HOW to Train Your Dragon is at the top of the schedule for cinemas and families this week, as the beloved franchise transitions to live action.
Your kids could probably fill you in on the basics: young Hiccup (Mason Thames) is an innovative but hopeless Viking in training who forms a bond with the dragon he was in training to kill.
His discovery that “everything we know about dragons is wrong”, threatens to upend the traditions of his village but may in fact be their salvation from a truly terrifying threat.
The trailers for the film promise a near shot-for-shot remake of the original, which can be forgiven due to the fact that the original and the remake are helmed by the same director, Dean DeBlois.
Not only that but Gerard Butler, who lent his voice to the character of Stoic the Vast in the original, now inhabits the character in front of the camera.
When storytellers keep retelling the same story, it’s because it touches something deep within them and their audience.
This will be worth a trip to the movies.
Materialists is a romantic dramedy from Canadian playwright and filmmaker Celine Song, starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans.
Promoted as something of a gender-flipped Hitch, Johnson plays Lucy, a modern day matchmaker who arranges meetings between clients who hope to find the love of their lives, but has yet to find a match for herself.
Her life gets interesting when she attracts the attention of the impossibly wealthy and charismatic Harry (Pascal) at the same time as she encounters her struggling old flame John (Evans).
This has some great potential to be the kind of romance that transcends the normal limitations of the genre, given the talent involved.
Aussie filmmaker Sean Byrne brings a new visceral horror-thriller to screens with Dangerous Animals.
Equal parts Jaws and Wolf Creek, the film centres on the wildly unhinged Tucker, played by Jai Courtney.
He plays a tour boat operator on the Gold Coast who kidnaps his victims in order to feed them to sharks.
Plot takes a backseat to performance in films like this.
Fortunately, Courtney delivers in spades, making Tucker a horror villain worthy of being remembered alongside Bates and Lecter.
Finally, if you can find a cinema playing it, the documentary Ellis Park is a touching and inspiring film that will make you a better person.
Following Australian musician Warren Ellis (frequent collaborator of Nick Cave) as he reflects on how music and creativity have shaped him, the journey is not into the soul of the artist but rather to the forest of Sumatra, where he has sponsored the creation of a sanctuary for animals that have been illegally trafficked and mistreated.
By Lindsay HALL
