Tag: Paramount

Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mutant Mayhem

If you’re of a certain age, it’s almost impossible to have escaped the phenomenon that is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. From the humble beginnings of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s 1984 comic book series, designed as a riff on elements from popular superhero comics, their creations became part of the monocultural fabric.

In their first cinematic outing since the Michael Bay produced reboot series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows (2016), TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM attempts to restart the series again with an animated feature. Before you breathe a deep sigh of resignation, know that the creative team this time around includes The Mitchells vs. the Machines co-director Jeff Rowe and a writing collective that includes Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and the Detective Pikachu team.

In this version, Techno Cosmic Research Institute (TCRI) sends a squadron in the direction of scientist Baxter Stockman (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito) to obtain the secret to a mutagen he’s developed. In the ensuing scuffle, the mutagen (or “ooze”) leaks into the sewers. You probably already know that it finds its way to four baby turtles and a rat.

Fifteen years later, the four mutated turtles – Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon) and Donatello (Micah Abbey) – have been raised by their adoptive mutated rat father, Splinter (Jackie Chan) to fight for themselves and fear the human world. Yet a chance encounter with teenage would-be reporter April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) sets them on the path of heroism, and ultimately against Stockman’s megalomaniacal mutant housefly, who now goes by the name Superfly (Ice Cube).

From the opening frames, it’s clear that the spirit of The Mitchells Vs. The Machines is infused into the ooze-filled DNA of this hyperkinetic and heartfelt piece of animation. Like Sony’s Spider-Verse series, it takes all of the pop culture it can digest and reimagines it through its own form of mutation, happily finding perfection in imperfection. Characters look hand-drawn and disproportionate, and quite deliberately so, giving the whole thing a sense of immediacy. Indeed, working with Mikros Animation, Rowe’s aim was to make it look and feel like concept art.

The film never stops moving either, with its painted designs wrapped around 3D models, squiggly lines that emanate from anything living, and a sketch-based vibe that looks as though entire objects have just been coloured in as they appear. During brief moments of pause, individual frames could have been lifted straight from the artwork of Eastman and Laird. The effect is remarkable, allowing for non sequitur humour and deeply emotional moments to populate the same scene. In other words, its DIY charm makes it feel all the more real.

Given that a sequel and two spin-off series have already been greenlit, TMNT: MUTANT MAYHEM allows these familiar characters to be reintroduced without trying to throw all the expected canon at the screen at once. Here’s a film that acknowledges the inherent outlandishness of the concept but never belittles anybody for digging on it. With obligatory credit stingers, ones that very much leave the door open for further adventures, Rowe and his crew have given us something very exciting to look forward to over the coming years.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Jeff Rowe | WRITERS: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit (based on characters created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird) | CAST: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, Ayo Edebiri, Maya Rudolph, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Natasia Demetriou, Giancarlo Esposito, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, Austin Post, Hannibal Buress | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 2 August 2023 (US), 7 September 2023 (AUS)

August 28, 2023
Review: Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One

It’s getting close to 30 minutes into the seventh Mission Impossible film before the title drop, giving us the dopamine hit of Lalo Schifrin’s iconic theme music. That we’ve already had three action set pieces by this stage is indicative of the sheer scale of Christopher McQuarrie’s MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING, and that ‘Part One’ is there to remind us of that from the start.

Following a mysterious incident that sends a Russian stealth submarine to the bottom of the ocean, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) receives his next mission from IMF. He’s to retrieve one half of a key from his ally Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) in the Namib desert. Faust also has a $50 million bounty on her head. Yet this is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

It seems there’s a powerful AI known as The Entity that has become self-aware, infiltrating intelligence networks, and making it impossible for them to trust anything. So, it’s a good old MacGuffin chase for the other half of the key, which might contain the secret to stopping the Entity. Hunt teams up with old friends Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), and new ally Grace (Hayley Atwell), a thief who gets caught up in the chase.

At an estimated US$291 million, it is one of the most expensive films ever made. Yet it feels practical and natural at every turn, a continuation of Cruise’s commitment to analog filmmaking in the broadest sense, with every dollar and cent evident on screen. Indeed, it doesn’t feel coincidental that in the midst of strikes and furors over the implications of AI on the entertainment industry, the fictional enemy is a “Godless, stateless” technological entity.

Case in point is the first major post-credits action sequence, set inside Abu Dhabi International Airport. In some ways, it’s old school spycraft as we watch various players – including everyone’s favourite disgruntled government worker Shea Whigham – play pass the parcel (or hide and seek if you prefer). Yet the tension is tangible, and the stakes are raised by the Entity making it difficult for anybody to verify the reality of what they are seeing. It sets the tone for the mammoth film, ensuring we white-knuckle our way through the entire 163 minutes.

This motif continues to play out in stylish fashion on the streets of Venice, where Hunt and Grace are on a chase through alleys and canals. At one point, Hunt has an intense alley fight with French assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), a fine addition to the franchise. Similarly, the chief (human) antagonist Gabriel (Esai Morales) goes head-to-head with Faust on a bridge. The juxtaposition of the two fight scenes makes for one of the tensest moments on screen. At least, that is, until we get to the gobsmacking climactic sequence set aboard, on top of, parachuting towards, and falling out of the Orient Express.

With the stunning backdrop of Switzerland, this murderous ride on the iconic train is Agatha Christie as interpreted by Justin Lin. Of course, it’s a Tom Cruise Film™ so there are some spectacular stunts, and one jaw-dropper in particular. You’ve probably seen the clips already, but watching Cruise jump off a clip on a motorbike breathlessly keeps the spirit of Jackie Chan’s heyday alive. Yes, that’s really Cruise – and he reportedly did the stunt six times in one day.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING – PART ONE continues the 2023 trend of slicing narratives in half, following Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Fast X in dropping Part One of a longer story. While it’s not necessarily a trend this reviewer is fond of, McQuarrie’s film never feels anything less than a complete entity, and leaves us quite literally hanging on for whatever the finale holds next year.

2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Christopher McQuarrie | WRITERS: Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen | CAST: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount | RUNNING TIME: 163 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 8 July 2023 (AUS), 12 July 2023 (US)

July 12, 2023
That’s the past, Captain: 20 years of ‘Star Trek: Nemesis’

Warning: 20-year-old spoilers ahead.

It had been four years since the theatrical release of Star Trek: Insurrection, the last time Star Trek audiences had seen the Next Generation crew together on screen. It was, at least at the time, the longest stretch fans had gone between Picard fixes.

Yet in that period, both the Voyager and Deep Space Nine TV series had finished their respective seven-year runs, moving the franchise well beyond its traditional roots. Star Trek: Enterprise was starting to find its feet after a season and a half, but was yet to hit its stride. Indeed, in the same week of the NEMESIS theatrical release, the episode “Precious Cargo” — a retread of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that even the producers have effectively disowned — was screened.

So, it’s safe to say that Trek fans were looking for something familiar when Picard took the helm once again. I remember going to see this with my girlfriend at the time and a mutual Trek-loving colleague. At the end, the latter turned to my girlfriend and apologetically said “It’s usually better than this.” Suffice it to say, Trekdom did not get a new fan that day.

Having binged all of modern Trek in order between lockdowns, watching NEMESIS again represented an opportunity to revisit and maybe reassess a film that had become associated with “bad Trek” in my head. After all, my revisit with Insurrection, effectively a feature-length episode of TNG, was unexpectedly delightful.

Which is where NEMESIS starts, with a genuinely heartfelt wedding sequence that’s like visiting old friends. Even with Data singing — one of many examples of the character being off-model outside of the TV show — it’s a sweet moment that feels the more like Trek than anything else in the film.

After that, it takes some odd turns. While en route to Betazed for Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Riker’s (Jonathan Frakes) honeymoon/second ceremony, they get word that new Romulan political leader, Shinzon (Tom Hardy in a very early role) wants peace with the Federation. However, on arrival they find that not only is Shinzon half-human, he has a secret heritage. Yes, it turns out he is a clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). Thus, shenanigans commence.

