Review: Corroboree

Corroboree
Dir. Ben Hackworth
Year: 2007 (production) / 2009 (release)
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 90mins

Ben Hackworth's Corroboree is impenetrable. I'm sure that it means something quite profound, but by film's end that meaning remains as mysterious as it does at the start. That's not to say that the movie is particularly terrible, but there came a point when I stopped caring about how pretty it looks or the few strands of understanding I was getting from it. It premiered over two years ago at film festivals around Australia and is only now getting a DVD release, which is hardly unsurprising since it is not made for anybody other than Hackworth himself. It, in fact, ends up feeling a lot like Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, mixed with Fellini's 8½ as if made by Gillian Armstrong in the 1970s.

Corroboree revolves around a director (a shadowy barely-seen Ian Scott) holding a weekend retreat of sorts with an inexperienced actor (Conor O'Hanlon, unsurprisingly in his first role) being forced head-first into a living piece of performance art with five actresses, amongst them Rebecca Frith, Susan Lyons and Natasha Herbert. It appears that these women all have assigned parts to play from the life of the director and that that the young male actor, who bares a striking resemblance at times to Michael Pitt (take that however you like), is oblivious to and must react "naturally" to their performances. Whatever that means. All of this, meanwhile, is being filmed secretly by the director in a last-ditch effort of work out his issues with women on screen before his increasingly inevitable death. You know these creative types, unable to express words off screen.


Of course, within any story of this kind, there is the obligatory "art imitating life imitating art" stuff and all sorts of conversations begging to be asked such as about the blurring of the lines between life and death. Of course there's also the old-as-time argument that just because one atones, or attempts to, in a creative form does not mean that it's worth much of anything and that the whole endeavour is flawed from the outset. I, however, couldn't particularly be bothered with trying to go down these paths as Hackworth seemed intent on turning off viewers with his increasingly cold style.

It is filled with long takes to represent hidden cameras, arch (and at times just plain bad) acting and an air of pompous arrogance that is the sign of a director having a wank on film. I have not seen Hackworth's short films, but I can tell there is some underlying talent within the man, it is just hard to see underneath all the layers, as transparent and obviously "arty" as they are.


There are individual moments in the film that stand out, but they generally feel at odds with the movie surrounding them. The opening passage is a gorgeous way to start a picture and other early scenes have a hypnotic, mysterious quality that is intriguing and its fun to watch the cast maneuver about the set, which acts as a more compact and country-side version of the giant theatre studio from the aforementioned Synecdoche (a movie made after this one I had to keep reminding myself). The illusion doesn't last long and I soon realised that the film had its head so far up its own arse it could see sunshine. Any overtly positive feelings ideas I originally had were well and truly dashed by the final scenes, a bizarre series of events portraying a directors need to remain forever that ends with the film's star covered in blood standing in a garden completely starkers. "He is the director" and so on.

And yet I still don't think the movie is completely worthless. It has... a quality. It's hard to point out, but it's there, it's just so unfortunate that it's so hard to find when surrounded by all this prosaic artifice. I don't know what any of it means outside of general vague meanderings and half-baked ideas about "our place on Earth" and I have no qualms with admitting that. It's cryptic for the sake of being cryptic and it flaunts it. C-

Black + White Friday: Scream

I wanted to experiment with Wes Craven's violent slasher flick and see if I could turn it into some sort of 1950s monster movie. A monster moving involving a monster with a ghost face, apparently. The experiment will most likely fail. The Scream movies hold such a special place in me, more than I can ever fully express, so this'll be interesting.


"Oh no! A person wearing a funny-looking mask is staring at me! NOOOO!"


"AAAAAGH! It's a giant horrible gelatinous blob! Whatever will I do?!"


Sidney: "My gosh Randy, who are you going to the Prom with? I'm just so happy to have found my dreamboat of a date!"
Tatum: "The Prom committee won't let me wear a dress this short to the dance, but I'm a fun-loving woman of the future so I'll wear what I want!"
Billy: "I can't believe I left my sweater-vest at home!"
Stuart: "Have you heard about the disaster at the nuclear plant?"
Randy: "DID YOU REALLY PUT HER LIVER IN THE MAILBOX? 'Cause I heard they found her liver in the mailbox, next to her spleen and her pancreas."
Everyone: "..."


