Past Programs
Comedy and Humour - 2008
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Choke
30/10/2008
When Choke first appeared in American cinemas earlier this year, a couple of critics complained that director Clark Gregg had not played this film sufficiently for laughs.
I laughed. I thought it bizarrely funny, but the laughter can become uneasy. It's adapted from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club where, if you remember, there was also a savage undertow of unease.
Choke is the story of Victor, a sex-addicted college drop-out, working by day to pay his mother's hospital bills in a ridiculous American heritage theme park where miscreant employees wind up in the stocks or have their pay docked for dropping out of early colonial idiom (You churl! You greasy f... knave...).
By night Victor works other scams. He feigns choking in restaurants, so those who come to his aid with a Heimlich manoeuvre will comfort him, adopt him and help pay his bills. And in between he goes to SA meetings, where the most unlikely people tell their stories.
His mother, Ida, ensconced in the hospice with a chorus line of even crazier old ladies, no longer recognises him. She has something important to tell Victor about who he is, she confides to her son, but he never comes to see her.
And so this increasingly crazy film unfolds, with moments of deep unease alternating with moments of complete absurdity.
Sam Rockwell plays Victor. His best friend Denny, played by Brad William Henke, is another sex addict and the pair endures the torments of the heritage park together.
But Denny is up to step four in the sex addicts program while Victor is still, if you'll excuse the expression, stuffing around. Then a young doctor begins to take an interest in his crazy mum. She asks a lot from him, and Victor's cynicism unravels.
Anjelica Huston is a joy to watch in this film. In recent years young directors have cast her as eccentric but here she is completely crazy, and Huston just goes for it.
Whether as a younger woman, teaching nine-year-old Victor how to scam teachers, social workers and foster parents; or as the spunkiest occupant of the dementia ward, Huston's Ida is a life force. Indeed, beside her Rockwell's wispy haired, cynical Victor looks pallid.
And this may be the weakness of the film. This should play out as the story of picaresque adventurers, mother and son, a kind of demented companion piece to The Grifters. But both Clark Gregg and Rockwell seem to be searching for a deeper meaning. Ida wouldn't have done that. She'd have just waited for it to come to her. And it would.
Although patchy, Choke is by far the most interesting and entertaining film releasing this week.
Just don't mistake it for a Jud Aptos, Seth Rogan sex, zits and coming-of-age comedy. This one's for grownups.
Trash and Treasure: Peter Castaldi on 'Dark Star'
09/10/2008
Dark Star was the very first feature that John Carpenter made, back in l974, after six shorts.
It's a space comedy, about four men who have been in a space ship for twenty years. Their commander is in the deep freeze, there is an alien on board, a computer called Mother, and a bomb which thinks it's God.
Top that. Carpenter was there long before Red Dwarf.
It's the choice of Peter Castaldi, who will be known to many of you as the once film reviewer for Triple J. These days Pete is part of the newly formed Australian Film Syndicate, distributing low budget Australian features for digital projection.
Babylon AD
02/10/2008
Director, actor, editor, producer, writer Mathieu Kassovitz was last seen acting in Amelie, but broke internationally with the French ghetto drama La Haine (which means hate). He's publicly disowned the studio cut of his latest feature, Babylon AD (based on the book by Maurice G Dantec), which must have hurt, as it cost a bomb in digital effects and nitroglycerine, and it's stuffed with highbrow thespians only a European director could attract to a Vin Diesel vehicle. All are wasted -- Gerard Depardieu as a caricature Russian mobster; Michelle Yeoh as a nun who has brought up a miracle child in a remote Mongolian convent; and the ever sexually threatening Charlotte Rampling as the high priestess of a new religion which seems to have something to do with cosmetic surgery and virgin birth -- an interesting combo but not one that is probed to any depth.
