Film

Review Roundup: Ten Movies To See This Week

Featuring: Liz Lemon in Afghanistan.

by Junkee 13 May 2016

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In case Netflix isn’t quite cutting it:

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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

The gist: Ditching her crappy office job, news producer Kim Barker becomes a war reporter in Afghanistan. Charlie from Girls is also an Afghan for some reason.

Given how rare it is to see stories of women in war zones on screen, it’s a shame that the film doesn’t choose to examine these core issues in any grander detail. The film is even less interested in the race relations on screen, which is odd considering where it’s set. The locals are mostly secondary to Barker’s story, and those that are featured prominently are portrayed by actors that are most definitely not of Afghan descent.

Despite the performances of Tina Fey and Margot Robbie, and despite the unique perspective of its subject, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot never seems to be setting its sights any higher than a story of one woman’s self-discovery. It had the perfect chance to give us something fresh and new, but instead sheepishly recoils just short of the finish line.

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Captain America: Civil War

The gist: Should the government control the Avengers? Iron Man versus Cap. Here are some explosions to help us decide.

What you have here is, frankly, the Avengers film we deserved when Age of Ultron staggered out of wherever Joss Whedon lets his films gestate nowadays. It’s proof that a superhero ensemble film can kick unfeasible quantities of arse. It’s proof that no matter how many explosions you throw into a film, the real way to make the climax of a story hit home is to make the motivations of the characters deeply personal and human. And it’s proof that no matter what cynics — or completely reasonable people who were justifiably appalled by Batman V Superman — might think, the superhero genre is still capable of churning out stunning popcorn cinema.

Read more: Captain America: Civil War Might Just Restore Your Love Of Superhero Movies, by Paul Verhoeven

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Bad Neighbours 2

The gist: Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s college turf war is now with some ladiez! Zac Efron makes a great return but not quite as you remember.

Growing and learning in the same way as its characters — who are all anxious in moments of generational transition — Bad Neighbours 2 takes a deliberate shift in focus to give women a legitimate voice, include a realistic and respectful gay relationship and intensely focus the laughs at the dudebros it once placed front-and-centre. Does that make it a great film? Not necessarily. But, as its characters at one point explicitly attest, it sure feels good to see a bunch of bloody tampons flying around in place of the usual dicks and balls.

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Midnight Special

The gist: Is this eight-year-old a prophet, a threat to national security or a regular creep kid? This film is at its best when it keeps us in the dark.

An uncharitable critic could say director Jeff Nichols is just another Spielberg fanboy, aping his hero like JJ Abrams does. Or that he’s waxing nostalgic more generally — quoting the 1980s sci-fi he grew up on, like Joe Dante’s Explorers, Randal Kleiser’s Flight of the Navigator and Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter. In a promotional featurette, co-star Kirsten Dunst says, “Midnight Special is the kind of movie that they just don’t make anymore.”

But the reason Midnight Special feels nostalgic is that blockbuster cinema used to invest in mystery and emotion. The best films make us confront our own values and vulnerabilities, and we leave the cinema feeling energised and profoundly moved. These days, Hollywood studios rarely trust directors to make films like this, and rarely trust audiences to watch them. I haven’t loved a film as viscerally as I love Midnight Special since I saw Whiplash.

Read more: Hollywood Desperately Needs More Movies Like Midnight Special, by Mel Campbell

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The Jungle Book

The gist: Like the Disney one, but with Avatar-level CGI.

It’s a ramble in the jungle: a string of spectacular setpieces that largely follows the template of the 1967 cartoon, with a little bit of Lion King-style buffalo stampeding thrown in. Yes, Baloo still sings ‘The Bare Necessities’, and King Louie sings ‘I Wan’na Be Like You’ — but mainly because director Jon Favreau knows audiences are expecting these moments. The giant python Kaa’s (Scarlett Johansson) hypnotism of Mowgli, and his visit to Louie’s ‘court’ in an abandoned temple, seem to happen purely because they have before. The story of this film is its consummate technical achievement.

