Performance: DVD Review

Performance: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

Movies are sometimes like buses - you wait ages for one of its ilk, then suddenly two of a kind show up.

So it is with Performance, aka A Late Quartet - and December's Quartet from Dustin Hoffman. Both films centre on a quartet with issues and both have a Hoffman involved. In the latest, it's a Seymour Hoffman as Philip who plays Robert, one quarter of the aforementioned quartet. They've been together 25 years and when founding member Peter (Walken in a sombre role) announces to the group he has Parkinson's Disease and must retire, it throws the cat among the pigeons for the remaining members.

Not only is there the grief of what lies ahead, but also simmering tensions between Robert, wife Juliette (Keener) and Daniel (Lerner) come boiling to the surface. Throw in the fact that Robert and Juliette's daughter Alexandra (Poots) is tempestuous to say the least, and it's a potent mix of relationships, resentments and Beethoven

Performance is a reflective character piece, which borders on the maudlin at times. However, it's very solidly and convincingly acted by the cast who are totally committed to what director Zilberman brings to the table. The music and stunning scenery plays second fiddle to the issues blighting the group and despite the refined settings of the film, there's a certain classiness to what the actors bring to the screen.

But there's also a distance and aloofness which proves difficult to the engagement despite the actors. Walken provides a haunting face to the stricken Peter, Hoffman is a powerful figure whose underplaying of the role is fast becoming a trademark of everything he does. Keener adds a dignity to the conflicted emotions she feels and Poots is all arrogance as the young daughter.

Occasionally melodramatic and self centred, there's a vulnerability to Performance which may strike more of a chord with some than I confess it did with me.

Rating:

ZB Movie Review - RED2, Identity Thief and Oblivion

ZB Movie Review - RED2, Identity Thief and Oblivion

This week on Jack Tame on Newstalk ZB, I talked briefly about Jobs, RED2, Identity Thief and Oblivion.

Take a listen below:

http://newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/player/ondemand/1587452907-darren-bevan--this-week-at-the-movies

Paranoia: Movie Review

Paranoia: Movie Review

Cast: Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Amber Heard, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon
Director: Robert Luketic

Billed as a "high stakes thriller", Paranoia is a delve into the world of greed and deception within the technology industry.

It focuses on Liam Hemsworth's Adam, a young up-and-comer in the industry who's been working at entry level at a tech company run by Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman, in cock-er-nee mood). Adam's an honest sort, but one who wants more from life, envious of how some are willing to cheat to get ahead and have achieved major wealth off of others. He lives at home with his sick father (a criminally underused Richard Dreyfuss) and is always struggling.

When he and his team are fired from their jobs, they head out to commiserate and spend up big on their company credit card. But the next day, Adam's hauled up in front of his amoral former boss and given an ultimatum and Faustian pact from Wyatt - face jail time for fraud charges or infiltrate another tech company run by Harrison Ford's Jock Goddard, Wyatt's former mentor and now business enemy.

Seduced by the wealth and possibilities, Adam's sucked into a world of corporate esponiage and is soon in danger of losing his life.

Paranoia is supposed to be a thriller, but to be frank, it lacks any real thrills or suspense whatsoever, resulting in a perfectly average, but utterly under-cooked effort.

Sure, Hemsworth finds any excuse to take his shirt off and wander around semi-naked, but the fact he's completely soulless, dead behind the eyes and lacking any real charisma means you don't actually feel for his plight or any peril he may be in.

Likewise, why tease the possibility of Oldman and Ford's characters being major rivals and have them face off each other in only a handful of scenes? And when they finally do face each other down, there's scant tension, little energy and only the slightest frisson of them wanting to tear strips off each other. Though the sight of a shaven headed Ford at the end seething and threatening to boil over brings the first sign of life to this - but it's too late by then.

Underwritten characters, lumpen direction and laughable dialogue in this derail it from the start. An initial voiceover from Hemsworth intones that "I am not going to make excuses - I asked for this" as he extols the fact the American dream has been bastardised by the corporate greed (before fully embracing said greed); another scene in the latter stages at the tech company sees one security guard screaming that they need to "get the IT guy on the line" when their systems go down. Even Ford isn't invulnerable too - he succumbs to delivering the line -"Power's the juice - get used to drinking it"

Worst though is Amber Heard's marketing boss Emma whom Adam tries to kindle a romance with. Initially frosty after a one night stand, there's the promise of some delicious banter and back and forth to give this some spark; but the writers choose to turn Heard's ball busting, no-nonsense corporate bigwig into a weak kneed, just wants a nice man to love her stereotype, who ends up resorting to batting her eyes and looking through her long hair at sad moments. The underwriting of the characters - that's the biggest crime of Paranoia, a film so mis-labelled there's hardly any paranoia around at all.

