Movies

A red carpet in Los Angeles. March 7, 2010: A handsome yet self-conscious Australian actor, who happens to have recently starred in the highest-grossing film of all time, is stopped for an interview while walking the red carpet at the Academy Awards.

When asked the mandatory question put to all Oscar attendees: “Your clothing, please discuss”, he replies “Payless Shoes and a friggin’ kick ass suit.” 
Quizzed as to the suit’s designer (it’s all about the labels, darling, hence the “who” and not “what” are you wearing) he shrugs “some bloke”.

Right on cue, the media in the actor’s homeland conclude this response to be proof of his down-to-earth appeal and marvel over his grounded, humble attitude amid a sea of Hollywood shallowness.

Continue reading "Wacko the diddle oh it’s a dead-set dinki di Avatar" »

Today I’m going to be a curmudgeon.  Let’s start with Avatar.  I hated it.  Before anyone starts:  yes, I know the special effects are amazing.  Yes, I saw it in 3D.  Yes, I know it’s nominated for a Best Film Oscar.  I still hated it.  The plot was lame and I resented being bashed over the head with the groaningly obviously political message.

While we’re at it, I also didn’t like Lord of the Rings. Fell asleep in the cinema in fact. Hell, as long as I’m bucking conventional wisdom, I may as well really disgrace myself: I find Monty Python terminally unfunny. I don’t get the big deal about Bob Dylan. And I don’t reckon Brad Pitt’s that attractive.

I usually keep these views to myself because of the reaction they provoke. The Monty Python one in particular attracts gasps of disbelief and horror.

Continue reading "Well readhead: Avatar, Dylan and Monty Python suck" »

There is movement at the police station, for the word has passed around, that there won’t be any piss on Australia Day.

While we’re hardly about to dip our toes back into the dry waters of prohibition on Fair Dinkum Day, the NSW police appear to be flying in the face of our deep seated tradition of inebriation, seeking to ban take-away sales of any beer worth bottling and proposing some sort of two can limit, as if the boundary at the SCG now stretched past Broken Hill.

And while one of our many national shames is indeed the battle of the binge, for me the only thing worse than our inability to keep our elbows from bending is our inability to make a film that looks like it hasn’t just fallen from a blue cattle dog’s bumhole.

Continue reading "Strike me pink it’s the crap OZ cinema drinking game" »

At first it seemed as though becoming an Avatar would be a risky professional decision. I was hesitant about transferring my life-force into the body of a Na’vi alien body and moving to the planet Pandora.

Leaving earth would be hard: dying planet though it may be I’d still miss the new season of Big Love. Furthermore I hate using aeroplane toilets at the best of times so I thought holding it in over a five-year long haul spaceship flight would be a challenge.

Of course there are also immediate benefits: I would be taller and bluer beyond my wildest dreams (although to be honest I hadn’t previously fantasised too much about being 10-foot tall and blue). But really what sealed the deal was the lack of competition in the Pandora media market.

Continue reading "Why I became an Avatar" »

With nothing coming out of Copenhagen to rile the world’s anti-green conservatives, they’re aiming their Hummers at Avatar, James Cameron’s decade-later follow-up to Titanic.

For his right-of-centre critics, Cameron is a new Michael Moore; a manifestation elitist Hollywood whose 3D spectacular is filling kids’ minds with terrible ideas like greed is bad and green is good.

Miranda Devine wrote a few days ago in The Sydney Morning Herald that Avatar is infused with “Cameron’s sanctimonious hippie sensibility.” That’s right, the bloke who made Terminator and T2 – movies in which explosions and a Republican Governor save the day – is a hippie. It’s not hard to see why Devine et. al. are going after Cameron.

Continue reading "Avatar’s a film, not a call to take up arms" »

Curators of obscure movie history will, if they’ve had their eyes open, likely record 2009 as the year the ‘chick flick’ smartened up.

