Feast of Film

John Lithgow thanking his agent and calling his lawyer after being cast in this movie. What sort of movie does a 15-year-old sci-fi geek go and see in 1984? Well, he goes and sees the film adaptation of George Orwell’s novel, 1984 . He also goes to see this. The plot: Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is a brain surgeon, rock musician, scientist and adventurer. His team are the Hong Kong Cavaliers. Buckaroo invents a machine to take him to the eighth dimension and back.  It’s been done before, by Dr Emilio Lazardo (John Lithgow), except he returned insane and wants to steal Buckaroo’s device and use it to conquer our dimension.  Assessment: This is a classic 1980s low budget sci-fi movie with a crazy plot, effects that really don’t deserve the adjective ‘special’. But what it doesn’t have in lasers, warp speed and quality dialogue it makes up for it in crazy plot and one of the most eclectic array of actors from the ‘80s, many of whom we all know as stars today In addition to Pet...

Looking out into the cold, dark, deep waters ahead, not knowing where and when the pack of wolves will come for him, his crew and their precious cargo. Tom Hanks is one of the few actors today who has the star power to achieve the feat of making this film - and having it bought for AppleTV+ to boot! See what I did there? I threw in a pun that relates to a classic WWII German submarine film - if you don't know it, then watch it. Greyhound attempts to show a singular experience in the Second World War that has not been as well documented in films of the past couple of decades.  We've seen them storming the beaches again via Saving Private Ryan , fighting on the Eastern Front via Enemy at the Gates , the horror of the Holocaust via Schindler's List and how not to make a movie about the pacific war in the execrable Pearl Harbor ( Midway helped salvage that somewhat).  Then, of course, there were Clint Eastwood's twin triumphs of Letters from Iwo Jima and Flag...

  Sandra Bullock: Carrying a feature film without punching anyone. Sandra Bullock gives an excellent performance in what is one of the films of the year (2013). Cinematography will certainly deliver Gravity an Oscar, and I suspect Bullock will be in line for best actress in both the Academy Awards and Golden Globes. Doctor Ryan Stone (Bullock) is on her first Space Shuttle mission, alongside George Clooney's veteran on his last mission. If that's all there was, that would be a tad boring, so for good measure a mass of space debris destroys the Shuttle, leaving Sandra and George alone in space, trying to survive. There is nothing more that can be said without ruining the film, so tune out now for the spoiler. Precise character exits The timing of characters entering and leaving a film - dying or moving away is exceedingly important. Gravity achieves the masterfully in killing off George Clooney. As an actor he talks too much, being George Clooney - he d...

Eek! Are they staring at the end of their film careers? Review to follow once I've actually seen the film. I never bothered to see it - knew it would be a disappointing effort from a group of entitled know-it-all teens.

More than meets the eye... Now this is a moon landing conspiracy theory I can accept. Optimus and team return to battle the evil Decepticons in a phenomenal, action-packed 2+hour marathon. To top it all off, appearances by Buzz Aldrin and Leonard Nimoy ! Oh, yes, there's also Rosie. The plot: Turns out that the moon landing was just a cover for a secret mission to investigate a crashed alien space ship on the dark side of the moon - Buzz confirms this himself. The ship was carrying a very important package and when he finds out, Optimus must get there to save his mentor and former leader of the Autobots - Sentinel Prime. On the other end of the 'importance' scale, Sam Witwicky ( Shia LeBeouf ) is stuck with a presidential medal but no prospects for a job. Though he seems to have stuffed up the relationship with Megan Fox and fallen into a relationship with Carly Spencer ( Rosie Huntington-Whiteley ) - the poor guy. She's an assistant to a super-rich guy played by Patri...

