B Movies

Rango

2011-03-25T12:00:00.001+11:00

An animated western starring a chameleon and directed by the man who brought us the Pirates of the Caribbean series, doesn’t instantly install confidence. However Gore Verbinski (who also directed The Ring and The Mexican) with the help of an impressive voice cast, has actually given us something withRango that is very intriguing. Despite this being a Nickelodeon film, the content seems very much directed at the accompanying adults in the audience. With its many allusions to other films like Chinatown, The Three Amigos and any number of spaghetti Westerns, Rango seems to have pulled off the Pixar trick of entertaining both young and old.

Rango (Johnny Depp) is a chameleon with an identity crisis (animal stereotype anyone?), who is thrown from his comfortable, but boring, life as a pet only to find himself lost in the Mojave Desert. He is pointed in the direction of a town by a cryptic armadillo (Alfred Molina, Spiderman 2) and finds himself in an Old West town populated by lizards, amphibians and rodents. Rango uses the opportunity of being unknown to create a tough persona for himself, which sees him being made sheriff. The town, Dirt, is in the midst of a water crisis and Rango isn’t aware of the danger he has put himself in, or the responsibility he has taken on as the town’s people look to him for a solution.

Dirt is populated with typical western characters, the iffy authority figure in the tortoise Mayor (Ned Beatty, Deliverance, Toy Story 3), the psychopathic gunslinger, Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy, Love Actually) and the precocious child-mouse, Pricilla (Abigail Breslin, Zombieland). The film’s fellow hero alongside Rango is Beans (Isla Fisher, The Wedding Crashers), an iguana who is trying to save her family’s ranch, and who has become suspicious about how the town’s water supply is being managed.

The film has been inspired by Clint Eastwood westerns, but added to this it has also borrowed from wider sources. The film’s narrative is very similar to Polanski’s 1974 noir film Chinatown, though it obviously avoids the less savoury aspects of the plot. Another notable adult reference in the film is Terry Gilliam’s 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas, which also starred Depp.

The CGI animation is beautiful and while the animals are all given personalities through the design, it is the landscape that is amazing.This was ILM’s (Image, Light & Magic), a division of LucasFilm, first animated feature (to read more about the animation process click here) and their careful attention to detail makes it appear to have been shot as opposed to created on a computer.

Bearing all this in mind what is there for the younger audience? There are some nice touches in terms of a fun (though at times absurdist) owl mariachi band that narrates the film, and there is plenty of slapstick comedy for kids. But overall it is easy to suspect that older audiences will get far more enjoyment out of this film than the seemingly target audience. While the film’s pacing could have done with some tightening and at times the film pastiches are too many, on the whole Rango is an enjoyable trip down cinematic memory lane.

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First published on Trespass

French Film Festival Preview

2011-03-24T21:11:00.004+11:00

Carlos/Le Chacal

Olivier Assayas‘ (Summer Hours) Carlos was originally shot and cut as a five and a half hours TV miniseries (which won Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television at the Globe Globes 2010), it has since been cut down to a two and a half hour film, and this is the version screening at the FFF. Looking at the exploits of infamous Venezuelan terrorist/revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, this film paints a very negative picture of the man who is better known as Carlos the Jackal (Edgar Ramirez,The Bourne Ultimatum).

At the beginning of the film we see a very confident young Carlos travel to Beirut to join The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1970. We follow Carlos up until his 1994 capture and arrest in Khartoum, Sudan. Throughout this time although Carlos’ alliances chop and change as he is involved in European communism, Arab nationalism and Islamist causes, his revolutionary persona grows to iconic proportions as he become the poster-boy for international terrorism through the 70s and 80s.

Early on in the film during a heated debate Carlos is told by another Venezuelan revolutionary “That’s what you want-to be admired.”. Shown as an egotist and a chauvinist, Carlos’ commitment to ‘the cause’ is perfectly highlighted by his involvement in the 1975 OPEC raid where he shows himself to be both self-serving and self-preserving.

Travelling between many countries and covering the geopolitics of three decades the film picks up the many hypocrisies of the regimes and organisations Carlos is associated with; such as the PFLP leader who couldn’t care less about the persecution of the Kurds in Iraq, or the German communists debating the difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism.

Carlos (Edgar Ramirez)

Refusing to allow in any of the idealisation of Soderbergh’s Che (2008) films, Assayas presents a man whose narcissism sees him go from idealistic revolutionary to public enemy number one and whose vanity ultimately places him as a forgotten page in Cold War history. Edgar Ramirez’ performance as Carlos is, of course, the glue that holds the film together. Playing the Lothario revolutionary, the gun-obsessed criminal and the image-conscience terrorist, Ramirez beautifully executes all Carlos’ personas giving us the man behind the myth.

On Tour/ Tournée

Mathieu Almaric (Quantum of Solace, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) directs and stars in this film about an American Burlesque troupe on tour in Western France. Almaric plays Joachim a failed Parisian TV producer, who is hoping for a triumphant return to France after a stint in America. Joachim has brought five American burlesque performers with him for a pre-arranged tour of Coastal France. It isn’t long before plans start to fall apart and Joachim isn’t living up to the performers’ expectations.

This very loosely scripted film stars real-life New York performers such as Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz andMimi le Meaux. Practitioners of what is called Neo-Burlesque, these buxom and bawdy women define their style of performance as ‘women doing burlesque for women’. As the troupe travels from chain hotel to chain hotel, performing at less and less glamourous theatres, the film shows the growing tension between the group and the sardonic Joachim, who moves between charm and insult in dealing with his unruly American performers.

Director and star Mathieu Almaric with his Burlesque stars

Filmed in both English and French, On Tour is one of those great films which offers you a little slice of life, without much concern for plot or cinematic polish. Almaric is fantastic as the weasely promoter, Joachim, who having burnt all his bridges before going to America tries rather unsuccessfully to reunite with former colleagues, friends and his children. But somehow this almost pathetic character is also likeable and his genuine respect for the burlesque performances and his desperate attempts to keep everything on track are endearing. There is a particularly lovely throwaway scene between Joachim and a petrol station attendant (played by Aurélia Petit) with a delightfully playful dialogue that highlights Almaric’s talents as a filmmaker.

Winning best director as the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 for this film, Almaric’s naturalistic approach to filmmaking serves him very well in this setting. While the acting performances of the burlesque artists aren’t always convincing, their unique and sassy personalities win you over. This witty, saucy and rambunctious film is a refreshing change of pace to conventional cinema fare.

My Father’s Guests/ Les Invitiés de mon Père

Actor turned director Anne Le Ny (Those who Remain/ Ceux qui Restant) gives us a tale of immigration and family in modern France with her second film, My Father’s Guests.This comedy takes more than a few pot-shots at bleeding heart liberals as it looks at the difference between rhetoric and practice. Focusing on a well-to-do middle class Parisian family, the film looks at the dynamics between middle-aged siblings Babette (Karin Viard) and Arnaud (Fabrice Luchini) and their 80-year old father Lucien (Michel Aumont).

When ageing humanitarian Lucien decides to open his doors to some illegal immigrants, his family is split in their reactions. While his G.P. daughter and daddy’s girl Babette and his politically active granddaughter (Flore Babled) applaud his decision, his rich lawyer son and daughter-in-law are less impressed with the idea. However when the family find out Lucien has married a beautiful 28-year old Moldovan refugee, Tatiana (Veronica Novak) to allow her and her young daughter to stay in the country, the family have trouble reconciling this reality with the image of the illegal immigrants they were expecting. As Tatiana’s behaviour towards their father begins to look suspicious, Babette and Arnaud connect over their distrust.

While Le Ny and co-scriptwriter Luc Béraud start out initially giving us as a satirical comedy exploring the values of Paris’ bourgeoisie and poking fun at their left-leanings views, there is definitely a mood shift about half-way through the film and the immigration aspect that has been used to fuel the comedy is buried for the more fruitful topic of family.

Arnaud (Fabrice Luchini) and Babette (Karin Viard)

Viard and Luchini have a great chemistry as brother and sister, whose father’s increasingly worrying behaviour sees them growing closer. Veronica Novak also gives a great performance as the tough-as-nails Eastern European immigrant. In a film that offers ample opportunity to laugh at the characters and their mores, it is Tatiana’s story which will give audiences the most trouble with the moral ambiguity which is offered by Le Ny, but never resolved.

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First published on Trespass

Wasted on the Young

2011-03-24T21:00:00.001+11:00

Coming out firing with more style than substance, Australian Ben C. Lucas‘ feature film directing/writing debut, Wasted on the Young is a slick and fast-paced high school drama. Tackling meaty themes of bullying, violence and the role of the bystander with flashy visuals and a thumping soundtrack, this is a film that shows promise but is ultimately unsatisfying.

