CinemaAU Reviews

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” [...]

In the first few minutes of writer-director Leslye Headland’s “Bachelorette”, a couple of the main characters are ordering lunch, and it results in quite a diverse, mixed spread between them. Headland’s film, though based on a play, seems to have been conceived the same way – a bit of this, a splash of that, a [...]

April Fool! A couple of years ago the world thought Joaquin Phoenix had slowly gone crazy. He grew a wild beard and declared himself through with acting, aiming to start a career as a rapper. Thankfully the whole episode was a stunt…an experiment for a documentary film featuring Phoenix called “I’m Still Here.” Now, with [...]

Look at the poster art for ”Seven Psychopaths”. It not only looks familiar, it’s not the first time Colin Farrell’s been here. In 2003 he starred in a violent ensemble comedy called ”Intermission”. As well as sharing a lot of the design elements that helped market Trainspotting to such heights, the poster loudly proclaimed the [...]

The first sentence in most synopses of ”The Sessions” will be enough to put you off – ‘a polio-afflicted man…’ It’s the kind of movie you’ll feel like you should see but don’t really want to and will probably endure rather than enjoy. It indeed – as some members of the cast have joked – [...]

Charming characters, scenic backdrops, original concept and many “Star Wars” references – “Safety Not Guaranteed” is the ideal indie film. “Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not [...]

You know a movie is good when it is based on real-life events – and uncertain, you cling to the edge of your seat anyway. So it is with the film “Argo,” Ben Affleck’s third time out as director of a feature film. The film opens in 1979 with the storming of the U.S. Embassy [...]

Emily Bronte’s classic literary novel, “Wuthering Heights” undergoes another adaptation with British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, who strips down the beautifully tortured love story in an attempt for realism and reduces it to nothing more than scenery and the minutiae of the everyday. “Wuthering Heights” tells the story of Heathcliff, (Solomon Glave), an orphan boy who [...]

What do you do after you’ve rescued your daughter from sex traffickers in Paris, killing pretty much everyone in your sight to do it? If you’re Brian Mills (Neeson), you give that same daughter driving lessons and worry about her new boyfriend. You also head to Istanbul for a few days work. But when the [...]