Review – Side Effects (2013)

Director: Steven Soderbergh     

Starring: Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Channing Tatum, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Side EffectsWhen I visited America a couple of years ago, I was struck by the advertising of prescription medications on TV. Viewers were encouraged to ask their doctor about the latest cholesterol medication or anti-depressant. It seemed symptomatic of a society with a disturbingly consumerist relationship with medication. It is precisely this mindset, particularly towards mood-altering medications, that Steven Soderbergh seeks to expose in Side Effects.

Dr. Jonathan Banks is a professionally ambitious psychiatrist who comes into contact with troubled Emily Taylor after it appears she has tried to take her own life. With a history of anxiety she is struggling to adjust after her husband returns from prison. When the usual suspects don’t seem to be doing the job, Banks turns to a new drug called Ablixa, whose advertisements encourage patients to “take back tomorrow.” But like all mood altering meds, it has a couple of side effects.

Both of their lives are soon rocked when Emily is arrested for murder, seemingly while under the influence of her medication. Dr. Banks is then caught between a rock and a hard place. If he chooses to defend Emily against the charges, blaming the drugs for her actions, the finger of blame then turns to him as the man who prescribed the medication. As his career starts unravelling before his eyes, he sets about investigating the events to work out exactly what happened.

While we are not encouraged to believe that Emily’s condition doesn’t warrant medication, Soderbergh uses other peripheral characters to mount his criticism of an overmedicated society which has become reliant on mood altering drugs. We see one woman calmly popping a beta blocker to help her get through a job interview, while others share their knowledge and familiarity with the effects of the various mood altering medications that Emily has been prescribed. While this social commentary ultimately makes way for a reasonably regulation thriller narrative it is interesting while it’s there.

Jude Law and Rooney Mara carry much of the load in this film and both put in strong performances. Law gives Dr. Banks a very composed and measured personality, but as the events unfold he deteriorates, growing more and more desperate. It is interesting to watch this character who makes his living from helping people keep it together fall apart. Mara, who burst onto the scene with her roles in The Social Network and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, delivers arguably her best performance, opting for subtlety when it would have been easy to go over the top.

Soderbergh’s body of work demonstrates an impressive stylistic range, with drastically different films like Traffic, Erin Brokovich, the Oceans 11 films and sex, lies and videotape. In this case he adopts a very neat, efficient and largely unobtrusive visual style. As well as directing the film, he acted as cinematographer (under his regular pseudonym Peter Andrews) and editor (this time as Mary Ann Bernard).

Steven Soderbergh has suggested that this will be his final feature film – though it should be noted that his made-for-TV Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra is set to receive a cinematic release in some markets. From here on in he plans to focus his energies on other artistic pursuits, primarily long-form television. If Side Effects does end up being his parting gift as a feature filmmaker – which I’m not entirely convinced of – it is not a bad note to leave on. While it won’t sit among the very best examples of his work, it is a good thriller with an interesting central premise.

Rating – ★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Stoker (2013)

Director: Chan-Wook Park

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Alden Ehrenreich, Dermot Mulroney, Jackie Weaver

StokerWritten by Wentworth Miller, who you may know as one of the stars of the television series Prison Break, and heavily indebted to Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Stoker is a coming of age story with a difference. Think less Stand by Me and more Carrie.

India Stoker is a morose teenage girl, darker than your normal morose teenage girl, uncomfortable in her own skin and unsure of her identity. When her father, with whom she was close, is killed in a car accident she is left without a buffer between her and her troubled mother, with whom she has a strained relationship. Living alone together in large Southern mansion, they are surprised by the arrival of her Uncle Charlie, a brother of her fathers whom she didn’t know existed. Charlie arrives out of the blue and declares his intention to stay for a while. He is young, handsome, and well-travelled, and instantly charms India’s mother, while India is more cautious and distrusting of this mysterious uncle. With time she finds this distrust matched with a strange sense of kinship, before learning the dangerous truth about Uncle Charlie… he is a psychopathic serial killer.

This psychological thriller is directed by Korean filmmaker Chan-Wook Park who gained international attention in 2004, when his revenge thriller Oldboy won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and became a cult favourite around the world. Stoker marks his first foray into English-language filmmaking and he has no trouble applying his immense talent for visual storytelling to a different language. The images are masterfully composed, and cleverly edited together, including an interesting transitionary device where items that appear to be part of one shot end up becoming part of the shot on the other side of the dissolve.

