Film Review: Skyfall

Skyfall. Rated M (violence and infrequent coarse language). 143 minutes. Directed by Sam Mendes. Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan.

Verdict: A triumph of cinematic storytelling.

How, one could ask, might filmmakers mark the 50^th anniversary of the venerable James Bond films that began with Dr No in 1962 (with Sean Connery as Bond)? As iconic literary and cinematic characters go, Ian Fleming’s ‘007’ arrives with a generation of history and association, ensuring that any new James Bond film is going to be rigorously scrutinised – and what we have with Skyfall is an undeniable triumph on a vast cinematic storytelling scale.

When MI6 bungles an attempt to retrieve a stolen computer hard drive that contains the identities of undercover agents around the world, the head of MI6 – ‘M’ (Judi Dench) – is held personally to account. But when a sinister Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) launches a cyberterrorist attack on the organisation’s headquarters, M finds herself fighting not only for her own life, but the survival of everyone associated with the intelligence organisation she commands.

Film Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. Rated M (supernatural themes, violence and sex scene). 115 minutes. Directed by Bill Condon. Screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg. Based on the novel Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer.

Verdict: The final vampire slap-down is undeniably worth the wait.

Just like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and in what seems like light-years away, Star Wars, there is something immensely satisfying about a series of films reaching their conclusion. In recent years it has become almost synonymous with the ‘business’ of movie making – that every chance to reap more megabucks at the box office should be matched by wandering sagas that, like The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, take 117 minutes to say what could have been said in a third of the time. Or less.

Film Review: Alex Cross

Alex Cross. Rated M (violence and sexual references). 101 minutes. Directed by Rob Cohen. Screenplay by Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson.

Verdict: Mildly engaging but mostly brutal reboot that fails to equal the sum of its parts.

James Patterson’s best-selling novels about the fastidious detective and psychologist Dr Alex Cross have been adapted for the screen on two previous occasions – Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001) – with the indomitable Morgan Freeman in the title role.

For this brutal and patchy reboot, Tyler Perry (Good Deeds) takes over to match wits, insults and body blows with Matthew Fox’s (Lost) Picasso, a psychopath who is waging a gruesome vendetta against Leon Mercier (Jean Reno), a rich businessman who plans to redevelop a derelict Detroit.

Film Review: Housos vs Authority

Housos vs Authority. Rated MA 15+ (frequent strong coarse language, sex scenes and drug use). 103 minutes. Written and directed by Paul Fenech.

Verdict: Fenech’s housos very quickly wear out their welcome in this long, repetitive big screen adaptation.

The history of Australian cinema is littered with films that celebrate anarchic, irreverent, broad-based humour – almost to the point that it sometimes seems that for every Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) there’s a The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972). Equally, Australian characters from the lower end of the country’s socio-economic spectrum have been the subject of many satirical films and television series from Kath and Kim to Fenech’s controversial television series Housos that premiered on SBS in late 2011.