Rounded female characters showed up in everything from straight-out Oscar bait to rock ‘em-sock ‘em horror flicks, while some of the best films of the year centered around women and their distinct set of needs and challenges.

2009’s diverse honour roll includes everything from Drag Me to Hell and Whip It to An Education and Coco Before Chanel.

This year’s femme flicks starred women saying and doing interesting things, a seismic shift from the decades of wish fulfilment pap clued-up female moviegoers have had to sit through.

Continue reading "A blokes guide to the best chick flicks" »

Update 8.05am: The early birds have triumphed. All ten passes are accounted for. Sorry if you missed out - go see the movie anyway. Tors.

It’s hard to believe it’s Christmas Day this Friday, and The Punch is nearly 7-months-old. We’re here because of you, so thank you for that.

You may have noticed we’re a bit politically obsessed here, as it seems, are most of you. In the Loop is a movie for political tragics with a robust sense of humour (to call the language colourful is an understatement).

It’s out in cinemas here from January 21 - and the first 10 people to email me and ask (8.10am: they’ve all been allocated now, sorry) will get a double pass to see it.

Continue reading "A little Christmas present from The Punch" »

Spoiler alert: Life is complicated.

The finest, noblest and most powerful motion picture ever made, with the obvious exception of Weekend at Bernie’s, is without doubt Superman: The Movie.

Superman: The Movie is not just a work of staggering scale and genius, it was also the pioneer of movies identifying themselves as movies so as to avoid any confusion among the lower end of the demographic, who may have mistaken it for, say, Superman: The Stepladder.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: Superman the Movie (1978)" »

There’s a very good reason why James Cameron’s Avatar, also known as The Most Expensive Movie Ever Made, stars a couple of computer-generated blue humanoid aliens.

Simply put, the mega-budget 3D sci-fi spectacle has been designed with a sort of ‘calculated universality’ and its 10-foot, cat-eyed protagonists are a central part of that strategy.

Film production is a tight business and risk-averse Hollywood isn’t about to throw big money at a production unlikely to make big returns.

Continue reading "Why Avatar just might make its money back" »

The 1950s was an extraordinary decade. It produced John Howard’s values, Tony Abbott’s existence and Marty McFly’s parents.

It was an age in which men were men and women were women and Supreme Court judges were white. People knew who they were back then and if they didn’t people were friendly enough that you could ask somebody and they’d tell you. Back then you could take all the drugs you wanted, as long as you were a housewife and had a prescription. You do that these days and people say you’ve got a problem.

Yet into this staid world exploded a force with such style, dark good looks and raw sexual energy that the cultural landscape of the entire western world was to be changed forever. I speak of course of the DeLorean DMC 12, a sports car whose fame is only eclipsed by its poor on-road performance and sudden withdrawal from production.*

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: The Tony Abbott tribute edition" »

When director Chris Weitz took on The Twilight Saga : New Moon, he took on a juggernaut.

The first film in the franchise, Twilight, grossed over $380 million worldwide.

New Moon has already smashed box office records set by ‘Harry Potter and The Dark Knight.

Continue reading "A tick for Twilight New Moon" »

I watched Twilight New Moon at an inconspicuous cinema, at a very un-trendy hour. I figured that by strategically selecting the time and location, I would not have to be overwhelmed with screeching teeny boppers drooling over Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) or Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) as they vied for the attention of leading lady (and I use the term loosely) Bella Swan (Kirsten Stewart).

I figured wrong. When Edward made his first appearance, there was a scream, and it was not dissimilar to the cheer that enveloped practically all cinema patrons when Jacob took his shirt off (though admittedly, that was not an all too terrible sight).

It seems that where society was once divided along the axis of east or west, Angelina or Jennifer, Vegemite or Marmite, it is now divided along an axis of Edward or Jacob.

Continue reading "Thumbs down for Bella, Edward and Jacob" »

Every now and again a film comes along that defies your expectations, raises the bar for all film-makers working in the genre, and leaves you feeling much much better than when you went in.  When that happens you feel blessed; films that hit the mark like that come along so rarely they deserve your respect, your money and, dare I say it, your love.

