Inside Out. Rated PG (mild themes). 102 minutes. Directed by Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen. Screenplay by Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley and Pete Docter.
It is impossible to imagine how much poorer our lives would be without the films (A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, to name just a few) from Pixar Animation Studios. Ever since their game-changing debut with Toy Story (1995), Pixar have been at the forefront of animated storytelling, and imaginations around the world have been inspired by their marvellously inventive creations.
It might also be just as impossible to imagine how Pixar could raise the bar yet again, particularly within an industry that is obsessed with producing a seemingly endless number of sequels. And while Pixar is no stranger to the perils of sequelitis, Inside Out represents a bold, original and radical departure from all that has gone before.
Set mostly inside the mind of a girl named Riley, Inside Out is about how her emotions – Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger – create, harvest and store our young heroine’s memories and life experiences. The creative team’s skill and unwavering commitment to what can only be described as a challenging and mind-altering premise, results in some extraordinary sequences and some incredibly special ones, such as those featuring the gorgeous creation that is Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong.
Where Inside Out succeeds without peer, is in the magical way in which an abstract Universe of emotion, thought, memory and action has been imagined and then flawlessly realised. Not only is Inside Out one of the most original films in recent memory, it is also a film that has the power to change not only the way you think, imagine and recall, but also what you think about. And these days, that is nothing less than an astonishing achievement, and one that will leave you utterly enthralled.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Jurassic World. Rated M (violence). 124 minutes. Directed by Colin Trevorrow. Screenplay by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly.
If there is one revelation from the experience of Jurassic World, it is how wonderful the first film, Jurassic Park (1993), was. Somewhat impolitely ignoring the series’ two less-successful sequels – 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park and 2001’s Jurassic Park III – Jurassic World begins with a fully-functional theme park to which visitors now flock in their tens of thousands.
The park is run by the fastidious Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who finds herself having to look after her nephews Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins) while their mother (Claire’s sister) begins divorce proceedings. When Claire is not busy meeting with the park’s owner Simon (Irrfan Khan), she is negotiating with Velociraptor trainer Owen (Chris Pratt), who Masrani wants to work more closely with the park’s newest creation, the Indominus rex. But when the fearsome and intelligent Indominus escapes from her enclosure, pandemonium reigns supreme.
Trevorrow, with one other feature film directorial credit (2012’s Safety Not Guaranteed) to his name, might have been a peculiar choice to helm this enormous undertaking, but he does a fine job steering the hectic action sequences to their moderately satisfying conclusions. The major problem is the screenplay, which apart from countless references to the vastly superior original (and several reverential nods to Jaws and King Kong), fails to establish a unique world or vision of its own.
There is no denying the overall effectiveness of the thrilling action set pieces and visual effects, and nor can you fault the spirited performances from the hard-working cast. But as Claire, in super salesperson mode, says early on: “No one’s impressed by dinosaurs anymore”. Unfortunately, by the time Jurassic World finally fades from view, it’s almost impossible not to agree.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Entourage. Rated MA15+ (strong sex scenes and coarse language). 104 minutes. Written and directed by Doug Ellin.
Verdict: The politically incorrect Entourage boys are back in town.
Loosely based on the life and times of Mark Wahlberg on his journey to movie stardom, Entourage (2004–2011) was a hit television series, created and written by Ellin, and produced for HBO by Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson.
The series focussed on the escapades of movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), his manager Eric (Kevin Connolly), his half-brother and wannabe actor, Johnny (Kevin Dillon), his loyal friend Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and his indefatigable agent, Ari (Jeremy Piven).
The series was helped enormously by the presence of Wahlberg (and a vertiable catalogue of Hollywood stars making cameo appearances), and a good deal of its effectiveness was due to the fact that we never knew if the often outrageous storylines were based on actual events in Wahlberg’s life.
For the big screen version, Ellin has steadfastly refused to depart from his hugely successful formula, and he and his original cast members run with it at a hundred miles an hour. Vincent’s next project, a film called Hyde he is directing and starring in, has already cost Ari’s investor Larsen (Billy Bob Thornton) millions of dollars. But when Vincent tells him that he needs more money to finish it, Ari learns that the extra funds will only be forthcoming if Larsen’s troubled, spoilt son Travis (Haley Joel Osment) is allowed to personally oversee the film’s completion.
What worked for the series transfers onto the big screen in all its tasteless and politically incorrect glory. Of the cast who are mostly going through their overly familiar paces, Piven is the stand-out as the stressed-out Ari. The scene where he loses his temper during a relationship counselling session and furiously punches a framed picture of a kitten is both as wrong and as hilarious as it gets.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
San Andreas. Rated M (disaster themes and coarse language). 114 minutes. Directed by Brad Peyton. Screenplay by Carlton Cuse.
Verdict: Perfectly distracting, and instantly forgettable, entertainment on a grand scale.
As over-produced, B-grade, disaster movies go, it’s impossible to fault this spectacular attempt to ensure we forget our day-to-day woes for at least a couple of hours. As purely escapist entertainment, San Andreas is faultless – full of sensational special effects and eye-popping sequences of destruction on an almost ridiculous scale. Just don’t make the fatal mistake of thinking too deeply about it, because that is when San Andreas (much like the entire West Coast of the USA), falls apart completely.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is Ray, a search and rescue helicopter pilot who is famous for pulling off extremely dangerous missions. Sadly, he was unable to rescue one of his daughters, Mallory, from drowning – a fact that destroyed his marriage to Emma (Carla Gugino) who has sought solace (and a much nicer house) for herself and their surviving daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario), in the company of property developer Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd).
As a ‘swarm’ of earthquakes along the infamous San Andreas Fault begin to decimate the West Coast, Ray and Emma put their differences behind them and race to save Blake, and her newfound heroic friends Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) and his cheeky young brother Ollie (Art Parkinson), from certain death.
