Jones’ relentless pursuit of the truth leads to explosive findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation’s top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a brutal secret from the American public.

THE REPORT is written and directed by Scott Z. Burns and features outstanding performances by a powerful cast led by Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm. Sarah Goldberg, Michael C. Hall, Douglas Hodge, Fajer Kaisi, Ted Levine, Jennifer Morrison, Tim Blake Nelson, Linda Powell, Matthew Rhys, T. Ryder Smith, Corey Stoll, and Maura Tierney complete the powerful ensemble that brings this essential story to life.

The Report will be released in Australian cinemas November 14!
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They get to ply their trade delivering a script that doesn’t have a mean bone in its body. It’s quite refreshing to experience a comedy that doesn’t resort to the usual snide and put down ethos that seem to dominate the current crop of movie comedies.

The set up is certainly silly. Overweight high school geek returns as super buff superman CIA agent (who loves the film Sixteen Candles) and reunites with the only fellow student that treated him with any decency. Together they reconnect and save the world, of course!

Few comedies of recent memory have been this funny while also being this sweet. It was also cool to see Aaron Paul drop in the Breaking Bad phrase while playing the bad guy.

Rob Hudson
www.centralintelligencemovie.com.au

Thankfully such scepticism is unfounded as Ritchie’s rebirth of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a solid cracker! It shows Ritchie back on key and looking like the kind of director who would be capable of pulling off something as cool and snappy as Lock Stock.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was conceived in the mid sixties as a kind of 007 for TV, indeed Ian Fleming himself was involved in the programme’s conception. Its likeness to Connery-era Bond is clear and Ritchie does a superlative job in recreating that. He packs his film with sass and suits and fashion and fantastic locations that typify the era; by turns beautifully photographed in noirish light and shadow and garish blinding polyester colours. The plot twists and turns through its interwoven appropriate jazz score, tinged with just a hint of suave sex and sleaze.

Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer and Alicia Vikander make a fantastic 3, unlikely allies sparring with each other through the twisty plot to out a villain threatening the welfare of the world with (of course) a nuclear bomb.

Cavill is suave as hell as American agent, Napoleon Solo, finding a more comfortable niche outside the Man of Steel. Hammer has not been this good since he came to prominence in Fincher’s The Social Network. His Illya Kuryakin’s barely restrained, iron clad pent up Soviet rage could explode at any moment and periodically does. But the most fun is Vikander’s play against type. Having made a name for herself as an uppity type in A Royal Affair, here she’s the mechanic’s daughter pretending to be posh and she’s a delight. The performances from all three stars are great; their dialogue delivery is funny, deadpan, and the comic timing is spot on.

Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is the best Bond film we’ve seen in many a year.

Stuart Jamieson
www.manfromuncle.com

Feig may have inadvertently stumbled upon McCarthy’s limitations, however, as his star is strangely the least funny character for at least the first half of the movie. This is because for the first half of the film McCarthy is playing the ‘nice girl’ and ‘nice’ McCarthy just isn’t very funny. Fear not, though, when Rose Byrne’s villain enters the picture, McCarthy gets a sparring partner and enters ‘hard arse’ mode and hard arse McCarthy is very funny indeed.

In the comedic void that is the first half of the film, the best comedic performance surprisingly comes from action star, Jason Statham, reminding us of his big screen debut in Guy Richie’s popular and funny Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s a welcome return to comedy for Statham; a turn that we’ll hopefully see more of amidst his well established action career. But Statham features only sporadically throughout the film so in the absence of any solid comedy in the first half, it makes for a fairly pedestrian opener.

Performances from the rest of the cast which include Jude Law, Allison Janney (strangely uncredited), Miranda Hart and Morena Baccarin are merely adequate and add little to the comedy quotient.

Spy is an uneven comedy. While all the cylinders may fire at one time or other, they never fire together. It’s as if there were a ‘funny stick’ being passed around the set preventing more than one character being funny at any given time. This combined with a lack of a binding spiritual soul (which made Bridesmaids so successful) means that there’s little in Spy to be emotionally engaged with.

Stuart Jamieson
 www.foxmovies.com

He’s too… nice. Even when he’s playing a bad guy he’s almost impossible to dislike, and that’s why I dislike him. And his films are usually vehicles to show us how nice he is (even when he’s a bad guy). So I was expecting very little from Safe House, which is what makes it so surprising.

The first indicator that Safe House may not be as asinine as it first appears is the impressive cast that also includes Ryan Reynolds, Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, Sam Shepard and Robert Patrick. Sure they’re all in carbon copy roles that we’ve seen in a multitude of other films but their mere presence adds gravitas to their formulaic parts. Reynolds in particular stands out. His desk jockey who spontaneously transforms into a super CIA agent when thrown in the deep end is rather incredulous but Reynolds carries it well. And even Washington isn’t all that bad.

The intense action sequences come thick, fast and soon; arriving in just the right frequency to hold us on the edge of our seats throughout, right up to its fairly predictable and impossibly neat conclusion. Good undemanding fun.

Stuart Jamieson
www.nooneissafe.com

Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Mary-Louise Parker and Bruce Willis reprise their roles from the previous film and this time they’re joined by Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Asian action star, Byung-hun Lee. As the central and most-grounded character, Willis is almost boring; instead the flash and colour is supplied by the peripheral characters and, as before, Mary-Louise Parker remains the heart and soul of the film

The plot? It has something to do with a weapon of mass destruction but really who cares about the plot! We just want to see Ms Mirren with a sniper rifle and a sly smile, a crazy-eyed Malkovich wielding explosives and unique hats and Parker’s crooked smile. On this score, Galaxy Quest director, Dean Parisot, delivers just about what is expected.

If you’ve seen and enjoyed the original Red then strap in as you’ll have fun with this one as well. It does follow the same tried and true formula as before and while there’s few surprises, it is still is a big bag of rollicking fun.

Stuart Jamieson
www.hopscotchfilms.com.au