Film Review: The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars. Rated M (mature themes and coarse language). 126 minutes. Directed by Josh Boone. Screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber. Based on the novel by John Green.

Verdict: Two exceptional young stars make the journey worth taking.

Hazel (Shailene Woodley) is a 17-year-old living with cancer. The disease, first diagnosed in her thyroid, has metastasised to her lungs, and everywhere Hazel goes her trusty oxygen tank goes too. When her doting parents Fran (Laura Dern) and Michael (Sam Trammell) suggest she join a support group for young cancer survivors, Hazel reluctantly attends. As fate would have it, it is there that she meets Augustus (Ansel Elgort), and the two begin a relationship that will ultimately challenge everything they had hoped would define the remainder of their short lives.

Woodley and Elgort (who most recently appeared together as brother and sister in Divergent) are exceptional in the leading roles, capturing the heady romance, abundant humour and the fierce dramatic peaks beautifully. They receive solid, if thinly-drawn, support from Dern (Enlightened, Jurassic Park) and Trammel (True Blood), while Nat Wolff shines as Isaac, Augustus’ best friend.

As a counterpoint to the main characters’ fearless optimism for the value of life and love, Willem Dafoe’s cruel, alcoholic author Peter Van Houten is a fascinating character. Having written Hazel’s favourite book, Van Houten is now a recluse living in Amsterdam. What appears to be a far-fetched plot device, later reveals itself to be an emotional lynch-pin that highlights how important it is to confront the presence of life-threatening illness with honesty, fearlessness and unequalled determination to survive.

Boone does a fine job keeping the performances unfailingly honest, and while Neustadter and Weber’s ambling screenplay could have done with a judicious edit, the time we spend in the company of our unforgettable young hero and heroine is extremely rewarding. Just have a big box of tissues handy.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Maleficent

Maleficent. Rated M (fantasy themes and violence). 97 minutes. Directed by Robert Stromberg. Written by Linda Woolverton.

Verdict: A glorious reimagining of a classic fairytale.

Here, possibly for the first time this year, is a film that justifies not only its every precious moment on the big screen, but a film that will fire the imaginations of its target audience to an inestimable degree. This is a Sleeping Beauty for our time, where the kiss from an impossibly handsome prince (Home and Away’s Brenton Thwaites) just might not cut it any longer.

In her flawless adaptation of Charles Perrault’s original fairytale and Disney’s animated classic Sleeping Beauty (1959), Woolverton gloriously reimagines the evil Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), with Jolie gliding, striding and soaring through the story with an astonishing performance of immense range. The scene where Maleficent wakes to discover that Prince Stefan (Sharlto Copley) has cut off her wings in order to claim the throne, justifies the price of admission alone.

Sam Riley (On the Road) is a revelation as Diaval, Maleficent’s loyal shape-shifting raven, and the witty banter he shares with her lends the film a much-needed lightness of touch. As do Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton and Juno Temple as the trio of hapless fairies who are charged with caring for the princess Aurora (Elle Fanning) until the day after her sixteenth birthday, when Maleficent’s ‘sleeping curse’ will end.

Stromberg’s career in art direction (he won Best Achievement in Art Direction Oscars® for Alice in Wonderland and Avatar), sets him up perfectly to rule over the film’s grand visual style and effects, while the cinematic command of veteran Australian cinematographer Dean Semler is ever present. Recalling the magic of waiting for the page of a book of fairytales to be turned, we wait with breathless anticipation to see what these masters of their art will create for us next. And they never disappoint.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: A Million Ways to Die in the West

A Million Ways to Die in the West. Rated MA15+ (strong sexual references, crude humour and comedic violence). 116 minutes. Directed by Seth MacFarlane. Written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.

Verdict: Seth MacFarlane rides again.

A Million Ways to Die in the West, like many of Hollywood’s recent attempts at comedy, is largely a hit and miss affair. Albert (MacFarlane) is a well-meaning, sheep farmer on the fringes of Old Stump, whose aspirational girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) dumps him for the town’s rich and pompous moustachier Foy (Neil Patrick Harris). When he meets Anna (Charlize Theron), the wife of the abusive, murderous outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), Albert accepts Anna’s offer to help him win back the girl of his dreams.