To their unending credit, the cast give the cringe-worthy dialogue and nonsensical material all they’ve got. Johnson’s bluff, bluster and screen-hogging biceps are infinitely watchable, while Paul Giamatti, as Lawrence the seismology professor, lends the film genuine gravitas. The Hoover Dam-shattering sequences that kick the movie off work even more effectively because of what Giamatti’s nerdy professor has invested in them – an urgent need for the science relating to how our planet is dying to be taken more seriously than it currently is. But might that be thinking about it all a little too deeply?
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Spy. Rated MA15+ (strong violence, coarse language and brief nudity). 120 minutes. Written and Directed by Paul Feig.
Verdict: A star turn from Melissa McCarthy manages to maintain our interest.
With his smash-hit romp Bridesmaids (2011), Feig launched himself, and one of the film’s stars Melissa McCarthy, into the heights of the comedy stratosphere. Bridesmaids became one of the most talked-about films of the year, gleefully dividing audiences straight down the line between those who adored its ribald, no holds barred hilarity, and those who found it all too obnoxious, crude and over-rated.
Whatever side of the Bridesmaids debate you were on may well define exactly how much you enjoy Feig’s modestly enjoyable plundering of the espionage genre.
Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is the ‘voice in the ear’ of one of the FBI’s celebrated field agents Bradley Fine (Jude Law). Using state-of-the-art tracking software at FBI HQ, Cooper guides Ford through a dangerous mission to discover the whereabouts of a nuclear device that the mysterious Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) has on the market to the highest bidder. When Ford is assassinated and the identities of all the other undercover FBI agents (including Jason Statham’s wonderfully resentful, rogue agent Rick Ford) are revealed, a guilt-ridden Cooper volunteers to take on the challenge of uncovering the bomb’s location to save the world from nuclear annihilation.
Feig’s screenplay is a good deal more ambitious than he is capable of delivering directorially, and while there are certainly some unforgettable sequences and some hilarious dialogue, the film struggles to maintain the breath-draining pace and equilibrium that it needs in order to feel like the gold-plated comedy experience it is trying a little too hard to be.
McCarthy, though, is brilliant, and Spy would be instantly forgettable if it wasn’t for her exceptional clowning skills and the extent to which she wholeheartedly throws herself both at, and into, the role of the endearing agent Cooper.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Mad Max: Fury Road. Rated MA15+ (strong violence and post-apocalyptic themes). 120 minutes. Directed by George Miller. Screenplay by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris.
Verdict: A masterpiece.
It’s been thirty years since we last spent time in the company of George Miller’s ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson). It was 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Before that was 1981’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and the ground-breaking movie that started it all, 1979’s Mad Max.
So how do you prepare to experience a film that has been thirty years in the making? After the epic disappointment (in similar circumstances) that was Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, there is always a danger that a keenly anticipated film might not have a chance of being as good as we want, or even need, it to be.
Fear not, because Mad Max: Fury Road is, in a word, magnificent. It is, in fact, beyond magnificent. It is a film of such complete, jaw-dropping cinematic mastery in every way that after the first astonishing twenty minutes, you will find yourself wondering where on earth Miller (Happy Feet 1 and 2, Lorenzo's Oil, The Witches of Eastwick) and his superb collaborators have left to go. The answer is, miraculously, everywhere and back again.
The screenplay is all fascinating, lean, cinematic muscle – creating a world where actions speak much louder than words and manage to say a good deal more. Photographed from every impossible angle by veteran cinematographer John Seale, scored majestically by Junkie XL, and edited to breathtaking perfection by Margaret Sixel and Jason Ballantine, Fury Road also boasts visionary work from costume designer Jenny Beavan and production designer Colin Gibson.
The performances from Miller’s outstanding cast are exceptional, but the stand-out is Charlize Theron. In a performance of immense emotional range, it is Theron’s Furiosa who matches the cars, trucks, weaponry, pageantry and gob-smacking stunt work, blowout-for-blowout.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Pitch Perfect 2. Rated M (sexual references). 115 minutes. Directed by Elizabeth Banks. Screenplay by Kay Cannon.
Verdict: A hugely entertaining sequel that lights up the big screen.
As surely as the sun will set, sequels to smash hit movies will eventually find their way onto our cinema screens. In the case of this sequel to Pitch Perfect (2012), it’s a welcome relief to discover that instead of trying, unsuccessfully, to reinvent what worked the first time around, Banks (making an assured feature-length directorial debut) and Cannon (Pitch Perfect, 30 Rock), play to all the first film’s undeniable strengths and deliver a sequel that is almost superior to its predecessor.
After a disastrous televised live performance in front of the President and First Lady of the United States, the Bellas are suspended from auditioning new members and from performing in the US. Facing the end of their dreams of a capella stardom, the girls discover a loophole in the terms of their suspension, which means that they can compete in the European titles in Copenhagen. The big challenge will be regaining the confidence to take on their nemesis, German supergroup Das Sound Machine.
One of the key aspects to the success of a sequel is ensuring that as many of the original cast members return to reprise their roles, a feat that Pitch Perfect 2 has achieved with great success. While the performances are effervescent, the standout is Cannon’s screenplay, which is the perfect fusion of musicality, personal drive and ambition, romance (although thankfully nothing too tense or complicated) and some fantastic laughs, of which Rebel Wilson (Fat Amy) and Adam DeVine (Bumper) get the majority share with which to have an absolute ball. Wilson (who clowns with the very best of them) canoeing across a huge lake to woo Bumper, is just one of the hilarious sequences that is guaranteed to have you laughing like you won’t have laughed in the cinema yet this year.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
