STACK #168 Oct 2018

CINEMA REVIEWS

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THE PREDATOR RELEASED: Sept 13 DIRECTOR: Shane Black CAST: Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Thomas Jane RATING: MA15+

SCREENING IN OCTOBER 2018

Shane Black's sequel/reboot is on the hunt for laughs.

It makes sense that writer-director Shane Black would make a Predator film – he was one of the Rasta-alien’s first victims in the 1987 original. Unfortunately, the Predator itself is the victim this time, in a jokey and blokey sequel having a laugh at the expense of one of cinema’s coolest creatures. As well as injecting a liberal dose of humour, Black and co-writer Fred Dekker (who gave us cult favourite The Monster Squad before killing off the RoboCop franchise) make the same mistake as Ridley Scott’s Alien prequels, demystifying the monster and messing with established lore. Why do the Predators make return visits to Earth? Why do they take

trophies? What’s with the dreadlocks? Do we really need (or want) to know? This time around the alien hunter is up against a busload of ex-military misfits, a female science teacher, a government agency committed to studying the creatures, and a bigger and deadlier upgraded Predator. The Predator is a movie with an identity crisis – is it a parody of past Predator films, a homage to ’80s sci-fi actioners, or a Shane Black tough guy film with Predators shoehorned in? It wants to be all of the above, and is consequently a bit of a mess. Rampant machismo and snappy dialogue have always been Black’s forte (he wrote Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout ), but this time the rapid-fire F-bomb wisecracks quickly wear thin. And the flippant tone isn’t helped by the introduction of a couple of Predator dogs – a hunter needs hounds, after all. The Predator does, however, deliver the action goods, hitting the ground running and barely pausing for breath. It’s chaotic, relentless and ultraviolent (bodies are ripped apart, guts are spilled and spinal cords ripped out), but ultimately disappointing. Surely Black and Dekker had the tools to come up with something better. Scott Hocking was originally planned as a typical animated movie comedy/adventure, but then somebody decided to make it a musical as well. Perhaps it was all of those frozen things everywhere that sparked the idea? As such, a good half dozen songs dot proceedings – sometimes a tad awkwardly. These musical outbursts bump up against a fairly standard Monsters, Inc. styled story of fear of the unknown, that’s regularly punctuated by callbacks to the classic days of Warner Bros. animation. Smallfoot tries to be a lot of things, and it’s better at some of them than others. At times there’s message overload, but ultimately they’re admirable messages – and it manages to have a few stabs at mobile phone culture that hit the mark in a way in which The Emoji Movie could only ever have dreamed of. We don’t recommend Smallfoot for very smallfooted kids, as it does have some scares, violence and slight language, but for those aged around seven and up there’s plenty to provide some solid school holiday entertainment. Amy Flower

VENOM

Tom Hardy and director Ruben Fleischer ( Zombieland ) restore some respect for Spider- Man's nemesis (after the debacle of Spider- Man 3 ) with this new standalone feature. Hardy plays journalist Eddie Brock, who is possessed by the shape-shifting alien symbiote of the title while investigating the mysterious Life Foundation. Find out just how badass Hardy's venomous alter ego is on Oct 4 .

Jamie Lee Curtis returns for a final showdown with knife-wielding maniac Michael Myers in this direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 horror classic. He comes home on Oct 25 . HALLOWEEN

RELEASED: Sept 20 DIRECTOR: Karey Kirkpatrick & Jason Reisig CAST: Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya RATING: PG SMALLFOOT

A cute animated adventure-cum-musical.

Migo the yeti (voiced by likeable lug Channing Tatum) has a little situation – literally! He’s stumbled upon a “smallfoot”– the things that we’d call humans – after a plane crashes into his lofty mountain home. Meanwhile, a dazed pilot hits a local village claiming he’d encountered a bigfoot. TV nature documentarian Percy (animation omnipresence James Corden), who’s watching his ratings plumb new depths, pricks up his ears and sets out in search of this apparent big guy. Well, actually he’s just going to fake it all, but… Smallfoot has an interesting pedigree. It

Director Damien Chazelle follows La La Land with a Neil Armstrong biopic. Ryan Gosling plays the famous astronaut in this adaptation of James R. Hansen's book. Taking one giant leap on Oct 11 . FIRST MAN

Seven strangers, each with a secret, gather at a rundown hotel where, over the course of one night, they’ll each have a last shot at redemption. Good times for noir thriller fans on Oct 11 . BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE

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OCTOBER 2018

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