Review: The Hangover Part III (2013)

In the latest, and hopefully last installment of Todd Phillips’ ludicrously successful Hangover Trilogy, the ‘Wolf Pack’ – Alan (Zach Galifianakas), Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) – find themselves at the mercy of a mob boss, Marshall (John Goodman), who has been ripped off by Mr Chow (Ken Jeong).

Threatening to kill the token hostage, Doug (Justin Bartha), he instructs them to locate Chow, who has just broken out of prison, and his missing gold bullion. The reason they are intercepted on the road? Callow man-child Alan has gone off his meds and his behaviour has escalated into new realms of ‘destructive’ so his friends agree to escort him to a psych facility.

The basis for this plot is a series of extended loose ends, which no one knew existed and have been drawn from very thin influences. The repercussions of their adventures in Vegas and Bangkok led to the events in this film, but the motivation behind it seems to be the ludicrous idea to have the intolerable Chow enter their lives again.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation.

Trailer: The World's End

Following on from Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) the new Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost collaboration, The World's End, looks awesome. It wasn't at all about what I expected, but the trailer is a lot of fun.

It hits Australian cinemas August 1.

New Releases (23/05/13)

Hitting cinemas this week is The Hangover Part III, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Dead Man Down.

The Hangover Part III - The third and final film in director Todd Phillips' record-shattering comedy franchise. This time, there's no wedding. No bachelor party. What could go wrong, right? But when the Wolfpack hits the road, all bets are off.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - We begin in 2011 in Lahore. At an outdoor café a Pakistani man named Changez (Riz Ahmed) tells Bobby (Liev Schreiber), an American journalist, about his experiences in the United States. Roll back ten years, and we find a younger Changez fresh from Princeton, seeking fortune and glory on Wall Street. The American Dream seems well within his grasp, complete with a smart and gorgeous artist girlfriend, Erica (Kate Hudson). But when the Twin Towers are attacked, a cultural divide slowly begins to crack open between Changez and Erica. Changez's dream soon begins to slip into nightmare: profiled, wrongfully arrested, strip-searched and interrogated, he is transformed from a well-educated, upwardly mobile businessman to a scapegoat and perceived enemy. With time, he begins to hear the call of his own homeland. Taking us through the culturally rich and beguiling worlds of New York, Lahore and Istanbul, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a story about conflicting ideologies where perception and suspicion have the power to determine life or death.

Dead Man Down - Niels Arden Oplev, the acclaimed director of the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, makes his American theatrical debut with this new action thriller. Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace star as two strangers who are irresistibly drawn to one another by their mutual desire for revenge. The film co-stars Terrence Howard and Dominic Cooper. 

Weekly Recommendation: Save your bucks, though The Reluctant Fundamentalist looks to be the best option, unless Phillips can return to the form he showed in the trilogy's first installment.  

Review: Snitch (Ric Roman Waugh, 2013)

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, set to grace our screens in four films in 2013 – G.I Joe, Fast and Furious 6 and Pain & Gain are the others – gives quite an affecting performance in the forgettable, often-preposterous Snitch, a crime thriller directed by former stunt man Ric Roman Waugh.

When his estranged son, Jason (Rafi Gavron), is charged for possession of ecstasy, the victim of a setup, John Matthews (Johnson), an owner of a construction business, desperately tries to help him escape a minimum 10-year prison sentence.John meets with U.S Attorney Joanne Keeghan (a snippy Susan Sarandon), who is in the midst of running an aggressive anti-drug campaign and cracking down on distribution. She is immovable on the newly introduced mandatory sentencing, but is willing to compromise and allow John a chance to reduce Jason’s sentence. John agrees to infiltrate and provide intel on a local drug ring run by Malik (Michael K. Williams in less-cool Omar mode).

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation. 

Review: Drift (Morgan O'Neil and Ben Nott, 2013)

Drift, a good-looking Australian surf drama directed by Morgan O’ Neil (who also wrote the screenplay) and Ben Nott, tells the story of Andy (Myles Pollard) and Jimmy (Xavier Samuel) Kelly, who escaped from Sydney with their mother (Robyn Malcolm) in their teens, to a surfing hotspot in the Margaret River region in Western Australia. Over a decade later, Jimmy has become a gifted talent with the potential to take on the worlds best. With their mother still in debt from the mortgage, Andy decides to start an ambitious entrepreneurial venture, which unites the skills of the family, as well as some local friends including JB (Sam Worthington), a Combi-dwelling surf photographer and his companion from Hawaii, Lani (Lesley-Ann Brandt) and personally crafted surf gear straight out of their backyard.

Drift focuses on a small pocket of this development, but surf gear is everywhere in Australia and the carefree beach-dwelling lifestyle will be relatable to anyone who has ever lived near or visited a coastal tourist spot. Commendably, it is a film about the drive required to embrace your passion, the selfless decisions we make for one another and the importance of maintaining a strong sibling relationship and surrounding yourself with friends you can trust.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation. 

Winter Preview: 22 Films To Watch For This Season

Before we look ahead to the 2013 theatrical 'Blockbuster Season' lets take a look back over the last three months. With The Great Gatsby still to come on April 30, it has been a solid stretch of films, with exactly half of the films I saw during that time receiving a cinema recommendation. The year really comw into it's own on May 9 (The Place Beyond the Pines and Spring Breakers particularly), easily the most interesting release date of the year so far.