All in all, Paranoia had the trappings of some decent moments and the promise of a thriller, but it delivers up a damp squib which is memorable for all the things it does wrong, rather than getting it right. And that's enough to make anyone in Hollywood paranoid.

Rating:

About Time: Movie Review

About Time: Movie Review

Cast: Domnhall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Lindsay Duncan

Director: Richard Curtis

Is About Time Richard Curtis’ directorial swan song?

The man who gave us such saccharine treats as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Notting Hill and launched the career of the foppish Hugh Grant is stepping down?

Say it ain’t so – but it appears to be with About Time, the latest rom-com sap-fest from the Working Title fold.

So, it’s back once more to Curtis’ idealistic Britain, where London is never gloomy and the English folk eat alfresco on the Cornish coast whatever the weather. So far, so quaint and so Hollywood stereotyped….

Domnhall Gleeson (one of the Weasley brothers from the Harry Potter series) plays Tim, who discovers from his father on his 21^st birthday that all the men in the family possess the ability to travel in time. All they have to do is enter a darkened room, clasp their hands together and think of the moment they wish to return to – et voila, a second chance from within their own lifetime beckons.

How does Tim use this great gift? 

Well, as Tim decries initially, “For me - it was always going to be about love” and he turns his power towards ensuring that Mary (a rather bland and wishy-washy Rachel McAdams) becomes his beau.

But Tim gradually learns that this power isn’t to be abused – and despite having every chance in the world to change things, not everything can be changed for the better and some life lessons need to be learned.

About Time is exactly what you’d expect from the Richard Curtis romcom stable. If you’re an old cynic, you’ll gradually feel the roof of your gums as you angrily gnash your teeth away as the celluloid sugar overload pours out in waves at you; otherwise, you’ll lap up every moment and laugh at every English eccentricity, ignoring the fact that Curtis is plundering from his own stockpile and trademarks to bring you a very polished, yet mawkish and sentimental film. (In fact, you can play Curtis bingo as well – as characters appear to have wondered in from other films he’s penned)

Gleeson really impresses in his first lead – even if he does have overtones of Hugh Grant’s patented stutter, awkwardness and vulnerability down to a tee; there’s something endearing about his gradual coming of age and realising that despite living each day again, it’s the extraordinary ordinariness which makes us all so special. (In case you didn’t already know and needed film to tell you otherwise)

Likewise, Nighy turns in another great character role, bringing a subtlety and nuanced heart to the father figure. It’s a performance which may have many (even the hard hearted) wanting to call their parents for a quick catch up afterwards but it’s never one that descends too far into sentimental mush, despite the plot going darker at the end.

Tom Hollander deserves some praise too as the acerbic bitter twist in this Brit sci-fi Groundhog Day as a playwright around to dispense the perfect oneliner to punctuate the overly tender moments. (Don’t dwell too much on the time travel element – it’s there to service the narrative rather than be explored and once the novelty of some romantic mishaps are explored, it takes a back seat until the poignant end.)

Did it win me over? Not in the slightest, due to the fact it borrows heavily and indulges Curtis’ own back catalogue; every moment I could see coming from a mile off and there was not one single moment where there was a surprise waiting for me.  It’s a meditation on regret and the reality of growing up not a complex look at the mores and dilemmas faced by someone with great power – it’s crowd-pleasing in the extreme and hits every note that Curtis would have wanted to this time around.

All in all, About Time is entirely predictable and utter feel good fluff as the overload of cute builds to its climax; Curtis’ schmaltzy swansong is exactly what you’d expect from the man (even down to the mood setting generic piano music) and thanks to a more coherent, if overlong, script, it comes together well as the consequences of change and the relationships we share are put under scrutiny. 

About Time is perfectly pleasant cinematic stuff, not life-changing, but not too soul-destroying in its saccharine assault on the senses. 

Rating:

Grand Theft Auto V trailer is here

Grand Theft Auto V trailer is here

Just launched is the brand new trailer for Grand Theft Auto V...

Los Santos: a sprawling metropolis full of self-help gurus, starlets and fading celebrities struggling to stay afloat in an era of economic uncertainty and cheap cable TV. Amidst the turmoil, three very different criminals risk everything in a series of daring and dangerous heists that could set them up for life.

www.rockstargames.com/V

ESRB Rating: MATURE with Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Nudity, Mature Humor, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

Watch the new Official Gameplay Video for Grand Theft Auto Online - which shows how we've taken the fundamental GTA concepts of freedom, ambient activity and mission-based gameplay and made them available to multiple players in an incredibly detailed and responsive online world.


In Grand Theft Auto Online, you'll have the freedom to explore alone or with friends, work cooperatively to complete missions, band together to participate in activities and ambient events, or compete in traditional game modes with the entire community, all with the personality and refined mechanics of Grand Theft Auto V.

Access to Grand Theft Auto Online is free with every retail copy of Grand Theft Auto V and launches on October 1st. 

