Movie review / 'Breaking News in Yuba County' (MA) ***and a half citynews.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from citynews.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
2/12/2021
Allison Janney toplines a starry ensemble, including Awkwafina and Mila Kunis, in director Tate Taylor s darkly comic look at the culture of fame and the tabloid media.
In the middle of the closing credits for Tate Taylor s new film, the director inserts a minute-long postscript scene. It s an exchange between the lead character, played by Allison Janney, and a talk show host portrayed by Juliette Lewis. Their eyes are wild with a delicious madness, and that brief coda contains all the satiric snap that the preceding 90 minutes so sorely lack.
The story of a woman who rises out of her put-upon anonymity by spinning a tabloid-fodder lie,
Rating: 4/5
Soldiers-versus-monsters flicks tend to be unapologetically cheesy. Too often, they get lazy, with the irony curdling into insincerity and the gore becoming just another overused prop.
This movie sets a higher goal. It features a group of Allied airmen - and one airwoman - battling a creature without embracing cheesiness, jump scares or wanton violence.
New Zealand director and co-writer Roseanne Liang not only delivers thrilling action minus the B-movie cheese, but she also slips in themes of misogyny and the erasure of the contributions of women from popular accounts of World War II.
Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz) boards a bomber in Auckland, New Zealand, as a passenger on a hush-hush mission. The men on board, miffed at playing bus driver for a mere woman, are immediately hostile and put her in the Sperry, the transparent machine-gun dome in the belly.