Smarts - 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.
Crazy Heart
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.
In the Loop
In the Loop is based on the British political satire The Thick Of It, which has been dubbed the new Yes, Minister. But to paraphrase one character, In The Loop makes Yes, Minister "look like Angela Lansbury". The dialogue crackles with witty one-liners, pop-culture references and copious amounts of furious, creative swearing.
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
I wish I could report that Heath Ledger's final film contains a performance to match his mercurial Joker or gruffly tender Ennis Del Mar. It doesn't. But even an off-form Ledger is still compelling as amnesiac Tony, who's rescued from an apparent suicide by tender-hearted Valentina (Lily Cole), the daughter of itinerant entertainer Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer).
Funny People
Like or loathe Judd Apatow, he's a game-changer. Funny People is only Apatow's third directorial outing, yet Hollywood comedies have embraced - to varying degrees - his signature themes of vulnerable manchildren reinforcing traditional family values through dick jokes and rapid-fire pop-culture references.
Age of Stupid
This is the movie you must see. Not ‘must see' in a latest blockbuster or Oscar buzz kind of way (though a nod for Best Documentary certainly wouldn't go astray), but rather a film that you simply must watch - as a human being and a citizen of this planet. Yes, we at the Thousands like to have fun, but sometimes there are issues that warrant real attention, and, like it or lump it, climate change is one such issue.
Inglourious Basterds
When a film's opening titles feature several different typefaces, someone's drunk on pastiche. And Quentin Tarantino is the most self-referential inebriate of all. Inglourious Basterds mangles several individually awesome ideas, adding lashings of Tarantino's trademark tedious dialogue.
There's a war-movie homage of both the British ‘derring-do' flavour and the American ‘military western' variety.
District 9
Provocative, gory and thoroughly enjoyable, District 9 is a low-budget alien flick that has a big-budget feel yet eschews both Independence Day jingoism and ET sentimentality. And its gritty verité quality is far more unsettling than your average Michael Bay blamfest.
Johannesburg is a powerful backdrop for what's essentially a racism allegory.
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