Movie of the Week – Kill the Messenger
Kill the Messenger recounts the story of Gary Webb, the Californian journalist who exposed the CIA’s collusion with Nicaraguan druglords in the ’80s. Jeremy Renner, an actor who has struggled to find good roles, gives a career best performance as Webb. While the movie trades in a few too many conspiracy thriller clichés, it’s a compelling watch for fans of such fare.
Still Alice
Julianne Moore picked up her first Best Actress Oscar a couple of weeks ago for her performance in Still Alice, and it’s hard to argue with the Academy’s choice. Moore is fantastic as a linguistics professor who finds her life torn apart by early onset Alzheimer’s. It’s a run of the mill disease of the week flick but Moore’s nuanced, unshowy portrayal elevates it somewhat.
Appropriate Behavior
Appropriate Behavior is a charming indie comedy from writer-director-star Desiree Akhavan. The movie plays like a hipster lesbian take on Woody Allen as Akhavan plays a young New Yorker torn between her bisexuality and her conservative Iranian parents.
Hyena is a stylish but superficial thriller about a corrupt London cop who gets in over his head when he forms an alliance with a pair of Albanian gangsters. The movie looks very slick and Peter Ferdinando delivers a great performance in the lead role, but we’ve seen all this many times before.
Well meaning but amateurish, Difret is the true story of a legal case that led to the outlawing of female abduction for marriage in Ethiopia. The film suffers badly from a script that lacks nuance and spells out every last detail to the audience.
Worst of the week is South African sci-fi comedy Chappie, a painfully unfunny vehicle for rap duo Die Antwoord.
By Eric Hillis
