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Feb 09 2011
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Review: True Grit, Inside Job and Wild Target

By Cinema and Reviews

Once again the Coen Brothers set a stand­ard for every oth­er film to try and match. True Grit is every bit as bril­liant as its repu­ta­tion would sug­gest: the best west­ern since Unforgiven and a cent­ral per­form­ance from Jeff Bridges that is twice as good as the one he secured an Oscar for last year (Crazy Heart).

Bridges plays iras­cible one-eyed Deputy Marshall Rooster Cogburn, a man with a repu­ta­tion for shoot­ing first and ask­ing ques­tions later, a man with a taste for whis­key and a dis­taste for author­ity. He is hired by spunky 14 year old Mattie Ross (aston­ish­ing new­comer Hailee Steinfeld) to hunt down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who killed her law abid­ing, decent, cit­izen fath­er. Also, hunt­ing Chaney for a huge Federal reward (that dwarfs Mattie’s small bounty) is suave Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) and soon the chase is on, into law­less Indian ter­rit­ory where the fugit­ive is holed up.

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Mar 14 2010
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Review: It’s Complicated, Cirque du freak: The Vampire’s Assistant & Astro Boy

By Cinema and Reviews

It's Complicated posterThe first thing you need to know about It’s Complicated is that it isn’t very com­plic­ated at all. The plot, the char­ac­ters, the gags (dear God, espe­cially the gags) are all per­fectly com­pre­hens­ible – even to those of us with only mod­est intel­lec­tu­al fac­ulties. Rest assured, at no point will any­one be talk­ing over your head in this one.

Nancy Meyer’s pre­vi­ous film was The Holiday, which eas­ily remains in the bot­tom ten of the 1200+ films I have reviewed in these pages, so It’s Complicated earns a single point for not being that bad, but that’s where I run out of positives.

Meryl Streep plays Jane, suc­cess­ful baker and busi­ness­wo­man, who has a drunk­en one-night-stand with her rogue-ish ex-husband, played by Alec Baldwin. He thinks that they should try again. She isn’t so sure – mainly because he is now mar­ried to the woman he left her for ten years earli­er and she really doesn’t want to be the “oth­er woman” to the “oth­er woman”.

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Mar 22 2009
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Review: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, The Unknown Woman, The Unborn, The Women and Notorious

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

Underword: Rise of the Lycans posterA friend of mine audi­tioned for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (pro­duced in Auckland in 2006) and did­n’t get a part. I was pleased to report to him yes­ter­day that he had dodged a (sil­ver) bul­let there as this non­sensic­al pre­quel to the Kate Beckinsale leather-fetishists fantasy series was not going to do any­one’s career any good.

The usu­ally great Bill Nighy plays Viktor, lead­er of a bunch of aris­to­crat­ic (but strangely demo­crat­ic) vam­pires in middle ages middle Europe. They earn their keep by squeez­ing pro­tec­tion money out of the loc­al humans – sup­posedly keep­ing the were­wolves out of their hair – but evol­u­tion is not on their side and the wolves are in the ascendant.

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May 31 2007
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Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Aurora Borealis

By Cinema and Reviews

Pirates of the Caribbean posterIs it really only a year since the last Pirates of the Caribbean film (Dead Man’s Chest) ended so abruptly after three hours that it felt almost per­son­ally insult­ing? Apparently. Now the team are back to try and com­plete the long drawn out story and provide some level of sat­is­fac­tion for those of us who wanted a little more than huge, epis­od­ic, set-pieces that go nowhere.

To the cred­it of writers Elliott and Rosso and dir­ect­or Verbinski, At World’s End does a fair job of wrap­ping up the mean­der­ing story and the final hour is as thrill­ing as any in recent cinema – its just a shame it’s taken eight hours of end­less double-crossing to get there.

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