Best known as the voice of Family Guy’s Peter, Brian and Stewie Griffin, A Million Ways to Die in the West is MacFarlane’s debut in front of the camera (he also produces and directs). And while there is no doubting the appeal of his self-deprecating charm and charisma as a performer, his humour has always been an acquired taste. Ted (2012), which MacFarlane voiced, wrote and directed, went on to become the most commercially successful R-rated comedy in the history of cinema. So it is hardly surprising that he should be given another opportunity to rake in the big box office bucks.

As we have come to expect, there are spectacular examples of bad taste and smut, and the easily-offended advocates of political correctness will be apoplectic with rage in no time at all. Cinematographer Michael Barrett (Ted, Zookeeper) photographs it all beautifully, which helps enormously, and Joel McNeely’s lavish score is great to experience in the cinema.

It’s just a real shame that the endless array of jokes are so cheap, and that the moments of genuine wit and cleverness are so limited.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days of Future Past. Rated M (science fiction themes, violence and infrequent coarse language). 131 minutes. Directed by Bryan Singer. Screenplay by Simon Kinberg.

Verdict: A hypnotic return to form for the X-Men series.

Boasting ambitious storytelling on an epic scale, matched with superb visual effects and an outstanding ensemble of actors all at the top of their game, this instalment of the X-Man franchise is an often brilliant, and always engrossing, addition to the big screen adventures of Marvel’s X-Men.

Faced with extinction at the hands of an undefeatable foe known as Sentinels, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back to the time these formidable creatures were invented by Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage). At this juncture, Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) had shot and killed Trask, which brought about the rise of the Sentinels who were created to exterminate the mutants in revenge for his murder. Charged with altering to course of history, Wolverine must reunite the young Charles (James McAvoy) with the younger Erik (Michael Fassbender) to ensure that Mystique doesn’t make the same mistake again.

Kinberg’s (Sherlock Holmes, X-Men: The Last Stand) screenplay manages to tell what might have been a collision of plots, subplots and character-based exposition extraordinarily well – to the point where even those who haven’t caught up with this successful series won’t be left wondering what on earth is going on. There are even some great laughs, particularly when Quicksilver (Evan Peters), is recruited to help Erik escape from a maximum security prison, deep within the Pentagon.

Singer (X-Men, X-Men 2, Superman Returns) and frequent collaborator, cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, capture every moment of the story with supreme confidence. Unusually for this genre (and this series in particular), there is never a moment where it threatens to take itself far too seriously. Instead, X-Men: Days of Future Past plays out at a furious pace from the first frame, and the emotionally-charged awareness of all that is at stake makes for an extremely rewarding, big screen experience.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Godzilla

Godzilla. Rated M (science fiction themes and violence). 123 minutes. Directed by Gareth Edwards. Screenplay by Max Borenstein.

Verdict: A triumphant return for our megastar Kaiju.

Since his first appearance in Ishiro Honda’s Gojira (Godzilla) in 1954, the megastar Kaiju (strange creature) has starred in 31 films, and returns to the big screen this year to celebrate his 60^th birthday – and what a spectacularly gob-smacking celebration it is.

Sounding mostly like a symphonic concert, courtesy of Alexandre Desplat’s (Zero Dark Thirty, Argo) majestic score, Edwards’ brilliant ode to the monster movie genre (with particularly obvious references to King Kong and Alien) is an often astonishing achievement.

One of Borenstein’s many masterstrokes is the way he incorporates Godzilla into the story, and the less you know about the reasons for his appearance, the better. The outstanding cast, afraid no-one will notice them if they don’t take the emotional content of their performances up to an equally radioactive level, go for broke with the florid material – with Borenstein unafraid to dispense with them as and when the story demands it. The early, heart-breaking sequences where Bryan Cranston’s (Breaking Bad) Joe parts company with his wife Elle (Elizbeth Olsen) set the ruthlessly efficient tone for all that is to follow.

It is the screenplay’s brutal lack of sentimentality that powers Edwards’ grand vision of total annihilation as prehistoric foes go head-to-head for supremacy. On their battleground, humans don’t matter.

Edwards (who made the under-rated Monsters in 2010), cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (The Avengers) and Western Australian-born production designer Owen Paterson (The Matrix, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) have created an entirely absorbing, big-screen experience, which is edited to perfection by Bob Ducsay (Looper, The Mummy).

Don’t be at all surprised that as you make your way home from the cinema after this immersive experience, you’ll be expecting our heroic Kaiju to rise from the ocean to see you safely home.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.