Our guide to (almost) everything you might want to see these school holidays with a big bucket of popcorn in hand.
The school holidays have begun, and we all know what that means – there’s finally something else to see at the cinema aside from Top Gun: Maverick. If you haven’t seen Tom Cruise flying high, you definitely should – but if you have? Then here’s our take on the rest of what the big screen has to offer over the next few weeks.
Elvis
Baz Luhrmann’s 150-minute look at the life of Elvis (Austin Butler) and his manipulative manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) is a classic of the “more is more” school of filmmaking. Ducking and weaving through the life of The King, there’s plenty here to take in, from the multiple origins of his sound and the Colonel’s dubious background to Elvis’ struggles later in his career to free himself from his sinister manager’s grasp.
What this doesn’t have is much of a sense of why we should care; Elvis’ actual music is surprisingly sidelined (presumably we all know it), and whatever drove him personally rarely gets a look in. Even the debauched Vegas era is skipped over; for a film clearly focusing on the legend, this presents a fairly sanitised version of his final years. Butler does a good job with a thinly sketched character; Hanks’ wobbly European accent does most of his work for him.
It’s all great to look at, but Elvis’ polyester jumpsuits had more substance.
Jurassic World: Dominion
Watching the sixth instalment of the Jurassic franchise is like watching a dinosaur trying to escape from a cage. Everybody knows what we want to see in these movies – dinosaurs! – but CGI nature documentaries already have the “what were dinosaurs really like” angle covered, and being a kid’s movie means they can’t have dinosaurs openly devouring people like stale popcorn.
So instead of giving us what we want to see, this is full of superficially exciting but dramatically pointless chase sequences where dinosaurs try to hunt and eat our many heroes (everyone from the previous Jurassic World films is back, plus now Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum from the original Jurassic Park). There are two main stories here, both pretty silly (locusts are eating the world’s crops; evil bounty hunters are snatching up clones), which eventually combine for yet another “oh no, the dinosaurs are running loose in a high-tech park” ending.
Maybe it’s time for the dinosaurs to go extinct again for a while.
Lightyear
A word of warning: the on-screen backstory of this spin-off from Toy Story makes zero sense (this is meant to be the movie Andy saw in 1995 that inspired him to want a Buzz Lightyear action figure), so it’s probably best to forget that side of things. Especially as the movie the original Buzz came from always seemed like it was a lot more exciting than this one, which is a competent but rarely thrilling film built around Buzz learning the importance of teamwork.
The story sounds promising: Buzz is stranded with a spaceship full of colonists on a hostile planet, then refuses to give up on finding a way back long after everyone else has settled in (each test flight takes him minutes but shoots him four years into the future, further isolating him from society), before teaming up with a bunch of misfits when alien robots The Zerg show up with an evil scheme in mind. But in practice it all feels a little too safe, the moral a little too obvious.
The original Buzz might have been a bombastic buffoon, but he also seemed a lot of fun; this version, not so much.
Minions: The Rise of Gru
The focus shifts back to Gru (Steve Carell) in this latest Minions movie, though anyone worried they’re not going to get their fill of the gibberish-talking yellow guys can rest assured that everybody here knows who we’ve really come to see. The story initially involves a twelve-year-old Gru’s attempt to join the number one villain franchise (which includes Jean Claude Van Damme as Jean Clawed and Dolph Lundgren as Swengeance), only to discover they’re not just bad guys, they’re bad at respecting underage villainy. No surprise that the middle act sees Gru in trouble and his minions having to step up to (try to) save the day, before a whole lot of action that manages to be both exciting and silly.
Somewhat surprisingly, this is probably the pick of this school holiday’s new releases; the Minions have been around the block a few times now but their endearing mix of loyalty, stupidity, and gadgetry makes them a solid comedy trio (this film largely focuses on the main three – you know who they are). The pace is breakneck but there’s still time for the jokes to land, the animation keeps on getting better, and most of all, at under 90 minutes it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) has a lot on her plate. Her family business is crumbling, her marriage is falling apart (not that she’s been paying much attention there), her father is coming over from China and her daughter wants him to know she’s gay. You’d think being audited by the IRS would be the last straw, but somehow things get even more stressful: she discovers the multiverse is real and there’s a supervillain out there who wants her – all versions of her – dead. Being literally the worse possible version of herself she could be is no protection: if she’s going to survive, she’s going to have to level up.
Even after months in cinemas this is still pulling in crowds, thanks to a mix of family drama, high-concept action, and a very broad streak of crude humour (a reality where people have hot dogs for fingers isn’t the half of it). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll ponder your own life choices: it’s well worth checking out.
Men
Horror movies are one of the few sure things at the cinema in this not-quite-post-Covid world, though the creepy side of this story sometimes threatens to be overwhelmed by some muddled and not very subtle messaging. After seeing her husband fall to his death, Harper (Jessie Buckley) needs a break. Unfortunately she’s chosen an oversized country manor in rural English where all the locals (Rory Kennear) seem to have the same face.
A walk in the woods leads to some sinister stalking; the local priest seems more than happy to blame her for her abusive husband’s crimes. And what’s the story behind the ancient relic inside his church? Some effectively unsettling scenes and a completely bonkers final sequence make this uneven film memorably disturbing, even if the end result never quite comes together.
Visit Village Cinemas in Geelong here, The Pivotonian Cinema here, and Reading Cinemas here.