With his face like a squashed doughnut, and physique like the tyres of a huge truck, Diesel just doesn't inhabit the same planet as Rampling or even Kassovitz himself. Melanie Thierry, in the lead role as the preternatural Aurora, can spot a clone at 30 paces, but appears to be one herself, in the mould of a young Nastasia Kinski or Milla Jovovich. But the story is frankly ridiculous, and so is the film. The plot ends up pivoting on a feminist separatist conspiracy to colonise every soul on the planet (and create new ones without men), which is very post Da Vinci Code -- but this gangsta-rap, ghetto-is-cool, Blade Runner meets Neo James Bond action sci-fi film feels and looks very 1990s. Brutal nihilistic futurism like this was out of date, despite buzz words like global warming, locations resembling Grozny (or South Ossetia) and holographic touch screens to die for, long before Hollywood even got its mitts on it
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
02/10/2008
These days young girls are bombarded with bling, Paris Hilton, porn on the net, and marketing bent on snaring their very profitable demographic. So I was nervous about taking two tweenagers to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. My girls were dressed like supermodels, hell bent on shopping, and as excitable as puppies --spying the poster for House Bunny really got them going. No, I said firmly. That film will fill your head with rubbish -- which made them want to see it even more. Fortunately, Beverly Hills Chihuahua was a welcome surprise. It has the surface glitz of a film starring the Duff sisters, it's set in a fantasy world of filthy rich Americans with Mexican servants and acres of mansion and pool, but the story is both exemplary and FUN!
Chloe, expertly voiced by Drew Barrymore, is a spoilt ultra groomed Beverly Hills chihuahua whose hi-flying executive owner (Jamie Lee Curtis) dotes on her like the child she never had. It's a life of Manolo Pupniks, mink stoles, doggie cocktails, and beauty salons -- until Chloe is rudely dog-napped and smuggled south of the border. On the run she learns the value of loyalty and friendship over mansions, diamonds, and staff ... ooooeeerrhhhh with a wonderful cast of canine vagabonds, including an ex cop Alsatian, a lost tribe of Aztec chihuahuas, and one cute landscape gardener, this film really is ...cute. The three of us even cried...and then we shopped!
Bonneville
28/08/2008
A widow and her two best buddies take a road trip in her late husband's convertible, the Bonneville of the title, to deliver his ashes to her bitchy step-daughter. This golden-hued, daggy chic flic has 'made for cable' written all over it. While Jessica Lang, Cathy Bates and Joan Allen play their middle-aged suburban characters with good humour and affection, the story just doesn't do enough to pull the heart strings.
How About You
24/07/2008
Vanessa Redgrave is a geriatric ex showgirl, one of four hardcore grumps at an up-market old people's home with no loved ones to visit over Christmas. So they annoy the young carer on duty instead (Hayley Atwell)—who tries to loosen them up with a trip to the pub and a spliff. The script chugs predictably. Director Anthony Byrne delivers sublime shots of snow falling on autumnal leaves, but not much else.
Happy-Go-Lucky
26/06/2008
Sex and the City
05/06/2008
Sex And The City delivers on designer couture, female fantasies, and the odd nightmare (try wedding hysteria, and a committment phobe Mr Big). Carrie's three besties are still there for each other, come what may, still stubbornly hopefully loving men, and most importantly, having fun. this film is definitely smart and will make you feel terrific!
Interview with Stephanie Bunbury from Cannes
22/05/2008
Julie Rigg speaks to Stephanie about what's hot at the Cannes Film Festival.
Interview with Tony Rogers, writer-director, 'Rats and Cats'
15/05/2008
Director Tony Rogers reckons there's a lot to learn from his film's lead character Darren McWarren - a former Australian star of television soaps who had to flee Melbourne because of, well, indiscretions...
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
08/05/2008
I went to see Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day with high expectations because Frances McDormand, who plays the out-of-work governess Miss Pettigrew, has never let me down in a movie. Sadly, she is miscast in this 30s style comedy in which she is accidentally employed as social secretary (or what we would call life coach) to a ditzy starlet, Delyssia Lafosse, played by that extremely accomplished actress Amy Adams.
In the course of a day Miss Pettigrew has to sort out Delyssia's three boyfriends, her career and her love life.
It doesn't really jell, because the lead actors seem to be playing in different movies, and that's the fault of director Bharat Nalluri. It's a cozy DVD experience really but, heck, I enjoyed quite a lot of it, and I really wanted Miss Pettigrew to have her day, Watch for Shirley Henderson, the best British comic on the block.
Made of Honour
01/05/2008
A Manhattan casanova (Patrick Dempsey) realises the woman of his dreams has been under his nose all along -- it's his best mate (Michelle Monaghan) -- but he's only twigged now that she's marrying someone else. In a quirky flaunting of tradition, he accepts to be her chief bridesmaid, but while he's helping plan the wedding he starts plotting to win her heart.
These two are classic romantic comedy opposites. Monaghan is an odd amalgam of girl next door flirt and WASPish prude (she says -- without a trace of irony --that she's dreamed of her bridal shower since she was ten). Dempsey's the stubble-faced jock who likes to shoot hoops with his buddies and drives a vintage coupe (proof, I suppose, he's got an edge). Unfortunately I didn't buy them as a couple, and the script falls flat. Rather than a sparkling New Yorker romance, it plays like a collection of rejected gags from a Seinfeld episode.
Smart People
24/04/2008
Dennis Quaid plays Lawrence Wetherhold, a widowed professor whose approach to the world is sarcasm. Somehow he's raised his two teenagers, son James, a would-be poet who has fled to a college dormitory, and daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) who copies her father's intellectual snobbery. When the Prof breaks his leg after a ludicrous accident his shambolical brother Chuck moves in to chauffeur him. And the doctor in casualty, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, turns out to be a former student to whom Quaid gave poor grades. Mysteriously though, she likes him.
I had some hopes for this film about the redemption of a curmudgeon, especially with the delightful Ellen Page (Juno) as the snobbish daughter, and warm, goofy Thomas Hayden Church (Sideways) as Chuck. But it's a second-rate script and it's directed with such a heavy hand by Noam Munro, a former commercials director, that most of the characters drove me nuts. Quaid is so arrogant and Page so snooty I wanted to slap them both; there is no way I could believe Sarah Jessica Parker's character could be attracted to Quaid. Only Thomas-Hayden Church's Chuck has any warmth.
Look, I am not silly enough to believe that the only worthwhile movies are about likeable people. Often the opposite is true. But there has to be some sort of insight, and this has none. I hope Noam Munro doesn't direct any more movies till he's worked out what makes a good one
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
17/04/2008
A comedy in which Jason Segel gets dumped by his TV star girlfriend (Kristen Bell) for a preening, Cockney rock star (Russell Brand), then by sheer accident the three end up holidaying at the same Hawaii resort. Written by Segel himself -- I chuckled as he drowned his sorrows at the breakfast buffet and then cried himself to sleep. But I wasn't laughing long -- the film sags, it lacks an antagonist (Brand's rockstar is actually much too likeable) and when Mila Kunis arrives as the flirty, 'interested' resort concierge with the motherly wisdom it's stretching the male fantasy too far. I'm a bit over these comedies about hard-done-by slobby blokes and the gorgeous women who save them. This film needed to be meaner.
Global Haywire
10/04/2008
I don't think I'm giving too much away if I start with the last words of Bruce Petty's Global Haywire. They are spoken by the narrator, actor Tom Baker, and they are uttered with a kind of weary resignation. 'This story,' he says, 'is told with cartoons, because when it is told factually, no one believes it.'
These are poignant words, and they go to the heart of what Global Haywire is about, and what it seems to be trying to do. How do you account for the world as it has become? How do you represent its history and imagine how it might be otherwise? How do you show the mess we're in, and how we got into it?
Petty is a cartoonist, animator and filmmaker, and he's been wrestling with this conundrum for decades, on the page and on the screen. His first feature, Global Haywire, which is also called, in the opening titles, 'An Animated Discussion' and 'A Short History of Planet Malfunction' is, not surprisingly, a dense and hard-to-categorise work.
It's an essay, an exploration, a narrative, an inquiry, a parable, and it's made out of almost every conceivable cinematic material: of animation, archival footage, talking heads, actors, artworks, photographs, voiceover narration, music, sound, archival audio -- sometimes, it seems, all of them at once, jostling for space in the frame and on the soundtrack.
The organising principle is the notion of an international committee with a Mission Impossible task. It is set up to look at the phenomenon of what the film calls 'global haywire'. Its assignment is to examine the world and 'work out what keeps going wrong'. Although its brief is serious and vast, there's a generally comic tone to its deliberations. The committee is a motley crew: its chair is portrayed by Robyn Nevin, and its members include actors, cartoon characters and historical figures. It soon uncovers the image at the centre of the film.
This is the idea of the world as a machine, designed by a cartoon version of Leonardo da Vinci. He's building a craft that's described as a freedom machine, a vision created by technology and ingenuity, but teeming with inequalities, compromises, absurdities and disasters. It's a kind of aircraft, but sometimes this machine seems more like a boat, a Ship of Fools, or a Titanic divided into first class and steerage. And it's not actually flying, yet it is functioning and it's being used and abused.
Around this idea of the freedom machine of history and possibility, Petty assembles a range of faces, voices and images. There are talking heads, writers, journalists and commentators such as Gore Vidal, Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali and Noam Chomsky. There are students, drawn mostly from Britain, America and Lebanon, speaking about their understanding of past, present and future. Specifically, they talk about about political divides, about religion, about colonisation. About how the West understands itself. About Islam. About inequity. These are pithy and eloquent speakers, and the students often have as much to stay as the pundits. The voices of the young people, in fact, bring a generous and positive sense to the film.
The film is portrayed an animated discussion, but it's not really a discussion or a debate. It's not about airing opposing points of view or arguments.
But sometimes Global Haywire feels burdened by its structure: individual moments and utterances can be sharp or illuminating, but there's something a little awkward about the way it's been conceived. The committee is a bit clunky, and the image of the Leonardo da Vinci freedom machine is surprisingly constraining. Back as far as 1976, in his Oscar-winning animation Leisure, he has been crowding the frame, mixing images and drawings, reflecting on history and human folly. He draws and is drawn to absurdity, and he has created memorable and illuminating images of the world at work -- of systems and institutions in action, of the creaking, chaotic, illogical, improbably functioning machines that people create and are defined by. And those elements are still there; not in the overall structure of the film, but in individual moments of imagination or passionate, energetic exposition.
Lars and the Real Girl
03/04/2008
There are people in life who are so painfully shy they can barely cope with quite everyday encounters. But you rarely see their dilemmas explored on the screen. I think the last time I saw such a person was in Jane Campion's realisation of Janet Frame's autobiography An Angel At My Table.
Lars Lindstrom, played by Ryan Gosling, is one such pathologically shy person. He lives in a garage at the back of the frame house occupied by his older brother and sister-in-law, avoiding every overture from them to get him to come to dinner. He has a white-collar job where he can hunch over a computer and keep his interaction with fellow employees to a minimum. In conversations he can't avoid he hangs his head and wears a painful set smile while he edges away to safety. He works, he shops, he drives, he goes to church and, apart from that, just wants to be left alone. There is something very disturbing and distressing for him in social contact.
Then, one day, a huge package is delivered, a life-sized sex doll. His brother and sister-in-law (Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer) are staggered to find Lars on their doorstep, hair slicked down, asking may he bring his friend Bianca to dinner to meet them?
Bianca is half Brazilian, he tells them. And an archaeologist, now studying to be a missionary. She's not feeling too well at the moment. Her bags have been stolen. Could Karin lend her some clothes? Could she sleep in the bedroom in the big house?
The astonishing thing about this small film is its air of genuine sweetness. There is not a smutty line, not a note out of place. It ventures across perilous dramatic ground on a tightrope and miraculously makes it to the other side, without a false step. Lars is clearly delusional. But his reluctant big-guy brother and his already concerned sister are able to get Lars to take Bianca to see the town doctor (Patricia Clarkson), who is also a psychological counsellor. She very quickly twigs that Bianca is completely real to Lars. They cannot argue him out of this belief, so they had better go along with it.
In Bianca's company Lars is more talkative and outgoing than the townsfolk have ever seen him. He blossoms. One by one and group by group, the people in this small community begin to go along with Lars'a delusion.
There are some wonderfully observed scenes here, played absolutely straight. Screenwriter Nancy Oliver won her stripes writing for the television series Six Feet Under. There was considerable psychological insight in that series, and even more in this film, as we learn, little by little, about why Lars is how he is, and what he is reclaiming in the relationship with Bianca.
But the truly delightful thing about this film is its view of human nature, as the townspeople in this community, which could be somewhere in Minnesota not too far from Lake Woebegone, take on Bianca, and Lars. Is it a mass delusion?
