Review: Persecution Blues: The Battle for The Tote

Persecution Blues: The Battle for The Tote

Dir. Natalie van den Dungen

Country: Australia

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 57mins

The sub-sub-genre of Melbourne social activism documentaries is certainly one that has sprung up with a vengeance within the local filmmaking community. Empowered by the ease with which these films can be built from the ground up thanks to affordable equipment, eager participants and built in audiences (at least at film festivals) make them an exciting prospect. While I wasn’t a fan of Rosie Jones’ The Triangle Wars, which blandly detailed the fight of rich NIMBYs against a new shopping complex on the St Kilda foreshore, there are others on the horizon that aim to put the spotlight on local institutions in trouble from becoming obsolete. With Natalie van den Dungen’s Persecution Blues: The Battle for The Tote we get a peek into the final days of a building that would come to symbolise an over-zealous government’s reactionary policies that are harming what gives this city its pulse.

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Review: Bel Ami

Bel Ami

Dir. Donnellan & Ormerod

Country: UK

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 105mins

Bel Ami has an identity crisis: is it a frilly, comedic period piece romp about a dashing young upstart forced to choose between the love of an impish woman his own age or the giddy older lady who was instantly smitten?; or, is it a dramatic period romance about a motivated young upstart who woos a married woman to make a better life for himself, all whilst participating in a game of political class warfare? By the end credits it was still hard to tell. With two credited directors (Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod), two editors (Gavin Buckley and Masahiro Hirakubo), two music composers (Rachel Portman and Lakshman Joseph de Saram), plus a history of a revolving door casting (Nicole Kidman was cast, but subsequently dropped out) just make Bel Ami’s duel personalities a glaring problem and one that the film never recovers from.

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Review: Iron Sky

Iron Sky

Year: 2012

Country: Finland/Australia/Germany

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 93mins

Never again will you be able to say that nobody ever made a movie about Nazis living on the moon who then return to Earth and joined forces with a Sarah Palin-esque politician before waging intergalactic war. No you certainly cannot because Iron Sky is here and after years of development, crowd-sourced funding, and even filming just up north in Queensland, this comical sci-fi spoof is here on the big screen. How it conjured up a theatrical release I’m not too sure, but there it is in its entire goofy, oddball, space opera glory.

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Ten Homomoments in Vision Quest

Harold Becker's 1985 coming-of-age drama, Vision Quest, must have been a beacon for young gay men. Well, obviously apart from the scene where Matthew Modine discusses wanting to become a gynaecologist so he can "look inside a woman and find the power they have over me", which is just not really dialogue I'd expect to hear in any movie. Still, I can only imagine what it must have been like to be 16 and gay in 1985 and watching Vision Quest. No doubt there were fuzzy VHS copies in high circulation for the second half of the 1980s from all the pausing and rewinding. Teenagers will take anything they can get, haven't you heard? I know that I'm doing little to distinguish myself from the 16-year-old me of ten years ago to the 26-year-old me of today by snickering and giggling at a high school wrestling movie, but it's hard not to when the movie in question is just so out there.

10. Gay tai chi
Oh look, a gay panic scene! Louden Swain (how's that for a character name?), the hunky high school wrestler, gets groped by a patron at his work whilst being taught how to perform tai chi (yeah... it was the '80s, I guess) and he goes bolting outta the room and performs pushups (yeah... I have no reasoning for that). Still, before it leaves too bitter of a taste in the mouth, it's followed by a scene where Louden and his buddy (Michael Schoeffling as Kuch) talk about it in such nonchalant manner that it becomes almost comical.

9. Gay-baiting teenage boys
Do teenage boys really talk like this? Did they ever? If you're having a war of words with a guy at your school, would you tell the other "I'll give ya something to blow" whilst grabbing your crotch? Or are straight male teenagers only afraid of being the "bottom" of a gay joke? Still, Louden's retort of "First ya gotta find it, airhead" is both glorious and gloriously '80s. "Airhead" - not enough uses of that word in this day and age.

8. Jake Ryan
Not gonna lie: I spent a large chunk of Vision Quest's exceedingly lengthy runtime imagining this as a gay romance film about Matthew Modine and Michael Schoeffling (aka Jake Ryan himself) with Linda Fiorentino and nothing more than the sass-mouthin' best friend who ends up with the geek who has been in love with her for the whole film, but whom she kept ignoring. It was still about wrestling though. Sexy gay wrestling.


7. This:
"The girl of my dreams lives under the same roof, I see her every day, but she thinks I'm a kid, immature, a dumb jock, all of which is more or less true ... She's wonderful. She's got all the best things I like in girls and all the best things I (pause) like in guys."

6. Madonna and a gym workout
Yes, Madonna's "Crazy For You" plays over a scene where Louden lifts weights. So motivating, you guys! I presume the sauna is is that-a-way. :/

5. Forrest Whitaker as "Balldozer"
Need I say more?

Okay, I will. He's not even in the movie at all. I was surprised to find him listed amongst the cast with an actual character name. He has only one line of dialogue (that I noticed) and does nothing of any importance whatsoever to the plot so why they went and named him "Balldozer" instead of "Chris" or what have you I haven't the foggiest idea of. Still, it's amusing to see him in there. You can glimpse him in the first small image of #3.

4. Frank Jasper as "Brian Shute"
Ahem.

Ahem.

No, but seriously, I'm always surprised by American high school movies where all the guys are big and bulky like this. My guess from what I've seen of it from television and movies is that it is because the American school system puts such a high esteem on sports, and especially sports that requite size like wrestling or NFL what with scholarships and all that, plus there being a general larger amount of sports to persue that are lucrative (baseball for instance). Growing up in Geelong and attending a fairly normal high school, students were into sports, but unless there was a career in it it wasn't anything that was taken all that seriously. Nothing like Friday Night Lights or this that I'm aware of, but then maybe I just wasn't paying attention. That or my school just wasn't known for its athletic champions. Plus, if you do want a career in sport it's generally AFL and that leans less on massive muscles and size like, say, NFL. Anyway. It's nice to look at and maybe high school wouldn't have been so bad if there were gratuitous somethin' somethin's like this here Brian Shute. Also: teehee, "Shute".

One more? Okay!

Could they film him taking off that top any slower? Also, he attends Hoover High!

3. All of this:
Actually, it's not just Brian Shute up there that gets his body lovingly stroked by the camera, but eventually the entire wrestling team!

I'm sure this is all very true to life of high school wrestling - and, hey, they all have good bodies so they really shouldn't suffer from the same body issues as the rest of us - but that still doesn't make it any less surprising to see it put up on the screen in an otherwise innocuous teen drama. It bathes in skin and I'm sure many a viewer was all the more thankful for it.




And what do they do after he weighs in at the correct number whilst still standing there stark naked? Grab him and slap him around as congratulations, naturally.

Let the man get some jocks on, yeah? That locker room doesn't exactly look warm and inviting now does it?

2. Ain't love grand?
Wrestling is a very homoerotic sport, isn't it? All the scenes of actual wrestling in Vision Quest look like they could be from an athletics themed porno. Yes, yes, aren't I childish, but really... the people who invented the rules of this game shouldn't have made mounting the arse of an opponent as one of the positions one must pose. It's no wonder there are all those pictures out there of male wrestlers succumbing to the wills of their body's functions when there's so much, well, wrestling going on. Jeepers!



1. Madonna
Vision Quest? Vision QUEEN. Er...



It's as if the director just knew that both his film and the then 25-year-old singer hired to sing during one seemingly insignificant scene were destined for gay icon status. Madonna's brief cameo appearance as a bar singer who performs two tracks (the uptempo "Gambler" and slow, synth-driven ballad "Crazy For You") propelled the film to international recognition, something an American film about high school wrestling would never have been expected to do. The movie was, in fact, retitled to Crazy for You in Australia and the UK amongst others as a means of capitalising on the huge success of the titular song. "Crazy for You" went to number one in Australia and the USA and "Gambler" reached the top ten here and in the UK so it makes sense. Still, "Crazy for You" is iconic and something of an anthem and it fits into Vision Quest with ease, and I remember the video clip so well with its intercuts of Vision Quest. I surprise myself by having taken this long to actually get around to watching it. "Gambler" is considered more of a cult fan favourite than one of Madonna's most mainstream, well-known tracks so I guess it's fitting that it appears in a movie that is also considered a cult favourite in certain circles.

So, basically, Vision Quest is really, really gay whether you giggle at the homo moments of the wrestling or not. Not sure how many high school sporting movies were including gay references so willy nilly (granted, most are derogatory, but the fact that the lead character shrugs them off seems quite interesting). The film really isn't all that, but it has its moments. It's no Bring It On, but it's about as good as Stick It.

Review: W.E.

W.E.

Dir. Madonna

Country: UK

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 119mins

Madonna. One name only, no others necessary. It’s a startling image to see the credit “Directed by Madonna” writ large on a cinema screen for a film as polite as W.E. For a woman whose very image was meticulously crafted to appear as the cutting edge– even when she’s behind the times, she has a marvellous way of beating everybody else at their own game–this sophomore directorial effort (her first to arrive in Australian cinemas) is a very tame picture. Having gone to painstaking lengths to ensure this film assigns her oh-so-serious directorial cred that she has sadly forsaken the very energy that makes her a megastar to this very day. In its place is a mawkish and frequently uninspired take on the lives of the rich and famous, repurposing moviemaking tricks from other sources and shuffling them about like a deck of cards. The finished product is more 52 Pick Up than anything resembling a royal flush.

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Review: Mama Africa

Mama Africa

Dir. Mika Kaurismäki

Country: Germany

Aus Rating: N/A

Running Time: 90mins

The best music documentaries are those that shine a light on a familiar subject in a new and illuminating manner, or those that place the spotlight on somebody who otherwise may have gone unnoticed by the general public. Miriam Makeba, the subject of Mika Kaurismäki’s Mama Africa, is one of those names, faces, and voices, that will be remarkably unknown to many readers (plus this writer), but this documentary goes a long way to demonstrating why she was so popular and hailed as the defining voice of African music. The performer of songs “Pata Pata” and “The Click Song” died in 2008, but her life story remains as vital and important today as it did in 1950s and ‘60s. Mama Africa assembles its collection of old interviews, modern day testimonials, and classic performance footage into a powerful film that explores how one woman used her musical gift to bring attention to not only the issues of her homeland, but the racial troubles of America.

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Mama Africa screens alongside and The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 and Come Back, Africa for a very brief time at ACMI. I looked at all of them via the link.

Review: Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here

Dir. Kieran Darcy-Smith

Country: Australia

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 93mins

There’s a joke about the Australian film industry that all of our films are about serial killers in the outback, or serial killers in suburbia, or just all sorts of other grim and grisly things that send potential tourists running to a different departure lounge. The idea of going on a tour of the dusty outback doesn’t look too appealing once you’ve watched a movie about a vacationing couple being carved up and forgotten about, does it? Wish You Were Here reverses that trend and posits all of its trauma – well, the physical stuff, anyway; emotional trauma is something else entirely – offshore as four young, attractive, affluent Sydneysiders venture to South-East Asia for a getaway and fall afoul of… well, both the audience and several central characters aren’t quite aware of what they run afoul of (bad ecstasy, perhaps?) and therein lies the mystery of this debut film of Kieran Darcy-Smith (known more for his acting in work like The Reef and The Square).

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Review: Café de Flore

Café de Flore

Dir. Jean-Marc Vallée

Country: Canada/France

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 120mins

This uniquely compelling tale of lives torn apart by seemingly pre-ordained destiny comes from one of Canada’s most promised directors, Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria). Café de Flore, so named after the popular song that is frequently used throughout the film, follows two parallel narratives that act as mirrors to one another and form a sort of mysterious tragedy of the soul. In the first we find a mother, Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradis in her “Canadian Oscar” winning role), taking care of her mentally handicapped child in the 1960s. The second sees globetrotting DJ Antoine (musician Kevin Parent in his film debut) as his marriage falls apart under the influence of a new woman in his life. Where the two converge is a secret that hasn’t even been entirely solved by the end credits, but it’s a fascinating one based on ambiguous ideas of identity and what it exactly means to be in love. Café de Flore very much floored me and its enigmatic charm continued to weasel its way into my mind long after it was over.

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