Newstalk ZB Movie Review - Anchorman 2, The Mortal Instruments and The World's End

Newstalk ZB Movie Review - Anchorman 2, The Mortal Instruments and The World's End

This week, it's the final NewsTalk ZB live cross with Jack Tame.

We talked about Christmas, new movie Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues; The Mortal Instruments and The World's End.

Take a listen below:

Doctor Who: Series 1-4 Blu Ray Review

Doctor Who: Series 1-4 Blu Ray Review

Rating: PG
Released by BBC And Roadshow Home Entertainment

The first 4 seasons of the relaunched Doctor Who get a Blu Ray Release in time for Christmas.

Each individual set collects together all 13 episodes from the tenures of Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant and remind you why the revamp of the show was so successful in 2005. It's Eccleston's era which has been longest neglected by this reviewer in the endless Tennant repeats, so heading back to the beginning again is a great reminder of why it worked so well - an actor who was so committed to the role, who brought austerity and heart and helped the show find another life.

From the final scenes when Eccleston's Doctor goes to the opening moments when he's full of life and freshly regenerated, there's a joie de vivre that's encased in the heavy heart of the last of the Timelords - something which is ramped up to a degree in David Tennant's time in the TARDIS. There's a carefree selfishness that manifests itself in his time and it certainly makes for a more lively time during the 3 series that are released here. Of these, School Reunion which reunites him with Sarah Jane Smith is just heart warmingly poignant and beautiful - a reminder of how old school Who can be effortlessly woven in.

Each set's packed with extras, Doctor Who Confidential (oh, how we miss you), behind the scenes stuff, deleted scenes and trailers - well worth diving into as there's some 60 hours of viewing here.

A must for any collector of Who - but no new material to speak of.

Rating:

RED 2: Blu Ray Review

RED 2: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Hopscotch Entertainment

RED (Retired and Extremely Dangerous) was a sleeper hit back in 2010.

Its infusion and mix of an older group of action heroes and the fact Helen Mirren got to shoot a very big gun (thus shattering a lot of stereotypes) meant that it was an unexpected worldwide box office hit.

So, perhaps a sequel was inevitable.

This time around, retired black-ops CIA agent Frank Moses (a broodier Bruce Willis) is back and forced into action once again. Which he's not happy about because he's enjoying the quieter life with beau Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) - even though she craves the more active life and has a taste for danger since the first outing.

When former colleague Marvin (Malkovich) is apparently assassinated, (minor spoiler - he wasn't) the group is sent on a global jaunt to try and track down a missing portable nuclear device...and that sends them right to Bailey (Anthony Hopkins) a scientist from Frank's path - and also into the sights of Frank's former flame Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones). With RED2, it's a case, really, of repeating the successes of before - and adding in a few more ingredients of the older generation to get a wider audience. But with a few caveats.

Unfortunately, some of the thrill of the first film was seeing Helen Mirren in action - she's largely sidelined in this piece and separated from the group, which is a real shame. Though, Mary-Louise Parker's character has come more alive in this and her need to fulfill a vicarious streak to her nature leads to some more comedic moments than perhaps you would initially have been expecting. The cattiness between Sarah and Katja is entertaining for a while but its lightweight nature threatens to topple RED 2 despite some average action sequences.

With a plot that closely follows that other uber-work of Bruce Willis, A Good Day to Die Hard, it's almost as if Bruce is suffering from deja vu here. And deja vu is present in many ways, with Neal McDonough taking on Karl Urban's role from the first, as the hard-as-nails pursuer - but there's way too much comedy in this piece to make it feel like the right mix. The problem is the characters do nothing new - with perhaps, the exception of Mary-Louise Parker who gets to be part of the spy world and get the action she so craves.

Distinctly average but fairly disposable entertainment, RED 2 is another outing for the Grey Team - and perhaps some will enjoy that. Others though will feel that they maybe need to actually stick to the concept of being Retired (but with a third installment planned, that could be a long shot).

Extras: Gag reel, deleted scenes, the cast, the weapons, the stunts

Rating

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Movie Review

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Movie Review

Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Adam Scott, Patton Oswalt
Director: Ben Stiller

Ben Stiller flexes his directorial muscles in this quirkily whimsical piece about a white collar worker who works for Life magazine.

That worker is Walter Mitty (played by Ben Stiller) - and his job is to process photos for inclusion in the magazine. Prone to daydreaming, Mitty's an unmitigated hopeless case; a man for whom fantasy is more reality than an escape from the anonymity of a boring daily routine.

But when the magazine is bought out by a conglomerate and the final issue's announced by management-speak spouting bearded boss (Adam Scott), Mitty's forced to take action - not just because the image they need from top photographer Sean O'Connell is missing.

So, bounding out of the door and finally coming to life, spurred on by LIFE Magazine colleague (and crush) Cheryl, Mitty embarks on the first and biggest adventure of his lifetime as he comes wildly to life.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a real curio of a film and a doozy served up by Ben Stiller. Based on James Thurber's 1939 short story and not a remake of the 1947 film, Stiller's committed something to celluloid which looks distinctly different to anything else witnessed this year.

