A little late with the Worth Watching roundup for June thanks to The House of Caine kicking things off here on the blog for the month. Not the busiest month of viewings, but some good stuff and a contender for my least favourite of the year. Take a read and share your thoughts.

Worth Watching:

•  The Great Gatsby (2013), Baz Luhrmann – Just because the visuals on display here are so incredible, doesn’t mean this film is all style over substance as many have claimed. Indeed the film brings to life the disillusionment and vapidity of life better than the book did for me. Awesomely acted, I thought all four leads were excellent and I was also a big fan of the pretty divisive soundtrack.

• Premium Rush (2012), David Koepp – This is perfect Saturday night with a beer fodder. I had a lot of fun with this film. I mean how can you go wrong with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a bike messenger and Michael Shannon as the bad guy. He is soo delightfully Michael Shannony in this film. It does some quite interesting things visually and also has some really fun bike versus car chase sequences. I loved this film.

• Tabu (2012), Miguel Gomes – Ambitious (perhaps even pretentious) but unfortunately not as successful as I would have hoped. It is too slow, especially the first half, which is essentially an hour long prologue for the incredible love story of the second half. A tale of adultery in mid 20^th century colonial Africa. This second half is wondrous, with incredible acting (with no dialogue!) and lovingly brought to life in 4:3 black and white.

• Weeds Season 1 (2005), Jenji Kohan – It takes a little while to settle on a tone, but when it does, this is really original stuff. Mary Louise Parker is utterly fantastic. Her character is a really bloody good one and has such a good arc as the season progresses. The whole thing feels really authentic. Parker’s character in particular does not always have her shit together which is refreshing. 

Not Worth Watching:

• After Earth (2013), M. Night Shyamalan – What an utter toilet of a movie. Will Smith’s kid has the most annoying presence on screen. As for Will, his laconic screen charm has disappeared. This is a film that is mind numbingly stupid and at times so cliché it is literally laughable. Arouses no emotion or feeling, even when straining incredibly hard to do so. Doesn’t even look particularly good.

• World War Z (2013), Marc Foster – Whilst this has some upsides, I was disappointed. The early action sequences are just shaky cam – if you want to convey highly kinetic danger, you need to do it more intelligently than that. The globe-hopping structure, clearly yearning for the book, feels half cocked. Adventure film-lite if you will. Plus the whole conclusion is a let down, leaves you feeling pretty hollow. Despite a reasonable running time and a couple of good performances, this really dragged for me.

If you only have time to watch one The Great Gatsby

Avoid at all costs After Earth

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