I am an unashamed fan of disaster movies; they capture the essence of what is important about humanity and remind us that we people are one with nature and not apart from nature.  The first genuine disaster movie was Deluge, made in 1933 in which a paper model of NYC, and most especially the Statue of Liberty, is destroyed by a tsunami (Roland Emmerich referenced this in The Day After Tomorrow). Like all such films to follow it concerned the struggle of a good, honest working man, trying to protect his loved ones in the face of almost insurmountable odds.

Disaster films tend to introduce a new kind of special effect to the audience.  The Poseidon Adventure gave us the first realistic depiction of a capsised boat (though if you watch the capsising scene frame-by-frame you can actually see the actors pulling the table-cloths off the tables as they run past them).  The Towering Inferno was the first to show fire in reasonable proportion to the building (watch old episodes of The Thunderbirds  to see the opposite of this, where flames and water give away the scale of the models to humourous affect.)  Earthquake in 1974 introduced Sensurround to the jaded masses and The Swarm in 1978 (I saw it with my Mum) gave us some pretty convincing bee-clouds.

Continue reading "Best apocalypse I’ve ever had" »

The Blues Brothers, 1980. Spoiler alert: Marriages don’t always work out.

There is something about The Blues Brothers that is at once reassuringly wholesome and wildly decadent. It’s a bit like having a home cooked meal and then having sex with your cousin.

It begins as all good movies – and Hildebrand family stories – do, with somebody getting out of jail.* The person in question is of course Jake Blues, who exits a prison in suburban Chicago to be picked up by his brother Elwood Blues. It is at this point that some credit should be given to the parents of these two gentlemen, as had they not both had the surname “Blues” it is unlikely this movie would ever have been made.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema #12:  The Blues Brothers" »

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991 Spoiler alert: Tenuous links between Kevin Costner, Joe’s mum, and the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival

In 1991 Bryan Adams had a good old fashioned tug at the world’s heartstrings with the smash hit ballad “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. The song was the theme to the classic motion picture Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and was written to express the way Robin Hood felt about Maid Marian. It also, by an uncanny coincidence, describes exactly how my mother feels about me.

This was never more clear than when I went home to Melbourne for the weekend on a racing junket and thought I would pop by the old family homestead afterwards. I won’t delve too much into a description of said homestead except to say that it is the sort of house which does not so much have rooms as it does narrow pathways cut through piles of old newspapers.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: Costner in Robin Hood" »

Knight Rider, 1982. Spoiler alert: David Hasselhoff walks into a bar.

Civilisations are built on the backs of great men, and, where possible, great Pontiacs. In 1982, when humankind was still reeling from the release of the Toyota Camry and crying out for a hero, such a man and such a Pontiac answered the call.

His name was Michael Knight and he was to go on to change the face of crime-fighting for a generation, as well as deliver the 2000 Sydney Olympics on time and on budget.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: Knight Rider" »

As iconic movies go, you’d be hard pressed to find many that would top the Wizard of Oz.

But can you believe that some of the key Munchkin characters are still alive with their memories of the movie and love for Judy Garland still intact.

Watch this incredible interview with five of the remaining Munchkins now all aged between 85 and 90 years of age.

On a couple of occasions now a friend and I have met at a certain Italian restaurant where I consume a bowl of meatballs and a litre of house wine.

This has reached the point where it has become quite a tradition, or, to put it another way, quite a drinking problem. Fortunately I always offset the wine with several beers before and afterwards to ensure I remain clear-headed.

This friend of mine had recently quit his job, and was planning to fund the remaining 20 years of his working life by writing the great Australian novel.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1 a week cinema #10: Dirty Harry" »

Point Break. Year: 1991. Spoiler alert: Fear causes hesitation.

