It goes without saying that The Running Man, the Schwarzenegger sci-fi action film adapted from not-Stephen-King’s novel, is a prescient piece of work, predicting both terrible reality television (here more violent and with more game show trappings) and The Hunger Games. Except generally prescience goes hand-in-hand with coherence, and there’s little of that on offer…
Early in Galore, Billie (Ashleigh Cummings) intones in voiceover that her life on the outskirts of Canberra is soon to be devastated by a bushfire. It’s the kind of introduction that’s there to assure its audience that this all means something. A shame, because Galore is most meaningful when it’s simply existing. The first half…
Romantic comedies aren’t known for their unconventionality. There’s the meet-cute, the (often ridiculously contrived) premise to get the two leads together, the last act reveal, the grand romantic gesture. It Boy is no different in this regard; David Moreau’s rom-com ticking all the boxes. Its two-pronged premise – that late-thirties magazine editor Alice Lantis is…
Improvisational comedy is fast becoming the norm. Whether it’s This is the End, Bad Neighbours or Anchorman 2, the construction is the same: narrative skeleton to keep the audience interested interspersed with some carefully-honed gags and a lot of loose improvisation, edited into something tighter. I’m not complaining, mind; I love the shooting-shit-with-your-mates vibe of…
Love is Strange resembles a gay version of Tokyo Story filtered through Woody Allen’s wry, New Yorker worldview except, unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as great as that sounds. After thirty nine years together, George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow) take the opportunity to legally recognise their relationship in matrimony. Legal acceptance doesn’t necessarily translate…
Blue Ruin feels like a feature-length version of the suspenseful, often silent showdowns found within understated thrillers. I’m thinking Coen Bros specifically – the climax of Blood Simple, or the hotel showdown between Chirgurh and Moss in No Country for Old Men. Executed right, these scenes practically define the cliché “on the edge of one’s…
Joe begins with violence; a man strikes his son, and shortly afterwards is beaten himself by unseen assailants. Violence begetting violence in a world defined by masculinity. Joe tells us of the struggle to be a man for fifteen year-old Gary (Tye Sheridan) and Joe (Nicolas Cage) alike, the latter taking a shine to the…
The Fault in Our Stars is carefully constructed to tear plaintively at your heartstrings. It works best not as a weepy, but as a gentle evocation of romance through the subjective perspective of teenage protagonist, Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley). Hazel has cancer, yes, and the story is in many ways about that. It’s also about…
“The Mountain and the Viper” is a reminder that in George R.R. Martin’s unforgiving Game of Thrones universe, some things are inevitable… …bloodshed, for example. Or that whenever there’s a cursory shot of buff, shirtless men… …there’ll be a series of leering close-ups on naked women shortly afterwards. (Not that I’m especially complaining about getting…
As a modern example of the post-Bourne action blockbuster, Tom Cruise vehicle Jack Reacher is more than adequate. It’s a sleek, streamlined piece of Hollywood filmmaking, managing to maintain interest throughout its 130 minute runtime thanks to carefully-judged pacing, clean cinematography. The narrative – a machismo-laden mystery mostly faithful to Lee Child’s novel One Shot…
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