Veteran editor Stuart Baird knew how a film was put together, although his two previous directorial efforts — Executive Decision (1996) and U.S. Marshals (1998) — are about as far removed from TNG‘s vibe as you can get. Case in point, an over-exposed set-piece sequence built around desert dune buggies feels like it was already set up for another film, then populated with Picard, Worf (Michael Dorn) and Data (Brent Spiner) at the last minute.

Yet the core of the film is meant to be the confrontation between Shinzon and the Captain. What could have been TNG‘s Wrath of Khan (or The Undiscovered Country) instead becomes mixed up with a myriad of plot points in John Logan’s (Gladiator) screenplay. There’s a deadly McGuffin that has something to do with thalaron radiation, a whole lot of woes stemming from Shinzon’s cloning process, the discovery of new double for Data (mockingly named B4), and occasionally someone mentions Romulan peace talks.

Tying them altogether are a group of hitherto unseen Remans, a Romulan slave caste who have psychic powers and are the orcs of the 24th century. Deanna gets mind-raped during sex for what seems like the dozenth time in the series, an uncomfortable plot device wedged in to help them find a cloaked ship later on. Just when it couldn’t get weirder, Bryan Singer turns up as an uncredited cadet. Yes, even a man who’s Wikipedia entry has a ‘See also: Me Too movement‘ section didn’t want to be associated with the film at that point.

Where’s my Deep Space Nine resolution?

NEMESIS ends on a bittersweet note, with Data heroically sacrificing himself to save the crew. However, the script gave actor Spiner a ‘get out of jail free’ card by transferring his memories to B4. This sews the seeds for Picard almost two decades later, a series that at least tried to redeem much of the B4 subplot and this ‘have its cake and eat it too’ ending. Still, it’s a sad send-off for a beloved crew — especially when Voyager fans got more of a coda with a brief cameo from Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew).

Frakes, who directed the previous two Star Trek films, regrets not continuing behind the camera. “I would have loved to have done Nemesis, but it seemed like, ‘Really? That’s all you’re going to do, is Star Trek movies?’” he told Vulture in 2019. “It’s glib to say now. I wish I had done Nemesis.” Stewart, speaking with Variety, wasn’t positive on the film. “Hugh [Jackman] and I were so thrilled when the last thing we did for X-Men was Logan…Next Generation didn’t end like that. In fact, our last movie, NEMESIS, was pretty weak.”

Spiner, in an interview with Trek Movie, is more pragmatic: “It wasn’t about good or bad – nobody came and that was significant. It was not the quality of the film. People go to bad films all the time…The first weekend was dismal and that wasn’t word of mouth or Data dying, that was that the fans were not interested.”

In Star Trek: Picard, the legacy of Nemesis is in pieces.

Baird, who has been largely slammed by the cast in retrospect, went back to editing on films like Casino Royale and Skyfall. He has not directed a film since. It’s also the last time to date that this crew was together as a unit — although that is set to change in Star Trek: Picard – Season 3 in 2023. Whether that is the final emotional catharsis fans craved two decades ago is yet to be seen at the time of writing.

Cinematic Trek would never be the same after this. A fifth and final outing that would have tied up the franchise was abandoned. It would take another seven years for the franchise to return to the big screen, and by then the entire universe took a hard left turn in favour of an alternate timeline — albeit one that has its Romulan origins in NEMESIS.

Yet here we are 20 years later still watching and discussing the merits of this bastard stepchild of the universe. Love it or hate it, the influence of STAR TREK: NEMESIS is (for better or for worse) still present in the warp coils of contemporary Star Trek.

STAR TREK: NEMESIS had its world premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on 9 December 2002. The film was released widely in North America on 13 December 2002 by Paramount Pictures. It took a little longer to reach Australia, where it got a cinema release on 6 February 2014.

December 9, 2022
Review: 6 Festivals

There’s a lot of firsts that 6 FESTIVALS can claim. In addition to being the narrative feature debut of Macario De Souza (Bra Boys, Fighting Fear), it’s the first Australian-produced film for the Paramount+ streaming platform. Yet it’s also part of a coming of a local coming of age tradition that sits somewhere at the crossroads of Garage Days and Babyteeth.

