TV Movie Guide
Big Daddy
TVNZ 2, 7pm
Starring Adam Sandler. Annoyingly contrived but occasionally funny Adam Sandler comedy about a man who reluctantly becomes a surrogate father but then comes to like it. ★★
Far From Home: The Adventures Of Yellow Dog M ori TV, 7pm Starring Nansal Batchuluun. Slow-moving yet curiously engaging Mongolian-language drama in which a rosy-cheeked nomad girl finds a dog which becomes her beloved best friend. A simple tale, but effectively told. ★★★★
Back To The Future II Three, 8.25pm Starring Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd. Picking up where the original left off, Marty McFly and Doc head into the future to avert a McFly family crisis. While a darker tone brings it down slightly, this sequel is still plenty of fun – especially to see what moviemakers thought the future would look like 20-odd years ago. ★★★
The Grudge 2
TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm
Starring Amber Tamblyn. A mildly unsettling but, ultimately, pointless sequel to the Americanised remake of a Japanese horror, in which a supernatural curse is unleashed on a group of seemingly unrelated victims. ★★
The Hustle Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson. A gender flip remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson replacing Michael Caine and Steve Martin as two con artists. While the 1988 effort was fun, this isn’t, most likely because men, somehow, make more credible con artists. No sexism intended. ★★
Miller’s Crossing M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne. Finney, Byrne ... what’s not to like here in this 1991 noir crime drama. The Mafia puts out a contract on a crooked bookie, but Irish mob boss Leo O’Bannon protects him because he is dating the bookie’s sister, but so is his right-hand man, Tom Reagan. An early Coen brothers effort, it took in a miserly $5 million at the box office, but is now recognised as a classic. ★★★★
The House Bunny
TVNZ 2, 8.45pm
Starring Anna Faris, Colin Hanks. Lightweight but still watchable comedy about a bunny girl who gets thrown out of the Playboy mansion for being too old, leaving her to struggle with life in the ‘real’ world. ★★★
Cruel Fixation Three, 10.35pm Starring Kristina Klebe, Sebastian Cabanas. A mother becomes suspicious about her son’s new school friend, one of the most popular students. Not reviewed.
Love Birds
TVNZ 2, 10.45pm
Starring Rhys Darby. Quirkily charming local romantic comedy in which the quirkily charming Rhys Darby woos a veterinarian with the help of a duck. Great Queen soundtrack. ★★★
The Avengers
TVNZ 2, 12.40am (Sun)
Starring Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes. The Avengers TV series had a certain style back in the day, with Patrick Macnee as suave secret agent John Steed, and Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, Linda Thorson and Joanna Lumley taking turns as his assistant. This 1998 movie is too little, too late and fails to capture the same tone. ★
Brooklyn
TVNZ 2, 2.10am (Sun)
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen. A young Irish woman has
to choose between two worlds – her hometown in rural County Wexford, or the brighter lights of Brooklyn where she has emigrated to. It is multi-layered and superbly acted. ★★★★★ audience, it is difficult to gauge the true appeal of a Harry Potter film, but this sixth instalment is at least as good as any that have preceded it, with a stepped-up visual spectacle compensating for the excessive two-and-a-half-hour running time. ★★★★
The Salesman M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti. This Iranian drama uses a theatre production of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman as a sort of pastiche, substituting a husband whose wife has been assaulted for Miller’s titular character. Mainly watchable as a window into another world rather than for its entertainment value. ★★★
Knives Out Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Daniel Craig, Chris Evans. This film is the sort of whodunit popularised by Agatha Christie, the queen of crime fiction, but with a modern twist. Wealthy novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead and the police conclude it was suicide. But someone isn’t convinced and anonymously hires private detective Benoit Blanc to investigate. From here on, it’s a brilliant plotted sort-of comedy/thriller with enough plot twists to keep the most demanding audience happy. ★★★★★
The Nutty Professor Bravo, 9.20pm Starring Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy plays an obese, sweet-natured science teacher who transforms himself into a slimline, testosterone-pumped wiseass in this remake of the 1963 slapstick comedy. ★★★
Southpaw
TVNZ 2, 9.50pm
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Billy ‘The Great’ Hope, a junior middleweight champion, in this heartfelt boxing epic. It’s a committed performance from Gyllenhaal, but even he finds it hard to punch his way through a plot that tries to be gritty but comes across as a giant marshmallow. ★★★
Evil Dead
TVNZ Duke, 10.20pm
Starring Shiloh Fernandez. This much-anticipated remake of one of the classic cult-hit horror films of all time may not quite capture the magic of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, but at least it manages to avoid stomping all over the memory of the original, and the predominant use of practical special effects over CGI will surely be applauded by fans. ★★★
Final Destination 5
TVNZ 2, 12.20am (Mon)
Starring Emma Bell, Miles Fisher. The fifth instalment of this popular horror franchise is predictably similar to its predecessors, but its mix of comedy and grotesque violence is still uniquely appealing – or should that be appalling? ★★★ unionised exploited Californian farmworkers and became involved in the LGBTQ movement. ★★★
Bastille Day Prime, 9.35pm Starring Idris Elba, Richard Madden. Idris Elba shows off some serious acting chops as a CIA agent out to thwart a terrorist attack in Paris. Despite his efforts, it still feels like a poor man’s Bourne with a silly plot and some serious stereotypes. However, there are still enough high-octane chases to keep fans of the genre happy. ★★★ of familiar – Atomic Blonde, Red Sparrow – and riddled with stereotypes. But there is enough action to make it watchable. ★★
The Fighter
TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale. Former boxer Dicky Eklund could have been a contender but now he’s a crackhead in a decaying American mill town while doing his best as an on-again off-again trainer to his younger brother ‘Irish’ Micky Ward. Ward is a real character who went on to have a half-decent career as a boxer after the events portrayed here. ★★★★
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, about a Melbourne socialite turned private detective in 1920s Melbourne. This is a feature-length version in which Miss Fisher travels to Jerusalem to rescue a Bedouin girl. Back home, a mysterious man has an amulet connected to Alexander The Great and which seems to be cursed. ★★★ middle-aged billionaire (Robert Redford) who casually offers them $1 million for a night with the wife. This sets the scene for some remarkably banal moments which, despite the promise of intrigue, never delivers. Watch out for Oliver Platt in yet another comic-relief role. He’s a scene-stealer as the lawyer who brokers the deal. ★★
Hercules Three, 8.25pm Starring Dwayne Johnson, Ian McShane. Helmed by former music-video director Brett Ratner, best known for the Rush Hour trilogy, this tongue-in-cheek take on the legendary Greek hero should be viewed with a pinch of salt – enjoy it for what it is and you won’t be disappointed. ★★★
IT Chapter Two Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy. Pennywise is back in this follow-up to 2017’s IT, based on the 1986 novel by Stephen King. Again, it’s scary stuff with a solid back story, weaving the narratives of the major characters into a compelling climax. Again, it features the Losers club, a collection of misfits who defeated IT/Pennywise, the trans-dimensional monster in the first movie. Here, the monster reawakens and the Losers regroup to fight it once more. Overall, an effective horror, but not as sharp or scary as the first film. ★★★
Killers M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl. This cringe-inducing attempt at action comedy lacks both of the obviously necessary ingredients to be properly placed in that genre, and the best thing that can be said about it is that at least it’s well under the two-hour mark. Fans of Ashton Kutcher and/or Katherine Heigl will be entertained, however. ★★
Eagle vs Shark
TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm
Starring Jemaine Clement, Loren Horsley. The first full-length film that Taika Waititi directed, and one he also wrote. It’s an acquired taste – even for Kiwi audiences who are familiar with the uniquely low-key Antipodean sense of humour that it so deftly displays – but this tale of misfit love has surprising depth and is worth watching more than once to pick up on the nuances that run through much of Waititi’s observational comedy. It was made in 2007, three years before Boy really launched his career. ★★★