The death of Patrick Swayze last week wreaked havoc within the media industry. Being the sensitive and well-honed professionals that we are, we naturally wished to present Swayze in a respectful light and only show examples of his best work. As a result all the montages went like this:

1. Water scene from Dirty Dancing
2. Pottery scene from Ghost
3. Field scene from Dirty Dancing
4. Fade to black.

This kind of blatant editorialising is based on the small-minded orthodoxy that classic films such as Road House (42 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes) and Next of Kin (43 per cent) are somehow unworthy of Swayze’s legacy.  In fact while reception was largely negative (the combined US box office was $0), more prescient sections of the media realised that history would judge both movies well.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema #9: Point Break" »

As any regular moviegoer could attest, it is a truth regretfully acknowledged that to glimpse an actress with a wrinkled forehead has become a rarer occurrence than a genuine sighting of a UFO. 

So perhaps it was inevitable that photographs of the fortysomething stars (indeed fiftysomething, in the case of cast member Kim Cattrall) of the upcoming Sex And The City sequel would unsettle a public unaccustomed to a mature-age woman playing a character outside the confines of mother/grandmother.

Captured on location in New York, the shots reveal Sarah Jessica Parker and her on-screen cohorts in an array of characteristically fashion forward outfits (1980s flashbacks notwithstanding).

Continue reading "Elusive search for footage of women ageing naturally" »

I cried watching Ghost. But then I cried at the end of Platoon, so maybe I’m not the best judge of a movie’s weep-inducing capabilities.

“Ditto,” though, is surely one of the great one-word one-liners. Patrick Swayze‘s character in Ghost, Sam, couldn’t bring himself to tell Molly he loved her, and used the phrase whenever she said “I love you.”

It’s at the top of our list of the most memorable quotes from Swayze, who has died of cancer. He was 57. We’re looking for your input to build the list so add your suggestions and discuss your favourite Swayze moments in the comments.

Continue reading "Patrick Swayze’s greatest movie moments" »

There was so much fanfare when The September Issue first came out, with everyone caught up in the hype of “Anna, the Ice Queen” and “Anna, the Bitch” and “Anna, the Hardcore Alien” it was hard to assess the movie objectively because as usual, all the hype pointed in one direction. I, for one, definitely wanted to see it for the sole reason of judging what Anna was actually like in, you know, almost-real-life.

I wanted to see her cut-throat ways and watch her spiking staff with her whiplash tongue first hand. I wanted the camera to be in an elevator when Anna stepped in and watch the look of fear on the faces of those cowering out of her way.

This is the Anna I was expecting. Like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Someone vicious and uncaring and completely insensitive of other people’s feelings.

Continue reading "Is Anna Wintour really a bitch, or just doing her job?" »

Schwarzenegger, by request: Commando, 1985. Spoiler alert: The commando is no racist.

With the possible exception of Kevin Rudd’s stimulus package, no force on earth has done more for world peace, sexual emancipation and fiscal rectitude than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Across four decades Schwarzenegger has loomed large in the global psyche as an omnipotent moral guardian, as well as a cautionary example of the dangers of dental steroids.

What is most impressive about Schwarzenegger is that he overcame poverty, hardship and a strong family background in Nazism to become the very embodiment of the American dream.*

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema #8: Commando, by request" »

Filming in the Big Apple started this week on the latest instalment in the Sex and the City hexology, sending upper middle-aged women around the world into mildly incontinent hysterics.

Sarah Jessica Parker was snapped in character as the ever-youthful Carrie Bradshaw, skipping across a Manhattan street in a pair of Hush Puppies, falling into the arms of her on-again-off-again lover Mr Big (who has been played by Zac Efron since SATC V).

All four of the leading ladies have returned for the sixth film, after protracted negotiations rumoured to have almost broken down over the huge cost of providing their health insurance.

Continue reading "Meet the GILFS*: Imagining Sex and the City VI" »

Today is the 64th anniversary of the mass publication in America of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a book considered one of the most influential of all time. 

