Brothers in arms: Liam & Noel Gallagher in ‘Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger’.
OASIS: DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER **** (123 minutes) M
Rarely has the power of music to move, heal and unite been so joyously evoked t6hyan in Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, an outstanding, insightful, ultimately uplifting documentary concert movie about one of the most talented and boorish bands ever.
Covering their stupendous world-embracing 2025 comeback tour, the film features archival clips, rehearsal footage and chats with devoted fans, who now include the children of the original fans who have stood by Oasis since their heyday in the 1990s.
Splendidly edited and featuring stunning shots of the band playing to packed arenas, the film chronicles the group’s rise, the bitter feud between brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher and their reunion after 15 years of not speaking with each other.
Superb and easily one of the best, most incisive and enjoyable documentary concert films yet made, it’s peppered with some terrific, touching moments. Immediately after one concert a lone fan is so overwhelmed that fellow fans comfort him. A great get.
Gradually the doco pulls focus on the lads who deliver some choice, often funny quotes about their bumpy ride, their fallout and how the excesses of youth and some of the things they said to and about each other now enjoy the perspective only maturity can bring.
Oh, and the music is not only great it’s seen with a renewed appreciation for the meaning it has on people’s lives, particularly in bringing folks together in a spirit of friendship and love.
As for the power of forgiveness, a theme that runs through much of the film, Liam pays the ultimate tribute to Oasis fans by saying how, if he was a fan, he would have dumped Oasis long ago.
See it in Imax if you can. And you don’t need to be a fan.
PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 **1/2 (130 minutes) M
The latest in a long line of sequels nobody was exactly begging for, Practical Magic 2 clocks in as a lukewarm, somewhat cynical studio seat-filler that dutifully replicates the mediocrity of the 1998 movie that, for the record, might have accrued a following in the decades since yet was not, by any fair measure, a big hit at the box office.
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as sister witches Sally and Gillian Owen, still living in the same house with their loving witch aunts (Dianne Weist and Stockard Channing, the two genuinely bright spots in the film).
The kicker here is that Sally’s daughter Kylie (Joey King) has run off to Britain to try and free her boyfriend from a coma by lifting the dreaded curse that afflicts all the women in the Owen clan that condemns to an early grave any poor sod who falls in love with one of them. In this case, the besotted beau Gideon (Xolo Mariduena) has been put into an ICU bed by a fate-driven accident.
Look, fans are probably going to eat this up, despite the inordinate running time and story holes. This includes the rather ridiculous notion that, even though the film is set present day 28 years after the first film, Sally’s daughters – who were around 8-10 years old – are somehow in their early-20s rather than their mid-30s. Maybe it was magic, a wondrous spell where you age but one year for every two.
It’s a stupid continuity flub that no amount of “retconning” – where a sequel ignores or tries to rewrite a timeline to make something impossible possible – can explain or excuse. If they wanted the characters to be that young they should have set the shebang in the appropriate year, say around 2010-12.
Indeed, it might have been more interesting to have the daughters at their proper age and focus the film on the adventures of their daughters.
Look, all up it’s a passable piece of cinematic chaff designed to fill the multiplex with fans on opening weekend.
Still, it’s hard not to detect the whiff of studio cynicism in making this sequel now, the theory being that the bean counters crunched the numbers and advised their overlords that the legacy of the first film might see a sequel turn a dollar.
Incidentally, and predictably, Practical Magic is presently trending on Prime. This, of course, was part of the studios forward planning. It’s a common thing: make a sequel or a remake and the streaming numbers for the original ebjoys a nice spike.
RUNNER *** (97 minutes) M
For some aimless thrills in a throwaway action jaunt, suss out this over-the-top, fight-filled, Brisbane-set action time killer as an ex-military, ex-alcoholic, muscle-bound underworld errand boy (Alan Ritchson from Reacher, War Machine) and a hyperactive live-organ expert (Owen Wilson) as they race in vehicles and on foot as terrorists try to intercept the liver they’re trying to deliver to a dying kid. Some sloppy direction is countered by a few nifty action sequences, the standout being a fabulous oner during a chase down a major city street that puts one in mind of Matrix: Reloaded. Nice.
Not a bad popcorn seller. Just keep your expectations low. Oh, and it’s loud.
THE RUNNER *** (85 minutes) M
Sticking with the running theme, action movie The Runner features a sweat-streaked Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) as a lawyer who is coerced into frantically racing across London to shoot the star witness who she’s been preparing to testify against a major crim. The creep at the other end of her phone (Damian Lewis) has kidnapped her son who’ll he happily dispatch if she doesn’t complete her task by the ends of the hour.
For such a well-directed race-against-time thriller – Kevin Macdonald gave us The Last King of Scotland, State of Play and Black Sea – the film oddly contains a remarkably silly segment in which our frantic heroine somehow manages to outrun a speeding train.
We loved Gal as Wonder Woman – the third film was dumped and she won’t return to the role, unfortunately – but even if she donned the spandex again, she couldn’t do that.
Forgive that, though, and the lark is reasonably tense and proficiently done, with lots of neat location work in the London streets and waterways.
The film is presently huge on Prime. And it’s brief enough to consume over a coffee.
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