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Movie Reviews
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Wreck-It Ralph
13 Feb 2013 by SPLING / 2 Comments
Video game arcades are casinos for minors, who want to blow their pocket money in one night. Bright flashing lights, no clocks, no windows, no parents, an instant token dispenser (and drug dealer) in every dingy corner… it was every kid’s dream and every other parent’s nightmare.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Zero Dark Thirty
06 Feb 2013 by SPLING / 1 Comment
Zero Dark Thirty is not The Hurt Locker. This may seem pretty obvious from the outset, but you’ve got to leave your preconceptions behind when you watch this chronicle of a decade-long manhunt. While both films share a number of crew and film-makers, these are two very different films.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Argo
30 Jan 2013 by SPLING / No Comments
Ben Affleck has been to Hollywood and got the t-shirt. As an actor, his career has been tumultuous – racking up a hit-and-miss list with roles ranging from romantic leads to superheroes. As a writer, his career started as a one-hit wonder, winning an Oscar with Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting. As a director, […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Django Unchained
23 Jan 2013 by SPLING / No Comments
Slavery is not dead, it’s alive and well in Hollywood. We’re not talking about those struggling actors chained to their trailers between takes, being forced to succumb to the hardship of celebrity, we’re talking about a trend that has emerged in 2012 in Cloud Atlas, Lincoln, Les Misérables and most notably Django Unchained, in a […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Perks of Being A Wallflower
16 Jan 2013 by SPLING / No Comments
The Perks of Being A Wallflower is a character-driven drama about the musings of a loner, suffering his way through high school, coping with first love and a dark secret with a little help from his friends. It sounds like a downward spiral of teenage angst, but The Perks of Being A Wallflower manages to […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Intouchables
09 Jan 2013 by SPLING / No Comments
If you enjoyed The Bucket List and Welcome to the Sticks, you will love The Intouchables.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: End of Watch
02 Jan 2013 by SPLING / 1 Comment
End of Watch is a buddy cop movie that has been shot like a found footage film. This film immerses us in the world of two super cops in the L.A.P.D., documenting life on the beat and their personal relationships, as they inadvertently draw the attention of a notorious cartel.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Jack Reacher
26 Dec 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Tom Cruise is Jack Reacher, in the adaptation of One Shot, a novel by Lee Child, in which ex-military hero, Jack Reacher, becomes the lead investigator in a multiple shooting homicide after the prime suspect of an “open and shut” case calls for the drifter by name.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Life of Pi
19 Dec 2012 by SPLING / 2 Comments
Life of Pi is a breathtaking adventure drama from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon director Ang Lee. Based on the book by Yann Martel, this beautiful film tells the story of Pi Patel, a young Indian boy whose survival at sea forms the basis for a spiritual journey of epic proportions.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey
12 Dec 2012 by SPLING / 2 Comments
Bloemfontein born author, J.R.R. Tolkien, would have been very proud of Peter Jackson if he was still with us today. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, undoubtedly the greatest trilogy of all-time, has a special place in most people’s hearts and movie collections and is the new standard by which all fantasy adventures will be […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Looper
05 Dec 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Where will you be in 30 years? More importantly, who will you be and would you really like the you you’ve become? Before we get too ahead of ourselves, that is essentially what’s at play in Looper, a new sci-fi actioner starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, from the mind of writer-director, Rian Johnson (The Brothers Bloom).