With my flight delayed 6 hours in Hong Kong and my colleague's phone dead and thus not contactable, I decided to spend a couple of hours in the cinema - the choices were several, but I chose well enough with this lite faire, the latest in the comic book superhero films that finally delivers a reasonable reason to wear those 3D glasses. The Plot: Test pilot Hal Jordan ( Ryan Reynolds ) is a young man scarred by the death of his father in an x-plane crash before his eyes. He's young and extremely talented, but emotionally crippled by his fears. Bestowed in a flash of green light by a dying alien with a mysterious green ring and lantern, he is set to battle evil (played, in part by Peter Sarsgaard ) using the force - literally - of his will, as translated by the ring. In Summary: Worth seeing to pass just under two hours, and not at all a waste of time - particularly at HK movie prices equivalent to A$10. The muted love story with Blake Lively's character is very poorl...

The Plot: Leo is a new kind of thief - one who steals information from dreams. Taking subjects into a dream state and entering their mind, he can trick them into revealing all sorts of trade secrets. That's called "extraction". But then he's confronted with a new challenge, much more difficult than extraction - inception. To plant a thought such that the victim thinks that he or she has thought it, accepts it and then changes an entire life. In Summary: Special effects that are cool, many in the same way The Matrix was cool, but a tool to the plot. Leo is good, as he usually is, and the supporting cast fill their roles well too. The Casablanca Connection : Rick and Leo both can't return to the US because of a shady deed in the past. You never see Rick commit a crime in Casablanca - his opaque past is assumed to conceal malice, but it never needs to be detailed, and perhaps is never much of anything other than a few notes in a Gestapo notebook. Yet he manages ...

Adam Sandler without the smutty jokes and crude humour - and funnier for it. Yes, he did it to an extent in Click , but with Bedtime Stories he has the 'Walt Disney' shingle and produces a very enjoyable movie that you can take children to see without fear. The plot: Skeeter Bronson (Sandler) is the son of wonderfully imaginative but no-so-financially astute hotel owner Marty Bronson ( Jonathan Pryce ), who is forced to sell his hotel to ruthless hotelier Barry Nottingham ( Richard Griffiths ). He does, however, manage to extract a promise that if Skeeter applied himself he would be given the chance to run the hotel one day. Needless to say, Nottingham reneges on the deal and Skeeter is relegated to maintenance of the massive hotel that is built on the site. However, one day Skeeter's school principal sister Wendy ( Courteney Cox ) tells him that her school is being shut down and that she needs him to babysit his niece and nephew while she goes to Arizona to look for a ne...

The above image shows an audience member who just happens to resemble the lead actor, whose vitals signs are measured, as are all other viewers, so that medical assistance can be rushed to them as the film methodically sends them into a manic state of eco-insanity. Keanu Reeves stars in two sorts of films: Good and Crap. This is the latter and should not be allowed to draw on the good name of the original , directed by Robert Wise . The plot: Mysterious glowing spheres land around Earth, the largest of which touches down in Central Park, New York, lit up like a '70's area disco globe. The US government rounds up a team of scientists ahead of its landing, one of whom is Helen Benson ( Jennifer Connelly ). Out of the Central Park sphere - now surrounded by military and police, who are emphasised to be incredibly poorly coordinated (despite the previously demonstrated massive coordination effort to assemble the science team) emerges Klaatu. He approaches Helen and is - like the ...

Dr Jones, there's no way down from this ledge. I should have known that it was a bad idea to see this film, but my wife's little brother wasn't interested in The Hulk or Sex in the City (thank heaven). George Lucas should never again be let near a motion picture. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Lucas household for a few days, just to listen in on the conversation and figure out if George & co. really speak in the same ridiculous, turgid dialogue the way his characters do. The plot: It is the late 1950s and Indy (Harrison Ford), still wearing the same gear, made it through World War II working for the OSS (war-time equivalent of the CIA - except effective). He is kidnapped by an evil Stalinist Soviet version of Boris's Natasha (Cate Blanchet), whose dozens of commandos somehow break into one of the US's most secret installations with amazing ease. This base (where we saw the Ark stored at the end of the first film) is not underground, but rather in...

