Movie Review ... The Rover

 

The Australian outback has been used in a diverse array of movies.  Representing the Wild West, modern vistas and science fiction landscapes, it has been popular with film-makers.  ‘The Rover’ mixes the dusty dramas of westerns within a futuristic tale.  Whilst having more than a whiff of ‘Mad Max’-inspired theatrics, it marks its own place in the genre.  Showing off the vast outback in its deadly glory, ‘The Rover’ utilises what nature brings to its full effect.

Ten years after a world-wide economic collapse, Australia has become a money mecca.  Trading in American dollars, its populace does anything for a buck.  When thieves steal his prized car, lonely drifter Eric (Guy Pearce) seeks vengeance.  When kidnapping one of the gang who stole it, Rey (Robert Pattinson), Eric uses his hostage to his advantage.  Tearing the outback asunder in his quest, the duo’s lives become increasingly endangered by those crossing their path.

‘The Rover’ is a violent drama with a theme of desperation.  Each character wants something and will do anything to obtain it.  How their desperate natures fuel their determination makes them more dangerous.  Haunted by their pasts, Eric and Rey have much in common.  Sifting what they can out of life, their bond makes them a strange duo.  Using their relationship as a basis for its rugged road-movie-motif ‘The Rover’ succeeds in becoming a gripping character-driven tale.

Whilst a little drawn-out and leaving certain aspects frustratingly unexplained, Director David Michod uses ‘The Rover’s expansive setting well.  He ensures the landscape perfectly matches the tension everyone feels as they struggle for survival.  The desolate terrain mirrors the weary resolve they endure.  The Flinders Ranges has never looked so good on film with the international cast aiding in creating the rugged world in which they live.

A generally fine local production ‘The Rover’ showcases the locales to stark effect.  The versatility of Australia’s scenery continues apace with its backdrop sure to be used in many more productions for decades to come.

Movie Review Rating out of 10:  7

Movie Review by Patrick Moore

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Patrick Moore's Movie Review is an alternative look at movie releases in Australia.

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A Delores Moran Moment

 

Trivia Bits 21 June

 

The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias, is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately 53 km in circumference, about 21 km long, and 13 km wide.

Queensland, South Australia and Northern Territory meet at Poeppel Corner named after Augustus Poeppel who conducted a survey in the mid-1880s to find the exact location of the central Australian state borders.

Minsk is the capital of the European country of Belarus.

Soap opera actress Catherine Hickland notably as the character of Lindsay Rappaport on ABC's One Life to Live, starred in the Broadway production of Les Misérables as Fantine in 1995.

Napoleon III, Emperor of France, bought the American ironclad Dunderberg in 1867 over the objections of his own navy, which preferred a home-built ship.

The compass and the steel square are commonly symbols of the Freemasons.

The golden age of arcade video games defined as the peak era of arcade video game popularity and technological innovation began with the release of Space Invaders in 1978.

Brownie Wise, a pioneering American saleswoman, was responsible for the success of Tupperware through 1950 development of the "party plan" system of marketing.

The zloty, which literally means golden, is the official currency of the European country of Poland.

Alexander Pope's 1711 An Essay on Criticism is a poem written in heroic couplets.

Quotables 21 June

 

A Delores Hart Moment

 

Trivia Bits 20 June

 

Jarman Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia is the site of the first European settlement in the mountain area near Albemarle County in 1734 by Michael Woods and his family.

Australia’s national capital, Canberra has two sister cities – Beijing in China and Nara in Japan.

The satellite tracking station of Pine Gap is in the Australian state of Northern Territory.

Bonuses promised to girls for Sumangali (child labour) work in Tamil Nadu are deducted from their stipends and held until they complete three years of work, a form of debt bondage illegal in India since 1976.

The Alpine Ibex, a species of wild goat living in the mountains of the European Alps including Gran Paradiso National Park in northwest Italy, were first protected in 1816.

Golda Meir was the first female Prime Minister of Israel and the fourth Prime Minister of Israel having been elected on March 17, 1969, after serving as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister.

On top of the traditional Canadian Nanaimo bar is chocolate and is a wafer crumb-based layer topped by a layer of light vanilla or custard flavoured butter icing which is covered with melted chocolate.

In 2013, American Grammy Award-nominated humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor David Sedaris released a collection of narrative essays as a book titled Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.

The Koori indigenous Australians traditionally occupied the areas now known as New South Wales and Victoria.

The capital of the country in Southeastern Europe Albania is Tirana with the first records of the Albanian people as a distinct ethnicity date to the 14^th Century.

Quotables 20 June

 

A Delores Gray Moment

 

Trivia Bits 19 June

 

The femoral artery is located in the thigh (leg).

Jessica Sutta is best known as a member of The Pussycat Dolls - an American pop girl group and dance ensemble, founded in Los Angeles by choreographer Robin Antin in 1995 as a burlesque troupe.

Haeinsa is a popular tourist attraction in South Korea and is the Temple of the Ocean Mudra, the head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism in the Gaya Mountains.

Diatomic molecules are molecules composed of only two atoms with early as 1805, French chemist and physicist Gay-Lussac and German (Prussian) geographer, naturalist and explorer, von Humboldt showed that water is formed of two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen.

Haloumi cheese is a Cypriot semi-hard, unripened brined cheese made from a mixture of goat's and sheep's milk, and sometimes also cow's milk.

English amateur cricketer W. G. Grace captained Gloucestershire County Cricket Club for 29 years and is regarded one of the greatest cricketers of all time.

Penrod “Penry” Pooch was the Alter ego of the carton superhero Hong Kong Phooey a 16-episode Hanna-Barbera animated series that aired from September 7, 1974 to December 21, 1974.

In Casper the Friendly Ghost comics, the “Tuff Little Ghost” is Spooky.

French lawyer and politician Maximilien Robespierre was one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution who, during the Reign of Terror earned the nickname l'Incorruptible - The Incorruptible – only later to be beheaded by guillotine on 28 July 1794.

Vientiane is the capital of the Asian country of Laos.

Quotables 19 June

 

A Delores Del Rio Moment

 

Trivia Bits 18 June

 

Keratoconus is a degenerative disorder of the eye causing structural changes within the cornea.

Medieval royal official Reginald de Warenne (died 1179) was one of the first persons summoned as a Serjeant-at-Law, being summoned in 1168 by King Henry II of England.

Traditionally, Arborio rice is the main ingredient in risotto.

Opened on 24 May 1906, The Ritz Hotel, a 5-star hotel located in Piccadilly in London, England, was the first hotel to offer a private bathroom for every guest room.

An Embassy is the collective noun for a group of people from one state or an international inter-governmental organisation, such as the United Nations, present in another state to represent the sending state/organisation officially in the receiving state.

But, for my own part, it was Greek to me is a line from William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar believed to have been written in 1599.

Danish film director and screenwriter Lars von Trier is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective – an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 – aimed to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme.

It was in the 1960’s that the first electronic push-button system telephones were introduced when on 18 November 1963 the Bell System in the United States officially introduced dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) technology under its registered Touch-Tone® mark.

Australian actress and musician, Toni Collette’s character in the American drama TV series Hostages is Dr Ellen Sanders.

The highest peak in the Northern Territory is Mount Zeil situated in the western MacDonnell Ranges with a height of 1,531 metres (5,023 ft).

Quotables 18 June

 

A Delores Costello Moment

 

Trivia Bits 17 June

 

Australian journalist and television presenter Indira Naidoo wrote the book The Edible Balcony which was released in 2011.

Bob Dylan’s son Jakob is best known as the lead singer of the band The Wallflowers a rock band from Los Angeles, California.

T S Elliot’s 434-line poem The Waste Land begins “April is the cruellest month” and was first published in 1922 and first appeared in the U.K. in the October issue of The Criterion.

Located in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hospital, cofounded by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond on May 11, 1751, was the first hospital in the United States.

In the classic film Citizen Kane, a 1941 American drama film directed, co-written, produced by, and starring Orson Welles, the old man’s final word is Rosebud.

The South Australian capital city of Adelaide is named after Queen Adelaide, the wife of British Monarch King William.

Pule cheese is made from the milk of a donkey.

Fashion magazine Marie Claire's co-founder Marcelle Auclair also wrote biographies of socialist Jean Jaures and Catholic Saints Teresa of Avila and Bernadette of Lourdes. Marie Claire's first issue appeared in 1937. The US edition was started by the Hearst Corporation, based in New York, in 1994.

Providing the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story films is American comedian, actor, voice-over artist and entertainer Tim Allen.

Scottish-Aboriginal Artist Lin Onus who’s most famous work, a 1992 painting Michael and I are just slipping down to the pub for a minute, has been featured on a postcard, and is a reference to his colleague, artist Michael Eather and also shows a dingo on a sting-ray surfboard riding a Hokusal wave.

Quotables 17 June

 

A Della Reese Moment

 

Trivia Bits 16 June

 

The red and green kangaroo paw is the floral emblem of the Australian state of Western Australia.

The British Army requisitioned the Manor House in Chew Magna, Somerset, England, during World War II until they discovered it had no electricity, running water or modern sanitation.

The South Australian suburb of Adelaide known as Albert Park was laid out by W R Cave in 1877 and was named after Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert.

Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees in south-western France, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes said to have occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous when at that time, the most prominent feature of the town was the fortified castle that rises up from a rocky escarpment at its centre.

The Beaufort Sea is a part of the Arctic Ocean and is located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, west of Canada's Arctic islands.

US actor and musician born Alicia Augello-Cook is better known by her stage name of Alicia Keys – an American R&B singer-songwriter, pianist, musician, record producer, and actress.

The Gospel of Philip, dating back to around the 3rd century, was one of the many Gnostic writings found in 1946 in the Egyptian village of Nag Hammâd.

French sociologist, social psychologist and philosopher David Émile Durkheim founded L'Année Sociologique, the first French social science journal In 1898 as a way of publicizing his own research and the research of his students and other scholars working within his new sociological paradigm.

The modern mandolin has eight – four pairs – of strings.

The four Kalamazoo-class monitors, a class of ocean-going ironclad monitors, begun during the American Civil War, were eventually scrapped in November 1865 because the unseasoned wood of their hulls rotted while they were still on the building stocks.

Quotables 16 June

 

Movie Review ... The Fault In Our Stars

 

Romance movies have been enduringly popular.  ‘From Here to Eternity’, ‘Gone with the Wind’ and others have captured the imagination for generations.  Those lasting the distance have something original in them whilst following the expected ‘Boy meets Girl’ formula.  Others have taken the predictable ‘Mills and Boon’ path featuring lingering looks, swirling violins and soft focussed lens.  ‘The Fault in our Stars’ falls into the latter with its manipulative nature enabling it to mark its own place amongst a gallery of forgettable romantic pot-boilers.

Hazel (Shailene Woodley) is a teenager with terminal cancer.  Determined to overcome obstacles she joins a Cancer Support group.  There she meets Augustus (Ansel Elgort), a former sportsman now amputee.  Forming a connection, they bring new spark to their lives whilst attempting to meet the author of a book they like.  Travelling to Amsterdam to meet the writer, their struggle against emotional and physical adversities continues to haunt their lives.

Based on John Green’s best-selling novel, ‘The Fault in our Stars’ fails to have the courage of its convictions.  Whilst its central theme of embracing life and staying positive is commendable its execution isn’t.  Lazily directed by Josh Boone, it shamelessly uses the usual TV movie ‘Disease of the Week’ formula to the maximum.  He fails to bring any fresh perspective to the couple’s plight with a soft rock soundtrack and constant weeping substituted for genuine characterisation.

Its biggest crime is its tasteless insensitivity.  A sequence features them visiting Anne Frank House with their illness unsubtly linked to the World War 2 Holocaust.  They then promptly passionately kiss in Anne Frank’s attic to the cheesy applause of fellow tourists.  This alone robs the movie of any credibility with the performers having little to do except cry and emote on cue.

Featuring pretty, wealthy people dealing with traumatic hardship, ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ story is dubious at best. Undemanding viewers may enjoy although others should steer clear of this teenage romance constantly searching for depth and sorely missing passion.

Movie Review Rating out of 10:  2  

Movie Review by Patrick Moore

Agree with Patrick's Movie Review? Then please use the comment box.

Patrick Moore's Movie Review is an alternative look at movie releases in Australia.

Official HomePage click HERE

TRAILER

SOUNDTRACK

A Debra Paget Moment

 

Trivia Bits 15 June

 

The basalt formation known as the Giant’s Causeway is located in Northern Ireland.

In geography, a cataract is a large powerful waterfall

The 9.2 inch naval gun at O'Hara's Battery, Gibraltar, was capable of firing shells from Europe to Africa. The battery was in use during World War II and was last fired during training exercises in 1976.

In music theory, a diatonic scale has eight notes composed of seven pitches and a repeated octave, and are the foundation of the European musical tradition.

MIlla Jovovich played Leeloo in the 1997 movie The Fifth Element directed by Luc Besson and co-starring Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman.

Novelist Mary Angela Dickens, the oldest grandchild of Charles Dickens, died in 1948 on the 136th anniversary of his birth.

The Spanish treasure fleet was destroyed in the Battle of Vigo Bay on 23 October 1702 during the opening years of the War of the Spanish Succession.

In 1980, Queen Juliana abdicated from the throne of the Netherlands.

Non-standard poker hands in five-card draw are determined by house rules and may have colourful names like Little Bobtail and Round the Corner Straight.

The Vietnamese prison camp that American POW’s referred to as the Hanoi Hilton was at Hoa Lo.

Shatrunjaya, hills located by the city of Palitana, in Bhavnagar district, Gujarat, India, is a sacred site for Jains, containing hundreds of Palitana temples.

Ojos del Salado, reportedly the world’s highest active volcano at 6,893 m (22,615 ft), is on the border of South American countries Argentina and Chile.

The second wife of Henry VIII was Anne Boleyn who was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right.

Major sewing machine manufacturer, Singer, was first established as I.M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac Merritt Singer with New York lawyer Edward Clark.

Mario Cavaradossi and Baron Scarpia are characters from Giacomo Pucccini’s operaTosca which premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900.

The British plan for the Battle of Bazentin Ridge in 1916, was dismissed beforehand by one French commander as "an attack organized for amateurs by amateurs".

Clifford Brown was best known for playing jazz trumpet with two of his compositions, Joy Spring and Daahoud becoming jazz standards.

The 1936 famous photo known as The Falling Soldier was taken by Robert Capa, a Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist.

The first actor to play Dr Who was William Hartnell who played the coveted role from 1963 to 1966.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Vice President Selina Meyer in the HBO television comedy series Veep.

Quotables 15 June