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I have questions on how this didn’t make more impact overseas.

If you’re a fan of Aussie comedy, then Any Questions For Ben will fit right into your sense of humor. If you’re not a fan of films such as The Dish and The Castle, both of which were also produced by Working Dog, then this film might not rattle your chain. Aussie comedy is an offshoot of a lot of British humor, although since our foundation in 1901 we’ve moved a fair way from the Mother Country in terms of what makes us laugh. Films such as Gettin’ Square and The Nugget, alongside more iniquitous laughs like Jimoen’s The Extra, for example, have become the touchstones with which we Australian’s identify much of our heritage. Trouble is, Aussie humor is often selective in its focus and invariably too mired in backwater self-referential in-jokes to become truly accepted by the broader cinematic community. That’s not to say we’re not adept at pop-culture success – we gave the world Crocodile Dundee, for which we’ve been apologizing ever since – but usually, our big screen comedies tend to be too culturally stringent to matter to most. This is my own opinion, of course. So when Any Questions For Ben popped up on the market, marking the end of a 12 year gap since the crew at Working Dog last graced our cinema screens with a film, I was more than hopeful it would become the cross-culture success The Dish had become, instead of the butchered-for-foreign-audiences experience of The Castle (a film, I might add, that remains perhaps the most quoted Aussie film of all time, at least here at home).

Click here for more questions….

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This is one f*cked up cabin in the woods.

If you’ve ever seen a teen horror film, a slasher movie, and you often ask yourself why the kids in them act like imbeciles when the lights go out and the blood starts to run, then Cabin In The Woods answers at least three of those questions. Part horror film, part homage to horror films, The Cabin In The Woods is more than your typical blood-and-guts titillation-teen romp; this is a gleeful party inside the demented minds of Joss Whedon (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity, The Avengers) and Drew Goddard (writer on Cloverfield, Alias, Angel and Lost), both of whom are obvious fans of the genre. The premise is as simple as ever – stick a bunch of hormonal, horny kids inside an isolated cabin deep in an isolated part of the world, say, Canada, and wait til the spooky shit goes down. It doesn’t take long for that to happen here, let me give you the big tip. For those of you who aren’t fans of horror, gore and blood, is there anything in this film for you? Is there a reason other than gratuitous titties and self-referential genre in-jokes to keep you interested?

Click to enter the cabin in the wooooooooods!!!

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Expectations for Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, Man Of Steel, are reaching fever pitch across the blogosphere – with each and every trailer, TV spot or featurette, anticipation grows exponentially, thanks largely to a reverential yet explosive take on the legendary superhero finally giving us something to care about. Like most, I was disappointed by Superman Returns (I can understand the reason we needed that film – to finally erase the visage of Christopher Reeve as the definitive screen Superman - but I still find it cloying and boring years later), and news of another Superman film so soon afterwards wasn’t exactly filling me with excitement. Marvel had done something similar with the Hulk – Ang Lee’s Hulk bored most people to death, while Leterrier’s Incredible Hulk manged to amp up the action and excitement and make itself at least a decent film – so one had to hope that Warners knew what they were doing.

Having Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan producing the film was the first step to putting the doubters on notice. Nolan’s pedigree was met with near universal acclaim, coming off the back of The Dark Knight trilogy’s success. Troubling, however, was the attachment of Zack Snyder to the director’s chair: Snyder’s polarizing take on Watchmen, his failure with Sucker Punch, and the waning glory from 300 and Dawn of The Dead meant his association with the film wasn’t exactly met with fanboy excitement. On the plus side, even if the film was a disaster, it would at the very least look amazing.

Click to read what I want to see in Man Of Steel….

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Morning folks! Hope you enjoyed our Star Trek Into Darkness review last week, and even if you’ve not seen the film yet, we promise the early part of our review doesn’t spoil it for you! As always, we try and be as accommodating as we can here at Fernby Films. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t fear…. scroll your mouse down a bit and there it will be, right beneath this very article!

Regular readers will be aware that we normally publish articles twice-weekly, on Mondays and Thursdays. Kicking off this week, we’re going to ramp up our schedule to publish 3 times a week! We’ve been sitting on a backlog of reviews for a while now, and at the pace we’re watching new films, it’s going to take an eternity to bring our thoughts on them to you! So, rather than maintain the regular 2-per-week schedule, we’re lifting that to 3 a week, for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we’ll be able to use this schedule to play catch-up on stuff we’ve reviewed aaaages ago! So check out our new articles, now on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays!! What a way to keep yourself entertained!!