As the title of the film would imply, De Souza’s film takes place over the course of half a dozen music festivals along Australia’s east coast. Maxie (Rasmus King), Summer (Yasmin Honeychurch) and James (Rory Potter) share a friendship over their love of live music. The latter dreams of being a promoter and running his own festival one day.

However, when James receives a heartbreaking medical diagnosis, the trio resolve to see as many festivals as they can. The fests — which include Utopia Valley, Big Pineapple, and Yours and Owls — not only see them soaking up some of the nation’s best performing artists, but dealing with their various personal and familial issues as well.

There’s almost a whole season’s worth of television packed into this one unassuming feature. Summer has aspirations of singing, but is unable to come out of her own shell. Maxie has to deal with an abusive older brother, who forces him to sell drugs at the various gigs they attend. As we’re dealing with a whole bunch of live gigs, it never feels as though De Souza (alongside co-writers Sean Nash and Lou Sanzh) has tried to cram it all in. The transition between venues allows them to grow and develop organically.

Shot on location at the actual festivals throughout 2020 and 2021, 6 FESTIVALS is also a celebration of the music. Specifically, it’s a magnification of contemporary Australian music, with cameos and performances from the likes of Lime Cordiale, G Flip, Dune Rats, Hooligan Hefs, Bliss n Eso, Ruby Fields, Peking Duk and more. When these kinds of youth-driven films roll along, it often feels as though someone has wedged in an adult’s view of what the kids are doing. Yet this, like John Hughes or early Susan Seidelman films did in the ’80s, always feels immediate and fresh. Cinematographer Hugh Miller captures it all in slick fashion, and some genuinely emotional pieces to G Flip’s ‘I Am Not Afraid’ and Dune Rats’ ‘Scott Green’ are highlights.

A lot of that has to do with the terrific young cast. While Potter’s character has one of the weightiest arcs of the narrative, Honeychurch (Life of Jess) does a lot of the emotional heavy lifting of the piece. Similarly, King takes what could have been a one-note goofy character and gives him a few extra layers of pathos. Mind you, they get to drop a fair number of C-bombs — which just adds to the authenticity of the whole thing.

Opening and closing with sing-a-long covers of Powderfinger’s ‘My Happiness,’ 6 FESTIVALS is ultimately a joyful film. While some of the youth tropes may seem familiar to some audiences, this jaded ol’ viewer can only imagine what an impact a vibrant film like this would have had in my formative years. Try and see it on a big screen — and if you can’t, make sure those speakers are cranked right up.

2022 | Australia | DIRECTOR: Macario De Souza | WRITERS: Sean Nash, Macario De Souza, Lou Sanz | CAST: Rasmus King, Yasmin Honeychurch, Rory Potter, Guyala Bayles | DISTRIBUTOR: Bonsai Films, Paramount+ | RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11 August 2022

August 11, 2022
Chasing moons and maelstroms: 40 years of ‘The Wrath of Khan’

“This is all Ahab,” director Nicholas Meyer once said in an interview. “I just cribbed it.”

He was talking about one of Ricardo Montalbán’s most iconic lines from STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN: “I’ll chase him round the Moons of Nibia and round the Antares Maelstrom and round Perdition’s flames before I give him up!” Yet given that the line comes as his Khan and William Shatner’s Kirk engage in a battle of wills, one that can only end in mutual casualties, Meyer could have been talking about his whole picture.

Forty years since its release, KHAN remains one of the definite examples of big screen Star Trek. It’s an action-packed adventure filled with explosions and heart in equal measure, one that put memories of the more intellectual Star Trek: The Motion Picture to bed. It kicked off a sci-fi summer that included E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, The Thing and Tron. Yet in 1982, you couldn’t find something further from the franchise’s oeuvre.

Needs of the few

The storied and embattled history of Star Trek is well-covered territory. After suffering rejection for his original pilot in 1964, creator Gene Roddenberry got a rare second chance when a second pilot was ordered. With a new cast and a fun outlook, the familiar crew we grew to love over three years emerged in 1966. Despite threats of cancellation after the second season, a letter campaign saved the film for a troubled third year. Several attempts to craft a sequel series (or Phase II) failed to take off, but after the success of Star Wars (1977), Paramount greenlit Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

With its contemplative attitude and measured pace, the visually stunning film failed to connect with critics but was successful enough to warrant a sequel. (In fact, despite common misconceptions, the film sold the most tickets of any film in the franchise in the US until Star Trek (2009), and it remains the highest-grossing film of the franchise worldwide adjusted for inflation). Nevertheless, Paramount studio heads — including Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner – asked producer Harve Bennett if he could make a better film. It turns out he could.

