Atonal Musings, now atonalFILM!

Hi all,
This site has now been replaced by a new site:

http://www.atonalfilm.com/

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Josh

News: Atonal Musings - The Sequel

Just an update for those few cats who've been following my adventures in cineland on this site. I'm currently working a new site, with its own domain, hosting and all that jazz. All the film related content here will be transferred over.

In addition, there will be even more new content - reviews, news and interviews from the world of Film and TV, charting my adventure in the world of film and film journalism.

The site will go live in a few weeks. The short of it is, I will still be updating this blog until then, but posts will be more sporadic while I sort out the teething issues on Atonal Musings 2: Bigger, better, and with more Tina Fey (wait, that's not entirely accurate, but on the upside, there's only four more days 30 Rock returns to the airwaves).

Look forward to seeing everyone on the new site.

Happy filmgoing!

Review: Accidents Happen (2009)

Released April 22, 2010

The struggling family of Accidents Happen

Geena Davis’s career imploded after Cutthroat Island, the 1995 pirate movie that holds the dubious honour of being the biggest ever box-office flop. After an intermission involving Olympic archery and matters presidential (TV’s Commander in Chief), she returns to the big screen in this numbing British-Australian co-production about a family torn apart by unfortunate happenstance.

In tone and theme, it’s a less charming version of Pushing Daisies, the wonderful series that combined wacky Tim Burton-esque whimsy with morbid dark humour. There’s some of that here: “Some people wouldn’t know their ass from an air-conditioner,” our know-it-all narrator informs us as a man goes up in flames on a sunny morning in suburban Connecticut. Beautifully shot in poetic slow-motion, it’s the best scene in the film. This event is observed by the young Billy Conway (Harrison Gilbertson), the son of Davis’s Gloria, a boy struggling to find his place within his fractured family after a car accident kills his sister and places one brother into a coma.

He’s too bland a protagonist for us to really invest in his coping strategies – dabbling in girls, drugs and the odd nude streak through the local supermarket. Davis is however fine as the distraught mother, who spends most of the time on the verge of crying and muttering overly-scripted, inane wisecracks like “I’m so hungry I could eat a crowbar and shit a jungle jim.”

First-time feature director Andrew Lancaster shows a flair for painterly images but is saddled by a mess of a script by Brian Carbee that never settles on a consistent tone. Things turn all serious at the end when the story focuses on the real psychological cost of the family’s loss, and even though the ethereal indie-rock soundtrack encourages us otherwise, it’s hard to care when the catharsis isn’t earned.

Review: The Book of Eli (2010)

Released April 15, 2010

Denzel and Mila Kunis wandering the plains in The Book of Eli

Post apocalyptic movies are all the rage (The Road, Children of Men) and why not – there’s few concepts that are inherently dramatic and provide the platform for existential angst. There’s plenty of the latter in the latest movie from the Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society, From Hell), though the point of its confused religious grandstanding is anyone’s guess.

Eli, the man-with-no-name wandering though the generic but oddly beautiful American wasteland, is played by a stoic Denzel Washington. He’s a wizened old survivor who’s become adept at dispatching cannibalistic thugs with his workhorse blade slung over his shoulder. He needs it, especially, to ward off the aggressive Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who launders over a ramshackle town like Ian McShane’s Al Swearengen in Deadwood. Carnegie may delve into a Mussolini biography and have a paperback copy of the Da Vinci Code on his desk, but what he’s really after is the crucifix-adorned book in Eli’s possession. It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to guess the book’s subject and, as per the historical precedent, The Book of Eli follows the battle over this divine text, complete with wildly excessive, but gloriously stylish action scenes.

For two-thirds of its length Eli maintains this enjoyable B-movie Western vibe, replete with a classic high-noon style standoff. But it then turns to serious philosophizing and final act twists which are simply baffling. These WTF moments, weirdly, do not commit the M. Night sin of invalidating all that happened prior, but just act to make it more fascinating; The Book of Eli is nothing if not ambitious. The ideas are silly, but the oddball sincerity is kind of charming, and there’s a stylized exuberance to the images seemingly inspired by graphic novels.

