Win a copy of The Craft: Legacy on Blu Ray

To celebrate the release of The Craft: Legacy on Blu Ray, you can win a copy thanks to Sony Home Entertainment.

About The Craft: Legacy

In Blumhouse’s continuation of the cult hit The Craft, an eclectic foursome of aspiring teenage witches gets more than they bargained for as they lean into their newfound powers.

Honest Thief: DVD Review

In Honest Thief, a fairly competent story is given plenty of heart and soul before falling into old action genre tropes, and fizzling when it should really be ramping up.

An earnest Liam Neeson delivers another variation of his Taken routine, this time performing as Tom, a former marine cum IED disposer turned bank robber with a conscience.

Following a meet-cute with Kate Walsh’s Annie at a storage depot, Tom decides to turn his back on bank robbing life to settle down.

So deciding to turn himself in, Tom calls in the FBI, and tries to convince them he’s their man. Initially Reticent, two of the FBI’s most disgruntled (for reasons never fully expanded upon) decide to rip Tom off, steal the cash and make off with the perfect crime.

But when Tom is crossed, he takes the fight to the FBI, using a variation on his set of special skills to get revenge.

Honest Thief starts by placing characters into its story, developing them before they deciding to throw them in the shackles of a relatively plodding typical action film.

Neeson gives good hangdog face and his burden is obvious, even when the script fails him. But by the time Jai Courtney’s maniacal glee enters the frame. The film eschews any desire to further service its characters, preferring merely to service a rote plot that neither fizzles nor burns in its final third.

There is a story of how middle management flounder in life, how males lose their direction and how guilt catches us all up, but Honest Thief is less interested in that and more interested in ensuring a happy ending for all, the baddies are caught and love will find a way.

An abrupt end doesn’t help things and serviceable action scenes exist only because they have to and not because they ramp up tension or push you to the edge of your seat.

Honest Thief is watchable enough fare, but unless Neeson does something new and fairly soon, the twilight of his career will be notable only for a long list of average actioners - that’s the honest truth, but also would be a crying shame.

Rams: DVD Review

A re-imagining of Grimur Hákonarson's Cannes Award-winning Icelandic movie, Australian director Jeremy Sims' latest offers more of a lighter tale than the bleak original.

Neill and Caton are Colin and Les, two estranged brothers who are at war with each other, and whose quarrels have divided the community. When Colin suspects Les' award-winning ram of having a rare disease, he has no choice but to tell the authorities, setting in motion a purge of the region's sheep and devastating livelihoods potentially for a generation....

The Australian version of Rams is less interested in providing the kind of bleakness that was so redolent of the Icelandic original. 

From broader strokes to an almost comedic performance from an OTT official, the film isn't wanting to wallow in the darkness of the first, that came with both an oppressive Icelandic setting and a grim outlook. But given its desire to reach a wider audience, this is perhaps understandable.

Instead, by setting the film in the Aussie outback with its pristine paddocks and rolling hills, Sims' take on Rams is less nuanced, but nonetheless effective, thanks largely to a stellar performance by Neill as Colin. (Although the ending leaves a lot to be desired.)

Neill delivers a weathered and wearied performance that taps into the farming mindset of less said, more demonstrated - from occasional looks to the heart-rending viscerally numbing moments after he has to slaughter his sheep, Neill delivers a masterclass in understated and builds a character that's both loveable and questionable in some of his antics.

Caton has less to work with but manages to turn in a brother whose anger and resentment has gone beyond my brother's keeper ethos and is tinging on self-destruction. But when needed, he provides a more than adequate foil to interactions with Neill's Colin.

Ultimately, despite the bucolic background, there's still the elegaic feel of the original to Rams, and a slower pace gets to the heart of both the characters and the community affected by the outbreak of disease and the devastation of loss. It may have softer edges than the original, but it has an eye for the subtleties of farm life and those who dwell within it.

There's a rhythm adjustment needed for Rams, but work with it, and it offers a strongly rewarding experience that offers insight into how men behave later in life, and how rural life shapes a certain perspective and outlook.

It may be occasionally stymied by some of its broader comedy strokes, and its desire to err from the darkness blackish comedy within, but given its central performance from Neill, it's eminently watchable.

Ammonite: Film Review

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Kate Winslet, Gemma Jones, Fiona Shaw, James McArdle

Director: Francis Lee

God's Own Country director Francis Lee turns his precision lens to the story of fossil hunter Mary Anning in this tale of frustrated ambition and love.

Winslet is Anning, who spends the days on the beaches of Dorset scouring for fossils in among the inclement weather and muddy cliff faces while facing the reality of barely making ends meet in her tourist seaside shop.

