Fast & Furious 6

(M) ★★

Director: Justin Lin.

Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Sung Kang, Chris Bridges, Luke Evans, Gina Carano, Jordana Brewster.

"Look ma! No brain!"

IF someone told you in 2001 that The Fast & The Furious was going to turn into a six-film franchise worth more than $2 billion, you would have laughed in their face and told them to lay off the weed.

The first film was a surprisingly sturdy undercover cop actioner fuelled by some exhilarating street racing and car chasing sequences, but it didn't appear to have the gas to go the distance of a long-running series.

Much to the surprise of everyone, here we are, 12 years and five films later, and the Fast & Furious series shows no signs of hitting the brakes.

Since re-calibrating the series with Fast 5, steering away from its street-racing origins and driving in the direction of international crime, the franchise looked to be in supreme condition.

Unfortunately, the laws of escalating returns have caught up with F&F, much like it did with Pierce Brosnan's 007 stint. The need to go bigger and better is this film's undoing - the insanity of the underground car races that appeared in #4, which became the admittedly enjoyable vault-dragging scenario of #5, has begat the truly mental showdown that ends this shark-jumping entry into the series.

Following on from the successful Brazilian heist of Fast 5, Dom (Diesel), Brian (Walker) and the rest of their fast-driving crime gang are living large and enjoying the good life.

But US agent Hobbs (Johnson) shows up on Dom's doorstep, asking for help in stopping a new team of lead-footed criminals. Hobbs also has some tantalising news: that his old flame Letty (Rodriguez), who was so unceremoniously blown up in film four, may still be alive and working for the new bad guys.

While the set-up of Fast & Furious 6 shows promise, particularly with its mirror-image crime gangs, the film proceeds to get increasingly baffling and ridiculous, eventually escalating into a full-blown tidal wave of stupidity.

The flagrant disregard for how the law, logic, and even reality work is at the centre of so much of the movie. That a group of criminals, with the help of a gun-toting US agent, can boss around army officers on an army base, ordering the army officers to release the chief villain, despite having spent the whole film trying to catch said mastermind, is an example of the movie's ability to be mind-bogglingly infuriating.

But that's only one moment out of many in F&F6 that beggars belief. The last part of the film attempts to set a number of records, including the world's longest runway, the world's slowest take-off, and the largest number of impossible things that can happen in the space of 20 minutes.

No one has ever watched the F&F series for its gritty reality or its acknowledgement of how the universe (particularly physics and logic) actually works, and if you can ignore the litany of script errors, #6 is as exhilarating as ever.

Long-time series director Lin knows how to put the audience in the middle of a street race (without the need for 3D thankfully), and it's hard to beat his flair for piecing together a race or a chase. Also, there are at least two action sequences in this film - one involving a tank, and another involving a huge airplane - that are impressive in their ludicrous over-the-top-ness.

For the diehard fans, who may not be as vocal as say the Twi-hards, Trekkies or Potterheads but who must be out there somewhere, there are a few pay-offs, including an intriguing epilogue that points to the already-planned F&F7.

It's hard to really hate the F&F films. The franchise's unexpected longevity has given it an underdog status that's endearing, the bromance between Walker and Diesel (with added Johnson) is as charming as ever, and the ability to capture the necessary speed and ferocity is unrivalled.

But having been so pleasantly surprised by how great Fast 5 was, Fast & Furious 6 is a massively bonkers disappointment.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat in May, 2013.

(M) ★★★

Director: Baz Luhrmann.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke.

"Here's to becoming a classic gif."

F. SCOTT Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is generally regarded as a serious contender for the title of "best book ever".

Unsurprisingly the story has been filmed repeatedly, with Aussie director Baz Luhrmann the sixth director to have a go at the story of the elusive Jay Gatsby, his lost love Daisy, and the glittering American dream of the 1920s.

Luhrmann is perhaps the most distinctive filmmaker to tackle the novel and it was the prospect of his flair for the razzle dazzle that made his adaptation an intriguing proposition.

However, Baz's kinetic camera movements and stylistic tics are both the best and worst thing about this take on The Great Gatsby.

Told from the point of view of hapless bystander Nick Carraway (Maguire), it focuses on his enigmatic neighbour Jay Gatsby, whose palatial mansion regularly holds enormously decadent parties, despite the host remaining some what of a mystery to his hundreds of often-uninvited guests.

As Nick comes to know his fabled neighbour, he learns of Gatsby's connection to Nick's cousin Daisy, who is married to the rich philanderer Tom Buchanan, and Nick is slowly drawn into an intriguing web of lies and love.

Initially, the film is annoying. Luhrmann's over-the-top shots and hyperactive editing are distracting, while the framing device of Nick narrating (and later writing) the story from a sanitarium is awkward.

Having said that, Luhrmann's cinematic panache is pitch-perfect for Gatsby's parties. Mixing his camera moves, an anachronistic soundtrack, and the mercurial set designs and costumes of his Oscar-winning wife Catherine Martin, this adaptation captures the booze-soaked decadence and orgiastic excess brilliantly.

Outside of Gatsy's parties, Baz's tics and tricks (such as words appearing on the screen, fast edits, or his flat-chat runs through the New York landscapes) are distractions. The film works best when Luhrmann gets out of the way and lets F. Scott Fitzgerald's story and the talented cast do the heavy lifting.

In DiCaprio, Luhrmann not only had his perfect Romeo but now an indeed great Gatsby. DiCaprio is excellent, combining the necessary "old sport" affability, the tortured soul, the idealistic naivety and air of mystique. Could this finally be the role that snags him a much-deserved Oscar? His performance here is certainly worthy.

Mulligan is also good, as is Maguire, but Edgerton is the sneaky scene-stealer as the brash and bullish Tom Buchanan.

Another positive is the stellar soundtrack - the non-era hip hop and electro slip in effortlessly - and Luhrmann's love of the text, its heavy symbolism, and its weighty themes is obvious.

Far less effective is Luhrmann's extensive reliance on greenscreening and CG work. It looks terrible. If it's meant to demonstrate the falsehoods swimming around some of the characters, mission accomplished. But generally it's just rubbish and there must have been other ways of demonstrating the fakeness of the society in which the characters live that didn't look like total crap.

This adaptation goes so close to being definitive in places, but is frequently annoying, particularly in the first act.

Like Gatsby himself, it comes so close to achieving its dream, only to fall agonisingly and frustratingly short.

REWIND REVIEW: Jurassic Park

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Steven Spielberg.

Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, B. D. Wong, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards.

Parking inspectors are pretty ballsy in Jurassic Park.

We take computer-generated imagery (CGI) for granted these days, but there was a moment in 1993 when it dawned as the future of film-making, laid out on the big screen for all to see in a single moment of wonder.

That moment was when the power of pixels brought the long-extinct brachiosaurus back to life, walking casually across a green pasture and eating from the tallest trees in Spielberg's box office-busting and ground-breaking Jurassic Park.

Like Dr Alan Grant (Neill) and Dr Ellie Sattler (Dern) in that particular scene, audiences were stunned - the awe portrayed by those two characters mirrored the reaction of those looking up at the big screen in darkened theatres around the world.

It was a jaw-dropping, magical moment. Sure, CGI had been used before, as far back as Tron and The Last Starfighter, and more recently in The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

But here was a photo-realistic dinosaur. In broad daylight. No jerky stop-motion, "go motion", or in-camera trickery. It was as if they'd found a brachiosaurus and put it on the screen.

Here was a long-dead creature brought back to life through the powers of science in a film about long-dead creatures being brought back to life through the powers of science. It was a perfect storm of the technology not only catching up with the ideas, but featuring in the right idea. No wonder the film broke all box office records, and was the biggest grossing film in the world (until Titanic came along four years later and sank it).

Twenty years on, without that context of the thrill of the new, Jurassic Park exists now as one of the pinnacles of popcorn cinema - a terrific thrill ride that is more than just the sum of its special effects.

Re-released in 3D for its anniversary (an effect which proves unnecessary but not distractingly so), it's a delight to see this back on the big screen, if only to remind us all of how good the film is.

Its high concept kick-off remains tantalising; what if we could bring back dinosaurs? And from that springboard, Michael Crichton's novel (developed as a script by Crichton and David Koepp) spins a man-versus-nature story laced with the dangers of science, human humility, and dashes of Crichton's directorial debut Westworld and its out-of-control theme park plot.

The screenplay is perfectly balanced, in spite of its much picked-at plot-holes, such as the sudden appearance of a steep drop into the T-Rex paddock, or how the T-Rex manages to sneak up on the heroes in the film's climax. Spielberg, who would follow this with its polar opposite Schindler's List, takes the script's ups and downs in his stride, his pacing and tone not that dissimilar to his work on Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

The technique he accidentally perfected in Jaws thanks to a malfunctioning shark is played out repeatedly and effectively throughout, and it's amazing how satisfying the reveal of each new and potentially dangerous creature is, which is testament to Spielberg and his editor Michael Kahn.

The script introduces its characters swiftly and cleverly - the practical, child-phobic paleontogist Dr Alan Grant (Neil), his enthusiastic and tenacious partner Dr Ellie Sattler (Dern), the charismatically odd mathematician Dr Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), and the Icarus-like visionary John Hammond (Attenborough) are all shown to us through economical but natural dialogue, intelligent performances and smart direction. Malcolm's not-so-subtle wooing of Sattler, Hammond's sudden appearance in Grant's trailer, and Grant's solution to his seatbelt problems are telling examples of the old screenwriters' axiom "show, don't tell".

Maybe some of the effects aren't quite as perfect now, but it's barely noticeable and just nit-picking. When that T-Rex appears out of the stormy darkness, it's still one of the most awe-inspiring sights cinema provided in the '90s, if not ever. And maybe Dern's acting is a tad over-the-top, and the film plays a little loose with the science, but Jurassic Park is a how-to guide for structuring a multi-character disaster film.

That fact often gets ignored in the face of the mind-blowing special effects, but if this was merely a movie with pixel-perfect dinosaurs, I doubt we'd care about it as much 20 years on.

Iron Man 3

(M) ★★★

Director: Shane Black.

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle, Rebecca Hall.

It's better than drinking alone.

THE good news is Iron Man 3 is better than Iron Man 2. The bad news is it still can't live up to the excellence of the first film.

It's a shame really. This could be Robert Downey Jr's last film as Tony Stark (his contract is up) and if he should bow out, it would have been great to see him go out on a high.

Not that Iron Man 3 is a total misfire. It features some of the best moments of the trilogy, but it does feel a bit like a missed opportunity. There is so much good material in here - almost too much - that the story barrels along like a learner driver, hanging on for dear life and only just keeping things under control as it swerves wildly through traffic, jumping a few kerbs along the way.

The set-up involves Stark struggling to deal with the fallout from the alien attack on New York (as seen in The Avengers), which has left him with insomnia and a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.

While he compulsively tinkers and builds in his Iron Man workshop, a terrorist dubbed The Mandarin (Kingsley) has been unleashing terrifying explosions across the US, including one that severely injures Stark's friend Happy (Jon Favreau). This leads Stark to issue a threat against The Mandarin, jeopardising himself and his girlfriend Pepper Potts (Paltrow).

There's so much to like here. Stark's issues following the events of The Avengers make for an intriguing character development, the use of the Extremis virus (much-loved in the comics) is interesting, and the rogue's gallery of villains such as The Mandarin, scientist Aldrich Killian (Pearce) and a team of Extremis soldiers is enjoyable.

Also thrown into the mix well is Captain Rhodes (Cheadle), whose Iron Man-like persona of War Machine has been rebranded as Iron Patriot, much to Stark's amusement.

The level of comedy that has been a consistent triumph of the series is certainly here, although the film does tend to the wacky end of the humour spectrum a few times.

And with such a talented cast, it almost goes without saying that the performances are uniformly excellent, particularly Downey Jr, Pearce and Kingsley.

As for those "best moments of the trilogy" previously mentioned, a "barrel of monkeys" skydiving sequence is awesome, the final battle has some cool pieces, and there's some Spielberg-like magic in Stark's interaction with a young boy named Harley, although it's wonderfully subverted by director Shane Black and Drew Pearce's script and zippy dialogue.

So where's the problem?

Well, there are plot issues that are difficult to discuss without giving away spoilers, but one example is the government's efforts to find The Mandarin appear to have been non-existent until the story called for them, yet Stark can find him when he needs to. The involvement of certain characters is also questionable, while the finale's wrap-up of everything is way, way too neat to the point of ridiculousness. There are other leaps made and it's hard to tell after one viewing whether the script is being subtle or asking the audience to fill in a few too many gaps.

Iron Man 3 almost suffers from Too Many Villains Syndrome, which is a common affliction with superhero sequels, and the film struggles to keep all its characters and subplots in focus throughout. As mentioned, it seems to be a case of having too much good material.

Having said all that, the more I think about Iron Man 3, the more I like it. The initial feeling walking out of the cinema was one of mild disappointment. There were questions, things that didn't stack up. It probably begs a repeat viewing, in which case I reserve the right to change my star-rating down the track.

But for now, my gut tells me this is a three-star film, and hopefully not the last time we see Downey Jr as ol' Shellhead.

The Croods

(PG) ★★★

Director: Kirk DeMicco, Chris Sanders.

Cast: (voices of) Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Clark Duke, Cloris Leachman.

Outside the cave - McDonald's restaurants, as far as the eye can see.

SCHOOL holidays are usually a time when you put away the learnin' books and break out the fun, which makes The Croods the perfect school holiday fare.

That's because despite being set in prehistoric times and focusing on a family of Neanderthals, you won't learn anything about life 100,000 years ago, but you may enjoy yourself.

This is the latest computer-animated feature from Dreamworks Animation, who have been on a winning streak of great family films lately (their last five films are Megamind, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss In Boots, Madagascar 3, and Rise Of The Guardians).

The Croods is a weird blend of familiar ideas, where a Flintstones-like family goes on an Ice Age 4-type adventure through an Avatar-esque world. They are led by Grug (Cage), whose motto of "never not be afraid" has kept his family alive while secluded in a cave.

But the curiousity of his eldest daughter Eep (Stone), combined with a serious case of continental drift, means The Croods are about to discover there's a great big world outside the dark hole they call home. History gets replaced with fantasy in this version of prehistoric Earth, which is populated by turtlebirds, owl cats, piranhabirds, giant sabre-tooth kittens, mouse-aphants, and crocodogs. 

It's a weird world but it generates a sense of wonder via its lush animation. Equally fantastical is the movie's portrayal of its prehistoric humanoids. One minute, The Croods are presented as being like animals, the next they're discussing their feelings and emotions, and behaving like a thoroughly modern version of mankind.

Less uneven is the film's sense of humour and adventure. It barrels along at a solid pace, stopping appropriately for its emotional notes, but all the while embracing a bone-breaking level of slapstick.

Luckily these characters are seemingly impervious to all injuries and accidents, including falling from great heights and being crushed by giant rocks... repeatedly. This does take some of the sense of danger out of the film, but does provide some good laughs.

Nic Cage's distinctive delivery is slightly distracting, but there is humour to be had from Stone's Eep, love interest Guy (Reynolds) and his cute pet sloth called Belt, and the comic sidekick grandma (Leachman).

It's this knack for laughs and a rollicking good time that helps the film overcome its deficiencies, which also include a distractingly over-the-top score from Alan Silvestri.

Another plus is the strong characters, who cover up for the movie being too ludicrous in places. If only the film had been brave enough to go for the super-powerful, stick-in-the-memory ending that it flirts with instead of the silly way out it took, then we might have had something truly worthy on our hands. Instead, this is just uneven fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

Oz The Great & Powerful

This is a version of a review that aired on ABC Ballarat Breakfast on March 15, 2013.

(PG) ★★★

Director: Sam Raimi.

Cast: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Zach Braff, Joey King.

Hobart sure did look pretty this time of year.

A PREQUEL to The Wizard Of Oz? Who would be fool enough to try to emulate such a landmark piece of movie-making?

After all, such cinematic lightning has never struck twice for the many reimaginings of L Frank Baum's beloved story through the years. The dark 1985 sequel Return To Oz, the 1976 Aussie rock'n'roll version Oz, the 1978 African-American take The Wiz, The Muppets' Wizard Of Oz - the best any of these has achieved is a status as a cult favourite, and none of them have come close to reaching the lofty heights the 1939 classic.

This belated predecessor would like to think it's cut from the same cloth as the film that it's prequeling, but really this is more like Tim Burton's recent adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. It collects familiar tics and tricks from its source, tries to mould a solid story to some sketchy background information, and it does it all with an over-abundance of shiny computer-generated imagery.

In the context of what it's up against, what had come before, and what director Sam Raimi and scriptwriters David Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell Kapner are trying to do, Oz The Great And Powerful is as good as it could be.

It tells the story of how a carnival magician named Oscar Diggs ended up in the magical land of Oz and ended up becoming its Wonderful Wizard.

In spite of the film's propensity to answer questions no one was asking (Why is the wicked witch wicked? Why does she fly on a broom? What's the deal with that wizard guy?), it's a solid-enough look at one man's journey to overcome his own caddishness and become a good man.

Standing between Oscar and the incalculable riches of the Emerald City are three witches (played by Kunis, Williams and Weisz), and the movie's main conceit is figuring out which one is good, which one is wicked, and which one is a homicidal maniac.

The familiarities are innocuous enough and mostly endearing - the black-and-white real world changing into the colour of Oz is done well, there is a selection of anthropomorphic creatures to join Oscar on his journey, there's a reference to a cowardly lion, and the tricks that the wizard would later hide behind are used as plot points.

Wisely, Oz The Great And Powerful is not a musical, and it makes a slightly predictable but still worthwhile joke about the fact.

It certainly looks a million dollars (or $200 million apparently) and most of the CGI is pretty good, even if it is over-the-top and filled with unnecessary detours as opposed to necessary details.

There are some decent family laughs in there and the characters are fleshed out reasonably well. Franco is good and gets strong support from the trio of witches, particularly Kunis and Weisz.

Overall the film is decent-enough. It was never going to be exceptional and it was going to be impossible for it to match the wonder of its 1939 follow-up. The story is too constrained by what comes next when Judy Garland's Dorothy arrives to be surprising or feel fresh, but Oz The Great And Powerful is adequate for a film that no one was asking for. 

Cloud Atlas

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Tom Tykwer & The Wachowskis.

Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, James D'Arcy.

Rainbow Serpent Festival was really going off this year.

DAVID Mitchell's tour de force novel Cloud Atlas is a sprawling, epoch-spanning marvel that's as entertaining as it is ambitious.

It's also one of those books that was always going to be difficult to turn into a film.

As a movie, Cloud Atlas is as bold as the novel. However, it is predominantly a noble defeat - compressing Mitchell's six segments and endless interwining themes into a streamlined narrative proves beyond the grasp of The Wachowskis (The Matrix trilogy, Speed Racer), Tom Tykwer (Perfume, Run Lola Run) and a willing cast.

The six stories span almost five centuries and in Mitchell's book they run sequentially forward, then back again to the beginning, but in the film they are edited together into a mass of parallel stories that jump back and forth between each other.

In 1849, lawyer Adam Ewing (Sturgess) is battling illness on a trans-Pacific voyage. In England, 87 years later, musician Robert Frobisher (Whishaw) is reading Ewing's journal while helping composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Broadbent) write his symphonies. In San Francisco in 1973, journalist Luisa Rey (Berry) discovers Frobisher's letters to his lover while she investigates corruption at a nuclear power plant.

Luisa's story ends up as a manuscript in the hands of publisher Timothy Cavendish (Broadbent) in present day England, where Cavendish is fleeing unhappy clients only to end up trapped in an old folks' home. His story is eventually made into a movie that transfixes Sonmi-451 (Bae), a clone in Neo Seoul in 2144, who is whisked from her regimented life by a freedom fighter (Sturgess) with the intention of using her as a figurehead and catalyst for social upheaval in the corporatocracy they live in. And finally there is Zachry (Hanks), whose people worship Sonmi in a post-apocalyptic 2321.

As you can likely guess, jumping back and forth between these tales is disconcerting, distracting and disruptive. Despite the best efforts of the directors and their editor, Cloud Atlas struggles to maintain momentum or allow an ongoing connection with the characters.

It does allow the film to play up the links that run through the segments though, which are tied together by ideas about past lives, reincarnation, and an undying spirit of survival and determination that runs through humanity, as well as themes of prejudice, love, regret, redemption, freedom, and oppression.

It's these ideals and concepts that give Cloud Atlas a depth that may come to be appreciated over multiple viewings (if you can handle the 172-minute running time). Moments fly by, narratives are set aside almost randomly, and the individual vernacular and style of each story thread can take some time to adjust to, particularly Zachry's post-apocalyptic tale, which is told in a pidgin English that is a struggle to follow at times. But going back to soak it in again and again could make this film a rich experience that rewards over time - it's likely this is destined for cult status.

Watching it first time through, however, will leave many cold. It's scattershot approach is distancing, despite the best efforts of the cast, who appear in multiple roles though some ingenious make-up work, further highlighting the links between the different time periods, albeit in an occasionally distracting and slightly confusing way.

There's a lot to like about Cloud Atlas and the effort to adapt Mitchell's novel should be applauded. Unfortunately it doesn't quite fit together - it's big ideas and ambitious plotting fly by at the expense of having an engaging story that builds emotion and connects to an audience.

Ultimately, it's a scattershot film that courageously tries to incorporate as much of the novel as possible, only to find it doesn't translate well from the page.