Review: Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror

Dir. Tarsem Singh

Country: USA

Aus Rating: PG

Running Time: 106mins

With each of his first three feature films, famed music video director Tarsem Singh has gone by a new name. At first it was Tarsem Singh, then just Tarsem, and then Tarsem Singh Dhandwar. For this fourth film, the updated fairy tale (some would call it “revisionist” since that’s the hot word these days, like “reboot”, “prequel” and others before it) Mirror Mirror sees him revert back to Tarsem Singh and whether the man is secretly trying to convey a hidden message by doing so or not, the man has done enough in my eyes to change his name to Elizabeth Taylor Fancypants McGregor and I wouldn’t care one iota. He is such a rare gift in Hollywood, with films so richly decadent and a feast for the eyes that – to take a page from his latest – I routinely find myself falling under the spell of.

Whereas his first and third films were violent otherworldly fantasies (The Cell and Immortals), his second and fourth features have been buoyantly lavish fairy tales. Mirror Mirror sees Singh veering away from the original, globetrotting fairy tale of The Fall, MIrror Mirror takes the much more familiar tale of Snow White and the seven dwarves and spins it into a comical farce, sumptuously designed and hilariously bonkers in equal measure. First and foremost a movie for kids, its pleasures are not bound to one’s age, instead its rhythmic absurdity should prove a delight for those of any age with a penchant for bright-eyed, candy-coloured visual madness. Curmudgeons will surely find its big-grinned magic hard to resist; its somewhat off-kilter marketing campaign hopefully setting many up for a world of surprise.

Mirror Mirror more or less follows the traditional tale of Snow White that we know from the Brothers Grimm as well as the Walt Disney animation of the 1930s. This time Snow White is kept prisoner in the castle by her evil stepmother after the disappearance of her father, The King. Upon daybreak outside the castle walls Snow happens upon a near-naked Prince, the victim of bandits who reside within the forest. Basically, you can guess what happens after that as Snow White ends up living with the famed seven dwarves before enacting revenge on the Evil Queen, reclaiming her father’s kingdom as well as the love of her charming Prince.

What makes Mirror Mirror so special and not just a tired, flat retread done with enough bells and whistles to feel unique is the flare with which Singh has gone about it. When the term “kid’s movie” cans sound like a dirty word for cinephiles, he has turned the dial up to eleven and embraced the inherent zaniness of the plot. Unafraid to capitalise on the artificial idea at its core, Mirror Mirror fills its frame with an abundance of weirdness, the kind of which is rarely found in a mainstream live action movie for children. The sound editing and visual effects are particularly cartoonish and risk ridicule in being so. The cast, too, are game for the challenge and all elevate their performances to a degree of camp rarely seen. Julia Roberts, particularly, as the evil Queen Clementianna is clearly relishing the chance to be so openly playful with her image, and Armie Hammer is truly delightful as the slapstick charmer. The Queen’s rather overt horniness of his frequent disrobed appearance is one of the film’s most kookily amusing running gags.

As Snow White herself, Lily Collins is a lovely screen presence and her porcelain skin certainly speaks to the story’s origins. I expect a grand Hollywood death match between Lily Collins and the Lynn Collins of John Carter where only one wins fame and fortune. If Lily is willing to work on such obviously nutso productions like this then I hope she wins (we’ll forget about Abduction, okay?)

Of course, as all Singh films have been in the past, Mirror Mirror’s true claim to fame will be the enduring fabulousness of costume design Eiko Ishioka. The Japanese design legend passed away earlier this year and just six months after hitting us with Greek mythology chic in Immortals, she has done perhaps her finest work since winning an Academy Award for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Academy may as well go and engrave her name on a posthumous Oscar right now since the extravagant duds on display here are truly a work of stunning art. The seemingly never-ending parade of overflowing ball gowns, stuffed shirt pomp, frilly lace collars, exquisitely tailored corsetry and stunning jackets (that yellow ribbon jacket is rather to die for) in every colour you could possible imagine – the “color designer” gets their own singular on screen credit! – are a sight to behold and truly a majestic piece of fairy tale couture that will send fans of costume design into frequent fits of giddy joy. There’s even a fashion montage that feels like it was personally put in just for me. A Singh/Ishioka collaboration was always an event and the next film of this man’s will just not feel the same without Ishioka’s miraculous vision.

