Five Shots: Under Construction

Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street
Dir. Samuel Beyer
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 94mins

It had to happen. The last of the big 1980s horror franchises to receive the Hollywood remake treatment is A Nightmare on Elm Street. Originally conceived as a horror film about the power of the subconscious from the mind of genre pioneer Wes Craven, the franchise eventually descended into never-ending sequels that were more interested in laughs than scares. Unfortunately for filmgoers, this 2010 incarnation of the famed series is a humourless and scare-free bore.

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There were so many issues with this movie that I couldn't put them all into my word limit. I really just couldn't believe that despite everything they had at their fingers - a series worth of memorable kills to drawer from plus a budget and improved effects - all Freddy seemed to do was show up behind someone to the sound of big loud crash sound effect and then carve them up. Nothing to it. So boring. I just wanted him to do something. And, furthermore, I think Jackie Earle Haley was entirely miscast. Hire an actual actor and do that to him? All he does he stand around. Occasionally he walks around the room, but that's about it. And his voice, ugh, his voice. And, dear filmmakers, when I go see a slasher movie I do not want five minute long scenes devoted to hearing about how a man likes to rape little children. Disgusting.

I have soured on this movie even more since seeing it on Wednesday. It's not quite as bad as the Friday the 13th remake, but it's bad. Really bad. D

Speaking of the Friday the 13th remake, over at Trespass Mag I also have a piece on modern day horror remakes where I throw some praise on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and, ahem, House of Wax, while eviscerating Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. I ran out of words to write about Psycho, but that movie has been on my brain quite a bit lately so I might just have to write about it anyway. Enjoy.

Five Shots: Mirrors

Review: Harry Brown

Harry Brown
Dir. Daniel Barber
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 103mins

As the opening credits tell us, "Michael Caine is Harry Brown”. In response, here are some things that I think Harry Brown is. Repugnant. Offensive. Vile. Repulsive. Awful. Retched. Shameful. And most of all, just plain old bad. Unlike the similarly themed Australian film The Horseman, Harry Brown celebrates the ultra-violence it is thrusting upon audiences and thrives on it rather than condemns it and that is a disturbing thing.

Set predominantly around a lower-class British housing estate (you know the ones, big gray slabs with holes cut out for windows and a stove for making a hot watery substance that can scarcely be called "tea"), Harry Brown stars Michael Caine as a recently widowed senior citizen who decides to enact his own brand of justice on the hooligan youth culture that terrorises the estate and who sent his best friend Leonard (David Bradley) to a violent grave.


Reading that description may not sound like anything terribly offensive, sure, but once the surface is scratched (scratched as thinly as the plot will allow) there is a disturbing hypocrisy in its attitudes towards violence. At once decrying the violence that the thuggish youths act out - stabbings, bashings, fires and other antisocial behaviour - and cheering on the violence that the elder Harry Brown unleashes - shootings, bashings, fires and other antisocial behaviour - there is a distinctly unpleasant aura around the proceedings. Increasingly grotesque and repugnant in its imagery, Harry Brown director Daniel Barber and screenwriter Gary Young are simply having fun at the idea of this old gent brutally murdering thugs. Graphic blood splatters and torrents of blood overflow from each of Harry Brown's victims without even the slightest hint that we're meant to be condemning him for what he is doing. He was in Vietnam, you see, so I guess he's allowed?

The movie’s attitude towards the quote unquote youth of today is awfully narrow-minded. Even when one of the teenage louts is clearly shown being the victim of sexual abuse and rape it barely rates a mention. This lack of character development is detrimental. The aforementioned Vietnam reference is all that Barber gives us to somehow understand how Harry Brown could commit these acts. And of the gang’s leader Ben Drew sprouts phrases like “fucking cunt” a lot and that’s about it.


That I haven’t mentioned the acting or the crafts is a show of how much I really detested the movie’s themes, but if you really would like to know then I shall inform. Caine is competent in the lead role, but it never leaves the realm of “MICHAEL CAINE KILLING HOOLIGANS”. Emily Mortimer, the only other actor with a recognisable face, plays a police detective but is ineffective, plain and uninteresting, much like the drab visuals. I hardly expect a movie such as this to replicate the bright colours and extravagant visual splendour of Quentin Tarantino’s own revenge thriller Kill Bill, but if you’re going to present your tale as one of open revenge lust then the grungy look that this movie has is all wrong. It reminded me of Australian druggie drama West in its ability to be as equally repellent to look at as it is to think about.

