Summary: Two women face off as a deadly game called The Hunt goes completly off track.
Year: 2020
Australian Cinema Release Date: TBA
Thailand Cinema Release Date: 12th August 2020
Australian VOD Release Date: 9th April 2020
Country: USA
Director: Craig Zobel
Screenwriter: Nick Cuse, Damon Lindelof
Cast: Hannah Alline (Flight Attendant/Not Stewardess/Kelly), Usmine Ally (Crisis Mike), Alexander Babara (Bojan), Walter Babington (Bandana Man), Ike Barinholtz (Staten Island), Christopher Berry (Target), Reed Birney (Pop), Macon Blair (Fauxnvoy), Steve Coulter (The Doctor), Sylvia Grace Crim (Dead Sexy), Wayne Duvall (Don), Ariel Eliaz (Dino), Betty Gilpin (Crystal), Glenn Howerton (Richard), Jason Kirkpatrick (Rannnndeeee), Jim Klock (Captain O’Hara), J.C. MacKenzie (Paul), Amy Madigan (Ma), Steve Mokate (Sgt. Dale), Kate Nowlin (Big Red), Vince Pisani (Peter), Emma Roberts (Yoga Pants), Sturgill Simpson (Vanilla Nice), Charlie Slaughter (Young Crystal), Ethan Suplee ((Shut The F**k Up) Gary), Hilary Swank (Athena), Dean J. West (Martin), Teri Wyble (Liberty), Tadasay Young (Nicole)
Running Time: 90 mins
Classification: MA15+ (Australia), 18 (Thailand)
OUR THE HUNT MONSTER REVIEWS & RATINGS:
Dave Griffiths’ The Hunt Review:
In a year where people have learnt to embrace films in ways that they haven’t previously the one genre that seems to have topped all others has been the horror genre. While The Wretched topped the US Box Office just before the lockdown Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man found itself scoring five star reviews from some of the world’s top film journalists.
While those two results seemed to surprise fans of the genre the film they were eagerly anticipating was director Craig Zobel’s (Compliance) The Hunt. The excitement around the release was hardly surprising – Zobel’s post-apocalyptic thriller Z For Zachariah is one of the most under-rated films of the last decade while The Hunt was the latest film to come out of Blumhouse stable, a production company who rarely produce a dud.
The film itself is basically an adult version of The Hunger Games with some extra quirk thrown in for good measure. The opening scenes of The Hunt pretty much The Hunger Games but do quickly establish that characters like Crystal (Betty Gilpin – Stuber) are involved in a deadly game that has been set up by the mysterious Athena (Hilary Swank – Million Dollar Baby) But what exactly is the game that Crystal has found herself in? And why the hell has Athena set something up some vicious and cruel?
Those are the questions that the audience are asked to explore, but to be honest the road to getting those answers is un-original and at times plain boring. While the screenwriting team of Nick Cuse (Watchmen) and Damon Lindelof (Lost) try to give the film its own originality with some quirky Kevin Smith style black humour it does nothing to lift any interest in the film’s plot at all.
While the idea of losing characters on mass and at a whim throughout the early stages of the film may have made the script look like a horror film with a difference it just doesn’t work on the screen. Introducing characters and then having them killed or disappearing straight away makes it nearly impossible for the audience to get a vested interest in the film. It is also does nothing but waste the talents of quality performers like Emma Roberts (We’re The Millers).
While the film does gain a little bit of traction when it becomes a battle between Crystal and Athena even that comes to a crashing end with a lacklustre finale that any decent horror fan will have seen close a film a million times previously. To be honest that little battle royale comes a little bit too late for the interest of the audience as well. The film’s inability to engage its audience early on really does mean that you never really care for Crystal the way you should and again there are a lot of scenes throughout the film that are just too similar to other recent films like Peppermint.
The only winner out of this film is the star Betty Gilpin. While everyone falls around her her performance as Crystal is enough to at times back you forget the clichés that is holding the film back. She brilliantly delivers whatever is thrown at her – action, gore and black comedy. Her scenes with Hillary Swank are at times the only things making the film watchable and for that Gilpin deserves a lot of credit.
The Hunt never really lives up to the hype that came before it. Fans of genuine horror will give it a wide berth after just one viewing while it’s quirkiness and gore is probably enough to put off the casual cinema goer. If you’re looking for a decent gorey, catch-me-if-you-can horror then bypass The Hunt and try to find a way to watch Tony D’Aquino’s The Furies instead.
The Hunt is rated 18. It is available on a number of streaming services and will open in select Thai cinemas on August 12th.