It takes a lot to truly get me grinning from ear to ear for a film’s entire runtime, but from the weird animated opening, the bizarre yet thrilling mid-film marionette action sequence, the appropriately bonkers make-up and art direction, and, yes, the enjoyable sight of Armie Hammer sans clothes, I couldn’t resist this film’s oddball charms. The upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman may have the gritty pop culture cachet, but Mirror Mirror’s childlike mentality shouldn’t be overlooked. In all fairness, Mirror Mirror is a blast that recalls the best works of Walt Disney whilst living very firmly in the present. A-

Review: Black & White & Sex

Black & White & Sex

Dir. John Winter

Country: Australia

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 92mins

“We’re going to get an adult rating!”

For a film built upon such shifting sands of identity and morality, it’s good to know that at least its much-deserved adult rating is a certainty.

If one of cinemas greatest gifts is to confront taboos head on and make audiences contemplate different points of view of something they otherwise might never have considered, then the debut feature of acclaimed local film producer John Winter (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doing Time for Patsy Cline) will be like Christmas for audiences brave enough to take a chance on Black & White & Sex. A pseudo-experimental feature that Winter also wrote, this film will be a hard ask for many who will balk at the idea of seeing a micro-budget independent feature that raises questions about the sex industry, its workers, and sexuality in general. “It’s a bit of an experiment,” says one of the characters as if pre-empting the negative “WHO WANTS TO SEE THIS?!?” feedback that so frequently greets local films that aren’t aimed squarely at the multiplex. Still, filmed in striking black and white and structured so as to keep the film and its audience constantly on their toes, Black & White & Sex is an adventurous, if occasionally too knowing, look at a world so rarely explored.

Read the rest at Onya Magazine

Review: Harvest

Harvest

Dir. Benjamin Cantu

Country: Germany

Aus Rating: N/A

Running Time: 85mins

There are nearly 30 films listed on IMDb with the title Harvest. From such a roundly unimaginative title, however, comes a story that emerges out of a refreshingly unique location as Benjamin Cantu’s film explores the lives to two young men who stumble across each other within the confines of a farming apprentice program in the Nuthe Urstrom valley on the outskirts of Berlin. For all the internet pornography that has fetishised the lives of farmers, it’s a thoroughly unglamorous life and that’s just one of the surprises of Cantu’s debut feature – he has previously made short films and TV – that rarely lets the audience’s expectations come to fruition. That it takes some 50 minutes for the “queer” aspect of Harvest [Stadt Land Fluss] to finally manifest itself in a truly physical way is another, but what it may lack in overt gay DRAMA for audiences seeking little more that titillation, it gains in a slow-burning intensity that makes for fine viewing.

Opening with gorgeously lensed shots of Germany pastures, Harvest is able to very quickly paint a sense of place as it goes about showing the working lives of a class of farming students. The reserved Marko never speaks out of turn, doesn’t indulge in drinking like his fellow students, responds passively (or doesn’t even notice, it’s hard to tell) to the advances of a female student, and simply wants to learn how to be a farmer to make a life for himself that his troubled upbringing may have otherwise not allowed. Newcomer Jacob has recently quit a similar internship with a far more socially acceptable and well-paid institution (a bank). That the two become friends out of awkward necessity – neither of them feel quite right around other people – rather than some instant sex radar is what lends Harvest’s final sequences a rich authenticity. That they fall for each other isn’t surprising, what’s refreshing is that Cantu doesn’t treat their romance as Gone with the Wind.