Some of the great movies we’re reviewing over the coming months include The Cabin In the Woods (look for this review on Wednesday!), Looper, Dredd, The Raid: Redemption, and a whole slew of current and back-catalog films (including our Man Of Steel review, which comes out in June!) for your edification. We kick things off on Monday, however, with an article I wrote detailing some of the things I’d love to see happen in Man Of Steel. The Five Things I Want To See will set tongues wagging, hopefully. Check it out, right here tomorrow!

Rodney T – EIC, fernbyfilms.com

Stuff from our friends!!

• Review: Star Trek Into Darkness (Spoiler-Free)
• The Moviesite Spotlight: Head in a Vice
• Tremendous Trailer Trash Tuesday, May 14th 2013
• Fogs’ Movie Reviews is giving away the Star Trek Original Motion Picture Collection on Blu Ray
• Five for the Fifth: May 2013 Edition
• Top 10 Films To Look Out For In 2013

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To Boldly Retread A Legendary Story.

When the planet Vulcan was destroyed in 2009′s Star Trek, JJ Abrams set the bar for what he was prepared to do to make his revised Trekiverse different from the previous thirty years of the franchise. He wasn’t afraid to shake things up, it seemed. It’s a pity, then, that the shaking up of the Trek universe seems to have stopped with that installment, because Into Darkness doesn’t seem to want to shake things up at all. Oh sure, it looks flashy, and superficially does some narrative barn-dancing, but Into Darkness has a number of crucial errors that stop it being as brazen, as daring, as outright arrogant as the ’09 film was. They’re heavily spoilery, so with that in mind, I’ll be dishing out this review’s official spoiler warning when you need to stop reading – especially if you haven’t seen the film, and actually want to.

Driving lessons weren’t going quite to plan….

For those seeking a non-spoiler review, let me say this as plainly as possible. Into Darkness is as commercially swish, sharply filmed, glitteringly entertaining and, at times, jaw dropping, as its immediate predecessor. JJ Abrams taps into the zeitgeist once again with his alternative timeline Trek delivering all the explosive excitement, heart-pounding action sequences and superficially exciting narrative moments you could ask for. While I’d say it’s not really as good a film as Star Trek was back in ’09, Into Darkness takes us on yet another journey into the heart of space where danger lurks around every corner, and shadows aren’t always as accommodating as they appear to be. The film’s cracking pace, the hip-savvy dialogue and refusal to buckle to Trek conventions make Into Darkness one of the most approachable Trek films to date, and as far as sequels go it’s definitely as entertaining as the previous film – a film which retooled the ailing franchise for the millennial generation. This doesn’t mean it’s a perfect film – more on this down below – but as far as sheer popcorn-schnuffling enjoyment goes, they don’t come much bigger, badder and thrilling than Star Trek Into Darkness. And it’s definitely a film worth seeing on the Big Screen.

Henceforth, this review will be discussing key elements of Star Trek Into Darkness that involves plot and character spoilers. Reading further may spoil many of the surprises that await you when you watch this movie.

Click here for spoilers!!!

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Four score and eleven kills ago….

Four score and about a hundred and fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, began slaughtering vampires. Betcha didn’t know that bit of history, didya? Okay, so that’s probably not true, but Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a cavalier historical alternative which sets one of American’s greatest ever leaders against one of the world’s most feared and reviled monsters. The title alone evokes a hazy image of Honest Abe striding through the corridors of the White House, brandishing his hefty weapon of choice, dealing out death to the undead whilst still wearing that famous tall black hat. Sadly, that image isn’t represented in this film, but plenty of great ones are: in particular, Abraham Lincoln battling the vampire enemy aboard a steam train crossing a burning rail bridge. There’s a casual flamboyance to this film, a sense of adventure mixed with tinges of horror – there’s plenty of blood and gore, although considering the saturation level to which vampires have risen in pop-culture these days, I doubt that’ll put many folks off seeing it. Vampire Hunter is, if I can use the term, a genuine Bebmambetov film: flashy, visually gorgeous and stunningly mounted, although typically lacking in depth and emotive cohesion. Still, it’s a nice little film that never once tries to convince you of it being in any way legitimate.

Click to go hunting!!

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If Jason Statham is the go-to guy for dependable b-movies in England, then Mark Wahlberg must surely be his American equivalent. Wahlberg, who cut his teeth in action films on The Big Hit, Three Kings and The Perfect Storm, has managed to carve a fairly dependable CV from his time in Hollywood; he’s not what you’d consider a frontrunner for an action movie, but when he does transition from dramatic roles such as The Fighter to outright action, he does a commendable job. Wahlberg is an actor I normally consider “vanilla”; not quite as rough as a Bruce Willis or a Stallone, nor as slick as Statham’s brooding, menacing approach, but a softly-softly style that sets him apart from the majority of his film-making brethren. He lacks the raw intensity of other action stars, yet doesn’t seem to let that stop him giving it a red hot go. I don’t always enjoy a Wahlberg performance, but I give the dude props for always trying to step out of his comfort zone. So what of Contraband, an action/thriller set against the backdrop of New Orleans and the Panama smuggling trade? Does Contraband bring back the glory days of The Big Hit, or is it actually a Big Miss?

Click for Contraband!

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In recent times, audiences have had their fill of the world of Ancient Greece – from the Titans franchise starring Sam Worthington and that damned Kraken, to 300 and Gerard Butler’s Spartan warcry, the life and times of the ancient Mediterranean has been well pillaged on cinema screens of late, and Immortals is no different. While the marketing material for this film screams about how the producers also made 300, the disappointing thing about the film is that it comes across as a diet cola version of that masterpiece. There’s blood, gore and battles galore, as well as eerie creatures of pain and agony, while Gods lounge about on Mt Olympus like a family on holiday from life; visually the film is terrific, but it’s the story and the overall….. tone of the movie that just seems clumsily handled. Immortals isn’t badly made, not in the least, it’s just that it feels too convoluted and too produced for its own good.

Click here for more Immortal action!

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Total Recall: people born after 1990 may have hazy memories of this film being an early Arnie sci-fi classic, but here, in the second decade of the new millennium, we’re given a shiny new edition to play with. While I’m not against remakes overall, I admit to a little lethargy getting excited every time a Hollywood mogul decides he’s got a better vision for a classic film than the classic film had for itself. After all, those classic films need remaking, right? That’s what the kids want, right? Okay, perhaps not, but there might be a time and a place to remake an older story, and Philip K Dick’s novella, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, seems ripe for a modern twist thanks to state-of-the-art visual effects and cinematic sensibilities. Paul Verhoeven might be somewhere dark right now, gnashing his teeth at the cheek Columbia Pictures had for green-lighting this remake, considering his film from 1990 is rightly considered a bona fide classic of the genre, but you look back on Total Recall from 1990 and think of how that story could be improved, the visuals could be updated, and the character given broader scope in which to play, and you’ll probably see the same tantalizing sense of promise I did when I first heard this film was coming down the line. But what is the end result of this effort from director Len Wiseman: is 2012′s Total Recall a trip down memory lane, a sullying of the glory of Verhoeven’s memory, or in itself a classic science fiction opus sure to remain in the mind’s eye of a new generation when they think about three-breasted women?

(more…)

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Bourne again…. only without Bourne himself.

With the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, you kinda got the sense that the story told with Matt Damon in the driver’s seat had run its course; the plot threads were wrapped up, the characters all concluded and the three-film narrative arrived at what was its seemingly natural three-act conclusion. The story of The Bourne Legacy, which gives us a new central “hero” to invest in, feels more like a profit making exercise than a genuinely involving continuation of the franchise, a franchise that, I might add, was exceptionally well built from the first installment, and continued under the stylish eye of director Paul Greengrass. While much of the same plot devices from the previous films make their way into this one, and the listing between on-the-run fugitives and in-a-bunker-with-screens CIA surveillance sequences continues unabated, The Bourne Legacy tries to reach the heights of what has come before, and doesn’t quite make it. It’s not bad – it’s just not that great by comparison, either. So what is it about The Bourne Legacy that misfires? Is it the casting? The story? Or the fact that this film doesn’t include Jason Bourne?

Click here to read more about this Legacy!