www.sundayterritorian.com.au Sunday, January 5, 2014. Sunday Territorian. 39

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LEGEND ● NO FREE TICKETS ✚ CINE BUZZ MOVIE OF THE WEEK ■ FAMILY PASS Copyright © 2013 - EVENT Cinemas

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THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (M)

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AMERICAN HUSTLE (M) ✚

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THE RAILWAY MAN (M) ●

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THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (M) ●

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FROZEN (G) ● ■ 3D 2D

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PHILOMENA (M) ●

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THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

(M) ● 3D 2D

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ANCHORMAN 2 (M)

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CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 (G) ■

2D

3D

Frozen [PG]Sun Mon 9.45am, 11.55, 2.05pm & 4.15pmSun Mon 7.30pm

2D

3D

Hobbit 2 (M)Sun Mon 11.25am, 4.10 & 6.30pm Sun Mon 2.20 & 9.15pm

2DWalking With Dinosaurs [PG] NFL

Sun Mon 9.40am & 1.10pm3D Sun Mon 11.25am & 7.30pm

Cloudy With A Chance Of

Meatballs 2 /G\ Sun Mon 9.30am & 2.10pm

Hunger Games Catching Fire (M)

Anchorman 2 (M)

Railway Man (M)

Secret Life Of Walter Mitty [PG]

Sun Mon 9.30pm

Sun Mon 5.15 & 9.30pm

Sun Mon 11.55am, 3pm & 7.10pm

Sun Mon 9.45am, 5.20 & 9.25pm

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Moviessundayterritorian.com.au sundayterritorian.com.au SUNDAY REVIEW

Colin Firth and Nicole Kid-man in The Railway Man

Anothertriumphfor FirthTHE RAILWAY MAN

116 minutes (M)

Director: Jonathan Teplitzky

Starring: Colin Firth, Nicole

Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, Stellan

Skarsgard

Reviewer: Leigh Paatsch

HHHH

ERIC Lomax’s autobiogra-phy The Railway Man dealswith his experiences as aPOW forced by the Japaneseto work on the Thailand-Burma railway. It’s also arecord of his struggles withpost-traumatic stress andhow, in his 60s, he finallymanaged to overcome it.

Lomax’s story has nowbeen made into this movie,an Australian-British co-production, with the Asiansequences filmed in Queens-land. Lomax, who was Scott-ish and sadly died monthsbefore the film’s completion,is played by Colin Firth.

In 1980, Lomax gets on atrain to Edinburgh andfinds himself sitting op-posite former nurse Patti(Nicole Kidman). Patti findsEric’s encyclopedic know-ledge of the towns they passthrough impressive and hisobsession with train time-tables endearing.

Their romance is damp-ened by Eric’s nightmaresand spells of waking mania.He won’t reveal any of histraumatic experiences toPatti, who turns to Eric’swartime friend Finlay (Stel-lan Skarsgard) to help fill inthe blanks.

Flashback scenes beginwith the fall of Singapore in1942, with the 22-year-oldEric played by Jeremy Ir-vine (Great Expectations)and the Japanese officerwho torments him, Nagase,played by Tanroh Ishida.

Conditions on theThailand-Burma railwaywere horrendous. More thanhalf the prisoners who wor-ked on it perished, includingmore than 2700 Australianservicemen. The RailwayMan is not so much abouttheir deaths as the death ofthe spirit of those who sur-vived. It’s hard-hitting, butnot gratuitously violent.

It’s the fourth featurefrom director Jonathan Te-plitzky, a talented directorwho should have no troublefinding an enthusiasticaudience for this film.

Firth is as good in the leadas you’d expect from thestar of The King’s Speech.

VERDICT: SEIZE THE DAZE

Wild rideworth taking

Ben Stiller plays the daydreaming Walter Mitty in his new film The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER

MITTY

114 minutes (PG)

Director: Ben Stiller (Zoolander)

Starring: Ben Stiller, Kristin

Wiig, Adam Scott, Sean Penn

Reviewer: Leigh Paatsch

HHHH

WALTER Mitty (played byBen Stiller) is a man whodares to dream. A lot. Any-where, any time. Some mightcall it zoning out.

A random train of thoughtwill be passing by, and beforeyou know it, Walter Mitty hasjumped aboard and is gone.

Walter Mitty is also a manwho dares not do anything tomake a dream become re-ality. Life may have alreadypassed him by. What somemight call zoning out, others

would call hiding away. Wel-come, then, to The Secret LifeOf Walter Mitty.

A quiet, unassuming andrefreshingly contemplativeaffair, what we have here is amajor film in a minor key.

This is not to damn the pic-ture with faint praise, nordelicately dismiss it as a nicetry. It is just that Hollywoodproductions on this scale ra-rely suppress the need to pro-voke a reaction in everyscene possible.

However, it would bewrong to mistake the movie’sveneer of modesty for any-thing approaching weakness.

There is an unshakableconfidence at its core thatsees The Secret Life Of WalterMitty subtly grow in strengthand stature as it goes about

its business. The same couldbe said of the character ofWalter himself. When wefirst meet him, he is barelyexisting as a mild-mannereddoormat for others to step on.By the time we bid him fare-well, there’s no chance thatwill ever happen again.

Between those two points,a gentle journey of self-discovery is mapped out, anauthentic adventure that willsee Walter emerge from hislifelong hibernation as a no-body to become the someonehe always should have been.

His job as a backroomphotography expert at Lifemagazine has been markedfor termination, as has thepublication itself.

Only one more edition is tobe published, and the image

intended for the cover hasgone missing. The globe-trotting photographer (SeanPenn) who has taken the kil-ler snap has vanished. It is upto Walter to find him, and re-trieve the fabled picture.

The incredible places Wal-ter must go — and the lengthshe must take to reach them —fill the second half of the film.Each new location (has thereever been a production set inboth Greenland and Afghan-istan?) drags Walter furtherfrom his cosy comfort zone.

This is very much a pas-sion project for Ben Stiller,who also keeps a firm grip onthe directorial reins here.Stiller has exhibited someserious talent behind thecamera with Zoolander, TheCable Guy and Tropic Thun-

der. But his efforts here arenext-level stuff comparedwith earlier endeavours.

This is one of the best-directed films you will seethis summer. Particularlygiven the source materialStiller is working with.

The Secret Life Of WalterMitty began life as a two-pageshort story by veneratedAmerican author JamesThurber in The New Yorkermagazine in the late 1930s.

Over the decades, a vast ar-ray of big names have at-tempted to translate itswhimsy and depth to the bigscreen. Leaving aside a light-weight Danny Kaye comedyfrom the 1940s, Stiller hassucceeded wonderfullywhere so many others havefailed miserably.