Stoker has a creepy, chilling tone – established through the way the picture is photographed, the performances of the actors, and the music – that elicits quite a visceral reaction. Before you process the narrative information, before you understand what is going on, you are already feeling that sense of unease and mistrust.

The film has a Gothic feel to it, no doubt resulting from the fact that much of the action takes place in the Stoker’ old Southern mansion, which looks unchanged since the 1930s. In fact, it makes it initially quite difficult to pin down a time period for the events. You find yourself assuming that you are watching a period piece from the first half of the 20th century until we get a couple of scenes at the school which makes it apparent that it is the present day.

Stoker’s second half lacks the subtlety of its slow-burning first half, with that spookiness and sense of menace that is so overpowering in the film’s early passages making way for more direct, confronting images of violence. The eroticising of these acts of violence adds another disturbing layer to the bond being formed between India and her uncle.

Stoker will only receive a limited release, and likely won’t make a huge impact, but it could well be one of the year’s best films. It is a fantastic psychological thriller: creepy, compelling and strangely beautiful.

Rating – ★★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Safe Haven (2013)

Director: Lasse Hallström

Starring: Julianne Hough, Josh Duhamel, David Lyons, Cobie Smulders

Safe HavenIn the last decade Nicholas Sparks has established himself as today’s undisputed king of schmaltz. Safe Haven is the eighth Sparks’ romance to be adapted for the big screen, and it is not one of the best.

Sparks has a bit of a formula – girl meets guy, girl and guy fall in love, girl and guy get caught in the rain together, and then something dramatic threatens to keep them apart. In this case that girl is Katie and that guy is Alex, a single father who runs the general store in a small fishing village that she happens to come through. The thing threatening to derail them is Katie’s secret: she is on the run, wanted for murder and being pursued by a particularly obsessive Boston detective. The thriller element is something different from the usual formula, but isn’t particularly strong, and feels like a concession to all of the boyfriends who will be made to sit through the film by their better halves. The film plods along pleasantly enough before “surprising” you with two plot twists, one which you see coming a mile away, and the other which will surely be one of the most ridiculous and unnecessary twists you will ever come across.

Safe Haven is directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström. Hallström has made some fine films in his career – My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules, and Chocolat ­to name but a few – which makes you wonder what on Earth attracted him to Safe Haven. Does he owe someone money? Does he just like spending a couple of months in a lovely location doing not overly strenuous work? More unfathomable is that it is actually his second Sparks adaptation, after 2010’s Dear John. Could he be a fan?

Katie is played by Julianne Hough, a dancer best known for her work in Footloose and Rock of Ages. Those films took advantage of her song and dance background. Safe Haven does not. Unable to employ her primary talents, it appears she has been cast for her ability to smile and wear shorts. She is one of a number of weak links in the film, with her inability to convince you of the burden that is supposedly weighing on her yet she seems so easily to forget, contributing to the ineffectiveness of the whole film. Cobie Smulders from How I Met Your Mother is on a hiding to nothing with her character, the mysterious Jo, but I don’t want to say too much in case I spoil the big twist. The only cast member who can really hold his head up is Josh Duhamel, who tries his heart out as single dad Alex in the face of substandard material, managing to be the only character who you can almost bring yourself to believe could be a real person.

But the lack of interest in the characters is not such an issue given that, as is often the case in Sparks adaptations, the real star of the film is the idyllic location. In this case it is the picturesque fishing town of Southport, North Carolina. Just lovely.

Schmaltzy romances don’t have to be bad, but this one is.

Rating – ★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – The Lone Ranger (2013)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Starring: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fitchner, Tom Wilkinson, Ruth Wilson, Helena Bonham Carter, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale

Lone RangerThe Bruckheimer, Verbinski, Depp trio which brought you the Pirates of the Caribbean series is back and this time they are taking us to the Wild West with a remake of the classic serial The Lone Ranger.

The Lone Ranger and his trusty sidekick Tonto date back to a radio serial from the early 1930s and have since appeared in novels, comics, television series and numerous films, both features and shorts. But the young demographic the film is targeted at are a couple of generations removed from those who grew up with the Lone Ranger, so the film really has a clean slate in introducing these much-loved characters to a new audience.