Read more: The Jungle Book Review: Let’s All Go Live In The Wild Immediately, by Mel Campbell

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The Boss

The gist: Melissa McCarthy is a self-made millionaire who gets done for insider trading. She now has to embrace her personal life to get ahead. Also, WIGS.

The Boss is not McCarthy’s strongest work, but only because the movie itself is not strong; the idea that only Paul Feig, who directed her in (Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy) can unlock some sort of comedic genius in McCarthy is ludicrous. His films are objectively better than The Boss but the idea that McCarthy needs Feig’s guidance to make her funny, isn’t accurate.

The more likely scenario is that Ben Falcone just isn’t a very good director, and that Paul Feig remains one of the best comedy directors in the biz (also, one who actually seeks out stories starring female comedians). McCarthy is still funny in this film — the character she’s playing is great, but the structure around it lets her down. At the rate McCarthy is putting out movies, of course not all of them are going to be The Heat.

Read more: Meh, I’ll Watch Anything With Melissa McCarthy, by Sinead Stubbins

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Brooklyn

The gist: Saoirse Ronan leaves Ireland to make a new life for herself in 1950s New York. It. Is. Hard.

Brooklyn is an excellent film for many reasons. While it may take its title from one small part of the world, it works so well because of the universal nature of its themes. Speaking as somebody who also upped stumps several years ago and moved to New York City, there is a lot to find personally true to life that I had a powerful reaction to. But it’s not just me. Brooklyn is a film that gets its themes of isolation, melancholy, and ultimately happiness so spot-on that it will speak to anybody who has packed their life into a suitcase and moved far away, as well as anybody who’s ever yearned and dreamed of something bigger and hoped for something better. It is a film that’ll leave you with an immense lasting impression.

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Eye In The Sky

The gist: Helen Mirren is in command of a military operation to capture terrorists when things get more complicated than first thought.

Eye in the Sky offers an account of a drone strike with ethical implications potentially so fraught that — by the time the British politicians in charge have done their best to abdicate responsibility — it is unclear who precisely has authorised the attack. It trades on similar themes to those explored in South African filmmaker Gavin Hood’s earlier Rendition, consciously positioning itself as a provocation, encouraging its audience to consider an ethical dilemma that is uniquely contemporary and that — according at least to the logic expounded by the film — is almost impossible to resolve.

Read more: Drone Strike Thriller Eye In The Sky Is A New Kind Of War Movie For A New Kind Of War, by Alice McCredie-Dando.

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Sherpa

The gist: What started as a doco about a revered local guide on Mt Everest turns more serious as an avalanche kills 16 sherpas during filming.

Filled as it is with soaring mountainous photography and beautiful sequences documenting everyday Nepalese life, director Jennifer Peedom has great respect for the region and its people. She has worked here before, having directed Everest: Beyond the Limit, Miracle on Everest (about Australian climber Lincoln Hall), and announced a narrative biopic of Tenzing Norgay, the first man to ascend, you guessed it, Mount Everest.

Certainly, this knowledge is key in her having the trust of her subject. She also gets great mileage out of interviews with some of the American climbers who — in the grand tradition of boorish idiots talking too much in front of camera — consider the protests of the locals to be selfish and are more concerned about touching the tip of Everest than the wellbeing of their lowly-paid guides who provide them with hot towels and tea every morning.

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Zootopia

The gist: A city of animals have to work together to solve a crime and, yeah, it’s deeper than you think.

Zootopia may begin with the standard kids’ flick message — believe in yourself! — but it soon rattles a stick at this hoary plotline. What if your belief in yourself hindered your ability to recognise the trials of others? Which kinds of prejudice are annoying, and which are institutional, and insurmountable?

At a time when people are more outraged by accusations of racism than they are by actual racism, it’s fantastic that a protagonist in a kids’ film has to confront their own prejudices. It’s fascinating that an American film, in this current cultural climate, allowed the police force to be the good guys, but also showed how out of context statements and statistics can unfairly scapegoat marginalised parts of society. And it’s flat out bizarre that all this happens in a film where hips-don’t-lie Shakira plays an inspirational pop star who is a gazelle and is also named Gazelle.

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