REVIEWS: JANE MAYNE
[star rating=”4″]
LION. Directed by Garth Davis, with Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham.
Little Sunny Pawar is the star of this dramatisation of the life of Saroo Brierley – a five-year old in rural India who accidentally took a train which separated him from his family, and rendered him lost and alone in Calcutta. Lion relays this true story, tracking his ordeal as a lost child eventually adopted by a Tasmanian couple (Kidman, Wenham).
Watching a vulnerable child escape the dangers of city life makes for emotive viewing, and this does provide Lion’s meat. As with Slumdog Millionaire, Patel is highly watchable as the adult Brierley searching for his lost family, but a slight second half sag does diffuse and slacken the pace. Despite this, Davis (Top Of The Lake) keeps you focused on the outcome – will Saroo find his beloved mother and brother?
Lion’s poignant, gut-wrenching tale is coloured by Kidman and a mediocre Mara (unlike her star-play in Carol). Ultimately it’s Sunny Pawar’s film, which has a winning story line – that of the lost and found.
Genre: Drama
Rating: 10-12pg
Running Time: 118mins
[star rating=”3.5″]
MAGGIES PLAN. Directed by Rebecca Miller, with Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, Ethan Hawke, Maya Rudolph
A fairly light ‘romance’ grounded by a vital Gerwig and the casual charisma of Moore. Essentially Hawke is outplayed by all the oestrogen power, and while Gerwig cements the drama, Moore is oddly mesmerising with a weird, silly Nordic accent.
Writer-director Miller (Private Lives of Pippa Lee) is smart enough to avoid outright valentine schmaltz, and shapes Maggie’s Plan into a more substantial drama with just a hint of offbeat humour.
The storyline: Single 30-something Maggie figures it’s time to bear offspring. Up pops struggling novelist John, who’s actually married to Georgette (Moore). Infidelity leads to relationship shifts, and as is customary with fickle in-an-out of love scenarios there’s heartbreak, and a comeback. Overall, Moore’s icy Georgette makes for one truly potent, scary matriarch.
EXTRAS: Commentary with Rebecca Miller, Sundance Fest Q&A, Controlling Fate: the Making Of, Hilarious Outtakes
Genre: Drama/Romance
Age: 13L
Running Time: 95mins
[star rating=”3.5″]
ARRIVAL. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, with Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker, Jeremy Renner, Michael Stuhlbarg.
There’s plenty of sci-fi/ET content around in just about every medium these days. YouTube alone is a treasure trove of extraterrestrial snippets and conspiracy theories, and Hollywood itself has also been training us up to accept there’s tons of galaxies crawling with friendly and no-so-friendly bugs and beings going about their daily business. So is it really a big surprise when some amorphous aliens park their vans in your own back yard? Well for some, I guess.
Here mysterious spacecrafts simultaneously land at various locations across the globe, and an elite team, led by expert linguist Louise Banks (Adams), assembles to find out more. Trigger happy nations edge closer to global war, and it’s up to Banks and co to race against the clock to figure out whether the visitors are friendly, or have ulterior motives.
There’s always that moment of expectation when you wait to see how ET’s will be displayed, and this is another fluid take on the form and formless.
I found Adams a bit limp as the lead. And while the focus on deciphering communication engaged, Arrival lacks overall vitality. Denis Villeneuve has a knack for creating hard-hitting content – think Sicario and Prisoners and the completely shattering Incendies, but Arrival just doesn’t have the same punch.
Genre: Sci-fi/Drama/Mystery
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 112mins
[star rating=”2.5″]
INFERNO. Directed by Ron Howard, with Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Ben Foster
There aren’t any real surprises in this save-the-world, or more accurately save-most- of-the world’s-population, reproduction of Dan Brown’s (Da Vinci Code) latest bestseller. Hanks has had his moments excelling with profound portrayals, but here wears just one befuddled mask from beginning to end – despite the impending Inferno.
Additionally, any attempts at unravelling what could be stimulating symbology are pretty superficial and hardly elevate the story. So the bare bones of what you’re left with is a chase movie, which Academy Award-winner Howard puts together well as a mainstream chase thriller.
Felicity Jones is so-so as Sienna Brooks, a doctor who’s quite prepared to flee her job and hotfoot it off with her semi–conscious patient Robert Langdon (Hanks). They’re pursued by gun-toting strangers hell-bent on securing an item Langdon has on his person. And so it goes.
Ultimately Hanks comes across as really tired, which contributes to the general deflation, despite adequate movement in the action scenes.
EXTRAS: A look at Langdon, Billionaire Villain, This is Sienna Brooks, Inferno Around the World, Visions of Hell, Ron Howard: A Director’s Journal, Deleted Scenes
Genre: Action/Crime/Adventure
Age: 13
Running Time: 121mins
What: Ster-Kinekor Home Entertainment
WS