With days of discovering major fossils behind her, and with poverty continuing to knock at the door, Anning is faced with no choice but to look after the convalescing Charlotte Murchison (Ronan) after her wealthy husband insists and offers to pay. But, despite the initial distance between the pair, and the clear class divides, a relationship, forbidden by society, develops.

Handsomely shot, and at times, run at a glacial pace, Ammonite lacks the intensity of the kind of relationship explored in Lee's stunning debut, God's Own Country.

Winslet's steely determination throughout renders Anning an almost impenetrable character, whose motivations are hard to fathom. Lee wisely uses other interactions with Anning to flesh out her story, and when Anning finally lets some of her guard down, Winslet subtly integrates nuance into her delivery and lightens her tone, brightening the screen and breathing life into an almost fossilised character.

Equally, Ronan helps push through some of the coldness of the movie, with glances and moments helmed by Lee helping fuel more of a character. From looking longingly at a room full of people to disappointed looks to her husband (McArdle in a brief but memorable turn), Lee's camera captures more insights into the pair than the script allows.

In fact, it's Lee's capturing of the intricacies and minor details (a horse's strap, a camera hanging on eight ceramic ornaments that have more significance later on) that provide a more handsome and rich tone that Ammonite could have done more with. His eye for seeming visual insignificances of the world around his characters does much to fill the obvious narrative gaps that will leave some feeling cold and isolated.

Minari: Film Review

Cast: Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Will Patton

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Quietly unassuming but even more devastating for being so, Minari is a perfect pearl of a film about the American immigration experience.

The Walking Dead’s Stephen Yeun is Jacob Yi, a speedy chicken sexer who has moved his family to the outskirts of rural America for a better life in the 1980s.

But when his wife Monica (Ye-ri, an effective foil) glimpses said life of a trailer on wheels with a 50 acre plot of land she’s horrified. Their two kids aren’t much more impressed either but they have no choice but to settle in.

The couple's youngest David has his a heart murmur and his mother worries at their distance from a hospital should the worst happen; their eldest seems content to carry on a domestic life but both kids are on edge, firing paper planes with "Don’t fight" messages scrawled on their wings into the rows that develop over time.

Eventually Jacob acquiesces and welcomes his mother-in-law to live with them so they can become a true unit and get on with life.

To say more about Minari is not to reveal more for fear of spoilers, merely a statement that this semi-autobiographical film from Lee Isaac Chung isn’t about plot machinations or dramatic reveals.

While the poster and trailer may  be led by the child David and promise a kind of quirkiness reserved for many films of its ilk, Minari isn't about easy simple and lazy stereotypes. There's an earnestness, humour and warmth that's ripe for the viewing.

It’s a gentle film that wraps you in its rhythms and one which is content to shock you over how engrossed and invested you’ve become in this family as the final moments of quiet slice of tragic devastation play out.

Veracity underpins every scene of this bucolic coming of age movie, skilfully shot by Lachlan Milne and directed by Chung. Each frame is a masterpiece in minimalism and a highly-skilled execution in immersion.

Minari is beyond effective throughout, seeding you deeply into the world of these South Korean immigrants. It's another effective examination of the human condition, and of the journey others take in our worlds - and it's easily one that deserves to be part of any awards' talk which happens.

Deerskin: DVD Review

French director Quentin Dupieux, the guy who brought us Rubber, returns to the festival with an offbeat look at masculinity and bizarrely, fashion.

A greying Jean DuJardin is Georges, a man who appears firstly on the road, and secondly out of sorts. Clad in ill-fitting chinos, and drably coutured, his first stop is at a rest stop, where he throws his jacket in the loo, pushes it down with his feet, and retreats as the facilities begin to flood.

Having dispatched his wardrobe with veritable aplomb, Georges buys a full length, tassles and all, deerskin jacket, that comes with a digital video recorder. Dubbed The Beast by its seller, the jacket seems to exert a hold over Georges, demanding that all jackets be destroyed....

Deerskin is dubbed as a comedy, but it's not exactly laugh-out-loud amusing, more unusual and offbeat than anything.

Beiges, browns and other drab colours provide a palette of malaise that affects much of the mood of the film, and symbolises the collective atmosphere of loss.

DuJardin is committed to the lunacy and the delusion, but grounds his Georges in a kind of broken sadness that's universally recognised, before it teeters off ultimately and heads into the unhinged arena.

At 76 minutes, the film's stretched about as thin as it can go, but the descent into madness is well put together and sold mainly by DuJardin's sense of detachment and Adele Haenel's Denise's desperation to escape a crummy job and buy into the delusion.

"You can't make sense of it now, but it rocks," is one line intoned during proceedings, and may be much of the audience reaction to how Deerskin plays out, and descends into obvious genre tropes.

Ultimately, Deerskin paints itself into a corner, as is demonstrated by an ending that comes out of the blue, but Dupieux's commitment to the journey of lunacy allows it to not outstay its welcome.

Just.