Newstalk ZB Movie Review - The Impossible and Django Unchained

Newstalk ZB Movie Review - The Impossible and Django Unchained

Here's the latest movie review from myself on Saturday morning on Newstalk ZB with Jack Tame in New York.

This week, I take a look at The Impossible, starring Naomi Watts and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.

Take a listen below - and make sure you tune in every weekend on Saturdays from 9am.

Click here to listen to the Impossible/ Django Unchained Movie Review

Resident Evil: Retribution: Blu Ray Review

Resident Evil: Retribution: Blu Ray Review

Rating: R16
Released by Sony Home Entertainment

So, the fifth film in the Res Evil series hits the small screen.

Milla Jovovich reprises her role as Alice being forced to escape out of the evil clutches of the Umbrella Corporation where the T virus has run amok. So, once again, gathering together guns and some familiar faces, it's upto Alice to blast her way out and save the day - but not everything she faces this time is real....

If you're expecting plot, character and depth of exposition with Resident Evil: Retribution, I think you're at the wrong place.

However, if you're after stylish shooting of things, slow mo shots and lots of explosions, welcome on in, close the door and settle on in for a night's fun. It starts off very slickly with an action sequence played backwards and impresses visually, but to be honest, aside from a few visual flourishes here and there, it's all been done before.

It feels like a video game, and plays out like one - but to be honest, fans will adore it and with news a sixth is planned, the franchise lives on - despite continual critical panning and offering little else new or original.

Extras: Outtakes, deleted scenes, commentaries

Rating:

Looper: Blu Ray Review

Looper: Blu Ray Review

Rating: R16
Released by Roadshow Home Entertainment

It's Kansas, 2044 - Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Joe, who makes a living working as a Looper, an assassin with a twist. Basically, in 2074 time travel becomes a reality and the mob use it to get rid of anyone they don't want alive. By dropping the victim back 30 years in time, the Looper takes care of the job.

However, the future's under threat from a kingpin known as the Rainmaker, who's "closing all the loops" by systematically sending back the future versions of the assassins to be taken care of their younger selves.

One day, Joe's out on a job and the future version of himself (Bruce Willis) drops into existence, for execution.

Only older Joe manages to escape - and it's upto younger Joe to close the loop....

Looper is an utterly incredible movie - I've yet to see anything match it for intelligence, intensity and surprises  this year. The Looper trailer gives little away and really wrong foots you to a degree.

From a brilliantly realised future / day after tomorrow world which blends seemlessly into the background of every shot and gets it spot on with the look and feel of future technology through to a continually surprising storyline, Johnson hits every right note from the get go.

It helps that he's blessed by another riveting performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who under a few prosthetics oozes the gumshoe/ hitman appeal and hits the genre spot on as well as offering a mature take on his role. He's also got the steely determination downpat as the story goes on - and in his scenes with Bruce Willis, it's pretty obvious to see the future connection between the pair.

Talking of Bruce, by putting away the smirk and actually doing some proper acting for a change, Willis adds a lot to the story and gives Joe the humanity and warmth that he's lacking as a younger junkie version of himself. It's a sympathetic turn and one which may catch you off guard.

The thing with the movie Looper though is, to be honest, you're best going in to it without any idea of what lies ahead. Sure, you're promised a time travel story with some familiar ideas and ethics, but what Johnson actually delivers is rich in story-telling, blessed by great character acting and uses the sci-fi as a construct for the narrative rather than the sole purpose of it.

Looper is an easy contender for one of the films of the year - it offers a new thematic take on a few old ideas and is dazzingly original, ambitiously fresh and stays with you for days after you've seen it - something which has been so rare this year.

Do yourself a favour and see one of the best genre films for a long while.

Extras: Audio commentary, animated trailer, deleted scenes, Blu ray exclusives - making of, the science of time travel and more.

Rating:

Safety Not Guaranteed: DVD Review

Safety Not Guaranteed: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Vendetta Films

A quirky little indie film, Safety Not Guaranteed is a gentle nugget of cinematic genius.