Homer does it again, this time in a big way when he pollutes Springfield 's water supply, causing the EPA to encase the towen in a gigantic dome. The Simpsons family escape from the angry mob, but return to save the town. Sound like it could have been done in a 30-minute episode? I think Matt Groening , James L. Brooks and David Silverman could have done more with this movie. The plot: See above. In summary: While the plot and characters are as thin as a Kate Moss on coke, the graphics did get a bit of a boost, which is the least they could have done. Homer says it at the beginning, "I can't believe we're paying to watch something we could see on TV for free! If you ask me, everyone in this theater is a big sucker! Especially, you!" The Casablanca comparison: Honestly, I would have thought that they would have given me something to hang this on, but there's just not enough in The Simpsons Movie to do anything with. The rating: 5 out of 10. Simpsons fan...

Bruce Willis shows why he is the last great action hero in this probably last iteration of the Die Hard series. Don't expect any computer generated graphics here. The plot: Detective John McClane is assigned to pick up computer hacker Matthew Farrell ( Justin Long , of PC vs Mac ad fame). Just as he arrives someone tries to kill Farrell, and thus ensues a cyber attack on the US by an angry ex-NSA computer expert. Naturally, it's up to McClane and sidekick Farrell to save the day. The film spans significant amounts of territory over its rollercoaster ride, rather than the rather restricted locales of the previous Die Hards, but the action is as intense as ever. The familiar plot aspects, motives and so on are all there. The only thing absent is McClane's usual rivalry with local or federal authorities - for once, all the cops are on the same side. The summary: Director Len Wiseman delivers an action-packed Die Hard movie that harks back to the original and provides an ...

Kate Winslet , Cameron Diaz , Jack Black and Jude Law form an interesting and at times delightful ensemble in this light romantic comedy.  The plot: Amanda Wood (Diaz) is an overworked, emotionless Hollywood trailer guru (she owns a company that makes the trailers for movies). After breaking up with her boyfriend ( Edward Burns ), she decides at the spur of the moment to take a vacation - she goes onto a web site that specialises in house swaps. There she sees and decides on a small cottage in the Cotswolds owned by Iris (Kate Winslet), a marriage columnist with The Telegraph . Iris is aching to get away for a while after the man she has been in love with for 3 years announces that he is marrying someone else; she jumps at the change to swap with Amanda and jet out to sunny LA. After spending 6 hours in the Cotswolds in Iris's cottage, around 1AM, Amanda decides it is a huge mistake and decides to head home just about the time that a drunk Graham (Jude Law) starts knocking on th...

The toy-driven cartoon of the 1980s, Transformers makes it to the big screen with an earth-shattering force. I haven't been wowed this much in years, and Optimus and pals are the key to the mayhem. The plot: "Before time began, there was... the cube. We know not where it comes from, only that it holds the power to create worlds and fill them... with life. That is how our race was born. For a time we had lived in harmony, but like all great power, some wanted it for good..." Thus narrateth Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen - from the original TV series). It turns out that teenager Sam Witwicky's ( Shia LeBeouf ) grandfather strayed across the cube in the Arctic and had the coordinates scratched in Transformer code on his spectacles. Sam's now trying to sell them on eBay so that he can afford to buy a car (who turns out to be the Autobot Bumblebee). Skipping on a bit, the Transformers also surf the web and eBay and it's a race between the Autobots and Dece...

The History Boys was meant to be a British school version of Dead Poets Society , except its Robin Williams character doesn't quite create the same magic, being a fat, old paedophile. The plot: Director Nicholas Hytner and writer Alan Bennett introduce us to a group of clearly gifted boys at a lower class British secondary school in the 1980s. The students of the 'special' class have all qualified to sit for admission to Oxford or Cambridge. The Principal, thirsting for success, hires a young gun teacher to teach them how to pass the exam. This flies in the face of the established academic staff, particularly the fat, old paedophile, who believes in knowledge and education for their own sake. The central plot revolves around the struggle between the new and old methods of teaching and goal setting - do you want to know the facts on the test paper or do you want to be a well-rounded human being? The sadness of the loss of innocence that the students face when being taugh...

