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antonio banderas

RN 1/10: A 30.48 metre journey to be precise

By Audio, Cinema, Rancho Notorious, Reviews

Liam Maguren from flicks.co.nz joins Dan and Kailey to review the cross-cultural korma that is The Hundred-Foot Journey (star­ring Helen Mirren and Om Puri) and the explos­ive nostalgia-fest of Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables 3.

Listen for a chance to win Glenn Kenny’s book Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor (Glenn was inter­viewed in last week’s epis­ode).

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Review: Oblivion, Warm Bodies, Barbara, Performance, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and The Croods

By Cinema, Reviews

Oblivion_30_580 Last time we saw Tom Cruise he was known as Jack Reacher. Now, in Oblivion, his name is Jack Harper. What range! What diversity! You’d hardly recog­nise him. Harper is a main­ten­ance guy, repair­ing the drones that pro­tect giant machines that suck Earth’s oceans up to an enorm­ous space sta­tion orbit­ing above us, a space sta­tion that is going to take the few remain­ing sur­viv­ors of our pyrrhic vic­tory over invad­ing ali­ens on a final jour­ney away from a dev­ast­ated plan­et to a new life on Titan.

Oblivion posterAssisting Mr. Cruise with his mech­an­ic­al defence duties is Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), life and work part­ner, keep­ing him in con­tact with the super­visors float­ing above them and keep­ing an eye on the strag­gling rem­nants of the ali­ens who tried to con­quer us. Traditional gender roles are very much still intact in the future – even though the Moon isn’t – and Ms. Riseborough’s char­ac­ter seems con­tent to nev­er leave the spot­less mod­ern kit­chen while Cruise gets his hands dirty on the sur­face. Neither of them seem too bothered by the fact that they had their memor­ies wiped six years pre­vi­ously, although he has been hav­ing some strange dreams recently.

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Review: The Skin I Live In, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Ghost Rider- Spirit of Vengeance

By Cinema, Reviews

The Skin I Live In posterAnyone won­der­ing wheth­er the great Pedro Almodóvar had lost some of his edge at the ripe old age of 62 should imme­di­ately check out his new film The Skin I Live In which is as deranged as any­thing else he has pro­duced in more than thirty years of fea­ture film mak­ing. Puss In Boots him­self, Antonio Banderas, plays a suc­cess­ful plastic sur­geon with a dark secret. Many of his greatest med­ic­al achieve­ments are a res­ult of the exper­i­ments he con­ducts on a beau­ti­ful woman (Elena Anaya) held cap­tive in his mansion.

Who is she? Why is she there? These ques­tions are answered in the film but have to be skir­ted around here for even the tini­est hint at spoil­ers will wreck some of the twisti­est (in all senses of the word except per­haps con­fec­tion­ary) sur­prises you will exper­i­ence all year. It’s enough to say that if this film had been made in the 1950s then Banderas’ char­ac­ter would have been played by Vincent Price (think House of Wax) and that every­one involved would have been run out of town by the authorities.

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Review: Puss in Boots, Jig, Red Dog and Tomboy

By Cinema, Reviews

Every so often a film comes along that fits so squarely and neatly inside one’s own per­son­al set of interests and enthu­si­asms that it is impossible to be object­ive about it. I try and keep my work here dis­in­ter­ested and arms’ length – clin­ic­al, if you will – but, y’know, I’m only human. Just so you know. With that dis­claim­er out of the way, then, here’s my review of Puss in Boots.

So. Much. Fun. Soooo. Much. Fun. As one of the smart Embassy staff poin­ted out to me after­wards, Puss (Antonio Banderas) has been basic­ally single-pawedly keep­ing the Shrek fran­chise alive for a while so a spin-off was not only likely but neces­sary. And welcome.

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