Category: Reviews
Review – Doctor Strange (2016)
Director: Scott Derrickson
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt
The fourteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange, is a peculiar beast. It is simultaneously the boldest and most conservative Marvel film in some time, taking the franchise in an exciting new visual direction, while taking enormous steps back from the character and relationship complexity of some of Marvel’s more recent films in order to tell a routine origin story.
Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a brilliant, wealthy and arrogant neurosurgeon from New York whose life is turned upside down when a serious car accident leaves him with severe nerve damage in his hands, effectively ending his medical career. After exhausting all the options of western medicine, in desperation he heads to Kathmandu in search of a holy teacher who he has learned healed a man with a serious spinal injury. There he is met by the mysterious Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who takes him to Kamar-Taj, an ancient community of sorcerers under the leadership of the Supreme Sorcerer, known only as the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Continue reading
Review – Weiner (2016)
Directors: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg
Starring: Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin
Sometimes the best documentaries happen when things don’t go quite according to plan, when the story the filmmakers end up telling is not the one they set out to. This is definitely the case with and Weiner. When Josh Kriegman (former chief of staff to Anthony Weiner) and Elyse Steinberg approached the disgraced congressman about documenting his 2013 campaign for the mayorship of New York, they probably envisioned a comeback story, a tale of redemption. However they ended up getting much more than they bargained for. Continue reading
Review – Zootopia (2016)
Directors: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush
Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, JK Simmons, Shakira
In 2013 Frozen earned Disney praise for, among other things, its deviation from the well worn princess formula by showing the love of a sister to be every bit as powerful as that of a prince. With the charming Zootopia, the studio continues the positive evolution of its messaging for young girls by presenting a female protagonist who is not a princess but a police officer.
Since childhood, idealistic bunny Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) has dreamed of leaving behind the rural life of a carrot farmer to become a police officer in the big city. The more people told her it was an impossible dream, that there had never been a bunny police officer before, the stronger her drive got. The first to benefit from the mayor’s Mammal Inclusion Initiative, Judy graduates top of her class from the academy, determined to prove that she belongs and is “not some token bunny.” Continue reading
Review – Suicide Squad (2016)
Director: David Ayer
Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adele Akinuoye-Agbaje, Karen Fukuhara
Suicide Squad represents the brave next step in the stuttering DC Expanded Universe as, for the first time, it shifts its focus away from DC’s big two characters, Superman and Batman, instead looking to a band of misfit villains-turned-heroes. Redemption is the theme here. Redemption for these characters and redemption for the studio after the less than glowing reception of Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.
The US government is still coming to terms with the presence of meta-humans in the world after the climactic events of Batman vs Superman. What happens if the next Superman isn’t such a nice guy? Intelligence agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) proposes an initiative called Taskforce X. In exchange for reductions in their sentences, a group of highly dangerous but highly gifted criminals in Belle Reve Penitentiary are engaged to fight America’s most dangerous foes. Continue reading
Review – Jason Bourne (2016)
Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles
After a real misstep with the spin-off The Bourne Legacy, which tried to continue a franchise without its titular character, star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass have been lured back after nine years to the franchise they both declared they were done with for Jason Bourne. However, in watching this fourth instalment in franchise (we should take our lead from this film and just pretend The Bourne Legacy never happened) it is difficult to see what it was that caused their change of heart.
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) has been off the grid for a number of years but he is tracked down by old ally Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). She has hacked into the CIA’s system determined to expose their black ops programs, including Treadstone, and in the process has uncovered some information about Bourne’s father. Continue reading
Review – Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
Director: Taika Waititi
Starring: Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley
For most casual film fans the New Zealand cinema of the last decade-and-a-half has been defined by Peter Jackson and his adventures in Middle Earth. But this period has also seen the rise of one of the world’s more fun and interesting cinematic voices, writer-director Taika Waititi. Nominated for an Academy Award in 2005 for his short film Two Cars, One Night, his 2010 feature Boy was up until recently New Zealand’s highest grossing domestic film, his vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows won acclaim all over the world, and he has been tapped to enter the blockbuster big time as director of Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok. His current film, and the new highest grossing New Zealand film at the domestic box office, is his most complete, fully realised film to date, Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Thirteen-year-old Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) has spent his life bouncing from foster home to foster home. As child services officer Paula Hall (Rachel House) observes, he’s a “very bag egg,” with a track record of stealing, spitting, kicking things, breaking things and loitering. Continue reading
Review – Ghostbusters (2016)
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Neil Casey
The film at the centre of this year’s most ridiculous “controversy,” Paul Feig’s all-female remake of Ghostbusters, has been released and, surprise surprise, not only has the world continued to turn and everyone’s childhood remained intact, Feig and his quartet of talented comediennes have produced a really fun movie.