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Skyfall
28 Nov 2012 by SPLING / 4 Comments
Skyfall is the third James Bond film starring Daniel Craig, an actor who has successfully managed to keep himself detached from his Bond status in Hollywood. This can be attributed to his mission, which has seen him play 007 in every anti-Bond formula film since Casino Royale.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Jeff, Who Lives at Home
21 Nov 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a slacker comedy with a difference. Our hero is on a journey, the kind that we sometimes mistake for everyday life, in which he lets his destiny simply unfold as a series of interconnected signs, after his mom tells him to get something from the shop.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Cold Light of Day
14 Nov 2012 by SPLING / 2 Comments
The Cold Light of Day is as inane as its title. It’s cold – thanks to a wishy-washy script and wooden performances; it’s light on intrigue and intelligence – two pillars of great espionage films; and ironically most of the action sequences happen at night.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Cloud Atlas
07 Nov 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
The Wachowski Bros. brought us The Matrix, a film that redefined action sequences and challenged audiences to wrap their minds around a nightmarish vision of the future, now. The sci-fi actioner was revolutionary and set in motion a multi-million dollar franchise and a trilogy with diminishing returns.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Campaign
31 Oct 2012 by SPLING / 1 Comment
Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis and U.S. politics… one thing’s for certain, The Campaign couldn’t have come at a better time with all the political sentiment surrounding the next U.S. Presidential Elections and the Obama vs. Romney showdown.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Copposites
24 Oct 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Copposites is a body swap crime comedy from I Now Pronounce You Black and White writer-director Oliver Rodger. It’s refreshing to see a high concept comedy from South Africa, starring local comedians Rob Van Vuuren and Siv Ngesi, with support from Nik Rabinowitz, Alfred Ntombela and Loyiso Gola. Sadly, this stellar comedy line-up is wasted […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Ruby Sparks
17 Oct 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
The girl of your dreams usually stays there, but what if she didn’t? What if she lived in your mind and in your house? Describing Ruby Sparks as a high concept fantasy “romcom” is an insult to the film. It’s so much more… sidestepping the temptation to distort her physical attributes, they’ve written the story […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
10 Oct 2012 by SPLING / 2 Comments
How I Spent My Summer Vacation, originally Get the Gringo, stars Mel Gibson in what has been described as an unofficial sequel to Payback. Love or hate the man, he’s still got loads of moxie and star power. He may be a washed up celebrity in real-life, but Gibson’s still a live-wire on screen and […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Casting Me…
03 Oct 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Casting Me… is a character-driven semi-biographical indie comedy romance inspired by Clerks. Instead of Kevin Smith, we have Quinton Lavery, whose real-life antics as a casting director have spilled over into film as we journey with the man on his quest to write and direct a film after hours and win back his sweetheart.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Dredd 3D
26 Sep 2012 by SPLING / 2 Comments
Hollywood has run out of ideas, which is why they’re starting to reboot projects that failed to reach their full potential… like Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd. The idea of seeing a second attempt at this comic book hero, wrapped in a 3D bow and sporting a relatively unknown cast was about as appealing as snorting […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Flowers of War
19 Sep 2012 by SPLING / 4 Comments
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II describes events leading up the 1937-1938 Nanking Massacre with an account of the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. The controversial book was one of the first to introduce the massacre to the world in the English-language and inspired Geling Yan to write […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Searching for Sugar Man
12 Sep 2012 by SPLING / 5 Comments
Rockumentaries are usually about fame, the paranoia of money and the affects of a sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll lifestyle on the road. Searching for Sugar Man reinvents the genre with a real-life mystery about Sixto Rodriguez, a ’70s music icon, whose career was stifled and forgotten… or so it seemed. Decades after Rodriguez […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Dark Tide
05 Sep 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Dark Tide is a shark thriller starring Halle Berry and directed by Blue Crush and Into The Blue director, John Stockwell. The film is set in Simon’s Town, South Africa, which lends it some Proudly South African flavour with its setting, film crew and local acting talent. Although, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Total Recall
29 Aug 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
It’s difficult getting the balance right when you approach a remake. You need to offer the audience enough nostalgic hooks, entertainment value and enough reinterpretation to justify recycling a movie title. Unfortunately, the new Total Recall doesn’t work as a tribute, only sells eye candy and delivers a patchwork refresh to a superior film that […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Ted
22 Aug 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
This story of a talking toy and a boy is very Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, but Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane has taken it a step further, going beyond the innocence of childhood and delivering a down-and-dirty modern twist in his feature film directorial debut, Ted.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
15 Aug 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th U.S. President, who in his several years in office, led America through the Civil War, maintained the Union and ended slavery before he was assassinated in 1865. The great man has been immortalised, which explains why Steven Spielberg is releasing Lincoln, a biography starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s fantasy horror novel Abraham […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: A Million Colours
08 Aug 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
A Million Colours is based on the true story of two best friends, who fought the system that tried to separate them, after they shot to fame in 1975 with the release of the South African film e’Lollipop. Muntu Ndebele and Norman Knox didn’t see life in black or white, at a time when the […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Brave
01 Aug 2012 by SPLING / No Comments
Whatever Dreamworks can do, Pixar can do better. It’s been a game of ping-pong for these major animation studios, who seem to be constantly trying to out-animate each other. In their latest battle, Brave vs. How to Train Your Dragon, it seems that Dreamworks may have just clinched it from Pixar, whose work has been slightly less than perfect of late.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises
25 Jul 2012 by SPLING / 4 Comments
Christopher Nolan is a perfectionist, a conductor who insists that every instrument at his disposal is finely calibrated and double-checked. This means his films are always beautiful and reinforced by strong writing, powerful music and breathtaking visuals. His clinical precision could be accused of siphoning the warmth, imperfection and joy out of film, but he does tend […]
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