"What is that on the horizon? A pack of wild radioactive animals?!? Why yes it is!"


"It is true you know what happened to Old Man Willard on his farm and that he is involved in a secret government plot to inject human lab rats with radioactive waste?"


"This is the uniform headdress that is worn by the secretive cult who worship aliens that police believe are behind the plot to murder all the young people of this pure, perfect American hamlet."


"Due to my boyish all-American looks and police uniform you can believe everything I say because a brave member of the Police force in the United States of America would never lie. It's those damned Communists!"


"Even though there is a monster killing all the teenagers in town and tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the suspicious unexplained death of my mother I think I will go to that big party tonight held at a house in the middle of nowhere filled with all the major characters from this story. All this despite my psychic abilities telling me something dreadful is going to happen there. Oh yes."


"I truly thought nothing could have possibly gone wrong with this idea! How could I, the fun-loving girl that every boy wants to get to third base with, end up in such a predicament?"


"AAAGH! Apparently this final monster comes equipped with a deadly fan! Those horrible radioactive animal-like communist cult monsters sure do come prepared. Oh, wait, it's just a false alarm. Now that we have beaten the evil commy cult monsters, this sleepy 1950s American town can live without fear... except the fear of GAY MARRIAGE!!"

*dun dun duuuunn*

{fin}

Review: RiP: A Remix Manifesto

RiP: A Remix Manifesto
Dir. Brett Gaylor
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 80mins

One shouldn't go into Brett Gaylor's RiP: A Remix Manifesto expecting an even argument. This documentary about copyright laws and their hindering of musical culture is most definitely in the "against" camp and doesn't even attempt to present an even-sided view. In that regard, this documentary isn't very good, but the one-sided affair that is presented is done so quite nicely. I suppose it helps that I err on the side that Gaylor is arguing, but it's also nice because there is plenty of great music within and an energetic central figure in the form of mash-up artist Girl Talk.

This is Gaylor's first film and it shows. The doco has a distinct DIY feel to it that is both apt, considering the focus of the film, and frustrating. There are wonderfully done opening credits and title card sequences and there is some great live performance footage. Unfortunately Gaylor inserts himself into the picture far too often when the more interesting person is Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis). Gaylor does not have a strong enough voice for the film's narration and there is no need to see him sitting opposite his interview subjects (something that is happening more and more in documentary filmmaking).


And as interesting as the history of copyright is - that's actually true, I'm not being sarcastic - it's as if Gaylor couldn't quite pick out the more interesting aspects of it to focus on. While the film focuses on Girl Talk there is a great rhythm and the music will surely keep your focus, but he is hardly the first artist to use samples. Nary a mention of Erik B and Rakim? DJ Shadow? The Avalanches? And famous copyright cases such as The Verve vs The Rolling Stones barely even touched upon? Or what about the case of The Fugees vs Enya, which occurred even before that? Sloppy research? Perhaps not, but the film's lack of scope in this area was disappointing.

The film's strongest moments, however, are during a sojourn to Brazil with it's energetic and eclectic musical taste pushed front and centre. These scenes are so overflowing with musical passion that it would take the sternest of "kids these days" head-shakers to not get caught up in it. Elsewhere law professor Lawrence Lessig proves to be the most knowledgeable on the debate and his arguments hold up best. Such moments of wisdom like 'People quote books all the time in everything from movies to school essays with nothing more than a citation, so why can't a musician use a two-second loop of a song just the same?' provide much food for thought. Dan O'Neill, a famed underground cartoonish, is another welcome addition and provides a well-needed laugh.


It's such a shame that this documentary feels held back by Gaylor and the fact that it's such a small project. It could have definitely benefited from a larger scope and less of the director himself. He, himself, presents facts too straight-forwardly and it becomes obvious that that sort of stuff is better left to the entertaining people he has surrounded himself with. And even though I think his argument is important and worthy, presenting the other side in a fair manner would have made it even stronger. B-

Befitting the film, Gaylor has actually allowed people to download the movie from the official website for a suggested fee. It receives a limited release in Australia from Thursday.

