Mega free-to-air weekend movie guide
We’ve run the rule over every movie on free-to-air TV this weekend to help you pick the best one for you and your family.
Leigh Paatsch
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Leigh Paatsch runs the rule over every movie on free-to-air TV this weekend.
FRIDAY
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
**1/2
8:30 PM CH.7
A battered brown suitcase that holds a bright, shiny alternate universe within. Eccentrically exotic creatures with bizarre names such as Nifflers, Erumpents, Murtlaps, Graphorns and Bowtruckles. A diminutive,
deceptively modest hero who can change the world with the wave of a wand. Yes, there can be no mistaking the magically active mind of the celebrated author J.K. Rowling. But just a gentle word of warning nonetheless: don’t expect this prequel-ish adjunct to the Harry Potter series to be matching those beloved movies set at Hogwarts on any level. Eddie Redmayne stars as Newt Scamander, a wizardly magizoologist who misplaces a bottomless suitcase full of adorably anarchic species on the streets of 1920s New York City. There are stretches where the film as a whole goes on autopilot, coasting along on the fumes of former glories as it trollies all of its many colourful characters and cunning critters from one set piece to the next. It’s all so very entertaining, but never quite essential. Co-stars Colin Farrell, Katherine Waterston.
X-MEN: APOCALYPSE
**
7:30 PM 7 MATE
Is this the worst-ever film to carry the venerated X-Men brand? Perhaps not. Is this the dullest of the whole lot? Yes. It did not have to be this way. After opening with a corny, collapsing-pyramid flashback in Ancient Egypt, the die is cast. (And oh, how the cast – which includes the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and Sophie Turner – dies a slow and meaningless collective death here.) The sole survivor of the big crash later wakes up from a 5500-year coma. His name is Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), and this super- powered supreme deity is most displeased with what has become of the world. So his next move is to fire every nuclear missile on the planet into deep space. Is this guy supposed to an arch-villain, or is he pressing for preselection as a Greens candidate at the next election? Sadly, we will never know. Mainly because X- Men: Apocalypse keeps overstuffing its many underdeveloped characters into any scene it can.
ALIENS
****1/2
10:25 PM 7MATE
Without a doubt, one of the greatest movie sequels of all time. At the dawn of the 1980s, kick-ass action roles for women were completely non-existent. It took Sigourney Weaver (and arguably, The Terminator’s Linda Hamilton) to batter down the door for the many who have since followed. Weaver’s searing solo display as a one-woman monster-mauling machine toughing it out in deep-space has lost none of its power over the years. When Weaver’s Ripley starts operating that hydraulic robot apparatus at the film’s apex, today’s Marvel-approved maidens of mayhem look pretty soft by comparison.
GAME NIGHT
***
8:30 PM 7 FLIX
Married couple Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) are hardcore, old-school gamers. How old-school? Max and Annie are board gamers. Selected family and friends regularly gather at their home for an evening of anything that might involve a pair of dice, a pile of cards and a dinky little figurine being moved this way or that. So begins an erratic American comedy that burdens itself with the tough task of being edgy and endearing at the same time. When it gets this tricky combo right, the movie can land a laugh as big as the best of them. Which of course means that when Game Night bungles the blend, there is nothing but the sound of crickets chirping in the distance. After a slow start, the hits do start outnumbering the misses, particularly once Max, Annie and their entourage decide to mix things up by staging an “interactive murder mystery experience.” So what could possibly go wrong here? Aside from, like, everything? Co-stars Kyle Chandler, Sharon Horgan (TV’s Catastrophe).