The Great (4.5-5) Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, The Place Beyond the Pines, The Hunt and No.

The Good (3.5-4) Rust and Bone, Spring Breakers, Iron Man 3, Chasing Ice, Oblivion, Star Trek Into Darkness, Trance, Tabu, Sleepwalk With Me, Warm Bodies, First Position and Oz the Great and Powerful.

The Average (2.5-3) Barbara, Broken, In the Fog, Evil Dead, Drift, Haute Cuisine, The Big Wedding, The Company You Keep, Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai and Mama.

The Poor (0-2) Snitch, Jack the Giant Slayer, A Good Day to Die Hard, Hyde Park on Hudson, The Loneliest Planet, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, G.I Joe: Retaliation and Olympus Has Fallen.

But, here is what we can look forward to in the coming months. June is pretty dire and I am a bit thin on the August releases (though there are still plenty to look forward to) as is usually the case when investigating the ever-changing schedule from afar.

Mud (June 13)*

Man of Steel (June 13)


Monsters University (June 20)

World War Z (June 20)

 

Satellite Boy (June 20)

In the House (June 27)

We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (July 4)

To the Wonder (July 4)

Before Midnight (July 11)

Pacific Rim (July 11)

Behind the Candelabra (July 11)**

Much Ado About Nothing (July 11)

This is the End (July 18)

Only God Forgives (July 18)

The Way, Way Back (July 18)

The Bling Ring (July 25)

Blancanieves (August 8)

Elysium (August 15)

Frances Ha (August 15)

You're Next (August 22)

What Maisie Knew (August 22)

Stoker (August 29)

What are your most anticipated films for the next three months? Are there any that I have left off this list with a confirmed release date that you can recommend? 

*New addition, courtesy of Andrew McCarthy.
**New addition, courtesy of Roadshow schedule update.

Review: Evil Dead (Fede Alvarez, 2013)

This intense re-imagining of Sam Raimi’s 1981 low-budget gore-fest, The Evil Dead, which spawned two sequels and remains a cult favourite today, is the feature debut from Fede Alvarez. Raimi (Spiderman, Oz: The Great and Powerful), his Evil Dead star, Bruce Campbell, and original producer, Robert G. Tapert, remained involved to supervise this new addition to the franchise, serving as producers.

Five twenty-somethings – a brother and sister, Mia (Jane Levy, very good) and David (Shiloh Fernandez), David’s girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), and Mia’s friends Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Olivia (Jessica Lucas) – meet at an abandoned cabin deep in the forest. The reason: not to party, but to form an intervention to support Mia through drug withdrawal and a give her opportunity to cleanse herself from her addiction. When they discover a book titled Naturom Demonto: The Book of the Dead, irresponsibly opened by Eric, releases a demonic presence from the surrounding woods.

Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation.

Review: Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)

Winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize for Artistic Innovation and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize at the 2012 Berlinale, Miguel Gomes' passionate and provocative drama, Tabu, about love and memory, is separated into two distinct halves. Opening up in contemporary Lisbon, it follows a temperamental old woman named Aurora (Laura Soveral), her Cape Verdean maid, Santa (Isabel Munoz Cardoso), and her caring neighbour,Pilar (Teresa Madruga), who shares the same floor of Aurora's apartment building. Pilar does her best to take care of Aurora, who gambles away all of her money at casinos and is convinced that her maid is practicing witchcraft on her.

When Aurora's health begins to fade she asks for Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espirito Santo), revealed to be a man she once knew but had never spoken of before, to come to her bedside. When he is tracked down, he reveals to the women an extraordinary tale (at this point the film shifts to the past) of obsessed love shared by he and a pregnant and married Aurora (Carloto Cotta and Ana Moreira respectively) in Africa in a period prior to Portuguese Colonial War, and the events that led to their since life-long separation.

Tabu is a beguiling and original film. Gomes has utilised a number of interesting stylistic devices; a 4:3 ratio and classy black-and-white cinematography from the very beginning, and in the second half a complete absence of dialogue, reliance on gesture and expression, and a blend of voice-over narration (Ventura's account), tribal beats, pop songs and the concoction of sounds from the Mount Tabu location. These inspired ideas are not a gimmick and give the storytelling unique qualities that are both alluring and distracting. I wasn't convinced they all worked, or were necessary, and when I viewed Tabu amidst the 2012 Sydney Film Festival it wasn't one of my highlights. But still, there was plenty about this film that I admired.

Even at close to two hours, which is a test, Gomes' film is certainly not dull. It does evoke a strange feeling of hypnosis in the second half as the sweaty African climate and the voice-over lull one into a surreal viewing state. It felt like I was dreaming up the story of Aurora's past for myself. Hard to describe. For future analysis I would be interested in giving it another go, ensuring I am fully alert. Perhaps I would have a completely different experience.

This adventurous drama uses subversive humour and creates effective tension. The performances are great, the sound design is brilliant and this rich tapestry of ideas will leave viewers with plenty to discuss. It looks explores the loneliness and bitterness that accompanies aging, the longing for the past. It also optimistically addresses the idea that fleeting chapters in our lives, if they significantly re-route them at the time, will always remain with us, the increasingly unreliability of memory aside.

My Rating: ★★★1/2