Your Night In: Every movie on free-to-air TV tonight rated
Tonight’s free-to-air viewing selections include timeless he-said-she-said rom-com When Harry Met Sally, gangsta fairytale Chappie, and lukewarm Nicholas Sparks-inspired, Zac Efron starring sop The Lucky One.
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THIS MEANS WAR (M)
**1/2
8:30 PM 7mate
Yikes! This inelegant welding of a chick flick to a bro-mantic action thriller is very much the mess you would assume it to be. Though not entirely unwatchable when it doesn’t try so hard. Tom Hardy (Inception) and Chris Pine (Star Trek) play secret-agent best-buddies who both fall for the same girl (Reese Witherspoon). A lot of the humour is not as amusing as the writers think it to be: there just isn’t many gags in one guy getting all jealous and stalker-ly while the other is out on a date. The brawny action stuff sans a ditzy Witherspoon is much more effective, though Hardy shows enough to suggest there is a good comedy in him in future outings. Be forgiving, and it will probably be enough. Co-stars Chelsea Handler.
CHAPPIE
**1/2
10:30 PM 7mate
Frustratingly scrappy, but admirably ambitious gangsta fairytale from acclaimed director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium). This is the strange tale of a police robot programmed to feel human emotion, only to fall into the hands of crooks ready to exploit the innocent machine for their own nefarious means. On a storytelling level, Chappie mixes a sweetness and a swagger that becomes quite addictive. However, your real chances of enjoying Chappie will come down to how exciting you find its generous collection of splenetic (and sometimes gruesome) action sequences. Stars Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman.
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (M)
***1/2
7:30 PM GO!
Yet another TV outing for the timelessly appealing she-said-he-said rom-com. Harry (Billy Crystal) is a political advisor. Sally (Meg Ryan) is a journalist. So what’s the attraction here? Well, every time they meet over many years, comfortable conversation slowly transforms into genuine chemistry. So what’s the problem here? Well, Harry believes men and women can never be just friends, as “the sex part always gets in the way.” Sally completely disagrees. So what will they do? Talk it over. Again and again. Then go their separate ways for a while. Then talk some more. Sooner or later, the penny will drop. Lovely stuff that always stands up to a second (or seventieth) look.
THE LUCKY ONE (M)
*1/2
9:30 PM GO!
More gloopy romantic slush from the piffling pen of author Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, Dear John). Zac Efron plays an ex-soldier looking high and low for the babe (Taylor Schilling) whose snapshot saved his life at the height of the Iraq war. Once he finds her, our heart-stricken hero gets a job at the dog kennel where she works and waits for (sigh) lurve to do its (sigh) thang. Includes dialogue like “You should be kissed every day, every hour, every minute.” Enough said.
OUT OF SIGHT (M)
****
9:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
The complex crime caper at the heart of the tale (based on an Elmore Leonard novel) takes a rightful back seat to the potent sizzle of stars George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Not a dull second to be found here, and the legendary clinch in a car boot remains the dirtiest “clean” love scene of all time. Elsewhere in the plot, Clooney’s career crook Jack needs to pull off a complicated jewel heist to keep his head above water. Meanwhile, Lopez’s gun-toting US Marshal Karen needs to put him behind bars to retain her credibility as an officer of the law. However, when nobody else is looking, they both need each other in a way that is not usually found in the cops-and-robbers rule book.
A FANTASTIC WOMAN (M)
***1/2
11:45 PM WORLD MOVIES
The 2018 winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is a moving, mind-opening character study with a difference. Marina (a composed, emotionally astute performance from Daniela Vega) is a transgender nightclub singer whose long-term boyfriend has suddenly died. His surviving family want all trace of Marina erased from their lives. Inevitably, Marina’s gender identity – and the panicked misunderstandings that it draws – makes her desire to mourn and move on far more arduous than it should be for anyone.
KANGAROO JACK (PG)
*
11:30 PM CH. 7
Of course this American-made, Australian-set caper comedy is ten tonnes of terrible. How could it not be? Come on now, the title character is a mad marsupial hopping all over the outback with a pile of Mafia cash in its pouch. Cutting to the chase, we have several dimwitted Yanks in pursuit of the rogue roo for their lump of the dough. New York hairdresser Jerry O’Connell is the loser who lost the bucks in the first place. Then there’s a cutthroat Aussie crim (a shocking effort by New Zealander Martin Csokas), a hard-bitten US hood (Michael Shannon) and several other no-name wise-guys, all doing the bidding of a Brooklyn-based don (Christopher Walken). They don’t make movies like this anymore. We hope.
THREE MOVIES TO STREAM OR RENT TO GET YOU THROUGH THE EVENING
ENOLA HOLMES (G)
***1/2
NETFLIX
Drawn from the popular series of YA mystery novels by Nancy Springer, this lively and engaging all-ages adventure charts the famous family tree of Sherlock Holmes from a distinctly fresh feminine perspective. As we all know, the shrewd and sharp Sherlock has long enjoyed a reputation as the world’s most dynamically deductive detective. Real fans will also be aware the iconic investigator has a comparatively mediocre and meddlesome brother named Mycroft. So where does Enola fit into all of this? Well, as posited by Springer, she is the (much) younger sister of the Holmes brothers. Precocious in all the ways that point to a future in superior sleuthing, Enola shares plenty in common with Sherlock, and nothing at all with Mycroft. Played most vividly by Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, Enola’s debut case involves the mysterious disappearance of her eccentric mother (Helena Bonham Carter). Our heroine must run away from her rural home all the way to London, where a not-so-warm welcome awaits the rookie sleuth.
CLASS ACTION PARK (M)
****
STREAM via FOXTEL; coming soon to BINGE.
A fascinating look back at what will go down as the most notorious theme park in outdoor entertainment history: Action Park. At the height of this maverick New Jersey operation’s popularity, a lot of people got hurt. And yet, the fun continued. Unsupervised. Unregulated. Uninsured. And unbelievably dangerous. In an alternately amusing and appalling new documentary, the inexplicable true story of how great fun and gross negligence collided head-on every day at Action Park is definitively told for the first time. Seriously, you just can’t make up the kind of stuff that went down here. Every morning, the gates were flung open to greet thousands of young thrillseekers determined to spend the day sampling the park’s vast array of bruise-making, bone-breaking delights. While their parents hit the open bar, the kids literally ran wild all over a sprawling property (a ski resort in a previous life) where there were dodgily constructed, yet undeniably enticing rides and attractions as far as the eye could see.
JUST MERCY (M)
***1/2
Stream via NETFLIX; or RENT via various platforms.
A man sits on death-row. His execution is not considered a matter of if, just when. His guilt is not proven, by the way. What matters is that, as a man of colour, he conveniently fits the profile of someone who might have killed a young white woman in the southern US state of Alabama in the mid-1980s. Real-life cases like those of Walter McMillan (played by Jamie Foxx) have often been covered by Hollywood come Oscars time. Which is not to say there can ever be too many of them. Particularly if they are put together in a form as powerful, provocative and genuine inspiring as that of Just Mercy. Michael B. Jordan (Creed, Black Panther) co-stars as Bryan Stevenson, a young Harvard-educated lawyer who turns his back on a lucrative career to mount pro bono defences of lost causes like those of McMillan. The courtroom-drama component of this solid production arrives relatively late, but is well worth sticking around for simply due to the emotional crescendo struck.
READ MORE:
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WHY THIS HOLMES IS WELL WORTH A VISIT
SPIDERMAN TOM HOLLAND LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HIM
Originally published as Your Night In: Every movie on free-to-air TV tonight rated