
Healing is an Australian movie about the people in a low-security prison, who are all trying to find their ways in life. The main character, Viktor Khadem (Don Hany), killed his best friend when he was drunk and has been in prison for over sixteen years. Finally, he has made his way into a low-security, pre-release prison, where he will be trained and prepared or return into the real world.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is a movie about an Indian family who moved from India to France. They settle in a small village in France, charmed by an old restaurant. However, the owner of the French restaurant across the street, Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren) does not approve of the Indian restaurant opening and turns out to be quite the antagonist to the family.

This movie is part of the Spanish Film Festival, which takes place during May. As one of the many films chosen to play at the Spanish Film Festival in 2014, Three Many Weddings (original title Tres Bodas De Mas) is a wild Spanish-language romantic comedy following a month in the life of Ruth (Inma Cuesta), the puppy-eyed lab scientist longing for love. When Ruth wakes up one morning from a drunken night of random love-making, she is faced with three wedding invitations – all from ex-boyfriends.

This movie is screened during the Spanish Film Festival in Australia, taking place all May. In Ariel Winograd’s To Fool A Thief, we’re often reminded to think upon the kind of screwball comedies that made romance the immaterial ideal that critics so often found unbearable for its overtly fictitious realities – It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, The Great Ziegfeld and on and on the list goes. It’s not surprising during the course that Winograd’s film should reprise these classical thematic structures, but it’s presented in a fashion which is ultimately a distraction from the main action.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – Horace “It is sweet and right to die for one’s country”. Most famously, and aptly, used by the World War I era poet Wilfred Owen in his poem, “Dulce Et Decorum Est-,” about knock kneed soldiers slogging through dirt and grime within dangerous trenches on the European front. The quote is haunting in both Owen’s and Horace’s context, even if it also belies a satirical edge.

The newest film written and directed by The Wachowskis, Jupiter Ascending, is a return to science fiction and action in a universe more accessible than our own where interplanetary shipping is business as usual and the Earth is but a chess piece on a planetary chess board. Channing Tatum is Caine Wise, a genetically engineered hunter sent to Earth to find Jupiter Jones, played by Mila Kunis. Jupiter’s fate is much grander than her station in life would lead her to believe and the powers that be get nervous when she starts to learn her destiny.

Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner (Dustin Hoffman). He is left to figure out what’s next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck.

Christopher Nolan, Wally Pfister, Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman… The big names attached to this film as well as the potentially great story all promised a pretty awesome movie. The movie, however, did not live up to the promise, at all. Transcendence tells the story of the great, famous computer scientist Will Caster (Johnny Depp) and his wife, Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall).

When I saw the first preview of this film, it appealed to me as a sci-fi thriller fan. I had every intention of going to the theaters to see it, but alas, I waited too long. Meanwhile, Gravity won several Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Score.

A well-executed horror film is quite possibly the most pure and affecting of all cinematic experiences. A horror film can be the ultimate ‘pop-corn’ movie – a work that draws you into its world, gnaws on your emotions and intellect, and finally spits you back into your seat, thrilled and grateful and dripping with adrenaline. It makes sense that horror films illicit a strong response – after all, we are naturally hard-wired to fear.