Ghostbusters, directed by Ivan Reitman, is a much loved movie and an icon of 1980s culture, so attempting to remake it was always going to be tricky. But unlike a sequel which seeks to recreate the original, trying to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time, a remake has license to reimagine, to do something different. So while this remake shows a great deal of reverence to the original film – including multiple cameos from its cast members – it also understands that this is 2016 and the world, and film comedy, has changed since 1984. So what we get is a Ghostbusters film for today. It is a Paul Feig comedy, cut from the same cloth as Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy, making it a jokier film than the original. Continue reading
Review – Finding Dory (2016)
Directors: Andrew Stanton, Angus MacLane
Starring: Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence, Ed O’Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy
Animation studio Pixar has produced more than its fair share of beloved movies but 2003’s Finding Nemo undoubtedly sits close to the top of their very impressive pile. So it was inevitable that we would return to the Pacific Ocean for another installment, and with Dory, the lovable blue tang with the five-second memory, being arguably their most popular character it made sense that she would play a starring role. The only surprise then is that it took 13 years for us to get there. But Pixar’s track record is not nearly as impressive when it comes to sequels. With the exception of Toy Story 2 and 3, none of the others have really hit the mark. Pixar is undoubtedly at their best when they are being original and thinking outside the box, but with a title that suggests much the same premise as the first film, can Finding Dory be more than just a simple retread?
“Hi, I’m Dory. I suffer from short term memory loss.” These are the first words we hear in Finding Dory and in an instant they simultaneously re-establish who this character is and entirely reinvent her for this new story. Continue reading
Review – War on Everyone (2016)
Director: John Michael McDonagh
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Michael Pena, Theo James, Tessa Thompson, Paul Reiser
With his third film, War on Everyone, writer-director John Michael McDonagh steps away from his customary Irish setting, and from his burgeoning collaboration with veteran actor Brendan Gleeson, to offer us a dark and violent satire which gives an outsider’s view of American police justice.
Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård) and Bob Bolano (Michael Pena) are ethically questionable detectives. Scratch that. They are entirely unethical detectives. Terry became a cop because “you get to shoot people for no reason.” Bob is returning from suspension after assaulting a fellow police officer. Both use blackmail and violence to make sure no criminal in their jurisdiction gets away without giving them a kickback. The duo get word of a planned racetrack heist, and are keen to get in on the action. But when the heist ends in a bloodbath, it becomes apparent that the man behind it is not their usual caliber of perp. As their investigation proceeds to uncover a child pornography ring, the question becomes how much can this bad cop-bad cop pair be confronted with before their latent morality supersedes their self-interest? Continue reading
Review – Sing Street (2016)
Director: John Carney
Starring: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor, Mark McKenna, Ben Carolan, Ian Kenny, Aiden Gillen, Maria Doyle Kennedy
Every year I seem to come across one little movie which compels me to proselytise, a little gem of a film that makes me want to tell the world, because it is a film that deserves to be seen more than it will be. In 2015 it was Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. In 2014 it was Calvary. This year it looks like that film is John Carney’s nostalgic musical Sing Street.
Carney takes us back to Dublin in 1985. Fifteen-year-old Conor Lawler’s (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) parents have been forced to pull him out of the expensive Jesuit School he has been attending and enroll him in the working class Christian Brothers boys school, Synge Street. One day Conor meets Raphina, a young model who lives in the girls’ home across the road from the school, and, in a moment of improvisation, asks her to star in a music video for his band. Expect he doesn’t have a band. So now he needs one. Conor takes a crash course in rock and roll from his older brother Brendan (Jack Reynor), and with the help of schoolyard entrepreneur Darren (Ben Carolan) and musical prodigy Eamon (Mark McKenna), starts a band, which they call Sing Street. Continue reading
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