What a pity I’ve actually never read it. 

And this is despite the fact that I’ve owned a copy since I was 17, when everyone else I knew read it. Or did they?

Continue reading "Five reasons to read the book before watching the movie" »

Yes! Stick this in your eye, over-analytical movie critics: Quentin Tarantino has named his favourite 20 movies of his directing career, and it’s a laundry list of pop shtick including Speed, The Matrix, Fight Club, and Team America - World Police, while the closest it gets to a Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is the palatable Lost in Translation. 

To my fellow trashy-movie-loving Philistines who have been hiding in the closet: it’s time to celebrate. Liking movies with bad guys and guns is OK. Quentin Tarantino, one of the finest directors of his generation, says so.

The list includes some off-the-wall Japanese and Korean martial arts and monster flicks - which I haven’t seen and probably won’t, ever - but the rest help make up one of the most quotable lists you’ll see this year.

Continue reading "At last, a movie buff who says it’s OK to love trash" »

Special Edition: First Blood, 1982; Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1985; Rambo III, 1988; Rambo, 2008. Spoiler alert: Rambo has difficulty re-adjusting to civilian life.

Centuries from now visiting aliens will come across humankind’s 2008 film catalogue and think that the most powerful warriors among us were chosen by the length of their ear-hair.

They will have discovered The Age of the Late Sequel – an era of elderly Indiana Joneses, Rocky Balboas and John Rambos – and they will pity earthlings for it.

“No wonder they didn’t see that meteor coming,” they will say.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1 a week cinema #6: All the Rambo movies" »

Hollywood director John Hughes, who directed some of the greatest comedy movies of the past 25 years, has died of a heart attack at 59. The one standout of his life’s work is, of course, the utterly brilliant Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

A question, though: What was it that made Hughes’s Bueller character so great? He wasn’t especially good at anything: he was neither clever nor witty, he didn’t wear cool clothes, he liked daggy songs. And yet women wanted to be with him, and men wanted to be him. Was it just raw confidence?

Some links to some online Bueller memorabilia below, but over to you: How much did you love Ferris Bueller, and why?

Continue reading "Just what was it that made Ferris Bueller so great?" »

That’s all she wrote for ‘newspaper movies’, with the fruitful subgenre to breathe its last once the Russell Crowe thriller State of Play slips this week from Australia cinemas.

No longer will Hollywood stars loosen their ties and roll up their sleeves as scoop-hungry newspaper reporters, no more will veteran character actors bring knowing splashes of avuncular charm to the stock role of the grizzled editor. No longer will the movie news be broken in print.

State of Play, with Crowe as a Washington journalist chasing a far-reaching Capitol conspiracy, marks the end of an era simply because 21st century audiences assume, correctly or not, that news now happens online.

Continue reading "Time to pronounce the death of the newspaper ... movie" »

Tango and Cash, 1989. Spoiler alert: Tango and Cash start out hating one another but become friends.

The Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell film Tango & Cash was the last of the great ampersand films of 1989, following hot on the heels of Turner & Hooch and Milo & Otis.

For all of that landmark year filmmakers had been experimenting with various human/animal combinations in an effort to find out what audiences would most respond to. In Milo & Otis they tried using two animals, in Turner & Hooch they tried a human and an animal and in Tango & Cash they used a human and Sylvester Stallone.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1 a week cinema #5: Tango & Cash" »

Last weekend marked the launch of the sixth in the now eight-part movie saga that is Harry Potter. As is surely apparent by now, the movies sit not as a substitute for the books but a complement to them. They succeed where they can visualise magic that cannot be done in words - the creatures, the castle and a large part of the action. But they fail where the books have their most significant: in the complex characters and the deeper moral issues.

