STACK NZ Jun #63

REVIEWS

DVD & BD

A walk on the wild side WILD

He had a dream SELMA

Release Date: 17/06/15

Release Date: 17/06/15

Format:

Format:

Hiking America’s 1,100-mile long Pacific Crest Trail is not for the inexperienced, nor the unprepared. Cheryl Strayed is both when she embarks on the journey as a way to recover from grief and self-destructive behaviour. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Reese Witherspoon perfectly captures Cheryl‘s complexity – damaged, guilt-ridden and struggling to find out who she really is, but also a woman of true grit, wit and determination. Writer Nick Hornby ( About a Boy) and director Jean-Marc Vallee ( Dallas Buyers Club ) cleverly use freewheeling flashbacks to reveal the

The recent spate of controversial police shootings in America is a sobering reminder that the US has still a long way to go as far as harmonious race relations are concerned. And this impassioned, multi-layered drama about the fight for voting rights for African-Americans provides some valuable insights into why these racial divisions run so deep. The year is 1965 and Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Dissatisfied that Lyndon Johnson (TomWilkinson) is dragging his heels in legislating for equal voting rights for all Americans, he decides to make

circumstances that led Cheryl to embark on her wilderness adventure, which is fraught with irritations as well as danger. Being a woman alone in the wild makes Cheryl vulnerable to both men and beasts, but she perseveres, learning about survival and, more importantly, about herself along the way.

a stand in ultra-racist Selma, Alabamba, where their non-violent protests ignite a brutal police response. Oyelowo is magnificent as King and what makes the performance – and the film – even more compelling is that director Ava DuVernay is not afraid to cast him in an unflattering light.

THE SALVATION

HONEYMOON

BLACKHAT

THE BOY NEXT DOOR

Release Date: 11/06/15 Format:

Release Date: 24/06/15 Format:

Release Date: 24/06/15 Format:

Release Date: 17/06/15 Format:

Reversing the current Hollywood love-in with all things Nordic, Danish filmmaker Kristian Levring here tackles that most American of genres, the western. And a mightily impressive effort it is too, even if it’s closer in feel to the darker spaghetti westerns of the '60s. Mad Mikkelsen is his usual charismatic self as the immigrant farmer who kills the man responsible for the death of his wife and son, only to find himself hunted in turn by the dead man's brother, evil land baron Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The excellent, multi- national cast also includes Eva Green as Morgan’s sister-in-law and Jonathan Pryce as the town’s shifty mayor.

Leigh Janiak brings a deeply unsettling psychological dimension to the standard cabin-in-the-woods flick in his stunning horror debut. Essentially a two-hander, Rose Leslie ( Game of Thrones ) and Harry Treadaway ( Penny Dreadfu l) are newlyweds who travel to her family’s idyllic but remote cabin for their honeymoon. But their dream vacation begins to unravel when he discovers her sleepwalking in the woods and begins to detect perplexing changes in her personality. Leslie and Treadaway are heartbreakingly believable as the tormented couple and the ambivalent ending just heightens the sense of dread. One of the year’s best horror flicks.

When cyber-terrorism creates chaos in the financial markets and compromises a nuclear plant in Hong Kong, convicted hacker and tech genius Chris Hemsworth is offered a temporary get-out-of-jail-free card in exchange for assisting the FBI to track down the person responsible. Directed by Michael Mann, Blackhat is a topical techno-thriller saturated in the filmmaker's signature visual dazzle and neon glow, with the camera plunging into and traversing the datastream in a flashy sequence worthy of David Fincher. Best viewed on Blu-ray to better appreciate Mann's visual tour de force.

The kind of cookie-cutter psycho- thriller that was popular in the '90s ( Single White Female , Fear , The Crush ), The Boy Next Door is an unashamedly corny yet guiltily enjoyable blast from the past. Handsome stranger Ryan Guzman enters the life of Jennifer Lopez, whose marriage is on the rocks. Before the half-hour mark he's already seduced her and taught her bullied teenage son to stand up for himself. But when she rejects his further advances, things turn predictably nasty. J.Lo and Step Up hunk Guzman give this huge appeal for teens,

who will enjoy the racy sex scenes and fail to notice the blatant lack of originality.

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