Aubrey Plaza is Darius, a grad who's unable to get a job and ends up working as an intern at Seattle magazine. When reporter Jeff (a Mark Ruffaloesque Jake Johnson) suggests he looks into an ad in a newspaper promising to take a trip back in time, but with "safety not guaranteed", Darius, along with studious intern Arnau head to Ocean View to find out more.

But while Jeff uses the opportunity to look up an old flame, Darius discovers that the guy who placed the ad, is a curious oddball called Kenneth (a brilliant Duplass). Kenneth works at the local store and is convinced the authorities are following him as he nears completion of his time machine.

So, the question is - is Kenneth telling the truth or is it the mutterings of a mid American nutjob?

Safety Not Guaranteed is a real charmer of a film and an unexpected humour filled delight, which will amuse and engage your heart too.

From its start where we first meet Darius being rejected for a job right to its final shot where something unexpected happens, it's a film which confounds your expectations and surprises you.

It's a low key, lo fi indie film in many ways which hits all the right notes; part rom com, part sci fi flick, part road trip and part relationships/ hipster film, it's a mash up of many genres and all of them sensitively and sensibly handled with charm and ease.

The central premise is an intriguing one and throwing together the trio works very well; from the lazy, just out to hook up Jeff to the uptight Indian intern Arnau, mixed in with a dash of sullen sarcasm courtesy of Aubrey Plaza, the final resulting cocktail works very well.

But the film scores its major points with Mark Duplass  as Kenneth, a denim jacketed slight oddball of a man about whom you're never quite sure if he's a sandwich short of a picnic or actually onto something with his notion of time travel and reasons for it. (And his occasional resemblance to 1990s Scott Bakula in time travelling TV series Quantum Leap is uncanny at times - or perhaps, a deliberate nod). Thanks to sensitive acting and a bit of depth of character, he remains an enigma throughout and a character you can't quite get a handle on.

As one character remarks "This mission has to do with regret, mistakes and is about love" - it's an adage which helps us identify with the characters and engage with what could be a lunatic proposition.  With dashings of deadpan humour thrown in, and a final act which once again confounds your expectations by swiftly whipping the carpet from asunder, Safety Not Guaranteed deserves to be a hit thanks to its charm, performances and touchingly heartfelt and yet universal story.

Whether or not it will be depends on how much you're willing to gamble on this - my advice, roll the dice and enjoy every moment of what is one of the best character films of the year.

Rating:

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters: Movie Review

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D: Movie Review

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala, Peter Stormare
Director: Tommy Wirkola

With a tag line "Classic tale, new twist," you'd be expecting something of a reinvention for this fairy tale that everyone's familiar with.

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton are Hansel and Gretel, who, traumatised by being abandoned in the woods and being suckered by a witch in the Gingerbread house, are now bounty hunters and crossbow wielding killers, determined to rid the world of witches one by one.

15 years later, with the Blood Moon approaching in the town of Augsburg, the town mayor hires the duo to find out why so many children are being kidnapped. Despite the protestations of the local sheriff (Stormare), they set about this mission - only to find a witch more powerful and more evil than they've ever faced before....

And one which could hold a secret to their past.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D is more Grimm than you could realise (and not in a good way).

Pushed back from March 2012, this latest release is, sadly somewhat of a muddled mess, which sets out to be too many things to too many people and ends up being nothing distinguished.

Which is a shame, because in amongst all the constant in your face 3D (wood, explosions, arrows all come flying towards your face), there is some promise of a decent story. Its opening titles recall illustrations from the middle ages and set the tone of a little tongue in cheek and promising blood and gore aplenty in its killings. Certainly heads explode completely when crushed, smashed and stomped in an array of red blood.

