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the a-team

Review: The A-Team and Micmacs

By Cinema, Reviews

The A-Team posterLast week your faith­ful cor­res­pond­ent reviewed a big budget Hollywood film, based on a beloved tele­vi­sion series, fea­tur­ing four friends who went to a for­eign land with no know­ledge or empathy for the inhab­it­ants and con­tin­ued to live their self-serving, smug, lives blind to the real­ity sur­round­ing them. This week, I’m going to do it all over again and the only dif­fer­ence is that I really hated Sex and the City 2 and actu­ally quite enjoyed The A‑Team.

Now this real­isa­tion is giv­ing me some pause. They are fun­da­ment­ally the same film. Why should I react so strongly against one and so… benignly to the oth­er? Is it just a mat­ter of gender? Am I hard-wired to enjoy the male-bonding, explo­sions and gags in the way that female view­ers are hard-wired to enjoy the shoes and frocks in SATC2? Christ, I hope not. I’d bet­ter find some good reas­ons for enjoy­ing The A‑Team before I out myself as a review­er who can’t rise above his gender or class and there’s enough of those around already.

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Review: The Losers, Every Jack Has a Jill and A Single Man

By Cinema, Reviews

This week’s review comes to you from sunny/rainy Auckland where your cor­res­pond­ent is catch­ing up with old friends and enjoy­ing the Auckland cinema scene. The first thing to report is that audi­ence beha­viour in the 09 is as selfish and imma­ture as it is at home. Texting and talk­ing is as pre­val­ent at com­mer­cial films like The Losers (screen­ing at the oth­er­wise well-appointed Sky City St Lukes) as in Wellington.

The Losers posterThe Losers itself would be an easy film to avoid if it wasn’t the only not­able Hollywood release of the week. A crack com­mando squad are hung out to dry by mys­ter­i­ous forces back in Washington. Somehow they have to get back stateside, clear their names and take their revenge on the shad­owy mas­ter­mind who tries to des­troy them. Sound famil­i­ar? Yes, it’s The A‑Team and a remake of that comes out in a week or two so you can safely bypass this low-rent ver­sion fea­tur­ing some B‑list stars like Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen ), Chris Evans (Fantastic 4) and the bland­est super vil­lain in his­tory, Jason Patric (Speed 2).

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