Terminator: Salvation Movie Review
Like the make up job on Sam Worthington's exposed Terminator face, the film as a whole is patchy at best. Though there are plentiful nods to the previous films which will keep some diehard fans happy, some of the references (like recurrent sound bites, for instance) are laugh-out-loud cheesy. Abundant cheddar is also evident in the adoption of styles, shots and sequences that unashamedly resonate other (notably better) films: Aliens, Transformers, Mad Max (there's even a weird, mute kid - ...
Karnivool – Asymmetry Album Review
The new long player Asymmetry more than lives up to those expectations with its expansive take on progressive rock.
The work screams with passion when the mood strikes but also whispers with precision. The band creates a musical world with all the bombast and idiosyncratic behaviour that marks the best in the genre. It’s minute attention to detail also gives clues to the band’s less than vast recorded output.
It’s a dense work that is best left to wash over you as it reveals ...
Monsters University Movie Review
So it is that Monsters University arrives with much anticipation. The sequel has some mighty shoes to fill and sadly it falls some way short as it is surprisingly bereft of new ideas. What is presented here is simply a ‘further adventures of Mike and Sully’ film that could easily have gone straight to DVD.
The film channels the frat movies of the eighties. While that seems like such a great idea in theory, the potential remains largely unrealised here. Taking most of its cues from ...
Toy Story 1 & 2 (in 3D) Movie Review
I remember feeling a little like this the first time I saw Toy Story: the amazement that somehow a computer had created these textured colourful creatures that emoted and cavorted through such a beautifully detailed world. It's worth remembering that the first film came out nearly 15 years ago, when the top of the line Power Macintosh boasted a head spinning 120Mhz CPU and 16 Mib of RAM! (Of course Pixar used racks of Sun Sparkstations to actually render the movies, but you get my point.)...
Alice In Wonderland Movie Review
This vivid approach isn’t just limited to the visuals either. The landscapes and creatures are integral to a story that also expands the mind. One thinks that the story’s original author Lewis Carroll might have gotten hold of some of the Blue Caterpillar’s best stash before pen was put to paper.
Australian actor Mia Wasikowska as Alice, starts out as a dour young girl sent off to marry a man she doesn’t love and through the magic of the story becomes a luminous woman ready to ...
A Million Ways To Die In The West Movie Review
The biggest obstacle the film fails to overcome is in one of its lead castings as writer/director Seth MacFarlane is a very average actor and his role is not helped at all by the awkwardness of the writing. MacFarlane’s take on a modern day intellectual being able to deal with the brutal ways of the early American west ends up falling very flat. The rest of the actors are well cast but head bad guy Liam Neeson is given very little to do.
It’s a sign of our conservative times that ...
Ted Movie Review
The surprises continue with the acting with Mark Wahlberg proving himself particularly adept at this style of raunchy comedy and his rapid-fire white-trash name recital is one of the film’s most laugh out loud moments. Ted, the CGI created teddy bear voiced by MacFarlane himself also defies simple categorization by being both offensive and inviting at the same time.
Elsewhere taste is stretched to the absolute limit and this nothing off limits approach is refreshing in its disregard to ...
Tedeschi Trucks Band – Made Up Mind Album Review
With the amazing talent pool in the Tedeschi Trucks Band, one could be forgiven for thinking it would result in music aimed squarely at fellow musicians. Made Up Mind sidesteps this concern most spectacularly.
It’s an earthy workout with band co-leader Susan Tedeschi delivering just the right amount of grits and gravy in her vocals while husband and Allman Brothers Band alumni Derek Trucks spits fire when it’s completely appropriate while laying out and comping extremely tasty fills ...
Senna Movie Review
His career also ran parallel to the dawn of the new media age pertaining to live sport, so his life was very well documented visually, so well in fact that the film is built entirely from actual footage from his career, while a large part of the film’s dialogue comes from Senna himself.
It’s a masterful job of blending archival footage, spoken snippets from Ayrton himself and comments from some media experts that knew him well. There is also family footage that nicely places the ...
Yagull – Films Album Review
This sunny Sunday morning that perfect aural pleasure is Films by Yagull. The group, the project of composer/guitarist Sasha Markovic blends beautiful acoustic instrumentation with forward thinking arrangements and playing.
Don’t let the acoustic tag impact your mindset on this either, for there is as much power in these grooves as a Marshall stack on 11, it’s just more cerebral and only slightly less physical. There is also a superb use of space that allows the listeners to add ...