Iron Man 3: Blu Ray Review

 Iron Man 3: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Entertainment

"We create our own demons."

So goes the very first line of this threequel, opening to massive expectations and no doubt, box office following Iron Man's last triumphant outing as part of the superhero powerhouse which was The Avengers. 

Robert Downey Jr reprises his role as billionaire Tony Stark - who, this time around, is suffering a little from PTSD following the events at the end of the alien Chitauri invasion masterminded by Loki. Well, you'd expect that from someone who escaped from a wormhole with a nuke in tow...Facing a distinct lack of sleep, Stark has been distancing himself from the love of his life Pepper Potts (Paltrow), who's working hard at Stark Industries and is choosing to dwell on building other Iron Man suits within his basement.

But when bearded terrorist The Mandarin strikes, taking down everything Tony Stark holds dear, Stark has no choice but to go back to basics to try and save the day...

Iron Man 3 is not what you would expect in terms of blockbuster outing.

Sure, Shane Black's fashioned some killer crowd-pleasing, large exploding moments of spectacle but the overall feel of this flick is somewhat of a downer, darker and slightly dour affair - despite moments of humour throughout this character piece. Stark is prone to panic and anxiety attacks - and it gives Downey Jr a new facet to play with onscreen as well as humanising the smarmy, egotistical philanthropist. But it also gives depth of vulnerability and a degree of heartbreak to his distancing himself from Potts (their relationship being the pulsing heart of this latest film) as it all plays out. Downey Jr is never anything less than eminently watchable as it unfolds, whether it's raging anger when laying down a challenge to Mandarin  and chasing after the bearded terrorist (bin Laden allegories, anyone?) or realising how mortal he is post-Avengers' incidents.

Likewise, Ben Kingsley's Mandarin character is a fabulous addition to the pantheon of Marvel baddies. To say too much about this bearded Bin Laden-esque terrorist, with his cyber-hacking broadcasts is to give too much away from the film. But he adds a menace which is befitting and the equal of Stark's theatricality as he exacts his diabolical plots. Guy Pearce brings a level of nastiness and rejected smarm as Aldrich Killian, but Rebecca Hall is frankly wasted in a role, which amounts to little more than an extended cameo. Don Cheadle gets a Lethal Weapon-esque team up with Stark toward the end of the film as Iron Patriot falls into trouble.

Despite there being plenty of unexpected moments, twists and turns, and some eye-catching action sequences, there's a horrendously saggy middle piece. Will it lead to an Iron Man 4?

That's the big question - with the Iron Man 3 ending feeling like a kind of wrap up, and Downey Jr's contract being finished with the role, you'd have to wonder if this is the end for Stark. But given this latest performance, he's irreplaceable - and Marvel would be hard pressed to bring anyone else into a role which Downey Jr has made so emphatically his own.

Extras: Marvel one shot Agent Carter, deconstructing the scenes, gag reel and exclusive look behind the scenes of Thor: The Dark World.

Rating:

Evil Dead: Blu Ray Review

Evil Dead: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Entertainment

A cabin in the woods, a possessed person, plenty of gore and dismemberments, and a reboot of an iconic horror series. It could only be Evil Dead, which was filmed in Auckland's Woodhill Forest.

Jane Levy (Suburgatory) stars as Mia in this reboot of the Evil Dead franchise, which of course was originally helmed some 32 years ago by Sam Raimi and starred Bruce Campbell. Along with four other friends (including her brother David - played by Shiloh Fernandez), Mia's holed up in a remote cabin as they try to help her kick her drug addiction.

But when one of the five discovers the Book of the Dead and reads out one of the incantations out of pure curiosity, all hell breaks loose as the demons are summoned and Mia is possessed....

Evil Dead starts with a bang and gore and doesn't really let up from there.

It's an old school horror in that it ramps up the tension, plies up the horror soundtrack and ratchets the uncomfortable feeling to 11 - and then some. The idea that Mia is in lockdown and detox adds a little something to the whole possession edge of the film and makes her initial strung-out behaviour a little easier to play on.

Add in tensions between David and Mia because of family and the concoction is there for a truly horrific showdown. And in many ways, that's what you get; buckets of blood, neck-cricking possessions (a la J horror movies) and some moments where you can't bear to look at the screen.

The Evil Dead movie is refreshingly old school; not self-aware, and true to its mythology. It's also the home of some great CGI technology, prosthetics and some stomach-churningly impressive FX work as the splatter-fest begins. It also makes moody work of the Woodhill Forest location and builds on the cabin's claustrophobia. Jane Levy impresses as she gives her all on screen as the shocks and jolts begin to build up.

Bloodthirsty and brutal, it will appeal to the original fans of the series. It's also bloody good fun in an old school horror way - and with a sequel planned and more films involving Bruce Campbell's Ash from the Evil Dead franchise, now is a good time to get possessed by the obsession which has been running for years.


Rating: