Moviedex » star rating

Safe (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Mon, 21 May 2012 03:31:37 +0000

Safe is like a poor man’s Mercury Rising – a film I never thought I’d reference, let alone compare favourably to anything. Ugly in both sentiment and style, it stars the undiscerning Jason Statham (The Bank Job) as an ex-cop, hit-man, cage-fighter, hobo and – why not – trash collector who’s forced to take on a cocktail of Manhattan’s scummiest scumbags in order to protect the life of an eleven-year [...]

Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:19:03 +0000

Comparisons between Trainspotting and Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy are inevitable, appropriate and a total disservice to the former.

Both films are set in the Scottish narcotics scene. Both are based on novels by Irwine Welsh. Both open with self-reflective narration from a thickly-accented protagonist, and both see him searching for drugs in his own faeces before the first twenty minutes are up. And yet everything that was fresh and exciting about Trainspotting [...]

Dark Shadows (Video Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Sat, 12 May 2012 04:26:24 +0000

Every few years on Halloween’s eve, somewhere between a sharp crack of thunder and a wolf’s longing howl, Tim Burton phones Johnny Depp to ominously announce:

“It is time.”

“Right,” Depp sombrely replies, “I’ll start applying the makeup.”

This is the unofficial story of how Burton and Depp’s eight collaborations have come to pass, the first being the broodingly brilliant Edward Scissorhands, and the latest being the broodingly not-so-brilliant-but-still-entertaining Dark Shadows.

Based on a [...]

Rebellion [L’orde et la morale] (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:00:33 +0000

After a couple of serious Hollywood misfires in the form of Gothika and Babylon A.D., Matthieu Kassovitz’s first French language film in over a decade is a tense, troubling and highly politicized return to form. Set during a guerrilla uprising in the French colony of New Caledonia that took place the late nineteen eighties, Rebellion [L’orde et la morale] stars Kassovitz himself as an experienced hostage negotiator and Special [...]

The Five-Year Engagement (Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Sun, 06 May 2012 15:24:41 +0000

Super-producer Judd Apatow and his creative minions have given the romantic comedy a much needed shakeup in recent years, embracing humour of a more raunchy and irreverent variety while also pasteurising the classic formula with a welcome degree of sincerity. Still, if last year’s Bridesmaids is any indication, Apatow’s rom-com recipe has yet to be perfected, the film’s serious and silly elements struggling to meld into [...]

Act of Valor (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Fri, 04 May 2012 02:38:43 +0000

Every time I think American action films can’t get any more ludicrously jingoistic, Hollywood goes and proves me wrong. Act of Valor, a production over which the US Navy had final cut, made me yearn for the nuanced screenwriting of Battleship, the moderate politics of Transformers 3 and the versatility and range of Sam Worthington and Taylor Kitsch. A twelve million-dollar military recruitment ad tailor-made for the videogame [...]

The Avengers (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:29:08 +0000

After years of development and no less than five quasi-prequels later – Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America – Marvel’s superhero slumber party The Avengers arrives with expectations no mere mortal could possibly meet. But writer/director Joss Whedon is no mere mortal; he’s the geek deity responsible for TV’s Buffy and Firefly, and not only does his Avengers satisfy expectations, it [...]

Wish You Were Here (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:40:06 +0000

A montage of colour and sound, of wide smiles, street vendors and beach parties that stretch long in to the night, Wish You Were Here’s opening credit sequence captures exactly why it is that Australian tourists go to South East Asia to lose themselves. Sometimes, however, it’s a more literal disappearance than others. Centred around four friends on holiday in Cambodia who return home one man short, the first film [...]

The Lucky One (Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:20:42 +0000

There’s scarcely enough substance to Scott Hicks’ cloying romantic drama The Lucky One to pad out a short poem, let alone a feature film. As a stock-standard story of love and loss, it’s of little surprise that the film is a product of the fluff factory known as Nicholas Sparks, the prolific yet formulaic novelist of swoon-fiction hits like The Notebook and A Walk To Remember. Technically, The Lucky One [...]

Battleship (Video Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:30:48 +0000

If you can look past the fact that Peter Berg’s Battleship is based on a board game, well, you’re doing better than me. It’s just so ridiculous! I mean, at what point when playing with a bunch of white and red pegs do you stop and think: “Wait a minute, there’s a bazillion-dollar movie in this! Quick, get Liam Neeson on the line!”

But instead of trying to look past the [...]