The really big surprise with The Devil Wears Prada 2 isn’t just that it’s good but that it’s very good, clocking in as a more-than-worthy sequel to the 2006 hit film about the world of high fashion.
This time around the focus isn’t on frocks but on the fragile state of publishing in the digital age as freshly fired, award-winning journalist Andy (Anne Hathaway) goes back to work for the ever-snarky Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) and her struggling magazine Runway.
Reprising their characters are Stanley Tucci as Miranda loyalist Nigel and Emily Blunt as Emily, Miranda’s former assistant, now head of Dior.
The fun is still there and while the tone is upbeat the story touches on some topical issues about the idiocy of online culture and the war between flash and substance.
Unsurprisingly, the film has been a massive hit in theatres, clearly pleasing the fans it has amassed in the two decades since the original. Proof again that sequels can be done well.
In a delightfully inventive family film, The Sheep Detectives follows a flock of lovable sheep as they try to work out who killed their beloved farmer (Hugh Jackman).
The sheep speak, of course, and help the local village copper in solving the crime, following the standard murder-mystery formula.
Featuring lots of colourful suspects, the film is blessed with a very convincing cast of digital animals who are as believable as the human cast, which includes veteran Emma Thompson.
Speaking of sequels, the martial arts-fantasy-action movie-burger Mortal Kombat II has just been unleashed across the planet’s shopping malls, its procession of elongated, blood-splattered fight sequences and video-game dialogue set to please fans.
As far as multiplex mulch goes it’s actually not bad, although the battle scenes get very loud and all the flashing blue, green and red lightning bolts can be tough on the optic nerve, so be sure to bring welding glasses and earplugs.
A stirring, quietly powerful film about Australia’s dark colonial past, Wolfram tracks the journey of two exploited indigenous children who fall into the midst of some nasty characters after toiling in the mine fields.
By any fair measure, this film – directed by Warwick Thornton who gave us Samson and Delilah – is a masterwork, but you’re going to have to scramble to see it before it disappears from screens.
Sadly, it’s the latest local film to suffer such a fate.
Seeking some peace and quiet in a remote Irish inn, an American author (Adam Scott from Parks and Recreation) finds everything but in Hokum, a fun little horror schlocker that fans of old-fashioned scare tactics and jump cuts will love.
A stressed-out Charlize Theron stars in Apex, a nifty chase thriller set in an Australian national park in which a nutter with a shaved head and a crossbow (Taron Egerton brandishing a very good Aussie accent) pursues her as though she is game.
Featuring scenic cinematography and some vertigo-inducing visual effects – it really looks like Theron is scaling sheer cliffs – it’s very well done, with a killer finale.
Check it out on Netflix.
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