Watch - DVDs, Movies, TV Shows
WATCH is FourThousand's guide to movies in Brisbane. While we focus on art-house and independent releases, we never shun our secret pop-culture pleasures. WATCH also has its fingers on the pulse of film-festivals and specially programmed events and we give tickets away every week. We have also been known to organise special preview screenings, which we always chicken out of introducing on the microphone before the previews start playing.
Tomorrow When The War Began
A bunch of unfeasibly attractive teenagers go bush. Laughing, flirting, frolicking beside creeks and campfires... Something bad's definitely about to happen. Luckily, this isn't yet another of those shitty horror flicks Australian filmmakers insist on continuing to make. This all-Aussie action blockbuster is based on John Marsden's beloved young-adult novels set in an Australia invaded by an unspecified foreign power.
Boy
Everyone's had the moment when they realise their dad's not all that. For Luke Skywalker, it was shortly after having his hand cut off on Cloud City; for me it was the day I watched Dad, resplendent in a pair of red Speedos, challenge my cousin to a race across the backyard pool at a barbecue in Wodonga circa 1987.
Salt
Salt has been described as Angelina Jolie doing The Bourne Identity, but it's more like Mission: Impossible meets The Manchurian Candidate, with Angelina playing the Terminator crossed with McGyver. Seriously! CIA superspy Evelyn Salt is like a really resourceful killer cyborg who wears latex disguises and was possibly brainwashed by Commies.
The Killer Inside Me
Since I don't enjoy films whose gaze lingers on sadistic violence, I was a little worried about Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of Jim Thompson's brutal pulp novel. For god's sake, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson have stunt doubles for their bashings, and someone appears in the credits as Alba's "prosthetic makeup artist".
The Expendables
Perhaps it was a lingering boyhood fantasy burrowed deep within my subconscious that convinced my older, more cynical, self that The Expendables would be nothing short of amazing. I mean seriously - Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Statham, Lundgren, Willis, Li, Rourke - all in the same film! What could possibly go wrong?
Well, lots.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
Filmmakers often struggle to incorporate the comic-book form into comic-book adaptations. Dick Tracy tried deep-focus lens tricks and limited colour scheme; Ang Lee's ill-fated Hulk used split-screen ‘panel' effects; Sin City and 300 cut-and-pasted Frank Miller's artwork. But Edgar Wright sets a new standard with Scott Pilgrim's clever framing, frenetic pace, split-screens, gaming imagery and onomatopoeic textual sound effects.
Step Up 3D
The hilarious thing about Jon M Chu's 3D dancers is how one-dimensional they are. They bang on and on about how dance saved their life. They're never more themselves than when they dance. Dance makes them free. Dance can do anything! Blah blah dance blah blah. Dance.
Luckily, dancing is incredible to watch, and Chu's urban-inflected extravaganza knows it.
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