The Motion Picture’s coda tells us ‘The Human adventure is just beginning.’ Which was true in a way, it just took three years for that adventure to be reworked with a greater emphasis on action and character-building. Flying in the face of youth-oriented sci-fi, it acknowledges the inevitability of ageing. From the moment ‘Bones’ McCoy (DeForest Kelley) gifts Kirk (William Shatner) a pair of reading glasses, Jack B. Sowards’ screenplay not only allows Kirk to pass gracefully into middle-age but foreshadows an even sharper reminder of mortality.

Kobayashi Maru

STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KHAN begins with death. In fact, everyone dies in the opening scene. It turns out to be a training session led by Admiral James T. Kirk, the infamous Kobayashi Maru no-win scenario. The lesson for cadets is that sometimes defeat is inevitable, but it’s a lesson Kirk has never learned. He is famous for being the only person to have beaten the test — but only by hacking the system.

Meanwhile, the starship Reliant is looking for places to test Dr. Carol Marcus’ (Bibi Besch) Genesis device, a powerful scientific development that can terraform a planet in moments. When they land on what seems to be a deserted planet, the crew instead find genetically engineered tyrant Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán) and his crew, who the Enterprise had mistakenly left stranded there back in the classic episode Space Seed. Suffice it to say, he isn’t happy with Kirk.

Shifting the tone to a navy-inspired action adventure, from the military uniforms to the blinking lights of the ships, Meyer operates the Enterprise like a submarine in space. As a result, the relentless pace of the action combines the claustrophobia of the ships, arguably echoing Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot released a year earlier. The space battles are every bit as exciting as anything in Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back, and the stakes are heightened by the constant threats to characters we’ve known for the better part of two decades at this point.

Of course, one of the oft-cited fun facts of WRATH OF KHAN is that Kirk and Khan never share a set. They face off across view screens – and Khan’s name is yelled by Kirk in one of the film’s most famous and parodied moments – and yet they never once set foot on the same bridge. Yet their mutual appetite for the scenery ensures that their respective presence continues to compete for audience attention, much to the delight of viewers everywhere.

Yet it’s the death of a colleague that is arguably the most iconic moment in the film. Death, mortality and new life pervades every aspect of film, including the revelation that Carol’s son David (Merritt Butrick) is Kirk’s son. However, all of that pales in comparison to final moment of sacrifice, one in which Spock (Leonard Nimoy) famously gives his life to save the crew. The poignant moment maintains his credo that the ‘needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ (or the one), but leaves the crew and the viewer alike devastated. As a missile tube carrying Spock’s body is fired into space, a broken-voiced Kirk eulogises: “Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most… human.”

“I have been – and always shall be – your friend.”

Death would not be the final frontier for Spock. As Kirk adds in his eulogy, “in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life.” This was the literal case in the narrative, given the appropriately-named Genesis planet was already starting to terraform before their eyes. Yet it was also true for the franchise, breathing new life into a series that would continue through an additional four films with this crew. THE WRATH OF KHAN opened on 4 June 1982 in 1,621 theatres in the US, and made over $14 million in its opening weekend, at the time the largest opening weekend gross in history. It ultimately became the first chapter in a story arc that ran through Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, crafting one of the great mid-series trilogies of all time.

You could also argue that this broke the mould for ‘Trek pictures, pushing them into naval action territory and away from the exploratory stuff that made the series a staple. Yet forty years later, the franchise has found infinite diversity in seemingly infinite combinations. Star Trek in 2022 is many things. It’s a far-future oratory in Discovery. It’s nostalgia viewed through a glass darkly in Picard. It’s self-aware and wry in Lower Decks, broad and kid-friendly in Prodigy and unabashedly retro in Strange New Worlds. Had THE WRATH OF KHAN failed, Trek may never again dared to experiment with the form so boldly.