Aside from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and, presently, Date Night), the very pretty Mila Kunis often feels miscast. Here, her young Solara, a woman intrigued by Eli’s sturdy conviction, is an odd foil for the Washington’s grizzled survivor. A hoot, though, are Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour as a couple of cannibalistic outlanders.

Review: Beneath Hill 60 (2010)

Released April 15, 2010

Brendan Cowell's Captain Woodward somewhere under Hill 60

Spoilers for history: in 1917 members of the 1st Australian tunnelling Division detonated 19 mines under the German front lines in Belgium, resulting in the biggest ever man-made explosion. The blast, it is said, was heard as far away as Dublin. The lead up to this momentous event is the subject of this awfully old fashioned war movie set in the muddy misery of World War I. Don’t expect cries of “war is hell,” existential crises or sharp political comment, Beneath Hill 60 tells its story with a straight face and minimal reflection.

Our band of heroes, plucked from working in the mines back home, are lead by the soft-spoken Captain Oliver Woodward (Brendan Cowell). Tunnelling and explosive experts, they’re literally “diggers,” not soldiers. Before their reassignment to Hill 60, the movie skirts with tensions within the squad and between them and the more highly trained regular soldiers, but the underdeveloped characters are non-descript and expendable. As perfunctory is a relationship between Woodward and sixteen year-old farmgirl Marjorie Waddell (Bella Heathcote), told in flashback, which is low on romance but high in creepiness.

Despite impressive production values and cinematography (and a budget of only $9 million), director Jeremy Sims’ heavy theatre-trained hand is bludgeoning. Music swells, men fall in a slow motion swath of bullets and heroes make the necessary scarifies for the greater good. It’s undone, too, by some peculiar self-conscious acting from men who feel more like NIDA grads than working class miners. An exception is Steve Le Marquand’s as the gruff Fraser, a man who is not afraid to state his mind.

BH60, while delving into the procedures of war rather than its ideology, is no Hurt Locker. That film used specific details to illuminate Jeremy Renner’s adrenaline junkie protagonist. The characters in BH60, on the other hand, exist only at the service of the insufficiently explained plot. Not every war film needs to be a meditation on violence, but they do have to pass the most basic litmus test of any film: making the audience care, something Sims, despite his smooth and earnest production, struggles to achieve.

Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

Released April 1, 2010

Sam Worthington as the demi-god Perseus

The original 1981 Clash of the Titans was a plodding fantasy epic made enjoyable by the special effects of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen. The creator of innumerable beasts in the Sinbad movies and, most famously, the skeletons at the climax of Jason and the Argonauts, his designs were masterpieces of creativity and subtlety. These are qualities absent from Louis Leterrier’s frenetic remake, a wash of bland CGI monsters, ADD action and self-important dialogue.

Current bigshot Sam Worthington (still struggling with his pseudo-American accent) plays a non-descript, monosyllabic Perseus. The son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), he is none too pleased with his demi-god status after his adoptive parents are inadvertently killed by the malicious god of the underworld, Hades (Ralph Fiennes, in slithering Voldemort mode). As punishment for their rejection by man, the gods decree the city of Argos to be destroyed by the monstrous Kraken – inflated this time to Bruckheimer-sized proportions – unless the beautiful princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) is offered up as a sacrifice. It’s up to Perseus and his disposable band of warriors to avert disaster.

The plot makes little sense, especially since Perseus’ affection lies not with the in-peril Andromeda but towards the helpful demi-god Io (Gemma Arterton). Saving the princess, hence, seems like a plot convenience. Worse are the messy visuals. Already a victim of Leterrier’s poor spatial sense, the post-conversion to 3D is at best perfunctory and at worst, downright atrocious, simply too dim and muddled to be coherent.

Technical ineptitude aside, it’s the creature design and scene construction that reek of laziness and indifference. The suspenseful Medusa confrontation of the 1981 version is here replaced by an improbable battle in a cavern that’s a cross between the gravity-bending maze of Labyrinth and the fires of Mount Doom. It might have worked if, Mads Mikkelsen’s Draco aside, the characters were not already made of stone. I was cheering for Medusa, her demonic cackle one of the few moments of original inspiration.