In terms of British crime tales, The Bill this ain't, but nor does it present a truly compelling tale of a man whose only option is revenge. In the end the film's abhorrent politics had my mind doing back flips long before the film's final scene, a moment that is so hopelessly clueless that it just compounds the issues at. As Harry Brown walks through the once-dangerous underground tunnel that was the scene of so much violence, are we now supposed to think that it is filled with light, happiness, promises and rainbows? That's what that film would have us believe and therein lays more problems. Barely scratching the surface of a very real and pertinent issue, but using it as the backbone for a grubby slaughter fest. Mr Brown is having his cake and eating it too. This film wants to pretend to be “important” and “about something” but is then more interested in filling the screen with icky violence than telling a story about a man truly haunted by violence. Even the movie poster is all but telling audiences "Michael Caine kicks arse!" It is all incredibly unappealing. F

Review: Robin Hood

Robin Hood
Dir. Ridley Scott
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 140mins

There are very few directors who get their name plastered all over the marketing materials for their films. Ridley Scott is one of those few and with masterpieces such as Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise to his name he’s certainly deserved it. Unfortunately he has spent the majority of the last decade making disaster after disaster, whittling away the goodwill he has accumulated. The latest in his stretch of bad films is this dire retelling of Robin Hood. Billed as “the untold story behind the legend”, there’s good reason for that; It’s bad. Really bad.

Read the rest at Trespass Mag

So very, very bad. Although I still think Kingdom of Heaven was a far more boring movie than this, Robin Hood is actually much more of a mess. The best bit was when Rusty got his clothes off, I guess. D

Review: New York, I Love You

New York, I Love Your
Dir. Fatih Akin, Yvan Attal, Allen Hughes, Shunji Iwai, Wen Jiang, Joshua Marsden, Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, Randall Balsmeyer, Shekhar Kapur & Natalie Portman
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 103mins

One city, ten directors and a cast of familiar faces await audiences of New York, I Love You. This follow-up to Paris je t’aime, a surprise box office hit that saw famous directors craft odes to the city of love, will leave many disappointed. This so-called love letter to the Big Apple is a fizzer that doesn’t even come close to approaching the joie de vivre of its Parisian ancestor.

Read the rest at Trespass Mag

I am a New York "tragic", it's true. I have been twice - plan to go again in the next few years, hopefully/maybe - and I love movies to be set in New York. A movie such as The Exploding Girl can be so much better than it has any right to be simply by being set in NYC and allowing me to drown myself in the images and sounds. Barely any of the vignettes in New York, I Love You give that feeling of being surrounded by life like actually being in New York does. My favourite was the Maggie Q/Ethan Hawke sequence, which felt like a "New York Moment" more than, say, Natalie Portman's awful Jewish wedding piece.

One thing I mention in the review is the lack of any queer substance whatsoever. Watching the movie and I felt as if they were going out of their way to feature as many cultures and yet somehow gay people got left out. And in a film about the gay capital of the world (to be token and cliched). I also find it hilarious that the producers cut Scarlett Johansson's piece because it "didn’t jive with the rest of the shorts." I definitely think this film could have used more pieces that played outside of the box like it sounds ScarJo's did. Ah well. C-

Five Shots: Red Shoes

Review: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call Orleans
Dir. Werner Herzog
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 122mins

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a movie isn’t close to being as fun, funny or insane as it thinks it is. Considering the original Bad Lieutenant by Abel Ferrara was released 18 years ago, it’s hard to see how Werner Herzog’s version is as shocking as it thinks it is either. Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant was doing drugs, masturbating in front of young women and abusing suspects around the same time Nicolas Cage was giving his patented crazy style of acting in much better movies such as David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. So what then, dear reader, was the point of this movie?

It’s hard to say. None of the actors are able to emerge out of the shadow that Herzog creates for Cage. Eva Mendes has nothing to do but stand around and look sultry, which is a hard thing to do given Peter Zeitlinger’s cinematography is so dank and confining – while the likes of Val Kilmer and Faizura Balk just stand around with nothing to do. Jennifer Coolidge is perhaps the only actor who’s able to shine since she has the innate ability to be even more deranged than Cage and Herzog put together. The brief moments where Herzog really goes off his medication, mostly moments involving alligators and iguanas, are amusing in a broad sort of way, but feel more like token oddities rather than anything truly organic.


The actual plot of The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans revolves around the trailer park shooting of a family of Senegalese refugees in the months after Hurricane Katrina. Herzog can be commended for his representation of New Orleans, he doesn’t sugarcoat this town’s misfortunes and there isn’t a pretty sight in the entire movie. As a murder mystery, however, it doesn’t even rise above the level of intrigue supplied by season 15 of Law & Order. Nor does it excite from a filmmaking point of view. None of the twists or developments feel exciting from a storytelling point of view, nor are they shown in any compelling form. Things happen and that’s about it.

Which brings me back to the lead character of Lieutenant Terence McDonagh as played by Cage. His foul behaviour is supposed to be the hook of this film, but it instead feels forced and even juvenile. I’m sure it was shocking to see Harvey Keitel strut around naked while snorting bags of cocaine whilst solving the crime of a nun being raped in the 1992 original, but in 2010 watching Nicolas Cage dive off the deep end is about as revolutionary as, well, Harvey Keitel nuding up.

And what of Nicolas Cage? A man whose tics and twitches have seemingly taken over his career and his mumbly vocals inserted itself into every performance. There isn’t anything about this performance here that we haven’t seen. Am I meant to find it better simply because he’s being directed by a man just as bonkers as he? Cage’s style perfectly fit the aforementioned Wild at Heart 20 years ago and at least that picture was stylistically on the same wavelength. And then there’s the issue of Cage’s accent, which strangely changes midway through the movie into some weird combination of Jimmy Stewart and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.


Ferrara’s original wasn’t even that good in the first place and even though there is no connection other than the bare strings of plot that they share, Herzog’s movie feels dated and warn out. As a movie made solely to frame Herzog and Cage’s duel wackiness around a story of ever-increasing moments of “shocking” depravity it lacks anything that can truly be described as shocking in this day and age as it plods along at a snail’s pace. Both of these men have done incredible work before, similar to that on display here, but The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a perfect example of two people being so perfect for one another that they end up cancelling each other out. Two pretty people equalling an ugly baby if you’d like a metaphor. It could be humourous if it wasn’t so ugly and putrid, both to look at and from an entertainment level. All that’s left in the end that’s truly new is a scene involving iguanas and that just isn’t enough. D

Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time Machine
Dir. Steve Pink
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 100mins

Two weeks ago cinemagoers had Steve Carell and Tina Fey starring in Date Night, a movie with a plot that came directly out of 1986. This week fans of dopey comedies can, quite literally, go back in time to 1986 with Hot Tub Time Machine, a terminally unfunny piece of nostalgic time travel that throws everything except the kitchen sink into the hot tub resulting in nothing more than a soggy mess. When the title is the funniest thing about a movie, you know there’s trouble afoot.

Read the rest at Trespass Mag.


I had mentioned to fellow Melbourne film man Luke Buckmaster before the screening that I was not looking forward to this movie and, lo and behold, it turned out to be as bad as I expected. I truly, honestly did not laugh one single time. Say what you will about Date Night, I already did, but at least I laughed during that one in spite on how badly made it was. This one is just drab and uninteresting and doesn't even seem to raise a sweat, but here chugs along at its own pace and then ends. et voila. One thing I didn't get space to write about is Lizzy Caplan. She shows up in 1986 as a woman that steals John Cusack's heart, but then when we see her in 2010 (or whatever year it is set since the maths is way off) she looks exactly the same. In those 20 years did she invent a product that stopped aging? It was kinda scary. D-

Review: Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom
Dir. David Michôd
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 112mins

Australians love a good crime drama. Hell, judging from the TV ratings they love even bad crime dramas, crime documentaries, crime comedies, crime anything as long as it features people getting themselves in too deep with drugs, violence, sex or the inability to drive properly. And yet crime seems to only pay on the small screen, what with big locally made hits such as Underbelly, Border Patrol and City Homicide sitting pretty alongside international fare like Bones and Midsummer Murders at the top of the ratings heard. Give audiences a body - or, preferably, an ever-increasing pile of them - and they're on board.

For some reason, this predilection to crime hasn't jumped to the big screen in any major way, until now, with David Michôd's debut feature Animal Kingdom. Sure, Matthew Saville ventured there with Noise (the second best Aussie film of the last decade) sort of went there, but not to the level of Animal Kingdom. Lazy people - such as myself, I admit - will describe it as "Underbelly on the big screen" and they're not too far off the mark if you mean a slickly produced, invigorating product featuring a bevy of talented acting heavyweights of the Australian acting industry.


Set in Melbourne, Animal Kingdom begins with teenager Joshua "J" Cody (James Frencheville) being moved to live his grandmother (Jacki Weaver) after the death of his single mother. The mother who had intentionally sheltered J from the life of his grandmother and uncles. He soon becomes indoctrinated into the family business of armed robbery and drugs. The young and easily influenced J is quickly pounced upon by police Senior Sergeant Leckie (Guy Pearce) and is caught between his family and the law. Michôd's screenplay is such a fine, solid base and yet it weaves unexpected sidetracks alongside the intricate plot. Michôd has a knack for dialogue here and each character has such a strong, defined persona, which is something that a lot of films tend to lack. These characters live and breathe, and feel as if they have been for decades.

The movie is impeccably made from a technical standpoint with Adam Arkapaw's cinematography looking so crisp, there are several shots worthy of art. The sound work was, I found, particularly note worthy as was the editing by Luke Doolan who manages to wring so much tension and shock, especially during one scene in which Clayton Jacobson reverses out of his garage. Sounds simply, you will understand when you see it, but it walks such a delicate line of nail-biting suspense. Impressive too is the wonderful cast that Michôd has assembled. Perhaps Ben Mendelsohn is miscast as the elderly brother Pope, and perhaps Frencheville has some strange character traits that are hard to define (is he autistic?), but Joel Edgerton is excellent in a role that I am sure many will spoil, but I will do no such thing. Luke Ford, the brother from The Black Balloon, impresses in what is probably the weakest character while Sullivan Stapleton, Susan Prior and Laura Wheelhouse provide great support too.

The performance of the film, however, is Australian acting legend Jacki Weaver. Instantly recalling recent towering performances by the likes of Mo'Nique, Weaver spends much of the film's first half being quietly creepy and, at times, even gothic, but she proves to be merely biding her time before unleashing a flood of evil in scene after scene leading up to the film's haunting conclusion. The way her lips curl as she tries to keep a motherly smile on her face as she extorts, blackmails and manipulates the walls that are crumbling around her is a sight to behold. It is sure to be remembered as one of the finest displays of acting ever committed to an Australian film.


Unfortunately, I do think that the character of J is what lets the film down during these final passages. His character, not necessarily Frencheville himself, feels messy towards the end and the way the character navigates the twists that the film has in store isn't done as cleanly as one would expect from this otherwise finely crafted film. Sure to become a definitive title of Australian film for what it's trying to - and mostly does - achieve, Animal Kingdom is a superb film that should once and for all get audiences excited about Australian cinema once again (even though they already should be). B+

Animal Kingdom is release 3 June, but I'll remind you about it so don't worry!

Review: Were the World Mine

Were the World Mine
Dir. Tom Gustafson
Year: 2008
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 95mins

The likes of Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman and Gregg Araki have a lot to answer for. If it weren't for directors like them and other vital names of the New Queer Cinema movement - and even those like Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell who have come to prominence with quality gay cinema after that early '90s heyday - then it might be acceptable to find films such as Were the World Mine quality representations of gay life on screen. Such as it is, however, and Tom Gustafson's teen musical is embarrassing, stupid, cliched to the extreme and inept in almost every conceivable way.

I am of the strong and unwavering belief that the segment of gay cinemagoers who cheer on movies such as Another Gay Movie would not be so kind if they were about heterosexual characters. With Were the World Mine, we are being asked to give unlikeable characters, unfathomably bad writing, lousy camerawork, baffling character and plot development, obvious song choices (Mika? Really?), tacky and forced raunch, unsexy eroticism and lapses in logic, common sense and sanity. Sorry, no can do. No amount of watching pretty boys pash each other, as fun as that can be to watch from time to time, can make me ignore, for instance, a scene in which the drama teacher puts a magic hush spell over a group of outraged parents.


Is it even worth discussing the plot? The flimsy amount of it that there is could easily be written about and still only fill half of a post-it note. So, there's this all boys' school and they're putting on a show of A Midsummer's Night Dream and then the school's resident queer boy puts a spell on everyone and they go all gay like. That's it. Oh, I guess he realises the errors of conformity? Or he realises that love is not something to be played with? Or he realises that homoerotic all boys schools are hotbeds of steamy lust just begging to be set free?

Oh who cares, writer and director Gustafson (he co-wrote with Cory James Krueckeber) clearly don't and are instead more interested in seeing HOT BOYS MAKE OUT AND OLD QUEER-HATERS GET THEIR COMEUPPANCE YEAH!!! Oy. The former is uninteresting because it comes off as soft-core porn and nothing even close to realism and passion or sensuality. And it's as if the makers thought the only people who would see this movie were easily-excitable gay people who wouldn't care that even the homophobes are so thinly painted with broad strokes of weak paint.

All of this could have possibly been forgiven, although only slightly, if Gustafson were interested in telling a tale of a boy growing up gay. I'm far from being the sort of person who thinks all gay cinema should be about having AIDS or being gay-bashed, but when Were the World Mine decides to ditch any semblance of drama in favour of OMGLOOKATTHEHOTBOYSKISSING!!! it ceases to hold any interest. There is no conflict, no urgency and no reason to keep watching unless you like watching, you guessed it, cute boys kissing while singing wishy-washy songs with tedious lyrics.


One good musical number and an actually nice lead performance from Tanner Cohen are all that stops Were the World Mine from descending into truly F-grade territory. As it is, I'm left here wondering why there only appears to be one school in this entire town, and an all boys one at that, or why there never appear to be any other teachers or students at this school other than the main characters. Or why characters talk about the town it is set in having a population of "10,000" and yet somehow someone can make a career out of selling Avon type products door to door? Honestly, this movie is not interested in answering any of these so why am I asking? Because I'm not so easily distracted by guys with no shirts on that I can so calmly forget such inept filmmaking, that's why. D-

Review: Chanel Coco & Igor Stravinsky

Chanel Coco & Igor Stravinsky
Dir. Jan Kounen
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 120mins

Fans of cinema may be experiencing a bit of deja vu lately. First there was Jim Sheridan's Brothers, which was a remake of Susanne Bier's Brødre. Then at the start of April we had Philippe Lioret's Welcome, which was, generally speaking, a better (and French) version of The Blind Side. Now comes Chanel Coco & Igor Stravisky (conveniently being shortened to Coco & Igor), which picks up directly after last year's Coco avant Chanel left off with the death of Coco's lover "Boy". These two films about Coco Chanel were made completely independent of one another and yet here they year, less than a year between release dates and sharing so many similarities, it's uncanny.

Thankfully, Coco & Igor jettisons the biopic-fodder that filled Coco avant Chanel's opening passages - the orphanage, the jazz bars, the career buildup - and dives right in to when Chanel began her love affair with Igor Stravinsky, the famed Russian composer and married father. On that basis I am thankful, but unfortunately this latest film suffers from many of the same problems that plagued last year's box office hit (Coco avant Chanel was the highest grossing foreign language film in Australia and the USA in 2009) such as its been-there-done-that feel. Except this time it's not the growing-up-in-poverty-before-making-good storyline that has been done before, it's the beginning-an-affair-with-a-married-man-in-a-time-when-women-were-only-meant-to-wear-pretty-hats that we've seen time and time again.


Anna Mouglalis gives by far the best performance of Coco Chanel that we've seen lately. She trumps Audrey Tautou's vague, limp reading of the fashion icon as well as the bombastic one of Shirley MacLaine in the made-for-TV movie Coco Chanel. Mouglalis' deep, throaty voice makes her stand out and gives an aura of authority that Tautou couldn't even attempt. Mads Mikkelsen is fair, if a little one-note, as Stravinsky, while Yelena Morozova impresses as his patient put upon wife, but nobody's performance breaks out from the framing that attempts to suffocate them.

The film is actually much more concerned with Igor than it is Coco, who is merely a more recognisable name to hang the curtains of the movie upon. Little to no attention is paid to Chanel's growing business apart from a few scenes in her Parisian shop, although there is a subplot involving the creation of Chanel No. 5 that feels superfluous, as if writer Chris Greenhalgh - also the author of the biography that the film is based on - and director Jan Kounen felt that they weren't putting in enough of Coco. As if they owed something to the audiences who had purchased a ticket based on the name of Coco Chanel. Chanel is by far the most interesting character in this or Coco avant Chanel and yet none of these filmmakers seem to be able to get her right. Her aloof independence surely doesn't help, but was this all her life really was? Screwing a married man in the study of her country estate? At least Coco avant Chanel played somewhat with the idea of Chanel's radical achievements.

Just as with the other Chanel film, the costumes in Coco & Igor are exceptional, with costume design by Chattoune and Fab (yes, those are their names) and even featuring an original Karl Largerfeld design for all you fashion crazies out there. Try and spot it! The art direction of the country estate makes it feel effectively lived in and the sound design is also of special note. Each step a person takes on the hardwood floors and every note played on the piano rings out of the speakers and helps the film feel more intimate than it really is. Unfortunately, David Ungaro's cinematography is incredibly dark at times and it's particularly bothersome during several early scenes when the audience is trying to figure out who everyone is. Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised to see Gabriel Yared show up on Oscar's radar for his musical score.


Coco & Igor is book-ended by two exceptional sequences. The first is a recital of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring with choreography by Vaslav Nijinski, which will thrill and delight many, both for visual wow factor and as a fascinating way of figuring out who all these noteworthy people are circling one another. The film ends with a five-minute montage sequence that makes a better case for the beautiful, dramatic and all too bitterly sad life that Coco lead than anything in the 110 or so minutes before it. It's a gorgeous sequence that almost had me re-evaluating the rest of the movie. I saw this movie nearly a month ago and this scene still lingers in my mind with its beautiful images set to Yared's wonderful score. Stay tuned until the end of the credits, too, as there is a little nugget of a scene that ties a neat little bow onto the life story of Coco Chanel. C

Review: Date Night

Date Night
Dir. Shawn Levy
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Tine: 88mins

The thought of spending 90 minutes with Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and Tina Fey (Mean Girls) would normally be a fun thing to do with your evening. In the case of Date Night, however, director Shawn Levy (cinematic travesties Just Married and Cheaper by the Dozen) appears to have done his best to make even these two funny and talented lead performers unpalatable.

Read the rest over at Trespass Mag.
The friend that I dragged along to see Date Night had a much harder time reconciling his feelings towards Date Night as I. There definitely were quite a few moments that I found myself laughing quite heartily, but the film is just so poorly done. Anytime it descends into sentimental pap then it just falls into a black hole of awfulness. Thank god Carell and Fey have adlibbing skills!

And, lastly, hasn't the resurrection of James Franco from pretty-but-bland James Dean wannabe into sensitive-and-yet-hysterical character actor been one of the most fascinating things to watch these last few years. Throw his cameo in Date Night alongside Pineapple Express, Milk and (apparently) Howl and his career looks far more impressive than when he was making those terrible movies like Annapolis and Tristan + Isolde. And let's face it, he's not bad to look at either. If only he'd taken his shirt off for extended periods of time instead of Mark Wahlberg.

Review: Micmacs

Micmacs [Micmacs à tire-larigot]
Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 105mins

By this stage of the game, I imagine cinema audiences who are aware of the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet would fall into one of three camps. They could be big fans and will continue to be big fans for as long as he keeps working. They could have never been particularly fond of Jeunet's whimsy via art direction fantasia and probably won't ever be for as long as he keeps working. And then there is the final option, that they could have been fans once upon a time, but by now feel he has lost the fire. I suspected I was all set to fall into the third camp before seeing his latest French quirk-fest, Micmacs; I couldn't have been more wrong.

Micmacs, Jeunet's first film since the uncharacteristically dramatic A Very Long Engagement in 2004, is not going to create any Jean-Pierre converts, but for this longtime fan of the director it was a delightful and pleasing jolt of energy. I thought for sure that this man's penchant for extreme distorted goggle closeups, beaucoup oddities and surreal touches of absurdity would have worn thin by now as even he himself seemed to have tired of it during Engagement, a movie that was aimed squarely at the American awards market. What I found instead with Micmacs was a film that did indeed live up to its French title of "non-stop madness" and proves to be a truly joyful and triumphantly jubilant experience.


Billed as a satire of the world arms trade, Micmacs stars Dany Boon as Bazil, a man who loses his job and apartment when he spends a lengthy stay in a hospital after being shot in the head. That we see his father killed by a landmine in the opening scene and it doesn't take long to realise he has some bad luck. However, he soon ends up in the company of an underground team of social outcasts who live in a cave made from scrap metal and appliances. It's not too long before the group, which includes Jeunet regulars such as Dominique Pinon and Yolande Moreau, come together to help Bazil reap his madcap revenge upon the landmine manufacturers responsible for his father's death and the ammunition corporation responsible for the bullet lodged in his head.

What follows is an increasingly elaborate, excitingly eccentric and hilariously entertaining series of events as this group of misfits band together on one nasty, yet startlingly original, trick after another. There's really no way to truly explain how giddy Micmacs made me with its sheer imagination. Filled to the brim with typical Jeunet novelties like Aline Bonetto's wacky art direction - long gone is Jeunet's former collaborator Marc Caro, but his influence remains - the kooky cinematography by Tetsuo Nagata as well as any number of singular quirks. How about the appearance of billboards throughout Micmacs advertising the very movie that we are watching? How about the alien-like sign language that character seem fluent in. The black and white film credits featuring music by Max Steiner or a scene involving an orchestra that would feel cynical in the arms of another director.


Comedies in a foreign language can be tricky for audiences since so much of what one nationality may find uproarious can be anything but to another. Micmacs successfully avoids this trap and proves to be a winning bout of absurdist fun. It's a true joy to watch the imagination found within the screenplay by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant unfold. While I am sure that Jeunet's detractors will continue to be bitten by the grouch bug, there's no reason for everyone else to not go out and revel in the fun that is to be had. Micmacs is a treat! A-

Jeremy Saunders - The Poster Man

I had the pleasure of doing an interview with one Jeremy Saunders. In the same five years I have increasingly become addicted to poster artwork, as I'm sure many of you have noticed, and Jeremy Saunders was the first name in the field whose name I knew. His early designs were always good, but it took a while for the man to truly be recognised as the key art extraordinaire that he is. You would have seen a bunch of his designs littered about in my top 50 posters of the decade list from earlier in the year as well as the (outdated, yes, I'd totally change so much about that list now) 100 greatest movie poster list I did back in 2008.

The interview is now up at Trespass Mag and it would be nice of y'all to read it. He gave me a wealth of stuff to write about, which is always good.

Image courtesy of Mark Rogers.

Review: Welcome

Welcome
Dir. Philippe Lioret
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 100mins

The surprising, and quite shocking, laws that revolve around the French illegal immigrant crisis provide the central crux of Philippe Lioret's Lumiere Award-winning drama Welcome. With its ironic title, strong performances and its tale that plays like a harsher and all-around better version of The Blind Side, Welcome becomes one of the most refreshing French titles to reach Australian cinemas in a while, if not necessarily one of the very best.

It's a fantastic and gripping opening sequence where we witness Kurdish teenager Bilal (newcomer Firat Ayverdi) attempting to make his way out of France to get to his girlfriend in England. Along with his travelling companions, Bilal is captured and thus sets of a chain of events that will see him cross paths with former Olympian Simon (an excellent Vincent Lindon) who now gives swimming lessons at a local public pool. Simon's ex-wife, Marion (Audrey Dana) warns the gruff and lonely Simon that helping this boy could result in five-years jail and a substantial fine, something that I was personally quite shocked to discover were actual repercussions for anybody found guilty of helping these refugees in France under Nicolas Sarkozy's government.


It's a stunning facet of French society that lends Welcome a substantial amount of heft in the drama stakes. Helped along by a screenplay by Lioret, Emmanuel Courcol and Olivier Adam that thankfully steers the rather Hollywood storyline from the mundane to the potent. I couldn't help but see the similarities between Welcome and The Blind Side as both revolve around people who are thoroughly bored with their lives and decide to help someone far less fortunate than they, despite the social implications, and all-but adopting their chosen cause. Welcome is obviously the better film and thanks to Lioret's direction, it manages to be warm without whitewashing.


Unfortunately it is this Hollywood arc that allows the film to slip when it shouldn't. Characters other than Simon are rudimentary and black or white, whether it be the saintly ex wife school teacher who feeds the homeless in her spare time, the evil neighbour who glowers and represents the conservative right, or the naive Bilal. I found it quite difficult as a viewer to truly believe Bilal's mission - to swim the English Channel - or that he was stupid enough to attempt it. So much so that the film's end lacked the emotional punch that I suspect others felt. The film's strengths do not lie in its subtleties, but more in the performances, the light that it sheds on such a troubling development for French politics and Lioret's ability to keep the audience fixed on this important issue. It's just a shame that the end turns far-fetched. B

Review: The Secret of Kells

The Secret of Kells
Dir. Tomm Moore
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 75mins

I'm going to fess up right from the get go: I haven't the foggiest idea what The Secret of Kells is going on about. Minimal research has told me about the Book of Kells, but that still doesn't help me. Throw in the movies' enchanted forests, mystical foreign lands and weird ghost girls who turn into wolves and I basically sat down for 75 minutes without the faintest idea as to what I was watching. Thankfully what I was watching was pretty, so it has that going for it.

The Secret of Kells is an Irish hand-drawn animated film that surprised with a nomination at the recent Academy Awards in the Best Animated Feature category. The film isn't anything particularly exciting - if ancient religious books and Irish lore circa the ninth century is your idea of exciting then by all means, be excited - and manages to be as successful as it is because of its, at times, rapturous animation beauty. So many gorgeous sights to behold within this movie despite the rather simple design of the characters. I particularly found myself in awe of a moment involving a pit of butterflies. At times even flirting with a sort of art deco design, The Secret of Kells wouldn't have been my pick for a token arty nomination, but I can't say that the branch weren't thinking for themselves when they jotted it down on their ballot. B-

Review: Brothers

Brothers
Dir. Jim Sheridan
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 104mins

As my friend and I walked out of our screening of Brothers we couldn't help but both point a finger on what we felt was wrong with it. Not that either of us didn't like it, much to the contrary actually since we both liked it quite a bit, but it was the ending that left us unsatisfied. Now, I am not a fan of writing reviews in which I express my obvious* wisdom** and let the director know what they should have done, but so strong was our argument that I can't help but bring it up. More on that later.

I have not seen the Danish film by Susanne Bier, Brødre, that Jim Sheridan's film is a remake of - although it was immediately placed atop my DVD queue when I got home - but I am lead to believe that he and screenwriter David Benioff have been incredibly faithful. I imagine many people will be in a similar situation and will be going to see Brothers based on the accumulative star power of Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal rather than their fondness for the original so I don't think that harms one's critical assessment of the film.


Having been sent away for another tour of Iraq, Tobey Maguire's Tommy Cahill is shot down and presumed dead, leaving a grieving wife (Natalie Portman) and recently-released-from-jail brother (Jake Gyllenhaal). Anyone who has seen the original film will know what follows and those who have not will surely be able to guess, but may be surprised at the extent. Once Tommy returns home - this is not a spoiler since Maguire is the first credited cast member and it is all over the marketing - he sets in motion a series of romantic and familial troubles.

While Portman is incredibly miscast - surely she is the hottest young mother of two in a Hollywood movie - the rest of the cast is the main reason you should see the film. Maguire received the bulk of the praise, even receiving a Golden Globe nomination, and he is fine even when Tommy descends into madness, I thought it was Gyllenhaal who came out best out of the three major players. Even then, the best work is left to the supporting players. Mare Winningham is truly wonderful as Maguire and Gyllenhaal's stepmother, while Sam Shepard has some fine moments as their father. A dinner scene late in the movie allows Bailee Madison to shine as the eldest, angry Cahill daughter and in a tiny role is Jenny Wade who makes quite an impression with her limited screen time.


The film generally works quite well and manages to spin a considerable about of drama out of the quite formulaic storyline. However - and I did warn you this was coming - I think Sheridan and Benioff did a disservice to the film by revealing the secret behind Maguire's character and what happened to him in Iraq. The film makes no secret of what goes on and I can't help but think that the film would have packed a more substantial punch if they had have left it a secret and allowed it to be revealed to the audience at the same time as it is revealed to the characters in the movie. As it is the film ends of a relatively flat note. It builds and builds, but then just ends because Maguire's big confession is little more than telling us something we already know, making it land with a dramatic thud. B

Now I need to see Brødre

* Ahem
** AHEM!

Review: The Blind Side

The Blind Side
Dir. John Lee Hancock
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 128mins

It’s not too often that a Sandra Bullock movie causes such debate amongst film-lovers. I am a fan of Ms Bullock and think her performances in fare such as Speed and While You Were Sleeping proved far better than the genres of action blockbuster and rom-com usually warrant. Four years ago she gave a stirring performance in racial-themed Oscar-winner Crash, and now she’s back in the wheelhouse, receiving an Oscar nomination herself for her role as a woman who adopts a homeless African-American teenager.

You can read the rest by clicking over to Trespass Mag.

As I say in the comments, this was a tricky movie to review. As a movie it's not that great - nor is it particularly bad, either, it's just there - but it is not a movie that was made for hardened film lovers. It is a movie made for mass audiences that isn't asking for much more than to have a big grin on their face as they leave the cinema without feeling as if they need to understand that the wheel has been revolutionised, and in that regard I think it succeeds.


Personally, I am quite proud of my line about how The Blind Side is like Slumdog Millionaire, but with polite suburbanites who own beige sweater sets from Target. What are you thoughts? click over and let us know.