Your night in: Every movie on Melbourne TV tonight rated or slated
From a WWII epic to a silly but watchable time-travelling romp, we’ve reviewed every movie on TV tonight, as well as taking a look at a few flicks well worth streaming.
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WHERE EAGLES DARE (M)
****
8.30pm 7MATE
In the winter of 1944, British forces attempt a daring rescue of one of their own held deep behind German lines. The Brigadier General who needs to be extracted quickly is being held in the Schloss Adler, aka the Eagle’s Castle, built high on a promontory and accessible only by cable car. British Major Jonathan Smith (Richard Burton) leads a crack team of commandos for this possible suicide mission, including an American addition to the team, Lieutenant Morris Schaffer (Clint Eastwood). A classic of its time, this riveting WWII drama is rife with great action sequences (the cable car!) and shock twists pulled out of thin air. Three escapist hours very well spent.
ASSASSINS
*1/2
11.45pm 7MATE
An openly disinterested Sly Stallone plays Robert Rath, a Cold War-era hitman forced to go freelance and finding it tough adjusting to the amorality of the moneyed elite who now call on his services. If that ain’t enough, Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas) is an ambitious up-and-comer in the pay-per-kill ranks, and he wants Rath’s mantle in the top pay bracket for himself. You can pencil in the rest for yourselves – a bullet in the head here, an explosion there, plenty of shards of broken glass, assorted blood splatters, and the annoyingly predictable climax. The only wildcard: Julianne Moore as a femme fatale named Electra.
STEALTH
*
7.30pm GO!
Three fighter pilots (Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx) chase a talking unmanned plane all over the atlas before it brings about World War III. The rogue bird – which speaks in the effeminately threatening manner of a reprogrammed HAL 9000 from 200: A Space Odyssey – gets all the best lines. Bombs away, indeed.
TIMECOP (M)
**
10.00pm GO!
By the mid-1990s, one-time action icon Jean-Claude van Damme had well and truly lost his butt-kickin’ mojo. Nevertheless, this super-silly effort strays quite near the watchable thanks to it’s looney-tunes time-travel angle.
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (M)
**
7.30pm WORLD MOVIES
A fanciful embellishment of a (possibly) true story turns out to quite a drab and passionless affair. On the eve of WWII, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray) receives the King and Queen of England at his country retreat. Matters of state do not matter as much to FDR as the health and happiness of his new mistress Daisy (Laura Linney). Who also happens to be his distant cousin. An oddly static experience that rarely ripples with any of the warmth or insight many associate with Roosevelt. May not be the fault of a visibly restrained Murray in the lead role, as the script gives him nothing to work with. Ditto the usually vibrant Linney, reduced to playing a dutiful dullard here.
FIVE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (PG)
***1/2
rent via Google, iTunes, Foxtel Store
An odd, yet endearing look at the life’s work of the late Fred Rogers. Fred who? In Australia, it is this one question that will be the making or breaking of the movie for most viewers. A long-time fixture on American TV, Rogers specialised in a uniquely quaint brand of educational entertainment for children rivalled only by the gang on Sesame Street. What does help, however, is that the irrepressibly friendly and wise Mr Rogers is played superbly by the great Tom Hanks (a current Oscar nominee for his fine work here). Matthew Rhys (of TV’s The Americans) co-stars as a cynical writer looking for cracks in the glass-always-full veneer of Rogers.
THE CLUB (M)
***1/2
FOXTEL, AMAZON
An Aussie (Rules) treasure from the year 1980. With the footy back, it’s high time David Williamson’s classic tale of boardroom bloodletting and player-coach relations gets to do a new lap of the oval on home streaming. Though best seen in its original incarnation as a play – heck, I once saw a production with Dipper in a starring role, and even that was good – director Bruce Beresford and a cast of colourful dependables (including Frank Wilson, Graham Kennedy and Jack Thompson) make the most of Williamson’s wonderful words. Fun for its heavy-duty cameo component, too. Among those lurking in the background are Lou Richards, Scot Palmer and the Incredible Bulk himself, Rene Kink.
FYRE (M)
****1/2
NETFLIX
This jaw-dropping doco about the high-end music festival that become a low-ball debacle is an absolute must-see. This is the strange, strange story of the ill-fated Fyre Festival, a two-day event that was supposedly to happen in the Bahamas in April 2017. Attendees were sucked in by a spectacular social media campaign that promised supermodels, superstar bands and DJs, and super-lavish accommodation on a small remote island that once belonged to a notorious Mexican drug lord. A second wave of Instagram influencers jumped aboard to hype the event, and in a flash, the whole thing was a sellout (no mean feat for an event where tickets were priced between 750 and 15,000 dollars). However, the rich stargazers, hipsters and tastemakers who arrived at the Fyre site soon discovered this event was a non-event. How this ever happened – and how so many with-it people were without a clue they were being scammed – stands as a warning to all who choose to believe what see on their social-media feeds.
PATERSON (M)
****
SBS ON DEMAND, NETFLIX
If you have Paterson high up on your must-see list, there are a few matters that are best dealt with ahead of time. Firstly, lead actor, Adam Driver is playing a bus driver. Secondly, his character is named Paterson, and lives in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. Over the course of one week, we witness Paterson, a man in his early thirties, go through the cycle of a typical day. However, the more this rigid schedule is repeated in the film, the more deep, meaningful and amusingly moving does Paterson’s fixed way of living his life become. A real gem from veteran American indie master filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers).
OASIS: SUPERSONIC (MA15+)
***1/2
FOXTEL, STAN
A deliriously enjoyable documentary charting the rapid rise and slow-motion fall of 1990s Britpop superstar band Oasis (best known in Australia for their classic anthem Wonderwall). In the space of a year, they ascended from pub-rock obscurity to topping charts and filling stadiums. The doco good-naturedly reminds us that hitting those heights without adequate oxygen will mess with the heads of anyone. However, when the two most important craniums of Oasis belonged to the famously mercurial Gallagher brothers – Noel (lead guitar, songwriter and chief riff stealer) and Liam (lead vocals, tabloid media taunter and not-so-deep thinker) – the ticking of a time bomb destined to blow the band apart just grew louder and louder.
Originally published as Your night in: Every movie on Melbourne TV tonight rated or slated
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