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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Crazy Heart feels a little like The Big Lebowski meets The Wrestler. Like Darren Aronofsky's film, it quietly, impressionistically follows a broken-down former star: country singer-songwriter Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges). Alcoholic and estranged from his family, he's scraping a living touring dismal dives, ducking out mid-song for a spew.
Vampires are everywhere these days, so Daybreakers - a film imagining what happens when vampires take over the world - makes sense, right? It's the near future and everyone dresses like they're in the 1940s and everything looks like a Tool music video. Human blood is low in supply and starving vamps are turning into screeching bat-creatures.
This year, Valentine's Day falls on a new moon. But you'd still better watch out for the signs you may be dating a werewolf. Has your Valentine ever been into ripping villagers to shreds? Does he or she do a really good Chewbacca impression? If you look up a book called Lycanthropy and flip to chapter two, "Ancient Gypsy Lore", do you see a woodcut of your Valentine with a furry head and no pants?
The Wolfman is Universal's homage to its own classic 1941 monster flick.
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