SHORTCUTS

NEW RELEASES

Deadpool: Nothing is sacred to either this film or this character (played with abandon by Ryan Reynolds), which pokes fun at superhero movie culture, Hollywood itself, Reynolds, director Tim Miller, love and human decency – and that’s just in the opening credits. On the page, it sounds like a lot of fun and it starts out strong with a cheeky, self-awareness. But that wears thin very quickly for the raunchy, irreverent boy property of the Marvel comic book world, which also seems to have matured to only a Grade 5 level in its humour, wit, and ideas about subversion. It’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a movie for boys that only adults are allowed to see. For the future sleepover party where some open-minded parent allows a screening, it’ll surely be a blast. ★★★ A Perfect Day: Spanish writer-director Fernando Leon de Aranoa makes his English-language debut with this comedy-drama about a group of humanitarian aid workers stationed in the Balkans in 1995 as the Bosnian conflict was winding down. With a nod to antiwar comedies like Catch-22 and MASH, the film’s humour is low-key to a fault, but its characters don’t always spark as the script intends. ★★★ How to be Single: There’s a right way to be single, a wrong way to be single, and then there’s Alice. And Robin. Lucy. Meg. Tom. David. New York City is full of lonely hearts seeking the right match – a love connection, a hook-up, or something in the middle. And somewhere between the teasing SMSes and one-night stands, what these unmarrieds all have in common is the need to learn how to be single in a world filled with ever-evolving definitions of love. Not reviewed Vir Altyd: Hugo (Ivan Botha) returns home to Paarl for the first time in 10 years. He arrives the day before his childhood best friend Nina (Donnalee Roberts) is about to be married. Unexpectedly, Hugo becomes part of Nina’s big day, but their lives are turned upside down when Nina’s fiancee leaves her at the altar. Not reviewed

ON CIRCUIT

Spotlight: Set in Boston in 2001, Thomas McCarthy’s film follows the journalistic investigation into the persistent abuse of children by the city’s priests. It’s a movie you could imagine Henry Fonda or James Stewart starring in as upstanding journalist heroes: old-fashioned, painstaking, absorbing and deliberately low-key. Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton give fine character performances in a grim film with the momentum of a well-told detective thriller. ★★★★★ The Dressmaker: Jocelyn Moorhouse’s film is lively and enjoyable enough and often gorgeous to look at, but undermined by its shifting storytelling styles. As Kate Winslet’s Tilly turns up in the two-bit 1950s Aussie town where she endured a wretched childhood, the film shapes up as a brash revenge comedy, but the comedy is combined with dark melodrama dealing with bereavement, childhood trauma and shared guilt. A film that starts off seeming satirical begins to take itself seriously and loses almost all of its initial comic zest. ★★★ The 5th Wave: This sci-fi disaster movie starts promisingly, but turns into yet another lesser young-adultpost-apocalyptic flick, becoming increasingly dreary and derivative. Part of the problem is the clumsy way the film-makers combine teen movie tropes with dystopian sci-fi. Amid the death and destruction, there’s still time for some very incongruous romance with dollops of mawkishness. ★★ The Hateful Eight: In keeping with most Quentin Tarantino movies, The Hateful Eight combines crudity and sophistication, prolix writing with blood-spattered action scenes, acute psychological insights with cartoonish characterisation. As ever, Tarantino wrong-foots us. We expect Peckinpah, but we get Agatha Christie in this Western version of Christie’s And Then There Were None. ★★★★ The 33: Harrowing, suspenseful, pitting hope against despair and culminating in a triumph of can-do spirit – the story of the 2010 collapse of a century-old Chilean mine is, for good and bad, the stuff of Hollywood dreams. Director Patricia Riggen finds a rigorous and affecting visual language for The 33, but she and her cast are hampered by a formulaic screenplay that too often gets in the way of a powerful story. ★★★