Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

Released March 4, 2010

George Clooney and a goat seeing who will blink first

Do you believe you could stop the heart of a goat with only the power of your mind? The men in The Men Who Stare at Goats think so, and, apparently, some real soldiers in the US military believed they could too.

Based on a sort-of-true story in Jon Ronson’s book on the same name, the film depicts the bizarre training of the First Earth Battalion, a New Age version of the military dreamed up in the 70's in reaction to the Vietnam war.

George Clooney stars as one of the original members of the movement, Lyn Cassady, who is currently on a mission in present day Iraq. He claims to have psychic powers and keeps in shape by bursting clouds with his mind. In flashback we see his training under hippie flower-loving leader Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). Most seem to accept the group’s airy Earth-loving philosophy, except for Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who would rather use his powers to learn the ways of the dark side.

That’s not just a snappy pop-culture reference either as Cassiday likes to call himself a “Jedi Warrior”. He speaks knowingly about his bushido to an embedded reporter, played indifferently by an American-accented Ewan McGregor, who thinks he’s stumbled upon the story of a lifetime.

I know what you’re thinking: surely this can’t be a true story? Despite a Fargo-esque claim at the outset, the farce on screen certainly isn’t. More a series of offbeat gags than a coherent satire, it’s a case where the actors seem to have had more fun making it than an audience does watching it.

It’s tricky material, and director Grant Heslov, Clooney’s producing partner, never finds the right balance between flippancy and sincerity. Clooney, however, is entertaining playing a variation of his Coen-brothers dumb guy act, and Spacey gets all the best moments as the angry rebel.

Goats is an amusing diversion (with an appropriately loopy title) but enjoyment wears thin as it becomes clear that none of the characters are keen to wake from their deluded LSD-induced slumber.

Review: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Released March 4, 2010

Alice (Mia Wasikowska) wandering in Wonderland

Tim Burton's version of Lewis Carroll’s classic is surprising for the wrong reasons. Updating it for today’s 3D craving audience, and with a story shoehorned into the hero’s journey archetype, the director that made the near-masterpiece Ed Wood or even the overblown but terrific Sweeney Todd seems curiously absent.

His usual elements are in play: Johnny Depp as the loopy Mad Hatter, the Danny Eflman score, the emphasis of visuals over story and his wife, Helena Bonham Carter, tearing it up as the manic Red Queen. But despite them and a wonderland that looks like Pandora on acid, it's too conventional, as if Burton was reporting to a committee, rather than the other way around.

Most startling is the screenplay by Linda Woolverton. Drawing more from Through The Looking Glass than its predecessor, the curious young protagonist has been refashioned into a post-pubescent young adult. In this guise her story becomes a simple coming-of-age tale about empowerment and responsibility.

Given this approach, a Jane Austen-lite framing story, in which Alice (Australian Mia Wasikowska, vash-ee-kov-ska) is the impending victim of an arranged marriage, works well enough. But as soon as she tumbles down the rabbit hole, she – and the audience – are thrown into a deliriously excessive 3D imagining of Wonderland.

The art direction and some of the effects are magnificent but, unlike Avatar, 3D was added after principal photography and it shows. The technology has not yet been refined, or at least implemented well, and Alice is an incomprehensible, haphazard mess.

Alice encounters all the usual suspects on her journey: the evaporative Cheshire cat, the wise Caterpillar, the waddling Tweedledee and Tweedledum and, ultimately, the nasty Jabberwocky. They are voiced by luminaries – and half the fun is guessing who is who – including Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman. Some of this is wackily amusing but the finale degenerates into a CGI battle that could have been pulled from any recent fantasy blockbuster.

The only unique element is Wasikowska as Alice who, behind her pale beauty and youth, belies an emotional strength otherwise absent from the film. Other than Carter’s scene stealing monarch, it’s only she that offers a lasting impression.

DVD Review: Shrink (2009)

Released February 18, 2010

Kevin Spacey asleep on the job in Shrink

Shrink is a distinctly indie feature with aspirations of being a scathing Hollywood satire. In truth, its jabs at the industry that gave it life are less scathing than familiar and trite – we’ve seen all this before, wittier and more assured, in Robert Altman’s The Player.

From the opening montage set to an ethereal Coldplay clone it’s clear Shrink really wants to be about something, and wants us to know about it.

Henry Carter is the titular psychiatrist, played by Kevin Spacey with his usual magneticisim. When recording his new audio book “Happiness Now!” he says “Happiness is a word for a feeling. Feelings are rarely understood in the moment, they are quickly forgotten and almost always misremembered. And besides, feelings are totally full of shit...”

His misery stems from the recent death of his wife, who committed suicide, and of the frustrating self-obsessive problems of many of his patients. These include an obnoxious movie producer (Dallas Roberts), a sex and alcohol addicted celebrity (an uncredited Robin Williams) and an actress (Saffron Burrows), the most sensible of the three, but who is still struggling with her career and destructive husband.

Carter is awoken from his self-indulgent, pot-smoking slumber by the arrival of Jemma (Keke Palmer), a troubled school student with filmmaker aspirations. Will this be the trigger to make him finally stick his neck out for somebody? In a less conventional film, maybe this wouldn't happen. This is not that film.

The screenplay suffers from its parallel structure – a difficult thing to pull off – which valiantly ties its threads into a big happy knot, but the narrative lacks dramatic drive. A few of the punchlines about Hollywood’s current obsession with vampires ring true, but is it really wise to have not one or two, but three obvious references to The Graduate? (literally, as Jemma observes a revival screening) All it does it remind you of a better movie you could be watching.

Shrink did not garner a theatrical release in Australia, but is now available on DVD. It’s only notable feature is a 22 min interview with Director Jonas Pate and Producer Braxton Pope, who discuss the birth and evolution of the project. Like the film, the video quality of these special features is poor, with aliasing and artefacts in almost every scene.

Diluted by absent direction and a script that resolves everything and nothing, Shrink is occasionally funny but ultimately vapid. By trying too hard to be sincere, you sometimes end up achieving the opposite.

News: Hit Girl Kick(s)-Ass

You feeling lucky? Punk?

I’ll have my normal review up soon, but I just got back from a very early screening of the much anticipated Kick-Ass at the Entertainment Quarter in Sydney.

This is the film based on Mark Millar’s comic book of the same name, which depicts a real-world band of superheroes with no superpowers. The film is probably most widely known at the moment for the violent red-band trailers that have been floating around. You know, the one with a 12 year old girl telling a bunch of baddies "OK you cunts, let's see what you can do now," just before giving them a thorough ass kicking.

Here it is:


Kick-Ass Red Band Hit Girl Trailer - Watch more Funny Videos

That’s Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl and Nicolas Cage as her father, one of the more peculiar and hilarious father-daughter parings in the movies. Moretz was only 12 at the time of filming and predictably the right wing Australian Family Association, among others, disapprove.

But if you watch an interview with Chloe Moretz, much like when you watch the equally precocious Dakota Fanning, it’s clear she understands it is only make-believe. And once you’ve seen the movie (which I doubt any of the those upset will) it’s clear that the tone is completely irreverent and flippant. That's the real gleeful joy of the movie, and I don't think any of it - the violence or the swearing - is meant to be taken seriously.

That said, the movie is a success partly because of the teenage angst and banter reminicent of Superbad, though there's a few pop-culture references that will quickly become dated.

The cut we saw was finished except for the soundtrack and sound mix. It's an interesting experience to watch the movie temp-tracked to music from every other superhero movie - The Dark Knight, Superman, Batman, among others. The references are oddly appropriate because the movie exists in a world where everyone, especially our wannabe-superheroes, are already familiar with them. They also picked the best and most memorable cues; I can't imagine the replacement score working any better, though it will at least be more coherent.

The bottom line is Kick-Ass is a blast. You don't need me to tell you to see it, since you will anyway, but it's the funnest time I've had at the movies in ages. It's released in Australia on April 8th.

Review: From Paris With Love (2010)

Released February 18, 2010

The brainy trio of Travolta + Rhys Myers + random hooker

This movie is dumb. The bad guys are bad because they sell drugs or are from the Middle East. The good guys, if they are good, amount a body count to rival Roland Emmerich's in 2012. If only Pierre Morel's film was as entertaining or as sophisticated as that disaster epic.

At least, one might say, it has John Travolta. Here he's in screen chewing mode, swearing, flattening gangs with his fists and hookers with his...well, never mind. Essentially playing the same character as his baddie in The Taking of Pelham 123, Travolta is Charlie Wax, an American secret service agent roaming Paris with his new straight laced partner, James Reece (Jonathon Rhys Myers). What they are doing, who they are killing and why is as murky as the ugly, glum photography.

Plot is instead replaced by incomprehensible action. I can appreciate a brainless action thriller as much as the next person, but the sequences in From Paris with Love have no sense of space or tension. We see Travolta fire his gun. Cut. A baddie falls. Cut. Repeat. There's not even a Die Hard level of coherence let alone balletic Yuen Wo Ping choreography.

The pretty Kasia Smutniak plays Reece's Parisian wife who, thanks to the law of economy of characters and a lack of imagination by the screenwriters (Adi Hasak and the sometimes talented Luc Besson), quickly becomes more important that she appears.

It all leads to attempted suicide bombings and Travolta hanging out of a speeding car with a rocket launcher, and even that is, somehow, boring.

The only conceivable reason to watch this film is for Travolta’s lip-smacking murderous rouge. If you've seen Pelham 123, there is precisely none.

DVD Review: Van Diemen’s Land (2009)

Released January 20, 2010

Convicts face nature - and themselves - in Van Diemen’s Land

Vegetarians be warned: unless you feel vindicated by one man munching on another’s raw flesh, this not the film for you.

Meat eaters, too, might be turned off by this depiction of convicts pushed to the edge in the raw Tasmanian landscape.

Van Diemen’s Land, the debut feature of Australian director Jonathan auf der Heide, tells the true story of the infamous Alexander Pearce (played by co-writer Oscar Redding). We find him having been sent to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement in Tasmania, a sort of outdoor Colditz for dangerous prisoners. Knowing that they are surely to die of starvation, dysentery or the lash, he and seven other prisoners escape into the wilderness.

It’s not long before the scarcity of food weighs on their spirits, the rainforest largely devoid of animals, and they begin to look for more immediate means to satiate their hunger.

Under the pretention of eerie colour-saturated photography, long moody gazes into the empty forests and a self-consciously arty voice over (in Gaelic), Auf Der Heide has ambitions of profundity his script can’t match. Tension is generated in exactly when and how the killings take place, but each character, hidden under impressive beards, is indistinguishable from the next. This, and the unrelentingly bleak tone, make it a bit of a chore.

Undeniably though, it’s well made, in particular, the cinematography by veteran Ellery Ryan.

It’s at its best when it becomes a hypnotic Terence Malik kind of existential, when the morally dubious characters reflect on their actions and their place in the natural order of things, but it doesn't make the film any easier to digest.

The disc contains a good array of features, including a commentary and some insightful docos. Best of them are the three additional self-depreciating featurettes (one has the clapperboard man describe his subtle influence on the actors' performances). These are funny and uniquely Australian. In their more sincere moments, the interviews reveal that this was clearly a project of love for the creative principals. I'd expect good things from Auf Der Heide in the future.

Review: Shutter Island (2010)

Released February 18, 2010

Digging for secrets on Shutter Island

It’s easy to be have a heightened critical eye when a director has the likes of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas in his filmography. And it’s true that Martin Scoresese’s latest, an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) best seller, is not quite of that standard. But Shutter Island is still an exhilarating movie, a dense psychological mind trip into the world of 1950s mental institutions.

Scorsese shoots it like gothic horror, like One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest drowned in Kafka and German Expressionism. This is so from our first view of the jagged island, as seen from the incoming boat ferrying U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). They’re on their way to investigate a patient’s disappearance, but the two lead physicians, played by Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow, are unhelpful: either too calm and evasive (in the former case) or obviously malicious (in the latter). Soon a storm brews, patients run amok, Teddy starts having visions of the liberation of Dachau and his tragically dead wife (Michelle Williams), and general weirdness ensues.

While it wanders in the second act, the film is always fascinating as it tenuously borders the line between the real and the unreal, never making it obvious which is which. What is clear is that something is not quite right on the island. Are the CIA continuing Nazi eugenics experiments? And what are the doctors hiding?

DiCaprio is the standout in a fine cast; who’d have thought the heartthrob from Romeo + Juliet would have become Scorsese’s new De Niro? The real master, however, remains the man in the chair. Even when working within genre limitations, his startling compositions, whip pans and ambiguous handling of the material gives weight to a story that could have been trite and simplistic. Every element works here: the beautiful cinematography by Robert Richardson, the effective use of source music (there is no original score) and the perfectly judged performances from a cast playing tricky characters that are often more than they appear.

It's only a shame, at very least for DiCaprio, that it comes too late for the awards season.

Review: The Wolfman (2010)

Released February 11, 2010

Emily Blunt tending to the Wolfy Benicio Del Toro

The Universal Monster movies of the 30s and 40s were never really A-list productions. Often saddled with cheap production values and shoddy acting (Bela Lugosi might be the definitive Dracula but his performance is truly hilarious), they were at their best when most subversive – Bride of Frankenstein springs to mind. The Wolfman was always one of the second tier monsters, and this remake directed by journeyman Joe Johnston is very much in the same B-movie tradition.

This is not to say the production is weak. The cast is first rate, with Benicio Del Toro starring as Lawrence Talbot, an American man holed up in an estate in rural England with his father played by Anthony Hopkins. His brother, Ben, has disappeared, and townsfolk and wandering gypsies claim of a beast roaming the land causing havoc. Cue the arrival of Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving), fresh from investigating the Ripper murders and appearing like a deliberately spoken, bearded Agent Smith. Best of all is the wonderful Emily Blunt as Ben’s fiancée, totally compelling as the underwritten love interest.

The effects, a mix of traditional makeup and CGI, mostly convince. Showing more flair for visual design than one would expect from the director of Jurassic Park III, Johnston drenches the film in a lush gothic visual tapestry backed by Danny Elfman’s thunderously old fashioned score.

The story – and werewolf tales on screen are hardly rare – offers no surprises. What does is the level of gore. In this age of PG-13 blockbusters it’s refreshing than The Wolfman literally goes for the jugular. Entrails are spilled, organs devoured and heads roll. It’s all so schlocky that some of the more gratuitous moments elicit more laughs than scares, but that’s part of the appeal.

Whether or not multiplex audiences will go for a film so dreadfully old school, over wrought and melodramatic is another matter, but it succeeds as an affectionate slice of nostalgia for the original horror classics. Take it or leave it.

Blu-Ray Review: Red Cliff (2009)

Released January 6, 2010

Epic action in John Woo's Red Cliff

After a string of unfortunate Hollywood films (Paycheck, Windtalkers, Mission Impossible II) slow-mo action master John Woo returns to his native China in the grand epic Red Cliff. Originally released in two parts in Asia, the four and a half hour total running time was butchered down to two and a half on general international release. Both editions have been released locally on DVD and Blu-ray, but it's the full full original cut that I will be reviewing here.

The film is an exciting, thunderous and broad retelling of the titular Battle of Red Cliffs that occurred near the end of the Han Dynasty, circa 220 AD. Drawing upon the historical text Records of Three Kingdoms rather than the further interpretation offered in the Chinese classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Woo claims that it offers a more historically accurate treatment of the material than is custom. Not that fidelity or knowledge of Chinese history is necessary to enjoy a film that borrows more from David Lean and Akira Kurosawa than either historical fact or Zhang Yimou’s recent martial arts epics (Hero, House of Flying Daggers).

The story goes like this: Imperial chancellor Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) is on a mission to destroy southern warlords Sun Quan (Chen Chang) and Liu Bei (Yong You). Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), advisor to Bei, works to form an alliance between the southern leaders with hopes of defeating the numerically superior Cao Cao. On this mission we meet Quan’s viceroy, Zhou Yu (Tony Leung). An alliance forms, and the two sides clash in various amazingly staged battle sequences until laying camp opposite one another outside Red Cliff in preparation for the final showdown.

The battle scenes themselves are vast and Kurosawa-esque. Avoiding CGI for the most part, what they lack in realism they compensate for with energy and spectacle. Woo’s specialty is still smaller scale combat (see his late 80s Hong Kong classics of balletic action), a trait evident when massive conflicts seem to hinge on the actions of one individual. In a particularly improbable sequence Cao Cao’s scout cavalry are encircled in a maze of enemy troops, only to be systematically split up and annihilated. Thousands of troops stand by and watch as our spear-wielding heroes annihilate dozens of enemies in increasingly inventive ways. Most of these characters are archetypes - the burly bearded warrior who seems to be China's Ajax, or the proto-feminist spy Sun Shangxiang (Wei Zhao). For complexity one has to instead look towards Fengyi's villain, who implies more moral uncertainty than the script offers.

Xiao Qiao (Chi-Ling Lin) confronting the enemy

Still, the running time allows Woo digressions in developing the dozen or so main characters, which also include Yu's wife, Xiao Qiao (Chi-Ling Lin) and the commanders of Cao Cao’s navy. While I can’t imagine the shortened version being preferable (which I have not seen), half an hour could easily have been excised, zipping up the pacing without affecting audience comprehension.

The special edition is a two disc release which presents each contained half on separate discs. The visual quality is astounding, and befits an epic of such visual beauty and scope. It’s the only release even worth considering, even though the HD and the largest flat screen could not do this film justice in the way of a cinema screen. Where the discs falter is in the special features, which are restricted to a 15 minute interview with John Woo and a bizarre collection of behind the scenes footage seemingly captured on an iPhone. While interestingly candid, music and narration begins and ends randomly and some of the clips are mere seconds long. It’s a peculiarly unpolished addition to an otherwise professionally presented release.

But no matter, fans of John Woo or action epics are in for a treat with Red Cliff. It’s sprawling and grand entertainment, a real and rare spectacle rarely seen in today’s moviegoing landscape.

Note
Red Cliff is the most expensive film ever financed in Asia with a budget of $80 million. How does Hollywood produce movies for double that amount that are so ugly and so empty? The argument that no one could make Lawrence of Arabia anymore because it would be too expensive doesn't make sense when studios are willing to spend $200 on utter trash like Tranformers 2 and yet could make a more beautiful and epic film with no CGI for half that. Maybe army extras are more expensive in the States.

Review: Bright Star (2009)

Released December 26, 2009

Love and longning in the air in Bright Star

It's a bit tardy, but here is my review of Jane Campion's latest:

Contrary to the beauty and elegance of many of their works, the lives of 19th century romantic artists – poets, composers, novelists – were frequently difficult and fleeting. Such could be said of poet John Keats, who died in 1821 from tuberculosis at the age of 25. It is however not true of Jane Campion’s film, a beautiful ode to the works and genius of John Keats, and his love for the girl next door, Fanny Brawne.

With subject matter that could have become a sensationalised melodrama, Campion instead deliberately downplays her directorial hand in favour of beautiful and painterly images that are kind of, well, poetic. They enhance the smouldering love between Keats and Brawn which is chaste but desperately passionate. Restrained by circumstances (they cannot marry for Keats is not of appropriate financial standing), they instead exchange letters, stare longingly, and kiss with barely restrained sexuality.

This is not surprising from a director who, throughout her films, seems most interested in the female awakening, sexual or otherwise. And it is through the eyes of Fanny, played with heartbreaking grace by Aussie actress Abbie Cornish, that we view Keats (a scrawny, pale Ben Whishaw). Aside from Fanny’s mother (Kerry Fox), who approves of Keats personally but not socially, one of the many hindrances to their relationship is Keats’ reader and friend, the contemptuous Mr. Brown (Paul Schneider). Brown disapproves of Fanny mostly because he feels she is stealing Keats’ attention away from his work, though his hostility also suggests a peculiar sexual attraction.

There’s little in the way of story in Bright Star, though Keats does eventually leave Hampstead and Fanny for the warmer climate of the Mediterranean in an effort to stave off his worsening illness. It is instead a film of images – Fanny in a flowered meadow, the wind blowing over her bed, their embrace against the trees. They enlighten Keats’ poetry and his intense relationship with his muse. Over the end credits Whishaw recites Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”. It’s worth staying for.

Review: Edge of Darkness (2010)

Released February 4, 2010

Angry Mel in Edge of Darkness

Having gained recent notoriety as a director and for drunken anti-Semitic rants, Mel Gibson is back in front of the camera in this effective revenge thriller. With the similarly themed Payback and Ransom already part of his filmography, Edge of Darkness hardly breaks new ground. Nor is its premise particularly unique: Liam Neeson’s recent Taken covered much of the same territory.

No matter, for Mel is still a likable presence even when playing a variation on his other hard-nosed vengeful fathers. At the outset he, Boston police officer Thomas Craven, witnesses the brutal murder of his daughter on his porch doorstep, with enough blood flowing that the scene is worthy of another well known Craven. Believing the buckshot was meant for him, he sets off on a grim-faced investigation of to find those responsible.

Mel thumps ex-boyfriends, lawyers and slimy senators on his way to discovering his daughter was a victim of a conspiracy related to her internship at the Northmoor nuclear facility.

Set against this backdrop of the rise and dangers of nuclear power, Edge of Darkness feels like it’s from another era. Which it is, it being an adaptation of a 1985 BBC miniseries also directed by Martin Campbell. Its strengths lie in the slow burn of paranoia worthy of an X-File, punctuated by raw and well judged moments of shock.

Best of all is Ray Winstone’s mysterious fixer and informant, who seems to operate outside the usual secret service channels. He visits Craven Deep Throat style, puffing on a cigar while seductively offering information. His cloudy allegiances make him more compelling than the obviously evil head of Northmoor (Danny Huston) and the nasties working surveillance.

Even though the third act rushes by too fast, up until that point the line between realism and hokum is nicely drawn. It’s eminently watchable and a solid return for a star who remains noteworthy both behind and in front of the camera.

Review: The Road (2009)

Released January 28, 2010

The desolation of The Road

Cormac McCarthy provided the source material for one of the best films of the decade in No Country for Old Men. Now his subsequent Pulitzer Prize winning novel has been adapted, a brutal portrayal of the remnants of mankind fighting for survival in a post apocalyptic wasteland. If you want a joyous, fun-filled time at the movies, look elsewhere.

A road movie in the purest sense of the term, we follow a father (a superb, restrained Viggo Mortensen) and son (young Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee) attempting to make their way to the sea in the hopes of warmer weather. Their most dangerous challenge, more so than the vicious cold or of finding food, are cannibals armed with more than just their peculiar appetite. The full extent of this disturbingly plausible savagery is only glimpsed, but still produces the required quota of queasiness.

The source of the holocaust is not explained, making the film contained and emphasizing the central dilemma: just how far is one willing to go to survive? This juxtaposition forms the centre of the relationship with between the father, determined to ensure his son’s survival no matter the cost, and the son, who clings closer to accepted, civilized morals.

The father's determination in part stems from the death of his wife (Charlize Theron), who chose her fate in preference to mere animalistic survival which she found distasteful. Don’t let the trailers fool you, though, her presence is fleeting and her story told in flashback.

I have not read the novel, but from the film one can easily get the feeling of McCarthy’s sparse punctuation-devoid prose and the overwhelming desolation of his world. Despite this, some characters, such as a dying old man played by an unrecognisable Robert Duvall, still retain their humanity amongst the horror.

And that, perhaps, is the film’s weakness. There are elements (I read) that have been softened from the novel (spit-roasted newborns, anyone?) and there are moments of promise that verge on sentimentality. It might be an odd claim for such a dark film, but one feels they almost didn’t go far enough.