ENTOURAGE: THE MOVIE
**1/2
10: 40 P.M. 7 FLIX
If you are going to enjoy Entourage: The Movie, let’s just say you had to be there. Where is there, exactly? Any or all of the eight seasons that Entourage played on TV between 2004 and 2011. People either loved this hangin’-out-in-Hollywood phenom on the spot, or hated it with a passion. The big-screen version is no different. It is not here to make new friends. It is here to give old friends a feature-length dose of that addictive celeb hedonism they’ve been itching for. Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) is still (perhaps inexplicably) one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and remains the blazing sun at the centre of a solar system of lifelong buddies, fleeting one-night-stands and assorted halfwit hangers-on. Now he has his sights set on becoming a director, a career change which has the incomparably inflammable showbiz player Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) going up in flames repeatedly. Co-stars Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon, Jerry Ferrara.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
**1/2
8:30 PM CH. 9
A visually dazzling, but thematically drab take on the fateful rivalry between two major monarchs in the late 16th century. If the pairing of the great Irish star Saoirse Ronanand our own Margot Robbie was not the key part of the creative equation here, the end result would have much, much worse. Proceedings commence in 1587, where young Scottish queen Mary Stuart (Ronan) is about to literally put her head on the chopping block on the day of her execution. Weirdly, and tellingly, the care factor provoked from the viewer at this worrying sight is decidedly low. Things don’t improve when the clock is inevitably wound back to work out how the idealistic and upbeat Mary and her pragmatic and downbeat cousin, Queen Elizabeth the First of England (Robbie) fell out so tragically. To cut a long story short – and it is long – all you need to know is that the pair’s all-male coteries of advisers considered each ruler a subversive threat to the other.
THE GAME
****
11:15 PM CH. 9
The orderly life of bored tycoon Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) becomes a mess when his erratic younger brother Conrad (Sean Penn) persuades him to take part in an experimental role-playing game. Several chance meetings and catastrophic coincidences later, Nicholas learns that he may not be playing the game at all. Perhaps the game is actually playing him. Aside from the superb, mind-bending direction of David Fincher (Seven, Panic Room), the surprise packet of this underrated thriller is the flawless performance of Michael Douglas. A long-time acquired taste for many viewers, Douglas’ range of reactions to The Game’s wide gamut of trapdoor plot twists and weird diversions are 100% believable. They play a crucial part in keeping up the illusion of this murky movie mirage right up until the final few minutes.
TROLLS
**1/2
7:00 PM GO!
A boilerplate animated adventure for kiddlywinks, starring a bunch of neon-hued, scary-haired little dolls that once sold like hot cakes in the 1960s and 70s. (You’ve seen ‘em around. Just imagine a better-dressed, weirder-looking Smurf.) This inoffensive, highly formulaic affair differs only from other average ‘toons in that it merrily pours on the audiovisual sugar (perky pop songs all over the soundtrack, and a hi-vis colour scheme you can see from the moon) to overload proportions. Anna Kendrick voices the chipper Troll princess who joins forces with village grouch Justin Timberlake to save her people from a horde of monsters that wish to eat them.
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
***1/2
8.40 P.M. GO!
The guilty-pleasure goodness of the first Transformers is completely missing from the second. Instead, what we have here is a prolonged explosion-athon, occasionally interrupted by those famous shape-shifting robots belting the scrap metal out of each other. Stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox have very little to do of note, thanks largely to a set-up more intent on sticking to formula than storytelling. Despite the impressive CGI technology used in the many fight sequences, the overall effect achieved is only a slight cut above a Japanese monster movie from the 1950s.
ALL IS LOST
****
7:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
A man. The sea. No dialogue. Don’t be fooled by the micro-minimalist structure of All Is Lost. There is a big film in there just waiting to be discovered. The plotting is brutally basic. Somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a small boat is slowly sinking. The sole passenger aboard is a nameless fellow in his mid-seventies (Robert Redford). He looks as if he could be an experienced sailor. He had better be. Time is running out. The vessel is filling up. What will he do? Redford’s bravura performance is truly astonishing, with virtually every indication of his character’s emotional state suppressed with extraordinary control. Whenever Redford does briefly reveal how his character might be feeling, the connection he makes with the viewer is truly electric. This intensely challenging, yet serenely rewarding experience owes much to the shrewdly intuitive scripting and direction of J.C. Chandor. Amazingly, this was only his second feature. (The first, the financial drama Margin Call, is radically different, but equally impressive.)
THE PIANIST
****
9:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
Powerful true story of a gifted musician (an astonishing, Oscar-winning performance by Adrien Brody) and his fight to stay alive as a Jew living under a brutal Nazi regime during WWII. While the unimaginable atrocities of the Holocaust have not been cheapened for the sake of viewer comfort, the real value here can be found in director Roman Polanski’s haunting, harrowing tribute to the uniquely human instinct for survival.