We are taken back to the beginning, with idealistic young lawyer John Reid is caught in an ambush by the horrible Butch Cavendish and his gang, having been deputised a Texas Ranger by his sheriff brother. While the rest of the posse is killed, Reid is brought back from death’s door by a peculiar Comanche named Tonto, who teaches him that sometimes in a corrupt society the only way to serve justice is to operate as an outlaw.

Our story teller is an elderly Tonto, recounting the story of the Lone Ranger – or as he knows him, Kemosabe – to a young boy. That we hear the story from Tonto’s point of view turns him from a sidekick into arguably the central character. This is a move obviously designed to make the most of Johnny Depp’s star presence, which sees him largely playing a variation of Jack Sparrow as an Indian. Tonto is also given his own back-story, which explains his kookiness without merely resting on unfortunate racial stereotypes that would not be as easily accepted now as they were in the 1930s and 1940s. That we first meet the elderly Tonto standing in a Wild West sideshow exhibition display entitled “The Noble Savage” suggests an awareness on the part of the writers of the problematic tradition that characters like Tonto have come out of.

The writers do a good job in staying true to the characters and elements that fans will expect, while making the required adjustments to give it a fresh and contemporary feel. They are also willing to acknowledge that some things just don’t quite work as well for a 2013 audience as it did for a 1933 audience. The picture finishes with a good laugh at the expense of the Lone Ranger’s catchphrase, “Hi ho, Silver! Away!”

While the Western has experienced somewhat of a return to relevance in recent years with films like True Grit and, of course, Django Unchained, The Lone Ranger represents something entirely different. This is a $250m studio blockbuster, making it far and away the most expensive Western ever made, and indicates a level of faith in the genre that hasn’t been present in major studio Hollywood since the 1950s. It is also a return to the matinee style, Wild West adventure, and is definitely the most fun that has been had with the Western for quite a while.

With the producer, director and star of the Pirates of the Caribbean series joining forces again, it is unsurprising that The Lone Ranger has a very similar feel to that incredibly successful franchise. You get that blockbuster-friendly blend of action, adventure and comedy. Every dollar of that estimated $250m budget has ended up on the screen. The Lone Ranger is a big movie with big action. It may not have been based on a ride like Pirates of the Caribbean was, but it still feels like one.

For much of its two-and-a-half hour run-time, The Lone Ranger feels uneven. Verbinski seems to struggle to find a balance between the light-heartedness that comes from a slightly bumbling hero with a quirky sidekick, and some moments that are surprisingly dark and disturbing. But the movie really hits its straps in the last 45 minutes, finishing on a high with an enormous action sequence featuring horses and trains and horses on trains. Add to that the iconic William Tell Overture, and you’ll have a hard time not smiling.

Rating – ★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Man of Steel (2013)

Director: Zack Snyder

Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne

Man of SteelAfter successfully resurrecting the dormant Batman franchise with his Dark Knight Trilogy, DC Comics and Warner Brothers turned to Christopher Nolan with a far greater challenge: Superman. At a time when audiences seem to prefer their heroes flawed, either with a sense of damage and menace (Batman) or an overly well-developed ego (Iron Man), was there still a market for an idealistic boy scout in a blue suit who fights for truth, justice and the American way?

Whereas the last attempt to resurrect the franchise, Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, tried to follow on from the Christopher Reeve series, Man of Steel takes us back to the beginning. Rather than working chronologically, the film jumps back and forth, relying heavily on flashbacks to fill in the story of how Kal-El became Clark Kent and then Superman – a handy device to avoid the usual origin story problem of requiring the audience to wait too long before Superman starts being super. No sooner has Clark learned the truth about his heritage, he is called upon to protect his adopted home from invaders from his ancestral home, with the banished Kryptonian military leader General Zod mounting an invasion of Earth, with the intention of establishing it as a new Krypton.

