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Moulin Rouge -- two-disc set [2001] |
Jurassic |
Amelie |
The World is not Enough [1999] |
The Mexican |
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| The story is paper-thin, but that’s hardly the point. Nicole Kidman's courtesan Satine falls for poor poet Ewan McGregor while pledged to a psychotic English Duke. The show goes on, of course, and we know it will end in tragedy--because that’s the sort of story this is, and the only thing that makes it bearable is the knowledge that it’s all just brilliant artifice. The third of Luhrman's "Red Curtain" trilogy (after Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet), Moulin Rouge reinvents musical cinema, acknowledging its debt to past masters like Vincente Minnelli (Gigi) and Michael Powell (The Red Shoes), but taking in the best of rock video along the way. The incessant MTV-style editing might seem like a distraction, but in the end a film insane enough to include Jim Broadbent's cover of "Like a Virgin" defines its own genre rules. | Posing as wealthy tourists, an adventurous couple (William H Macy, Téa Leoni) convince palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and his protégé (Allesandro Nivola) to act as tour guides on a fly-over trip to Isla Sorna, the ill-fated "Site B" where all hell broke loose in The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2. In truth, they're on a search-and-rescue mission to find their missing son (Trevor Morgan) and their plane crash is just the first of several enjoyably suspenseful sequences. Director Joe Johnston (October Sky) embraces the formulaic plot as a series of atmospheric set pieces, placing new and familiar dinosaurs in misty rainforests, fiery lakes and mysterious valleys, turning JP3 into a thrill-ride with impressive highlights (including a T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus smackdown), adequate doses of wry humour (from the cowriters of Election) and an upbeat ending that's corny but appropriate, proving that the symptoms of "sequelitis" needn't be fatal. | Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain could be read and marketed as a simple love story, but in doing this you would be missing a huge portion of powerful cinema. It is in fact only the second half of the movie where the romance begins to blossom and even then it is in an unconventional way. It could also be mistaken for a French version of Ally McBeal with its use of special effects to express the internal emotions, however unlike Ally ("woe is me for I cannot find a man") McBeal, Amélie is not distress the lack of men in her life, in fact the whole idea of sex seems to amuse her no end. Basic pleasures such as cracking the top of a Crème Brule offers Amelie all the sensual satisfaction she needs and her existence in the "Paris of Dreams" offers a fairy tale sentiment; this cinematic treat must have worked wonders for the Paris tourist board with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s beautiful interpretation of Parisian life including the vibrant colours you would expect from the director of Delicatessen. | Bond's
grimmer demeanour, while preferable to the smirk that eventually swallowed
Roger Moore whole, proves wearying, unrelieved by any true wit. The
underlying psychoses that propel Renard and Elektra eventually unravel
into unconvincing melodrama, while Bond is supplied with a secondary love
object, Denise Richards, who is even more improbable as a nuclear
physicist. Ultimately, this world is not enough despite its better
intentions. Elektra, the daughter of oil billionaire Robert King, inherits all his wealth when he is killed in a bombing at MI6 HQ. Her father's assassin, Renard, a man who feels no physical pain, also has a keen interest in her now for revenge. Only the world's best undercover agent stands in the way.... James Bond... Includes 'The Making Of ...'. |
Part road movie, part romantic comedy, part thriller and a whole lotta fun, The Mexican could get by on star power alone, but it offers Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and a clever plot full of delightful surprises. It's a thoroughly enjoyable shaggy-dog story in which the downtrodden Jerry Welbach (Pitt) copes with a dual dilemma: his girlfriend Samantha (Roberts) has just dumped him to pursue solo ambitions in Las Vegas, and a manipulative mobster has ordered Jerry to Mexico to retrieve a coveted antique pistol (the "Mexican" of the title) that carries a legacy of legend, death and danger. Jerry soon has his hands full with bandits, bloodshed, and a grizzly hound dog that vanishes and reappears with amusing regularity. En route to Vegas, Samantha's taken hostage by a burly assassin (James Gandolfini) who's attached to the gun-fetching scheme and is, in more ways than one, not who he seems to be. |
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Harry Potter |
Shrek |
Cats & Dogs |
Cinderella 2 |
Planet of the Apes |
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| The question on everybody's lips though is "How true is the film to the book?". The answer: Chris Columbus has come up trumps proving that it is possible to develop a film that is true to the book. Although you cannot transfer everybody's reading of this enduring novel onto the cinema screen--maybe Fluffy was a bit more Fluffy in your imagination or Hagrid (superbly played by the ever-watchable Robby Coltrane) a little more giant-like--but Steven Kloves's screen play (thankfully with the help of Rowling) has transferred Potter's adventures onto the big screen with supreme energy and excitement. | Full of verve and wit Shrek is a computer-animated adaptation of William Steig's delightfully fractured fairy tale. Our title character (voiced by Mike Myers) is an agreeable enough ogre who wants to live his days in peace. When the diminutive Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) evicts local fairy tale creatures (including the now-famous Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man), they settle in the ogre's swamp and Shrek wants answers from Farquaad. A quest of sorts starts for Shrek and his new pal, a talking donkey (Eddie Murphy), where battles have to be won and a princess (Cameron Diaz) must be rescued from a dragon lair in a thrilling action sequence. The story is stronger than most animated fare but it's the jokes that make Shrek a winner. | Using combinations of live animals, animatronic puppets and digital wizardry, Cats & Dogs has just enough imagination to match its effects, climaxing with a feline global-domination scheme involving mice sprayed with chemicals that will make all humans allergic to dogs. Goldblum and Perkins gamely play second fiddles to this menagerie of mayhem and, as madcap "realism" gives way to cartoonish fantasy, the movie escalates into utter chaos, burdened by lame jokes but highlighted by a furry supporting cast including a Saluki hound (voice of Susan Sarandon), a shaggy sheepdog (voice of Michael Clarke Duncan), and a Chinese hairless techno-geek named Peek (voice of Joe Pantoliano). Though never as charming as the Babe movies, Cats & Dogs is harmless fun--especially for dog lovers. | Disney has once again "sequelised" a classic feature with Cinderella II: Dreams Come True. With smart foresight, the filmmakers choose to go with three snappy short films to comprise this 73-minute feature with the Fairy Godmother granting wishes to various characters. In the opening short, Cinderella must pursue life as queen. Several feathers are ruffled as she brings her down-home ways to the castle (bring the commoners in and open those darn curtains). In the other tales, one of Cinderella's animal pals receives a chance to see the world quite differently and finally, Anastasia, Cinderella's formerly evil stepsister, finds love with a little help. As with the other sequels, the look of the film helps bring the distance between the original and the sequel (here over 50 years) come together seamlessly. Little ones from age four to nine should be entertained while purists may be a bit aghast. | Tim Burton's "re-imagining" of Planet of the Apes is about one thing above all else: monkey movement. But for most filmgoers, whether fans of the 1967 original or not, that’s simply not enough. Thematically the story of an outsider in a society that doesn't know what to do with him chimes in nicely with Burton's other work. As always with Burton, the focus is more on what's colourfully going on around the central character (Mark Wahlberg) than his own story. It all looks stunning, of course, as make-up, set design and costumes outdo the accomplishments of the original. But otherwise a direct comparison with the classic version simply shows up holes in the Burton approach. The breakneck pace at which the pared-down plot is told makes little sense of the material and misses all the satire and social comment potential. |
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