ScreenScribe

Sagebrush fans with a sense of humour can look forward to a rootin’-tootin’ Blu-ray bonanza. Universal is about to dust off four westerns that, while not as distinguished as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood’s other credits, still will be well worth rediscovering in HD. The best of the mild bunch is The War Wagon, in which […]

Hereafter, Faster and Season of the Witch head a raft of Blu-ray releases that will bow here without a cinema release over the next two months. Season of the Witch goes on sale on June 22, Hereafter on July 13 and Faster on August 15. Hereafter’s the most interesting of the three, reuniting Invictus director […]

Marley & Me: TV3, 8.30pm Saturday. Every dog-eared joke you can think of is funnier than this comedy that laboriously contrasts a husband-and-wife’s testing relationship with their larrikin Labrador’s unconditional love. Based on a true story, it’s an amusing but predictable take on marriage, kids and pets that surprises only by crediting among its writers […]

Duplicity: TV3, 8.30pm Saturday. The writer/director of Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy, targets the lighter side of industrial espionage in this sophisticated to-catch-a-spy caper with a droll romantic-comedy streak. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play transatlantic secret agents-cum-distrustful sweethearts who risk being outfoxed by one another when they team up to scam two multi-nationals. Their skulduggery […]

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach. Director: Sergio Leone. Screenplay: Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone. Score: Ennio Morricone. Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli. The spaghetti western that completed Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy with epic panache has Clint Eastwood’s enigmatic gunslinger on the trail of buried Civil War booty. All three movies have just been released on Blu-ray […]

Cast: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Tony Kgorge, Patrick Mofokeng. Director: Clint Eastwood. Screenplay: Anthony Peckham. Score: Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens. Cinematography: Tom Stern. At age 80, Clint Eastwood must be Hollywood’s most invincible filmmaker – and with this stirring dramatisation of South Africa’s bid to win the 1995 World Cup, he’s clearly not ready to […]

Bottle Shock: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Saturday. What should have been a corker romp about wine snobbery is a cloudy array of clichés, stereotypes and blended storytelling. Alan Rickman is marvellous as a struggling Paris wine merchant who, in 1976, visits the fledgling wineries of Napa Valley to concoct a blind, New World-Old World tasting test […]

Warner Bros NZ and Sky TV will celebrate Clint Eastwood’s 80th birthday with only half the HD gusto it deserves. The veteran filmmaker becomes an octogenarian on May 31, two days before the Blu-ray release of the most recent movie he’s directed, Invictus. June also is when Warner Bros will release for the first time […]

Yippie-ki-yay! Bruce Willis die-hards will delight in not only their hero’s Die Hard trilogy making its HD debut next month on Sky Movies Greats but also his underrated Navy SEALS-in-Nigeria thriller, Tears of the Sun. Also getting its first 1080i tour of duty, on the eve of its Blu-ray release, is Saving Private Ryan, along […]