The appearance of three African-American tales up for best picture at the Academy Awards this year (Hidden Figures, Moonlight, and Fences) is welcome and curious.
Arrival tells a fairly straightforward story of first contact. Like many such films made since Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Arrival shares...
There are plenty of good and great actors who became successful directors. Ron Howard, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck are some recent examples. If Money Monster is anything to go by, then Jodie Foster will not be one of them.
This is my hundredth film review for the South Sydney Herald. It’s been great to explore the genres, the actors and the directors and have fun at their expense. Most of them deserved it and I gave it with both barrels.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Director: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron
Genre: Aggrieved Medium
It’s not necessarily saying much but Mad Max: Fury Road exceeded my expectations. Admittedly they were pretty low. I had no great expectation that character development or plot intricacies would feature highly. That certainly proved to be the case.
Jon Stewart is a hugely influential, highly successful and politically savvy comedian. Loved and loathed in equal measure, his Daily (4 times a week) Show is the standard bearer for left-wing commentary and causes in the USA.
I tried to keep my expectations low with Birdman, I really did. But it’s hard when everyone, including Margaret and David as their last hurrah, gives the film full marks. I’ve been burnt before, caught up in the hype and the promise of great insight and mind-blowing movie-making.
If I could travel in time I’d go about an hour into the future, find out how I introduced this review, then go back in time and write it. So, does the fact that I’m now writing the introduction mean that maybe I did travel in time and can’t remember it?
I’m going through a bit of a Scarlett Johansson phase at the moment. I’ve seen three of her films this year: Her (Johansson as the voice of a computer), Under the Skin (an alien) and, now, Lucy (a super human).
You know what you’re getting with Seth MacFarlane and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Think Peter from Family Guy meets Ted in cowboy hats and you pretty much understand the entire film already. Even the woman introducing the film preview screening advised us to leave our maturity at the door.
It’s awards season in Hollywood and in the great tradition of Academy Award best picture nominations, the actor who best portrayed someone gay, sick, disabled or dying (or better still all four) is going to win. Think Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994), Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Geoffrey Rush in Shine (1996), Jamie Foxx in Ray (2004), Sean Penn in Milk (2008) or Colin Firth in The King’s Speech (2010).
Could a human really fall in love with his or her operating system? Well if you watch enough SBS on Friday nights you’d know that humans can fall in love with anything (roller coasters is a particular fave).
Dirty Harry had no qualms when it came to vigilantism, while Garry Oldman’s DEA agent Stansfield in Leon (1994) was happy to knock off the family of the man who undercut his supply of cocaine.
Genius in filmmaking is about making an audience crave that for which they really know they shouldn’t. Trainspotting made heroin desirable. Easy Rider makes you want to rush out and buy a motor bike. The Hangover series makes you want a drink. And Rush makes you want to drive fast. Really fast. Formula One fast.
Films about porn are usually more interesting than porn films themselves. The production values, soundtrack and acting are all better for starters. Admittedly, there’s usually only one climax and you have to sit through an hour and a half or so to see it, but it tends to be more satisfying and longer lasting than the X-rated variety, or it should be if it’s any good.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are very funny people. To see them interviewed is a running gag fest, often at each other’s expense. But moviegoers expecting The World’s End to be a laugh-a-thon are going to be disappointed.
If you ignore the ridiculous plot, the nonsense scene segues, the overwrought emotion, the average acting, the perfect nuclear family, Brad Pitt’s never changing facial hair, the pointless attempt at making an environmental statement, the inconsistencies in how zombies are made, move and are motivated, the medical impossibilities, the unintentionally comic portrayal of zombies and the lack of blood, then World War Z isn’t too bad a film.
This is the first documentary I have reviewed for the South Sydney Herald and there’s a reason for that. Most documentaries aren’t created for their entertainment value, so I don’t bother seeing them.
