Aubrey MaloneThe team behind Frozen and Wreck It Ralph, two of the most successful Disney films of recent years, have now made Big Hero 6(PG), a comedy adventure that chronicles a quirky relationship that develops between a huge inflatable robot, Baymax, and a child prodigy, Hiro Hamada, when they team up with a group of friends to become high-tech heroes. Inspired by the Marvel comics of the same name, this has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Film of the year.
Also on release is Son of a Gun(15A) starring Alicia Vikander, who was so stunning in the recent Testament of Youth. The film centres on the predicament of Brenton Thwaites, a prison inmate who receives ‘protection’ from a notorious Australian gangster (Ewan McGregor). He pays a high price for this, however, for upon his release he has to agree to a plan to ‘spring’ McGregor from prison and also join in a heist for gold.
Vikander is reportedly going to be everywhere this year. After years of refusing poor movies for more fastidious ones, the former ballerina now seems to be saying ‘yes’ to everything that’s going, which is a pity. She also turns up in Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina(15A), an oblique science fiction film about a computer programmer who’s selected to participate in a breakthrough experiment in artificial intelligence.
The question of whether it’s a victory of style over substance has been posed. It’s really a director’s film but the cast also features two more stars on the up-and-up: Oscar Isaac, who was so brilliant in the recent A Most Violent Year, and Domhnall Gleeson, Brendan’s son.
The Gambler(15A), meanwhile, represents a change of direction for Mark Wahlberg. Some might find the erstwhile ‘tough guy’ hard to credit as a novelist-cum-English professor, at least until we see him putting up his life as collateral for a loan from a hood. The trouble with most of Wahlbeg’s films is that they start well and then fizzle out and this seems to follow the same pattern.
Of significantly more interest is Selma (PG), a chronicle of Martin Luther King Jnr’s campaign to secure political equality for blacks during his epic march from Selma to Mountjoy, Alabama in 1965. The march culminated in Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The film is directed by Ava DuVernay and features an acclaimed performance from David Oyelowo in the lead role. It’s been nominated for an Oscar but Oyelowo, surprisingly, isn’t up for Best Actor. Even more surprisingly, DuVernay hasn’t received a Best Director citation.
How can a film be a Best Film nominee and the director of that film not qualify for a Best Director award? Does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences think the film directed itself?