A different Khan from another universe

In 2013, the rebooted Star Trek Into Darkness attempted a soft remake of this classic sequel. In that version, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan faces off against Chris Pine’s Kirk in a battle of wills that mirrors the 21st century’s war on terror. If it speaks in shorthand, right down to a cheeky double-bluff ending, it’s because WRATH OF KHAN did the heavy lifting in 1982. It has been, and always shall be, the absolute best of theatrical Star Trek.

June 7, 2022
Review: A Quiet Place Part II

Being able to hear a pin drop in a crowded cinema isn’t normally the watermark of quality. Yet that was precisely the appeal of A Quiet Place, the surprise hit for director and star John Krasinski. Using the absence of sound as a powerful weapon, a film that transcended the silent gimmick to offer up an original take on the survivalist family genre.

“I wrote a family drama and I Trojan horsed it as a genre picture,” said Krasinski of the first picture, one in which real-life couple Krasinski and Emily Blunt play parents determined to protect their family against sound-sensitive monsters. In the cold open to A QUIET PLACE PART II, Krasinski’s character Lee Abbott briefly appears in a gripping sequence that takes us all the way back to Day 1.

The story proper picks up on Day 474, moments after the ending of the first film. Evelyn (Blunt), her deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds), son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and new-born baby begin the hike to what might be a friendly encampment. After meeting survivalist and old family friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy), they learn there is more of the world left than they thought, along with a chance of fighting back at the terrors.

The laser focus of the first film, and indeed much of its reliance on complete silence, is replaced here by three concurrent plotlines. If the first film used silence as a terrifying weapon, then the second expands the perimeters of that world to something grander. Having said that, Marcus and Evelyn’s arcs are more reactionary, acting as secondary characters this time around as they respectively fight off monsters on the Homefront while the search continues.

So, it is Simmonds who steps confidently into a leading role. The emotional core of this entry is her journey towards becoming a hero, alongside Emmett’s search for redemption. Deafness and her hearing aid are positively displayed, with entire conversations happening in ASL. Indeed, this so-called disability is weaponised here, with the character finding her strength via an ability she discovered at the end of the first film.

Clearly made on a bigger budget, Krasinski’s sequel is filled with some incredible set-pieces. The first of these comes early in the film: a point-of-view sequence with Blunt behind the wheel as chaos ensues around her. At other times, it’s back to super tense moments of avoiding a monster without making a sound. As with the first film, the feeling of a (refreshingly) full theatre holding its breath is tangible. There’s perhaps a little too much emphasis on the CG monsters this time around, but it all culminates in two duelling action moments that will have you white-knuckling your way to the credits.

In a Q&A at the Australian premiere, Krasinski said the “world is the main character.” Which remains the strength of this series, building solidly on the story as a sequel rather than an intended ‘franchise.’ Yes, some plot points are completely glossed over — including one of the shadier aspects of Emmett — but it never feels anything less than authentic to that world. Once again leaving us with a partially opened door, it will be fascinating to see where they take this next.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: John Krasinski | WRITERS: John Krasinski | CAST: Millicent Simmonds, Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Noah Jupe, Djimon Hounsou, John Krasinski | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 27 May 2021 (AUS)

May 20, 2021
Review: Rocketman

While music biopics are a dime a dozen, including ones that don’t even have the rights to the original music, some lives feel like they are written for the big screen. Coinciding with his retirement from live touring, the history of Elton John’s life and career is just as over-the-top as his stagecraft.

Complete with a flamboyant entrance in a sparkly devil costume, Lee Hall’s screenplay uses a rehab session as a framing device. The recovering Elton (Taron Egerton) reflects on his earliest memories with music, his relationship with his mother (Bryce Dallas Howard), his songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), his affair with John Reid (Richard Madden), and all the hits, sex, and drugs along the way.

ROCKETMAN isn’t concerned with historical fidelity as it is with catching the spirit of its subject’s music. Which isn’t to say that it’s inaccurate, it’s just written and performed as high fantasy. Within moments of opening, we are transported to a post-War London via a straight-up musical theatre rendition of “The Bitch Is Back.”