SATURDAY
FROZEN
***1/2
7:00 PM CH. 7
It is not hard to warm to what this wildly popular Disney animated fantasy offers an all-ages audience. When the royally bred Elsa (Idina Menzel) loses command of her mystical power to generate ice and snow – plunging the whole of her kingdom into an endless winter – she goes into hiding in the mountains. Elsa’s plucky younger sister Anna (Kristen Bell) is understandably concerned, and commences an urgent search. Frozen melts the iciest resistance is by virtue of quality writing, vibrant visuals, and a brace of catchy musical set-pieces. The pacing is sprightly, the story is deceptively involving, and the voice cast meet the challenge of balancing comedy, drama and song with consummate ease.
FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD
**1/2
9:00 PM 7MATE
After all those wonderful Harry Potter books and movies, we all thought J.K. Rowling walked on
water. However, it only took two movies into the author’s new Potter-ish series Fantastic Beasts for a new consensus to take hold. J.K. Rowling is treading water. Perhaps sinking in our estimations,
even. When it comes to conjuring true movie magic from the exploits of series hero Newt Scamander (played by Eddie Redmayne) and his many friends and foes, this sequel (like its predecessor) struggles to cast a captivating spell for long. And as sole screenwriter, Rowling must accept the blame. The movie has too many characters doing too much yapping. Mostly about stuff that is too hard to follow, or too soft to get invested in. A garbled story unfolds in 1927 Paris, where the wicked Dark Wizard known as Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is spearheading a new movement to rid the world of No-Majs (aka Muggles). Co-stars Jude Law, Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller.
CHAIN REACTION
**1/2
10:30 PM 7 MATE
An enjoyably mindless action adventure flick welded to a ludicrously cumbersome storyline. Keanu Reeves plays Eddie, a student scientist who has stared into microscopes just long enough to unlock the secret of water as a limitless power source. Shock Development #1: the FBI reckon Eddie has blown up an eight-storey building after selling the secret of water as a limitless power source to the Chinese. Shock Development #2: Eddie may have been cruelly framed for the crime by ‘The Foundation’. So who are they exactly? They may or may not be a CIA front who may or may not be responsible for blowing up an eight-storey building and selling the secret of water as a limitless power source to the Chinese.
ROBIN HOOD
***
7:30 PM 7FLIX
If you’re after the regular lowdown on the famous Mr R. Hood of Sherwood Forest – you know, robbing from the rich, giving to the poor, and so on – you’ve come to the wrong film. This epic reboot of the enduring medieval legend from director Ridley Scott winds the clock back to the years before the title character earned his reputation as “the prince of thieves.” As played convincingly by Australian star Russell Crowe, this Robin Hood evolves from lowly soldier of fortune to high-minded social justice crusader across the complex tale outlined here. Cate Blanchett co-stars as Lady Marian Loxley, the foxiest widow in Nottingham. A solid, if slightly dour affair.
SE7EN
****1/2
10:00 PM 7FLIX
Don’t be fooled by the hackneyed premise of a serial killer theming his work according to the seven deadly sins. After taking a little while to warm-up, the shackles of character and plotline establishment are broken, and this classic chiller goes off on a spooky tangent from which it never returns. Follow it into the darkness if you will. Whatever happens, I can assure you that it is what isn’t said, isn’t done and isn’t thought in Seven that will have you ducking for cover by the film’s end. Even those much-imitated opening credits – a crazed Super-8 collage atop a brutal re-mix of Nine Inch Nails’ Closer – are enough to get under the skin of even the most hardened horror buff. With a cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey and Gwyneth Paltrow, how can you go wrong?
RED DOG: TRUE BLUE
**1/2
10:30 PM CH. 9
A better title for this fair follow-up to the Australian all-ages smash hit of 2011 would have been Red Dog: The Early Years. With a sequel out of the question, a prequel filling in some of the blanks on the heroic Pilbara pooch’s sketchy bio was the only option. The narrative tape is rewound to the turn of the 1970s, where a little dog named Blue is experiencing the life lessons that will one day come in very handy when he hits the open road. For now, he’s have a fine old time running about a rural WA farm with his best bud Michael (Levi Miller), a young boy from the big smoke who could really use a mate. In all honesty, True Blue comes up slightly short in every department when compared to its irresistible predecessor. No shame in that, as this is still an endearing children’s film (though its charm may not hold up with adults for long). Support cast contribute some fine work, especially Bryan Brown as Michael’s hard-but-fair farmer grandpa. Co-stars Hanna Mangan Lawrence.
