CinemaAU Reviews

Duty or Love? Leo Tolsoy’s Anna Karenina novel has been brought to life on the silver screen by Joe Wright, with an all star cast including Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Kelly Macdonald. It is late 19th Century Russia the film is set largely amongst the confines of a stage, we start with [...]

I can only imagine what it was like to go to a movie during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Long before television, home video and the internet you could go, uninformed, to see a movie and every now and then leave the theatre realizing you had just witnessed the birth of a star. I felt [...]

An empty room. On the floor, a set of bloody footprints. Fade to black. Martin (Channing Tatum) has just been released from prison where he did time for insider trading. His wife, Emily (Rooney Mara), appears to be happy that he’s home though the combination of a husband in prison and an uprooted life has [...]

Of course, like me, you remember the story of Hansel and Gretel. Two kids lost in the forest find a house made of candy, go inside and eventually kill the witch that hoped to eat them. The End. Or so you thought. Apparently there’s a little bit more to the story. Gorily rendered in pretty [...]

There must be something in the water in California. In 1967, actor Ronald Reagan began the first of two terms as Governor. In 2003, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger did the same. But the similarities don’t end there. Both were succeeded in office by Jerry Brown (ironically, Reagan succeeded Jerry Brown’s father). After leaving office both went [...]

For me, a Quentin Tarantino movie is like ordering a Ham sandwich in the states. Here in Australia, you order a Ham sandwich, you get just that – a Ham sandwich. Order the same thing in the U.S, you’ll get the sandwich plus a side-serve of potato chips (on most occasions). Tarantino makes his movies [...]

Some movies are immune to criticism by virtue of their subject matter. Any movie about the tragedy that befell the four corners of the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004 is like a movie about US soldiers leaving their loving families and going to Afghanistan to fight, or a disabled child defying the odds to [...]

“This is 40”, a sequel of sorts from Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up” focusing on Debbie (Leslie Mann) and Pete (Paul Rudd) and their two daughters (played by Apatow and Mann’s real life daughters Maude and Iris). That’s about the entire plot including the spoiler in the film’s title: Debbie and Pete turn 40. This is [...]

You don’t celebrate a remarkable film like “Zero Dark Thirty”, you absorb, admire and bloody applaud it. You absorb it’s engaging, occasionally nail-biting register of the hound for Osama Bin Laden, you admire it’s braveness to inject villainy into both sides of the warring coin, and you bloody applaud it’s masterful configuration – its likely [...]

I apologize in advance if these first paragraphs seem “preachy.” But I feel strong enough about what I’m going to write that I must include it. Sometimes things in life tragically coincide with things in Hollywood, with Hollywood always getting the blame for exploiting a tragedy. On July 22, 1991, the world first learned of [...]

We mightn’t have met the mother yet, but sitcom star Josh Radnor’s not going to make us wait eight years to I.D his merit. In between seasons of his bread-and-butter gig, “How I Met Your Mother”, Radnor’s been Zach Braff-ing himself, attempting to convince the industry he’s capable of working with more than one camera [...]

At first I found the idea of recasting Santa Claus as a sword-wielding Cossack ridiculous, like some screenwriter was scraping the bottom of the ideas barrel. But when you see the entire mythology behind ”Rise of the Guardians”, the characterisations work. Santa (Baldwin) is joined by a ninja-like, boomerang-wielding rabbit who speaks like Steve Irwin [...]

Questions about how filmable Yann Martel’s smash hit novel is swirled everywhere when Fox announced they were adapting it. As soon as Ang Lee was confirmed as director, any residual fears about the movie should have been dispelled, and the experience of seeing it makes you realise just how filmable the story always was with [...]

It’s over. Finally. The epic vampire meets girl, girl meets vampire, wolf-boy takes his shirt off a lot adventures known as “The Twilight Saga” has reached its end with “Breaking Dawn: Part II.” For those of you that may have missed the story: Bella (Stewart) is a high school girl living in a remote town [...]

One of the things you learn as a film critic is to always hedge your bets. Which is why, six years ago this month, I called ‘Casino Royale’ “possibly the best Bond movie ever!” Thank goodness for the word “possibly.” In the 50 years since James Bond first hit the big screen in “Dr. No” [...]