New Dictator trailer unveiled

Brand new trailer for Sacha Barn Cohen's The Dictator has just dropped.

It looks like there's a full story as well - and sees a lot of Borat style fish out of water.

Still, it's got a few giggles out of me while watching...

Mirror Mirror - Movie Review

Mirror Mirror - Movie Review

Cast: Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane, Mare Winningham, Sean Bean

Director: Tarsem Singh

So, another take on the Snow White story arrives in the cinema - and this one ahead of a certain Twihard's performance in a similar role.

But this one is very clearly aimed at the family PG market.

Lily Collins stars as Snow White and Julia Roberts the Queen who steals the heart of the King (Sean Bean) in a world far, far away. When the King disappears, the Queen keeps Snow White locked up in the castle and away from the rest of the kingdom, which she taxes at an exorbitant level to play for lavish parties and life in general.

However, when the Queen is told she's near bankruptcy, she looks for ways to marry out of the predicament - and one of those, Prince Alcott (Hammer), literally ends up on her doorstep.

But at a chance meeting, Alcott falls hard for Snow White and becomes besotted with her. The Queen, though is having none of that - and decrees Snow White's death....

Cast out into the forest, Snow White meets the seven dwarves and sets about reclaiming her birthright.

Mirror Mirror is as completely different a take on the Snow White story as you'll ever see.

It's from Tarsem Singh who brings such incredible visuals to the big screen in all his films but has yet to match the dazzling visuals with an equally dazzling story. Sure, it's a take on the original fairy tale - but it veers more off in a completely different direction than you may expect.

Julia Roberts plays the Evil Queen more as a sarcastic witch with a bitchy outlook than an out and out "boo hiss" villain - and it's a touch which director Singh uses to give it a slight point of difference but it's also what unfortunately confuses the feel of the film. It does, however, give rise to some funny moments and oddball comments which make the whole flick seem like a bit more of a slightly off kilter pantomime than anything else. That said, they are amusing.

If you're looking for the classic elements of the Snow White story, they're all there - the seven dwarves are given different names but are essentially the same characters - but not just in the way you may expect. Mind you, the dwarves are given somewhat of a makeover with accordion style expanding legs as they maraud around the woods - it's a sort of Cirque du Soleil crossed with little people - but again, it's visually inventive.

Arnie Hammer is more comic relief and slightly cheesy than dashing prince (even though he does spend an inordinate amount of time with his top off - which is remarked on by the Queen as she 'struggles to concentrate' with his shirtless ways) and Lily Collins, while initially a little wet and weak as Snow White, gives rise to a lot of misty focused moments and winsome gazes rather than single minded heroine. It's very family orientated viewing though thanks to their performances - plus throw in Julia Roberts and Nathan Lane and you've got a great ensemble.

Tarsem Singh is such a wonderfully inventive director who leaves his visual mark on anything he touches - but he's yet to match a truly unique eye for colour and imagery with a story.

That's the thing with Mirror, Mirror - this family film deserves to be lauded for its stunning costuming and unbelievably dazzling visuals (it even ends with a Bollywood style dance song during the credits and opens with a stunning shadow puppet animation) but in terms of the story, thanks to an odd mismatch of styles and narrative ideas, it's a little bit of a mixed and flat experience.

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The Lorax: Movie Review

The Lorax: Movie Review

Voice cast: Zac Efron, Ed Helms, Danny deVito, Taylor Swift, Betty White, Rob Riggle

Director: Chris Renauld, Kyle Balda

From the team who brought us Despicable Me comes this latest computer animated outing The Lorax.

Zac Efron is 12 year old Ted, who lives in the world of Thneedville, a walled city where all the trees are dead and their world is covered in plastic inflatable trees as well as other artificial bits and bobs.

Smitten with Taylor Swift's Audrey, Ted is determined to win her over and make her the girl of his dreams - his way of doing this? Getting a tree for her.

So, when his Grammy tells him that a mysterious being known as the Once-ler who lives outside the walled city has the key to the trees, Ted sets off to break out of Thneedville and discover what exactly happened.