Review: The Survivor

The Survivor
Dir. David Hemmings
Year: 1981
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 80mins

Anyone who saw the wonderful documentary from last year Not Quite Hollywood would have become well used to the name Antony I Ginnane. A film producer who revolutionised the Australian film industry in the late 1970s with his large slate of genre films. They were sometimes very good (Patrick from 1978) and sometimes they were very bad (Harlequin from 1980). Thankfully, The Survivor errs more onto the side of positive with it's atmospheric tale of an airplane pilot who survives a crash that kills everybody else on board. It was directed by the British David Hemmings who had appeared as an actor in many of these type of films, including vampire flick Thirst.

Starring Robert Powell (an American actor who also starred in the aforementioned Harlequin) as said pilot and Jenny Agutta as a psychic who looks as if she came out of a Jane Campion movie about a uptight school teacher who, at nights, becomes a posh prostitute. It revolves around the lengths Powell's Pilot Keller goes to to remember what happened on that fateful night - in the Adelaide suburbs, apparently - and the lengths the spirits of the dead will go to to punish those responsible. Also featured in a surreal regard is legendary American actor Joseph Cotton, in his final role, as a Priest. Yes, the man who was in Citizen Kane was also in a shlocky Aussie horror flick, if you can believe it.


The central premise holds a lot of promise, and when focusing on the scary elements the film works a treat. A scene in a cemetery proves particularly fright-filled and the big centrepiece of the movie, the airplane crash, is an excellently put together set-piece that would surely continue to rank as one of the best examples of its kind. The use of the hollowed out and destroyed airplane craft adds an incredible amount of atmosphere to the proceedings, too. Especially in this day and age, the sight of these giant engines laying broken on the ground is ominous, and a scene later in the film inside a hangar is a well-done pyrotechnic display. The film's production design received a deserved AFI nomination.

There's also no denying that the film looks a million bucks (in actual fact, it's budget was just over $1mil and it was the most expensive Australian film ever made at the time.) Nominated cinematography by future Oscar-winner John Seale is simply gorgeous. There is such great use of lighting and the way the action is played around the charred chunks of airplane wreckage really is something. I'd hazard a guess and say it still ranks as some of his finest work, even when including titles like The Talented Mr Ripley, The English Patient and Witness in the equation. I also liked the music score by Brian May, whose music here is very much in the same vein as a lot of these early '80s Aussie horror flicks, but here it is much more in tone with the film as it has been in others.


There are problems though, naturally. The final act begins to descend into a confusing muddle with apparent twists being disclosed, yet done so with no context. Despite all the well-done individual scenes they sometimes don't form a cohesive whole, with a struggle going on between the more subtly supernatural elements and the more bombastic horror. And while I enjoyed the performance by Powell - a much better performance than the one in Harlequin that's for sure - the work by Agutter is overblown and feels like it came out of a completely different movie altogether.

Anybody wanting to learn anything about Australian cinema must made through films like The Survivor. They may not hold the prestige of a My Brilliant Career or Gallipoli, but they are an important part nonetheless. And, as these movies go, you could do far worse (trust me, I have). B-

Black + White Friday: Reds

Let us welcome back "Black + White Friday". It proved to be one of the most popular features here at Stale Popcorn when I started it last year. As you obviously would have noted I stopped doing it towards the end of last year, mainly because my working/home situation meant I just did not have the time, but I have decided to resurrect it (I started it roughly around this time last year, anyway) because it's so fun. Some of my favourites from season one were Birth, Chicago, The Others, Showgirls and Moulin Rouge! Three of those star Nicole Kidman, which we quickly realised looks ravishing in black and white. Today we learn the same goes for Diane Keaton.


It's Warren Beatty? What's not to like? He certainly looks far more fetching in his tuxedo than he does in his ratty, muddy clothes later in the movie. Soak it up while it lasts because he spends a lot of the three-hour run time in those ratty clothes.


Funnily, the first thing I thought of when I did this screencap was a horror movie. Something like Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie or Robert Wise's The Haunting. And, let's be honest, there are worse things I could be reminded of.


This was actually the moment that made me want to do a screencap entry on Reds. It's just so beautifully done with the white shirt front and the light on Diane Keaton's face. This movie really did frame Keaton well, didn't it? There are so many close-ups of her face where it feels as if Vittorio Storaro was entranced by her. And we all know Beatty was at the time, too.


I just really like the framing on this moment. Seems so overflowing with romanticism, don't you think?


Well, duh. The moment I saw this moment I was like "that's another screencap". It really is somethin' else, isn't it?


Again, the way Diane Keaton is filmed in this movie is just gorgeous. Even down to the placement of the hat seems so spot on precise to get the right about of shadow onto her face as we try and figure out what she's thinking. And also trying to not let Jack Nicholson's character see into them too much.


Another shot that was begging to be used. Vittorio Storaro is a master, I swear. Reminds me I need to use Dick Tracy for this feature, too. That'd be interesting to say the least considering how incredibly dependent that movie is on colour. Not that Reds isn't either, mind you. There were many bits that I would've loved to use, but simply did not look as luscious in black and white. Epics have almost always been filmed in colour for a reason. I do wonder what something like DW Griffith's Intolerance would have been like in colour. Or, better yet, let's not give Hollywood any bright ideas. Eep.


I just really loved this scene and this particular moment with the light fixture. Plus, more Warren can't help, right? Even if he is wearing that hat.


I'm surprised this looks like it does since the scenes in question are so full of bright yellows and oranges that I thought it would look bad. It does not.


Hey look, Diane Keaton has lines around her eyes! Shocking, I know. Almost unfathomable in today's film landscape, isn't it? In fact, despite framing and photographing Keaton gorgeously throughout the whole movie, I was surprised by how normal she looked through the whole thing. Not glamourous, nor uglified. Perhaps that's why I thought she was best-in-show, there was something so natural about her in Reds.

What did you think of Reds or the black and white? Speak up if you like in the comments.

Review: State of Play

State of Play
Dir. Kevin Macdonald
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 127mins

Anybody who remembers the 2006 awards season will remember my general loathing of Kevin Macdonald's The Last King of Scotland. So going into his latest feature (he started his film career with documentaries such as the brilliant One Day in September) I was wary. Was this, yet another political thriller, going to be yet another bombastic nauseating experience? Thankfully not and I ended up being pleasantly surprised as the film is an at-times quite exciting and intriguing journalistic movie. It has delusions of being a love-letter to the proud days of newspaper journalism, but thankfully the movie itself hasn't succumbed to modern mainstreams tricks and silliness to tell its tale.

Not having seen the British mini-series from which State of Play is adapted, I was not aware of the many twists and turns that I figured the tale was sure to have. Despite a final act botch-up involving the character of Robin Wright-Penn Macdonald mostly succeeds in making a no-fuss movie. More for adults - there is copious amounts of dialogue and the "thriller" elements are decidedly brief and un-flashy - it features good performances out of Ben Affleck as a scandalous senator and Russell Crowe as the journalist friend out to solve the story. Helen Mirren adds fire as Crowe's editor and Jason Bateman arrives in fourth gear as a sleazy PR agent. It is, however, Rachel McAdams that comes out best from the film and it's just a shame she doesn't have more to do because it was nice to reminded of her talent.


State of Play isn't reinventing the wheel, but it does succeed in being a well-made drama/thriller that doesn't always use the easy options (doesn't always, but sometimes does). It wastes throwaway story-lines, that were obviously more prevalent in the British extended TV series, and the actors involved in them (that would be Wright-Penn and Jeff Daniels), but it provides enough fire to make for a rousing piece of movie entertainment. B

Review: Samson & Delilah

Samson & Delilah
Dir. Warwick Thornton
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 97mins

The tagline of Warwick Thornton's starling debut feature Samson & Delilah is "True Love" and true love, as they say, is hard work. Being an Australian film you can probably already tell that this story isn't going to be easy, but some the harrowing moments that Thornton puts on screen seem to bring new definition to the phrase "doing it tough". However, the true wonder of this movie is that in spite of the hardships and the troubles that plague these two achingly beautiful characters is that there is indeed true love and it shines brightly.

Samson & Delilah, no connection at all to the biblical tale, has quickly become the buzz title of the Australian film industry and with just cause. It premiered at the Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival only two months ago and has become a word-of-mouth sensation, and just recently was selected for the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes. It really isn't hard at all to see why.


Beginning in a remote outback community, Delilah (Marisa Gibson) lives with her Nana (Gibson's real life Nana Mitjili Gibson) making a small living from selling authentic dot paintings, which unbeknown to them get sold for thousands of dollars in the city. Samson (Rowan MacNamara) lives nearby and has nothing to do except sniff petrol cans and roll around in a wheelchair. Once Nana dies these two souls, seemingly destined for one another from the outset, set off on a road trip that goes from bad to worse to tragic to near-catastrophic. But while this could easily be taken as not being an "easy" film to watch, there is just such authentic humanity and beauty in it, particularly the closing passages, that it will continue to swim through your mind for days and weeks on end. It still swirls around in my mind and I saw it a month ago!

The film works on so many levels. Is it simple a love story? Is it a tragedy about drug addiction? Is it a realistic portrayal of Aboriginal life? Is it a cautionary tale to everyone about their conceptions of people or is it an indictment on this country's treatment of Aboriginal people? It's all of these and more. It's a letter from Thornton to his audience. He wants us to think and feel. He wants us to breathe the same air as these characters and he achieves this with amazing sense of place. Cinematography by Thornton is gorgeous and the simple yet stark production design by Daran Fulham is really great at identifying a strong sense of place.


There are scenes in this movie that will, truly and honestly, break your heart. Watch as Delilah tries to sell a dot painting to the white cafe patrons or as she delicately holds a desperate Samson. The performances are quite astonished, particularly that of Marissa Gibson. She barely speaks after the first few scenes - McNamara on the other hand had only one word of dialogue for the entire film if I remember correctly - but evokes so much. Their world is one of silence and yet we can understand so much about it, and that's an incredibly testament to Thornton and his filmmaking partners.

Samson & Delilah is a great piece of filmmaking and one that you will not forget in a hurry and one can only hope that Australians - and, if they get the chance, international - audiences take a chance on it. A

Review: The Baader Meinhof Complex

The Baader Meinhof Complex
Dir. Uli Edel
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 150mins

Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex appears to be, to it's own detriment, incredibly thorough. It is ferociously directed, well-acted and feels like it's barreling ahead at breakneck speed, and yet in it's desire to become the Forrest Gump of movies about the German RAF movement it suffers from it's own heavy weight and what could have been a blisteringly exciting exploration of history eventually becomes over-wrought.

German cinema is quickly becoming some of my favourites, and for a good portion of Baader Meinhof's 150 minute running time I felt it slotted right in, but while the running time might not suggest anything truly exhausting - there have been far worse movies that ran far longer - Edel and writer Bernd Eichinger have tried to fit every single noteworthy moment of the infamous Red Army Faction's first ten years of existence that it becomes obvious there is just too much. And since the first hour - I checked - is so pulse-elevating, there's only so much of that I could take. There are moments that I felt could have been easily excised such as a sojourn to an army training course in the desert. Nothing comes out of it except to slow the film down.


Reliving the years between the group's creation in 1967 to the infamous "German Autumn" in 1977, that climaxed with the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane, the film follows the RAF's major creative forces, Ulrike Meinhof (an excellent Martina Gedeck), Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek in another of the film's finer performances) as they plot, scheme and carry out acts of terrorism on the German government. Beginning with a claustrophobic and terrifying riot sequence Edel sets a frenetic pace. Much like the similar events that were portrayed in Steven Spielberg's Munich (which has a bit of cross plotting to Complex) it is so interesting to see this period portrayed on screen. Cinematography by Rainer Klausmann is clean and polished while Alexander Berner's editing really shines.

However as so many differing schemes and battle start going on involving characters who know characters who we don't know and it all becomes too heavy for the film to handle. The events begin to confuse and become hard to follow unless you're already aware of the timeline that is transpiring. The lack of any insight into the personal lives of these characters outside of a brief flash or two towards the start is particularly frustrating since the brief moments we do see - especially Meinhof's relationship with her children once she joins the militant group - are fascinating. It's hard to figure out why Baader was so influential over this group of people since he comes off as a horrible wretch of a human being for long periods of the film. Surely these characters - and there are indeed a lot of them - didn't speak radicalism 24/7 with brief interludes for discussions about guns, explosives and the evils of their government.


Edel hasn't made a cinematic drama since Last Exit to Brooklyn in 1989, instead focusing on episodic television and TV movies. By seemingly modelling his film on Hollywood movies he has fallen into the same traps that they do by not realising that just because he has the means to film everything and put it on screen doesn't mean he should. Although, to be perfectly honest, I think that is a problem with the screenplay, based on the non-fiction novel by Stefan Aust, and not Edel's direction, which is very impressive and there is plenty to recommend here from the acting to the technical skills on display. It just would have been far more effective if the fat had been trimmed from it. B-

The Baader Meinhof Complex is released 7 May and is in preview screenings this weekend.

Capsule Review: The Square

The Square
Dir. Nash Edgerton
Year: 2008
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 107mins

Nash Edgerton's upgrade from short film director to feature film director is a familiar course for Australian filmmakers. From Jane Campion to Matthew Saville there is an impressive roster of names - and there are more making the jump this year - and The Square is an incredibly impressive feature debut for Edgerton.

The Square is a thriller written by Joel Edgerton (Nash's famous actor brother who co-stars as a paid arsonist) and Matthew Dabner that takes that good ol' fashioned Aussie film staple - depressed man (David Roberts) having an affair with a younger woman (Claire van der Boom) - and injects it with tension and heart-racing twists and turns. Filled with secrets, double crosses, car chases, mysteries, frights and a fair share of dead bodies, The Square is the sort of film our industry should be making more of. Of course, the movie flopped upon release - all sorts of reasons for that that we won't go into yet again - which is such a shame because it really is a corker of a film. As the press quotes may say, "you'll be the on the edge of your seat." B+

Review: My Year Without Sex

My Year Without Sex
Dir. Sarah Watt
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 96mins

In only two feature film, writer/director/animator Sarah Watt has already proven herself to be one of the most important voices in Australian cinema. After the grand debut of Look Both Ways (which won the AFI for Best Film amongst others) she has given us the effortlessly charming My Year Without Sex. Watt creates such real and wonderful characters that help take away from the themes that many deem unpalatable for audiences. It's going to be incredible hard for another Australian film this year - hell, try any film this year - to put forth as honest and delightfully flawed characters as Watt has here.

Starring Sacha Horler (Praise) and Matt Day (returning from overseas TV work such as Secret Diary of a Call Girl) as an ordinary married middle class suburban couple with two kids (Jonathan Segat and Portia Bradley). When Horler's Natalie suffers an aneurysm her life takes many different turns. Split into twelve separately themed segments - and with the help of inventive title cards thanks to Maryjeanne Watt and Patrina White - the film flies by as the family go on vacation, enjoy Christmas and Easter, deal with a potential loss of job and even a potential diversion into born again Christianity. Yet along the way Watt never loses sight of the indelible truths behind her characters.


It is just so enjoyable to watch characters that one knows in real life portrayed so lovingly on screen. These characters are not shown in a particularly glamourous light, but nor are they mocked for being nothing but normal. It has become a habit of Australian cinema to feel the need to portray suburbia in the traditional Aussie Gothic manner filled with quirky weirdos and social deviants, but Watt has none of that. Even a Priest character, played by the ever-wonderful Maud Davey, is never mocked or laughed at, something Paul Cox could learn lesson or two from. And while it is nice to see realistic characters on screen - a problem that is far too common with Australian films is that the characters are so unrealistically written - that doesn't always make a good film. Thankfully Watt has surrounded them with spirited comedy, delightful supporting characters and injected the main family with true blue Aussie humour and spirit. The film even ends with an all-in singalong to Little Birdy's "Beautiful to Me" and I defy anyone to not sit there and just grin.

The cast is all tops, too. Horler - a three time AFI award winner - continues to go places few actresses do and does so with such cutting delivery. Matt Day, whose last Australian film was Hell Has Harbour Views in '05, makes a fine everyman and plays a bit like a ladies crumpet. The two kids, too, are excellent, especially Jonathan Segat who has a particularly awkward, but well-played, moment at a cinema that plays like a mini tight wire act. The supporting cast, from Maud Davey to Katie Wall right on through to a hilarious cameo by William McInnes (although try and spot it before you read the cast list.)


Sometimes there are movies that just put big ol' smiles on your face and I suspect My Year Without Sex will be one of those movies for many people. Look Both Ways was a surprise word-of-mouth hit and I can only hope that the same fate belongs to Watt's sophomore effort. It has more charm, wit and love in one scene than most films have in their entirety. It's a triumph. B+

My Life Without Sex is out late May.

Review: Newcastle

Newcastle
Dir. Dan Castle
Year: 2008
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 107mins

A couple of years ago there was an Australian film called Tan Lines. It was a fairly dreadful look at homosexuality and Aussie surf culture, a thoroughly interesting topic I might like to add, that treated its queer topic with a strange pitched level of surprising earnestness and poor execution and unrealistic storytelling. It was further hampered by amateur acting and bad writing. It did, however, provide endless opportunities for queer audiences to fawn over shirtless male bodies (although their age sure was cringe-worthy at times) and that seems to be about the maximum depth you will find in many GLBT-themed movies.

Another Australian film that wades through similar territory, released late in 2008, was Dan Castle's Newcastle, which is a far more successful - and yet, at times, just as frustrating - attempt at the surfer-via-homos theme. While the queer angle is clearly not the film's prime reason for existing, it is actually the one aspect that really shines brightest. The film predominantly focuses of Jesse (Lachlan Buchanan of TV's Blue Water High so surfing experience comes with the package), but it is the relationship between his gay twin brother Fergus, played by the rising star Xavier Samuel (September), and one of Jesse's alpha surfer buddies that provide the thrust of the movie.


The character of Andy (Kirk Jenkins in his acting debut) is one of those incredibly unrealistic fantasy character that every socially awkward gay teenager daydreams about. He is sensitive, caring, incredibly dreamy in the looks department and acts all nice to the outcast. It's a character that almost every gay coming-of-age tale has, and yet I didn't feel that it derailed Newcastle. It's never made explicitly clear whether he is gay or not - Fergus most definitely is since he has purple streaks in his hair and, apparently, hangs around at beach toilet blocks - but he sure does come off that way. There is a scene on the dunes of a beach that is actually quite tender and beautiful. It's a fine example of the sort of thing movies like Another Gay Movie just do not understand. Just because your characters are gay doesn't mean a gay audience is going to want to watch them. Here they are well-formed and well-acted. I'm sure plenty of the film's gay male audience will swoon.

The film as a whole, despite not being entirely queer-centric, is very much queer-friendly. Scene after scene shows the pack of lithe and muscular young men (apparently all supposed to be 16 and 17 years old) pictured above sans clothes. Nudity is prevalent as, apparently, skinny dipping is a popular past time in Newcastle's surfing community. There's even one scene involving nude underwater wrestling between the two brothers that will provide some viewers with naughty thoughts. Even a scene in which the straight Jesse masturbates in his bedroom is intercut with as many shots of shirtless surfers as it is with shots of sexy women running along the beach with their tits bouncing about. Further to that point, for a film that I presume was supposed to be aimed at a teenage male audience, there are more shots of male posteriors and flapping dicks than there are shots of attractive women in bikinis.


Of course, the filmmakers have other more predominant issues on their brain and as soon as the third act comes around it all but ditches the queer subplot except for a quick reminder here or there plus a post-credits scene that seems to confirm what the audience surely suspected. Outside of this angle the film doesn't hold up quite as well. It is a fairly routine coming-of-age tale - that horror term that all followers of Australian film have grown to cringe at - about a younger brother emerging out of the shadow of his more successful older sibling (Reshad Strik). Jesse isn't a very likeable character - he's either angry or angry - which is why the subplots seem to be more interesting. The film's climax is sudden and seemingly unfinished. We don't even get to see Jesse's big chance at the surfing competition he's been working the entire film towards achieving. It just ends. Did they run out of money?

The photography by Richard Michalak is impressive as most surfing cinematography seems to be these days. Editing by Rodrigo Balark is equally good and continues his trend of being amongst the highlights of all his work after movies such as Black Water and The Eternity Man. The acting, too, is definitely worthy of mention and is one of the film's high points. Far too often in Australian films of this variety, the acting is as amateurish as the writing, but the actors fill their characters with spirit, playfullness and all have moments of note even if it is just a laugh or a single line of dialogue.


That writer/director Dan Castle is openly gay (his queer-themed short films have won awards) actually makes Newcastle more disappointing. It's obvious that the gay storyline is the film's most powerful asset, but I suppose it wasn't in the financiers best interest to ditch the less interesting Jesse storyline to focus on the Fergus/Andy one. Films that focus solely on a gay romance are all but always pushed aside and resigned to the queer festival circuit. As it stands though Newcastle is an impressive feature debut and a hopeful sign of an interesting new voice in both Australian and queer cinema. B

PS; I'm not just being a perv. There are seriously next to no stills from this movie that aren't of it's cast minus shirts.

Review: Mary and Max

Mary and Max
Dir. Adam Elliot
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 80mins

What is it about claymation directors that brings out the creepiest, oddest and downright strangest in the animated form. Whether it be the all-singing all-dancing Halloween celebrations of Henry Selick or the moons made out of cheese and evil penguins of the Aardman Studios’ Wallace & Gromit creations or any number of other contenders for the status as the most imaginative and ghastly claymation images. Adam Elliot’s Oscar-winning short Harvey Krumpet had its fair share of eccentricities going for it, too, and that continues with the release of his first ever feature film, Mary and Max.

In this film some of the crazy and crazier images on display are suicidal goldfish, birthmarks that “look like poo”, alcoholic kleptomaniacs, Asperger's syndrome sufferers with weight problems and gay pen pals. You can’t accuse Elliot of not shoving his entire imagination into this project, at times to his detriment, but as a wildly inventive and original piece of Australian cinema Mary and Max is a winner.

Taking place decades before today, Mary is a lonely young girl who lives in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverley (hey, I’ve been there!) who admires The Dinkles, an animated kids television series of brown blobs, and eating sweetened condensed milk. On a whim she writes to the first name she points to in a New York City phone book – cue a funny joke about Jewish people that it’s okay to laugh at - and that man just happens to be Max, an obese man with Aspergers Syndrome who attends Eaters Anonymous meetings and also watches The Dinkles. These tangible threads of commonality actually bring these two lost and lonely characters together in a much more believable fashion than you may expect.


The true magic of Mary and Max is that in between hearty guffaws and brilliant sight gags is that there is true poignancy to it. These two characters, especially Mary – voiced as a child by Bethany Whitmore and as an adult by Toni Collette – who represents so many different feelings associated with potential young audiences that it’s hard not to be touched by her tale. Max, as voiced by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is an equally miserable character but is surprisingly endearing because of it. His afflictions and addictions are handled with care and the scene in which he rattles off the conditions of Asperger's has genuine emotion as a man who still hasn’t come to terms with what hand he has been dealt, and yet has become so disconnected and desensitised from everything that he just doesn’t care what people think.

The humour, dark and silly, comes thick and fast during the opening 30 minutes especially with Barry Humphries supplying plenty of it with his droll narration alongside the assorted weird and wonderful gags on view. It’s an easy film to find yourself missing jokes as they creep up on the audience so sneakily and some of them being so dark that it takes a moment to realise the joke actually happened.

Unfortunately, Elliot's experience in the short form of animation proves to be a problem during the final act of this 80-minute movie. The film has such a rapid pace at times – like a short – that when it slows down these moments feel awkward and the forward moving story grinds to a halt. The jokes seem to stop, too, which wouldn’t be a worry if the early portions of the film had not have been so entertaining and funny. There were real moments of heart spread throughout Mary and Max that when Elliot decides to make a big moment out of them they come off as forced, which is incredibly unfortunate.

However, even when these hiccups disrupt a free-flowing story, the animation remains beautiful to watch. Elliot’s character designs are fabulous – this writer’s favourite being Mary’s lush of a mother Vera, voiced by famous Melbourne singer Renee Geyer – and the art direction is utterly captivating. The New York scenes are wonderfully detailed and the Australian parts have such a true sense of Australiana that beats most live action movies easily.

As something truly fresh and original though, Mary and Max is a triumph and it’s just a shame that the glorious joy-in-sadness that the film had revelled in had to be detracted by outright sadness towards the end. B