A look at the life of the astronaut, Neil Armstrong, and the legendary space mission that led him to become the first man to walk on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Year: 2018
Australian Cinema Release Date: 11th October 2018
Australian DVD Release Date: TBA
Country: United States
Director: Damien Chazelle
Screenwriter: Josh Singer, James R. Hansen (based on the book by)
Cast: Christopher Abbott (Dave Scott), Mark Armstrong (Paul Haney), Chandler Barron (Scott Carpenter), Skyler Bible (Richard Gordon), Connor Colton Blodgett (Mark Armstrong), Leon Bridges (Gil Scott-Heron), Callie Brown (Young Bonnie White), Kyle Chandler (Deke Slayton), Jason Clarke (Ed White), Steve Coulter (Guenter Wendt), Ethan Embry (Pete Conrad), J.D. Evermore (Chris Kraft), Ryan Clay Forbes (Bill Anders), Claire Foy (Janet Armstrong), Patrick Fugit (Eliott See), Matthew Glave (Chuck Yaeger), Ryan Gosling (Neil Armstong), Edmund Grant (Older Ed White Jnr.), Choppy Guillotte (John Young), Lukas Haas (Mike Collins), Oliver Hamilton (Pat White), James R. Hansen (Dr. Kurt Debus), Robert Hatch (Joe Schmitt), Braydyn Nash Helms (Young Eddie White Jnr.), Ciaran Hinds (Bob Gilruth), Helen S. Jackson (Louise Sheron), Brian d’Arcy James (Joe Walker), Shaun Eric Jones (Wally Schirra), Jonathon Kankolenski (Young Edward Higgins II), John F. Kennedy (himself – archive), Michael Lee Kimel (Bill Moon), William Gregory Lee (Gordon Cooper), Dutin Lewis (Ralph Morse), George Linkenback (Col. Frank Borman), Ben Owen (John Hodge), Greg Puckett (Charles Berry), Willie Repoley (Jim Fucci), Kermit Rolison (George Mueller), Pablo Schreiber (Jim Lovell), Margo Schroeder (June Hoffman Armstrong), Brady Smith (Butch Butchart), Claire Smith (Older Bonnie White), Corey Michael Smith (Roger Chaffee), Lucy Brooke Stafford (Karen Armstrong), Andrew Stahl (Ken Mattingly), Jim Stearns (David Hammock), Corey Stoll (Buzz Aldrin), Kris Swanberg (Marilyn See), William G. Tomek (Donald Babbitt), Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (himself – archive), Kent Wagner (Fred Haise), Gavin Warren (Young Rick Armstrong), John David Whalen (John Glenn), Shea Whigham (Gus Grissom), Luke Winters (Older Rick Armstrong), Perry Zulu Jnr. (Robert Lawrence)
Runtime: 141 mins
Classification: M
OUR FIRST MAN REVIEWS & RATINGS:
Dave Griffiths Review:
When you think of space exploration we now days think of the romanticised Hollywood version of space travel. Unless you can think back to realistic movies like Apollo 13 it is easy to forget that it only takes a second for space exploration to become a nightmare for all involved. Sure we have sci-fi movies like Aliens that enhance the extra-terrestrial horror that many believe might be out there, somewhere, but very few films capture the horrors of the unknown and the impact it had on its first explorers like First Man does.
Director Damian Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land) doesn’t have to develop scary looking aliens in order to create horror for intrepid test pilot and engineer Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling – Drive, Blue Valentine) and his wife Janet (Claire Foy – Season Of The Witch, Vampire Academy). Like he did with Whiplash Chazelle just shows human life in its purest form… which for this family provided more horror than most couples could withstand. From the loss of their daughter which led to Armstrong joining the NASA Space Program in the first place, dangerous test missions that place Neil’s life in danger nearly every day through to the anguish that Janet endures on the days she knows that her husband is doing such tests. Chazelle just stirs the pot and lets the human emotions in the film bubble and boil until they explode.
Neil and Janet’s solace come from their best friends Ed White (Jason Clarke – Zero Dark Thirty, Terminator Genisys), his wife Pat (Olivia Hamilton – Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far On Foot, The Last Tycoon) and Neil’s immediate boss the caring yet determined Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler – Friday Night Lights, Argo). Even so Pat and Janet’s ‘talking’ is normally disguised as children’s play dates, Neil seems happy to talk to Ed about the mission but pushes him away when the talk turns personal and while Deke does what he can to help his test pilots at the same time he is the man who has to make tough calls like switching off intercoms so wives can’t hear their husbands in peril and writing death announcements for missions he has to appear to be ‘confident’ for.
