sin City: A Dame To Die For    ✪✪✪½

Opens in Australia:                  18^th September 2014

USA: 22^nd August 2014           UK: 25^th August 2014

Other Countries:                       Release Information

OUR THOUGHTS

Nine years after the original Sin City that spawned a new film noir style, co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller reunite again to bring Miller's Sin City graphic novels back to the screen.

Don’t worry if, like me, you didn’t see the first Sin City, you will still enjoy the story and the stunning, unique, visual style, now in 3D. The effect of creating a film with the look of the graphic novel, sometimes the exact scene frame of the comic, is truly an experience to savor on the big screen.

Two of the film's four segments are based on the six issue Sin City comic: A Dame To Kill For and the single run Just Another Saturday Night. Each story is told as a separate storyline with each intersecting and then glancing off each other in their own showcase.

Dwight (Josh Brolin) is so in love with Ava (Eva Green) that he will ‘kill for the dame’ even though he knows she is not worthy of his trust, having betrayed him before. She claims that her husband will soon kill her. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Johnny, a gambling hustler, who falls foul of Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) when he wins at the table. Nancy Calahan (Jessica Alba) is emotionally struggling with the suicide of John Hartigan (Bruce Willis), and though revenge is what she seeks, she can’t seem to find the courage to act. In each, as in the comics, Marv (Mickey Rourke) becomes involved, and when you have Marv with you that means there will be blood.

Sin City is filled with a dark menagerie of characters played to perfection by names such as Rozaria Dawson, Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Christopher Lloyd, Stacy Keach, and even Lady GaGa.

It’s hyper-violent and a crazy, wild ride, with a claustrophobic atmosphere conveying the feeling that these characters are trapped in this terrible, dangerous world from which there is no escape, giving them only small triumphs over greater evils. As the poster says, “There is no justice without sin.” Especially when this sinning is so good to watch. 

STUDIO BLURB

Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller reunite to bring Miller's visually stunning "Sin City" graphic novels back to the screen in SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR. Weaving together two of Miller's classic stories with new tales, the town's most hard boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more notorious inhabitants. SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR is the follow up to Rodriguez and Miller's 2005 groundbreaking film, FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY. (c) Dimension Films

Wish I Was Here  ✪½

Opens in Australia:               18^th September 2014

USA: 25^th July 2014               UK: 19^th September 2014

Other Countries:                   Release Information

Perth:                                   Luna Palace Cinemas

I’d like to rename this film from the filmgoer’s perspective. The actors might be wishing they were here, but I think most audiences will be wishing they were anywhere but here in a cinema watching this. 

My best description of this crowd-funded film, written, produced and starred in by Zach Braff, is to say that it was clumsy and un-engaging. The character Braff plays is an unsuccessful actor. Now he can add unsuccessful scriptwriter and producer to his credits. Don’t go. He’s already crowd-funded enough money from innocent people. Don’t give him any more. He might make another film.

And how bad is the poster? What a shocker.

STUDIO BLURB

Director Zach Braff's follow-up to his indie breakout hit "Garden State" tells the story of a thirty-something man who finds himself at major crossroads, which forces him to examine his life, his career, and his family. (c) Focus

If you’ve enjoyed these reviews, please share with your friends and followers on social media and I will be very grateful. I love new readers who love film.

Weekly Film Reviews 13th September 2014

It’s the kid’s film release week here in Australia in the lead up to the school holidays in two weeks, when my life gets a whole lot louder for two and a half weeks. There are two kids films and a YA (young adult) book adaptation.

(My movie Pick of the week)

The Giver   ✪✪✪½ 

Opens in Australia:               11^th September 2014

USA: 15^th August                   UK: 19^th September 2014

Other Countries:                   Release Information

OUR THOUGHTS

It’s adapted from a 1993 book and you might think its similar to Divergent and Hunger Games. They’re all about a dystopian future. Those books were, no doubt, inspired by this earlier book. 

I liked this film a whole lot better than Divergent. It may not pack the surprises that the book does, but having read the book myself, it’s a pretty reasonable adaptation. I loved the book, too. So I suggest you grab that if you don’t fancy the movie. It’s really very thought provoking. The film is a good watch, too.

STUDIO BLURB

The haunting story of THE GIVER centers on Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the sole keeper of all the community's memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community's secret past. With this newfound power of knowledge, he realizes that the stakes are higher than imagined - a matter of life and death for himself and those he loves most. At extreme odds, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all - a challenge that no one has ever succeeded at before. THE GIVER is based on Lois Lowry's beloved young adult novel of the same name, which was the winner the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. (C) Weinstein

TARZAN  ✪½

Opens in Australia:               11^th September 2014

USA: 9^th May 2014                 UK: 2^nd May 2014

Other Countries:                   Release Information

OUR THOUGHTS

If you desperately love Tarzan then go see it. It’s a very strange version. It’s filmed using motion capture, which is where the actor looks like some alien from the future with dots all over them while filming, and then they digitize them, so they look like very real cartoons.

In the case of this film, something’s gone very wrong with the process. They just look like really weird people with no expressions on their faces and bad hair. You can get an idea by the poster. The story is okay, but I judge these kid’s films on the basis that you are coughing up a fair whack of money to take your family, so you are entitled to see something better than what you can see on free-to-air. So I wouldn’t spend your hard earned money. Go buy the Disney DVD of Tarzan. Much better.

On another note, I see there is a Tarzan movie coming in 2016 that looks very cool starring Christopher Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Alexander Skarsgård, and Margot Robbie.

STUDIO BLURB

A teenage boy raised by gorillas in Africa falls for a pretty conservationist following a chance meeting in the jungle, but finds their romance threatened by a menacing Silverback, and a scheming capitalist in search of a new energy source in this animated adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic tale. Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  ✪✪½

Opens in Australia:               11^th September 2014

USA: 8^th August                     UK: 17^th October 2014

Other Countries:                   Release Information

OUR THOUGHTS

I should have hated this film. However, I actually found it better than expected. Mind you, that is not saying a lot. It's aimed squarely at the younger fans. Megan Fox is so good in her role (I realise that could be a shock for you). She plays a dumb reporter who discovers the turtles and tries to convince everyone else they exist. Everyone she works with thinks she’s pretty stupid. See why it works with her? 

A couple of kids I saw after the preview told me that they loved it. There’s a lot of action. Some of it not bad, if not clichéd. I don’t know if it was our screening, but the 3D was not good at all. It was blurry in parts and quite annoying. Maybe its better to see it in 2D. Cheaper at any rate.

STUDIO BLURB

The city needs heroes. Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles must work with fearless reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) and her wise-cracking cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) to save the city and unravel Shredder's diabolical plan. Based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Characters Created by PETER LAIRD and KEVIN EASTMAN with a Screenplay by JOSH APPELBAUM & ANDRÉ NEMEC and EVAN DAUGHERTY, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is produced by MICHAEL BAY (director and executive producer of the blockbuster Transformers franchise), Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, Galen Walker, Scott Mednick and Ian Bryce, and directed by JONATHAN LIEBESMAN (Wrath of the Titans).(c) Paramount

If you’ve enjoyed these reviews, please share with your friends and followers on social media and I will be very grateful. I love new readers who love film.