ENTERTAINMENT
Stars with Lilith
CINEMA
REVIEWS
BY JOHN CAMPBELL
OPPORTUNITIES FOR RADICAL CHANGE MANIFEST STEADILY THROUGHOUT SEPTEMBER, WHOSE VOLATILE QUALITIES DO RECOMMEND PAUSING BEFORE SPEAKING AND LOOKING BEFORE LEAPING… ARIES: Your main planet Mars in get-it-together September’s keen to tidy up, streamline and reorganise daily routines into more efficient, effective systems. This week recommends doing that gracefully, with a light heart – you know how intense you can get when you’re on a mission. Admiration gets more cooperation than aggravation, so convert criticism into compliments. TAURUS: As planetary patterns shift from pause to play, this week’s forward momentum in a compatible earth sign has you all systems go and gung-ho. But don’t overdo it, trying to get everything done in a day. Ask for help when you need to. Remember the mantra: All the way to heaven is heaven… GEMINI: Gemini’s ruler Mercury turning direct is always welcome news. But it’s still an ask and no mean task to keep finding the silver lining in this week’s nitpicking niggles, petty intrigues and irritable bickering. For bonus points you could practise being a portal for playful magic to enter the world. Why not? Can’t hurt. Could work… CANCER: Have aprèsclipse realisations shown you what to let go of in order to make room for what you truly, deeply, madly want? Good. If that hasn’t happened yet, you might be feeling a tad depleted – in which case let midweek’s super soulful full moon replenish your spiritual reserves and top up your creative tank. LEO: Communicator Mercury might have you in the mood to roar, but remember the lessons of recent weeks and don’t waste the tremendous benefits from two consecutive new moons in your sign. Stay calm and constructive rather than vent. Listen to Venus in your sign saying silence is far better than unnecessary drama. VIRGO: Right now you’re at your most practical, ingenious and industrious, but Mars in your sign can be a bit of a fussbudget. You already know others won’t work as hard or be as painstaking as you, so this week craft more gracious ways of dealing with vexations than getting all worked up and wrung out.
LIBRA: You like being precise and meticulous, but this week’s full moon could mess with your ability to see things clearly. Choose carefully if shopping for big ticket purchases; even better, put off decisions altogether. Stick with the comforting, reassuring consistency of routines till clarity and discernment return again next week. SCORPIO: September buffs up your public image, and this week’s particularly vivid social zone features community opportunities, local group affiliations and spontaneous talkfests with kindred spirits. Drawbacks? Being too insistent with your opinions. It pays to listen, even to what you mightn’t want to hear. Actually, especially to that… SAGITTARIUS: Now that efficient Saturn’s moved forward in your sign supported by generous Jupiter, you’re off and running. This week some will join you in prompt action, others will want to ask a lot of questions first. Don’t be too quick to dismiss someone who doesn’t measure up to your high ideals. Be honest – do you? CAPRICORN: With Mercury in the sign of pride and selfimportance, people with strong views will be voicing them this week, perhaps you among them. Whatever, it’s worth keeping in mind (a) that needing to be in control isn’t the best motivation for acting, and (b) a tradition is only of value if it remains relevant. AQUARIUS: This week looks like getting Aquarians back on track with a fresh set of coordinates in their personal GPS. Venus in your house of fluent charm and persuasive eloquence brings a sense of renewal, resurgence of optimism and refreshed perspective, with shelved plans now showing a fresh set of options and possibilities.
and crucifixes) included in the drama that might have been done without, but the heart-stopping moments are perfectly executed, even when you can see them coming – anticipation is half the fun. The ending jumps alarmingly into the realm of the psychotic, promising macabre sequels.
THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD
ANNABELLE: CREATION
Just off the cuff, I don’t think that I have ever seen a chase scene shot in Amsterdam. And as far as that weary old actionflick standby goes, it is a beauty too, involving a motorbike and a speedboat fanging along the canals, as well as the usual screaming, smashing, summersaulting cars. Otherwise, this is just another noisy, blood-splattered celebration of violent death (what is it about blokes having their brains blown out by gunfire that appeals to so many plebs?).
Oldman). Darius is really cool because he says ‘fuck’ a lot (it’s Jackson’s shtick – some fellows need to identify with it), and Michael is likeable because he is the boy-next-door with a stubble who only kills dozens of people (one of them twice, I thought), because they really deserve it. Penelope Cruz is in the mix as Darius’s imprisoned girlfriend, and you know she’s fab because she says ‘fuck’ almost as often as Darius.
The pity is that there is an interesting moral question being posed: Who is the bad (or good) guy? Jackson and ReynPresenting a little girl with a doll will olds work well in a Butch and Sundance eventually be regarded as an act of child way, but what’s funny about slaughter? abuse. There is no scarier prop in the horFootnote: I turned up at the cinema to ror movie genre and I wouldn’t have one I pretty much lost interest in what is a pre- see Ali’s Wedding, but the session had in the house for all the farms in Cuba. This dictable wank of a film soon after Richard been cancelled. Sadly, the audience for a is the prequel to the 2014 movie, providE Grant’s coke-addled lawyer was written movie about who we are as Australians ing for fright-fans the back-story of the out of the script in the early stages (I kept is nowhere near as large as that which is eponymous doll with the painted face eager to be fed glossy rubbish like this. hoping for him to come back). Michael and frilly dress. Samuel Mullins (Anthony Give it a miss – it’s horrible. (Ryan Reynolds), a bodyguard whose LaPaglia), a dollmaker, and his wife Esther career has been on (Miranda Otto) live in one of those gothic the slide since one timber houses in the middle of nowhere of his clients was that you would have to be bonkers to murdered, finds set foot in. Twelve years ago their young himself tasked with daughter was killed and her room is now escorting Darius boarded up, with her demonically pos(Samuel L Jackson), sessed doll inside it. a notorious hitman, Four orphaned girls and a cute nun arrive from England to the to gratefully take up the residency offered Court of International Justice [laugh] them by the lonely couple. One of the in The Hague, kids, Janice (Talitha Eliana Bateman), has where he will had polio and needs a metal walking stick to get around. It is to her that creepy testify against the genocidal president things start to happen. The build-up in of Belarus (Gary tension is measured but effective, so it is genuinely unsettling when Janice first encounters Annabelle. Suspense is added layer by layer as all of the girls are made aware of the malevolent spirit that threatens them (including a scarecrow in the barn that weirded me out totally). On top of that, there is the mystery of what part Samuel and the bedridden Esther might be playing in the dark shenanigans. As you would expect from schlockhorror aimed primarily at teens, subtlety is abandoned in the latter stages as the evil that inhabits the home goes berko in its hunt for souls to devour. There is a pronounced religiosity (in the form of Catholicism
PISCES: Studies made on plant sap during eclipses have recorded radical shifts, suggesting that all fluids, including our own, can experience significant repatterning during these events. So don’t underestimate the effects of recent weeks, and if midweek full moon in your sign suggests someone needs closer scrutiny, or something a lot more thought, trust your gut.
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The Byron Shire Echo September 6, 2017 51