He escapes to Las Vegas for a bachelor’s party where he strays from the missus and hooks up with Val (Hilary Swank) for a night between the sheets. He gets an inkling of her crazy in the morning but escapes relatively unscathed. That is until he runs into her again when his house is broken into and she turns out to the detective assigned to the case.

Thus begins a cat and mouse game where Val gets to unleash some seriously deranged activities that are all geared towards manipulating Derrick into her evil plans. The film highlights style over believability and never lets you leave its fantasy world of flash clothes, fast cars, expensive lifestyles, and beautiful people.

It also overstrains your sense of disbelief. It tries from time to time to tether its activities in a world of reality but does so unsuccessfully. Best just to get lost in the hyper-cool of it all and enjoy its elaborate forward momentum. This is Fatal Attraction for the new generation and tries its best to overwhelm the audience with flash, not substance. But be assured that no rabbits were harmed in the making of this film.
Rob Hudson
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As he tries desperately to put the pieces together, he falls deeper into her trap, risking his family, his career, and even his life.

FATALE is a suspenseful and provocative psychological thriller and an unpredictable game of cat and mouse where one mistake can change your life.

Fatale will be released in Australian cinemas May 6!

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Hilary Swank plays Amelia with a strangely varying accent; it starts defined but subsequently slips from scene to scene. Her vocal coach must have taken a lot of smoking breaks during filming. Richard Gere as her svengali George Putnam also suffers from an elusive accent. The film relies on its spectacular flying footage to provide a heart and soul and at this it is impressive.

Putnam’s actual impact on certain parts of Amelia’s life is only hinted at and this could have provided some much needed detail. He in essence created in Amelia one of the world’s first corporate shills. There are a few brief scenes to demonstrate this (and they burst out of the film like a sly wink from Busby Berkeley) but that train of thought is never fully developed and it’s to the film determent.

It is always difficult to build suspense in a film when everyone knows the actual conclusion and unfortunately Amelia suffers from this more than most. In real life there were a number of thoughts about what actually contributed to her loss at sea and these aren’t event mentioned. Did Fred Noonan’s alcoholism contribute to it, did the rumour of the Japanese shooting her down have any validity, these questions and many more like them could have given her demise an aura of mystery, instead all we got was a dark screen with words saying she disappeared and no evidence was ever found.

Rob Hudson
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This tale of what came first, the chicken or the egg is an ideal project for the times. It will create dialogue and opinions and fill a much needed gap in new film releases. Seen as social commentary it is cutting, as entertainment, outrageous and as feminist propaganda, empowering. It does all this and still remains escapist especially in these isolationist times.

The idea of hunting humans for sport has been visited many times before on the big screen but never have the motivations for the hunt be so topical or timely. The current technology that allows our version of social media to have such power and create such pitfalls is very much of today. Its impact on the gestations of events in The Hunt is dramatic.

Seen at home on our brilliant big screens with their voluminous sound systems, The Hunt lacks nothing in visual or audio impact and with our almost insatiable appetite for bigger and better thrills, the timing couldn’t be any better. The enjoyment of the new is intoxicating and one that as things drag on will become more and more important. Good on Universal for not making us wait any longer.

Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/UniversalPicturesAU

Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don’t know where they are, or how they got there. They don’t know they’ve been chosen… for a very specific purpose … The Hunt.

In the shadow of a dark internet conspiracy theory, a group of elites gathers for the very first time at a remote Manor House to hunt ordinary Americans for sport. But the elites’ master plan is about to be derailed because one of The Hunted, Crystal (Betty Gilpin, GLOW), knows The Hunters’ game better than they do. She turns the tables on the killers, picking them off, one by one, as she makes her way toward the mysterious woman (two-time Oscar® winner Hilary Swank) at the center of it all.

From Jason Blum, the producer of Get Out and The Purge series, and Damon Lindelof, creator of the HBO series Watchmen and co-creator of the TV series Lost, comes a timely and provocative new satirical thriller that has already ignited a national conversation. Now, it’s time to decide for yourself.

The Hunt is written by Lindelof and his fellow Watchmen collaborator Nick Cuse and is directed by Craig Zobel (Z for Zachariah, The Leftovers). Blum produces for his Blumhouse Productions alongside Lindelof. The film is executive produced by Zobel, Cuse and Steven R. Molen.

The Hunt will be released in Australian cinemas this April!
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It’s also a work of two parts and while the first half struggles a bit to find its footing, in the second half, things pick up nicely. As in all good caper yarns, things are not always as they seem and the work’s internal logic by film’s end is most satisfying. Soderbergh as is his way, loads the film with a heavy duty cast and it’s great to see Daniel Craig play against his usual screen persona as Joe Bang, a bleach blonde career criminal with a way with science.

Most will compare it to Soderbergh’s previous works but it’s hard to surpass the Clooney charm factor and so that suave sensibility is replaced with a more humorous approach and it doesn’t always fire on all cylinders. Some of the film’s characters are also not that clearly defined and this slows things down a bit in the first couple of reels.

It’s a welcome return for Soderbergh to the big screen and overall it’s a pleasant experience. Let’s hope his self exile doesn’t last and next time he tackles something with a little more meat on the bone.

Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/loganluckymovie/

But the conniving Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) decides its time to turn the family’s luck around, and with a little help from his friends, the Redneck Robbers, he plans to steal $14 million from the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Logan Lucky was directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Channing Tatum, Daniel Craig, Adam Driver, Hilary Swank, Seth MacFarlane, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston and Sebastian Stan. Logan Lucky releases in Australian cinemas on August 17, 2017.