Your Night In: Every movie on Melbourne TV rated
From an Agatha Christie whodunit to cheesy 80s comedies and romantic dramas — there’s a movie to suit everyone’s taste on TV tonight. We’ve rated every film so you don’t waste your time on a one-star dud.
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HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (M)
****1/2
7.30pm 7MATE
For anyone who isn’t counting, Harry is now in his third year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Everyone is rattled by word on the Hogwarts grapevine of the first-ever escape from the wizard world’s notorious Azkaban Prison. The fugitive is one Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), a rogue magic man blamed for delivering Harry’s late parents to the evil Lord Voldemort. Worse still, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon in place of the late Richard Harris) fears Sirius has Harry squarely in his sights. While there are moments that will leave viewers high on the sheer wonder of what is happening – such as Harry’s first ride atop a Hippogriff, and a Quidditch match played in a force-ten squall – the movie is grounded by the severity of what ultimately awaits the bespectacled hero in the closing act.
POLICE ACADEMY 3: BACK IN TRAINING
*1/2
10:45 PM 7MATE
Last week’s TV screening of PA2 was rating a one-star movie, so this accounts for a 50% improvement if you’re hellbent on collecting the set. This feeble affair rounds up most of the better players from the first one. The excuse for the reunion has something to do with a government decision that one of the state’s two cop-training facilities must close. So former graduates such as Mahoney (Steven Guttenberg) return as instructors to help save the day.
DEATH ON THE NILE
***
8:40 PM GEM
This is the 1978 version of the classic Agatha Christie whodunit, with Peter Ustinov as Hercules Poirot, and an crazy all-star cast including Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, David Niven and Maggie Smith. The whole thing is breezily, cheesily done, and won’t outstay its welcome, even on a second or seventh view. You may wish to give it a miss, however, if you’re counting down the days until the much-vaunted new remake drops (starring Kenneth Branagh and Gal Gadot).
THE VOW
***
7:30 PM GO!
This kooky romantic drama has a happy knack of wrong-footing viewers the right way, time and time again. Supposedly based on a true story, the premise pitches Rachel McAdams as a funky sculptor who contracts amnesia in a car accident, and no longer recognises hunky record-producer hubby Channing Tatum. While she reverts to a past life as a straitlaced law student, he frets and frowns upon how to rewrite a marriage that could already be history. There are some scenes where it is miraculous that Tatum and McAdams were able to remain upright, what with the huge nuggets of guilty-pleasure gold unceremoniously plonked in their way. Definitely one for both avid chick-flickers and the so-bad-it’s-good crowd.
IF I STAY
**
9:35 PM GO!
You can safely mark down this supremely soppy affair as a faulty version of The Fault in Our Stars: no matter how hard it tries, it just won’t make you cry. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Mia, a comatose car-crash victim deliberating inside her big sleep whether to wake up or turn her toes up. As her spirit-self wanders the hospital ward in which she remains on the brink of death, Mia fuzzily flashes back to quality time spent with her hunky high-school ex-boyfriend Adam (Jamie Blackley). Moretz is a fine young actor, but not even her talent can get this flat-lining weepie off life-support.
BLACK SEA
***
7:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
Set any old thriller inside a submarine, and it isn’t long before the claustrophobia comes flooding in. Under the expert direction of Kevin MacDonald (Last King of Scotland), we plunge the depths of dread at all-too-close quarters within a creaky old Russian rust-bucket. The captain of this vessel is Robinson (Jude Law), an embittered seaman who assembles a dodgy crew to retrieve a stash of gold from a Nazi U-boat rumoured to be sitting on the bottom of the Black Sea. While the movie does waste some hard-earned unease by cutting away to flashbacks on dry land every so often, the deep distrust festering among Robinson and his crew keeps the viewer’s nerves on a razor-sharp edge when it really counts.
RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE
***1/2
9:30 PM NITV
A supremely strange Christmas film, quite unlike anything you’ve seen before. In the ancient folklore of Finland, Santa Claus is not the cheery, chubby, CEO of a pan-global gift delivery company. The way the Finns remember it, Claus was a demonic tormentor of children who needed to be dealt with, once and for all. So they buried him beneath a mountain of ice. But now, centuries later, Santa is back in the bad-guy business, and no kid is safe. Director Jalmari Helander strikes a delicate balance between menace and whimsy that is almost impossible to resist. Equally striking are the snowy high-altitude locations, and of course, the many dark sides of Santa on display.
THREE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL
LOST ON EVEREST (PG)
***1/2
DISNEY+
It is often overlooked that a lot of National Geographic’s recent documentary output now goes straight to the ever-expanding Disney+ platform. It is here you will find this fascinating new release, centering on a search near the peak of Everest for the long-lost body of one of the mountain’s most tragic figures. In 1924, less than 250 metres from the top of Everest, gifted climber Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine disappeared alongside his partner, the legendary British mountaineer George Mallory. While the latter’s remains were finally found in 1999, it is believed that the whereabouts of Irvine’s body could hold the key to Everest’s most enduring mystery: did the pair actually make it to the highest spot on the planet almost three decades before Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing? A crack team of climbers and researchers were brought together by NatGeo for an expedition to finally find Irvine, largely in the hope that a camera he carried with him in his last days may settle the speculation once and for all.
THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND (MA15+)
***1/2
RENT via FOXTEL STORE, GOOGLE, APPLE TV
While there is a lot to like about filmmaker Judd Apatow’s latest comedy, there is also a lot to process. Quite a lot. As we have learned from Apatow’s days churning out hits like Knocked Up, Trainwreck and Funny People, he’s not interested in wrapping up anything inside the two-hour mark. Therefore The King of Staten Island’s 137-minute run time is an imposing challenge. Particularly for Australian viewers who may be unaware its lead actor Pete Davidson (a major star on US TV as a key member of the Saturday Night Love comedy team) is effectively playing himself here. In what turns out to be an unconventional, unreliable and utterly charming work of autobiography, Davidson channels his ‘lost years’ as a mentally ailing youth forever holding court (and inhaling weed) in the basement of his mother’s house. The movie should be a self-indulgent chore, but never comes close to that, thanks to Davidson’s charismatically awkward presence, and the colourfully committed performances of a great support cast led by Marisa Tomei and stand-up comedian Bill Burr.
MIDNIGHT OIL 1984 (M)
****
STREAM via DOCPLAY, STAN; RENT via FOXTEL STORE, GOOGLE
For the seminal Australian rock band Midnight Oil, the year of 1984 was at once a turning point, a launch pad and a broadening of ambition. In this exciting new documentary, we are catapulted in a rough-and-ready time machine to the era in the Oils’ vibrant history where they were already at the height of their powers. While definitely one of the most electrifying and incendiary live acts on the planet, we here in Australia still had them all to ourselves. The world would later catch on to the band’s unique sound – a potent blend of dynamics and doctrines – and buy their records in the millions. For now, however, the Sydney-based five-piece were big fish in a small pond, fiercely determined to make a splash on their terms, by their own rules. The rabble-rousing ripple effect issued by the Oils in full flight is captured starkly by the doco, capturing that super-charged command only Midnight Oil could summon and hold over every crowd they played for in 1984.
Originally published as Your Night In: Every movie on Melbourne TV rated