But in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince one of those deeper but unstated moral issues arose neatly and somewhat humorously in the movie: the role of academia. It came in the form of Professor Slughorn, a marvelously imagined character who is a teacher who cares only about the best in the class and seeks them out to the exclusion of all others. He, in turn, is a character that is perhaps the most instrumentalist of at least the “good” guys in the saga. Slughorn, at various points, commits self-interested acts claiming “academic purposes”. For instance, he is caught removing valuable leaves from a plant, claiming their scientific merit but we know being motivated by the black market value.

That, however, is not where this issue comes to the fore. It is hard to describe it without giving away too much of the plot but Slughorn cites the very same “academic” disclaimer when handing over clearly dangerous knowledge to a young Voldemort. Slughorn later clearly realises his error and attempts to cover his tracks but the message is clear: there is a danger to the academic shield.

Continue reading "Harry Potter’s uneasy relationship with academia" »

Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Year: 1990 Spoiler alert: Bruce Willis gets back together with his ex-wife again but it won’t last.

I was something of a late bloomer in my early teens, which is really the only phase of one’s life in which it is important to bloom on time.

When I was 14 years old the most exciting thing to me was the newly constructed Capital Centre in Dandenong, the Melbourne suburb which produced both myself and the highest violent crime rate outside of Johannesburg. For the first time in my whole life Dandenong had a cinema - 10 cinemas in fact - and the possibilities for nightlife were suddenly endless.*

Continue reading "Joe’s $1 a week cinema #4: Die Hard 2 - Die Harder" »

I just saw Public Enemies, the upcoming Johnny Depp-as-John Dillinger gangster flick, and boy oh boy did it get me thinking about ‘guy movies’. With its suite of expertly choreographed bank jobs and jailbreaks, smoothly criminal wardrobe and salty tough guy dialogue, it’s exactly the sort of muscular entertainment best enjoyed in the company of men.

And even though Depp-as-Dillinger does find time to romance a Depression-era beauty played by French Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose), she’s on hand mostly to get him philosophising about armed hold-up.

‘’I can hit any bank I want, any time. They got to be at every bank, all the time,’’ he tells her, dropping the first genuinely quotable line of dramatic Hollywood dialogue in many years.

Continue reading "Public Enemies and the top 5 guy movies of all time" »

Gifted comic Sacha Baron Cohen has shown misplaced restraint by snipping an inoffensive Michael Jackson joke from his upcoming moneymaker Bruno.

[Bruno in the early days. Clip contains strong language]

So what do we deduce from this? A public figure’s ripe for a skewering as long as they’re alive, but become off-limits on death?

When can we start forwarding those corny text message jokes about Jacko’s plastic surgery and questionable private life? How soon is too soon?

Continue reading "Bruno cuts Jackson scene - who’s the biggest loser?" »

RUSSELL Crowe knows better than most the blurred line between news and entertainment. “I’ve been living it for 30 years,” he tells The Punch while in the UK to film his latest blockbuster Robin Hood.

So it’s a little surprising to hear him bemoan the death of the “noble profession” of newspaper journalism, as across the United States, in particular, flag ship periodicals are closing or are being slashed to the bone.

Clearly the recession is to blame, combined perhaps with poor overall management. But Crowe believes it’s also because the reader has evolved into a cynic with an inability to discern fact from fiction due in no small way to the celebrity culture.

Continue reading "This generation doesn’t know bullshit from truth: Crowe" »

I have never seen as many dead animals on screen as I have in the past two weeks. From grasshoppers roasted over an open flame in to kangaroos mercilessly slaughtered in the night, I have been witness to a macabre cinematic menagerie of dead and dying fauna.

The Sydney Film Festival ended on the weekend, over for another year. And while there may not have been a programming strand dedicated to films with dead animals in them, the sheer number of those that did will remain with me as one of the most striking and unexpected things about those twelve days.

Obviously, it is the sort of observation that can only be made when one has attended a lot of films at the festival, an observation supported, as it is, by sheer weight of numbers. When more than one third of over forty-five features contains either a dead or dying animal, one begins to take notice of the trend.

Continue reading "Animal death toll soars at groovy film festival" »