43
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
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 walk on the wild side
WILD
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.
THE SALVATION
Release Date:
11/06/15
Format:
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.
HONEYMOON
Release Date:
24/06/15
Format:
Release Date:
17/06/15
Format:
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
forvoting 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
forequal voting rights for all Americans, he decides to make
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.
He had a dream
SELMA
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.
BLACKHAT
Release Date:
24/06/15
Format:
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.Loand
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.
THE BOY NEXT
DOOR
Release Date:
17/06/15
Format:
Release Date:
17/06/15
Format:
DVD
&
BD
REVIEWS