CinemaAU Reviews

The only thing selfishly contemptible about ”Despicable Me 2”, Uni’s latest Quidditch match with Pixar, is that it’s totally lacking in the frames department. Do you get what I’m saying? If bladders could handle it, I’d suspect there’d be no complaints about watching a Terrence Malick-sized version of the film – particularly if those butter-coloured [...]

As a car in abundant supply of oil will attest, sometimes having too much liquid at your disposal will result in a vehicle blowing lots of smoke but lacking in chug. Such is the case with ”Dude, Where’s My Third Act?” Or, as it’s butchered script’s title page reads, “World War Z”. Inspired by the [...]

This film tells the story of a group of misfits who must band together to win the ultimate college competition. Outcast by the rest of the school, one leader brings a team together, practising day and night to perfect their techniques, but in the end, they must learn to trust each other and embrace change [...]

If Vince Vaughn’s as good as a salesman in real life as he is in his latest movie, I’m not surprised Fox agreed to empty their pockets to make “The Internship” – the guy he plays in this elongated company training video could sell a poop-smeared dial-up modem to a PHP programmer (note : that [...]

Not since Morgan Creek slapped Kevin Costner in a pair of emerald slacks have their been so many fairies gathered in a cinematic forest – not that that’s really going to get the film’s I-want-it-and-I-want-it-know, pre-school aged audience to pick Epic as it’s next subject of tantrum. Honestly, the whole business proposal behind 20th Century [...]

For some reason Hollywood has been enamored of light about films dealing with the end of life on Earth as we know it. Earlier this year we had “Oblivion.” Later this summer we’ll get “Elysium.” And this week we get Big Willie and his little boy in “After Earth.” As the story begins we learn [...]

The “Fast and the Furious” franchise reminds me of shy kid at the start of a school year. They start off rather quiet, displaying their talents in short spurts, but as time passes, and knowledge and recognition kicks in, the park-brake comes off and we’re treated to a unabashed showcase of cocksure shenanigans so ridiculous, [...]

You only need to have seen one “Hangover” film to know the formula of this series: Bachelor party. Memory loss. Retrace steps of crazy drunken night. Solve a mystery like some sort of frat version of the Scooby gang. But in this third (and potentially final) film by director Todd Phillips, the story manages to [...]

When I was in middle/high school (mid 1970s – yes, I’m old) there were several books we were required to read, among them “The Old Man and The Sea,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Great Gatsby.” Though they had all been made into films, because there was no home video I actually had to [...]

Halle Berry offers up the muscle in WWE Films’ latest release, a non Wrestler-headlined thriller that rejigs the old “Play Misty for Me”/”Talk Radio” template and interlaces it with the kind of heavy-volumed teen-friendly thrill sequences most of the successful popcorn thrillers embody. Halle Berry, in one of her better parts in a while (her [...]

He’s back in black. Or rather, Black. Like not crediting an orange peel for holding together the delicious citrus within, it’d be a crime not to acknowledge the work famed fanboy screenwriter cum director Shane Black has done with this third instalment in the ”Iron Man”series. Inheriting the job from Jon Favreau (who retains an [...]

Sometimes it’s easy to spot the discipline a moviemaker has come from. Some are simple storytellers with writing backgrounds and little real interest in mood-setting except what the words on the page bring – think of the films of Kevin Smith or David Mamet, where the script is fairly sacred. And some artists are from [...]

”Oblivion” is what happens when Richard Mathieson walks into a bar, picks up Philip K.Dick, and later uses the stickers from his synthesizer’s keyboard as lubricant. Like a fairly standard Vegas buffet located on the glitziest part of the strip, ”TRON Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski’s sophomore effort is, not unexpectedly (considering his dazzling debut), an [...]

When I first learned that I would be going to see “Jurassic Park” in its 3D remastered glory, I had a flashback to my 11 year old self sitting in a cinema in 1993, watching the Steven Spielberg masterpiece with my cousins. I remember it scared me. It scared me a lot. Now its 2013, [...]

“What have you done to him? What have you done to his eyes, you maniacs!” Rosemary Woodhouse – “Rosemary’s Baby” In the future, after wars have decimated the planets, ours is visited by an alien race that begins to take over our bodies, making everyone happy and polite. However, not everyone has been turned. As [...]