But Ted's quest isn't going unmonitored - for hot on his heels and watching his every move, is greedy corporate baddie Mr O'Hare who owns a bottled oxygen company and who fears that if Ted gets his way, his empire will come crashing down.

However, when Ted finds the Once-ler, he discovers the guilty secret that he holds and how his quest to make a Thneed from the trees left them with a wasteland - despite the intervention of the spirit of the forests, the moustachioed Lorax (Danny De Vito).

Can Ted make a difference to what's gone on?

I'm not familiar with Dr Seuss' source material for this one; I understand it's based on Seuss' worries over economic progress at the expense of the environment -and I have to say this latest computer animation reeks of indoctrination from beginning to end.

The songs which permeate the brightly orange coloured film are clearly cleverly written to support the whole "Let's save the environment" stance of the piece. And it gets a little tiresome quite quickly. There's something insidious about the lyrics which get stuck in your head - the final song, a gospel style ode to the trees, is called "Let It grow" and for days, it's been lodged inside my brain like a seed growing away.

There's nothing wrong with that stance and fair play to the creators for so heavily pushing it but I just feel like the message was sledge hammered home over any level of subtlety.

Which is a real shame - because the animation, complete with its requisite looniness which you'd come to expect from the creators of Despicable Me, suits the piece perfectly. There's little of Seuss' rhyming within the film itself though and while the younger end of the audience won't care or notice, maybe fans will feel a little cheated. The film skews toward a younger demographic and while that's not a bad thing given the orange brightness of the whole piece (even the Lorax looks like an over spray-tanned Mark Sainsbury from Close Up), there's a small part of the film where the energy levels take a hit and it sags a little.

In terms of the talent, Zac Efron is ok as Ted and Taylor Swift is fairly innocuous - the star of the piece is Betty White who shows even in animated form, she can steal the scene. Ed Helms also makes a good go of his mournful post tree destructive Once-ler giving manic energy to the character before corporate greed overtakes him. Even De Vito is relied on to be more of a sad faced kind of Lorax, spirit of the forest.

Overall, The Lorax isn't bad - it's just that without the much needed easing off of the "Save the Trees, Save the Planet" message, the whole thing's a little heavy handed and leaves a sour taste in the mouth rather than the bouncy joy a Dr Seuss book should be.

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Attack The Block - Movie Review

Attack The Block - Movie Review

Cast: Jodie Whittaker John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Nick Frost

Director: Joe Cornish

From one half of a very successful UK comedy pop culture duo comes this film about an alien invasion on a South London council estate.

On Bonfire Night, nurse Sam (Whittaker) is walking home when she's approached by a group of lads, lead by ringleader Moses (John Boyega). Needless to say the group doesn't want to escort the nurse home but set about mugging her.

However, their attack is interrupted by something falling from the sky - together the gang set on a creature which appears to have been what fell from the sky and kill it, before taking it to local drug dealer Ron (Nick Frost).

But when more objects start falling from the sky, the gang arm themselves and set about defending their territory, the Block (a council house) from the invaders...

Attack The Block is a slice of welcome cultural sci-fi - the writers spent a year studying the language of the youthes of the area and it's reflected in every last spoken detail on screen, taking in street vernacular and interplay between kids these days. It takes a little bit of time to get used to - but soon, it starts to become a catchy lingo and you may even find yourself dropping in the odd word from time to time.

For a relatively low budget UK film, Attack The Block is a certainly assured piece of film-making. Cornish has the perfect eye for details and shots as well as throwing in some good action sequences as well.

The aliens themselves are kind of novel too - furry like gorillas but with huge glow in the dark teeth (which fade out like batteries dying after the creatures are killed) they're feral, brutal things which are unlikely any other aliens ever committed to screen.

