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Win a double pass to a special advance screening of The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society!

admin — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 16:53:03 +0000

Thanks to the StudioCanal, we have five admit-two passes to a special special advance screening of The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society on Tuesday, April 10, 6:30PM at New Farm Cinema, Brisbane!

London, 1946. Juliet (Lily James), a charismatic and free-spirited writer, receives a letter from a member of a mysterious literary club started in Nazi-occupied Guernsey.

Her curiosity piqued, Juliet decides to visit the island. There she meets the delightfully eccentric members of the Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, including Dawsey (Michiel Huisman), the rugged and intriguing farmer who wrote her the letter.

As the secrets from their wartime past unfold, Juliet’s growing attachment to the island, the book club and her affection for Dawsey will change the course of her life forever.

To enter this great competition just fill in the entry form below. Please note – these tickets are for a specific screening only and can not be exchanged or refunded. The winners will need to be available on April 10 at 6:30pm in Brisbane to be able to attend this screening atNew Farm Cinema, Brisbane.
www.guernseymovie.com.au

[contact-form-7 id=”6201″ title=”The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society Competition Form”]

Competition will be drawn 6 April 2018, winners will be notified by email.

The Imitation Game Movie Reivew

admin — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 22:02:17 +0000

2001 saw the release of Enigma, a film about the titular Nazi encryption machine and more specifically about the legendary mathematician who was instrumental in cracking its code.

It had a high profile cast (for its time) in Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who would, later on become much more famous as a pivotal character in an obscenely popular medieval TV show. There’s a problem with Enigma, however and it’s the fact the filmmakers substituted the real-life homosexual mathematician, Alan Turing, for a fictional heterosexual mathematician named Thomas Jericho and indeed the story centres around his very heterosexual love affair. This incredible sleight against a significant historical figure is, in retrospect, offensive to say the least let alone the disappointment in reducing a highly intriguing historical event to a spy-chasing romance.

The Imitation Game seeks to correct this ‘reimagining’ and essentially succeeds in this goal. Sure, there is much licence taking for the purposes of spicing up the script (which is a little frustrating given the intrigue of the truth) but it hits the important notes and we emerge at the other end with the commensurate admiration and sympathy that Turing deserves.

Turing’s homosexuality is dealt with deftly. Critically, Turing kept his illicit sexuality secret and so does the film for a good deal of the proceedings, appropriately revealing it as it becomes critical to the story. It is never permitted to overshadow the significance of Turing’s mathematical genius yet it doesn’t resile from the personal cost of the injustice that his sexuality invites even if this chapter of the story is a little prone to melodrama.

The film remains compelling throughout, touching upon the important issues such as the official withholding of intelligence at the expense of innocent lives. Though these events are at times presented non-factually, the gravity of the issues are rightly felt nonetheless.

Ever since his turn in the Sherlock television programme, Benedict Cumberbatch has become a viewers’ darling and his excellent performance here will not endanger that status. Likewise, Keira Knightley is excellent as is Charles Dance and Mark Strong. Matthew Goode does what he can in a rather thankless role as fellow mathematician, Hugh Alexander.

The Imitation Game is not entirely authentic but it hits the right tone and canvases the appropriate issues and historical landmarks admirably in a compelling presentation.
Stuart Jamieson
www.theimitationgamemovie.com

Fury Movie Review

admin — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 11:13:39 +0000

“Ideals are peaceful – history is violent.”

It’s the cold hard truth of the matter, verbalised by hardened veteran, Don ‘Wardaddy’ Collier (Brad Pitt), in an effort to annul the peacenik ideals of Private Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist clerk ordered to serve behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany. And it is the thesis for the film as we follow the titular American war tank and its occupants: damaged, battle weary individuals jammed in the middle of history in the making; protecting the world against the Nazi threat at great personal cost to themselves.

The first half of the film lacks a driving plot. Like Full Metal Jacket before it, it operates as a window on war, illustrating interpersonal relationships amidst the tragic yet inevitable moral corruption that occurs within the armed forces as a consequence of what their job requires them to do. And it is a hypnotic, nail-biting experience.

The film does not resile one iota from graphic violence and the horrors of war and we, the audience, get a front seat view through the eyes of the pacifistic Private Norman. It’s plain to see that the fear of death is in everyone, even the tough guys and everyone has their own facade of denial, a mask that only slips when they think that no one is looking. It’s a most effective portrayal of battle of a kind seen in the opening moments of Saving Private Ryan.

While the first half of the film is supremely tense stuff, the tension is significantly diminished in the latter half of the film with the sudden and inexplicable introduction of a love interest for Private Norman – an emotive device seemingly introduced to explicitly (and superfluously) demonstrate the loss of war. But this element of the film is so brief and ham-fisted that it is devoid of any emotional punch. The pair literally meet, copulate and fall in love (in that order) in the space of around 5 minutes – Romeo and Juliet have nothing on these guys! The fact that this all happens within the theatre of a war zone makes the encounter even more incredulous. And worse than that, it slows the pace of the film to a crawl.

The film then concludes with an ‘American hero against impossible odds’ showdown which, while mildly exhilarating (and highly improbable) in an action movie kind of way, further cheapens the sombre thesis set up in the film’s first half.

Brad Pitt is solid as always but the surprising performance here comes from Shia LaBeouf who proves he can be excellent in a gritty role. He’s so good, in fact, that without his usual nervous, twitchy shtick and clean baby face he’s quite difficult to recognise. Logan Lerman is also effective as our frightened proxy within the film: the office clerk thrown into the meat grinder and forced to kill.

Fury is very much a film in two parts. The first half is a fabulously tense depiction of the horrors of war. The second half is standard American war film fare, isn’t terrible, it’s just ordinary. It’s as if the film hits its mid way point and suddenly feels the need to add a ‘story’ when the truth is that a simple depiction of the horrifying nature of warfare has a story all its own. For the first half alone, though, Fury is worthwhile viewing.

Stuart Jamieson
www.fury-movie.net