The last ride of the Italian Stallion seems more of an attempt to recapture the thrill of his first run around the track. While it doesn't succeed, it was worth it just to make this the last volume of the series. The plot: Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is 60, running a restaurant named after his late wife Adrian, and stuck in the past. He visits Adrian's grave so regularly that he keeps a folding chair in the tree near her headstone. The old neighbourhood has run down, the store where she used to work is empty and the ice rink where they first skated and kissed has been demolished. Then along comes a TV show that runs a computer simulation that claims that the young Rocky would beat the crap out of the current champ, now more than 30 years his junior. The current champ (can't remember his name and won't bother to look it up) isn't impressed by this and his manager convinces him to agree to an exhibition fight with Rocky in order to boost his image. Apparently he is s...

Not so wild, but worth $7.60. The plot: Four 40-something friends hit the road to recover a bit of adventure in their unexciting lives. Doug Madsen ( Tim Allen ), Woody Stevens ( John Travolta ), Bobby Davis ( Martin Lawrence ) and Dudley Frank ( William H. Macy ) are bored, crashing, hen-pecked or geeky (respectively) and decide to head of on a week-long road trip on their bikes - hogs. They fancy themselves to be bikers and in their 'Wild Hogs' jackets (sown by Doug's wife, Kelly ( Jill Hennessey )) they ride off on adventure. There are a couple of minor incidents involving camping, a gay motorcycle cop and skinny-dipping. But the real trouble starts when the Wild Hogs decide to stop in and get a drink at a real biker bar run by the Del Fuegos, whose leader, Jack ( Ray Liotta ), takes an instant dislike to them. After a bit of an altercation that results in the biker bar being blown up, the Del Fuegos set their sites on the Hogs, who stop in the inoffensive and ill-prote...

The latest in the Bond line-up, Casino Royale is yet another of the prequels that are set in today's world. While I'm generally not a fan of rewriting a character to make him seem brand new - see for example the attempt to set up Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan in the film of Tom Clancy's novel Sum of All Fears - this attempt succeeds masterfully in allowing Daniel Craig to re-engineer Bond as much closer to that Fleming character seen so fleetingly in Sean Connery's original performance as Bond in Dr. No . This film certainly shouldn't be confused with the 1967 comedy starring David Niven. Daniel Crag crafts a nasty yet vulnerable Bond - almost a sheep in wolf's clothing, perhaps more like a ram. The plot: Fresh out on the streets, Bond is out to make a name for himself. Apparently it takes 2 kills to get the much revered '00' - and we see Bond rack his 2 up in the first few minutes. The rest of the film substantially increased the body count - if they had...

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves star in this enchanting romance across time, but not too much time. The plot: We begin as Kate Forster (Bullock) is just moving out of the lake house, an interesting glass house built on the shore of a lake north of Chicago. The film then cuts to Alex Wyler (Reeves), who is moving in. On checking the mailbox he finds a welcome note from Kate with the usual request to forward mail to her new address. She also apologises for the paw prints on the decking and floor. What paw prints, Alex wonders, just before a dog runs past him right in the middle of staining the decking leading up the house - thus are set the paw prints. How did she know? Alex writes to Kate asking her this and through a bit of to and fro, and seeing the mailbox magically raise and lower its flag by itself, they figure out what is going on. You see, Kate lived in the lake house after Alex, not before. They are corresponding across time - between 2004 and 2006. Needless to say, they fall...

The most implausible plot I have seen in a long time - and that includes Sci-Fi. Flightplan is a Jodie Foster vehicle, which is not normally a bad thing for a film to aspire to, but they usually at least have a decent plot line. It should be noted that the previous Foster effort I reviewed - Inside Man - was stronger in plot but still provided a fairly thin Foster character. The plot: Kyle Pratt (Foster) is travelling home to the US with her daughter after her husband mysterious dies by falling from the roof of their apartment building (suicide is implied). Kyle is some sort of aircraft engineer, specialising in the engines, but works for an incredibly stingy company (they stick her in economy class). She boards the newest passenger megajumbojet - an A474 (think Airbus A380 but bigger) - for the trip home. It's a plane so big your child could get lost. Needless to say she goes to sleep and wakes up to find that her daughter is missing. What follows is a frantic search of the pla...