That's what it settles for with scenes leading up to bloody confrontations with witches and scant little story to propel it along. The 3D is lazily applied and goes for the school of firing stuff in your direction and from the screen into your face, which soon grows incredibly tired. It's clearly what Wirkola, who had a hand in the brilliant Dead Snow, wanted to achieve, because everything's geared towards those showdowns rather than fleshing out what goes between. There's also as much action in the woods - including more hurtling through the air on broomsticks sequences - than there ever was in action on Endor in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

Gemma Arterton is all punkish bravado as Gretel, with Jeremy Renner more of a sullen and sulky type as the brother Hansel. One neat twist on the fairy tale sees Hansel having to inject himself every few hours because of the sugar intake from his youth but it's mentioned so often that you're aware very early on that it will become a stumbling block for him. Janssen sneers and gurgles her way through as the baddest witch in town, and there are some hints of menace which sizzle on the screen early on before being squandered in a CGI trickery.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D proffers up some moments of comedy, but then doesn't have enough one liners to carry it through; and has action and guns aplenty shoehorned in to make it feel a little jarring in places; tonally, while dark, it feels like too much of a mixed bag and I can't help but feel that if those in charge of it had decided what exactly they wanted out of the film, and zeroed in on it, it would have been more successful. Hints of what the film could have been come right at the end with a pre-credits sequence which expose more character, clever effects and sharp writing with great oneliners which lift the dour tone of all that's passed. Had the film incorporated those elements, it would have been a much better outcome.

Unfortunately, the final effect of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D is like the comedown of a major sugar rush a few hours earlier - moments of joy, mixed with moments of discomfort in the pit of your stomach.

Rating:

The Watch: Blu Ray Review

The Watch: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

In this latest aliens invade comedy, we find ourselves back in middle America.

A dialled-down Ben Stiller plays Evan Trautwig, a local guy who lives in Glenview, Ohio and who's terribly proud of his community. He's head of a stack of different hobby clubs, works as a manager of a local supermarket after years of slowly climbing up the ladder and is proud of what he's achieved and the people he lives with.

But when the night guard of his store is murdered, the uptight Evan decides to step up to show his love for the community and form a neighbourhood watch.

Having recruited only three others - boorish Bob (Vaughan), a rejected trigger happy wannabe cop (Hill) and a mild mannered, socially awkward Brit, Jamarcus (Ayoade) - the whole thing appears to be more of an excuse for lonely guys to socialise rather than patrol the streets, despite Evan's best intentions.

However, when the four of them discover that aliens have invaded and are about to take over Glenview, it becomes more of Evan's mission to try and convince everyone outside the watch and save his beloved community.

What to say about The Watch?

If you're after a slightly vulgar, occasionally puerile and hit and miss laugh out loud experience, then this film is for you.

Sure, this kind of film's been done plenty of times before (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Men in Black et al) but the central ensemble cast seemed to promise more than they actually delivered. On paper, it's a dream team - Stiller, Vaughn and Hill have great comic chops and CVs and the adding into the mix of the brilliant Ayoade seemed to hint at freshening things up between them all.

Stiller's the straight man to Vaughn's overprotective, just-wanna-hang-with-the-guys boor; and Hill adds a level of funny with his edgy, rejected cop who threatens to overflow into violence. But the star of the film (and who gets the admittedly slim lion's share of the best lines) is the IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade who punctures and peppers the "comedy" with moments of awkwardness and unpredictability. Sadly, though, there's just not enough of those scattered through the film - although it is a star debut.

With horrendous product placement once again on show and the film really reneging on the promise of a group of mismatched guys coming together and enforced bonding, The Watch proves to be a picking at low hanging fruit kind of film - and if you're in the mood for that (or have a teenage boy mentality to cope with the vulgar jokes) then it's the film for you.

Everyone else will just want The Watch to disband and never reform.

Extras: Gag reel, Alternate takes, casting the alien, deleted scenes - ruder, cruder and lewder special features apparently

Rating:

The Last of Us Demo Details revealed

The Last of Us Demo Details revealed

God of War: Ascension Players Gain First Access to The Last of Us Demo on PSN 

New Zealand, January 25 2013: Sony Computer Entertainment is giving players who are itching to get their hands on two of the biggest titles for 2013, exclusive first access to The Last of Us demo with the purchase of God of War: Ascension. 

Once purchased, fans will simply have to load their God of War: Ascension disc into their PS3 and find The Last of Us listing on the main menu. There, players will find details on how to access The Last of Us demo, for free, as soon as it becomes available.

More information on exact details of the demo will be released by Naughty Dog at a later date on the PlayStation Blog.