First Man could have easily suffered from Titanic-syndrome, a film where the audience knows the ultimate outcome and therefore just sits on the edge of their seat waiting for the expected finale but here Chazelle, who is aided brilliantly by his screenwriter Josh Singer (The West Wing, The Post), takes the audience on a different kind of journey. He captures moments they never told us about during our High School science classes. The raw, claustrophobic feel a test pilot feels as he hurled into orbit in what seems like a sardine can that they aren’t even sure will make the journey, the moments that wives find out that their husbands haven’t returned from a flight and the protests that occurred in America when the loss of life made people realise that these test pilots were really guinea pigs in what seemed like a cruel experiment. Then of course there is the tension an astronaut’s job puts on his family life and here we see painful moments such as the one where Janet has to plead with Neil to tell his children that he may not come back from his moon mission.
Just like he did with Whiplash Chazelle also brings out the best in his cast and helps them bring their character’s pain and anguish to the fore. Claire Foy delivers her best role to date and if she doesn’t at least receive an Oscar nomination for this performance then something is seriously wrong. As an actress she delivers on every level as Janet is put through an emotional ringer and these are the kinds of performances that the Academy should be applauding – ones that test an actress and her acting abilities. Equally good is Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong. When cast as an All-American hero, a real life Captain America if you will, you wouldn’t expect an actor to have to become emotional dark and foreboding, but that is exactly what is expected of Gosling here. Forget his pretty boy looks because here Gosling calls on the acting skills that saw him create memorable characters in films like Drive or The Place Beyond The Pines… he is absolutely brilliant.
First Man is the first film of 2018 that I have seen where my thought throughout was ‘this needs to be an Oscar film.’ From start to finish it felt like the film was taking me on a claustrophobic ride with its characters. The sequences in which the pilots are conducting test flights are moments of sheer cinematic masterpiece, where visuals and sound effects come together in a way that creates a horror that you never expected. This combined by outstanding dramatic acting performances from its leads and again I find myself putting the five stars down on a Damian Chazelle film. First Man is sheer brilliance, a lesson in dramatic filmmaking.
Average Subculture Rating (out of 5):
IMDB Rating:
Other Subculture Entertainment First Man Reviews: N/A
Summary: Cindy and Jim Green (Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton), who can’t wait to start a family but can only dream about what their child would be like. When young Timothy (CJ Adams) shows up on their doorstep one stormy night, Cindy and Jim – and their small town of Stanleyville – learn that sometimes the unexpected can bring some of life’s greatest gifts.
Year: 2013
Australian Cinema Release Date: 23rd May, 2013
Australian DVD Release Date: TBA
Country: USA
Director: Peter Hedges
Screenwriter: Peter Hedges, Ahmet Zappa
Cast: CJ Adams (Timothy Green), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Evette Onat), Michael Arden (Doug Wert), Patrick Brouder (Dash Best), Susan Bruce (Molly Frohn), Common (Coach Cal), Sharon Conley (Principal Morrison), Steve Coulter (Charlie Frohn), Chan Creswell (Billy Crudstaff), Jason Davis (Bart Best), Rosemarie DeWitt (Brenda Best), Joel Edgerton (Jim Green), Jay Freer (Coach Bob Francesconi), Jennifer Garner (Cindy Green), Lucy Gebhardt (Bethany Best), Rhoda Griffis (Doctor Lesley Hunt), Tim Guinee (Marty Rader (voice)), William J. Harrison (Bobby Crudstaff), Ron Livingston (Franklin Crudstuff), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Reggie), David Morse (James Green Snr.), Shaun O’Banion (Alan Rust (voice)), Dorothy King Peterson (Trixie Crudstaff), James Rebhorn (Joseph Crudstuff), Odeya Rush (Joni Jerome), Kendall Ryan Sanders (Rod Best), Lois Smith (Aunt Mel), Josey Cuthrell Tuttleman (Lily), M. Emmet Walsh (Unlce Bub), Tim Ware (Mayor Handelman), Dianne Wiest (Mrs. Bernice Crudstaff)
Runtime: 105 mins
Classification:G
SUBCULTURE MEDIA/THE GOOD THE BAD THE UGLY FILM SHOW REVIEWS/RATINGS OF ‘THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN’:
Average Subculture Rating (out of 5): IMDB Rating:
Other Subculture Media Reviews of ‘The Odd Life Of Timothy Green′: Check Episode #34 of our The Good The Bad The Ugly Podcast for a more in-depth review of ‘The Odd Life Of Timothy Green’.