PUSS IN BOOTS
***
7:00 PM GO!
If you have put a line through this one thinking it’s just cashing in on a much-loved minor character from the Shrek stable, you are mistaken. No, this animated film works so hard to engage and entertain an all-ages audience, and therefore earn its keep forthwith. Instead of repeating what we knew and loved of Puss (voiced with purring gusto by Antonio Banderas) from his earlier appearances, a fresh line of attack is taken. The clock is wound back to a pre-Shrek era where Puss was still finding his paws as a cat of action. As an origin tale, it is a sharp and sophisticated piece of storytelling.
SKYFALL
****
8:45 PM GO!
One of the most exciting and commandingly compelling 007 adventures. After barely surviving a bungled assignment in Turkey, James Bond (played with grit, gravity and self- deprecation by Daniel Craig) must come to the aid of his embattled boss M (Judi Dench) in London. Javier Bardem all but steals the Skyfall show with his depiction of one of the best Bond villains ever. You will have to wait until the one-hour mark for the preening psychotic known as Silva to make his entrance, but you will be blown away when he finally does appear.
SISTER ACT
***
7:45 PM CH. 10
Sister Act is an easy movie to get a handle on. Visualise Whoopi Goldberg as a low-rent Las Vegas cabaret singer in a nun’s outfit, and you can just about guess the rest. The interesting thing is, however, if you remove the identikit laughs and the Whoopi-as-a-murder-witness-in-hiding sideline, there are a number of unforgettable musical set-pieces that almost justify heading along to see this film. If you’ve never considered the prospect of watching twenty nuns transforming the classic Mary Wells Motown hit “My Guy” into “My God”, then this here is your lucky day.
THREE SUMMERS
*
9:45 PM CH. 10
A lifeless Australian comedy from go to whoa to no, lethargically collecting all the sketchy caricatures, redundant stereotypes and crass cliches writer-director Ben Elton can think of. After Elton applies a heart- hardening grasp of modern romance, then makes several life-shortening lunges at levity, what remains is just a dumpster fire with dialogue. The plot stretches a multitude of thin storylines across three successive stagings of an annual folk music festival. Characters who have initially got it wrong about how to be a good parent, a good spouse, a good lover, a good kid or a good multicultural citizen will eventually come to their senses and get it right. But not before a viewer’s patience – or goodwill towards an appealing homegrown cast which includes Michael Caton, Deborah Mailman and Magda Szubanski – has been completely vaporised. A featured love story between two unlovable types (Rebecca Breeds as a feisty fiddle player, Robert Sheehan as an annoying Irish drifter) merely prolongs the inert, inane agony of it all.
DESTROYER
**1/2
9:30 PM SBS
Psssst! Ever wondered what Nicole Kidman would look like if she: (a) went without sleep for a week: (b) went without makeup for a month: and (c) lived under a bridge for a year? Well, your dream screen trifecta has finally come in, and better still, Destroyer will give you two long hours to contemplate the sheer un-prettiness of it all. While Kidders has uglied it up previously for fun, profit and (Academy) awards, nothing will prepare you for the state of top-to-toe decay in which she presents herself here. In what can only be billed as a crime drama so grim and grotty it should come with a HazMat rating, Kidman plays Erin Bell, a Los Angeles detective who has multiple issues with anxiety, alcohol, anger management and personal grooming. She’s working a murder case that may point to a shadowy psychopath she has been chasing for the last 17 years. The whole experience is one slo-mo slap to your face, while Kidman maintains the most cadaverous countenance ever seen in a movie without zombies or vampires.
THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY
**
8.30 P.M. WORLD MOVIES
The numbers just don’t add up for a dreary drama based on the true story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-educated accounts clerk who ventured all the way from India to England over a century ago to change the face of mathematics forever. Under the protective wing of famed Cambridge scholar G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), Ramanujan (Dev Patel) moves past intense racial prejudice to achieve several lasting breakthroughs in just a few short years. Unlike A Beautiful Mind or The Imitation Game – two movies that powerfully convey the lonely, mind-twisting demands of a genius intellect – this politely cliched whitewashing of events equates to a multitude of facts minus any feeling.
LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL
****
10:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
This is the type of film that Hollywood usually botches – an action thriller with a fully-functioning brain and a warm heart. A disarmingly delicate storyline centres on a lone-wolf hitman, Leon (Jean Reno), and his efforts to protect his teenage neighbour (Natalie Portman) from a deranged drug lord who also happens to be a cop (Gary Oldman doing an ace Dennis Hopper impersonation). Fainter sensibilities could be put off by the graphic violence, but any offence is smothered by the subtle, sensitive direction of Frenchman Luc Besson (The Fifth Element).
DO THE RIGHT THING
*****
10:10 PM NITV
This racially-charged early work from writer-director Spike Lee (The 25th Hour) has not lost any of its power to provoke and challenge audiences in the 32 years since its release. Set on the hottest day of summer in a predominantly black New York neighbourhood, the film tracks 24 hours in the lives of the staff and customers of a local pizzeria run by the amiably grumpy Sal (Danny Aiello). Even though the early stretches of the film are infectiously easygoing – the best moments here occur as Sal’s easily distracted delivery guy Mookie (Lee) makes his rounds through Brooklyn – a worrying tension is being subtly amplified with the passing of each seemingly random event. If you’ve never seen Do the Right Thing before, I won’t reveal exactly the direction in which its truly explosive final act decides to head. Let’s just say these frightening scenes are the culmination of everything you weren’t hoping for.
SUNDAY
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
***1/2
8:30 PM 7 MATE
The noted epic specialist, Gladiator director Ridley Scott, winds the clock back to the Great Crusades of the 12th century. The ballistic bloodletting of the battle for Jerusalem is indeed awe-inspiring, but Scott also finds some space inside such heavy, hellish traffic to humanise the conflict. Vividly drawn characters such as the legendary knight Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson) – a tough hombre who states he once “fought for two days with an arrow through my right testicle!” – and the leprous King Baldwin of Jerusalem (a masked Edward Norton) come and go at a rate of knots, but do not waste a single second of their allotted screen time. Strong, stirring stuff. Co-stars Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons.
THE HOLIDAY
***
8:40 PM CH. 7
A syrupy, star-studded romantic comedy from popular writer-director Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give). Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet swap addresses in the US and UK for the Christmas holidays, and both get great new guys (Jude Law and Jack Black respectively) as housewarming presents. Not much more than a trans-Atlantic take on the same gloopy matters addressed by Love Actually, but it an effective date movie nonetheless.
LONDON HAS FALLEN
***
9:00 PM CH. 9
A plain-wrapped, blood-soaked guilty pleasure from beginning to end, this sequel to the unlikely 2013 action hit Olympus Has Fallen delivers exactly what its target audience wants. Flagrantly macho, flamboyantly stupid and yet somehow consistently entertaining, London Has Fallen charts the ongoing alpha-male adventures of Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler). Though Mike and his missus (Radha Mitchell) are expecting their first child, don’t go assuming this screw-loose protector of the US President (Aaron Eckhart) has tightened up his act in the years he’s been away. Nope, once he joins the Prez on a terrorist-riddled state visit to Great Britain, Banning proves to be as much of a loose cannon as he ever was.
THE 100-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO JUMPED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED
***
8:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
Imagine Forrest Gump as an exceedingly elderly Swedish trouble magnet with a lifelong penchant for blowing up stuff. Now you’re as near as you’ll ever get to an accurate lock on one of the strangest films that will be released in 2014. On his 100th birthday, an ancient codger with a curious past escapes from his nursing home and becomes the unwitting owner of a suitcase full of serious drug money. Flashbacks to our hero’s halcyon days (where he meets Stalin, Reagan and Einstein’s dumb brother, among others) places him at some important moments in 20th century history. Though the movie’s mix of the whimsical and the weird will not accompany all tastes, there is still much to recommend here if you love an out-there in-joke or two.
Originally published as Mega free-to-air weekend movie guide
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