Set around an exclusive high school where the swimming jocks dictate the social hierarchy, the film follows the fall-out from a party held by leader of the pack, 17-year old Zack (newcomer Alex Russell). Awash with A-class drugs the party sees the pretty and sweet Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens, X-men Origins: Wolverine) roofied, gang-raped and left for dead. Darren (Oliver Ackland, The Proposition) who is at the opposite end of the social spectrum to his popular stepbrother Zack, is determined to find out the truth about what happened to Xandrie and who was involved.

In this teenage world dominated by social media and devoid of any adult role-models, rumours about Xandrie spread like wildfire through the school, with the techno-savvy students debating the events of the party on facebook. But despite the control Zack exercises over his peers he is threatened by the quiet Darren, and as he tries to maintain his grip on power the atmosphere at school threatens to topple over into violence.

Zack (Alex Russell)

Lucas has spoken in interviews about wanting to make the film more thematic than realistic, and he has been somewhat successful in creating a morality play of sorts. The central idea of the film is that if you allow bad things to happen to people, without protesting, you too are culpable. The responsibility of the bystander is definitely interesting to investigate and the film’s initial set-up is very intriguing, but unfortunately all too quickly the story sinks into a revenge fantasy, which as the film progresses becomes increasingly preposterous and frustratingly squanders the potential of the film’s premise.

Ella (Geraldine Harkwill) and Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens)

Unfortunately for a film about high school dynamics, few of the cast look young enough to be 17 or 18 year olds. Adelaide Clemens is most certainly the shining light in this film. As Xandrie she embodies the ultimate high-school sweetheart. Good-looking and bubbly, she isn’t concerned with popularity and goes to Zack’s fateful party in order to see the shy and passive Darren. Clemens’ has a face for film, and is quickly able to influence the mood of each scene she is in.

Bret Easton Ellis-lite this new Australian film has been designed to appeal to an under-30s audience with Lucas seemingly using every visual trick in the book to try and make this film exciting. And it is aesthetically where Wasted on the Young is the most interesting and inventive, sadly the plot falls short of its director’s aspirations, and given his obvious filmic talents this is all the more disappointing.

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First published on Trespass

The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

2011-03-10T10:15:00.003+11:00

So we come to the third and final film instalment of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. Following feisty hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and tenacious journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), the trilogy has gone from murder mystery (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) to a political conspiracy (The Girl Who Played With Fire). The final film gives Lisbeth, who has been falsely accused, a chance to clear her name and expose the men who have been plotting to keep her silent for years.

Starting with a very brief recap, the third film swings straight into action; and given the film’s large cast of players it is certainly an advantage to have read the books. While subplots have been necessarily pared down or omitted, director Daniel Alfredson (brother of Tomas ‘Let The Right One In’ Alfredson) does make some odd choices at times, including partial sequences from the book that hang rather uselessly in the film due to their lack of context.

While director Niels Arden Oplev started the trilogy off with a bang, sadly the second film (also directed by Alfredson) failed to capture the freshness and excitement of the material. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest is an improvement on his last effort, but Alfredson still seems to be lacking a cinematic vision. This film feels more like a long TV episode than a feature film.

In a series that champions the power of women, with strong female characters, it is no surprise that the film’s major strength is Noomi Rapace. Playing the complex heroine Lisbeth, a role that is light on dialogue, Rapace conveys a huge amount of emotion with her eyes, giving us the character’s fury and fear.

The Millennium Trilogy’s Swedish telling has been a mixed bag that ultimately hasn’t lived up to the promise of the books. Given that David Fincher (The Social Network), a director renowned for his distinct visual style, is in charge of the English-language version of this trilogy, will this be one of those rare instances where the American remake is an improvement on the original?

2.5/5

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First published in The Brag 28/02/11

The Way Back

2011-03-09T13:09:00.005+11:00

The Way Back charts the journey of a group of seven men, who escape from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and make their way across a number of countries to safety in India. This film marks Australian director Peter Weir’s (Master and Commander, The Truman Show) return to filmmaking after a seven-year hiatus. While the renowned director has tried to use the film to show the resilience of the human spirit, ultimately the end result is very pretty but sadly emotionless fare.

British actor Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) stars as Janusz, a Polish man transported to a labour camp in Siberia by the invading Soviet forces for being a spy. Here Janusz stands out because of his kindness and quickly recruits a group of Eastern European political prisoners, and a solitary American prisoner, Mr. Smith (Ed Harris, A History of Violence) to plan an escape. During a ferocious snowstorm, they break out along with an unexpected companion, a violent Russian criminal, Valka (Colin Farrell, In Bruges) in tow.

Janusz (Jim Sturgess)

The Way Back has been adapted from Slawomir Rawicz‘ memoir, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (1956). However the truth of his story has long been debated and records show that although he was imprisoned in Siberia during WWII he didn’t escape but was released. It is widely believed that Rawicz’ book was based on accounts he heard during his time stationed in the Middle East after 1942. Weir has been very careful to state that this film is inspired by, as opposed to based on Rawicz’ account. Perhaps it is the director’s apprehension towards the material that has caused him to focus much more on the landscape than the film’s characters?

Mr Smith (Ed Harris) and Irena (Saoirse Ronan)

Creating an epic film that travels across Russia, Mongolia, China and Tibet (which was actually filmed in Bulgaria and Morocco) the film’s impressive cinematography (thanks to Russell Boyd) frames the desperate men against the imposing landscapes they must overcome. But watching this film it feels like nature wins out in the end. The characters are so underdeveloped that there exists no real relationship between them on screen or in fact between characters and the audience. Saoirse Ronan’s (Atonement) appearance as an orphaned Polish waif lends the film some emotion as her character is used to bring out backstory details about the men, but the only real benefactor of this is Harris’ character. The other characters are all pretty much reduced to singular traits; Good guy- Janusz, bad guy- Valka, priest- Voss (Gustaf Skarsgård), comedian- Zoran (Dragos Bucur), artist- Tamasz (Alexandru Potocean) and weakling- Kazik (Sebastian Urzendowsky).

Weir who co-wrote the screenplay fails to inject any real sense of human drama into the film and it is pretty apparent from early on which characters will make it and who will die along the way. The four time Oscar-nominated director seems to have lost his way with this film, and this is especially disappointing considering his calibre as a filmmaker.

Images provided by Roadshow Publicity

First published on Trespass

February DVD Picks

2011-02-28T10:00:00.001+11:00

The Messenger

Post 9/11 the film world hasn’t dealt with war in a very successful way, and apart from some notable exceptions (The Hurt Locker and In the Valley of Elah) films tackling the Middle East and America’s military involvement have been both critical and commercial disappointments. Often lacking any sense of subtlety or with a holier-than-thou attitude filmmakers have failed to grasp the complexity and moral ambiguity of war and its impact on those who fight in it. Then comes along Israeli director Oren Moverman (whose writing credits include I’m Not There) with his directorial debut, The Messenger and he illustrates the tragedy of war without massive explosions, gun fire and fanfare.

The Messenger follows Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster, 30 Days of Night) an injured Iraq War veteran, who due to his commendations has been assigned to the Casualty Notification Unit. Taken under the wing of Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson, Zombieland), the pair travel to tell next of kin of war fatalities, racing against the 24-hour news stations to be first to break the terrible news. Going through a carefully structured practice of informing the next of kin, the soldiers must remain clinically detached and most importantly avoid physical contact. Being the bearer of bad news sees the men bond as they are hit with the gamut of loss and the varied ways grief affects the relatives, from sorrow to anger, devastation to denial. Being the messenger weighs heavily on Montgomery and he finds himself drawn to a war widow (Samantha Morton, In America) who takes the news of her husband’s death in a unexpected way.

It is surprising given the quality of the performances from Foster and Harrelson (who was Oscar nominated last year) that this excellent film didn’t have a bigger cinema run. The supporting cast includes Steve Buscemi (The Big Lebowski) and Jena Malone (Donnie Darko) who add their talents to this film as it explores the consequences of war on those tasked to carry it out and those who are left behind.

This film seemingly focuses on a very small part of the US military, but as it explores themes of trauma, grief and masculinity it delivers a very powerful anti-war message.

Dogtooth

Whoa, so what to say about one of the most dark satires of recent time. Greek film Dogtooth was a surprise pick in this year’s Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars. Usually erring more on the side of conservatism the Academy Awards shocked many by including Yorgos Lanthimos‘ film in its short list. Violent, sexually explicit and disturbing, Dogtooth tells the story of a family that lives in isolation, and is definitely not a film to sit down and watch with family members.

