STACK NZ Nov #57

REVIEWS

DVD&BD

Hail Caesar! DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Prime target. TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

Format:

Release Date: 19/11/14

Format:

Release Date: 26/11/14

HIGH-DEF HITS

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a seriously brilliant reboot of the Fox franchise, and a hard act to follow. Fortunately, director Matt Reeves ( Cloverfield ) has delivered a follow-up that’s every bit as impressive and manages to surpass its predecessor technically, thanks to advances in performance capture. Your jaw will hit the floor when you discover just how real Caesar (Andy

Whether you love or hate the Transformers movies, you have to admit that the sight of Optimus Prime riding on the back a Dinobot is pretty cool. But is it enough to make you want to see the fourth film in a franchise that has copped its fair share of flak since the dire second sequel, Revenge of the Fallen ? Need further incentive? There’s no Shia LaBeouf! He’s been replaced by the

Serkis) and his tribe of primates look. They aren’t ‘special effects’, they’re fully-fledged characters with their own distinctive personalities. When we last left the apes they’d headed into the hills of San Francisco, leaving humanity to be wiped out by a lethal virus.Ten years later, a group of human survivors stumble across Caesar’s village, triggering interspecies conflict that inevitably leads to war. Compelling, philosophical and emotionally resonant, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a blockbuster every bit as intelligent as its simian stars. Highly recommended.

more affable Mark Wahlberg, who acquires an old truck that happens to be Optimus in disguise. In the wake of the destruction of Chicago in Dark of the Moon , the Transformers are now considered the bad guys by the CIA, whose chief techno whiz (Stanley Tucci) has created a new breed of robots to beat up on Optimus and the Autobots. Michael Bay, having apologised for past sequels, approaches Age of Extinction as a ‘reboot’, effectively transforming the franchise with a new cast, bigger explosions, better CGI, a longer running time, and Dinobots.

Little light at the end of the tunnel SNOWPIERCER

Up jumped the devil DELIVER US FROM EVIL

Format:

Release Date: 26/11/14

Format:

Release Date: 26/11/14

Director Scott Derrickson ( Sinister ) returns to the themes of his breakthrough movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose in this mix of cop thriller and demonic possession movie. Loosely based on true events – yeah, right! – Deliver Us From Evil finds NewYork cop Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) investigating a series of brutal crimes that appear to be linked to an Iraq war veteran (Sean Harris). Édgar Ramírez (soon to be seen in the

Foreign auteurs often come unstuck when they try their hands at English-language features but South Korean maestro Bong Joon-ho ( The Host) is at his dazzling best in this moving post-apocalypse parable. Snowpiercer is set in the near future in which the Earth’s population has been virtually wiped out in a global freeze, with the surviving humans now trapped aboard the remarkable self-sufficient train of the title. However, the passengers

remake of Point Break ) is the hip Jesuit priest who is convinced that Harris became possessed by a demon while on his last tour of duty, while Joel McHale ( Community ) is surprisingly good in rare straight role as Bana’s tough partner. It’s a very dark movie, both in tone and visual style, and while it occasionally descends into cliché, Derrickson nevertheless delivers all the requisite jumps, shocks and frights.

have been ruthlessly divided into the haves and have-nots, and revolution breaks out when Chris Evans ( Captain America ) leads the oppressed inhabitants of the train’s final carriage in an attack on the upper classes. The claustrophobic action set-pieces are vividly executed by Ho, while his steampunk vision of a new society divided on passenger class lines recalls the surreal style of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpiece Brazil .

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