TV Movie Guide

Couples Retreat Bravo, 2.15pm Starring Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman. The potential for what might have been a sharp, witty and insightful comedy has become lost in a sea of mediocre jokes, unrealistic dialogue and unnecessary absurdities. ★★

Doctor Dolittle 2

TVNZ 2, 5.20pm

Starring Eddie Murphy. Animal doctor Eddie Murphy has to play cupid to a bumbling circus bear, as well as saving a forest and its wildlife from destruction, in this highly unremarkable sequel. Young children will no doubt still be entertained by the extended cast of talkative wildlife but laughs for adults are few and far between. ★★

Alpha Three, 7pm Starring Johannes Haukur Johannesson, Kodi Smit-McPhee. A classic boy and his dog (well, wolf) story with a neat twist: it is set 20,000 years ago in the last Ice Age. There have been some bombs set in prehistory, but this one benefits from its great production values and beautiful settings. The wolf, Alpha, is played by Chuck, a Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, a breed which is a relatively recent German Shepherd/wolf cross, and one which has been used by Slovak commandos. Wikipedia notes that the breed ‘is considered to be a handful’. Chuck seems fine, though. ★★★★

Bernie The Dolphin M ori TV, 7pm Starring Lola Sultan, Logan Allen. A brother and sister befriend a sunburned dolphin separated from his family and in doing so they uncover a secret plan that could destroy the beach and their new friend’s home. ★★★

Knives Out Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Daniel Craig, Chris Evans. It is the sort of whodunnit popularised by the queen of crime fiction, Agatha Christie, 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 is a brilliantly plotted sort-of comedy/thriller with enough twists to keep the most demanding audience happy. Daniel Craig is Blanc, while Chris Evans co-stars as Hugh Ransom Drysdale, the novelist’s bratty playboy grandson. Jamie Lee Curtis has a prominent role as the victim’s daughter, while the late Christopher Plummer belied his 90 years as Thrombey. ★★★★★

Tracers

TVNZ 2, 8.30pm

Starring Taylor Lautner, Marie Avgeropoulos. Taylor Lautner stars in this not quite hip and not quite suspenseful enough thriller about a bike messenger who turns parkour-style thief in a bid to pay back the Chinese Mafia. It feels like a poor man’s Fast And Furious, only without the eye-popping stunts and with a paper-thin plot. Anything beyond a tough face and a good glare seems to stretch Lautner’s acting ability, but the fight choreography manages to pack a punch. ★

Birth M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Nicole Kidman. A scene where Nicole Kidman shares a bathtub with a 10-year-old boy claiming to be the reincarnation of her dead husband gave this film a brief bout of notoriety – but that’s probably all that it deserves. The plot is fascinating and touches on metaphysical issues which trouble most of us, but the film never quite gets to grips with its subject matter. ★★

In Time

TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm

Starring Justin Timberlake, Olivia Wilde, Amanda Seyfried. Skip over the pesky plot holes and this sci-fi thriller set in a world where people are genetically engineered to stop ageing at 25, and time is added or subtracted from your life like money in your bank account, comes off as adequate entertainment, though not as cerebral or thought-provoking as it could have been. ★★★

Chappie Three, 8.55pm Starring Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel. The third feature film from South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), this sci-fi actioner about a police robot who learns how to think for himself is full of cool ideas, but slightly disappointing overall. Hugh Jackman makes a great baddie, however. ★★★

Mad Max: Fury Road

TVNZ 2, 10.20pm

Starring Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron. The 30-year wait was well worth it, despite the absence of Mel Gibson. Tom Hardy stepped in as the title character in the fourth in the franchise, set in a post-apocalyptic Australia. Here, Mad Max teams up with Imperator Furiosa (Theron) to escape a tyrant who has set up a neo-Nazi base in what is left of Australia after a nuclear holocaust. Regarded as the best in the series. ★★★★

Fifty Shades Freed Three, 11.15pm Starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan. Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey are now married and continue their sexual hijinks in this nonsensical exploitative erotic thriller, which grossed US$371 million despite overwhelmingly negative reviews. It rounds up a trilogy, or should we say threesome, following on from Fifty Shades Of Grey and Fifty Shades Darker, and is possibly the worst of them. ★

Deception

TVNZ 2, 12.50am

Starring Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor. A workaholic accountant (McGregor) is introduced to an exclusive sex club for Wall Street’s rich and powerful by upper-crust corporate lawyer (Jackman) in this melodramatic look at the rotten core of American corporate life. It’s an OK erotic thriller, but lets titillation get in the way of tension. ★★★

Barely Lethal

TVNZ 2, 2.40am (Sun)

Starring Hailee Steinfeld, Jessica Alba. In this action comedy, a teenage special ops agent craves for a normal adolescence so fakes her death and enrols at high school. Aimed squarely at a young audience and overly predictable. ★★

1868 novel about a family of resilient women in the American Civil War is the gift that keeps on giving – Greta Gerwig’s somewhat modernised version is the seventh film adaptation. It can be thought of as a cross between the director’s previous coming-of-age drama Lady Bird, also starring Saoirse Ronan, and the novel. Fans wanting something truer to May Alcott’s work might prefer the 1994 movie starring Winona Ryder. ★★★★

Crazy Rich Asians

TVNZ 2, 8.55pm

Starring Constance Wu, Henry Golding. Rachel Chu is a New York University professor who travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s parents, only to discover they are fabulously rich. And she’s a bit upset? Don’t be fooled by the romcom cliche. This is frothy fun, but it is well done with top performances from its Asian cast. ★★★★

The Gilded Cage M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Rita Blanco, Joaquim de Almeida. A Portuguese couple who have lived in Paris for 30 years inherit a vineyard back in their home country and plan to return, much to the consternation of their employers, friends and neighbours who secretly try to sabotage the couple’s plans. ★★★

The Dilemma Bravo, 9pm Starring Vince Vaughn, Kevin James. Vince Vaughn and Kevin James are both familiar comedy stars, but this relationship dramedy has a darker side to it than most of their previous work. Containing equal parts slapstick and psychodrama, the end result is unsurprisingly irregular, making this a difficult movie to fully enjoy. ★★

Good Burger

TVNZ Duke, 9.35pm

Starring Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell. The dim and dimmer duo of Kenan & Kel make the leap to the big screen in this formulaic slapstick comedy. ★★

Alien

TVNZ 2, 11.30pm

Starring Sigourney Weaver. Mood-rich sci-fi classic about deep space miners who investigates an SOS call but find what seems to be innocuous alien bugs instead. Little to their knowledge, one grows inside a human host and causes predatory havoc on the trip home to Earth. Great suspense action-thriller with scary special effects which spawned a collection of sequels, video games and the idea of a female action hero (a believable Sigourney Weaver). ★★★★★