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Elysium poster

Review: Elysium, Stoker, We’re the Millers, The Heat, Giselle, Private Peaceful, Reality and Now You See Me

By Cinema, Reviews

Matt Damon in Neil Blomkamp's Elysium (2013).

With this year’s fest­iv­al now a rap­idly dimin­ish­ing memory – and my recov­ery from that event (plus anoth­er magazine pub­lished, some “live” pod­cast record­ings, a few Q&A’s, some dir­ect­or inter­views and a Big Screen Symposium) almost com­plete – I return to the com­mer­cial cinema and what do I find? Twenty-three new films have been released since my last set of reviews. Twenty-three! I only turned my back for a second. So, bear with me while I try and do some catch­ing up. Some of these films deserve more space than they are going to get here (and some of them don’t) but you can­’t have everything, am I right?

Elysium posterNeill Blomkamp’s District 9 was a sur­prise smash-hit in 2009 and his follow-up, Elysium, is what we call ‘eagerly awaited’. Watching it I was reminded of the great strengths of that first film: a vividly cre­ated future soci­ety, dys­func­tion­al yet plaus­ible; a great plot setup with a genu­ine dilemma for the cent­ral char­ac­ter. Then I remembered the third act of District 9 – one long fight/chase/fight. And so it proves with Elysium. Wasted poten­tial as – like so many films this year – the film is resolved by who can punch harder rather than who can think bet­ter. I have lots of oth­er prob­lems with it but that’s the main one.

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Review: Eagle Eye, The Rocker, The House Bunny, Wild Child, Space Chimps and Mongol

By Cinema, Reviews

This week I’ve had my intel­li­gence insul­ted by the very best. Steven Spielberg is cred­ited as Executive Producer of Eagle Eye, but if he spent more than one meet­ing over­see­ing this crapitude I would be very sur­prised. Eagle Eye is designed to appeal to cro-magnons who still believe that com­puters are inher­ently malevol­ent self-perpetuating pseudo-organisms and that the US Dept of Defence would invent an all-powerful, sur­veil­lance super-computer that you can’t switch off at the wall. And fans of Shia LaBoeuf. Director D. J. Caruso (last year’s Disturbia) is con­firmed as a name to avoid and Michael Jackson lookalike Michelle Monaghan has done (and will do) bet­ter than this (Gone Baby Gone).

In inter­views, Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute in the American “Office”) has admit­ted that he is behind Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson whenev­er the choicest scripts are handed out, so what that says about The Rocker (his first lead­ing role) I’m not sure. Wilson plays a Pete Best-like drum­mer, fired from the band he named (Vesuvius!) just before they shot to star­dom in 1988. Twenty years and twenty dead-end jobs later, he gets a shot at redemp­tion play­ing with his nephew’s high school band. Wilson really doesn’t have enough pres­ence to carry the film but he’s like­able enough and there’s some nice sup­port­ing work from Jeff Garlin (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and the lovely Christina Applegate (who really deserves to be a much big­ger star than she is).

One week on from the depress­ing Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, there’s even more mis­placed girl power on dis­play in The House Bunny. Scary Movie star Anna Faris gets to exec­ut­ive pro­duce a vehicle for her­self (writ­ten by Laurie Craig and Karen McCullah Lutz, the female screen­writ­ing duo respons­ible for the pos­sibly Nobel Prize-winning Legally Blonde) and with that power comes great respons­ib­il­ity, respons­ib­il­ity that she puts to good use set­ting back the cause of fem­in­ism nearly 40 years.

Almost-Playmate Shelley (Faris), kicked out of Hef’s man­sion for being too old becomes sor­or­ity house moth­er to a bunch of “ugly” mis­fits (includ­ing Emma Stone from The Rocker and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s eld­est daugh­ter Rumer). It’s the lack of ambi­tion that I find so dis­heart­en­ing, although it did con­tain my favour­ite line of the week: “Concentrate on the eyes girls, remem­ber – the eyes are the nipples of the face.”

Roald Dahl’s daugh­ter Lucy is anoth­er female screen­writer stuck in cliché hell. Her script for Wild Child could have res­ul­ted in pass­able enter­tain­ment, but is let down by poor dir­ec­tion and some odd post-production decisions. Last year’s Nancy Drew, Emma Roberts, plays the fish out of water, Malibu rich-chick, sent away to an English board­ing school run by firm-but-fair Natasha Richardson. There she makes friends and enemies and falls in love with hand­some Roddy, played by the worst act­or I’ve ever seen get his name on a major film: Alex Pettyfer (remem­ber the name, folks).