Mitty's flights of fancy are visually incredible as they weave seamlessly into the ongoing narrative - from an opening sequence where he imagines himself leaping perilously through a building to save Cheryl's three-legged dog before the whole thing blows up to an imaginary fight with his boss which wrecks as much of Manhattan as the Avengers did and an adorably funny sequence where Mitty imagines his life with Cheryl in an homage to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, they capture the fantastical nature of a daydreamer. But, with so many of them coming so quickly, the technique threatens to jar and irritate rather than to help the film soar.

Thankfully, when Mitty springs into life to track down O'Connell, the film calms down a little as the real adventure doesn't need sprucing up with fantastical edges. Taking in Greenland and Iceland's wondrous scenery, Stiller's done an excellent job of letting the visuals set the tone for this incredulous journey of a quiet and reserved man finding his voice.

Sure, there are coincidences of quirk layered upon this travelogue and a nice side story involving an internet dating site continually calling Mitty to expand his profile and hobbies as he's out adventuring, but there's an earnestness and a zest for life that's fully exploited on the big screen.

Stiller doesn't entirely manage to fully convince as Mitty; while he's dialled down his propensity for slapstick (which comes to the fore in a couple of sequences), his default setting appears to be Blue Steel which can be occasionally off-putting. He has a good solid rapport with Wiig and their burgeoning relationship works well; likewise, the enigmatic Sean O'Connell is excellently portrayed by an earnest Penn.

Thoughtful, occasionally profound and always visually inventive, it's as a director that Ben Stiller excels in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - I've seen nothing else like this on the big screen this year. There are strong visuals which really resonate as they bounce onto your eyeballs - and Stiller's found a crafty way to write various parts of the script into the world around Mitty thanks to VFX.

All in all, there's a cinematic eccentricity and whimsy to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty which is hard to ignore; it's a flight of fancy and reflective piece to let wash over you as the excesses of Christmas subside.

Rating:

August: Osage County: Movie Review

August: Osage County: Movie Review

Cast: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, Julianne Nicholson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sam Shepard
Director: John Wells

If you think your family gathering at Christmas is bad, you ain't seen nothing compared to August: Osage County.

Based on the stage play of the same name, it stars Meryl Streep as Violet, the monstrous matriarch of the Weston family. Struck with mouth cancer and addicted to pills, she finds her world comes unstuck when her husband Beverly (played by Sam Shepard) disappears without warning one day.

As the disparate family gathers to help the search, tensions from the past simmer and boil over, causing more anguish than any normal family gathering would cause - and Violet revels in them, spewing forth toxic bile on her own family...

For Julia Roberts' Barbara, her return to the homestead brings into sharp focus her separation from her husband Charlie (McGregor) and her distance from her daughter (Breslin) as well as the resentment from her sister Ivy (Nicholson) who's been forced to stay home all these years. Equally her other sister Karen (Juliette Lewis) breezes in her with her latest squeeze (Dermot Mulroney) causing more divides within the group. Add into that mix, Violet's very own sister Mattie Fae, who detests her son Little Charles, much to the growing chagrin of her own husband Charles (Cooper), and you can see how the roof is ready to explode in this mid-Western American powderkeg.

August: Osage County is a battering experience, a difficult film to sympathise with, presided as it is by the towering monster that is Violet. In some scenes, Streep's character positively chews out the scenery on display (and veers dangerously close into over-acting when compared to others in this troupe); while in other moments, this drug-addled poisonous snake is possessed of such insights that she can destroy anyone else on the screen. And it's the slightly-over-the-top nature of her turn that makes August: Osage County such a polarising experience as it blisters through such an affliction of meanness from its lead - even if the familiarity of family gatherings and meal-times with relatives proves a little too close to the knuckle.

Against everyone else, Streep fully owns her time on screen; but Julia Roberts comes close to matching her with a growing frustration that anyone forced to confront a sick relative / frustrating family member can relate to. Of the men on show, Cumberbatch seems to be woefully miscast as the clumsy halfwit, suffering from awkward guilt, Mulroney is nothing short of a sleaze and only Cooper (and Shepard in his brief scenes at the start) find the backbone of character to shine. In particular, Cooper's moment to stand tall against Mattie Fae's continuing barbs is devastatingly well done as Charles decides enough is enough - with just a few words and some acting, he delivers a punch that carries more emotion and conveys more weight than Streep's juddering harpy presents all the way through.

That's the thing with August: Osage County; it's almost unrelenting in its dysfunctional vitriol that you completely understand why the characters gradually leave as the venomous barbs begin to hit home. There's no reason to support a monster and there's no feeling in the audience that doing so is a remotely rewarding experience.

