FILM REVIEW: THE LINCOLN LAWYER

Roadshow Films

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It has been some time since Matthew McConaughey stepped foot inside a courtroom; 15 years to be exact. That was in the John Grisham thriller, A Time To Kill (1996), where his laconic Southern charm and then Paul Newman-esque looks impressed audiences and launched his Hollywood career.

While the charm never dissipated, McConaughey's CV has been less than stellar; a mixed bag of sub par dramas and rom-coms almost eclipsed by his commercials for Dolce+Gabbana, where he appears sans shirt and barely speaks.

But The Lincoln Lawyer sees McConaughey deliver one of the better performances of his career, the courtroom setting seemingly rejuvenating his acting mojo. He's Mick Haller, the so-called Lincoln lawyer, who chooses to practice law from the back of his car rather than an office. It shouldn't inspire client confidence but Haller wins more often than not, and in the courtroom, as in sport, winning is everything.

That's probably why Louis Roulet (Ryan Philippe) comes to Haller when he's accused of beating a prostitute. The wealthy real estate agent swears his innocence and his even richer mother (an under used Frances Fisher) happily bankrolls his defense. Despite the doubts of his investigator Frank Levin (the always welcome William H. Macy), Haller takes on Roulet's case and the games begin.

Of course, none of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has seen the trailer for The Lincoln Lawyer, which spells out almost every major plot point and in doing so undermines any necessary suspense.

That David Furman's film, adapted by John Romano from the first of a series of novels by Michael Connelly, continues to maintain interest is a credit to the director, McConaughey (and his fellow cast mates, which also includes Marisa Tomei and John Leguizamo), and the inherent watchability of a good legal thriller, which The Lincoln Lawyer is.

It proves to be a smooth enough ride – and more than passable entertainment – and will provide more than a few unexpected turns for those fortunate enough not to have seen the spoilers. The jury's still out on the trailer makers.

FILM REVIEW: JUST GO WITH IT

Sony Pictures

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Neither Adam Sandler or Jennifer Aniston are my favourite film folk. I don't find Sandler funny, and Aniston, for me, emits a sit-com vibe rather than a necessary big screen one; a legacy of her 10 years as Rachel Green on TV's Friends and not helped by her continual poor choice of rom-coms. So colour me surprised to find that I didn't hate Just Go With It (just between you and I, I even laughed).

That's not to say that Just Go With It is champagne comedy – it's not even passion pop – but it has its moments and, not surprisingly, they don't belong to either Sandler, who plays Danny, a plastic surgeon with a penchant for young hotties and an aversion to commitment, or Aniston, his plain Jane (she wears glasses) assistant, Katherine, who has two young kids and a deadbeat ex.

The two become a fakeshift couple when Palmer (Brooklyn Decker aka Mrs Andy Roddick), the young woman Danny has inexplicably attracted, believes him to be married and won't proceed further. Danny convinces Katherine to portray his soon-to-be ex-wife, handing over his credit card to turn her from drab to fab. And Aniston is pretty good playing the shallow “angry ex”, improvising various ailments and inadequacies for her husband at a meeting with Palmer to convince her the marriage is indeed dead.

But then circumstances see Katherine's kids – Maggie (Bailee Madison), who dreams of being an actress and thus speaks in a Cockney accent, and Michael (Griffin Gluck), who wants to swim with dolphins – roped into the charade and Danny blackmailed into flying everyone, including Danny's newly-endowed cousin Eddie (Nick Swardson), to Hawaii.

This sequence, a major piece of product placement no doubt bankrolled by the Hawaiian Tourism Board, goes on far too long before its inevitable conclusion but not before Swardson's Eddie, posing as Katherine's lover, named Dolph Lundgren, speaking with a suspect German accent and a sheep-shipper by trade, gets the most laughs.

Nicole Kidman even makes a cameo as Katherine's college frienenemy, Devlin, the name Katherine and her kids give their number twos and the moniker the soon-to-be ex-Doctor Danny has given herself throughout the charade.

Yes it's a farcical premise (adapted from the 1969 film, Cactus Flower) and stretched beyond breaking point (it clocks in at just under two hours), but it's arguably the best thing Sandler and Aniston have done in quite some time. It's $100 million at the US box office is almost de rigueur for Sandler (he is a genre unto himself with a built-in audience), but Aniston was in desperate need of a hit. She can count Just Go With It a success, which I have no doubt Oz audiences will ratify.