Cornish has also made some difficult decisions about the cast - there'll be some who feel torn about supporting a gang of muggers who're forced to try and save the day; almost as if the ASBO youth deserve sympathy for their plight and it's society which made them what they are. Cornish though doesn't pursue too much social commentary even though it's inherently there in the story, choosing to focus instead on the lingo and some comedy moments, such as a pair of 9 year olds following the group around trying to emulate them. He chooses to show the root causes of life on a council block rather than preach about it.  The relatively unknown cast do a great job of bringing them to life and the whole thing feels fresh and different.

There's something novel about Attack The Block - and something which will give it a life beyond the big screen - it's destined for cult status, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out. In the words of the gang themselves - "Believe, bruv, believe."

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The Women on the 6th Floor - Movie Review

The Women on the 6th Floor - Movie Review

Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Sandrine Kilberlain, Natalia Verbeke, Lola Duenas and Carmen Maura
Director: Phillippe Le Guay

It's off to 1960s Paris we go in this Upstairs, Downstairs social drama about the owner of a house and his relationship with the maids he employs.

A starched Fabrice Luchini is stockbroker Jean-Louis Joubert who lives with his socialite wife amid the perks of wealth. One such perk is the owning of maids; but when the head of the household quits, Joubert ends up hiring Maria (Natalia Verbeke), a Spanish maid new in town, who soon makes his mark in the household.

But not for the wrong reasons - her bright breezy attitude opens up Joubert's eyes to the injustice and suffering of the Spanish help as this cross cultural dramedy unfolds.

The Women on the 6th Floor is a gentle Gallic charmer of a film - it runs foul of a few cliches here and there as it negotiates the day to day life and politics of a stiffly starched yet compassionate relationship and tensions between the French and the Spanish as the Civil war continues.

Luchini and Verbeke make a pleasant couple - with her youthfullness and joie de vivre bringing out the compassion over time of his repressed socialite. Occasionally, their relationship feels a little forced and lacks perhaps some of the sizzle that you'd expect of the story.

All in all, The Women on the 6th Floor is a light, breezy Gallic treat of a film to wile away a Sunday afternoon.

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Total Recall teaser trailer unveiled

Methinks someone's taken a leaf out of the Prometheus marketing.

A 30 second trailer's been released for the 2012 remake of Total Recall, starring Colin Farrell and Kate Beckinsale.




Total Recall 2012 is a remake of the 1990 movie of the same name that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The official synopsis goes -
For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), even though he's got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life - real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs. But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. Finding himself on the run from the police - controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), the leader of the free world - Quaid teams up with a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) to find the head of the underground resistance (Bill Nighy) and stop Cohaagen. The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred and the fate of his world hangs in the balance as Quaid discovers his true identity, his true love, and his true fate...

The full Total Recall trailer is out on Monday in NZ and we'll bring it to you then.

Street Fighter X Tekken PS3 Review

Street Fighter X Tekken PS3 Review

Released by THQ and Capcom
Platform: PS3

So, yet another fighter game hits the small screen - in the wake of a lot of similar releases from Capcom over the past few months, you may be wondering if this one is worth your time.

And to a degree, I tend to agree with you - it seems as if there's a glut of these fighter games, crying for your cash and time in an increasingly busy market place.

Yet, Street Fighter X Tekken is still a lot of fun.

It's no real digression from the genre or from what's expected - you take on the guises of various fighters from Street Fighter, double up and combat your opponents in a computer generated fist fury breakdown. It's mainly from an array of Street Fighter characters that you get to choose a fighter - but all have their different strengths and skills, as well as weaknesses.

You can choose how long the fights go for; how many rounds and the difficulty of the smackdown as well - but it's really in the playability of this where Street Fighter X Tekken gives you the thrill of an arena fight. Some nice backdrops also flesh out the action - from dinosaurs to people standing by initially talking and then being drawn into the fights, a bit of effort has gone into the backgrounds and it's a welcome touch.

At the end of the day, these are two iconic franchises which have faithfully been ported across to a new game - and the inclusion of arcade, mission or online potential fights give the fluid gameplay a bit more life. It's playable enough fun but for the ultimate combat life, you really need to take this social and include other players - either in the room or out in cyberspace.

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