Review: Friends with Benefits

Friends with Benefits

Dir. Will Gluck

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 109mins

In 2010 director Will Gluck made the hilarious teen comedy Easy A, Mila Kunis broke out with psycho-thriller Black Swan, and Justin Timberlake showed real acting skill in The Social Network. Half a year later all three converge on Friends with Benefits, the second film this year (after No Strings Attached) to tell the story of friends who embark on a sexual relationship, only to discover it leads to emotional complications. Unfortunately this mingling of talented people has not produced anything of any worth. The idea of “friends with benefits” is hardly rocket science, yet Gluck and his three co-writers seem intent on being as dim-witted as possible.



Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

You know what? I could've talked about what was wrong about this terrible movie for a few hundred more words. The whole enterprise is just completely misguided and disingenuous. I mightn't have liked the film if it were nothing more than Kunis and Timberlake meeting cute and spending the next 100 minutes falling in and out of love and then back in again. Instead, the filmmakers went out of their way to mock the stereotypical nature of rom-coms before adhering to every single one of them. And it doesn't even stick to its (to use an American term) "red band" sensibilities. There's nothing particularly funny about hearing someone say curse words in the place of regular language. The lack of actual jokes would've been damaging beyond repair, but the rest of the movie is just as bad.



There got to a point where I was actually spotting all the bloopers and consistency issues the film had. A scene where the bed sheets shift positions between edits? A close-up of Timberlake appearing on the TV news as he's being rescued from the Hollywood Sign? Did they rig a camera to him? Or how about the scene where she says she didn't have time to shave her legs and he says he did have time to shave his legs and yet a close-up of their legs shows hers are shaved and his are not? And while they're not bloopers, I could not stop noticing the ridiculous toga parties these characters obviously thought they were attending whilst in bed. Take a look at this shot for instance:





And, okay, I'll give them leeway on the issue once or twice, but the entire movie is full of them. She routinely pulls the sheets up to her neck during the sex scenes and does anyone every actually do that? Or how about the magic mystery sheet that somehow found its way in the path of some rather important bodily movements that would've made sex impossible. It's like the improbably pool sex scene where Elizabeth Berkley thrusts against Kyle McLachlan's biceps for a new generation. The whole thing was just remarkably foolish. At least Bad Teacher, which I was in the minority of appreciating, had a go-for-broke lead performance from Cameron Diaz and, for a film that featured a plot about breast implants, actually showed breasts. Something's incredibly curious about Mila Kunis if she's willing to sign onto a film like this and yet wants to protect her modesty. Maybe she actually believes that scene where she tries to convince Timberlake's secretary that she's "perfect for Photoshop" and that she's a dog ugly heifer? Hmmm. And really? A man who runs a blog of six million monthly hits and DOESN'T know what a flash mob is? D- but bordering on F because it really is such a fail in so many areas.



You know what else I find amusing? When websites such as Yahoo make such glaringly obvious mistakes as this...





I don't seem to recall Mila Kunis ever being nominated for the Academy Award.

Review: Green Lantern

Green Lantern

Dir. Martin Campbell

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 114mins

It’s curious. The thing I kept thinking about most of all after exiting Green Lantern was not how especially bad it was – although it is. Very. – or Ryan Reynold’s marvellous physique – although it is. Very. – but, instead, how uniformly ugly everything is. Whether it’s the poorly-coiffed, heavily-bronzed actors, the dark acid-washed visual effects or the dingy soap opera sequences that make Kenneth Branagh’s Thor look like Shakespeare in comparison. Everything here is ugly. In fact, the only thing here that isn’t particularly ugly is Ryan Reynolds himself, although perhaps I was distracted by his abdominal muscles that are visible through clothing. Perhaps.



You want a plot recap? I honestly couldn’t give you one outside of there being this guy called Hal Jordon who flies jets in the military and he gets “chosen” by “the ring” to become the newest member of an intergalactic police unit. They’ve clearly been playing around in other sectors of the universe if they’d thus far ignored this planet. We need all the help we can get! Then there’s some story about a former something something becoming an evil something something that plans to take over the universe? Oh, and Peter Sarsgaard running around doing his impersonation of a fey Elephant Man and Tim Robbins looking like an outcast of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory doing their own version of Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want. I think it’s impressive I can recall that much.





Unfortunately, director Martin Campbell – a talented man responsible for two of the best James Bond flicks – seems to lack any idea of what is most interesting about his story. We barely get a chance to see any of the alien “green lantern corp” in detail, with only Geoffrey Rush’s fish-faced Tomar-Re (didn’t we already see this in Hellboy?) and Michael Clark Duncan as the actually-sorta-racist Kilowog. The location itself, the far away planet known as Om, is so horrifically lit that its images are barely visible. Maybe it’s just me, but when I go see a movie that purports to send viewers to planets in far off galaxies I’d rather they not look like a coal mine.



