Most of them seem to be positive so far...

ANIMATION

Astroboy

(PG, 94 minutes)

Four Stars

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Bill Nighy, Freddie Highmore, Donald Sutherland, Eugene Levy, Nathan Lane, Matt Lucas, Sterling Beaumon, Madeline Carroll, Charlize Theron

Director: David Bowers

Showing: Birch Carrol & Coyle

CAIRNS.COM.AU/MOVIES

It may be the gleaming blue core power source that allows Astro Boy to function as a superhero robot but it is the massive heart of the story that makes this updated animated spectacular a sure-fire winner.

Astro Boy is a much loved character that originated in a Japanese comic book back in 1951 and has since been the star of several television series both in Japan and America.

His big screen debut is sure to impress old and new fans alike.It's an exciting, heart warming story with humour, splendid visual effects and a big-name Hollywood voice cast.

The central premise of a father's love for his son is the glue that keeps this endearing storytogether.

There's also the conflict between the blue and red core energy, symbolising good and evil, and the intangible element of humanity that the robotic Astro Boy embodies.

But all these elements are delivered effortlessly as part of the adventure in which wepartake.

Our eyes open as wide as Astro Boy's as we are taken to the floating paradise of Metro City, where robots of all shapes and sizes care for their owners.

We get a sense of everyday life as curious and ultra-smart Toby (Freddie Highmore), who craves to spend more time with his father, heads to the lab to witness the newly created blue coreenergy.

Nicolas Cage is perfect as the conflicted physicist father, whose love for his son prompts him to create a super-version.

I love the scene in which Toby (aka Astro Boy) discovers his super-powers.

It begins when he hears the chatter between two window-cleaning robots, squirting and squeegeeing the outside windows of the skyscraper. The super-powers, by the way, include fire-powered legs that allow him to fly and guns at the ready, front and back.

Like Superman, he's strong, too.

There's an appealing mix of characters including Eugene Levy's hilarious robot Orrin, Nathan Lane's Ham Egg, who repairs robots from the scrap heap to participate in Gladiatorlike contests, Donald Sutherland's ambitious General Stone, Samuel L. Jackson's gigantic Zog and Kristen Bell's warm-hearted Cora.

Bill Nighy's distinctively English voice seems at odds with Dr Elefun's squat, koala-like scientist, who always promotes commonsense.

Watch out for the funny sequence in which the Barking TrashCan robot tries to divulge Astro Boy'ssecret.

The animation from Hong Kong's Imagi animation studio is simple and conducive to the story, which screenwriter Timothy Harris (Twins, Kindergarten Cop) has artfully structured.

Special effects are exactly that and deliver everything we can hope for in this magical and enthralling adventure suitable for everyone.

Review by Louise Keller online at www.rottentomatoes.com

WIN! Astro Boy Packs

To celebrate the release of the new animated flick Astro Boy, timeOUT and Birch Carroll and Coyle have nine fantastic prize packs to give away.

The packs include an in-season family pass to Astro Boy, an Astro Boy T-shirt, an Astro Boy key ring and an Astro Boy poster.

To be in the running, head to cairns.com.au/competitions and register your details. Entries close on October 22 at 10am. Full terms & conditions are online.

The end is nigh...

The Final Destination

(MA15+, 82 minutes)

Starring: Shantel VanSanten, Bobby Campo, Haley Webb, Nick Zano, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella, Richard T. Jones, MykeltiWilliamson

Director: David R. Ellis

Showing: Birch Carrol & Coyle

On what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O'Bannon has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris into the stands, brutally killing his friends and causing the upper deck of the stands to collapse on him.

When he comes out of this grisly nightmare, Nick panics, persuading his girlfriend, Lori, and their friends, Janet and Hunt, to leave escaping seconds before Nick's frightening vision becomes a terrible reality.

Thinking they've cheated death, the group has a new lease on life but, unfortunately for Nick and Lori, it is only the beginning.

As his premonitions continue and the crash survivors begin to die one by one - in increasingly gruesome ways - Nick must figure out how to cheat death once and for all before he, too, reaches his final destination.

What does it say about us when we go to cinemas to see people die in gruesome yet inventive ways?

I don't know, probably nothing good but I know it is nothing new. After all, the ancient Romans' idea of a good time was to go and watch Christians get torn limb from limb.

And public executions were pretty commonplace throughout much ofhistory.

In one letter, for instance, the composer Mozart tells of the time he attended a public execution (he didn't care for it though and never wentagain).

Some countries still have public beheadings, hangings and even stonings to this day so perhaps going to cinemas to watch pretend deaths is a step up morally.

Or maybe not.

The point is that four movies later, The Final Destination franchise still manages to entertain even though it closely follows the template set by the previous instalments and adds an ADD metal soundtrack instead of composer Shirley Walker's more atmospheric music for the previous movies.

This time, a group of people escape a gruesomely over-the-top car pile-up at a NASCAR race track in which hordes of spectators get crushed and pulverised by flying debris thanks (once again) to a young man's premonitions.

Soon the "survivors" start dying in ridiculously convoluted accidents.

Part of the - dare I say it? - fun is watching these accidents with their Looney Tunes inner logic unfold.

Unlike the recent spate of torture porn flicks (what, they made yet another SAW movie?!), you don't feel like a sadistic sicko for watching.