Most fun of the week can be found in Space Chimps, a bois­ter­ous CGI-animated com­edy for kids (and those that might find WALL•E a little too emo­tion­ally demand­ing). Ripping along at a great pace, it has plenty of gags per minute and bene­fits from hav­ing great voice-actors like Patrick Warburton and Kristin Chenoweth involved rather than big name stars slum­ming it. Recommended.

The Russo-Sino-Co-pro Mongol really deserves to be seen on a giant screen, as befit­ting the giant land­scape and giant story. The first of a pro­posed tri­logy telling the life story of Genghis Khan, this instal­ment fol­lows the 12th cen­tury war­lord from his own birth to the birth of an empire span­ning half the known world. Uniting the tribes of Mongolia was a bru­tal busi­ness and there’s plenty of CGI blood splash­ing around as young Temudjin (Tadanobu Asano) dis­cov­ers his destiny.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday, 1 October 2008.

Review: Transformers, Nancy Drew, Starter for 10, Eden and Heartbreak Hotel

By Cinema, Reviews

Above the pro­scen­i­um arch at the Embassy theatre, on either side of the screen, there are two flash­ing red lights. They’ve been there ever since the Return of the King refurb and I thought they were some­thing to do with the secur­ity sys­tem – motion sensors per­haps – but after watch­ing Michael Bay’s Transformers on Friday night I got the idea that maybe they are eyes, you know, wink­ing at us.

The Embassy as sen­tient sen­tinel – pro­tect­ing us from evil, ready to trans­form at a moment’s notice into a giant robot with a really deep voice: as a vehicle for justice, it’s no more pre­pos­ter­ous an idea than the muscle cars, hot rods, tanks and 18-wheelers fea­tured in the film and it might explain that feel­ing of secur­ity I get sink­ing in to the leath­er seats.

In the film, Earth has become the battle­ground for two war­ring races of robots: the good guy Autobots and the not-so-much Decepticons. The cube that is the source of all their power is hid­den some­where here and the only clue is a pair of antique glasses in the pos­ses­sion of horny high school kid Shia LaBoeuf, who the Autobots enlist to help. As you might expect with 30-metre tall robots, keep­ing their pres­ence secret proves chal­len­ging and the atten­tion of the author­it­ies (includ­ing a very hammy John Turturro) is soon in full force.

Transformers is big and loud and mostly fun but the age of its tar­get audi­ence seems to change from scene to scene and the more-than-casual racism of the char­ac­ter­isa­tions (every non-white char­ac­ter seems to be a buf­foon or a cow­ard or both) is a sour note, thank­fully rare these days.

Equally white bread, but not quite as insult­ing, is the latest incarn­a­tion of the Nancy Drew stor­ies about the fam­ous teen­age girl detect­ive. This time Nancy is played by Julia Roberts’ niece (and creepy Eric’s daugh­ter) Emma and while she’s got a little pres­ence she does­n’t seem to totally know what she’s doing. It’s a fish-out-of-water story as Nancy leaves her small mid-western story­book town for the wilds of Los Angeles and any­one who has ever seen an epis­ode of Scooby-Doo knows what’s going to hap­pen next.

The ubi­quit­ous James McAvoy (Last King of Scotland and Becoming Jane) plays Brian Jackson, a work­ing class boy on his way to Bristol University in 1985, in Starter for 10. Determined to get the most out of the exper­i­ence he tri­als for the University Challenge tv quiz team, get­ting a massive crush on the beau­ti­ful but shal­low Eve in the pro­cess. His two best mates are played by two act­ors from The History Boys which, as they were set at the same time and much of the music is inter­change­able, feels like you are watch­ing a weird altern­ate uni­verse at times. Recommended, but unchallenging.

Two minor entries from Europe to fin­ish. Eden is a fable about a bril­liant but lonely chef who falls for the unat­tain­able wait­ress at his favour­ite café: Food porn with a sur­pris­ingly ugly twist at the end.

Colin Nutley’s Heartbreak Hotel is about two 40-something divor­cées in Stockholm who strike up an unlikely friend­ship as they try and nav­ig­ate the world of the newly-single. Heartbreak Hotel itself is the name of the nightclub they go to, a neon cock­tail of the worst aspects of the Courtenay-Blair com­bin­a­tion on a Wednesday night.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times, Wednesday 4 July, 2007 (Eden and Heartbreak Hotel cut for space, Starter for 10 moved to the Picks sec­tion for the same reason).