Pacific Rim

(M) ★★

Director: Guillermo Del Toro.

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini.

"What have I told you about getting your Transformers wet?"

Guillermo Del Toro's Godzilla Vs Transformers - sorry, Pacific Rim - is both as dumb and as awesome as you'd expect.

It's dumb because it's about giant monsters fighting giant robots. But it's awesome because, well, it's about giant monsters fighting giant robots.

The set-up is done with applaudable efficiency in the first five minutes. Enormous creatures called kaiju have come to Earth via a portal deep under the Pacific Ocean and have been wreaking Mothra-style havoc on cities for a number of years.

In order to defeat the beasts, world leaders decided to build jaegers - ie. giant robots - to fight back. They are piloted by two humans who are mentally linked by something called "the drift" and control the machine like two synced-up puppeteers sitting inside the robot's head.

All seemed to be going well in the battle to save humanity until the attacks became more prevalent, the kaiju got bigger, the jaeger program became too expensive, and now we look doomed.

Admirably, Pacific Rim is not about the arrival of the monsters and the need to build these giant robots. It drops us into the thick of it - we get our first kaiju/jaeger fight in a matter of minutes, so Del Toro at least knows what people going to this movie want to see.

There is no tedious build-up, and very little in the way of a Jaws-like approach to the monsters or the mecha. Just a barrage of Cloverfield-type beasties punching on with Optimus Prime's big brothers.

But what happens between rounds in this hyper-heavyweight fight? Well, that's where Pacific Rim suffers and, as a result, so does the audience.

Surprisingly, the biggest problem is the cast. While admittedly most of the dialogue is exposition, the script isn't total rubbish, but some actors handle it much better than others.

Rinko Kikuchi is the best and acquits herself well as the jaeger pilot-wannabe, desperate for revenge but traumatised by her past. Idris Elba is okay despite getting the hammiest lines possible as the jaeger program commander, and ditto for Del Toro regular Ron Perlman as a blackmarket crimelord, but from there it really drops off.

Charlie Hunnam, who is the star of the show despite being so terrible as the lead in Frankie Go Boom and The Ledge, is stilted and utterly uncharismatic, while the "comedy" pairing of Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as the constantly sparring kaiju researchers seems to be a moronic competition to see who can go the furthest over the top without getting a laugh.

And then there's Robert Kazinsky and Max Martini as Chuck and Herc Hanson, the two Australian jaeger pilots. Not only are their performances rubbish, but they use two of the most hideous Australian accents since The Simpsons came down under.

With all this dire dialogue and bad acting, it's a relief when the monsters and robots start thumping the radioactive snot out of each other.

The special effects are nothing short of astounding, by the way. I know we take these kind of things for granted these days, but there is some seriously impressive CG work here.

Sure, most of the battles take place at night, in the rain or underwater in order to hide the seams, and occasionally Del Toro's camerawork has the same problem as Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen in that it gets too close to the action so you can't actually tell what the hell is going on, but when it pulls back and shows these two leviathans duking it out, it's glorious to behold.

But that is about all Pacific Rim has going for it. Even Del Toro's usually visual stylings, so distinctive and sumptuous in Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies, is almost totally absent. Only a small section of the film revolving around Perlman's character Chau bears the signature glow and style of Del Toro.

If you expect nothing more than monsters fighting giant robots, you'll love Pacific Rim. If you were hoping for something more from Del Toro, at least there are monsters fighting giant robots.

Man Of Steel

(M) ★★

Director: Zack Snyder.

Cast: Henry Cavill, Michael Shannon, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne.

"What a beautiful day. Be a shame if someone were to destroy it in a blizzard of CGI."

FOR DC Comics, there is a lot on the line with this reboot of the Superman saga.

If Man Of Steel flies like a bird or a plane, it will open the door for DC's own shared universe, which they hope will rival Marvel's ongoing Avengers' adventures.

Bad luck, DC. Man Of Steel sinks like a massive chunk of kryptonite.

It's ambitious, yes, grandiose, yes, and sure to be a hit at the box office, but in almost all other aspects, it is a $225 million turkey.

This rebirth of Superman, which literally begins with the birth of Superman, retells the story many of us know and love - the alien child, sent to Earth just before the destruction of his homeworld Krypton, raised by the kindly Kents of Kansas, and growing into a near-invulnerable superhero.

The twist in this version, as compared to Richard Donner's 1978 groundbreaker, is an attempt to imbue with the story of Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent with deeper themes and a more realistic look at the implications his arrival would have. It also ramps up the Christ allegory and picks at the relationship Superman has with humanity.

It's all part of the "Nolanisation" of Krypton's favourite son. Having turned DC's other heavy-hitter - Batman - into a real world concern with a dark edge, Christopher Nolan was attached to this project in the hopes he would help do the same with Superman.

It doesn't work. Man Of Steel comes off as utterly humourless, pompous, melodramatic, dumbed-down, repetitive, and even sporadically boring.

The film makes similar mistakes to that other DC bomb Green Lantern - it tells us everything we need to know in the first act, only to tell us everything again when the main character needs to find out. More editing is badly needed.

And while they were undertaking some more judicious editing of the first half, the filmmakers could have done away with the frustrating non-linear storytelling. Not only is it annoying to have the story jump back and forth between Clark's childhood, his teenage years and his nomadic adulthood, but it continually breaks the emotional flow of the film. Much of that heart comes from a nice turn by Costner as Clark's dad Jonathan, but the fractured storyline gets in the way of the audience connection with him.

Worse than this is the dialogue, which almost entirely falls into one of three categories - "Now I must explain my actions", "This is what just happened" or "This is what's about to happen". There is no subtlety, nobody talks like a real person, and the characters don't develop naturally, if at all.

This dumbing-down goes for the grandiose themes of the film as well, which are boiled down to infuriating obviousness, giving the audience no credit what-so-ever.

And I never thought I'd get sick of explosions and destruction in a movie, but I finally found my limit. It came with about 20 minutes left to go in the film - I actually sighed with relief when the final confrontation was over. And I've seen Roland Emmerich's 2012.

It's all a shame because the cast is great. Cavill makes for a great Superman/Kal-El/Clark, capturing that mix of nobility and humility that Christopher Reeve nailed. Shannon is menacing as Zod, Crowe brings gravitas as Jor-El, and Costner and Lane work well. Only Adams, as Lois Lane, feels out of place, but poor writing hampers her more than anyone.

Are there highlights aside from the cast? Some of the fight sequences are quite good before they become numbing, and the flashbacks, despite being jarringly scattered throughout the film, are nicely done. Snyder makes the film look good, particularly in the flashbacks.

These are slight redemptions. And maybe with really low expectations this will have a brainless charm to it. Maybe this is exactly the Superman movie some of the comic book fans have been waiting for.

But for all its ambition, this Man Of Steel fails to soar, instead crashlanding in a humourless, melodramatic mess of explosions.

The Wolverine

(M) ★★★

Director: James Mangold.

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Haruhiko Yamanouchi, Hiroyuki Sanada, Will Yun Lee, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Famke Janssen.

Lovely day for it.

THE X-Men movies generally fall into two distinct categories - the good and the awful.

In the former column is X-Men, X2, and First Class. In the latter; The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The Wolverine is the first to land right in the middle.

For much of its running time, it transplants the blade-bearing hairball to Japan, making for an interesting juxtaposition.

Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman) finds himself embroiled in an intriguing family struggle after old acquaintance Yashida (Yamanouchi) requests the clawed mutant visit him on his deathbed. Soon Wolverine's on the run with Yashida's daughter Mariko (Okamoto) from the Yakuza while trying to figure who's trying to kill who and why.

Ordinarily this would be a cinch for the effectively indestructible mutant, but Logan's superhuman healing powers are mysteriously out of action.

The sixth outing in mutton chops for Jackman (counting his brilliant one-line cameo in First Class) is engaging on a few levels. It features the usually invulnerable Wolverine at his most vulnerable, it captures an emotional insight into his torment at Jean Grey's death in The Last Stand, and it uses the mutant-as-prejudice metaphor of the X-Men series and turns it into a way to look at being a westerner in Japan.

The Japanese backdrop is also a nice point of difference from the rest of the series - it has a look all its own, and the fights embrace a frenetic samurais-and-ninjas style.

The problem is the film says "sayonara" to these strengths - and its sanity - as it hits the last act. The plot unravels with alarming speed, characters quickly change allegiances or entire codes of honour in a heartbeat, and the whole thing devolves into a generic smash-'em-up battle.

This battle sees the introduction of villains Silver Samurai and Viper, who prove to be unsatisfying and uneven. Hardcore fans of the comics will add these to the list of characters the series has failed to do justice to (alongside Deadpool, Juggernaut, Banshee, Gambit, etc).

The effects-heavy final battle feels like it has beamed in from another, less-interesting movie that lacks the grace, intrigue and culture of the first two acts.

Having said that, the first two acts are not without their flaws, such as when Logan criticises a woman's fiance for being adulterous, right after Logan has slept with the woman. There is also a perpetual run-and-chase quality to the middle section, although this is softened by some nice intimate moments and a rather cool battle atop a bullet train.

The major positive is that at least it's better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Last Stand. Sadly it goes no further than that.

Monsters University

(G) ★★★

Director: Dan Scanlon.

Cast: (voices of) Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren.

Mike was just minutes away from being used as a hackysack.

AMID the heavy hitters of Pixar's back catalogue, Monsters, Inc. is the under-rated gem.

Often unfairly overlooked compared to the Toy Story trilogy, Up, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, the tale of scare-mongering duo Sully and Mike Wazowski was a wildly original, creative, hilarious and surprisingly touching comedy caper.

This is why it pains me so much to say this prequel is a major disappointment. Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible film - it's still mildly enjoyable - but it feels so stock standard and flat compared to its dazzling predecessor.

As the title suggest, Monsters University covers Mike and Sully's college years, where Mike is the dedicated student following his dream of becoming a scarer and Sully is the naturally talented slacker expecting to coast through his degree.

A rivalry develops between the two, leading to college head Dean Hardscrabble (Mirren) kicking them out of their scaring course.

The only way to get back into the course is through a foolhardy bet between Mike and Hardscrabble - if Mike, Sully and their geeky fraternity can win the inter-fratenity competition known as the Scary Games, they can return to the scaring course. If they lose, they're out of Monsters University for good.

If all this sounds familiar, it's because the plot plays like a lazy mash-up of "college romp" movies such as Animal House and Revenge Of The Nerds.

The typical college life provides plenty of opportunity for the monsterised sight gags of Monsters, Inc., but again, it feels all too easy. Even the Scary Games feels like a tired trope despite being transplanted into Mike and Sully's world.

The silly sight gags are what is likely to keep the kids entertained because the plot appears aimed at an older audience, ie. one that grew up watching Monsters, Inc. and is now at college. This might make it a cult hit at universities, which is strange for a G-rated movie and makes you wonder if Pixar have completely missed their target on this one.

On the upside, the charms of Mike and Sully, voiced by Crystal and Goodman, that make this mildly enjoyable. Pixar have always been smart enough to realise that making the players more than just pixels is the secret to success, and here we get some heart and soul between Mike and Sully and the rest of their fraternity of misfits.

They all get some good lines, especially Crystal, and there are a few really solid gags and an endless array of adult-aimed nudges.

Best of all is the final act, when the film finally stops being a college collage and heads into intriguing territory. That's where Monsters University finally becomes surprising and interesting.

But it's almost too little, too late. The film predominantly coasts along a slacker student, doing only just enough to get by.

Of course, kids aren't going to mind. This will probably serve as their introduction to the college movie, and in years to come they may realise what Monsters University was riffing on, but in the meantime, it's likely most of it will fly over their heads.

Pixar have played with pre-established genres before, whether it be subverting the superhero ideal (the brilliant The Incredibles) or going weird on the spy movie (the misfire Cars 2).

But this dabble with the college romp feels stale and lazy, and only gets across the line thanks to nostalgic goodwill and some decent gags.

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.