We are never really told why parents, played by Christos Stergioglou and Michelle Valley, decided to keep their children, two daughters and a son, from experiencing the outside world. Whether it is a twisted form of protection or a reaction to some event in their lives, the three adult children (who appear to be in their twenties) have been psychological abused by their deeply disturbed parents and kept imprisoned in a house on the outskirts of town. Without any outside influence the children have failed to mentally mature, they are naive and have a behavioural age of ten year olds.

Keeping the children from leaving the house, the parents have created stories about the outside world that has convinced the children that until they lose their ‘dogtooth’ they are not capable of surviving outside the perimeters of their family home. The film feels like a social experiment gone very very very wrong. Messing with a topic we usually consider sacred, the family- Dogtooth’s characters create an alternative reality in the film, and in their insular world commit some of the ultimate taboos. With strong performances from the cast especially Aggeliki Papoulia, who plays the older daughter. The scenes incorporating Flashdance, Rocky and Jaws are treats for cinephile viewers and offer some darkly comical moments.

This isn’t a film you enjoy watching (hopefully), it is more about exploring theme. Taking the nuclear family unit and perverting it, Dogtooth has received much praise from critics for its deadpan delivery and lack of sensationalism, with director Lanthimos being heralded as an important new voice in European cinema. The film has an intriguing premise and love it or loathe it you have to admire the audacity and commitment of the filmmakers and cast.

Images provided by Madman

First published on Trespass

Unknown

2011-02-27T20:45:00.001+11:00

To say Unknown is perfectly adequate cinema-fare sounds like a negative appraisal of the Liam Neeson (Taken, Schindler’s List) vehicle, but it isn’t meant to. Giving audiences everything it promises in the trailer, Unknown requires very little mental energy to follow. With no aspirations above its genre, Unknown embraces the implausibility of its tale and delivers fun but rather forgettable viewing.

Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, a biologist who has travelled to Berlin with his wife Elizabeth (January Jones, Mad Men) to give a presentation at an important biotechnology conference. After the couple arrive at their hotel Martin realises he’s left his briefcase at the airport. Jumping into a taxi manned by Gina (Diane Kruger, Inglourious Basterds) he rushes to retrieve it, only to be waylaid by a freak accident that leaves him in a coma for days. After waking Martin finds another man (Aidan Quinn, Sarah’s Key) has taken over his life and that his wife has no recollection of him. Has his memory been confused by the accident, is he going mad, or is something more sinister going on?

Elizabeth Harris (January Jones)

Unknown is blessed with a good cast, including some fantastic German actors. Kruger is obviously completely miscast as a taxi-driver, but she doesn’t let this put her off delivering a strong performance. Bruno Ganz (The Reader, Downfall) as Ernst Jürgen, an ex-Stasi private investigator brings a nuanced performance that deserves to be in a far better film. His scene opposite Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) contains the best dialogue in a film centred on strong action sequences.

Martin Harris (Liam Neeson), Gina (Diane Kruger) and Ernst (Bruno Ganz)

Neeson is obviously the driving force in the film and while it isn’t clear when he became a thinking man’s action hero, here he is yet again in high-speed car chases and fighting off would-be assassins. If you enjoyed Neeson’s recent turn in Taken (2008), you are probably going to enjoy this film as well.

Unknown doesn’t pull off its climax despite building momentum and sadly the ending sees the film crumple in a heap. Certainly if you thought too hard about the plot and its many gaping holes your head might explode, but this really is a film with no pretences of being art or breaking new ground, it is a paint-by-numbers thriller. Very light on substance Unknown is probably best relished on DVD or as part of the in-flight entertainment it is sure to become.

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First published on Trespass

Inside Job

2011-02-26T14:00:00.001+11:00

We’ve all sat in the cinema terrified by a knife-wielding psychopath on screen, or a liver-eating genius. We’ve subtly tried to avoid looking as suspense grows and we know some sort of evil incarnation is lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on a nubile Hollywood starlet. Horror films offer harmless thrills, the usual reaction after been frightened is laughter as we realise something rather inane has got the better of us just for a moment. However the new documentary Inside Job, which looks at the causes and consequences of the 2008 economic collapse, is truly terrifying cinema-viewing, and there will be no nervous giggling after watching this film.

Charles Ferguson the filmmaker behind 2007’s No End In Sight, which investigated America’s complete mishandling and lack of understanding of Iraq in the lead up to and during the first year of invasion, has taken on a humongous task. Using the 109 mins running time to try and understand and explain the reasons for the economic crisis and the roles that different groups played in the collapse, Ferguson conducts a series of interviews with Economists, Lobbyists, Advisors, Politicians, Bankers, Regulators and Journalists. Narrated by actor Matt Damon, the documentary examines the historical background and increasing deregulation of banking in the US, the criminalisation of an industry and the on-going problems and issues that are impeding any reform even after massive bailouts.

Christine Lagarde- The French Minister of Finance, Economic Affairs,
Industry and Employment

The wealth and greed of Wall Street comes as no surprise with the obvious villains of the piece being companies like Goldman and Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns. By now most of us understand that the root cause of the recent stock-market crash has to do with deregulation, and that the subprime mortgaging system and something called ‘derivatives’ led us to the brink of an economic Armageddon. But as the film delves deeper into banking and investment practices and the use Credit Default Swaps (CDS) the true ethics of modern banking are revealed. Watching this doco you feel first angry then afraid. You certainly never fully appreciated the immense greed that permeates not just the banking institutions but that has also corrupted many of those who are meant to keep checks on the industry and the academics who are suppose to advise and lead it.

Robert Gnaizda- General Counsel and Policy Director of the Greenlining Institute in Berkeley

Thankfully for those less economically-minded the film gives succinct explanations of complicated financial practices, without making you feel like you are being talked down to. Ferguson is a consummate interviewer and while he has final editing powers, many of his more hostile interviewees fall prey to their own egos. More often than not it is what they won’t and don’t say that proves to be the most telling.

Barney Frank- Democratic Representative for the state of Massachusetts

Offering a comprehensive understanding of the financial meltdown and its causes, Inside Job is a highly accomplished documentary. Unlike Horror movies where you can remind yourself it isn’t real, it is hard not to leave this doco with a sense of dread, because those responsible for the World’s recent economic woes are still in the driving seat and despite the political promise of regulations, little to nothing has really changed.

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First published on Trespass

The Red Chapel

2011-02-26T10:00:00.001+11:00

In the centre: Simon Jul Jørgensen and Jacob Nossell

The first film up in the 2011 program is highly original Danish Documentary, The Red Chapel. Filmmaker Mads Brügger’s gonzo project won the World Cinema Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Taking two Danish-Korean comedians to one of the world’s most restrictive dictatorships, Brügger’s aim was to expose the true nature of North Korea’s oppressive and ruthless regime. Brügger travels with Simon Jul Jørgensen and Jacob Nossell, both of whom were adopted from Korea as infants, to North Korea posing as a small, socialist Danish theatre group named The Red Chapel. The group and accompanying camera crew are given permission to enter the usually closed off country under the pretext that they will give a performance encouraging cultural exchange.

The documentary follows the group developing a comedy show in ‘collaboration’ with their minders and assigned Korean theatre director, whilst being given the ‘official’ sightseeing tour of Pyongyang. As pressure increases to please the state-appointed guides, the moral ambiguity of the director Brügger comes into question as he increasingly ignores the protests of his companions.

Jacob, who was 18 at the time of filming is handicapped with spastic paralysis, is both the victim and hero of the film. Choosing to travel to a country that is accused of killing disabled children at birth, Jacob wanted to use the film to prove that he was as capable as anyone else. However both the official regime and Brügger had other ideas and want to use him for their own propaganda.

Jacob and director Mads Brügger with their minders at a peace rally

Funny, curious and outrageous in equal measures, The Red Chapel is much more than simply an exploration of a totalitarian regime, it is an exercise in the ethics of filmmaking.While this film is an example of incredibly brave documentary-making it is also a study in manipulation. The North Korean regime wants to manipulate the filmmaker, the filmmaker in turn manipulates his subjects. Brügger recognises his single-mindedness but does nothing to correct it, asserting that showing the truth behind the dictatorship’s façade is more important than the feelings of both Simon and Jacob. You also have to wonder whether anybody considered the potential consequences for the local people who they duped?

Brügger’s cunning coupled with unparalleled bravado sees him, Simon and Jacob undermining and mocking the regime in ways that are both outlandishly hilarious and insightful. This documentary is bold and brash and at times touches on the absurd as it explores North Korea.

It is one thing to assert that humour can subvert political oppression, it is quite another thing to prove it. This truly is a film that has to be seen to be believed.

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First published on Trespass

No Strings Attached

2011-02-25T14:00:00.002+11:00

From out of the romcom wilderness comes No Strings Attached, an inoffensive, oft entertaining and even occasionally funny addition to the genre. Whilst the Brits have Richard Curtis’ multi-storied outings like Love Actually (2003) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), it is Hollywood and its usual cast of actresses who have come to dominant the field. Kate Hudson, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Katherine Heigl seem to work on rotation opposite male leads like Matthew McConaughey and the menfolk that make up the cast of Grey’s Anatomy.

Romcoms frequently set up unrealistic ideals about love and relationships, as more often than not the genre revolves around a seemingly unsuitable couple getting it together. And No Strings Attached is no different, but it does stands out from the condescending/nauseating masses thanks to its strong female cast. Natalie Portman, Greta Gerwig (Greenberg), Olivia Thrilby (Juno) and Lake Bell (It’s Complicated) give the audience more to chew on with their performances. Yes they still fit into the archetypal romcom female roles, but there are glimpses where the characters play against convention, and this adds some colour to a generally formulaic film.

Emma (Natalie Portman) and Patrice (Greta Gerwig)

Portman stars as Emma, a doctor in-residence whose 80-hour working week doesn’t leave time for romance and who nullifies the potential for heartbreak by avoiding commitment. When Emma bumps into an old acquaintance, Adam (Ashton Kutcher) the pair develop a ‘no strings attached’ sexual arrangement, revolving around booty calls. It isn’t hard to guess where the story will go from there, but even though the storyline is predictable there is still some fun to be had in its telling.

No Strings Attached is definitely not without its weak points and the movie completely runs out of steam towards the end. Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) turns up as a respected doctor, but his role goes absolutely nowhere. Adam’s subplot with his aging TV star father, Alvin (Kevin Klein) is also pretty limited, and while British actress Ophelia Lovibond (Nowhere Boy) is fun as Alvin’s much younger girlfriend Vanessa, these characters take away more than they add to the major plot.

Adam (Ashton Kutcher) and Emma (Natalie Portman)

Director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop) certainly hasn’t done anything ground-breaking or original with this film, but he gets points for dealing with the topic of sex in an unusually adult way for a comedy. Lacking raunch (and foreplay) the film’s sex scenes are light-hearted, but they also depict sex as healthy and normal, something rarely seen in comedies or, in fact, mainstream films.

The film’s male cast is weak and it is definitely the females who do the heavy lifting in this film. Portman’s recent attention for her fantastic performance in the much lauded Black Swan is undoubtedly giving No Strings Attached a massive push in the publicity stakes. As romcoms go this is a cut above average and makes for easy, pleasant but quickly forgettable viewing.

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First published on Trespass

Down Terrace

2011-02-25T10:00:00.002+11:00

Down Terrace is a low budget British crime film from first-time director, Ben Wheatley. Set in the coastal city of Brighton, the film follows a criminal family, headed by patriarch and ex-hippie Bill (Robert Hill) who runs clubs and drugs for his bosses in London. His henchmen include his troubled son Karl (Robin Hill), his brother-in-law Eric (David Schaal, The Office and The In-Betweeners) and the hapless Garvey (Tony Way). The film begins with father and son leaving court after being cleared, of exactly what charges we are never told, and returning to their small terrace home where seemingly devoted mother and wife Maggie (Julia Deakin, Spaced) is waiting. However all is not well with this criminal unit. There is an informant in their midst. Betrayal and murder sees the family implode as the offender is sought out.

Wheatley co-wrote the script with Robin Hill. They have been writing and shooting shorts together for a number of years, often filming at Robin’s parent’s house on Down Terrace and starring his father, Robert. The writing pair decided they wanted to shoot a full-length film. As it needed to be something they could make on a small budget it had to feature Robert and Robin and be able to be filmed at the house on Down Terrace. And that’s how the idea for the film began.

Karl (Robin Hill)

The end result is a gangster film, but unlike anything you’ve come to expect. This is a film completely devoid of the glamour that often accompanies movies about professional criminals. Taking elements of the crime genre the film’s real focus is on the corrosive nature of a dysfunctional family. This darkly comical piece is populated by characters whose danger derives from how emotionally-stunted they are. Karl, a man in his thirties, lives like an overgrown teenager in his parent’s home, smothered by manipulative parents. Maggie is perhaps the most disturbed (giving Jackie Weaver’s matriarch in Animal Kingdom a good run for her money), as she at first appears to be a reasonably caring mother and wife, but when her true nature is revealed she is terrifying.

Down Terrace is a great example of clever filmmaking working within tight parameters but creating something exciting and fresh. The script highlights the productions natural strengths, the strong bond between real-life father and son Robert and Robin; the limited locations help exaggerate the claustrophobic and paranoid nature of the crumbling family.

Maggie (Julia Deakin) and Bill (Robert Hill)

Down Terrace is a surprising film, fitting in more to the kitchen sink drama mould of British filmmaking than the thumping soundtrack and bravado of Guy Richie’s criminal visions. No doubt this is an off-kilter gangster film, but somehow the occasionally shocking violence and the comedic elements combine to make something charmingly original.

Images provided by Madman

First Published on Trespass

Another Year

2011-02-24T20:27:00.003+11:00

British director Mike Leigh is known for making kitchen sink dramas and over the years has had great critical success with Secrets & Lies (1996), Vera Drake (2004) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). Known for his improvisational style of filmmaking, Leigh rehearses with a group of actors (usually long-time collaborators) over a number of months creating story from his outlined scripts, before filming begins. Not one to shy away from tackling tough themes, Leigh’s work tends to approach topics with subtlety and restraint, never taking the drama over-the-top or to melodramatic extremes. But it is in this gentle teasing of theme that Leigh makes his best observations about life, and Another Year is a fantastic example of the director working at his best.

Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and Tom (Jim Broadbent)

Following a middle-aged couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) over four seasons, the film looks at their relationship with friends, colleagues and family. A birth, a death and a new love are all events in the film, but this slow-paced character study is really about happiness and loneliness. The film’s gentleness is deceptive as it draws you into the seemingly mundane lives of the characters. Another Year is divided between the happy; Tom, Gerri and their adult son Joe (Oliver Maltman) and the sad; Gerri’s work colleague, Mary (Lesley Manville), Tom’s friend Ken (Peter Wight) and Tom’s brother Ronnie (David Bradley).

Joe (Oliver Maltman), Mary (Lesley Manville) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen)

Leigh’s film, Happy-Go-Lucky explored similar themes and Poppy (Sally Hawkins) the eternally optimistic central character in that film was dismissed by some viewers as being annoyingly happy. Watching Another Year the same charge could be laid at the feet of the film’s happy characters, and there are moments when their cheerfulness feels smug. But then you have to wonder what that says about you, the viewer, that you find genuinely contented characters grating. It is this mirror that the film holds up to its audience which makes it so clever. Watching the film and its characters’ outlook on life it is impossible not to meditate on your own. Mary’s (Manville) disappointments over the year are increasingly devastating, but at the same time you find yourself desperately hoping that you aren’t also one of life’s losers.

Ken (Peter Wight) and Mary (Lesley Manville)

While the ensemble cast are all impressive, Manville stands out and it is unsurprising that she has been nominated for a best supporting actress BAFTA. She allows Mary to be a character you are both sympathetic towards, but also infuriated by.

Another Year is definitely one of Leigh’s best films, with the apparently ordinary proving to be quietly and subtlety moving.

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First published on Trespass

Review: Black Swan

2011-01-28T10:30:00.001+11:00

From its many striking and beautiful poster designs to its tantalising trailer, Darren Aronofsky’s retelling of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake has promised something cinematically special. With an audacious director and excellent cast, hype and anticipation has been very high. Thankfully Black Swan is one of those rare films where the build-up translates and all the potential pays off on screen.

Black Swan tells the story of Nina (Natalie Portman) a perfectionist ballerina at a prestigious New York ballet company. Nina’s hard work looks set to pay off when the director (Vincent Cassel, Eastern Promises) announces that he is casting a new lead in the production ofSwan Lake. While Nina is perfect for the white swan role, the lead is required to play both the white and black swan and a new dancer to the company, Lily (Mila Kunis, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) who is a more sensual and free-spirited performer, becomes her rival. Adding to Nina’s professional stress, she also has to cope with the stage-mum from hell (Barbara Hershey, Lantana) who infantilizes her.

Those expecting some sort of high art may be surprised by Black Swan’s melodrama. Dark and tense, this film is on one hand a psychological drama and on the other a pulse-racing thriller. The ballet world makes a great home for this genre, with its intensity, professional rivalries and the abundance of mirrored rooms. But Black Swan isn’t really about ballet at all. That isn’t to say that this aspect of the film is slapdash; Portman and Kunis spent months in preparation for their roles, finely tuning their bodies so they could resemble the real thing. British newspaper The Guardian recently ran an article where professional dancers gave their verdict on the film’s authenticity. Someone really missed the point here- if you want reality watch the beautiful documentary La Danse. Black Swan is exaggeration, fantasy and most of all make believe at its most exciting- it is not an exercise to see whether a Hollywood actress can be turned into a professional ballerina in nine months.

Much had been made of Portman’s exceptional performance, however there are three very strong female performances that guide this film. Kunis’ rebel ballerina and Hershey’s overbearing mother are just as vital to the film’s success. French actor Cassel is sadly allowed to completely overact his part as the game playing ballet director. While his villainous isn’t out of place in this film, an actor of his calibre could have probably taken the role to a more interesting and original place.

With more than touches of early Polanski and Cronenberg films, Black Swan explores the the darker recesses of ambition and narcissism, using the conventions of thriller and horror films. The film is beautiful and lyrical at times before switching to the full power of the melodrama, this duality is definitely something to be appreciated.

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First published on Trespass

Review: Burlesque

2011-01-27T10:01:00.007+11:00

Burlesque is a form of performance art that mixes parody with adult entertainment. Saucy and fun, burlesque traditionally involves singing, mime, dancing and comedy, as well as striptease. Bearing this in mind, Burlesque is perhaps the most inappropriately titled film of recent times. Lacking humour and titillation this musical bears more resemblance to a Pussy Cat Dolls music video than to a Dita von Teese performance.

Audiences expecting a cinema experience akin to Paul Verhoeven’s, so bad it’s good masterpiece, Showgirls are going to be disappointed. Where Verhoeven went overboard on the kitsch, Burlesque’s writer/director Steven Antin (who incidentally is the brother of Pussy Cat Dolls’ creator, and has directed several PCD music videos) has pulled back completely on the ‘adult’ themes. The film’s M rating is probably unnecessary, under-15s will have seen more risqué content watching Video Hits on Saturday mornings as they tuck into their cornflakes.

Burlesque’s storyline sees small-town waitress, Ali (Christina Aguilera), head to the big smoke (LA) to try and make her dreams of becoming a singer a reality. In LA Ali comes across The Burlesque Lounge, which is owned by Tess (Cher). Enchanted by this strange and glamorous club and its staff and entertainers, Ali talks her way into a job as a cocktail waitress. Befriended by the club’s bartender and struggling musician Jack (Cam Gigandet), Ali is determined to make it on the stage.

Big voiced songstress, Aguilera makes a perfectly adequate actress, but she lacks the natural charisma needed to drive a film. Cher as the ‘mentor’ figure has a certain amount of charm, but not enough to sell the awful dialogue she’s been lumped with. Alan Cummings and Stanley Tucci phone-in their performances as club host and stage manager, and still prove to be the highlights of the film.

The real problem with this movie- aside from its tone and avoidance of burlesque content- is the ‘musical’ aspect. You can excuse a weak storyline, it is almost expected in a film like this, but it is unforgiveable to have a completely forgettable soundtrack. The musical numbers, over-produced Bob Fosse knock-offs, are actually quite boring and leaving the cinema you’ll be hard-pressed to remember a single song.

What should have been a camp triumph of singing, dancing and suggestive humour has sadly been over-sanitized and completely dumbed down. It’s hard to see how Burlesque will please any of its intended audiences.

1.5/5

First published in The Brag 10/01/11

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Blue Valentine

2011-01-11T11:46:00.009+11:00

It took twelve years for co-writer and director Derek Cianfrance to get his film from page to screen. Emotionally raw, heartbreakingly beautiful and superbly acted Blue Valentine was definitely worth the wait.

Switching between past and present the film tells the story of a couple’s relationship. In the present Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) are married with one young daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka). But this is a relationship on a downward spiral, with individual expectations dividing the couple. In the past sequences we witness the beginning of the relationship, and the passionate love between dreamer Dean and university student Cindy.

Asking if love is enough, Blue Valentine certainly isn’t a feel-good film (perhaps reconsider this as a date night film, unless you want to face some rather tough ‘relationship’ conversations afterwards). Told with brutal honesty the story unfolds over 48 hours in Dean and Cindy’s marriage, which ultimately proves to be exquisitely sad.

The film’s emotional core is fuelled by the experiences of both Cami Delavigne (writer) and Cianfrance who have cited their parent’s divorce as their inspiration. This film is undoubtedly a project where all the right elements have come into place (eventually) to create something special. The performances, the look and the sound enhance one another creating more and more layers to the story.

Cinematographer Andrij Parekh (Half-Nelson, Cold Souls) works his magic with the film’s visuals. With the past sequences shot on handheld super 16mm film and the present shot on red cameras, the sections are as equally divided by look as tone. While the past sequences seem open, bright and free, the present sequences with their extreme close-ups and more rigid structure seem constricting and claustrophobic, reflecting perfectly the atmosphere in the couple’s relationship.

Williams and Gosling are both Oscar nominated actors (Brokeback Mountain and Half-Nelson) and the high calibre of acting is evident throughout the film as they run a gamut of emotions. Williams and Gosling give themselves over to the script and at no time does it feel like you are watching ‘acting’, they feel natural and at times very raw. And it is only fair that their brave performances have been rewarded with Golden Globe nominations.

Toping off the impressive performances and evocative visuals, the sublime soundtrack comes from Brooklyn-band Grizzly Bear, with songs taken from their albums, Yellow House (2008) and Veckatimest (2009). The folky undertones of the band beautifully charts the film’s moods adding sumptuous texture. However perhaps the film is best summed up by a musical performance by Gosling’s character, Dean in a scene where he serenades Cindy (Williams) with “You Always Hurt the One you Love”.

First Published on Trespass 20/12/2010

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Somewhere

2011-01-05T14:00:00.003+11:00

Filmmaker Sofia Coppola is exceedingly accomplished in creating mood. Mixing a languid plot pace with very pretty visuals and chilled out soundtracks, her films, like the Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, are as much about generating an atmosphere as telling a story.

Coppola’s fourth film Somewhere is no different. Filmed on location at the legendary Hollywood hotel Chateau Marmont (situated on Sunset Boulevard) with a music score from frequent collaborators, French band Phoenix, Somewhere is set in the world of films and fame, but is very much focused on the reality of this seemingly glitzy existence. Stephen Dorff (Blade) stars as Johnny Marco, an actor numbed by drugs, booze and women. Marco is between projects, when his 11-year-old daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning) turns up to stay, somewhat unexpectedly, causing him to re-examine his life.

Somewhere is nowhere near as moralistic as the synopsis sounds. Coppola who wrote the screenplay is familiar with this world, the daughter of a famous director (Francis Ford Coppola) the film’s scenes of press conferences and award ceremonies seem awkward enough to be realistic. Add to this Dorff’s backstory as an actor- slipping from a promising early career to B-grade fare- and this film has a fascinating meta-fiction quality.

Dorff, proving he deserves to be in more films like this, provides an excellent emotional centre to the film, allowing you to care about a character who should be highly unpleasant. The father/daughter dynamic in the film doesn’t feel forced, Fanning is a natural in front of the camera, providing a perfect counterweight to Dorff’s more introspective performance. Chris Pontius, who is best known for his role in Jackass, cheekily improvises his way through the role of Sammy, Marco’s friend, and is kind of great.

Somewhere’s slow pace isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste or attention spans, but if you allow this film to cast its spell over you, you’ll still be basking in the afterglow as you leave the cinema. Thoughtful, poetic and evocative, it isn’t hard to see why Somewhere won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice International Film Festival.

4/5

First Published in The Brag 20/12/2010

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Love and Other Drugs

2011-01-05T10:45:00.006+11:00

Reuniting Brokeback Mountain actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway on screen should be a cause for celebration; unfortunately, this woefully trite and boring film has sullied the occasion. Ostensibly based on Jamie Reidy’s nonfiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, this film is an adaptation in the very loosest sense of the word, with the screenwriters (director Edward Zwick, Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz) turning the rise of big pharma companies into a romantic comedy.

Jamie Randall (Gyllenhaal) is a loveable rogue; good with ladies but bad at keeping a job. The underachiever in his family, he is convinced by his brother (Josh Gad) to take a position at Pfizer as a sales rep. Jamie is sent to Ohio where he must convince doctors to prescribe the depression drug Zoloft over Prozac. Jamie’s life takes a turn when he meets free spirit and Parkinson’s sufferer Maggie (Hathaway).

Set in the 90s around the time that Viagra was released on the market by Pfizer, Love and Other Drugs misses the mark on many counts. The filmmakers apparently deemed the real story of an overpaid, slacker drug rep in over-prescribed America as either too boring or too hard a sell. Instead, they (rather cynically) inject the Maggie character into the plot, hijacking a story worth telling and turning it into an unoriginal romance.

Gyllenhaal and Hathaway will leave this film unscathed because the likeable stars do a good job with what they have been given. The film basically asks them to be an attractive couple, which is what they do.Oliver Platt as Jamie’s mentor and Hank Azaria as a womanising doctor are shamefully underutilised in the film. In contrast Gad (who seems to have been hired as a Jonah Hill impersonator) is painfully overused as Jamie’s grotesque younger brother.

Lacking the sardonic wit or necessary bite to pull off a rom-com based in the world of pharmaceuticals, Love and Other Drugs is a very disappointing pill to swallow.

1.5/5

First Published in The Brag 13/12/2010

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Talking Genre Politics with Patrick Hughes

2011-01-05T10:19:00.006+11:00

Red Hill marks Australian filmmaker Patrick Hughes feature film directorial and writing debut. Red Hill, a modern Australian Western, had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The film’s action unfolds over one day and night in a small town in Victoria. Ryan Kwanten stars as Shane Cooper, a city cop who has just relocated to the country town of Red Hill. Cooper’s first day turns into a nightmare when convicted murderer Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis) escapes from prison and returns to town seeking revenge against the lawmen who imprisoned him, including Old Bill (Steve Bisley).

Beth Wilson caught up with Hughes on the publicity trail to find out more about his transition from short films and commercials to feature films, the inspiration for the film and to talk about the dirty word ‘genre’…

Red Hill has been called a Western and a return to the heyday of Australia’s 70s and 80s genre films, how would you describe your film and its film genre?

I like to call it a neo-Western. It’s a modern take on old themes. Certainly I was inspired by the landscapes and the town we shot the film in, I found something that was really tragic about the story of a town, a boomtown that has gone bust. It is an old town that has lost its way in a modern world and it’s fighting for its survival, and it is fighting for a position and a sense of identity. You look at a town like Omeo (where Red Hill was filmed) it used to have 40,000 people, in 1890 it was Australia’s biggest gold rush town, Now there are 120 and all those industries have shut down. What happens to all those people left? How far will they go to save their town? I found that was a really interesting starting point in terms of creating a modern-day Western.

So the story started with that town?

I was fortunate enough to do some Brumby chasing when I was younger with a character that lived up in that town named Ken Connelly, and I remember riding back through the main street of Omeo, and I literally felt I was in a living breathing Western. I remember riding on horseback and you’d pass the town hall, barbershop and rickety old shopfronts and then a Toyota Landcrusier drives past and no one flinches because it is the kind of town where there still is that mix of horses and cars. It felt like you were in a lost world, felt like you were walking through a museum.

I am a huge fan of what every western is, which is a moral code. Red Hill is an exploration of revenge, redemption and sacrifice, and then you look at the history of our country. I grew up watching all these Westerns and if you look at the colonialisation of America, and the white man moving in pushing the American Indians out and the terrible atrocities that happened, the parallels to our country are striking. Exactly the same thing happened here when the white man moved in and pushed the Indigenous people off their own land. I felt like if anyone is due for a story of revenge it would be the Indigenous people of Australia.

You have had a career making commercials and highly successful shorts, how did you find the transition to your first feature film, where you had a budget that was less than you’ve had previously for commercials?

Every time I’m on set I’m learning. I think commercials are a really great training ground to learn the physicalities of how a set operates. Knowing how fast you can move, and I like to shot fast and move fast, obviously with Red Hill we had four weeks to shoot the movie; some people would go “you’re nuts, you’re crazy” but I knew in the back of my mind that we had a real chance of pulling this off. What commercials have allowed me to do is bring in an incredibly gifted crew. These guys are some of the best people in the industry, they’ve worked on some of the biggest films, you know all the Hollywood blockbusters they shoot out here.

We ended up with a situation where if we could just get a really great cast and a really great team of crew and just get them into the high country, in this one town for four weeks, we could pull off a movie, and that was kind of how I did it.

How did you go about casting?

It is tricky as an independent filmmaker because you don’t have a studio behind you or any major resources, so I’d written the script, but I had to raise the money before I could approach the actors, because you don’t want to waste their time. You want to give them a cemented date. Once I’d written the script I then raised the money privately and once we had, that first port of call was casting the three leads.

Steve Bisley was my first choice and I got the script in front of him and we immediately hit it off. Then Tom E. Lewis, I was really terrified about sending him the material, because you know the assumptions people make about who the bad guy is. You know you’ve got a disfigured Indigenous person wielding a sawn-off shotgun and sweeping through a small country town, it is pretty confronting material. So before I gave Tom E. the script I said please don’t throw this in the bin at page 50 because you won’t know the full story, don’t make any assumptions. God bless him he didn’t and he called me the next morning. And Ryan [Kwanten] of course, I was looking for an actor who had a strong physical presence but also had a vulnerability, because essentially the film is the story of a city boy who needs to become a cowboy. Once I’d cast those three leads I knew I had a real movie. I’ve got two iconic legends of Australian cinema, Steve Bisley and Tom E. Lewis, obviously Ryan Kwanten is just a raw talent, he literally walked off the second series of True Blood and onto our set.

Because it was independently funded did that mean it felt like you had more creative control?

I mean the only reason you make your first movie is so someone lets you make another one. I know that I’ll look back in 20 years and say the most fun I probably ever had making a movie was shootingRed Hill, because we literally made it outside of the system. No one even knew we were up there shooting it, it felt like we were in this little bubble. It was a really surreal experience when you are standing on set at 3 am setting fire to a house, or doing all the crazy stuff we did with the car chases and shoot outs and we felt we had the whole town behind us and there was a real kind of team spirit up there.

There has been a lot of talk in Australian film circles that Australia needs more genre films, which you have provided. But are you worried at all that Australian audiences are notoriously bad at watching Australian films?

Yeah, but I think if we consistently keep on making better films then we’ll probably win them back. I don’t know if one film is going to turn it all around, I don’t think it is that simple. It does feel like maybe we lost our way for a while, we lost our audience for a while we certainly did that. How do we win them back? I think if we start making films of all different types of genres. That is really important too, not to just keep making the same kind of films.

Everyone walks around saying genre is a dirty word. I think it is ridiculous, because I think if you look at every kitchen sink drama, they are a genre to themselves, they all hit the same marks every time. If it is the fish out of water, the story of someone who has come back to bury their father in a small country town- I’ve seen that a million times. Name me one film that isn’t a genre movie.

But it is a term that holds connotations…

I think what people apply it to is making commercial films. I made this film because it is really something I’d like to see, I hope it transpires to box office figures. I think if filmmakers keep questioning who’s the audience for this film, then slowly piece by piece we might just win that audience back. I think there is a lot of distrust out there. The marketing can push it so far but to get that real pop you need to get the word of mouth and the buzz from people on the street. More than anything I’ll respect what my friend says “hey man you’ve got to go check out this movie”, at the end of the day that is what it comes down to.

That’s what we want more Aussies watching Aussie films

And if they don’t go and see it I’ll cut loose with a sawn-off shotgun. I’m serious I’ve got my gun licence. (he’s NOT serious)

Images provided courtesy of Sony Pictures Au

First Published on Trespass 18/11/2010

Monsters

2010-12-13T10:00:00.003+11:00

The independently-made sci-fi films that have been popping up over the last two years have more than proved that smaller films in this genre can compete, and in some cases completely outclass, the studio-funded big guns. Monsters is one such example, beautifully crafted from a tiny budget (reported to be anything from $15,000 to $500,000), with a miniscule cast (two professional actors) and a crew of four, including creator, director and cinematographer Gareth Edwards (making his feature film debut).

A road movie, a love story and a travelogue, Monsters is not much like a sci-fi film at all. Taking a unique spin on alien invasion, the film’s premise has similarities to District 9, with alien life forms taking up residence on Earth, in an area that is economically deprived. But here is where the comparison ends; Monsters treads a very different path, creating an engaging and poetically humanistic film.

The story takes place in the ‘Infected Zone’ of northern Mexico, as an unlikely pair of travellers try to make their way northwards – and homewards – to the United States: photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) and his boss’s daughter, Sam (Whitney Able), who he has reluctantly agreed to escort. The film’s success owes a huge amount to the chemistry between its two leads, a couple in real life. While this is an obvious advantage, the quality of their performances shouldn’t be underestimated.

Monsters is a good-looking film, with Edwards creating a lovely visual lyricism from Central American landscapes. As the person behind the special effects he has also created magic in post-production, providing the all-important extra-terrestrial action.

With clever political undertones, an affecting love story and gigantic squid-like aliens, Monsters may just be the best sci-fi film of 2010.

4/5

First published in The Brag 30/11/2010

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Due Date

2010-12-12T17:13:00.004+11:00

In Due Date successful architect Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr) is stuck making a cross-country road trip with wannabe-actor Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis), after they are both thrown off a plane flight by an over-zealous Air Marshall. On a strict deadline, and with his wallet and passport still on the plane, Peter opts to hop a lift with Ethan, in order to get back to LA in time for the birth of his first child, with wife Sarah (Michelle Monaghan). Along the way Peter learns about fatherhood and friendship from his eccentric travel buddy, through a series of incidents that includes masturbating dogs, violence against children, and various car wrecks.

With its gross-out humour and overly manipulated set-ups, Due Date is more cringe-worthy than humorous. The film feels like it has been pieced together from the leftover scraps of funnier, more entertaining films. The writers appear to have a checklist of comedy props – annoying child, ugly pugdog, angry war veteran, scary Mexican immigration officials – that they were obliged to mould into a coherent storyline. Any attempt by the filmmakers to say anything even vaguely true about fatherhood or friendship appears tacked on, as if the only way they can get away with the series of idiotic jokes is to inject in the odd emotional revelation.

What is most disappointing is that Due Date hasn’t been made by talentless hacks, and doesn’t have a second-rate cast. Downey Jr. and Galifianakis could and should have made a more appealing pair for a buddy film, but director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) hasn’t been able to balance the pairing at all, and both come off as highly unlikeable characters. Obviously playing on The Hangover riff that did so well last time, Phillips is too reliant on Galifianakis as a visual gag.

Saying all this, the film has already made back its budget of $65 million at the US box office, with a pretty hefty bit of change on top of that. So there is definitely an audience for this film, and (knowing the laws of Hollywood) an even more depressing sequel is probably already in the pipeline.

1.5/5

First published in The Brag 30/11/2010

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Josh Fox Interview

2010-11-23T09:34:00.005+11:00

An interesting episode in the life of Josh Fox

Josh Fox, US documentary-maker and current mouthpiece of the anti-natural gas drilling movement, has been on what he calls “an exhausting and comprehensive” tour with his film, GasLand. Launching screenings with local grassroot organisations across America and then travelling to Australia for Q&As in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, Fox’s role is one firmly stuck between filmmaker and activist. Tired but still obviously spurred on by the environmental damage he’s seen and the threat to his own home, Fox is determined to continue spreading the message of the film.

GasLand is part exposé, part personal travelogue. The project began when Fox received a letter from a gas company offering $100,000 to lease part of his family’s upstate New York estate for exploration. Instead of signing on the bottom line like many of his neighbours Fox- a theatre director and part-time banjo player- decided to investigate the natural gas industry. “I was in the middle of a raging debate in my area between people who wanted this development and people who didn’t, and I just wanted to find out who was right.”

At the outset of his journey Fox was oblivious to the extend of the damage that hydraulic fracturing (a process for drilling for gas) was causing across America. It was a trip to the town of Dimock, Pennsylvania (shown in the film) that spurred Fox on to action. Interviews with residents there revealed flammable drinking water polluted by chemicals involved in the drilling process and massive health problems caused by toxic emissions. Fox felt terrified.

“I came home [after visiting Dimock] and I couldn’t sleep for a month, I still can’t sleep sometimes when I think about it, because I feel the walls closing in and I feel like I might have to leave.” Indeed, Fox's greatest fear is that he may not ultimately be able to halt the drilling process. “Here I am down in the valley, a lot of the property up on the hill, to the north side is leased. My immediate neighbours to my left and to my right are not leased, but what if they sell their house and the next person leases? … Even if they just drill the properties up on the hill, all those toxic emissions, and I know what they are, are going to waft down and collect in the valley.”

Watching GasLand it is hard not to feel outraged and angry. The film shows how gas companies in the US have been allowed to by-pass environmental laws. But despite all of his alarming and depressing findings you never see Fox angry in the film, which is surprising. “I think I am in shock myself a little bit about that, I think I am really deeply angry, I don’t think that is the way to express it though.” Fox pauses before continuing “Here is the thing, I think you have to leave space for your audience to make up their own mind… GasLand is a series of questions, put forward from a reasonable perspective, and it is in the audience’s hands to figure out what they need to do or what they think. You’ve got to come charging in at the end of the movie, not me, I’m already charging.”

Converting audience outrage into action isn’t easily done, but this filmmakers isn’t shy about pointing the way. “I think people have to be in the streets protesting about this, in the major cities. I think you have to have, at the locations, civil disobedience. The popular opinion has to turn and say ‘no, we are citizens of this country and we really want to examine this before industry comes in and decides to buys out our continent and our government’. At the beginning of the process I was really interested in preserving my land and my house, now the most important objective to me is to move the Earth towards renewable energy. Its about all of us investing in the great change that is to come, which is to get off fossil fuels. And natural gas is dirty just like fossil fuels.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fox has attracted a smear campaign determined to discredit both him and the film. “A lot of people have said ‘hey you are getting to them, they’re attacking you’. But it sucks. Here is the thing that bothers me about it, what they [gas companies] are saying is so obviously a lie, they are lying through their teeth. I would like to see journalists challenge them on their lies instead of me having to deal with it. When they come out and say ‘We’re not exempt from the Safe Drinking Act’ the rudimentary level journalist could just look it up and see they are lying. And if they try and put that question to me, the journalists should chime in and say ‘sorry we know you are lying’. That’s is the part of it that pisses me off, the fact that they are able to hit one spin cycle in the media and disrupt the conversation with something that is such an obvious untruth.”

Becoming the mouthpiece of a cause certainly doesn’t come without its problems, but Fox with his wry sense of humour, seems to be coping. “The film has put the human face on this issue, on gas drilling…For me it is a really interesting rollercoaster. Isn’t this an interesting episode in the life of Josh Fox, I wonder what will happen next?”

First published in The Brag 15/11/10

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The American

2010-11-16T10:00:00.001+11:00

For his sophomore film, Dutch director Anton Corbijn (Control) gives us a slow-paced Euro-thriller, adapted from Martin Booth's novel A Very Private Gentleman. The central character has been changed from British to American, with George Clooney cast against type. Filmed largely in the stunning Abruzzo region of Italy The American is visually impressive, but light on substance.

Jack (Clooney) is a hitman/gunsmith who begins the film in Sweden, where he commits as act of violence that will haunt him throughout the rest of the film. Escaping to Italy he hides out in a small countryside town and takes on a new assignment for a mysterious client (Thekla Teuten, In Bruges). The town's elderly priest (Paolo Bonacelli) quickly sizes Jack up as someone whose soul is in torment, and tries to befriend him, but Jack is a little more interested in getting to know Clara (Violente Placido), a beautiful and vivacious prostitute. However the quaint old town is full of dark, cobbled, maze-like alleyways and Jack, who is unable to escape his past, is constantly on guard for enemies lurking in the shadows.

Clooney, rightly or wrongly, is associated with characters that are charismatic and amiable. Jack, on the other hand, is solemn and cold; too hard a character to care about, not because of his immoral choices but because we find out so little about him during the course of the film.

The American suffers from being too earnest and relying on a heavy amount of visual symbolism, struggling to find a suitable way to express the film's message without banging the audience over the head with it. Corbijn's lack of subtlety as a filmmaker means that when he does make smart choices he is unable to do so without pointing it out to his audience, spoiling the magic somewhat. Corbijn coming from the world of photography and music videos certainly knows how to make a visually engaging film, but he hasn't quite learned how to tell a good story yet.

2.5/5

First published in The Brag 8/11/2010

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Interview: Emily Calder / Flightfall

2010-11-15T10:36:00.003+11:00

A mystery of creative collaborations

I speak to Emily Calder, Flightfall is a week from opening at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, and the young playwright can hardly believe it. “It is feeling very surreal at the moment. It’s been two years of lots and lots of re-drafting. In my mind I never really imagined it would be on.” For the 26-year-old NIDA graduate, it’s a significant milestone: her first produced full-length play. Covering topics of fidelity, passion and creativity,Flightfall has a young cast of talented up-and-coming Australian actors, and will be directed by Calder’s fellow NIDA graduate, Mark Grentell.

In fact, Grentell has been an instrumental to Flightfall from its inception.“Mark approached me at the end of my Playwrights Studio year at NIDA, and he wanted me to write about a particular subject,” Calder explains. “It was very broad in scope and I struggled to find the story I wanted to tell to represent that.” It was a bit of fortuitous timing that saw Calder’s first draft become part of Sydney Theatre Company’s Next Stage program. “Mark was working as an assistant director on a production here (STC) and he mentioned our project, and they had some workshops they were offering to writers.”

Calder credits Next Stage as an integral force in the play’s development “We had a really amazing three day workshop at the STC and we had three of the young female actors [from the STC’s Residents] basically doing lots of improvisations, and I wrote a whole lot of new scenes from it.” Calder is enthusiastic about the need for artistic collaborations throughout the whole writing process. “One of the sweetest words to my ear is ‘workshop’. You are sitting there all alone in your room, and you read the words out to yourself, but until you actually hear them coming from someone else… I’ve been so lucky to have fantastic actors reading for me, the whole way through.”

In Grentell’s production of Flightfall Augusta Miller (Happy Feet) plays Nina, an artist who is seduced by her new muse (played by Ryan Corr ofPacked to the Rafters), causing tension with her boyfriend Sam (James Elliot) and her best friend Jo (Alexandra Fisher). Although Calder will discuss the play’s themes and tone she is a little coy about the plot. “Flightfall is a bit of a mystery play, so I can’t give too much away… the play is about this artist and her story. It is about art, and what happens with her and her boyfriend, but it also represents poetically something else, which you find out about at the end.”

At a certain point, with the show cast, and its premiere season approaching, Calder had to let go of her baby. “Mark and I had discussed the need to give the director and the actors the script by themselves, and not have the pressure of the writer in the room. I kind of really missed being [in rehearsals], because I loved it so much, and I have to admit I did have that initial ‘oh my baby’ – which I think is typical to all writers.”

There’s always the ‘next thing’ to look forward to, however. “There has been so much work put into it, it would be wonderful if it had a run somewhere else, or got picked up for another venue,” Calder reflects. “I hope it will open doors so I can write more. I suppose everyone would just love to do it again, I think.”

First published in The Brag 25/10/2010

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The Social Network

2010-11-10T20:00:00.006+11:00

With its themes of friendship, betrayal and ambition, The Social Networkis one of the best and most intriguing films of the year. The combination of wordsmith Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) and director David Fincher (Fight Club) has produced something exciting and narratively creative. Using two co-running lawsuits against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) the film tells the origin story through disputing voices and ‘truths’.

We open with 19-year-old Harvard student Zuckerberg out on a very uncomfortable date with his girlfriend (Rooney Mara). Showing off Sorkin’s signature rapid-paced, witty dialogue, this scene perfectly highlights the irony of the world’s largest social networking tool being created by someone who is socially inept. The narrative cuts between boardroom legal negotiations: on the one hand, original investor Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) is suing Zuckerberg for squeezing him out of the company after its move to Silicon Valley; on the other, the Winklevoss Twins (played by Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) are suing Zuckerberg for stealing their idea for Facebook. Using this legal setting to weave in and out of events and perspectives, Fincher’s directing is as intelligent as Sorkin’s words.

The young, up-and-coming cast is impressive. Eisenberg brings both arrogance and vulnerability to the role of the computer genius who wants to get noticed. Garfield’s performance, equally good, is a jovial counterweight to Eisenberg’s deadpan. Proving his chops as an actor, Justin Timberlake is the film’s only true villain, playing Napster co-founder Sean Parker, who seduces Zuckerberg with his rockstar charisma.

Certainly part of the film’s appeal is simple curiosity, about one of our generation’s most defining entrepreneurs; but with superb storytelling this film also seems to be saying something more about our lives right now and the rise of the tech-savvy.

4.5/5

First published in The Brag 1/11/10

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Made In Dagenham

2010-11-02T08:16:00.003+11:00

Based on the true events Made in Dagenham explores womens’ struggle against sexual discrimination in 60s-era England. Brits do social commentary films very well. Kitchen sink dramas are staples of their film industry- with often bleak, harrowing films about Britain’s working class. So it is a pleasant surprise that director Nigel Cole hasn’t taken this story of factory strikes and union movements down this gritty route and has instead given us a fun, up-beat dramedy.

When the female machinists at American car giant Ford’s UK manufacturing plants are reclassified as unskilled labour and are moved to a lower pay salary, the employees at the factory in Dagenham, a borough in Greater London, move for industrial action. Lead by shy, but passionate worker Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins) the women stage the first ever female strike, scaring both Ford and the Unions. What follows is a stalemate which raises issues of gender and rights forcing the British Government to take notice.

The competition between domestic duties and principles pull the women in differing directions giving some shade to the film’s overall light atmosphere. While Made in Dagenham’s message is loud and clear, the script’s witty dialogue and the cast’s performances stop it from being belligerent, or overly self-righteous.

Hawkins is fantastic as Rita, a woman who finds her voice fighting for sexual equality. There is a delightful cheekiness as well as stern determination to the character, which makes her a charming lead. Also brilliant is Miranda Richardson as Secretary for State Barbara Castle, whose role shows off another side to women in the workforce.

The film does overload the 60s clichés. Fashion and make-up are emphasised to the point that they are less setting and more proof that we are in the 60s- indeed we must be because there are hot-pants and massive beehives everywhere. But this is a small problem in what is overall a heart-warming and delightful film. The spirit of standing up and being counted is an important message that Made In Dagenham spreads by being entertaining rather than moralising.

3.5/5

First published in The Brag 25/10/2010

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Most Terrifying TV/Film Characters

2010-10-30T07:30:00.001+11:00

It is Horror Week over at Trespass, so I a sked contributors to pick the 3 most terrifying characters from either film or TV. Here are my picks...

Bob (Frank Silva) from Twin Peaks (1990-1991) and Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Bob is undoubtedly one of the most disturbing TV characters of all time. A demonic entity, Bob gains strength and pleasure from the fear and suffering of his victims. With the ability to possess humans who do his bidding, Bob’s character represented both the abstract notion of pure evil and also the idea of the evil within the human character. Bob’s status as a terrifying character is not only credit to the surreal visuals of the show’s creators- David Lynch and Mark Frost but also linked to the ambiguity of the character, was he real or imaginary- the catalyst for violence or the excuse?

Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Tim Curry) from It (1990)

The TV miniseries It can be blamed for many a person’s fear of clowns. Adapted from Stephen King’s horror novel, the title refers to a creature that can take on many different forms, often using its victims’ worst fears and phobias to hunt and kill them. With a taste for children, It most often appears as Pennywise, a playfully sadistic dancing clown, who attack his victims with fang-like teeth and claws. Watching It at a young age, the character of Pennywise has stayed in my psyche, and I often find myself irrationally crossing the road when I came to a drain.

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) from Psycho (1960)

I can’t count the numbers of time I’ve been spooked by a ‘movement’ behind the shower curtain. Perhaps I’m just a nervous bather, or maybe it is the indelible mark of Hitchcock’s horror classicPsycho and its infamous murderer- Norman Bates that is the cause. A man with some seriously scary mother issues, Bates is all the more terrifying because he doesn’t look like a monster, in fact he looks like your average Joe.

You can read the full list at Trespass

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The Town

2010-10-28T09:15:00.004+11:00

Following his critically acclaimed directorial debut, Ben Affleck’s (Gone Baby Gone) sophomore feature sees him returning to his beloved Boston, and its criminal underbelly. Adapted from the novel Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, The Town follows a gang of bank robbers who all hail from Charlestown, Boston- an area with more armed robbers per square mile than anywhere else in the world (a fact with which the film opens).

Not content with directing credits alone Affleck heads up the cast as Doug MacRay, a criminal with a heart and a brain. MacRay is part of a tight-knit group of bank robbers including the slightly unhinged Jem (Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker), ‘Gloansy’ the driver (Slaine, Gone Baby Gone) and (because you can’t have odd numbers of criminals) Desmond (Owen Burke). The gang holds up a bank, taking the manager Claire (Rebecca Hall, Please Give) hostage. After releasing Claire they discover she lives in their neighbourhood and could potentially finger them to the FBI.

While Jeremy Renner steals every scene he is in, other actors feel painfully out of place. Mad Man’s Jon Hamm overacts the role of Agent Frawley, the FBI man who will do anything to catch his target. Also falling into clichéd territory is Pete Postlethwaite (Usual Suspects) as the sociopathic florist Colm Fergus. Blake Lively (Gossip Girl) as Krista, Macray’s sometimes bed partner, seems terribly miscast. The actress is too pretty and too young (or perhaps Affleck is too old) for her backstory.

The Town is the classic one-last-job heist film. High adrenaline action sequences and the odd witty one-liner lift this film above what is essential a very average crime flick. While elements of the casting are questionable, aside from one poor performance, the actors do the best with what they were given. Unfortunately this story is not strong enough to handle the pathos being piled on it. Entertaining with enough intrigue to keep audiences’ attention, The Town is a good film despite its faults. Perhaps the film is most hampered by high expectations, which neither the plot, the cast nor the director could quite live up to.

3/5

First published in The Brag 18/10/2010

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