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MOVIES AND BOOZE: What to watch this weekend

Shazam! (12A) ***   ZACHARY LEVI delivers some great coming timing in Shazam!  -  a movie ...
Newstalk
Newstalk

14.00 5 Apr 2019


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MOVIES AND BOOZE: What to watc...

MOVIES AND BOOZE: What to watch this weekend

Newstalk
Newstalk

14.00 5 Apr 2019


Share this article


Shazam! (12A) ***

 

ZACHARY LEVI delivers some great coming timing in Shazam!  -  a movie the breathes new life into the superhero genre but ultimately overstays its welcome. He’s aided and abetted by a fine young cast in what is one of Warner’s stronger DC Comics movies to date.

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Based on the DC Comics character of the same name, the movie tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy who is chosen to be transformed into a bulked-up, fully grown adult superhero.

 

Teenager Billy Batson (a very good Asher Angel) has been moved from foster home to foster home ever since becoming separated from his birth mother as a boy. He’s spent years trying to trace her  -  but she’s never come looking for him.

 

Placed in a group foster home run by a kindly couple, he struggles to settle in with the other orphans and misfits, but forges a friendship with the superhero-obsessed Freddy (Jack Grazer).

 

A meeting with a mysterious wizard seals his fate. In a clever plot device used for all its comic and action worth by the filmmakers, he has the power to change back to a kid if needed, simply by shouting the word Shazam!

 

Henry Garden’s script, directed by David F Sandberg (Annabelle: Creation) has a lot of fun with the concept. It’s a busy, boisterous film that never justifies its 130-minute running time  -  and brings real problems with pacing as it approaches its finale.

 

The Sisters Brothers **** (15A)

 

ACCLAIMED FRENCH filmmaker Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust & Bone) has amassed a fine cast for his English-language debut.

 

Set in the 1850s and based on the much-loved novel by Patrick deWitt, Audiard brings his keen cinematic eye to the western landscapes to impressive effect.

 

There’s a strong story at its core too  -  that of Eli and Charlie Sisters, two siblings whose efficiency at carrying out hustles and killings to order have made them notorious in the region.

 

Working for an Oregon mobster known as The Commodore, they are bloody mr fixits in a savage and hostile world. Their latest job is to track down a man named Hermann Warm (an excellent Ahmed) who owes a debt, and has come up with a formula to help find gold.

 

He’s being accompanied to his destination by another man (Gyllenhaal) who is supposed to hand him over to the brothers. But this is a lawless land where the best-laid plans fall violently apart.

 

 


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