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.
Kick Ass
Based on a comic book about a comic-book fan who decides to become a superhero, Kick-Ass is a meta-valentine to comic-book nerd culture and the plotlines of Batman and Spider-Man. And like superhero comics generally, Kick-Ass indulges nerds' fantasies of righteousness and power reversal.
Like Tobey Maguire, the charming Aaron Johnson is too doe-eyed and buff to be entirely plausible as a teenage dropkick who pulls on more neoprene than he can pull off.
Alice In Wonderland
So many people must say to Tim Burton, "You should totally make a movie out of [insert colourful, absurdist text with childlike hero]!" Well, Alice In Wonderland is a very good impression of a Tim Burton film. The CGI-heavy product design looks an absolute treat, and Burton has fun with 3D technology, especially in the ‘down-the-rabbit-hole' scene.
French Film Festival
Ah the French Film Festival. Automatically there's a high bar right? After all France is considered the birthplace of cinema, not just of stripy shirts and carbs. This year's festival pulls out the big guns as well, including one of the most anticipated biopics of the year: Gainsbourg - all about ol' Mr Fistful of Gitanes himself.
The Men Who Stare At Goats
This shaggy comedy is very loosely based on an incredible true story: the US Army's secret elite squad of Jedi-like psychic warriors. It's pretty much an excuse for Oscar-nominated actors to clown about like doofuses. Actually, I've always preferred George Clooney's wild-eyed slapstick (Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou?) to his suave or serious roles.
The Hurt Locker
Sergeant Will James (Jeremy Renner) is the kind of maverick that war movies sooften ask us to admire: fearless, resourceful, wisecracking and soft-hearted with kids. But screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow slowly reveal the devastating truth: James is fucked in the head... and he likes it that way.
Flickerfest 2010
Who knew an Adam Sandler movie could have dragged out for so long? Though that part with Eminem and Raymond is hilarious, Funny People started to drain my restless ADHD riddled mind after the two hour mark. Flickerfest, on the other hand, won't have the chance. Showcasing the best in short films from around le globe, it's making it's way up to Brisbane for some love-action.
A Single Man
Fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut is high modernism at its most mannered and hallucinatory. Perhaps Ford means to express the increasingly unreal quality of life for a man who's decided to die. But secretly, I think he's just wallowing in aesthetics. That scene with the topless tennis players is a bit much.
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