There’s a joke early on about the absence of Bubo the mechanical owl, the R2D2 cash-in from the original. Bubo’s presence would have helped this movie. And that’s saying something.

Review: Kick-Ass (2010)

Released April 8, 2010

Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl prepare to pummel some baddies

Even with more than half a dozen superhero projects in development (including the all star The Avengers movies), it’s easy to feel the genre reached its artistic peak with The Dark Knight. Instead of following the formula to a tee, this adaptation of Mark Millar’s latest creation deconstructs it by making its characters comic book readers. In other words, it is to the superhero genre as Scream was for horror movies. It’s as much as success too, funny and surprisingly sweet yet featuring an 11-year old girl snarling the C-word and indulging in some cartoonish ultra-violence. Cue the uproar from family watchdogs. For the rest of us heathens, Kick-Ass is a thrilling piece of visceral cinema with a gleeful disregard for political correctness.

Traditional elements are shredded in a pop-culture blender resulting in characters who are familiar yet unique. Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is your average masturbatory teenager who would rather be anywhere but English class. A green wetsuit and myspace page later and he’s become Kick-Ass, amateur superhero and star of the most watched YouTube video on the web, a bloody and messy beating of local thugs. He’s Spiderman by way of McLovin. Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz) is the scene stealing purple-haired assassin, a mash of Natalie Portman from Leon and The Bride from Kill Bill. Her father is Big Daddy, whom a wacky Nicolas Cage defines indelibly as his own by way of Adam West’s Batman. McLovin himself (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) also appears as the son of supervillain Mark Strong, who should be getting good at it after Holmes, Stardust and Sunshine.

Director Michael Vaughan (Layer Cake) gives each action scene a distinct character – one brutal and circular, one in a continuous take and, in one of the film’s many nods to the iPod generation, one in video game-esque first person. He understands a mash of cuts doesn’t work without continuity, and that the best action advances character. Solidifying the endorphin rush is the deliberate choice of music, largely pillaged from composer John Murphy’s previous work (28 Days Later, Sunshine).

The buoyant thrills are matched by a genuine heart that lies less with Lizewski and friends’ Superbad antics than it does the unconventional Hit Girl/Big Daddy relationship, which optimistically purports how love can flourish even amongst the most peculiar of circumstances.

Review: How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

Released March 25, 2010

Hiccup and toothless give Jake and Neytiri a run for their money

Pixar has had a string of animated hits, critically and commercially, unrivalled since Disney’s heyday. DreamWorks animation was never going to challenge that dynasty but their latest is spritely and energetic, and revels in the 3D joy of simulated flight. That it doesn’t strive for the wit, invention and subtlety of Up or Wall-E is a mute point.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Jay Baruchel) is an 11-year old Viking whose vernacular seems acquired from too many viewings of Juno. He lives on a coastal village under constant threat from the vicious, titular fire-breathing reptiles. Instead of raping and pillaging, it has been tradition amongst the clan of enormous bearded warriors, which include Hiccup’s father Stoick (Gerard Butler), to hunt these feared creatures. To do so is a rite of passage for every young Viking.

Hiccup is not so sure after downing the dreaded “Night Wing,” who, upon closer inspection, is less a feared predator than a cross between a crafty cat and a lizard. His budding friendship with “toothless” is at odds with his training as a dragonslayer, though his first hand knowledge gives him an edge over the impetuous tomboy – and romantic interest – Astrid (America Ferrera, Ugly Betty).

The story, which wears its young heart on its sleeve, goes where it must. Both adults and children will instead be focused more on the colourful 3D animation (famed cinematographer Roger Deakins is credited as visual consultant), clever humour and the magnificent, heroic score by John Powell; only the most jaded and cynical could not be roused by its energy and scope. An over reliance on action – however well constructed and animated – at the expense of character is the only dampener.

What lingers are the swoops and rolls of soaring flight as Hiccup and toothless skip over the waves and climb into the stratosphere. For those few moments, you’ll feel like you’ve come along for the ride.

News: Scream 4 + Wes Craven = Official

It's official, Wes Craven is to reunite with Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette in the fourth Scream movie to shoot in May. The film will be set ten years later in Woodsboro and reportedly be the beginning of a new trilogy with a new bunch of characters. The original writer, Kevin Williamson, is to pen the script.

Even through Scream 3 had problems and was easily the weakest of the three (also the only not written by Williamson), Sidney's overall story was nicely bookended, so I hope they do it justice here. It's not as if there isn't plenty of new horror territory - torture porn among them - to mine, and with Craven now officially in as director, there's much potential.

Scream 4 is set for release April 12th, 2011.

Review: She's Out of My League (2010)

Released April 1, 2010

Molly, a perfect ten, and Kirk, a modest six in She's Out of My League

This is a slight, occasionally charming broad comedy that would feel more at home on the mouldy video store shelf than at the multiplex. There, it feels like a cheap copy of the Judd Apatow films (Knocked Up, The 40-Year Old Virgin); another valiant attempt to give hope to losers everywhere.

Stuck in dead end jobs, the 20-something male leads pass the time making crass jokes and rating people on a one to ten scale of sexual desirability. Kirk (Jay Baruchel), is a self-professed six, and works as a security guard at an airport. He and his three buddies, who are like the understudies of Jonah Hill, Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd, agree he has no chance with the gorgeous Hard Ten, Molly (Alice Eve). In a refreshing twist, it’s she, blond locks blowing in the breeze, who makes the first move. Family awkwardness, self-inflicted angst and sexual hijinks ensue.

League's concept is tired, but the jokes, when they’re not an American Pie level of crass, sometimes amuse, and nice-guy Kirk’s trepidation with his budding romance will be familiar to many. But his paltry self-esteem is more frustrating than endearing, especially since the traditional boy-meets-girl, boy-looses-girl structure hinges entirely on this character flaw.

Like Zack Galifianakis in The Hangover, it’s the chubby and lovable sidekick who is the funniest creation, in this case an overgrown child played by Nate Torrence. Krysten Ritter, who recently made a memorable appearance on TV’s Breaking Bad, also steals her scenes as Molly’s snappy best friend. They enliven but don't ignite this routine rom-com which, despite its second-tier charm, fails to achieve the elusive sweet-and-sour Apatow mix.

News: Top Ten Movies of 2009 - #6

6. Two Lovers

Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix unhappy in love in Two Lovers

Reputedly this was to be Joaquin Phoenix’s final film before embarking on a rapping career, complete with compulsive beard growing and weird talk-show appearances. Whether or not his career switch is genuine or a stunt for a Casey Affleck mockmentary may soon be revealed, with recent rumours that he is return to acting, playing gothic writer Edgar Allen Poe in an adaptation of Daniel Stashower’s book, The Beautiful Cigar Girl.

Either way, his "final" performance in James Gray’s romantic drama, Two Lovers, is extraordinary. His Leonard is borderline suicidal, but also a romantic with a crush on the blond beauty hauled up in the apartment across the courtyard (a brilliant Gwyneth Paltrow). Though it appears otherwise at first, she's as damaged as he is. They're contrasted by the normal girl played by Vinessa Shaw, who is attractive but is missing the allure of her more volatile competition. Leonard's caring mother outwardly disapproves of his little crush, and is played with grace and subtlety by Isabella Rossellini.

It’s rare to find a "romantic" movie that dares to treat its characters like real people, flawed and complex, instead of succumbing to the romantic comedy clichés that have all but killed the genre. Beautifully shot in a cold, icy Brooklyn, Gray's film is a beautiful, moving and heartbreakingly realistic gem. It certainly deserved more than a limited cinematic release.

News: Top Ten Movies of 2009 - #7

7. Watchmen

The Comedian and Ozymandias, dsyfunctional superheroes of Watchmen

The audacity of Zack Snyder. It was the most celebrated graphic novel ever written, and also deemed “unfilmable,” by Terry Gilliam, who was at one point attached to the project when it was stuck in developmental hell. And yet the director of 300, with a tremendous respect for the source material, has fashioned an exhilarating comic book film like no other.

It is remarkable that this movie even exists. With no name stars, a meandering non-linear narrative, brutal violence, sex, and, god forbid, such a thing as character complexity, Warner Brothers and Paramount firstly deserve credit for green-lighting a $130 million dollar comic-book movie with uncertain box office potential.

As a movie, it has its problems. The plot doesn’t have a totally satisfying structure, there is one retched performance (a stone dry Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre) and Snyder is slavish, to a fault, to the source text. Yet to do otherwise would result in a movie that does a disserve to the immense achievement of the original novel. This movie is the unadulterated Watchmen, rough edged, complex and provocative. It retains the shades of the book while delivering an exhilarating visceral ride of image and sound. Be sure to check out the more robust director’s cut, which contains 24 minutes of extra footage that brings the running time to a more satisfying three hours.

News: Top Ten Movies of 2009 - #8

8. In the Loop

Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), keeper of the curse words

One feels a review of this scathing British political satire is not complete without a requisite dose of expletives. Whether it’s lubricated horse-cocks or a fucking master race of highly-gifted toddlers, manic PR spin doctor Malcolm Tucker has a curse word for all occasions. And they flow freely as he attempts to manipulate UK and US power figures into a war in the Middle East.

While a satire of politics and the random decisions that can sometimes lead to war, In the Loop is genuinely hilarious. Aside from Tucker (played brilliantly by Peter Capaldi), there’s Tom Hollander as Simon Foster, a bumbling British politician who draws laughter through his ineptitude, and the US Assistant Secretary of State Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who perplexingly mutters random inanities such as “All roads lead to Munich.”

The screenplay (the movie is derived from the BBC series The Thick of It), written by director Armando Iannucci, among others, was nominated for an Oscar, and was a more deserving than the eventual victor, Precious. There’s few witter, funnier and outrageously satirical scripts around, and it’s a perfect antidote to the flag waving, idealistic portrayal of Washington we usually see. Instead In the Loop presents a political world closer to reality, one that is, in the words of its director, “a bit rubbish.” The film itself, though, is quite the opposite.

Review: Cop Out (2010)

Released March 18, 2010

A game Tracey Morgan and a bored Bruce Willis in Cop Out

Kevin Smith’s (Clerks, Chasing Amy) peculiar blend of witty dialogue-driven humour and sly observation is completely absent from this tired attempt to revive the buddy-cop genre. Those movies, epitomized by minor classics of the 80s such as 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop, worked both as action and as comedy. Cop Out works as neither, and can’t decide if it would rather be a homage or parody.

Take Tracey Morgan. Playing a variation of his manic 30 Rock character, in one scene he’s playing the good cop during an interrogation, endlessly quoting movies in an improvised sequence that could have been born as a Saturday Night Live skit. In another dramatic (TM) scene, he’s having a heart-to-heart with his wife (Rashida Jones), whom he suspects of cheating with their hot-and-single neighbour. This juxtaposition could have worked if either were (a) funny or (b) dramatic, but neither is the case.

Both Morgan and Bruce Willis, who sleepwalks through his role as the more sensible partner, are likeable stars at the whim of a mediocre script by Robb and Mark Cullen. Why Kevin Smith was inspired to make this his first directorial effort from material other than his own is baffling. He admitted that it was “not MY movie,” but “a movie I was hired to direct.” In which case, I would ask, why bother at all?

If it was a test of his directorial ability, then the pacing and sloppy handing of the few action scenes reveal areas for improvement. The plot, meanwhile, is based around the coincidence of Willis’ search for his missing baseball card – worth over $40k and to fund his daughter’s wedding – and a drug dealing ring.

Despite its problems, I didn’t want to flee from the theatre. Both Morgan, and Seann William Scott as a childish petty thief, have their moments, and the score by 80s-synth master Harold Faltermeyer is a snug fit. But Smith, at his best, is capable of greatness, whereas the best I can say of this soulless project is that it lives up to its title.

News: Top Ten Movies of 2009 - #9

9. A Serious Man

Larry Gobnick and his reaction to the universe

The Coen brothers have always been adept at creating dark, inquisitive comedies with an intellectual edge, and A Serious Man is no exception. It tells the story of Physics professor Larry Gopnick, an ineffectual man with more questions than answers. The movie is structured around his increasingly futile attempts to understand why the universe seems to have it in for him. All he can come with, as is suggested by friends, rabbis and his insensitive wife (who would rather be with a pretentious nitwit by the name of Sy Ableman) is “accept the mystery.”

A Serious Man works on several levels: as a satire of Jewishness, as a philosophical treatise, and, if one has the stomach for awkward situations, as a comedy. It’s also the Coens’ most personal film, set in their home town of St. Louis Park, Minnesota and based on experiences of their childhood. The cast is superb, with relative unknown Michael Stuhlbarg (robbed of an Oscar nomination) the standout as Larry, the bewildered and passive Serious Man of the title who is of good intentions but no conviction.

I first saw the movie at the Canberra Film Festival and the partisan crowd was already in on the joke. But it’s easy to see how audiences could be perplexed by its blacker than black comedy. Who can blame them when the sum total of Larry’s pleadings to the powers that be is, not a catharsis of answers, but an ominous, gathering storm.

News: Top Ten Movies of 2009 - #10

If there’s one thing movie geeks love to do it is to create lists. Everyone’s doing them. Top ten of the year. Top ten of the decade. Top ten blockbusters with the worst CGI. It’s completely perfunctory of course, and ranking them is, especially, absurd. But it satisfies our natural human instinct to ensure everything is categorized and easily referenced. With that spirit in mind, I will be revealing my Top Ten Films of 2009, in order, each weekday, beginning now with J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek.

10. Star Trek

Kirk and Spock on the iBridge

From the outset of 2009, Star Trek as a film series, and as a TV franchise, was dead. The last two films (Insurrection and Nemesis) were awful, and Enterprise was a valiant, but failed attempt to make hip a property widely known for the opposite. Leave it to J.J. Abrams, the skilful TV auteur behind Alias and Lost, Mi:III and, in concept at least, Cloverfield, to achieve just what Enterprise failed to do: make Star Trek cool again.

Hardcore fans may be upset that Abrams has fashioned Trek into an action-driven space-opera more akin to its fanboy rival, Star Wars. I am not, nor have ever been a serious Trek fan, my familiarity with series extending no further than many: First Contact, The Wrath of Khan and the odd episode of TNG or DS9. In other words, precisely the audience at which the 2009 revisioning takes aim.

With a gleeful energy and abundance of lens flares, this new Trek seamlessly blends thrilling action with a well drawn Spock/Kirk origin story. After Abrams, it is a success is largely because of its cast, especially Chris Pine as Kirk, paying homage to Shatner but making it his own, and Zachary Quinto, a surprisingly good Spock given his bland work as Sylar on the troubled Heroes.

The screenplay (by blockbuster go-to team Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) has its contrivances, but it’s also deft at establishing over a half dozen characters, and doing so with clever nods to the original series. Star Trek is not a great film, but it’s an exciting and polished refashioning of a beloved property, and that’s why it’s my tenth best film of the year.

Review: Brothers (2009)

Released March 18, 2010

The bad brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) and good wife (Natalie Portman) in Brothers

This remake of the Susanne Bier’s critically acclaimed drama has little new to say about the effect of war on its participants. What it does have are three strong performances from big Hollywood stars and a smattering of raw, emotional truth.

Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is a solider about to embark on another tour of Afghanistan, leaving behind his loving wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and their two daughters. Sam is the favoured and high-achieving son of the grouchy Hank (Sam Shepard), an alcoholic Vietnam-vet who would prefer to ignore the existence of his other trouble-making son, Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Sam heads off to war but is quickly captured. His family presumes him dead –but of course, he’s not – and when he eventually returns, psychologically damaged from his ordeal, he resents the tight family unit that has formed in his absence.

The second half of Brothers is an emotional sucker punch, with a series of powerful yet oddly manufactured scenes. While tapping into a timely problem facing many military families, the characters feel more like movie creations than living, breathing entities. This is despite a nuanced performance from Portman, who is wonderful in an underwritten role; the frightening frenzy of Maguire’s paranoid veteran and, most real of them all, Gyllenhaal’s well-meaning but dysfunctional Tommy.

Brothers is not a war movie, but a family melodrama about guilt and acceptance. Its heightened emotions, minimal score and austere direction are a difficult mix. Director Jim Sheridan knows this, and cleverly uses the gentle humour of the family's delightful young girls to offset the tension. It's just enough, together with the performances, for Brothers to maintain its delicate balancing act, but it remains less than the sum of its quite substantial parts.

News: The Oscars 2010

Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow and Greg Shapiro lap it up

Here we are again, another year, another Oscar ceremony, one that is possibly destined to go down in history as the one where Avatar did not win best picture. It certainly won't go down as one of the more memorable, with little drama outside of obnoxious producer Elinor Burkett stealing the microphone from Best Documentary Short winner Roger Ross Williams, who won for Music by Prudence. Even Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin's jokes fell flat (except for a pearler about Christoph Waltz's Jew hunter having arrived in Hollywood at "the mother lode") and were seemingly reading off a telepromter and without their usually spot on comic timing.

Are they looking for jokes which are actually funny?

But it wasn't a total loss.

Memorable moments include:

- Neil Patrick Harris' Busby Berkeley opening number

- The dances to the original score nominees, the first bunch in years to actually be good scores.

- Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. presenting together, the only paring to achieve any sort of zing.

Tina Fey and Robert Downey, Jr. making with the funny

- Best score winner (for Up) Michael Giacchino telling budding artists to ignore the naysayers and that creativity is not a waste of time.

- A tribute to (American) Horror movies. Roger Ebert (in a live tweet from the show) called it "Shameless pandering to fanboys & girls." Accurate maybe, but it's still good to see them getting some love.

Christoph Waltz, due next to star in Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet

- Chistoph Waltz's "uber-bingo!" Was it ever even in question?

- Every cut away to George Clooney looking bored.

- The tribute to John Hughes. I've barely seen any of his movies, but the heartfelt words given by Matthew Broderick and Molly Ringwald, among others, make me want to.

Less memorable moments or moments memorable for the wrong reasons:

- Elinor Burkett's aforementioned mic-stealing incident.

- Jeff Bridges for best actor. Well deserved (and received with a standing ovation), but as George Clooney joked on the red carpet, "Well, he's gonna win, right?"

The Dude with his prize

- Avatar for cinematography? Virtual cinematography over the old-fashioned film of Inglourious Basterds? Tarantino must be flipping out.

- Sandra Bullock's Best Actress for The Blind Slide. Expected, yes, but with her winning a Razzie the previous night for All About Steve, one can't help but feel this is a newcomer vote for starring in a popular tear jerker. But too her credit she joked about it in her acceptance speech, "Did I really earn this, or did I just wear you all down?" Kudos.

Moments that made you say WTF?

- Precious' adapted screenplay win over In the Loop? District 9? An Education? AND Up in the Air? The first three perhaps were never going to win (though In the Loop is the most hysterically foul-mouthed linguisting masterpiece in memory), but Jason Reitman's sublime Up in the Air? That great film got no love at all. Precious' win however, did give screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher the chance to give the most heartfelt speech of the night.

A surprised and moved Geoffrey Fletcher

- The Hurt Locker win for original screenplay is more understandable, though I wish Tarantino had gotten more love for his dialogue heavy WW2 yarn.

- El secreto de sus ojos winning best Foreign Film over the favourites The White Ribbon and A Prophet.

- The double Twilight presenting teams pandering to the young audience. The at best polite applause when Martin pointed them out in the audience speaks volumes (though Anna Kendrick is wasted in New Moon and magnificent in Up in the Air. She's the most talented of the quartet, by far).

The boys from The Hurt Locker in celebration

Overall it was an evening with few surprises and, despite many expecting James Cameron's epic to nab Best Picture (instead winning Cinematography, Art Direction and - gasp! - Visual Effects), it was Kathryn Bigelow's night. Her intelligent and sweaty-palm-inducing Iraq war film The Hurt Locker was a deserving winner, but one still wonders if her ex-husband's blockbuster won't have more lasting significance.

You can find the full list of winners over on IMDb.

Review: Green Zone (2010)

Released March 11, 2010

Matt Damon on the prowl in Green Zone

They might as well have called it The Bourne Zone. Reuniting that franchise’s star and director (Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass), Green Zone is a tense thriller set against the still ongoing war in Iraq. While flirting with the war’s politics and the false justification for the U.S. lead invasion, it is first and foremost an action picture, shot in the director’s typically ragged, hand-held style. Haters of the Bourne sequels’ shaky-cam be warned.

The title refers to the international safe zone in central Baghdad that at one time was the home of the transitional government. Set around 2003, it is there we find U.S. soldier Roy Miller (Damon) on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. He begins to question his intel when his MET – Mobile Exploitation Team – fails to find any of the offending devices. Surprise, surprise. The military’s source, he learns, is only known by the name “Magellan”, and has leaked information to an embedded Wall Street Journal reporter, Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan). Local C.I.A. chief (Brendan Gleeson) also feels something is amiss. A machine gun rattle later and Miller finds himself an ally-deprived rogue on a quest for the truth. Sound familiar?

Say what you will about his frantic style, but Greengrass knows how to construct visceral action. His hard-hitting, quick cut realism is just as effective, in its own way, as The Hurt Locker’s slow-burning suspense. Closely resembling the standard man-out-of-his-depth-and-doesn’t-know-who-to-trust thriller, Green Zone fictionalises and condenses years of revelations and debate about the Iraq war into an easily digestible and highly-entertaining format.

Aside from its telling final shot, the film is not interested in judging the war’s legality, only that it is deplorable to deliberately deceive and manipulate. Miller stands in for those courageous individuals who are unwilling to simply accept dogma without question or justification. Early on a seemingly honest Iraqi citizen tells him there's a meeting of high ranking officials up the road. An ambush could be feasible. Despite the danger, Miller chooses to take him up on his suggestion, to which one of his subordinates responds: “Chief, we’re here to do a job, the reasons don’t matter”. “They matter to me,” he replies. I don't think he's alone with that sentiment.

DVD Review: Mao's Last Dancer (2009)

Released March 4, 2010

The elegant lines of Chi Cao (as Li Cuxin) in Mao's Last Dancer

It's a shame that Mao's Last Dancer has been barely seen outside Australia. Only garnering a release in Germany (oddly) and appearing at a few film festivals, this DVD may be the first chance many have had to see Bruce Beresford’s latest, a broad biopic of ballet-dancer extrodinarre Li Cuxin.

Aside from his dancing exploits, Cuxin became well known because of his 21 hour long detention at the Houston Chinese Consulate in 1981. An exchange student reaching the end of his term, Li had fallen for his adopted capitalist home (not to mention, his pretty girlfriend) and wished to stay. The communist Chinese authorities did not approve.

His story, from a difficult childhood in 1960s China, to his training at the grueling Beijing Dance Academy, to his subsequent stay in the United States, is related in his autobiography which became the basis for Jan Sardi’s (Shine) screenplay.

Dramatic and uplifting, it is an enjoyable but conventional rags-to-riches tale. Beresford is not afraid to tug at the heartstrings or enounciate the blatant themes of race, culture and ambition. But it’s also weak, without the conviction of thoroughly depicting the hardships enforced on him as a child.

That would perhaps have been a better film. As it is the melodrama of Mao’s Last Dancer is painted in broad strokes with touching performances from Joan Chen as Li’s mother Niang, and company director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood, Star Trek), a soft fatherly figure and champion of his biggest star. Everyone else, including Chi Cao as Li are just servicable, though his dual-language role and superb dancing ability impresses.

Cinematography Peter James gives the Chinese scenes a grimy, grainy quality which contrasts well to the colourful dance sequences. The film’s biggest weakness is the superficial love story between our hero and attractive dancer Elizabeth Mackey (Amanda Schull), which seems to exist solely to allow Li to play marriage card when the communist officials come knocking.