The film carries on in this fashion, leaping through the years by using the songs as narrative shortcuts. It’s the same method that worked in the stage production of Jersey Boys, but with all the flair of a modern music video. “Your Song” serves as a revelatory moment to showcase the partnership of Taupin and John, while both the performer and crowd literally float off the ground as his performance of “Crocodile Rock” at LA’s Troubadour lifts him out of obscurity.

While it serves nobody to directly compare biopics, it’s impossible to not reference Bohemian Rhapsody. After all, Fletcher was the director who stepped in to replace Bryan Singer and at least some of that film’s success belongs to him. Both films feature famously gay performers who were closeted at the peaks of their career, and like Freddie Mercury, a character of a gay manager/hanger-on is used as a mephistopheles figure that enables a life of excess. Yet the crucial difference is that John now fully owns his past debauchery, and his homosexuality is never portrayed as a moral failing (as it was with Mercury).

Aiding this greatly is the revelatory Egerton in the lead role. If Kingsman: The Secret Service was his breakthrough role, then ROCKETMAN is surely his star-making performance. Along with providing some pretty faithful vocals while giving us his own take on the hits, slowly physically transforming into a Vegas-worthy lookalike.

ROCKETMAN manages to transcend the pitfalls of the jukebox musical by weaving in the highs and lows of John’s life with meticulously crafted versions of his most famous hits. As it ends with a recreation of Russell Mulcahy’s “I’m Still Standing” video, the seamless blend of original and recreation becomes all the more impressive.

2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Dexter Fletcher | WRITERS: Lee Hall | CAST: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 30 May 2018 (AUS)

June 2, 2019
Review: Pet Sematary

Adaptations of Stephen King novels are a bit like the plot of PET SEMATARY. There are some that the horror master would probably rather remain dead and buried, while others have been cropping up like hordes of the undead. Yet it’s a golden age for Constant Readers right now, from It to TV’s Castle Rock. As Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer set out to prove, sometimes retread is better.

On paper the original text of Pet Sematary is unquestionably a horror story, and arguably one of King’s most unnerving. Indeed, in the introduction to the book the author regards it as “the most frightening book I’ve ever written” and initially ponders whether or not he had gone “too far.” Inspired partly by the death of his daughter’s cat, and “thinking the unthinkable” after a near-death miss with his youngest son, it is possibly one of the rawest pieces of fiction King had constructed at that prolific point in his career.

In screenwriter Jeff Buhler’s readaptation we are in familiar territory, at least on the surface. As doctor Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and children from Florida to the remote home in Ludlow, Maine. When tragedy strikes, the new neighbour Jud Crandall (Jon Lithgow) introduces Louis to the titular burial ground and leads them all down a dark path.

Buhler, Kölsch, and Widmyer take their own journey from here, reversing several key plot elements and somewhat playing on expectations founded in the book or the more faithful 1989 adaption from director Mary Lambert. There were always textual shadows of The Shining, for example, that are hard to…overlook (Sorry. I’m so sorry). Here, it’s almost as if the filmmakers wanted to make something akin to The Shining with a few of the Children of the Corn thrown in for good measure.

Which is the biggest departure: Buhler’s script leans into the Micmac/Native American elements King introduced in the novel. With the absence of Jud’s wife Norma, the avuncular charcter’s talk of wendigos and the unexplained children in animal masks are much more dominant in this version. They also inform a large chunk of cinematographer Laurie Rose’s impressively dark photography, not to mention the twisted brambles that loom large in the production design. Even in with these often dramatic departures, there’s still much to admire about the approach. This PET SEMATARY wants to do its own thing – and that’s just fine.

Clarke is an effective Louis, driven by his grief and something sinister under the surface. It is also a joy to see Seimetz given a version of Rachel that has a greater level of agency than the one in any previous version. Instead of being shafted off to Boston when it is narratively convenient, she is present throughout much of the dark exposition, changing the dynamic between the couple and allowing her to share in the grieving process.

This, more than anything, is what the new PET SEMATARY is all about. It’s a meditation on grief. It’s about a family dynamic shattered by something sinister. It’s about how that fear also infects everyday life. The cyclical nature of the narrative speaks to how non-linear this process is as well. There are jump scares, the undead, bloodletting, and creepy ass kids. There’s also the realisation that this life we live isn’t to be taken lightly, and that sometimes dead is better.

2019 | US | DIR: Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer | WRITER: Jeff Buhler (based on the novel by Stephen King) | CAST: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jeté Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, Obssa Ahmed | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 4 April 2019 (AUS)

March 31, 2019
‘Dora the Explorer’ arrives in Australia

Future scholars note: Australia played a large part in bringing the live action and much older DORA THE EXPLORER to the big screen.

Screen Queensland and Paramount Players has announced announced that they have begun principal photography for the motion picture adaptation of Nickelodeon’s Peabody award-winning children’s animated series. Shooting is now taking place on location at the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

James Bobin (The Muppets, Muppets Most Wanted, “Flight of the Conchords”) marks the lovable Latina character’s big screen debut (and first live-action adaptation on any platform) after fourteen seasons (2000-2014) and 172 episodes on Viacom’s enduring children’s cable network. The film is a Paramount Players and Nickelodeon production in association with Walden Media. The film is being supported by the Queensland Government via Screen Queensland. Paramount will release the film on 2 August 2019.

Star Isabela Moner, pictured in a new photo from the studio, has most recently appeared in Transformers: The Last Knight and Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

Dora the Explorer will film entirely in Australia’s Gold Coast, in the state of Queensland on the country’s east coast, south of Brisbane.

August 12, 2018
Review: Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Prior to its release, the significance of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT changed depending on what fan community you were in. For some it was the film on which Tom Cruise broke his ankle. Other moviegoers can pinpoint it as the reason Superman’s upper lip looked so weird in Justice League. However, for those of us who enjoy ridiculously good action cinema, it’s simply the highlight of the event calendar.

Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie immediately picks up on a number of threads from his Rogue Nation script, opening with the first of many fake-outs: a dream sequence in which Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Julia’s (Michelle Monaghan) wedding is interrupted by Solomon Kane (Sean Harris) and a nuclear explosion. It’s a prophetic moment, as the IMF are soon on a mission where Hunt loses three plutonium McGuffins while protecting the life of teammate Luther (Ving Rhames). Now saddled with CIA minder August Walker (Henry Cavill), Hunt and Benji (Simon Pegg) try and prevent a massive disaster. Complicating matters is MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), working with and sometimes against Hunt’s interests.

Narratively speaking, McQuarrie’s film is a complicated series of double-crosses, compounded by ambiguously aligned agents intensely staring at each other. Yet the franchise principle of escalation means that each Mission: Impossible film has to outdo the last one. On this level, McQuarrie accomplishes his improbable mission, staging a film on a grand scale that makes the infamous laser grid heist scene from the first film (22 years ago!) look like a stroll through the park.

It starts with a lightning-filled skydiving sequence, or more accurately a High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) involving Cruise. One hundred jumps were made from around 25,000 feet to end up with three takes that are used in the film. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) It only intensifies somehow from there: a brutal three-way fight between Cruise, Cavill, and a target demolishes a bathroom. A series of chases through Paris have a French Connection vibe, before Hunt’s car goes against traffic at high speed. It all culminates in one of the best helicopter chases ever put to screen, and a reliable wire-cutting trope to ground it.

Handsomely photographed by Rob Hardy, there’s some beautiful shot of Paris in the golden glow of the sun, book-ended with massive widescreen moments showcasing New Zealand and Norway. The sound design is also to be commended. Between the rousing Lorne Balfe score, one that makes liberal use of the iconic theme, audiences almost feel buffeted by the wind as motorcycles tear through the archways of Paris.

Like the Fast and the Furious and James Bond series, Mission: Impossible has continually managed to reinvent itself while remaining true to its core characters. While the extended running time might seem like a lot of work, there are few time when audiences aren’t fully engaged with what is happening on screen. If the quality continues at this pace, having the series run for another two decades doesn’t seem all that impossible.

[stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]2018 | US | DIR: Christopher McQuarrie | WRITERS: Christopher McQuarrie | CAST: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 147 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 27 July 2018 (US), 2 August 2018 (US) [/stextbox]

July 26, 2018