Film Reviews
Films reviewed by Anthony Morris
Sex Tape There are a lot of elements working hard to make Sex Tape one of the worst films of the year, so singling out one to blame is both near-impossible and deeply unfair. A film this bad doesn’t just happen. It takes all manner of factors working together to waste ninety minutes of your life this badly. Sometimes they’re little things, like Jason Segel’s weirdly plastic lineless face in the early flashback scenes or Cameron Diaz saying the utterly unbelievable line in 2014, “am I really going to sell my blog for money?” Sometimes they’re bigger things, like the way Segel halfshouts a lot of his lines every time he’s meant to be flustered like someone who’s forgotten how to act, or the way this film shows us both leads repeatedly all-nude from the back only so it’s impossible not to think “butt double”, or even how the film spends the entire time telling us that the sex tape it revolves around is some kind of massively powerful erotic masterpiece that literally makes the people who see it have to have sex right that instant (even if they’re in someone else’s car) and then when we finally do
the wr ap Transformers 4: Age of Extinction Bigger, louder and dumber than all before it, this is more of the same flag-waving shouty exploding gibberish just the way you like it – even if this time the robots don’t really transform and even the good guys seem sick of it all.
Jersey Boys
see it it’s just a bunch of bad jokes. Even for a movie about a sex tape, the story here is terrible: Annie (Diaz) and Jay (Segel) started having loads of sex at university – then she got pregnant, they got married, they had two kids and their sex life just died. So they’re not perverts or idiots or swingers or inexperienced or people who like to watch: they’re middle-America looking to rekindle their perfectly legit and socially acceptable sex lives by recording themselves doing it.
Which they do, then somehow Jay synchs the video to every single iPad he’s ever owned (this, surprisingly, is made to seem somewhat plausible) and now they have to try and track them all down because someone’s sending them suspicious texts saying they’ve already seen it … and who gives away iPads anyway? Not only does this film take way too long to get to this stage of the story, it turns out that they only really visit one iPad holder: the family-friendly CEO looking to buy
Annie’s blog, Hank (Rob Lowe). This extended scene is set up to be some kind of comedy centrepiece – he has paintings on the walls of classic Disney movie scenes with his face painted onto the characters – but like everything in this film it never finds a level where we know what’s meant to be funny. Maybe this was meant to be one of those “one crazy night” films where average folks lives spiral out of control – Annie does coke, Jay flings a dog into a wall using a
treadmill, they get blackmailed by a nine-year-old, they break into a warehouse, Jay falls out a second-storey window (he’s fine) and off a balcony (not so fine) – but it never establishes their normal life well enough to make the craziness seem funny and not merely off-putting and random. But at least Jay makes a number of references to how sturdy and useful the iPad is: got to get that product placement in there somewhere.
Clint Eastwood’s version of the popular jukebox musical downplays the songs of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and foregrounds the story of the guys in the band – which is pretty much exactly the wrong approach to this material.
22 Jump Street A comedy sequel that’s (almost) as funny as the first one? This you’ve got to see. They probably don’t need to make a third, though: these bromance jokes are pretty much run into the ground.
Rio 2 The birds are back, only this time they’re having family trouble and developers want to cut down the Amazon rainforest, and the whole thing just washes over you like a warm, easily forgettable bath.
Blended Adam Sandler makes movies like he’s got something better to be doing so while he has some good chemistry here with Drew Barrymore, this vague updating of The Brady Bunch is a bit of a mess in a lot of bad ways.