Being gay and falling for somebody isn’t the only trouble plaguing these guys, Marko especially, but acknowledging these feelings will make them healthier and stronger, and therein lies the problem for Marko. He’s not sure what he wants; love seems like the least of his interests. At least at first. The performances are uniformly superb, with newcomer Lukas Steltner and Kai Michael Müller as Marko and Jacob proving to be quite stellar. The introverted performance by Steltner is particularly fine as his internal securities slowly begin to fade away. And, yes, they’re both good looking men but they lack a distracting prettiness that would belie their situation.

Handsomely photographed by Alexander Gheorghi, Harvest shares a similar brooding energy to the Danish gay romance, Brotherhood and its potency lingers far more than any cheap, crass, candy-coloured American import. Some may think it’s lack of horniness takes the sizzle out of it, but I found its more subdued take on the relations of young gay men was refreshing and all the slinkier. These two men don’t discover each other in seconds of gratuitous sex, but through evolving, fleeting moments. It has a quiet dignity about it that makes Harvest an impressive piece of work. B+

Check the MQFF website for screening details

And The Oscar Goes To...

One week ago today I got to hold an Academy Award.

It was amazing.

Let me explain.

Have you heard of Jim Cameron's Titanic? Yeah, well, it's being re-released for the 100th anniversary of the event that inspired it, and in 3D no less. Because, you know, nothing says respecting the lives of the dead like watching them die in the third dimension! I joke, but I not-so-secretly love this film. It was one of the very best films of 1997 and it's 3D rerelease will make it one of the very best films of 2012. I don't begrudge it any of its success, whether that be grossing over one billion dollars or taking home a mammoth haul of Academy Awards.

Speaking of the Academy Awards... Titanic's producer, Jon Landau, visited our fair shores to do a bit of promotion and while the full 3+ hour screening of Titanic in 3D isn't until next week, they did screen 40 minutes of the final product for us (mostly innocuous stuff like Gloria Stewart seeing herself on the TV, Kate Winslet's big hat, the staircase meeting, followed by a hefty chunk of the stunning sinking sequence) before getting into a Q&A with Landau. Towards the end he produced the golden statue and, hilariously, the Titanic fan who he allowed to hold it was also just kinda allowed to exit the cinema with her hands clasped around it with nobody here nor anywhere looking out for it. They quickly cottoned on that Landau's Oscar had gone walkabouts, but by that time I had already gotten my grubby lil mits on it and it was a glorious feeling.

Then we lined up to have our picture taken with Mr Landau and the Oscar, and boy... it was something. As somebody who actively follows the entire award season circus and who makes no apologies about loving the Academy Awards, getting a chance to actually hold one was incredible. I kinda felt, for those few brief seconds, what the fuss was all about. I'd seen them before - Oscars won by Adam Elliot and Cate Blanchett have a home on show at ACMI in Melbourne - but to actually hold one was something entirely different. It's like the statue has a gravity pull that just drew me in, even if the base was a bit wobbly. Landau needs to send that baby to the Academy's repair shop! It's a wonderful piece of work and I imagine many people who year-after-year bemoan the movie industry's slavish devotion to the Oscar tradition and who spout the same tired "who cares?" arguments would find the experience quite something.

And I love how Leonardo DiCaprio is peeking behind my shoulder there looking all intense and grumbling "I want one of those!"

Review: The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

Dir. Marie Losier

Country: USA | Germany | UK | Netherlands | Belgium | France

Aus Rating: N/A

Running Time: 67mins

An exquisitely assembled, if still somewhat haphazardly made, documentary about the life of two industrial punk icons, Marie Losier’s documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a spryly economical look at the face – definitely the face - of two identities who would rather be an underground somebody than a mainstream anything. Clocking in at only 70 minutes, there’s something to be said about Losier’s decision not to pad her debut feature directorial effort with needless nothings. Still, there does appear to be much left unsaid, some of which surely could have taken place of some of the more obtuse segments that float about within the documentary narrative like driftwood.