FILM REVIEW: IN A BETTER WORLD

Rialto Distribution

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In a better world, we might all have fathers like Anton. Yes he's estranged from his wife, partly due to his long absences – he's a missionary doctor in Africa – and also because he had a brief affair, but it's the unwavering, unguarded love he has and exhibits for his two young sons which makes him a rarity in films, if not the real world.

Anton also attempts to reach out to Christian (William Johnk Nielsen), the new friend of his eldest boy, Elias (Markus Rygaard), whom Christian comes to the aid of (somewhat OTT) against the school bully. Christian is mourning the recent death of his mother. Compounded by his removal from their London home to his grandmother's in Denmark, and his insufficiently grief-stricken father, Christian's grief is slowly but steadily morphing into a rage which threatens not only himself but the lives of Elias and others.

Danish director Susanne Bier's film, recent winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, isn't so naïve as to suggest that all we need is love to live in a perfect world. Sometimes love just ain't enough. In A Better World examines how unchecked emotions – anger, grief – can find expression in dangerous forms, and how love – understanding, compassion – if administered appropriately can go along way in negating the negative.

Bier, and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen, may not always succeed in their analogies between the local and the universal – Anton's situation in Africa with a gunrunner who cuts open the local pregnant women for sport, is an example of bullying in extremis; today's schoolyard bully is tomorrow's dictator? – but the emotional core of the film never feels less than real.

FILM REVIEW: RED RIDING HOOD

Warner Bros. Films

Now Showing

Unlike the majority of my film reviewing brethren, on Twitter and elsewhere, I didn't hate on the dog's breakfast that was The Wolfman (2010). Granted it was no masterpiece, nor was it memorable as far as horror films or remakes go, but I did find it to be a guilty pleasure; unlike my usual self, I delighted in the gore and scares. And in terms of werewolf films, you could do a lot worse. Case in point: Red Riding Hood.

A revision of the famous fairy tale which saw the eponymously attired young lass encounter a wolf while on a visit to grandma's house, Red Riding Hood, with its love triangle and latent sexuality, is very much aimed at an older audience. And supersizing the wolf to a werewolf must have seemed like the perfect way for Warner Bros. to take a bite out of the teen girl demographic, hot and heavy as they are for the vampire and werewolf action of the (inexplicably) successful Twilight series.

That may explain why Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first Twilight film, was brought in to helm the project. The studio (and Hardwicke) must have been hoping lightening would strike twice. But lightening (or any positive energy for that matter) is nowhere to be found here, though you may very will be struck dumb by the ludicrous goings on in this woodland village.

A werewolf has been kept at bay by the villagers for two generations by regular sacrifices of livestock. But with the Blood moon in orbit the beast has decided to up the ante, killing a young lass and threatening to savage the village until Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), sister of the slain and titular wearer of the red hood, agrees to come away with it.

Did I mention this is revealed when the werewolf 'speaks' to Valerie? Where others only here growls, she hears words; kind of like how Harry Potter speaks in Parsel tongue, only nowhere near as believable. Valerie also recognises that the creature possesses human eyes and, if the visiting Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), expert in the supernatural, is to be believed, lives amongst the villagers by day. But as who?

In an effort to bolster suspense, Hardwicke throws around red herrings as if caught in a food fight at a sushi bar. Is the werewolf Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), her longtime sweetheart? Her fiance, Henry (Max Irons, son of Jeremy), whom she does not love? The perpetually apologetic young priest (Lukas Haas)? Or is it her seemingly stoned grandma, played with a twinkle in her eye by Julie Christie (and if so, ick factor 100!)?

Or could it even be Father Solomon? After all, the werewolf bears a strong resemblance to Sirius Black in canine form. Indeed, the werewolf is more like a big black dog with anger management issues rather than some killer beast. Give me Benicio Del Toro's Wolfman any day; at least he had bite.

You may be surprised (or not) to discover just who is the lupine lech but you won't much care. For as much effort has gone into making the film look good – and it does, in a surreal, fairly tale kind of way – the screenplay by David Johnson undermines Hardwicke and her cast, which also includes Virginia Madsen and Billy Burke as Valerie's parents, from beginning to end.

You'll laugh – and you're not supposed to – more times than you jump in fright, and that's no good thing. Irregardless of whom the werewolf is, one thing's never in doubt: Red Riding Hood is a dog of a film.