Opinion Road

★★★★☆ Quentin Tarrantino can still make solid films. Christoph Waltz, who was mesmorisingly good in Inglourious Basterds, also commands your attention in this one. Jamie Foxx is brilliantly cast, insomuch as his inability to match Waltz’s acting talent is well masked by good direction. Unlike Tarrantino’s other work, Django follows a single storyline and doesn’t [...]

“Well rounded” doesn’t even start to describe this movie. Jackie Weaver’s much-celebrated role as the matriarch of large family of criminally-inclined ‘boys’ is not the award winning role that the movie’s PR company has decided to promote, but her role is pivotal and mesmerizing. Ben Mendelsen, Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton and newcomer James Frecheville excel themselves in their roles and a dysfunctional and yet highly effective armed robbery team (of sorts). “Team” kind of overstates the organic nature of their level of organisation, as you’ll see.

4½ / 5 stars

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams do a stellar job. See it with someone you love.

4½/5 stars

Cold (literally), suspensful, gritty and harsh. A story told with such a sense of honesty and sympathetic and balanced pace that you wonder where the hour and a half went.

4½/5 stars

Great to watch, but certainly not a good ‘date night’ for you and your brain. Whilst there’s a fairly heavy expectation placed upon the watcher to know something about the original story, it was probably fairly thin in the first place, so this installation feels [curiously and perhaps aptly] just like another frame of a meaningless, albeit visually stimulating and interactive, console game.

3/5 stars

Downey Jr puts in a solid performance (not exemplary though) and Galifianakis puts in his usual curious and comfortably ‘wrong’ repartee. Whilst the movie is well paced and general curious (though not hilarious), the director or writer seems confused about what he wants it to be – a comedy, a drama or a romp – complete Ultimately it’s fairly well balanced mix of the three.

3 / 5 stars

Never under the influence of white spirits (.. shall I rent a movie again) With a score of 5.3/10 from IMDB and an inclination towards action and sci-fi, I thought this might fill my needs.  Oh, how wrong I was. Vin Diesel never has never had a great screen presence, especially when he’s the star [...]

An Australian Drama by Matthew Saville Contemplative, honest and direct – so subtle in places, you really have to work at it.   The kind of movie about which you don’t immediately make your mind up. Plot (source): The community reels after an incident on a suburban train. A young cop, beset with doubt and [...]