As if assembled from jaggedly cut puzzle pieces, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye attempts to craft some sort of story out of the lives of Genesis O-Orridge and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, but focuses more on that of Genesis. Most famous for his work with industrial punk rock outfit Psychic TV as well as the esteemed William Burroughs, before embarking on a body experimentation in pandrogyny with Lady Jaye, his second wife, that aimed to blur the lines between body and gender. Before Lady Jaye’s death at the age of 38, the two had ventured headfirst into their body-morphing project of creating Breyer P-Orridge, a blending of the two through means of plastic surgery.

Lady Jaye, despite being so integral to the story that her name appears in the (rather nifty – something Marie Losie’s filmography shows she is capable of frequently) title, goes somewhat under-nourished by the filmmaker who prefers to stick with the still rather extraordinary life of Genesis. Losier’s frequent work within the realms of experimentation, having worked with the aforementioned Burroughs plus Guy Maddin and the Kuchar Brothers has leant this documentary a fractured texture. Mixing various types of film and video with art, old home movies, photography, original documentary footage and storybook narration, Losier’s film occasionally has the appearance of an unfinished, perhaps disregarded, art installation, and yet this lends it a messy, flighty authenticity.

The work of Losier on her own role as editor is both extraordinary, hypnotic and baffling. Acting as its own ferocious work of art that encapsulates the anarchic spirit of its protagonists, I nevertheless wished it had gleaned a more focused eye on one of the many tangents it goes on. Flashy visuals frequently smash on screen like the twisting mechanics of a kaleidoscope, capturing moments of bliss and poignancy as often as it does highlight the absurdity of their existence. The tagline claims “love is dedication”, and you certainly can’t say these two weren’t dedicated to each other and to their art. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye uses its artist subjects to form its own work of art, and that is something altogether fascinating. However, like any unique work of work, the reaction it gets out of an audience will be Losier and P-Orridge’s reward. The final image of Genesis swathed in fabric feels curiously haunting, his image becoming obscured but never disappearing entirely. No matter the identity, there's always a personality, and that is what Genesis is seemingly all about. B-

Check the MQFF website for screening details

Review: 50/50

50/50

Dir. Jonathan Levine

Country: USA

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 100mins

A friend once humorously observed that of course he cried at a movie about cancer: “Because cancer is sad!” I remembered this after 50/50, a cancer weepie that had given my rarely used tear ducts a workout. Thankfully, Jonathan Levine’s film earns its emotional outpouring by making its characters endearing and their plight entrancing. It’s a film of vivid textures, the prickly edges of cancer are blended with the slippery slope of young male friendship and the sweetness that’s born out of the actors’ spot on chemistry.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
Still can't believe this is only showing at one cinema in all of the country!

Review: Private Romeo

Private Romeo

Dir. Alan Brown

Country: USA

Aus Rating: N/A

Running Time: 98mins

Sometimes gay cinema feels like little more than an excuse to watch absurdly good-looking people in various states of undress. Pornography without the sex, if you will. Private Romeo reads like it’s potentially aiming for something more, but ends up being significantly less. Don’t get me wrong, there are many very attractive men walking around in nothing more than a towel, but there are plenty of other avenues for such imagery that don’t require sitting through a mediocre 100-minute movie. Where Private Romeo really fails is by letting its pretty cast carry the weight of its concept, and never truly embracing it in a cinematic fashion. Audiences are, I suspect, going to be far more interested in the beauty than the brawn of Alan Brown’s Shakespeare-meets-Active Duty romantic drama.

Beginning in a class room where buff military cadets read William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with a mocking tone as jokes are made the expense of those reading out the feminine roles. Very quickly the lines are blurred between reality and Shakespearean drama and Private Romeo quickly becomes just another modern day retelling of the bard’s most famous work. Such a concept could most definitely work as members of rival academies work to tear two young lovers apart, but simply rearranging the genders so as the entire cast are gay men doesn’t make a movie. Brown, who also wrote the screenplay, appears welcome to merely let Shakespeare’s words work on their own without any of his own input.

Such are the perils of casting such routinely good-looking actors that they eventually all begin to look like one another. It certainly doesn’t help that rarely seem to have any distinguishing features to help decipher who is a Capulet and who is a Montague. Furthermore, as if the entire film is just one big drama class role-playing exercise, all the actors are credited as “Josh” or “Sam”, rather than the “Romeo”, “Juliet” and “Nurse” that they recite to each other. Sadly, the military academy setting is nothing more than a fetish check list – military, uniforms, locker rooms, high school jocks, authoritative, etc – and isn’t used to its full potential. One would think that setting a gay romance within the walls of a place of education and warfare would be ripe for deconstructing more pertinent issues. Unfortunately, the film fails to navigate any true ideas about homosexuality within school systems, within domains of cocky brute masculinity, and within a private world that has been plagued by “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” for far too long. Private Romeo really is just a bunch of pretty men reciting Shakespeare on a school campus and it’s hard to see what’s so special about that.

Alan Brown has taken much of Shakespeare’s words verbatim and placed them within the mouths of these young men of lithe bodies and boyish looks. The performances are all fine, although it would have been nice to have seen them act without the restrictions of language placed upon them. Only Seth Numrich makes much of a lasting impression as the love struck Sam/Romeo. Perhaps it’s because in the right light he looks like a swoony Chris Evans that I responded to him, but maybe he’s just a fine actor. Mimicking the camera style of a more restrained Dogme film, and occasionally lit as if through a lens of honey, Private Romeo frequently appears as handsome as its cast, but it again comes back to Brown’s reluctance to use Shakespeare’s text as a jumping off point for something bigger. Teenage love is epic and dangerous, powerful and all encompassing, and yet everybody here just seems to be going about their business is their khaki sweats and perfect skin.

The scenes of romance between Numrich and Matt Doyle’s Glenn/Juliet frequently tip into tender, but their love fails to grow by the film’s end, which takes great liberties with the original text. Their initial make cute is actually just that, a rather sweet moment of cute flirting and the two are well matched. Perhaps the fact that both appeared on stage together in Broadway’s production of War Horse helped that, and the very stagey aesthetic of Brown’s film maybe aided even further.

While I have no doubt that some audiences will find the idea of Shakespeare done gay as a particularly novel twist – it’s certainly better than the last one I can recall, the atrocious Were the World Mine – but it lacks something that makes it inherently cinematic. The original text was used far more effectively by Baz Luhrmann in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and it is given little reason to be revisited here for any reason other than to say a gay version of Romeo and Juliet with the original text exists. Fleeting and weird YouTube scenes of pop lip syncing fail to add any zest, and instead just confuse. As it stands Private Romeo is a disappointing, but frivolously gratuitous, high school drama production. It deserves better. C-

Check the MQFF website for screening details

Review: John Carter

John Carter

Dir. Andrew Stanton

Country: USA

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 132mins

Where to begin when discussing Andrew Stanton’s (Wall-E) first foray into live-action filmmaking, John Carter? I could start by saying it is a hopelessly muddled, and egregiously confusing film that I have no problem in admitting left me utterly lost. Maybe start by waxing comical on the film’s ambitious, yet ultimately flat visual style with little resembling a unique, original vision. Perhaps I could be simple – something this film never is – and just start at the beginning.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
It's usually pretty easy to figure out what side of the critical establishment I will find myself on regarding a film, but I can honestly say that the reaction to John Carter has surprised me. I never would have expected that critics would be liking it as much as they have. I thought it was a disaster! Ah well...

Jeffrey Was Here

Purely by accident, I found myself watching two films within the same evening dealing with the AIDS epidemic. That they do so in such wildly different ways, however, made it a richly rewarding double.

I'm not quite sure where Christopher Ashley's Jeffrey fits into the world of gay cinema, but it was a strange viewing experience nonetheless. Made in 1995 - too late to be revolutionary, too early/small to skirt mainstream (although it's American box office of $3.5m suggests it struck a nerve with audiences, mostly likely New Yorkers) - this film takes a comedic approach to its subject matter, with moments for reflection and pathos. It's a curious film, for sure, and one that has its stage origins flaring at the peripheries, but one that succeeds by being completely its own beast and like no other that I can recall. It stars Steven Weber (you've seen him on television, no doubt) as a gay man who finds himself deciding to abstain from sex until the HIV/AIDS crisis dissipates. It's certainly a plot that would all but begs for wacky high jinks if it weren't for the prickly central issue, but it's still quite startling to see the topic being played with in such a flighty manner. That Weber's Jeffrey - Weber, by the way, looks remarkably like Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman at times and it was quite disconcerting to say the least - falls in love with an HIV+ man forms the rest of the film and the multitude of ways in which Jeffrey can be told he's missing out on a good thing because of his own prejudices.

What struck me most of all about Jeffrey was that it was so over-the-top in almost every way: Colours are vibrant, the characters are loud (oh hai there Bryan Batt from Mad Men), and there are so many funny cameos that it's easy to forget you're dealing with a subject that was and is still a very sore subject. I admit that it's definitely a-okay to watch Weber and Michael T Weiss act like cute lovebirds with one other, just as it's fun to watch everyone from Patrick Steward to Sigourney Weaver and Olympia Dukakis kick up their heals and sashay around with effervescent glee. As many films that err on the side of flamboyant tend to get, it's taste levels are questionable from time to time: a spirit from the afterlife? bizarro half-dressed fantasy sequences that attempt to break the fourth wall? Hmmm. In the end, despite some misgivings, it was quite refreshing how Jeffrey took such a different tact with the material. It never dismisses the tragedy of the events, but defiantly resists in letting the seriousness of the topic dictate its own agenda. Thankfully the actors are all game and it sounds awfully trite, but it certainly helps that it is competently made (which is something I can't say for some of the other queer films I've watched recently). B-

The subject matter gets a far more serious and detailed look in David Weissman's documentary We Were Here. Screening as a part of the upcoming Melbourne Queer Film Festival, this Oscar shortlisted documentary proves that no matter how many films are made on the topic of AIDS, there is always something new to learn. Less a straightforward history of the crisis that hit San Francisco in the 1980s than a series of talking head interviews with survivors of the era, We Were Here is an incredibly moving account of a time that truly does warrant the tag of a shameful moment in American history. We Were Here is both a film that mourns the loss of thousands of innocent people, but also a celebration of the people who unwittingly found themselves vital players in the fight against a curse that not only changed gay culture, but sexual culture the world over for as long as we'll live. Weissman, and co-director Bill Weber, have assembled a wonderful mix of people and simply allowed them to speak so eloquently about the subject that would essentially define their life. As one of the interviewees says, at least she can't look back on her life and she never did anything.

Recalling Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives and The Times of Harvey Milk, We Were Here is economical talking head documentary filmmaking at its finest. So much fascinating video, previously unseen by me, and photographs from the era are a constant fascination. We Were Here will stir up anger, fear, tears and joy; its existence always essential despite a plethora of other titles exploring the same thing and that is a telltale sign of a great film. B+

Check the MQFF website for screening details

Review: Coriolanus

Coriolanus

Dir. Ralph Fiennes

Country: UK

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 122mins

William Shakespeare adaptations will, I suspect, be with us until the last dying gasp of filmmaking. It’s not hard to see why, what with there being seemingly infinite ways to tweak his work so as to appear unique: modern setting with classic dialogue (Macbeth, 2006); modern setting with updated dialogue (Hamlet, 2000); period setting with classic dialogue (Much Ado About Nothing, 1993); international versions (Ran, 1985); plucky teen versions (10 Things I Hate About You, 1999), dramatic teen version (O, 2001); epics (Hamlet, 1996); arthouse (My Own Private Idaho, 1991); animated (The Lion King, 1994); gay (Were the World Mine, 2008); musical (West Side Story, 1955); weird anachronistic amalgamations of all (Titus, 1999)... the list goes on!

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine