Having caught a documentary before seeing the film on the real-life story that underlines this tale, it only hints at the depravity and manipulation that took place. Everyone has an agenda and they are all completely self-serving. The acting is also gloriously overstated and perfectly suits this fable of overindulgence. Lady Gaga is particularly adaptable at this excess.

There is entertainment to be had in several ways. It’s a lot of fun to catch the scenes that mirror some of the actor’s major meme moments, like Al Pacino’s famous Fredo declaration. Keeping the score of the actors dropping the faux accents is also very amusing. I’m looking at you AP. The ridiculousness of this level of entitlement pales in comparison to the actual reality of the super-rich.

Great art House Of Gucci is not but very entertaining it is and who doesn’t need an indulgent guilty pleasure right about now. On and by the way, those lost decades are calling and they want their fashion and hairstyles back.

Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/UniversalPicturesAU/

Spanning three decades of love, betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately murder, we see what a name means, what it’s worth, and how far a family will go for control.

House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Jack Huston, with Salma Hayek and Al Pacino, and will be released in Australian cinemas New Year’s Day!

www.facebook.com/UniversalPicturesAU/

Spanning three decades of love, betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately murder, we see what a name means, what it’s worth, and how far a family will go for control.

House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Jack Huston, with Salma Hayek and Al Pacino, and will be released in Aussie cinemas November 25!
www.facebook.com/UniversalPicturesAU/

Jennifer Lawrence delivers her bravest performance yet and adds another outstanding job to her ever expanding resume of excellence. As an actor, she endures almost as much pain and shows as much commitment as her character does on screen.

The film slowly builds and builds, so viewers looking for that quick visceral thrill might have to look elsewhere but for those that revel in playing arm chair detective themselves, will find much to love as the clues unfold. When the final reveal comes it makes you reassess all that has come before.

Red Sparrow harkens back to a time when you could challenge an audience’s intelligence and detective skills before attention spans recessed and action became the dominant form for spy movies. All this psychological action and not a martini, shaken or stirred in sight.

Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/RedSparrowMovie

Elsewhere, Jason Momoa is actually able to make the Aquaman character seem cool and fast forwarding Wonder Woman’s arc allows Gal Gadot to act more naturally. It’s still at heart a comic book movie and this finds everything in overdrive, even the final battle is so over the top as to defy description. The CGI graphics are more moody and less photorealistic than other franchises and this gives the film its own look and feel.

One of the few minor letdowns is in the character of the Big Bad and without giving away too much, they are just a bit too generic. The balance between the recruitment and formation of the Justice League is finely sequenced but the final reel and its big battle is the film’s least successful element.

Also be warned DC has now fully jumped on the Marvel bandwagon and make sure to stay until the very end so as not to miss the coda at the end of the credits.

Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/JusticeLeagueOfficial

Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.

JUSTICE LEAGUE is directed by Zack Snyder and stars Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Henry Cavill, Jeremy Irons, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, J.K. Simmons.

JUSTICE LEAGUE releases in Australian cinemas on November 16, 2017!
www.facebook.com/JusticeLeagueOfficial

Arthur Curry aka Aquaman

Barry Allen aka The Flash

Victor Stone aka Cyborg

Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman

Bruce Wayne aka Batman

But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.

JUSTICE LEAGUE is directed by Zack Snyder and stars Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Henry Cavill, Jeremy Irons, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, J.K. Simmons.

JUSTICE LEAGUE releases in Australian cinemas on November 16, 2017.
www.facebook.com/JusticeLeagueOfficial

A devoted daughter determined to protect her mother at all costs. A prima ballerina whose ferocity has pushed her body and mind to the absolute limit. A master of seductive and manipulative combat.

When she suffers a career-ending injury, Dominika and her mother are facing a bleak and uncertain future. That is why she finds herself manipulated into becoming the newest recruit for Sparrow School, a secret intelligence service that trains exceptional young people like her to use their bodies and minds as weapons.

After enduring the perverse and sadistic training process, she emerges as the most dangerous Sparrow the program has ever produced. Dominika must now reconcile the person she was with the power she now commands, with her own life and everyone she cares about at risk, including an American CIA agent who tries to convince her he is the only person she can trust.

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeremy Irons, Mary- Louise Parker and Charlotte Rampling, Red Sparrow is in Cinemas March 1, 2018

www.facebook.com/RedSparrowMovie

The Man Who Knew Infinity stars Jeremy Irons, Dev Patel, Stephen Fry and Toby Jones and is based on the incredible biography by Robert Kanigel. The Man Who Knew Infinity tells the amazing true story of self-taught mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Dev Patel stars alongside Jeremy Irons in a film that explores the brilliance of a man many believe could decipher the very fabric of the universe and possibly existence itself. Driven by his destiny for a greater calling, Ramanujan’s (Patel) life was turned upside down when Cambridge professor G.H. Hardy (Irons) discovered his talents and plucked him from obscurity in his homeland of India.

The pair would go on to become unlikely friends and make up one of history’s most bewildering and productive collaborations, working on the most complex problems known to man, with much of his works still relevant in maths and science today.

www.facebook.com/TheManWhoKnewInfinityMovie/

Competition will be drawn 04 May 2016, winners will be notified by mail.

With Batman versus Superman, however, it’s not quite so easy to see the conflict as they are both clearly on the ‘hero’ side of the equation. But director, Zack Snyder, does a reasonable job of pulling this together by tapping into a problem that many viewers had with his prior film, Man of Steel.

Batman, like many of us, heavily resents the heavy public toll resulting from Superman’s urban clash with General Zod. This is understandable but when Batman determines to kill Superman in response, whoah, that’s a whole different level again and Snyder never quite convinces why two honourable superheroes would wish to assassinate each other. Not even a zero tolerant Megacity judge with a penchant for police brutality went there!

In contrast with popular opinion, it seems, I quite like what Snyder is attempting with the Superman tale. It’s a fascinating prospect to put this extra terrestrial Man of Steel into a contemporary setting and look at how, in all likelihood, the public would react to an alien with almost limitless power. In messianic fashion, some would surely revere this figure, but the bulk would treat him with suspicion and fear of what he could do to us were he to turn ‘rogue’.

This is very close to the line Christopher Nolan took with his Batman films, of course, (and it’s notable that Nolan is a producer of Snyder’s Superman films) but Snyder is not the storyteller that Nolan is and the result is a Superman film that is grubbier than even Nolan’s Batman. Indeed, Snyder’s rendering of the Batfleck is just plain nasty and psychotic as he steamrolls through Gotham, branding criminals with his hot iron knuckle batdusters. Snyder has taken Nolan’s balanced grubbiness – and Watchmen-ified it. Substitute Superman for Mr Manhattan and Batman for Rorschach and you pretty much have it.

But while this tone may be passable in Gotham, it sits a little less comfortably with Metropolis. Superman is a messiah figure and dragging him through a Gotham-like quagmire of corruption and dishonour besmirches his brand to its detriment. It’s an uneasy and uncomfortable mix for our Kryptonian white knight and Snyder only narrowly gets away with it.

On the whole, I quite like Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, (I even saw it twice) but I like it more for the ideas that Snyder is attempting to relate rather than his success in reaching that goal.

Stuart Jamieson
www.batmanvsuperman.dccomics.com