What people misunderstand about the Final Destination movies is their black humour: one character's tow truck belongs to "Destiny Towing" forinstance.

Lots of such little jokes abound as each victim comes across as a recipient of the Darwin Awards.

Final Destination 4 - simply titled The Final Destination - milks the deaths (kills?) for all the 3-D shock worth it can.

However despite all the mayhem, The Final Destination still can't bring itself to break one of Hollywood's cardinal rules: that children shall come to no onscreen harm.

Much better to let them be traumatised for life by watching their soccer mum die in front of them in a particularly gory way.

Review by James O'Ehley at www.rottentomatoes.com

 

Astro Boy (PG)

*** 1/2

THE heroic robotic boy Astro, familiar from children's TV series from Japan and America, flies high in this unmistakably 21st century $65 million big screen production by the Hong Kong-based Imagi Studio.

The feature-length film, modelled on Pixar films, merges the best of western and eastern animation styles.

There's an international voice cast of British and American actors, directed by American David Bowers (DreamWorks and Aardman's Flushed Away), whose story was developed by American scripter, Timothy Harris (Kindergarten Cop, Space Jam).

Former Disney and DreamWorks animators worked with Imagi's team of about 500 animators in Hong Kong to produce the frequently moving epic adventure that should satisfy Astro Boy's huge army of fans, many now mums and dads themselves.

Dating back to the 1950s, Astro Boy (voiced by teen Freddie Highmore) has been skilfully modernised in a father-son story that remains faithful to the character.

Created by Dr Tenma (Nicolas Cage) in the gleaming futuristic Metro City to replace Toby, the bright-as-a-button human son he's tragically lost, Astro Boy has Toby's memory and human characteristics mixed with super-human powers. He draws on these to combat President Stone (Donald Sutherland) in a battle over a vital energy source, and to topple other aggressors, such as Hamegg (Nathan Lane) who leads a team of child-vagabonds who roam the scrap heaps outside Metro City for robot parts.

The distinctive voice of Bill Nighy (who also worked with Bowers on Flushed Away) is heard as Dr Tenma's colleague, Dr Elefun, and as Robotski, a rebel robot.

Humour, some of it provided by a robot dog Trash Can and Orrin (voiced by Eugene Levy) is interspersed with exciting action. The result is an entertaining film that should satisfy both adults and children. (90 min)

ASTRO BOY

Hoyts

90 mins (PG)

* * * *

VERDICT: Boy, what a great comeback

THIS computer-generated update of a beloved cartoon figure hits the spot between respect for the old and the possibilities of the new.

Popularised in Australia in the 1980s by an after-school TV series, Astro Boy first surfaced in 1951 as a Japanese comic-book character who became such an enduring favourite that many devotees feared Flushed Away director David Bowers' Astro film would tarnish their nostalgia-bathed boy wonder.

But Bowers blasts off with a feature-length Astro episode that bolts a sturdy ``origins'' story to a reverent yet vibrant adventure.

Like Up, Astro Boy begins with a shock demise. In a floating future city serviced by cyborgs, Dr Tenma (the voice of Nicolas Cage) creates a robot boy as a solution for grief.

But his rejection of this substitute son leads super-powered Astro Boy (Freddie Highmore) to plummet to the Earth's surface, where he befriends human children who are working for a Dickensian scammer called Ham Egg (Nathan Lane).

Issues of identity, acceptance and destructive consumption are assembled around some fantastic action sequences while Astro braving a Gladiator circuit, and his ultimate showdown with General Stone (Donald Sutherland), are boisterous big-screen battles underscored by kind concern for our little hero.

Bowers and emerging animation force Imagi Studios pay homage to Astro's visual history, just as the rocket-footed lad's old-school charms haven't been choked by contemporary slang or cultural trash.

Still, some of his quainter elements had to be addressed and explosive fight scenes did need to be beefed up to acknowledge how animated action has changed since Astro was a boy.

Astro Boy should please ageing devotees while attracting a new following.

Opens Thursday

THE much-loved, trans-generational animated TV icon with the spiked hair and rocket-powered legs gets the origin story treatment he/it deserves in this snappy, respectful and impressive-looking Hollywood mega-sizing.

The Jetsons-like setting is a utopian floating city where domestic robots form an ever-cheery servant class and the "ground-dwellers" are regarded with such contempt that garbage is dumped upon them without a second thought.

During a demonstration of a new power source, a high-IQ kid called Toby (voiced by Freddie Highmore) is sucked into oblivion. His grieving father (Nicolas Cage) attempts to replace him with a super-strong robotic look-a-like but soon learns he can't.

Abandoned by his "father" and pursued by a military-minded politician (Donald Sutherland), Astro Boy falls to the surface where he bonds with a group of children lead by the cynical Cora (Kristen Bell) and the Fagan-like orphan exploiter Ham Egg (Nathan Lane), who has a thing or two to learn about robot rights.

Astro Boy should please new-generation fans as thoroughly as nostalgia-hungry adults who grew up with the cartoons of the 1960s and 1980s.

Students of continuity are advised to ignore the way the trademark spikes in Astro's hair switch from side to side.

A caution to parents though: please take note of the film's sensible PG rating.

The story turns on the idea of a father trying to replace his lost son.

Everything comes good in the end, of course, but these scenes of loss and estrangement might prove too intense for younger children.

-- Edited by mara on Sunday 18th of October 2009 02:14:37 PM