Trailer: Black Sea

Give me a solid old-school adventure like Black Sea over your latest effects-pumped Marvel superhero epic any day. Directed by Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland), this submarine flick is a rarity these days: a mid-budget action-thriller emphasising performances and strong character work, hinging on a tense real-world/working-class type scenario. Jude Law's accent is a bit suspect, but the film has received some encouraging reviews so far: Empire says it's a "superbly shot men-on-a-mission thriller with chest-tightening tension and a striking contemporary resonance", and Time Out London: "its blend of old-fashioned storytelling values and zeitgeisty relevance make it a worthy addition to sub-aquatic cinema's nerve-juddering legacy." We're looking to secure a couple of screenings in March - fingers crossed! In the meantime, get your palms clammy with the trailer below:

Trailer: Big Game

Finnish director Jalmari Helander's debut film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale was a terrifically twisted yuletide adventure, combining decidedly offbeat humour and a glossy, commercial sheen into a fun little romp. His follow-up Big Game appears to take this sensibility one step further into action-blockbuster realm, with an awesomely ridiculous plot about a young hunter (Rare Exports' Onni Tommila) who rescues the President of the United States (Samuel Jackson!) after Air Force One is shot down. Containing elements of everything from Cliffhanger to Home Alone, Big Game looks like rip-roaring tongue-in-cheek entertainment, a project that could definitely catapult Helander into the Hollywood big leagues. 

Fatso's Top 20 Biggest Movies of 2014

And now, without further ado, our top movie rentals of the year. Any favourites? Disappointments? Surprises? These were the films you couldn't wait to see on DVD and Blu-ray:

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1. Gravity

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 2. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

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3. The Wolf of Wall Street

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4. Captain Phillips

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5. Thor: The Dark World

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 6. 12 Years a Slave

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7. Lee Daniels' The Butler

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8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

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9. Frozen

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10. Philomena

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11. The Railway Man

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12. American Hustle

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13. Blue Jasmine

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14. Rush

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15. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

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16. Ender's Game

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17. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

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18. About Time

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19. Saving Mr. Banks

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20. Dallas Buyers Club

Fatso's Top 20 Biggest TV Shows of 2014

2014 has been a pretty amazing year for TV. There was no shortage of quality series to watch, and more often than not, it sometimes became a bit overwhelming to keep up with all the great shows being churned out. In case you missed anything, here's a list of the Top 20 most rented TV shows on Fatso in 2014 -- once again, and unsurprisingly, the mighty Game of Thrones towered above them all...

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1. Game of Thrones - Season 3

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2. True Detective - Season 1

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3. House of Cards (US) - Season 1

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4. Homeland - Season 3

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5. The Bridge - Series 2

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6. Broadchurch - Series 1

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7. Sherlock - Series 3

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8. House of Cards (US) - Season 2

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9. Orange Is the New Black - Season 1

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10. Orphan Black - Series 1

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11. Justified - Season 3

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12. Borgen - Season 3

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13. The Returned - Season 1

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14. True Blood - Season 6

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15. The Americans - Season 1

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16. Elementary - Season 1

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17. The Tunnel

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18. Sons of Anarchy - Season 5

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19. Boardwalk Empire - Season 4

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20. The Walking Dead - Season 4

Trailer: Big Hero 6

Walt Disney Animation's latest animated feature Big Hero 6 is coming to NZ theatres on Boxing Day and it looks freakin' awesome! Based on a lesser-known Marvel comic character, this superhero flick, about a young tech-geek prodigy and his cuddly inflatable robot buddy, looks to combine all the slam-bang blockbuster action we've come to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Pixar's gorgeous state-of-the-art CG animation and smart, all-ages humour (the city design looks stunning). Fatso will be hosting previews in Auckland and Wellington on December 21 -- stay tuned to find out how to win tickets. In the meantime, check out this fantastic trailer below:

Trailer: Furious 7

The trailer for the SEVENTH entry in the non-stop Fast and Furious franchise -- simply entitled Furious 7 -- is out of the gate and it's a slick, action-packed beauty that fans will totally lap up. Fast and Furious 6 reached new heights of crazy for the series, what with cars pulling down a cargo jet, and it's probably safe to say that Furious 7 is going to offer plenty more physics-defying vehicular mayhem (cars falling out of the sky!) to complement its themes of family togetherness that Vin Diesel loves hammering home. I'm particularly interested in seeing how new-to-franchise director James Wan (The Conjuring), coming mostly from a horror background, will handle the big-budget action; he's got a good eye, and having done one decent action-y thriller in Death Sentence, I don't think he will blow it. Trickier perhaps, would be the work-around Paul Walker's untimely death. How will they write him out of the film? How's the doubling with his brothers going to look? It's hard to tell any of this from the trailer, but damn I'm hyped.

Stellar Buzz for Christopher Nolan's Space Travel Blockbuster

For hype and anticipation, Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Interstellar is the one to beat right now. It's about two weeks away from release and early reactions are starting to surface online, all of them positive. What can I say, if the likes of Edgar Wright ("Emotional, visually stunning"), Rian Johnson ("some of the finest space travel spectacle this side of 2001") and Brad Bird ("WOW") are bowled over, I think we're going to be in for a dazzler. It's also worth noting Interstellar is the first Hollywood blockbuster we've had in what seems to be an alarmingly long time that isn't a sequel or based on some existing franchise/toy/book. Be sure to see at IMAX on November 6!

Movie Cliché Supercut: "Let Her Go!"

Here's one of the most commonly used lines in action/thriller movies -- so common that I haven't even really thought about how often it is used -- made a lot more execrable and laughable seen in such quick succession. Highlights: Jon Lovitz in Loaded Weapon and Richard Gere's horrible Irish accent in The Jackal.

David Fincher: "And the Other Way is Wrong"

David Fincher is, without a doubt, one of the finest, most visually precise of all living American filmmakers. With his marvelously twisty -- and twisted -- new film Gone Girl just out, editor Tony Zhou -- who's previously broken down the style of other directors like Edgar Wright and Michael Bay -- has put together this terrific, illuminating look at Fincher and what he does (or more so, doesn't do) in his work. If you haven't seen the bulk of Fincher's films, spoilers follow, so approach at your own peril.

Teaser Trailer: Inside Out

Oh Pixar, you tease!! Just so no one out there gets TOO excited, the first trailer for the next film, Inside Out, contains about 30 seconds of footage, and the rest is made up of clips from their previous films. Still, it feels like it's been way too long since we've had an original Pixar movie, and this one definitely looks promising (it's more appealing to me than say, Brave, anyway). Being partially set inside the mind of a 11-year-old girl, and with Monsters Inc. and Up director Pete Docter at the helm, there's plenty of potential for going wild with the premise. June 2015 couldn't come sooner...

Keanu Avenges Dog's Death and Wows Fantastic Fest

If anyone needs a career resuscitation, it's Keanu Reeves. Although he did praise-worthy work with his underseen-and-appreciated 2013 directorial debut Man of Tai Chi, the gargantuan calamity that was 47 Ronin proved to be a large nail-in-the-coffin for the star. Enter his forthcoming hitman action-thriller John Wick, seemingly out of nowhere. After premiering at Fantastic Fest over the weekend, twitter lit up with raves about the film, which is apparently directed by his Point Break stunt double! The trailer makes it out to be a throwback to the bullet-ridden action flicks of the '90s, which is fine by me; any film that has Keanu uttering the line, "That dog was a final gift from my dying wife" must be kinda fun, right? Read more tweets here, and watch the trailer below:

For the Star Wars Fan with Everything #34

What do you get when you strip John Williams' score from the Throne Room scene in Star Wars? Sublime, hilarious awkwardness...

Friday Clips #10

We're long overdue for a Friday Clips post! Below: a supercut of Wes Anderson's POV-vehicle shots; an Honest Trailer of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is actually one of their more positive efforts but still points out, deservingly, lapses in the movie's narrative logic; a LEGO short film that spoofs Guardian of the Galaxy's mix tape; a video showing Pixar's beautiful colour script at work...

Trailer: Grand Piano

Grand Piano looks and sounds pretty absurd, but potentially absurd in that hugely entertaining way that sometimes Brian DePalma's films can be. Also I'm a sucker for a good limited-location thriller, so this looks like it'll be right up my alley. Elijah Wood stars as a stage-fright-stricken concert pianist who's targeted during his comeback performance by a psycho who tells him he will die if he plays one wrong note. Pinnacle Films will be releasing this film from Spanish director Eugenio Mira -- who interestingly, did the score to the great sci-fi indie Timecrimes! --  on October 1 on DVD and Blu-ray. Reserve it here. Watch Elijah plonk on some keys anxiously in the trailer below:

For the Star Wars Fan with Everything #33

It was only a matter of time before the viral fundraising phenomenon known as the "ice bucket challenge" reached the Star Wars galaxy, and behold, here we have Luke Skywalker,  Han Solo and assorted Episode VII cast members dousing themselves with ice cold water for the ALS Association. Enjoy!