Runaway Jury
From master storyteller
John Grisham (The Firm, The Pelican Brief) comes a suspense-thriller
about a high-priced and ruthless jury “consultant” (Gene Hackman),
who will stop at nothing to secure a verdict on an explosive trial.
When a young widow in New Orleans brings a civil suit against the
powerful corporate consortium she holds responsible for her husband’s
murder, she sets in motion a multi-million dollar case.
Representing the widow is Wendall Rohr (Dustin Hoffman), a courtly
Southern lawyer with a moral centre and a heartfelt passion for the
case he’s presenting. His opponent, the defence counsel representing
the corporation is, in reality, only the front man for Rankin Fitch
(Gene Hackman), a brilliant and ruthless jury consultant.
At a high-tech command center set up in an old French Quarter warehouse,
Fitch and his team work on the surveillance and assessment of potential
jurors. He will know everything about their lives, and strategically
manipulate the jury selection process so as to bring about a result
favourable to his client.
The Matrix Revolutions
In The Matrix Revolutions – the final explosive chapter in
the Matrix trilogy – the epic war between man and machine reaches
a thundering crescendo.
After his earlier adventures in The Matrix Reloaded, Neo (Keanu
Reeves) is left drained of his power, adrift in a no-man’s land between
the Matrix and the Machine World.
While Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) holds vigil over Neo’s comatose
body, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) grapples with a new revelation
of what the Matrix really is.
War breaks out on the scorched Earth. In Zion – the last bastion
of humanity – troops, aided by courageous civilian volunteers, desperately
battle to hold back the Sentinel invasion as the Machine army bores
into their underground stronghold.
Facing total annihilation, the citizens of Zion are fighting not
only for their own lives, but for the future of mankind itself.
Neo and Trinity make a hazardous journey above ground, across the
scorched surface of the earth and into the heart of the Machine City,
a vast mechanized metropolis.
The Honourable Wally Norman
A warm-hearted Aussie
comedy from the director of Kath & Kim, this film follows a
battler-hero who is accidentally nominated to run for Federal parliament.
In a small country town, the backbone of the community is the meatworks
where Wally Norman (Kevin Harrington, The Dish, SeaChange)
works with most of his friends.
It’s Federal election time. A smarmy member of the conservative
Total Country Party, F Ken Oats (Shaun Micallef, Micallef Tonight,
Bad Eggs) swans in for a photo opportunity at the meatworks to
prove he’s a man of the people.
Soon, however, Oats reveals his true nature when the meatworks is
closed down and he steals all the workers’ entitlements.
His rival candidate is boozy Willy Norman (Alan Cassell) of the Australian
People’s Party. Willy incorrectly fills in his candidature form by
typing the name Wally Norman, inadvertently introducing the
latter to the cutthroat world of politics.
Inept and inarticulate though Wally is, his mates count on him to
stand up for them and to get the meatworks re-opened, but they despair
when Wally puts himself in the hands of political advisers.
Seabiscuit
Reminiscent of Phar Lap, this true story is about an American racehorse,
Seabiscuit, who in the 1930s achieved the unthinkable and inspired
a nation.
Nineteen-thirties America – like Australia at the time – was in the
grip the Great Depression, a prolonged economic slump when factories
were closed and up to one in three breadwinners was without a job.
Based on Laura Hillebrand’s bestselling book, Seabiscuit is
the story of three disillusioned men – Johnny “Red” Pollard (Tobey
Maguire, Spiderman), a young man whose spirit had been broken;
Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), a millionaire who had lost everything;
and Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), a cowboy whose world was vanishing.
Even the knobby-kneed racehorse Seabiscuit was down-and-out, yet
he took America on the ride of its lifetime.
But behind this story of a famous racehorse is a remarkable human
story, set against the backdrop of a momentous period in American
history.
School of Rock
An excellent comedy that will be enjoyed by parents as much as by
their children, School of Rock is about a wannabe rock star
who is fired by his own band.
Broke and unable to pay his rent, Dewey Finn (Jack Black) pretends
to have qualifications as a teacher so that he can get a job doing
relief work at a private prep school.
A fish out of water in this staid and ultra-conservative environment,
the unruly Finn discovers, however, that some of his 10-year-old pupils
are quite talented musicians.
Unqualified to teach them anything else, Finn hits upon the idea
of getting them to enter the local “battle of the bands” and win $25,000,
thereby solving his money problems and re-establishing him as a respected
rocker.
Director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Waking Life)
delivers a real crowd-pleaser with School of Rock.
It has a razor-sharp script, a brilliant cast headed by Jack Black,
and a madcap storyline that is both inspiring and wildly hilarious.
Special Movie Offer
For your chance to win one of 10 double-passes to the forthcoming
Clint Eastwood suspense thriller, Mystic River (starring Sean
Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon), put your details on the back of
an envelope and send it to Movie Comp, SA Police Journal (168).