Back on Earth, meanwhile, we have to sit through a ridiculous sequence in which Uncle Hal must put his family at ease over a near-fatal plane disaster that – oh no! – had echoed his own father’s death via exploding air flying thingy. The love interest is played with vapid nothingness by Blake Lively who appears to have that unique acting talent of being able to cry without actually crying. My favourite bit in the entire film was when Lively’s Carol Ferris (what an ugly name) wipes a tear off of her cheek when there was, er, no tear to actually wipe away. That’s acting, folks! And then, of course, how about the night party scene where she shows up with her hair looking like a fly girl from In Living Color? Why the filmmakers decided to not give Angela Bassett her own super-power of enunciation is beyond me. She could talk that flying octopus of mud to death!



That someone as white bread as Ryan Reynolds gets to play a well-off, successful man whose inner virtues apparently far outweigh is outer rotten personality is probably the least offensive thing about Green Lantern. How about that ridiculous mid-credits coda that might as well began with “2 years on Green Lantern 2: Legend of the Mysterious Ga’zahoole or whatever”? I mean, there’s leaving the door open for a sequel and then there’s being so arrogant as to expect audiences will somehow show up for a sequel to an obvious dud of a movie just because you throw a yawnsome coda onto the end.





Oh sure, I admit to getting minor kicks out of seeing Ryan Reynold’s good looking mug and even better looking body plastered onto a big cinema screen, but a Google image search is equally forthcoming with the visual splendours. And, hey, at least that way he doesn’t look a ken doll with no genitals! I can’t particularly criticise the 3D since the wizards behind the scenes do well enough with what they were given for the post-conversion effort. Same goes for James Newton Howard whose score occasionally finds some rousing form amidst the cluttered scenery. The screenplay by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg occasionally comes out with an amusing line – I particularly enjoyed the one about having eyes in the back of your head – but their setup is rote and lacks rhythm. The ending is quite dunderheaded, really, when held up to the light of day for even moment. It’s all just a bit too shabby; not good enough in any legitimate way and not silly enough to truly embrace its ‘80s spirit. D+

MIFF Blogathon: Day 14 (Familiar Triangle Wars of Tyrannosaurus X)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

Familiar Ground
Dir. Stéphane Lafleur
Running Time: 88mins

A film of such little consequence that when I tried to tell fellow MIFF attendees what I had seen earlier that day the title of this film, and in fact much of the plot too, had mysteriously exited my brain. I had only chosen it as filler and it's brief 88-minute run time sounded like heaven for my 11am brain. Still, Stéphane Lafleur's Familiar Ground [En terrains connus] is quite an airless experience. It drifts along doing its own merry thing, never so much as raising the temperature of its cold, wintery Canadian backdrop. It never raises a sweat because it never does anything, or even attempt it, with any weight to it.

Francis La Haye and Fanny Mallette star as Benoit and Maryse, still dealing rather unsuccessfully with the death of their mother five years earlier. I only know this because that's what the MIFF guide tells me. The guide also tells me there's something about "a man from the not-to-distant future", but, in all honesty, I think I drifted off during the one minute he was on screen (one minute according to fellow attendee and blogathon-er Jess Lomas). Apart from a somewhat intriguing ending, there's just nothing in Familiar Ground to mull over. I can't even be enthused to use the title in a witty pun. D+

Innocent Saturday
Dir. Aleksandr Mindadze
Running Time: 99mins

Remember when I labelled Wasted Youth as worst of the festival? Well, step aside Wasted Youth, for Aleksandr Mindadze's terrible Innocent Saturday [V subbotu] is here to claim the title. Not just worst of the festival, mind you, but one of the worst films I have ever seen, period. It's a frustrating and muddle account of the Chernobyl reactor disaster as told through the eyes of some of the stupidest film characters you will ever lay eyes on. Why yes, the nuclear plant across the river is on fire and about to explode, but you know what? I need to shop for shoes! Or, even better, I need to join a rock and roll wedding band and play for tips until the wee hours of the morning. This all makes complete and perfect sense, doesn't it?

I could look up who the actors were in this drivel, but I'd rather not. All I know is that the lead actor looks somewhat like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Diego Luna and that I can't fathom why he would want to remain in the film's setting to try and save these horrible, retched characters. Outside of How I Ended This Summer I can't think of any more idiotic beings than these. The apparent love interest is, to put it bluntly, a dumb, pathetic shell of a real woman. Superfluous and superficial to the nth degree, I feel comfort in knowing this wicked character probably died a slow and painful death due to radiation poisoning. Same goes for all the rest, really. They're idiotic dolts and clearly all the years of living near a nuclear reactor has fried their brain cells into not wanting to evacuate a city on the brink of disaster. The MIFF guide tells me that this represents the complacency that nuclear powered countries seem to find themselves in (hello Japan putting nuclear plants on active fault lines!) but this reading is incredibly hard to decipher out from the nauseating hand-held cinematography and loud, incessant barking of dialogue. It's a disaster all right! F

The Triangle Wars
Dir. Rosie Jones
Running Time: 90mins

The world premiere of The Triangle Wars happened today at MIFF to an overwhelmingly positive response! What more would you expect, however, from a theatre full of viewers who are obviously on the same side of the filmmakers? I went into Rosie Jones' documentary The Triangle Wars not knowing all that much about the redevelopment of the St Kilda foreshore area known as "The Triangle" - I've never lived in St Kilda, nor do I ever visit there, so I didn't particularly follow - but now that I've seen this film I can safely say that I still don't know all that much because Jones and her collaborative producers have gone out of the way to present their film as biased as possible.

Now this was surely their intention all along, but I find it somewhat discouraging to find a documentary to be so blatantly one-sided. I sat there wondering what all the fuss was about over this triangle of land. I understood the objections by St Kilda residents, but I also started to consider the hundreds (thousands?) of jobs that the development would create, the business it would stir amongst the area and the tourism it would entice. Of course, Jones doesn't explore any of that, instead wishing to merely document the rabble raising that the so-called "UnChain St Kilda" action group caused.


Now, don't get me wrong - I more or less agree with the idea that giant malls would dilute the sunny charm of the St Kilda foreshore, but when presented in the manner that it is here I actually began to turn against it. The rally sequences have a sort of chest-thumping energy to them that sparks memories of my own protest attendances and there are some eye-opening talking head style interviews, but a bland television aesthetic - this will look much better on the TV than the highly-pixellated look that the cinema exhibition gave us - and lousy, dull narration (was it by Rosie Jones herself?) harm it greatly.

Almost everyone seen on screen in this documentary looks like the upper-class, privileged arty folk that I find so hard to relate to. It must be nice to just decide to become a council-member on a whim. Do these people even have jobs? The weird, creepy demonisation of the film's "villains" was also particularly off-putting, including a meanspirited and insulting slow motion take of one councilwoman dancing at a function. There was something that irked me about The Triangle Wars far more than it's rather inoffensive premise would suggest, but as audience members around me laughed and jeered as their enemies strutted about I couldn't help but feel there isn't much to the film for those who aren't St Kilda radicals. C-

Tyrannosaur
Dir. Paddy Considine
Running Time: 91mins

On day 11 of the festival I was privy to Peter Mullan's Neds, in which he had a small role as a drunk, abusive father. In Paddy Considine's directorial debut, Tyrannosaur, Mullan takes the lead role of a drunk, abusive man. It's a stretch, I'm sure, but he does it so well that we can forgive the typecasting. Thankfully, the film around him is equally impressive as Considine has written and directed this film with solid aplomb. Where it could have easily descended into true, honest miserebalism, Tyrannosaur explores the way damaged souls can connect through not only their collective anger, but through spicy humour and barbs of steel.

Starring Mullan and Olivia Colman as oddly connected souls - he a former abusive husband, she a currently abused wife - who help each other deal with the demons that dwell inside them. Colman is truly stunning here as Hannah and she tops it off with a climactic scene of dramatic power that tore my heart out and stomped on it, wringing tears in the process. Can the best actress Oscar campaign start right now, please? The film is beaming with compassion in the face of enraging violence with surprisingly clean cinematography by Erik Wilson, Tyrannosaur is a dark study, but it's dinosaur title is apt: it's a monster. B+

X
Dir. Jon Hewitt
Running Time: 85mins

"From the director of Bloodlust" is certainly an opening line that should spark wide-eyed fear in anyone, however I found myself curiously entertained by Jon Hewitt's lurid, sex-drenched tale of hookers on the run. I will be reviewing this in full at some later stage, but for now let me just say how much fun I had with X! It's bathed in flesh and neon with over-the-top flashiness to mask over the utterly ridiculous screenplay ("you're now a bowling ball!") by Hewitt and actor Belinda McClory (she was "Switch" in The Matrix!)

X features a great lead performance by Viva Bianca, wonderful cinematography by Mark Pugh as well as stunning sound design and music, plus electric editing by Cindy Clarkson. The Sydney locations are captured with glorious vividness and the nudity is frank and upfront. If the violence gets too much then, well, it is set in the underworld although any call of misogyny can be easily counterclaimed: these women get their own back! I had a blast with X and it's the best Australian film I have seen during the festival. B+

MIFF TALES
It can be amusing getting the reactions from others after a screening. I've been in the minority on a few occasions throughout the fest - including, to some degree, X which many seem to have tolerated, hated or moderately enjoyed - but the universal hatred for Innocent Saturday has been refreshing and unlike anything I've experienced so far this festival. I haven't spoken to a single person who liked it. Not even a little bit! I sat next to Greg Bennett of Sounds Like Cinema and we both let out exacerbated sighs are numerous point and once out on the street there was uncontrollable laughter in between loud proclamations of "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" Several others, including a stranger who waltzed over to myself and Jess Lomas after the screening, were all baffled by the degree of awful we'd just witnessed.

With only three days left of the festival, it really is sinking in that after Sunday I won't absolutely have to see three of four or (like today and tomorrow) five films throughout the day. I won't have to arrive home at some terribly late hour and somehow fit it blogging, eating, watching Masterchef (of course) and general relaxation. In fact, I'm surprised I made it through today so well with only some brief microsleeps during that movie I saw first that I've forgotten the title of again since I'd been up since 8am for reasons that I will explain later (it involves interviewing someone and WOW what an interview!)

And now it's 2:05am and I am so incredibly tired. Good night!

MIFF Blogathon: Day 13 (Once Upon a Time in Uruguay)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Running Time: 158mins

At 160 minutes, the first film I have seen by acclaimed Nuri Bilge Ceylan is certainly a long-haul flight of a movie. For at least two acts of Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia [Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da] I was more or less entranced. Featuring stunning night time cinematography by Gökhan Tiryaki the gorgeous look of the film is matched by buoyant performances by actors who wrap their tongues around the twisty dialogue almost with relish. The central story of the police driving around two men charged with murder as they try to find the location (amongst a countryside full of identical locations) of a buried corpse is handled with deft skill. The screenplay by Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal weaves non-sequitur conversations peppered with light comedy throughout that strikes a wonderful balance.



It's a shame then that Ceylan takes a different tact with the final third of the film and amps up the comedy. Shifting tones with the rising sun, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia ends up feeling somewhat disjointed with broken rhythms. A lengthy autopsy sequence at film's end, while a fascinating study of the sound editing craft, feels superfluous, although the very final moment is great. It's a hard film to observe, but ultimately a rewarding one. B

A Useful Life

Dir. Federico Veiroj

Running Time: 67mins

A tiresome, dreary and dull look at a Uruguayan cinema, A Useful Life [La vida útil] is as slow a snail's pace and features one of the most sour-faced lead performances I've ever witnessed by Federico Veiroj. What a load of garbage! There is so little to this film that I don't even know how to write it up. At less than 70 minutes I actually don't even know if this technically counts as a film, but a film it gets called. I mean, it was certainly made on film and features actors and there is music in the background so if that's what constitutes a movie then A Useful Life is a movie! Success!



Everybody walks around in this movie at such a slow pace and does their terribly menial jobs with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. By the time Jorge's playdo-faced cinema employee finally escapes the dungeon that is his career the proceedings become somewhat more loose and free-flowing, but then he's more just an idiot doing idiotic things. And do I have to mention the radio sequence? I know the whole scene is meant to be a joke, but good grief... A Useful Life is certainly in love with cinema - of that I have no doubt - but the filmmakers seem to have no idea as to what actually makes cinema so great. There's none of the innovation, energy, dynamism, explosiveness or sumptuousness that so many classic films have. In the end it just ends up as a forgetful nostalgia trip. Terrible. D-



A Useful Life screened alongside Louis Garrel's 44 minute "short" The Little Tailor [Petit tailleur]. This was a grinding faux-new wave film with dishclanger acting and idiot characters. I snoozed through a lot of it, but what I saw was flat. D





I also saw Beauty [Skoonheid], but can't discuss it right now. I really haven't the time this evening to think about it so hopefully I'll include it amongst one of the packages in coming days.



MIFF TALES

It was so great to see a nearly sold out crowd at this morning's 11am screening of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. It really does give one a peppy bounce at that time of day to see so many people who aren't seeing 60 films during the festival taking the time out at that horrendous time of day for an 160 minute European film. I found my seat right at the back, where I prefer, in an empty row and throughout the film's running time found myself in almost any position you could possibly consider to make myself comfortable. My knees don't work at the best of times, let alone when I've been sitting down for over 40 films in a barely 2 week period!

MIFF Blogathon: Day 12 (Falling for Wasted Tatsumi)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

Falling for Sahara
Dir. Khoa Do
Running Time: 81mins

Turns out there really is a first time for everything! Finally a Khoa Do film I actually like! I never saw last year's Mother Fish, but The Finished People is the worst kind of let's-use-non-actors-and-people-won't-notice-the-bad-filmmaking filmmaking and the less said about Footy Legends, perhaps the worst Australian film I have ever seen, the better. With Falling For Sahara he has assembled a charming cast of African teenagers to tell his rather sweet tale of refugees experiencing first love.

Following three boys who live in the housing flats of Flemington (the ones along the Upfield line for those who do or who have lived on that particular train line like myself) who all have eyes for a girl who moves in, albeit briefly, and whose stunning beauty has seen her scheduled to be shipped back to Ethiopia for an arranged marriage. Most of the characters here are thoughtfully written and even if the acting is a bit hit and miss - the young debut actress that plays Sahara, Mekdes Getachew, lights up the screen - the film is largely more successful than Do's previous films due to its combination of the sweet without the overt saccharine.


Despite an occasionally negative look at the life that refugees find themselves in, this actually gives it a unique place in Australian films. Never grungy and depressing in its representation of refugee life, it's ultimately hopeful and smile-inducing finale make Falling for Sahara a welcome addition to Do's career. Also of note to local AFL fans is that the film was partially funded by the Essendon Football Club and one of their players, the quite good looking Andrew Welsh has a small role as a footy coach. B+

Natural Selection
Dir. Robbie Pickering
Running Time: 90mins

One of the finest surprises of the festival by far is this delightfully funny film from debut writer/director Robbie Pickering. Rather than trading in tired quirk like so many American indie comedies, Natural Selection instead fills its thankfully short (perfect comedy runtime of 90 minutes!) with genuine jokes and, at key moments, sweet pathos. I'm not ashamed to say that I actually shed a few tears at the end of this film as the wonderful Rachael Harris - an actress that has mostly worked on TV and improv, but who is probably known by most as from The Hangover and Diary of a Wimpy Kid - realises her truest needs.

Natural Selection takes a great many potshots at religion, class and mismatched romantic comedies, but never feels like it's allowing a mean-spirited voice from overtaking the material. Harris is particularly wonderful in one of my favourite performances of the festival, revealing layers to this sad, lonely woman. Matt O'Leary, too, is good for many laughs as the son Harris' Linda never knew her husband had fathered. Natural Selection won seven awards at this year's SXSW festival and I can see why. I can only hope that it is allowed to venture outside of the arthouse that it's thorny subject matter suggests it could be relegated to. A-

Wasted Youth
Dir. Argyris Papadimitropoulos & Jan Vogel
Running Time: 99mins

There came a moment in the late stages of Greek drama Wasted Youth when yet another scene began of its dull lead characters boozing and skateboarding where I quite visibly and audibly sighed. My viewing partner turned, chuckled, and nodded in agreement. Earlier in the film he had awoke from his act one slumber, looked over at me and noticed that I, too, had drifted off into the land of forty winks. For you see Wasted Youth is the worst film of the festival so far. An absolute misfire in every way, enlived only by some interesting visual and music choices. Wasted Youth is a big fat dud.

Vogel and Papadimitropoulos' film follows two storylines that, as dictated by the laws of cliched screenwriting, must intersect by film's end. One storyline follows a husband and father who works night shift in his job as a police officer on the streets of a rowdy Greek town. The second storyline follows a group of teenagers as they traverse the city from one scintillating encounter to another. Many of these adventures involve girls, drinking, skating or sweating in the balmy Greek sun.


That the filmmakers thought that audiences really needed to be told that the youths of today (or, ya know, any day) like to rebel and drink and have sex and all sorts of dangerous stuff is not the biggest worry of Wasted Youth. No, the biggest problem is that there is no electricity to the film, no energy. It just flaps about from one tiresome scene to another, before finally limping to a ridiculous - and, might I say, offensive to the principals of storytelling - ending of indulgent "importance". Seriously? Another scene of these kids skating? Enough already! D-

Tatsumi
Dir. Eric Khoo
Running Time: 98mins

An animated biopic of a renowned manga artist, Tatsumi is Eric Khoo's ode to Yoshihiro Tatsumi who excelled in the art of gekiga manga. Despite it's stunningly gorgeous animation of various styles and forms, Tatsumi is an omnibus film of sorts that is diluted with each subsequent tale. It took me a while to actually figure out what on Earth was going on, but I know for certain that it opens with a wonderfully done World War II sequence that is evocative in its pained drawings (did the animation team take their cues from Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 for the Hiroshima bomb victims?). Unfortunately, later segments range from lovely to the dull to the downright uncomfortable.

Perhaps those "in the know" of manga and specifically Yoshihiro Tatsumi, but I suspect many others will find it as difficult to crack open as I did. C

MIFF TALES
I had a discussion this evening after Wasted Youth about the nature of applauding films. MIFF audiences are good at clapping for films, even if somebody involved in the creative process isn't there. They like feeling like the screening means something and so applauding their approval is, I guess, an extension of that. But as we discussed the curious nature of anybody applauding that woeful film we'd just seen, we recalled that nobody clapped after the extraordinary Martha Marcy May Marlene. Were people just too numbed by the experience to clap? I was all set to clap, but then nobody else did so I chose to keep my hands apart (wait, what?)

Speaking of creative people being in the house for their film, two of the cast from Falling for Sahara gave a Q&A afterwards and, curiously, it was the debut actress Mekdes Getachew that came off most natural of all. She could do quite well for herself in this business if she keeps that natural charm.

MIFF Blogathon: Day 4 (Yoko Ono Plastic Driving Morgue Attending Band)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

LennoNYC
Dir. Michael Epstein
Running Time: 120mins

This documentary about John Lennon's decade-long residency in New York City proved to be a very rewarding winner. Directed by relative newcomer Michael Epstein, and with permission by Yoko Ono to use unheard audio and unseen video, LennoNYC is an expansive and exciting documentary. I adored the various vintage videos of New York City as well as the fascinating Lennon/Ono footage that never quite becomes so in love with its subject as to lose sight of his foibles. Alas, thankfully, it's a loving put together film that shows Lennon off to the be funny, gifted musician that everyone says he was.

Thankfully, best of all, was the film's stance on Ono. Usually a figure of jest or abuse, all the participants who discuss her relationship with John do so in an affirmative manner, which is a relief - I guess since she is responsible for getting the film made then it was never going to be a Yoko Ono hate piece, but representations of her in the media are never positive enough if you ask me. It also helps that I feel the exact same way about this city as they did: They felt they were "on the same page as New Yorkers. We felt like New Yorkers." Amen, John. B+

Swerve
Dir. Craig Lahiff
Running Time: 87mins

This Australian thriller plays much like an ocker version of John Dahl's fabulous Red Rock West, and for a while is actually quite a rock solid affair. However, it also plays like a recent Australian film called Cactus. Unfortunately the end product is certainly better than that one, but lacks the punch of Dahl's western noir. Swerve is either not silly enough or not serious enough, but it does still have some entertaining moments.

The cast is great to look at and Lahiff's direction of a action sequences is great, but there's just not enough of them. For a movie called Swerve there are indeed a lot of cars, but not enough cars being hit my freight trains, ya know? C+

MIFF TALES
What began as a five film day very quickly became a two film day in a casualty like something out of Swerve. I unfortunately had to ditch Janus Metz Pedersen's war documentary Armadillo is favour of rest. While I, at first, felt much better today than the last few, by the end my head was pounding, my throat was rendering me unable to talk clearly and even my eyeballs hurt!

The biggest story of the day, however, was Pablo Larraín's Post Mortem. This film played in competition at Venice last year and won some effusive praise from the likes of Guy Lodge, but... yeesh! Post Mortem now counts as my first walk out of the festival. And after only about 45 minutes, too. While it's partly my fault - I dozed off and woke up during a scene of characters screaming and drooling and fucking and promptly went "right, that's that!" - but, yikes, from what I saw this was a maddeningly frustrating film. What any of it meant, I haven't the slightest clue. I went downstairs to The Forum Lounge and was quickly joined by Richard Watts and fellow blogathon-er Thomas Caldwell. Turns out, from witnesses who stayed the full length, that it was the busiest walkout film of the festival so far!

Has The Turin Horse screened yet?


Oh, and the fifth film? I feel no shame is admitting I dumped 33 Postcards for a press screening of Captain America. I chose correctly, I suspect. I continue to apologise if my writings sound awfully rushed and incoherent. I'm alive off of the smell of an oily rag!

Review: Stake Land OMG picture of a cute guy!!!

This was originally a review of Jim Mickle's Stake Land, currently screening at Melbourne's Cinema Nova, which follows a small band of survivors on the run from mutant/zombie/vampire creatures. There's a gun-slinger, a cute orphan kid whose parents are eaten, a nun played by Kelly McGillis(!) and a pregnant hitchhiker on the run from her serial killing uncle, Michael Myers - wait, what? The whole thing is rather silly and as I was writing the review the entire thing seemed to focus around one scene wherein the characters run from the snowy, mountainous terrain of the northern states of America into a glorious, mid-west cornfield. The scene didn't make a lick of sense and I wasn't particularly liking what I had written so, naturally, I scrapped it in favour of showing you pretty pictures of the film's star, Connor Paolo - otherwise known as Eric van der Woodsen from Gossip Girl.

I think we can all agree that this is a significant improvement.

Review: Cars 2

Cars 2
Dir. John Lasseter & Brad Lewis
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 113mins

That sound you hear is the screeching of breaks on the seemingly unstoppable Pixar express. After 15 years of peerless computer animation and cinematic magic, the Pixar juggernaut has come to a severe end with Cars 2. A follow-up to their 2006 charmer Cars, this year’s annual Pixar entry lacks everything that makes their movies so good. Missing the emotion, pathos and laughs (for anyone over the age of ten) Cars 2 places merchandising revenue over quality entertainment, with the film being excessive and overwrought in every department.

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It's not good. D+

Rubbing the Wrong Way

Quentin Dupieux's telekinetic car tyre movie Rubber was one title I was very eager to see after last year's MIFF. Unfortunately I missed it due to bad scheduling (on behalf of the festival and myself), but having just watched it thanks to Madmen's DVD release I can comfortably say I didn't miss a thing. In fact, after 40 minutes of watching it I went to Twitter and labelled it "unwatchable" before going to bed.

Returning to it today and it was pretty much just as bad as it was last night. It holds no water at all, in one ear out the other, and amounts to noting more than an overly extended Tropfest winner. It probably would have made a very entertaining Tropfest winner, too, but as a feature film it's 80 minutes of blah.


"In the Steven Spielberg movie E.T. why is the alien brown? No reason.
In Love Story why do the two characters fall madly in love with each other? No reason.
In Oliver Stone's JFK why is the President suddenly assassinated by some stranger? No reason.
In The Excellent Chain Saw Massacre [sic] by Tobe Hooper why don't we ever see the characters go to the bathroom? Or wash their hands like people do in real life? Absolutely no reason.
Worse, in The Pianist by Polanski how come this guy has to hide and live like a bum when he plays the piano so well? Once again the answer is no reason.
...
All great films contain some element of no reason."
With this introduction, writer/director Quentin Dupieux waves his magic wand and gives himself carte blanch to do whatever the hell he wants with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. 'It's the point, stupid!' This dialogue sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old who was eager to prove he knew a lot about movies by citing some famous movies and their directors (except, quite tellingly, Arthur Hiller who I guess doesn't have the same arty cache as Roman Polanski or Oliver Stone). Instead, he just comes off looking silly and more than a little childish. It's not like mainstream audiences are going to be watching Rubber anyway, so why not take inspiration from that other directing Quentin and cite some more esoteric titles?

This scene, a prologue of sorts, sets up the film in the wrong manner from the get go, anyway. Without it I may have been able to accept Rubber as just some sort of bizarre, prosaic stoner film, but by deliberately trying to give it a point of not having a point makes the whole thing a rather useless viewing experience. Dupieux is just making a movie with no point, and what's the point of that? There are movies that have free-flowing forms with little to no plot at all that still feel like more vital, energetic and importantly necessary, like they were born out of the directors need to tell that story, than Rubber. There's no need to think "what is he trying to do here?" because he admitted right up front that his movie is about nothing. And not in a humourous "it's a show about nothing" kind of way that is actually about something. It's just... there. A car tyre awakens by itself for some reason, it does some stuff and then the movie ends. Nothing to think about or enjoy here; It's just slow, repetitious and dull


It doesn't even have a deranged edge to it, with Dupieux - acting as cinematographer and editor - choosing to film it in a very chilly, straight-forward manner. It's easy to follow and boring when it should be messy and kinetically insane. It does have great visual effects, make-up and a wonderful pulsating music score by "Mr Oizo" and Gaspard Augé, but they can't save the film from being anything other than a director trying to cynically make a "hip" movie to get himself on the scene - something made all the more obvious by Dupieux's decision to film in English and set it in America, despite being a French filmmaker using French money - without having anything to actually say or anything interesting to show. D-

Review: Snowtown

Snowtown
Dir. Justin Kurzel
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 120mins

Revelling in its lower class miserabilism like a pig in shit, Justin Kurzel’s debut feature Snowtown - a dramatisation of the events surrounding the famed “bodies in the barrels” murders - is a dark, dank, depressing experience that does nothing but shove an endless parade of grotesquery in the audience’s face. Paedophilia, animal cruelty, incest, rape, incest rape, drug abuse, torture, homophobia, gruesome murder and, to top it all off, screaming bogans screaming at each other about screaming and stuff. Wanna feel dirty? See Snowtown!

Set in the years between 1992 and 1999, Snowtown plays out like a filmed nightmare. Director Kurzel along with his screenwriter Shaun Grant, cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, editor Veronika Jenet, sound design by Frank Lipson and a startling original score by Jed Kurzel, help create an ominous and oppressive atmosphere that suits the suburban fringe setting. Unfortunate thing is, people don’t actually like nightmares, do they? People wake up from them and try to shake the feelings that come as a result of them. Yes, Snowtown is a strikingly made picture, but that doesn’t stop it from being a numbing, repulsive experience.


Australia has been making this grungy, kitchen sink style of film for yonks. I don’t have a problem with them if they do something unique with it, but the makers fail to do so here. Snowtown’s obvious cousin is the far superior Rowan Woods drama The Boys, which was electric and so inspirational 15 years ago, but the subgenre of suburban bogans being miserable and/or unpleasant is overflowing with titles: West, Little Fish, Em4Jay, Last Ride, Candy, The Horseman, Romper Stomper, Blessed Bad Boy Bubby, Men’s Group, Mallboy, Praise, Head On, Tom White, Suburban Mayhem and Somersault all tread similar ground, right on through to obvious genre interpretations of Wolf Creek and The Loved Ones. It even traverses similar ground to iconic Aussie flick Wake in Fright, which investigated the often dangerous ways “mateship” can form amongst men. Some of these movies are indeed incredible, powerful pieces of cinema that have something to say about the ugly acts found within them. Others are not, and Snowtown belongs in the latter camp with them.

There isn’t anything fresh here; nothing being said is particularly revelatory. The cult-like charm that the murderous group’s leader, John Bunting, holds over his accomplices is never explained nor questioned. Kurzel has bled all the urgency out of this horrifying series of events by preferring to spend his time crafting painterly representations of gruesome acts in slow-motion. The lighting is delicately handled, the score is craftily inserted and the bogan gothic art direction is suffocating, but then when it’s all over and done with what have we learnt? That a group of bad men did some horrible stuff and then they got caught. Brief scenes showing Bunting’s methods of manipulation are lost amongst the repetitious scenes of people fighting and shouting in dingy kitchens lined with unwashed pots. The admittedly creepy storytelling device of allowing a murder to be represented by the victim’s own farewell tape recording is eventually muddled by its sporadic use.

All of this and Kurzel isn’t even particularly interested in the actual murders. By the time we finally see the infamous bank vault of Snowtown, the terror that it encapsulates has been all but castrated by the parade of vile acts that come before it. When the easily manipulated Jamie Vlassakis, who eventually went on to become the star witness in the court cases that followed, is seen sitting alongside the barrels that Australians have read about and seen in crime television programs they have been overshadowed by Kurzel’s unrelenting freak show of societal horrors.


The cast is filled with mostly newcomers and nonactors. Daniel Henshall is suitably malevolent as John Bunting, the killing group’s dictator, but Lucas Pittaway is not much more than a blank slate as the easily corruptible Jamie. For me it was Louise Harris, discovered in a supermarket by Kurzel, that gives the film’s best performance as Jamie’s mother Elizabeth Harvey. Much like Lynette Curran in The Boys, Noni Hazelhurst in Little Fish or Linda Cropper in Blackrock and Teesh & Trude, she does the downtrodden single suburban mother routine as if she knows it like the back of her hand. The film suffers greatly from her absence in the later half of the movie, as Jamie falls deeper under Bunting’s spell and Kurzel figures we don’t do much care about Elizabeth’s own bad decision. Unfortunately, nobody can wring a true filmmaking performance out of the threadbare screenplay, especially amidst all of Kurzel’s style stuffing.

There’s no denying that Snowtown is one of the most divisive local films of the year and I guess there’s something in that, but the Australian film industry only needs so many Alkinos Tsilimidos’ and Ana Kokkinos’, okay? D+

Road Train in Ten Convenient Images

Pardon the gratuitous nature of this entry, but I'm sure you won't mind.

Road Train, the Aussie horror thriller about a driverless truck running a group of tourists off the road, is not a good movie. It's one of those movies that seems designed for viewers to yell at the screen whenever a character does something silly like investigate a strange noise (which happens a lot) or walk around by themselves (which happens a lot more). It's full of all sorts of grisliness and a plot trick that was done far better in Triangle.

But, really, the main reason I didn't like it? Not enough of Xavier Samuel being sexualised! Clearly they needed more of Xavier in various stages of sweaty undress...










...and less of these annoying characters screaming at each other like a pack of wild banshees.


How silly of them, they should've known better. D