3 November 2015
When you think “Australian film” and stop thinking about grim tales of inner-city junkies, The Dressmaker is probably the kind of film that comes next: a big, sprawling, uneven but well-costumed, tale of Aussie-as types making jokes then getting serious at the drop of a hat.
31 October 2015
Tracy (Lola Kirke) is an 18-year-old university student struggling to fit into a New York that doesn’t seem all that interested in her. Her classes don’t excite her, her literary dreams are flailing, her fellow students largely ignore her, and so when her mother suggests she call up her soon-to-be sister (Tracy’s mother is marrying her father) Brooke (Greta Gerwig), she figures she’s got nothing to loose.
27 October 2015
Milly (Toni Collette) and Jess (Drew Barrymore) are inseparable best friends – so why does the opening scene feature Jess giving birth on her own? Has her husband Jago (Paddy Considine) met a grim fate on an oil rig?
24 October 2015
Johnny Depp takes on one of his increasingly rare serious roles here as Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger. While seeing him play a light-eyed repeat killer is thrilling – Bulger may have run most of Boston’s organised crime, but this film is only interested in the moments where he murdered people – the meat of this film lies in his relationship with FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton).
22 October 2015
In 2008, director James Marsh’s documentary Man on Wire thrillingly re-created French high-wire walker Philippe Petit’s greatest feat: walking between the tops of New York’s then brand-new Twin Towers in 1974. Now with The Walk, director Robert Zemeckis’ re-creates it all over again, with less charm, a more muddled sense of drama, but – and this is pretty much the point of the exercise – a whole lot of vertigo-inducing camerawork during the high-wire work.
20 October 2015
In London during the Swinging ’60s, the Kray brothers were the public face of crime, but there was tension in the ranks. Slick charmer Reggie (Tom Hardy) wanted to take their protection racket legit, while his somewhat mentally unbalanced twin Ronnie (Hardy again) wanted to stay true to their violent gangster roots.
12 October 2015
A problem rarely acknowledged in movies is when a film’s script and direction aren’t on the same page. For Sicario (the title is a Mexican term for hitman) that’s a good problem to have.
8 October 2015
Based on the real-life story of a disastrous 1996 expedition to climb the world’s tallest mountain and filmed in 3D, this is the kind of film it seems reasonable to expect will be little more than wall-to-wall sensation.
7 October 2015
With Snowtown, director Justin Kurzel proved he could create a grim and foreboding mood; now with Macbeth he doubles down on that with an adaptation that’s visually stunning even as it whittles the text down to a point well past the bare essentials.
4 October 2015
Never having met their grandparents due to a falling out with their mother (Kathryn Hahn) before they were born, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (a realistically annoying Ed Oxenbould) are thrilled when she agrees to let them go on a holiday visit to the family farm.
2 October 2015
Stranded on Mars when his comrades are forced to cut their mission short, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is four years away from rescue in a base meant to last three months.
1 October 2015
Charming but lightweight films in which single dads struggle to balance bringing up their adorable kids with the demands of their creative side aren’t exactly thin on the ground – we’ve already had Infinitely Polar Bear this year – and it’s often hard to avoid the impression that simply seeing a single dad at work is mean to be quirky enough to make their story worth telling.
29 September 2015
As a photographer himself, who better than Anton Corbijin to tell the story behind the iconic photo of James Dean in Times Square? Well… maybe someone who’s not a photographer? There’s a lot to enjoy in Life – especially the performances – but it’s hard not to come away from this feeling like it flatters the (usually ignored) man behind the camera at the expense of his subject.
26 September 2015
A weird hybrid of stoner comedy and ’90s action movie, this manages to avoid the charm of either, coming off as a somewhat nasty mess that lacks the thrills or jokes required to make this kind of thing work.
23 September 2015
What begins as a tribute to ’70s Spanish sexploitation film-maker Jesus Franco, the film swiftly becomes something different. As British director Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio) digs down to find the real substance in this increasingly offbeat look at a relationship between two women in a world without men, cars, or much of anything else beside butterflies.
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.
