Your night in: Every movie on Melbourne TV tonight rated
By Thursday night you’ve well and truly earned a guilt-free night relaxing in front of the TV with your favourite drink. We’ve rated every movie on TV so you can make the most of your night in.
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THE OTHER WOMAN (M)
*1/2
8.30PM CH. 7
Dire revenge comedy about three women wronged by a right jerk of a bloke. The trio (Leslie Mann, Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton) form an improbable alliance to get square with the predatory pantsman (Game of Thrones star Nikolas Coster-Waldaj). Performances are all over the shop – often in a worrying way – and the screenplay keeps switching tone from manic to moronic without notice. If you’ve seen The First Wives Club – or even that 80s chestnut 9 to 5 – then you’ve seen a much better way to get a simple job done.
FAST & FURIOUS (M)
**1/2
8.30PM 7MATE
This is the 2009 instalment where Vin Diesel finally returned to rev-up the road-raging franchise with which he first made his name. After getting off to a flying start – a prologue depicting the hijacking of a petrol tanker on a mountain pass is top-notch stuff – the film loses serious momentum due to a sluggish story. Diesel’s baldy bad boy Dom Toretto comes out of hiding to avenge the death of his girlfriend. A sinister Mexican drug lord and his steroid-crazed hired muscle better watch out. Custom-made for blokes who like their films filled exclusively by the four Cs: cars, chicks, chases and crashes. Co-stars Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster.
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (M)
****1/2
8.30PM CH. 9
The third Bourne instalment is not just the best of the franchise, but also one of the finest and most forceful action releases of the past decade or so With his malfunctioning memory banks finally rebooting, amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) wants answers, and wants them yesterday. The repeated use of handheld cameras, rapid-fire edits and brutally basic physical choreography catapults the audience headlong into the ensuing chaos. Addictively adrenaline-raising stuff. That spectacular fender-bending finale filmed on the streets of New York City took more than six weeks to shoot.
NOTORIOUS (MA 15+)
***
9.40pm WORLD MOVIES
The short life and high old times of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls, real name Christopher Wallace). This so-bad-it’s-actually-almost-brilliant biopic has an endearingly dodgy way of softening up hard facts. Scenes depicting the famous East Coast / West Coast rap wars of the mid-1990s are very cheesy, particularly those involving Biggie’s arch-frenemy Tupac Shakur. Stars Jamal Woolard, Derek Luke.
BEYOND THE LIGHTS (MA15+)
****
7.30pm WORLD MOVIES
This quality drama about the all-consuming nature of fame desperately aspired to – and then precariously achieved – deserved to find a much wider audience upon original release. Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Noni, a British R&B singer who hits it big in the States, and almost loses her life doing so. Well worth the look, as there is little to fault here. Co-stars Minnie Drive, Nate Parker.
THE BREAKER UPPERERS (M)
***
9.35PM NITV
This uneven, yet endearing comedy from New Zealand didn’t quite cut it in cinemas, but fares much better on the small screen. If the movie does not reach its full potential in most eyes, it is certainly not because it stars two complete unknowns in Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami (who also share directing and writing duties here). This pair have a warped chemistry that is both instantly accessible and consistently hard to resist. They play best friends who run a business ending relationships for partners who desperately want out of the whole damn thing. It is a great premise very cleverly established in the opening act, but a strong, coherent film never quite emerges. Some solid laughs are still there though.
THREE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL
BREATH (M)
****
AMAZON; or rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES
Adapted from the 2008 novel by Tim Winton, Breath has a universally accessible, yet pointedly personal story to tell. The message so gently conveyed is both a reassurance and a challenge. While it is perfectly natural to be intimidated by the unknown, it is a grave mistake to never try to understand why. What follows is Australian cinematic storytelling at its finest: mature, adventurous, intelligent, playful and calmly assured. The story is set in the 1970s on the south coast of WA, where two very different young best friends (Samson Coulter and Ben Spence, both perfectly cast) are about to learn a little about surfing and a lot about life from an enigmatic mentor (Simon Baker, whose directorial debut here also impresses). The film mines every ounce of gold from Winton’s rich words, but never in the interests of anything flashy. Instead, a small and intimate treasure is crafted, one each viewer will discover, examine and admire in their own way. Co-stars Elizabeth Debicki, Richard Roxburgh.
KEN JEONG: YOU COMPLETE ME, HO (MA15+)
***
NETFLIX
Ken Jeong first broke through to movie audiences with his profane, often nude and always hilarious character Leslie Chow in the monster box-office hit The Hangover. However, ongoing screen success – particularly on US TV – came at the expense of Jeong’s career as a stand-up comic. Therefore this Netflix concert special finds Jeong a little rusty when it comes to getting the laughs on a roll. If you can forgive him a very slow start – the Korean- American comedian is understandably nervous, and overcompensates with a lot of needless swearing – then there is good time to be had here. Jeong delves deep into his fallow years as a performer, where he was working long days as a doctor and long nights as a stand-up to make ends meet. These recollections and other personal anecdotes find Jeong at his most relaxed and funniest. When he’s going with straight jokes, the show becomes hit-and-miss in a hurry. Direction is very well done, largely because Jeong persuaded Crazy Rich Asians filmmaker Jon M. Chu to take the helm.
FROZEN 2 (PG)
***
DISNEY+; or rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES
Back in 2013, the general consensus about the animated musical Frozen amongst those supposedly in the know was that it was a nice enough ‘toon that would soon be forgotten. Every little girl in the world not only knew better. They also knew a precious touchstone of their childhood had appeared before them. And with an irresistible array of earworms – no, make that ear-pythons – wriggling all over the soundtrack, there was no chance Frozen would ever be forgotten. So here it is, the follow-up most parents were secretly dreading, and the massive Frozen fanbase have openly embraced. Now officially the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, Frozen 2 doubles down on both the gleefully goofy antics and asides of Olaf (Josh Gad) and a fleet of fresh catchy compositions. The plotting is arguably too busy (and a mite too dark) for its own good, but sisters Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) still vividly embody the right kind of values and vitality that won everybody over the first time around.