The “invaders from outer space” nature of the threat in Man of Steel makes it feel more akin to Transformers or Independence Day than other spandex-clad superhero movies. That is the biggest difference between this and previous screen adaptations: Man of Steel is a science-fiction movie rather than a fantasy. It looks like a science fiction movie, with the ice-crystal set designs of the Christopher Reeve films abandoned for a design seemingly more inspired by Ridley Scott’s Alien, and it sounds like a science-fiction movie, complete with terrible dialogue about world engines, codexes and Phantom drives.

Like many a Superman adaptation before it, Man of Steel flirts with the allusion of Superman as a Christ figure – an ironic tradition given the hero was the product of Jewish creators Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster. Our hero’s father, Jor-El, tells his son, “You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time they will join you in the sun. In time you will help them accomplish wonders.” The Christ allusions in Man of Steel aren’t as overt as they have been in the past – in Superman Returns he was “the light to show them the way,” literally sacrificing himself for the sake of humanity only to be resurrected a couple of days later – instead preferring to focus on the idea of Superman being a symbol of hope.

With Nolan acting as producer, directorial duties were given to Zack Snyder, who is known for his highly stylised use of digital effects in films like 300, Sucker Punch and Watchmen. While he sticks to a pretty simple aesthetic here, his experience with digital effects results in the most visually impressive Superman film yet made, with the little touches – like the way you see the sound barrier being cracked when Superman flies away – being more impressive than the huge effects we are used to seeing in this kind of movie.

A big movie like this one presented as an epic story needs a big-time cast to carry it. British actor Henry Cavill makes for a good Superman, with the appropriate combination of broad chest, chiselled jaw and trustworthy eyes. Amy Adams gets more to work with than past Lois Lanes, with her incarnation of the plucky journalist being courageous, resourceful, and finally intelligent enough to be able to recognise the object of her affection even when he puts on glasses. But it is the depth and quality of the supporting cast which really helps to give the film an epic quality, with the likes of Russell Crowe, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner and Lawrence Fishburne all putting in solid supporting turns.

While it is certain to perform strongly at the box office, ultimately Man of Steel runs into the same issues that Superman stories always seem to: that the build-up is more interesting than the climax. In this case the interest is in the existential journey of a young Clark Kent who is trying to work out who he is, why he is here and what he should do with his abilities, and in the way people respond to him and what he represents. But an adventure story climax requires a level of threat that is hard to muster when your hero is practically invincible. In this case he has an adversary who is equally invincible, and watching two of them hitting each other starts to get a bit tedious after a while.

Rating – ★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – To the Wonder (2012)

Director: Terrence Malick

Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams

To the WonderTerrence Malick is not your usual filmmaker. He was a philosophy student at Harvard who graduated summa cum laude before heading to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He was teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before deciding to enrol at the American Film Institute. Since then he has had an intriguing 40 year career as a director which has amazingly only resulted in six feature films. While he left academia a long time ago, that philosophical streak still exists in his work, and as he has grown older his films have become increasingly contemplative and esoteric.

His last film, The Tree of Life, divided critics and audiences alike with some declaring it the film of the year while others found it excessively self-indulgent and pretentious. His new picture, To the Wonder is a similar style of film to Tree of Life, though likely a step further away from the mainstream and less well executed.

As a filmmaker, Malick is growing increasingly disinterested in narrative. So while To the Wonder has a narrative of sorts it is not really the primary focus of the film. We meet two outsiders living in Oklahoma. Marina is a Ukranian single mother who has moved to America from Paris after falling in love with an American, Neil. Father Quintana is a Hispanic Catholic priest who moved to the area to minister. Both have been compelled to move their by love, but both now find themself feeling increasingly isolated and distant from that love. The picture contrasts Marina’s relationship difficulties with Quintana’s crisis of faith.

For this exploration of love in its different forms, Malick is more interested in evoking than describing. Instead of getting scenes, we simply glimpse moments. Instead of having passages of dialogue, we capture a sentence here or there. The prominence of the musical score over dialogue means the film can feel almost like a silent movie.

Like The Tree of Life, To the Wonder is a visual and aural experience with an ethereal quality. The cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki, who has worked twice before with Malick, is breathtaking. Whether in the streets of Paris, the plains of Oklahoma or the humble homes of Bartlesville, Lubezki and Malick give us beautiful, emotive images. However unlike its predecessor, To the Wonder doesn’t have the substance to support its style. The combination of these stunning images, an expressive score, and a narration of philosophical whisperings in French and Spanish has led more than one critic to liken the film to a high end perfume commercial.

An impressive principal cast including Olga Kurylenko, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem suggests that the chance to work with Malick is obviously a draw card for actors. But don’t come expecting to see movie stars because Malick’s camera doesn’t treat them that way. Case in point is Ben Affleck, who despite being a big name star, constantly finds himself on the periphery of the frame, often with his head cut out of the picture. In the film’s first passages in Paris Affleck hardly says a word. We assume this is because his character doesn’t speak French, but then when the film migrates to America we still don’t hear from him.

To the Wonder has an impassioned spirituality. You can’t help but feel that there is an autobiographical element to Father Quintana’s longing to again experience the presence of Christ in the world around him. Unfortunately though, the film lacks clarity, with the vagueness of its events, characters and themes more likely to leave you scratching your head than deep in philosophical reflection.

Rating – ★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – The Great Gatsby (2013)

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Jack Thompson

Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, often referred to as ‘the great American novel,’ is arguably the sacred text of American literature. The tale of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby who returns to reclaim his long lost love, provides a snapshot of the opulence and extravagance of the roaring Twenties, and an insight into the darker side of the great American Dream of the self-made man. Multiple attempts have been made over the years to bring Fitzgerald’s story to the screen, but none have really satisfied. The level of reverence towards the source material means that any film adaptation is going to encounter a certain amount of pushback from an audience with a strong idea in their head of what the story is supposed to look like.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann is not the type to shy away from the challenge of taking on a literary giant. After all, this is the man who made his name with his non-traditional approach to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and literary figures don’t come much bigger than William Shakespeare. With The Great Gatsby, what we get from the director is his interpretation rather than merely an adaptation. While he retains a high level of respect for the source material and sticks very closely to Fitzgerald’s narrative – with the exception of adding a framing device which sees our narrator Carraway recounting the events to his therapist – Luhrmann is not content to simply provide the images for Fitzgerald’s words. He gives us “Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby,” the Gatsby that only he could make. He takes a chance in that regard, but he needed to. The 1974 version of the film – directed by Jack Clayton and starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow – is a very conservative adaptation of the story and the result is an incredibly boring film. Love him or hate him, Baz brings something to the fold.

Luhrmann is, of course, a specialist in artifice, and with his production designer wife Catherine Martin, he provides a visual and aural extravaganza. The Great Gatsby is a period drama unlike any other you’ve seen. It is a feast of art deco style, with design and costume coming straight out of the 1920s – as an aside, you are looking at the early Oscar frontrunner in the Best Costume Design category. This period design is then contrasted with an overt digital element, used both to enhance the set design and geography, as well as in the cinematography. Luhrmann and cinematographer Simon Duggan employ a style of digital cinematography we are more used to seeing in action blockbusters like The Avengers, employing a number of impossible, artificial camera angles and swooping cinematography.

While the film’s visual style sets it apart from most period dramas, by far its most controversial element is its soundtrack. While the films diegetic music (music whose source is within the world of the film, like a radio or record player) is all in keeping with the era, the non-diegetic music (the soundtrack laid over the onscreen action) draws primarily from contemporary music, particularly RnB. The soundtrack includes the likes of Jay Z (also an executive producer on the film), Beyonce, Jack White, SIA, NEYO, will.i.am and Lana Del Rey. Much like the 3D photography, the use of contemporary music on the soundtrack is a device that is meant to draw you into the film. Hearing contemporary RnB music at Gatsby’s parties gives them a certain familiarity, making them a more relatable and as a result more immersive and overwhelming experience. But while it is an interesting device, I can’t help but feel the music is one element of the films which is not going to date well. There will come a time, and it won’t be too far into the future, when the film’s soundtrack feels neither of the period nor contemporary and as such just seems strange.

DiCaprio showing he can still do heartthrob

DiCaprio showing he can still do heartthrob

In the midst of this swirling visual and aural experience are four strong performances. Gatsby is, after all, a story built about relationships. Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway provides the film’s centre and the audience’s eyes and ears, with Luhrmann sticking to Fitzgerald’s device of telling the story from Carraway’s point of view. Luhrmann once described Carey Mulligan as “the actress of her generation,” and while Daisy is not really a meaty enough part to allow her to live up to that hype, she does bring an innocence to the role. DiCaprio, as the mysterious Gatsby, does not appear until half an hour into the film. But in the moment of his entrance, to the soaring tones of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ he shows that despite not having really done it since Titanic, Leo can still play Hollywood heartthrob. The most eye-catching performance of the picture though is from Joel Edgerton. Playing Daisy’s brutish husband, Tom Buchanan, Edgerton is at times an almost hulking presence. Yet despite being ostensibly the villain of the film, and despite treating Daisy horribly, Edgerton brings just enough nuance to Buchanan that you feel something for him as he watches his wife being stolen away by Gatsby.

Luhrmann’s Gatsby has polarised critics, as Luhrmann’s films are want to do. But coming on the back of numerous other failed attempts at adapting Fitzgerald’s novel – at least four others by my count – I can’t help but wonder does the question needs to be asked, are the elements which make Fitzgerald’s novel great not ones which can easily be translated to the screen? Does the brilliance of Fitzgerald’s novel come from something other than simply its narrative or its characters? Or is it simply the case that the right filmmaker hasn’t attempted it yet?

In the meantime, Baz Luhrmann has given us a characteristically glitzy and visually extravagant take on the classic story which is sure to please audiences and make a pile of money, even if it does leave the literary purists slightly dissatisfied.

Rating – ★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

 

Review – The Internship (2013)

Director: Shawn Levy

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rose Byrne, Aasif Mandvi, Josh Brener, Max Minghella, Dylan O’Brien, Tiya Sircar, Tobit Raphael

InternshipWhen are the limits of product placement? With The Internship, Google pushes them.

When watch salesmen Billy and Nick lose their jobs because their industry becomes obsolete (no one wears watches anymore, they just look at their phones), Billy decides to go for a long shot and arranges for an interview for the two of them to enter an internship program with Google. Despite their complete lack of computer knowledge they somehow manage to secure a position in an program, where they are thrown together with a team of misfits to compete against the other interns in a week-long series of challenges in which the “Nooglers” (that’s new Googlers) must demonstrate their “Googliness.” At the end of the week only the best team earn jobs at Google.

There is the temptation to see The Internship as one, massive piece of product placement. Throughout the picture we are told about all the wonderful products and services Google has to offer its consumers, with one character even going so far to say that she believes Google makes the world a better place. But Product placement tends to imply something more sneaky and subliminal – James Bond flashing his Omega watch while ordering a Heineken, the Men in Black wearing Ray Ban shades. That’s not what we are getting in The Internship, because Google is as central and essential to the film as any of its stars. Would the film have worked if it was any other tech company that Billy and Nick would have been equally out of place at? Not really. The film uses the established idea we already have of Google as “the best place in the world to work,” the computer nerd’s paradise on earth.

What saves this movie from feeling too much like an ad is that it has a heart. Billy and Nick are not only 20 years older than all of the other interns, but 20 years older than a lot of the Google staff running the program. This generation gap is the source of much of the film’s comedy (Billy’s continuous efforts to inspire his team through references to Flashdance), and also what gives the film that heart, with both generations have something to teach and something to learn from each other.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are not quite the box office draw they were eight years ago when the teamed up for Wedding Crashers, but they are still a really likeable duo with have an easy rapport, who working well off each other. So between them and a feel-good if generic storyline, The Internship musters just enough goodwill to win you over by the end, allowing you to look put aside the cynic inside you which feels like you’ve just watched a two hour Google ad disguised as entertainment.

Rating – ★★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Director: Justin Lin

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gai Gadot, Ludacris, Luke Evans, Gina Carano

Fast & Furious 6Amazingly, as the Fast & Furious franchise extends into its sixth instalment, rather than fizzling out as it tries and squeeze every last dollar out of the concept, it appears to have found a second wind and is getting stronger. By most every measure of quality, Fast & Furious 6 is terrible, except for one… it is heaps of fun.

Adversaries become allies and the hunted become the hunters when Federal Agent Hobbs is forced to turn to Toretto and his team to help catch Owen Shaw, a terrorist he has been tracking across the globe who leads an elite mercenary team of drivers. But what is in it for Toretto and his team? Why would they abandon the high life they are all living having made off with $100m at the end of Fast Five to assist their nemesis? Because one of Shaw’s crew is none other than Toretto’s lost love Letty, who we all thought died in Fast & Furious (the fourth one, not to be confused with The Fast and the Furious, the original). Oh, and she has amnesia… seriously.

The strength of this franchise, particularly with this film and the last, is that it knows exactly what it is. This movie is completely ridiculous, but it revels in it. Fast & Furious 6 is director Justin Lin’s fourth film in the series, having come on board for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and he delivers a very self-assured film. He knows what this film is, he knows who its audience is and what they are there to see, and he delivers it.

The plot is farcical. The acting is wooden. The dialogue is horrendous. But none of that matters because the there are plenty of laughs (about half of which are intentional) and the action is second-to-none. Lin gives us four major car-chase sequences, each one better than the last and each one good enough to be the climax of most action movies. Of particular note are the chase on a coastal bridge in Spain which features an army tank, and the climactic chase involving a cargo plane on a military base which must have the longest runway in the world.

There’s a great little post-credit scene which is going to blow the minds of fans, and assure they are all counting down for number seven.

Rating – ★★★

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Director: J. J. Abrams

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anton Yelchin, Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood

Star Trek Into DarknessIn 2009, J.J. Abrams reboot of the Star Trek franchise wildly exceeded everyone’s expectations, taking almost $400m at the worldwide box office, and establishing Abrams as the next big thing in blockbuster moviemaking. Almost immediately talk started about a sequel, and four years later we get Star Trek Into Darkness, a title seemingly in dire need of some punctuation (Seriously, doesn’t Star Trek: Into Darkness just look more right).

This second instalment continues on from where the 2009 film left off, again acting as a sort of prequel to the original television series and subsequent films. After Star Fleet headquarters are attacked by terrorist John Harrison, Kirk and his crew are sent on a revenge mission to blast Harrison the smithereens. However Harrison is hiding out on Kronos, and their mission risks sparking an all-out war with the volatile Klingons, so Spock persuades Kirk instead to attempt to take Harrison prisoner and make him stand trial. They capture Harrison and bring him aboard the Enterprise unaware that there is more to him than they knew and that aboard the Enterprise is exactly where Harrison wanted to be (If only Kirk, Spock and the gang had seen The Dark Knight… or The Avengers… or Skyfall).

At the heart of Star Trek Into Darkness, as with the previous film, is the symbiotic relationship between Captain Kirk and Commander Spock. They are completely different from one another. One is impulsive and instinctual. The other is logical and calculated. Both frustrate the hell out of the other, but both are also dependent on the strengths of the other to make up for their own deficiencies. They are mutually dependent. While the first film told the story of how these two met each other and came to be a team, this film deals with how they came to truly respect one another and see the value of each other. Both Kirk and Spock at key moments in the film must force themselves to think and act like the other in order to tackle a situation. That Abrams is able to effectively keep human relationships at the centre of such a large scale sci-fi blockbuster is what separates him from contemporary blockbuster makers like Michael Bay (Really, did anyone care about the human characters in Transformers?) and leads to the inevitable comparisons with Spielberg.

Abrams strikes the perfect balance, respecting the established lore of the Star Trek universe without being constrained by it. He homages classic characters and story elements, but isn’t afraid to take some creative liberties to freshen up the story. This may frustrate a hardcore Trekkie, but for the rest of us it gives the film a sense of newness and freshness. This combination of respect for existing lore with a willingness to take ownership bodes well for his next project, the seventh instalment in the Star Wars series.

In the Trekkie community the Star Trek franchise has one of the most devoted followings you will find. But rather than merely seeking to cater to the existing fan base, when Abrams set out to reboot the Star Trek franchise he looked to broaden its appeal and introduce these classic characters to a new audience. And again, Star Trek Into Darkness is big budget blockbuster filmmaking that will appeal to more than just the devoted Trekkies. It is a big movie, containing some top notch action sequences and terrific special effects, on par with anything you will find in blockbuster sci-fi cinema. Add to that a healthy smattering of humour, mostly courtesy of Simon Pegg who has a slightly larger role as Scotty, and you end up with a film that really is everything a great popcorn movie should be.

Rating – ★★★★

Review by Duncan McLean