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Jobs poster

Review: Jobs, The Weight of Elephants, Red 2, White House Down, Salinger & In the House

By Cinema and Reviews

Demos Murphy in Daniel Borgman's The Weight of Elephants (2013)Jobs posterThe best way I can think of to sum up Jobs, the hastily-prepared not-quite adapt­a­tion of Walter Isaacson’s hastily-published bio­graphy of the Apple co-founder, is that its sub­ject would have hated it. After all, Steve had taste and – fam­ously – exer­cised it. He also did­n’t release products until they were ready where­as Joshua Michael Stern’s film feels like the win­ner of a race to be first rather than best.

Ashton Kutcher imper­son­ates Mr. Jobs effect­ively enough, to the extent of mim­ick­ing the man’s strange lope, but nev­er gets fur­ther under his skin than a blog post or tabloid head­line might. I sus­pect that is not a com­ment on Mr. Kutcher’s tal­ent but on the epis­od­ic script by first-timer Matt Whiteley. Josh Gad’s Woz provides com­ic relief only and the amount of fake facial hair on offer sug­gests the film might bet­ter have been titled iBeard.

The Weight of Elephants posterOperating on a much deep­er level is Daniel Borgman’s The Weight of Elephants, a film that pri­or­it­ises what goes on under the sur­face almost to the com­plete exclu­sion of plot. Gorgeous Demos Murphy plays 10-year-old Adrian, liv­ing with his depressed Uncle Rory (great Matthew Sunderland) and Gran (Catherine Wilkin) in sub­urb­an Invercargill. The strange dis­ap­pear­ance of three loc­al chil­dren has an upset­ting effect on a boy who is strug­gling to fit in to the world around him anyway.

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Review: The Simpsons Movie, The Banquet, Angel and Georgia Rule

By Cinema and Reviews

The Simpsons Movie teaser posterIt’s an awfully long time since I have watched a com­plete epis­ode of The Simpsons so I was­n’t 100% con­fid­ent that I would be happy sit­ting through an exten­ded ver­sion of the legendary hyper­act­ive car­toon. I need­n’t have wor­ried. The Simpsons Movie is one of the most purely enter­tain­ing movies of the year, with all the stops pulled out by an army of tal­en­ted writers and anim­at­ors determ­ined that the grand leg­acy be con­firmed on the big screen.

And they have done it by not mess­ing with the for­mula. The film is essen­tially an 85 minute epis­ode of the series with the only visu­al con­ces­sions being an abund­ance of detail for the obsess­ives and an enriched col­our palette. Plus, the exten­ded dur­a­tion gives the writers a chance to take some time to really give the film some heart.

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