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Charlie’s Country Snowpiercer In an icy future caused by a bungled cure for global warming, the only survivors of humanity are packed onto one long train constantly circling the frozen planet. The rich who control everything live in luxury in the far distant front; the poor are crammed into cattle cars at the very rear of the train. There in this rolling slum the leader of the underclass, Curtis (Chris Evans), plots an uprising that will take him and his people the length of the train to the engine and control of this rigid class-bound world. Korean director Park Hoonjung’s brought together an all-star cast (including John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Soon Kang-ho, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer and Alison Pill) for his adaptation of a French graphic novel and the result is both a thrilling action movie and a savage, spot-on satire of the kind of classbased capitalist society you might see if you look out your window. Constantly inventive on every level and visually stunning both inside and outside the train (as we move up the train some of the fancier carriages are truly surreal), this can and does go from laugh-outloud comedy to brutal violence in seconds – with bullets “extinct” after seventeen years on the train, axes and clubs are the weapons of choice. The actual science fiction elements might be a little iffy, but it’s as a satire that this is strongest – and if you’re just after a smart, funny and gripping action movie, this is one not to miss. 52 forte
Charlie (David Gulpilil) isn’t doing too badly in his remote Northern community. He’s smart enough to put one over both the local police and the white drug dealers who come up to make a quick buck, he can go hunting if he wants a free feed (he’s not a huge fan of the junk food the local supermarket sells), he’s got a humpy to sleep in (he had a house but his family took it over and it was too noisy for his taste) and he’s got friends to talk to if he feels like a chat. But the law isn’t quite as lax as it used to be and soon things start to add up: he has his shotgun confiscated, a sick friend is taken to Darwin – a grim fate, to be separated from the land you grew up on – he’s not allowed to hunt with a spear (it’s a lethal weapon, you see) and when his own health takes a turn for the worse he goes bush to finish out his days on his own terms. But it’s not meant to be, and once he’s in Darwin he finds it’s all too easy to go off the rails. Director Rolf de Heer’s third film with the 60-year-old Gulpilil is a quiet, matter-of-fact character study that slowly draws you into Charlie’s life, thanks in large part to a towering performance from Gulpilil himself. Inspired in part by Gulpilil’s own life (but he’s in no way playing himself here) and recent struggles, this doesn’t lay blame in any one direction; rather, it consistently points out the way that two cultures living side by side can have very different aims – and in Australia, it’s the white culture everyone else has to bend to. Sad at times but very funny as well, this is easily the best Australian film – so far, at least – of 2014.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes It’s been a decade since Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and here’s all you really need to know: humanity has all but been wiped out by the “Simian Flu” and a tribe of super-intelligent apes have escaped into the woods to the north of San Francisco. The apes, led by Caesar (Andy Serkis), have built a community and settled down, with Caesar starting a family that includes one grown son, Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) and another child on the way. As for the humans… well, the apes figure they’ve all died out. So when Blue Eyes and a friend run into a small band of humans led by Malcolm ( Jason Clarke), they don’t take it well. One ape faction, led by Koba (Toby Kebbell), doesn’t trust humans;
Venus in Furs Thomas (Mathieu Amalric) is a playwright directing his first play and after a long day of auditions he’s about to head home when Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner) comes in out of the rain. She’s here to audition and she’s not going to be put off by his
Caesar’s approach is more moderate, letting the humans leave with their lives. Back in the overgrown ruins of San Francisco, Malcolm and company’s wild stories about talking apes don’t impress the leader of the survivors, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman). His day gets worse when Caesar and an ape army turn up to lay down the law: humans get the city, apes have the forest. Everyone stays separate, everyone stays happy. Whereas a lot of recent blockbusters go for bluster, this knows one of its strongest elements is just letting the apes run wild; a stunning opening hunting sequence is thrilling stuff. And large stretches of the film are all but silent, so when the apes do speak (they mostly communicate amongst themselves in sign language) it remains startling throughout. Caesar aside, the characters are thinly drawn (with the female characters basically stuck
in the background as nurturers), but this isn’t so much a film about individuals as it is a clash between two tribes. Both have similar internal dynamics and everyone’s motivations are clear and (somewhat) rational, even when they lead to violence. Much of this film is a slow burn, a back-and-forth between the two tribes as they repeatedly butt heads. The humans need access to a dam in the forest to generate the power they need to survive; they just won’t leave the apes alone. There’s growing understanding between individuals, but tensions slowly rise between the tribes. Unsurprisingly given what we know of human history, it all points inevitably to war – and the most thrilling and individual blockbuster out of Hollywood this year.
efforts to get her out the door and gradually she wears him down enough for them to at least start talking about his play, an adaptation of the classic story ‘Venus in Fur’ about a man’s obsession with a woman who can dominate and control him. But as they continue, their roles start to shift. Is it the director in control, or the actress? Roman Polanski’s latest film is another of his stage adaptations (following on from 2011’s Carnage), but where that was a relatively straightforward look at squabbling grown-ups, this is more subtle about its subject matter – and more effective for it. As the story progresses the
power balance between the pair is constantly shifting, both in the play they’re rehearsing and their “real lives” (one of the strengths of this story is the way they become increasingly archetypical as the story progresses – is Vanda a real actress or something more?), making this a literary examination of the original story, a look at male-female relationships, a study in power dynamics, and a lot more besides. It may just be two people in a theatre, but this is a lot more interesting, and has a lot more to offer, than most castof-thousands blockbusters.
The story isn’t as strong the second time around but there’s a lot of gorgeous animation on offer here (the flying sequences are great) and there is enough action to keep all but the pickiest viewers in their seats.
Fault in our Stars Cancer teens fall in love and the tears flow like rain. It’s not exactly subtle, but if you’re after a weepy this will definitely find a way to make you cry.
Maleficent Sadly Angelia Jolie – playing the evil Queen from Sleeping Beauty – doesn’t get enough opportunities to be really, really evil here. But even arch and snark Jolie is pretty entertaining.
Optimus Prime in Transformers: Age of Extinction