FILM REVIEW: THE A-TEAM

20th Century Fox
Now Showing

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I reviewed The Losers? I said that I always thought the trailer resembled a poor man’s A-Team but that I hoped the actual A-Team movie would aim higher than the ‘better than expected’ critical consensus? Oh well.

I’m not sure if fans of the 1980s TV series, where a unit of disgraced military men went about righting wrongs for money, will find this feature film remake a worthy update or a fat steamy dump on their childhood memories (I’m assuming most fans were kids in the ‘80s). I remember watching the show but I wouldn’t call myself a fan and I certainly harboured no desire to see it revisited.

The film opens like an origin story, with a mission in Mexico introducing us to Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson) and Face (Bradley Cooper), who are in turn introduced to B.A. Baracus (Quince ‘Rampage’ Jackson) and Murdock (District 9’s Sharlto Copley), thus forming the A-Team (A is for Alpha). Cut to eight years later and we find the men in the Middle East and called on by the CIA to retrieve US currency printing plates which the enemy has in its possession. But it’s all a set-up: the plates are stolen and the A-team, believed responsible, are dishonourably discharged and imprisoned.

The rest of the film (it clocks in at 2 hours) concerns itself with the A-team escaping from their various prisons and going on a global search for the plates and the men who set them up. It’s one set piece after another, mostly in Germany but climaxing in Los Angeles; a blur of action and noise and very little else.

Fans of The A-team will come away from this film either bitterly disappointed or, like a lot of Transformers fans (to cite another '80s re-boot), accept it as a fond trip down memory lane however inferior.

The very similar The Losers has struggled to reach $1 million after two weeks of release in Australia so I’d be interested to see if The A-Team surpasses that take in its opening weekend or struggles similarly. I suspect nostalgia, and the marketing clout of 20th Century Fox, will ensure the former. To paraphrase Hannibal, the plan will come together.

FILM REVIEW: ANIMAL KINGDOM

Madman Films
Now Showing

Judging by the television ratings, Australian audiences love watching stories about the local criminal underworld. And if some of that appeal can attract a similar number of bums on seats for Animal Kingdom, then it could be the biggest homegrown hit of the year.

It's certainly the most buzzed, following on from its raved reception at this year's Sundance Film Festival where it picked up the World Cinema prize. American critics, no strangers to crime and gangster films, were full of praise for David Michod's debut feature; and we Aussies love nothing more than the approval of others.

Which isn't to say that Animal Kingdom doesn't succeed on its own terms – it does. As an examination of a Melbourne crime family - the Codys - rotting from the inside out, it's uncompromising, uncomfortable viewing. Those rocking up in the hopes of catching some Underbelly on the big screen will be somewhat disappointed, and not just because the T and A quota is zero; Animal Kingdom doesn't seek to glamourize its subject, rather it depicts the banality and ordinariness of evil, and the inherent sinking inevitability, with an unflinching eye.

We witness the Cody family through the eyes of J (James Frecheville), a 17-year-old who comes to live with his relatives following the drug overdose death of his mother. Embraced by the family matriarch, Smurf (Jacki Weaver), who dotes on her sons a little too much, J is soon caught up in the world of drug running and bank robbery.

But it's not until his uncles – Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton and Ben Mendelsohn - kill a couple of police officers, in retaliation for the death of a mate and business partner, that his eyes are opened to the true nature of his new environment. And the true nature of his grandmother becomes all too apparent when a sympathetic detective (Guy Pearce) offers J a chance of escape.

Performances are all top notch here, from newcomer Frecheville, whose J is somewhat of a blank slate and the eyes through which we witness events, to Mendelsohn as the psychopathic, most dangerous of the Cody brothers, and Jacki Weaver, somewhat of a revelation as the mother who will do anything – anything – to protect her boys.

Animal Kingdom is not a fun viewing experience, but it's gripping, tense and intense. As a debuting writer-director, David Michod has made an accomplished film which has already proven to be as universal as it is Australian. Let's hope those foreign plaudits are followed by Australian audiences.

FILM REVIEW: SEX AND THE CITY 2

Roadshow Films
Now Showing

Who would have thought there could ever be too much Sex? But at almost two and a half hours, Sex and the City 2, the sequel to the 2008 film spun off from the hit TV series, is very much a case of quantity over quality. “Do you want it long or do you want it good?” the producers seem to have asked on the audiences' behalf, and answered in the former: they obviously believe that size matters.

That running time shouldn't deter fans of the franchise, and the four women – Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha – with whom millions of women (and plenty of men) love and identify with. We catch up with the girls some two years after the previous film, with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr Big (Chris Noth) married and happily ensconced in their New York apartment. Well, maybe not so happily since Big's idea of a pleasant evening is a night in front of the flatscreen watching black and white films. But Carrie wants sparkle and not of the diamond variety.

The others are not so happy either. The new senior partner at Miranda's (Cynthia Nixon) law firm seems to hate her; Charlotte (Kristen Davis) is struggling with motherhood; and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is in a war of attrition with menopause.

All of this is revealed during an elaborate gay wedding which opens the film and it's not too long (or far too long, depending on your point of view) before the gal pals head to Abu Dhabi (actually Morocco) and a week of luxury in the Middle East at the generosity of a Sheikh, a prospective PR client for Samantha. Cue a procession of Arabian Nights-inspired wardrobe changes, some desert misadventures and a cavalcade of instances that, if not racist and/or anti-Muslim, are certainly culturally insensitive on a cringe-inducing level.

It's a bit much for us to be onside with the sexually aggressive Samantha when she's in a country that has a very strict code of conduct for women. It's also a bit rich for Carrie and co., to preach against the Middle East's 'mistreatment' of women when these four Westerners are very much slaves to fashion, commercialism and the ideology of 'a woman can have it all but she's nothing without a man'.

But Sex and the City 2 is supposed to be fun, and it is, but only sporadically which isn't nearly enough to warrant its 150 minutes (or another sequel). Still, fans know exactly what they're in for and non-fans know not to even bother.

FILM REVIEW: CITY ISLAND

Anchor Bay Films
Now Showing

Like every family, especially those in American indie films, the Rizzos are dysfunctional. Which is to say, like every family, real or imagined, they have their problems, issues and, in this instance, a lot of secrets.

Rizzo patriarch, Vince (Andy Garcia), a corrections facility officer, harbours a dream of being an actor. But so ridiculous does this seem that he tells his wife that he's playing poker once a week when he's actually attending acting class. Joyce (Julianna Margulies), of course, believes he is having an affair.

Joyce's only secret seems to be that she (like everyone in the family, kids included), smokes. But then Vince brings home an inmate from work, supposedly to build a second bathroom, and she begins to contemplate a bit of extramarital tit-for-tat with the convict. He's Tony Nardella (Steven Strait), who unbeknown to everyone is Vince's son from an adolescent dalliance.

Then there's the younger Rizzos: Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido), whom everyone believes is at college but is working as a stripper after losing her scholarship; and Vince jnr (Ezra Miller), a smart ass with a predilection for overweight women.

All of these secrets will eventually be revealed but writer-director Raymond De Felitta takes a leisurely route in getting there. City Island is not an hilarious, laugh-out loud comedy but one which observes the humour which arises from everyday family life, if a little heightened.

Andy Garcia anchors the film wonderfully, relishing his best role in years, while Margulies is more animated here than in the entire first season of TV's The Good Wife. Good, too, is Emily Mortimer (currently seen in Harry Brown) as Vince's acting class partner with secrets of her own. Not quite Little Miss Sunshine but a family you'll enjoy getting to know.