But that also doesn't make for a comfortable experience as the vile Violet lashes out and there's little spark as the disparate cast come and go; the character arcs aren't as rewarding as perhaps they may be in their stage versions, with just leaving (Exeunt omnes) being the MO that's overused - the overall feeling in August: Osage County is more one of it being there to shock than anything else - despite there being sadness lurking in Violet's background, and despite Streep's at times OTT turn, there's little to care about as this family implodes.

Rating:

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes: PS3 Review

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes: PS3 Review

Platform: PS3
Released by Warner Bros Games/ TT Games

There's just something about the LEGO Game series from TT Games - they capture the essence of every genre they take on and chew it up and spit it out with a comedic touch that's hard to deny.

From Star Wars, Harry Potter to Batman and Indiana Jones, I've loved and played every iteration of the franchise and adored them - LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is no exception at all. In fact, if anything, it's perhaps the best of a very, very wide bunch.

Giving you the chance to take on the stewardship of some 150 characters from within that world, there's so much for you to do - and so much fun to be had doing it.

As for the plot, well, Doctor Doom's collecting a whole series of cosmic blocks and it's upto the various good guys of the series to stop him - as well as the deadly allies he's teamed up with.

From controlling the likes of Iron Man and shooting stuff, to the web slinging exploits of Spider-man, there's no denying this game has a charm and fun nature that's hard to ignore and brilliant to engage with. Each has captured the essence of their character and instilled into a small brick like character - and it makes the whole game fun to play with. But it's the authenticity to the genre and the world which give it its appeal - it's the usual story, collect lego studs, find hidden bits and bobs and play as different characters, but the coup de grace is having Clark Gregg on board as Agent Coulson, a sure sign that this game sticks to its origins.

Each level is quite extended in many ways and isn't just a series of short encounters - with over 150 characters, there are baddies aplenty and sure, the levels end with a battle the boss, but with so many to choose from, it never feels repetitive in the slightest.

There's just something about LEGO Marvel Super Heroes that appeals to kids of all ages. You certainly will have a blast playing it and it's definitely one for the whole family this Christmas - it's a LEGO Game you can't afford to be without. And if you're a comic book fan, you'll be in heaven....

Rating:

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Movie Review

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Movie Review

Cast: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Kristen Wiig, Meagan Good
Director: Adam McKay

Nearly a decade ago, a small cult began to grow with the launch of the movie, Anchorman - The Legend of Rob Burgundy.

Now, Will Ferrell returns as Ron Burgundy in the second Anchorman film - Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

After the success of the 1970s, things are looking good for Ron and Veronica (Christina Applegate) - but when she's promoted to lead anchor ahead of him, the narcissistic Ron hits rock bottom - until an opportunity comes to him to be part of a 24 hours new channel, the Global News Network.

However, Ron's got problems as the rest of the Channel 4 news team are no longer working in news. But this is Ron Burgundy and he's never been troubled by anything. So, he sets out to get the gang back together and take the world of news by storm. Again.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues had promise.

The first was a creative flash in the pan, a veritable souffle of ridiculousness and long lasting catch phrases guaranteeing it a place in the pantheon of the comedy films.

This sequel, is to be frank, a patchy and disappointing affair. It starts off promisingly with the over-the-top nature kicking in and the stupidity on display for all to see. The idiotic lines come thick and fast as the parody starts to hit home.

And there are hints of satire around too, a sly mocking of the softer news formats and weaker news agenda of current times, the lack of integrity of reporters as they try to fill 24 hours of news, a dig at an Australian owner of a media empire and the idiocy of racial and sexual stereotypes. They all have real potential for the film to hit it out of the park (or Whammy, if you're Champ) throughout.

Yet, scenes go on without real punchlines, a series of skits that are loosely narratively hung together and end in gibberish after proffering a few smiles before blustering quickly into the next one. It's almost as if they were a gaggle of comedy moments that worked better on paper and in the rehearsal room than on the big screen.

Nowhere is this more blatantly apparent than in a final out-of-leftfield fight sequence that sees Ron and the team confronted by groups of news anchors from different stations - and proves a chance to pack in more celebrity cameos than you could shake a teleprompter at and be self-indulgent rather than add to the story or prove fodder for some quality quick fire gags.

Don't get me wrong though - Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues offers some laugh out loud moments - mainly at socially awkward Steve Carell's Brick Tamland, who spouts such absurdisms at odd moments that it's impossible to fall prey to this idiot savant who is more idiot than savant. To be honest though, he's a real highlight in this - despite a romance with his female double (played by Kristen Wiig) not quite hitting the creative mark.

Overall, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues seems to be a case of getting the band back together for the band more than for anybody else. A once-over of the script could have helped and certainly a bit more editing would have tightened the comically weak structure - an entire sequence with Ron raising a shark as part of his character's growth would have been better off left as a deleted scene.

It's frustrating though as the satire is there in the wings, waiting and with a sharpening, it could have been so much more. If you're a fan of the first Anchorman movie or are willing to leave your brain at the door and get pre-loaded, you'll have some laughs. Everyone else may wonder what all the fuss is about as some of the barbs and laughs hit their target, while others miss.

Rating: