The animated plumbers are back for more mayhem, a young couple is torn by a secret, a girl bakes a cake for a dictator and a family has an adventure in WA
Everybody’s favourite plumbers return in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, a gloriously animated, fast and funny lark that sees Mario (red cap) and brother Luigi (green cap) head into Outer Space with Princess Peach to save Princess Rosalina from the Son of Bowser, whose father has been miniaturised and is being held prisoner by Mario. (Are you taking notes?)
Already a box-office monster, the producers certainly didn’t waste any time following up 2023’s Super Mario Bros. Movie but, rest assured, it’s a story-strong, visually beautiful family film, not a hollow cash grab. Enjoy.
The embarrassing experience of saying something you wish you hadn’t is pushed to darkly humourous extremes in The Drama, a tale of a happily engaged couple whose wedding plans are disrupted when one of them lets something slip.
The revelation is made while Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are taste testing their reception menu with two close friends when they begin telling each other the worst thing they ever did.
Everything is running like a nice, standard romance up to that point – then everybody’s world turns inside out with Charlie, a pleasant British director at a Boston museum, forced to grapple with the old question about whether how you can ever really know somebody.
Thankfully, the film’s increasingly tense narrative is buoyed by some well-judged moments of humour as the unavoidable chain of cause-and-effect play out.
Performances are top-notch, with Pattinson moving even further away from his Twilight legacy.
Quite a compelling, well-thought out number. Catch it.
Over on the arthouse circuit, two major treats await discerning film lovers.
An Iraqi film set in the 1990s, The President’s Cake follows a poor nine-year old girl called Lamia who has been given the near-impossible task of baking a cake to celebrate dictator Saddam Hussein’s 50th birthday.
Touching, harsh and featuring an impressive cast of excellent non-professionals – headed by wonderful child actor Baneen Ahmad Nayyef – it’s an absorbing story that paints a gritty picture of an oppressed society openly hostile to children. Luckily, Lamia has stamina.
Lovers of quality book-to-film adaptations might well swoon while watching The Stranger, a remarkable movie from French veteran writer/director Francois Ozon who has done a superb job with the immortal 1942 Albert Camus novel.
Filmed in stark black-and-white and made to look like it was produced 80 years ago, it tells the tale of Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), an unemotional young man leading a dull life in Algiers when he shoots an Arab who has been threatening his friend.
Then comes the trial – but what is the crime? The killing or Meursault’s indifference?
Obviously it’s not for everyone but fans of the book – one of the literary masterpieces of the 20th century – and fans of high-quality art movies will love it. Opens 16 April.
Whale Shark Jack proves that if there’s at least one thing the Australian film industry does consistently well, it’s family films.
This sweet, modest movie, shot on the beautiful coast of Western Australia, taps into the common theme of kids and their bond with nature.
Teenager Sarah (Alyla Browne) loves living on a boat with her marine researcher parents (Abbie Cornish and Michael Dorman) and forms an attachment with a friendly whale shark.
Tragedy relocates her life to the land but concern for the well being of her large underwater friend sees her return to the ocean, risking all in the name of preservation.
There’s nothing all that remarkable here, but it is well done, with some strong performances from the young cast.
Catch it on Stan where it’s proved to be quite a holiday hit.
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