Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t going to change your life. It’s probably not necessary to clarify that, but I thought it was worth noting in the wake of the torrent of #MadMadFuryRoad hype and hyperbole that has consumed Twitter regarding George Miller’s long-(long)-awaited follow-up to his original Mad Max trilogy. Believe the hype, but don’t…
The Fast & Furious franchise’s seventh lap contains few surprises for those familiar with the franchise. Fast & Furious 7 (originally titled just Furious 7) doesn’t deviate from the well-worn path established by its predecessors, delivering the same mix of cars, fights, absurd stunts and bro-y banter that’s sustained the series for the past fourteen…
My expectations for Run All Night were probably set higher than your average punter. It’s not that I’m a big proponent of the ubiquitous Liam-Neeson-Is-An-Alcoholic-Who-Shoots-People pseudo-franchise of the last decade or so – I couldn’t bring myself to watch Taken 3 – but that I was simply excited to see another picture from director Jaume…
It’s safe to say that The Dead Lands’ sold-out sessions are an outlier at the sparsely-attended screenings that have so far defined Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival. Perhaps this lends some insight into the movie-going demographics of our city, where a Chekhovian Palme d’Or recipient is outshone by the Maori cultural heritage championed in New…
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…
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…
The consensus on Divergent, the latest piece of young adult literature to be rendered onto the big screen, is that it’s a watered-down Hunger Games ripoff (often accompanied by an uninspired pun on the title and the film’s lack of originality, and an underlying assumption that art directed at teenage girls is inherently inferior). I’m…
In my review of 2011’s The Raid: Redemption, I discussed its opening shot, a close-up on a gun and watch, heralded the film’s violence and clockwork tautness. Gareth Evans’ sequel to his modern action classic opens on a long shot of a field of crops, grey-tinged by a sullen sky and lacerated by paths twisting…
Non-Stop brackets a thrilling middle sequence between two disappointing – but thankfully brief – acts. Your enjoyment of the film will depend pretty much entirely if you can forgive the silliness of the final act. But make no mistake, this whole film is remarkably silly – that’s the point! It’s simply that the second act’s…
Lone Survivor desperately wants to be described with clichéd buzzwords like “authentic,” “gritty” and “visceral,” but never earns such descriptors. When its four bearded Navy SEALs find themselves outnumbered by hundreds of Taliban guerrilla fighters, the action sequences’ painful physicality (there’s some bone-crunching stuntwork on display) is squandered by poor directorial choices from Peter Berg.…
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