21 July 2016
The surprising thing about this Ghostbusters reboot (it’s not a sequel – while the surviving original cast members have cameos, they’re not playing their original characters) isn’t how closely it follows the original, but how different it often is.
17 July 2016
Director Ivan Sen’s 2013 ABC telemovie Mystery Road was so impressive it ended up getting a cinema run, and this direct-to-cinemas sequel is even better.
14 July 2016
The one thing that’s been holding back the action movie career of The Rock, AKA Dwayne Johnson, is that he’s too nice.
10 July 2016
Generally derided as one of the sillier big budget disaster movies of the ’90s, it’s something of a shock twist that the sequel to Independence Day – only a mere 20 years after the original – turns out to be a surprisingly fun time.
9 July 2016
Poetry professor Perry Makepeace (Ewan McGregor) is not a happy man. He’s on holiday in Morocco with his wife, Gail (Naomie Harris), but whatever problems its meant to solve run pretty deep.
28 June 2016
Thirteen years may have passed since Finding Nemo, but it’s barely been any time at all for the cast of Finding Dory – and for Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), the friendly blue tang with a short-term memory problem, the days have just flown by.
26 June 2016
The big problem with Warcraft: The Beginning is that it’s for the fans: rather than showing us amazing things, it seems that everyone agreed the real audience for this film is already familiar with everything here so any attempt to build up mystery or awe would just be a waste of time.
25 June 2016
When Will Traynor (Sam Claflin) is injured in a motorcycle accident and left a quadriplegic, he retreats from his life as an extreme sports-loving financier to live with his castle-owning parents in their mansion. Meanwhile, the extremely quirky Louisa “Lou” Clark (Emilia Clarke) has just lost her job at the local café and is desperate for work to help support her family.
23 June 2016
Director James Wan returns from helming the Fast & Furious franchise to deliver the latest instalment in his series of films about paranormal investigators (the Insidious films were basically the same thing, only without the “based on a true story” hook).
17 June 2016
As a writer-director, Shane Black doesn’t have a whole lot of tricks up his sleeve, but he puts them all to very fun use in this buddy comedy-thriller where the snappy dialogue hits harder than the double-figure body count.
16 June 2016
Casting James Franco and Robert Pattinson in a movie set in pre-World War One Arabia is a pretty gutsy move. Unfortunately for director Werner Hertzog, it doesn’t pay off. Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) works largely because his appearances are scattered through this film; a look at the real-life exploits of Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman) as she explored the desert and met with many of its tribes.
15 June 2016
The big problem with the first Now You See Me movie is that while it was sold as a magic-based heist film, it turned out to be, well, a magic-based heist film.
11 June 2016
High-energy cable TV finance expert Lee Gates (George Clooney) is the host of fairly crass cable TV show ‘Money Monster’, so when he’s taken hostage during a live broadcast at first his viewers think it’s part of the act. Then when the bullets start flying, only his producer Patty (Julia Roberts) keeps a level head.
6 June 2016
When problem child Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) – his crimes include kicking stuff, burning stuff and loitering – is relocated to a New Zealand bush farm by somewhat intense social worker Paula (Rachel House), he’s taken under the wing of Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her silently menacing husband Hec (Sam Neill).
2 June 2016
After the death of her husband, New Yorker Marnie Minervini (Susan Sarandon) has moved out to LA to be closer to her scriptwriter daughter, Lori (Rose Byrne).
31 May 2016
The trouble with reviewing a sequel when the original was a): awful, but b): successful, is that there’s not much of a point in complaining about the same stuff all over again. Clearly whatever was wrong with the original wasn’t enough to keep audiences away, so in a sense it clearly wasn’t “wrong” in the first place. On the other hand, Alice Through the Looking Glass… is still pretty much terrible.
26 May 2016
The X-Men franchise has always been over-stuffed with characters, so it’s hardly surprising that this instalment – now set in the early ’80s – focuses on yet another group of new mutants.
23 May 2016
The year is 1944, and the wealthy heiress Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) is the doyen of the New York classic musical scene, hosting concerts and spending money like water.
17 May 2016
The original Bad Neighbours – in which a young, no-longer hip, dope-smoking couple (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) had to deal with a frat house next door – was a surprise delight, managing the tricky act of being dumb in a very smart way.
16 May 2016
With every Marvel movie ending in serious civilian-squashing destruction of the “something big falls from the sky” variety, it was only a matter of time before someone suggested putting superheroes on a leash.
13 May 2016
Michael Mason (Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden) is a US pickpocket working the streets of Paris.
4 May 2016
Les (John Brumpton) runs a pawn shop in Barkly Street, Footscray where “people come in bullshitting and leave pissed off”.
2 May 2016
The story of Eddie the Eagle walks a very fine line. As Great Britain’s first competitor in Olympic Ski Jumping, he was pretty much a joke who got in on a technicality, and his media success was as much to do with laughing at him as it was about admiring his pluck.
30 April 2016
Adelaide real estate agent Frank Mollard (Anthony LaPaglia) isn’t doing well. He’s divorced from his actress wife, estranged from his son, drifting aimlessly through his job and now his mum’s on the phone telling him she’s not happy.