No, not quite, but there is a considerable grip on what the Buddhists would call loving kindness in this town. Even in the church group.
You could talk about other stories in which men have fallen in love with their own creation: Pygmalion, Faust, My Fair Lady. Bianca isn't quite that. To my mind she's pretty bland, though she becomes more interesting as more and more townspeople befriend her.
Unlikely as it sounds, the most endearing quality about this film about a man and his sex doll is its winning combination of shrewdness, sadness, and innocence.
Trash and Treasure: Sara Dowse on 'The Three Caballeros'
03/04/2008
This week, we revisit one of the first Disney films to blend live action with animation. It's a visual treat, and it stuck in the memory of writer Sara Dowse.
The Three Caballeros has Donald Duck, the Brazilian parrot Jose Carioca and the Mexican rooster Panchito -- all Disney cartoon characters -- touring Latin America. It was made in l944, and at the time, there was fierce criticism of the film for its political subtext.
Now Sara Dowse, who was later to immigrate to Australia, grew up with the American film industry. Her mother was an actress, one of the many who was later blacklisted in Hollywood for her political sympathies during the McCarthy period. Her father was a celebrity lawyer.
Sara was six when she saw the film in New York, and she was dazzled.
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St Trinian's
27/03/2008
Long before Chrissy Amphlett strode out in her school tunic, cartoonist Ronald Searle invented the wicked schoolgirls. Then the British comedies of the sixties added sex, and a wondrous headmistress, Miss Fritton, played by Alastair Sim in drag.
How will the girls of St Trinian's play in a blasé new century where 12-year-olds do drink cocktails and every schoolgirl wears her tunic hoiked?
This remake, co-directed by Oliver Parker and Duncan Thompson, is slapdash, over art-directed, and slow to warm up. But once the hockey sticks start flying it becomes entertaining, largely due to the efforts of Rupert Everett as Miss Fritton, and Colin Firth as a pompous politician. Don't miss their final duet, 'Love is in the Air'. It's over the end credits.
The Dinner Guest (L'invite)
20/03/2008
Gerard and Collette (Daniel Auteuil and the delightful Valerie Lemercier) are a homely suburban couple thrown into panic when they must host a dinner for Gerard's boss to clinch a new job in Indonesia. But the sauve upstairs neighbour Alexandre (Thierry L'Hermitte) advises them on a complete makeover: clothes, apartment, conversation, hobbies -- to impress the boss.
Those who enjoy lightweight French comedy may be diverted by this film. Those who remember The Dinner Game may suffer déjà vu. But three fine comic actors elevate a predicable script.
Drillbit Taylor
20/03/2008
A comedy about a homeless con man (Owen Wilson) who passes himself off as an ex-soldier-turned-professional-bodyguard to three high school nerds who need protection from bullies. Wilson's made a career out of roles like this since his debut in Bottle Rocket -- the eccentric 'amateur expert': enthusiastic, obsessive, highly organised but, ultimately, a bit of a flake. He is passable in this but far from his best, and the rest of the cast is ordinary.
Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger
20/03/2008
A coming-of-age black comedy set in Adelaide about a 13-year-old Jewish nerd (Danielle Catanzariti) who experiences life beyond her exclusive private school cocoon when she befriends a rebel from a state school (Keisha Castle-Hughes) with a motorbike-riding mum (Toni Collette). This is in the mould of the sharpest American films about teens, like Rushmore or Heathers, but falls short. Esther's up-tight family -- replete with tense, stuffy meals, a brittle mother and a family shrink -- plays more like a cliche of middle class dysfunction than insightful satire. Even on a surface level the camera and art direction are overwhelmingly dull, taking away from Catanzariti's solid central performance. There's more verve in the title than the whole film.
Trash and Treasure: Mike Walsh on 'Gen Y Cops' ('Tejing xinrenlei 2')
20/03/2008
An unabashedly trashy Hong Kong action thriller made eight years ago and starring the now infamous Canadian Chinese star Edison Chen -- who made headlines a few months ago when his laptop was stolen and various pictures of him in bed with Hong Kong starlets were posted on the net.
Gen Y Cops is the choice of Mike Walsh, who teaches film at Flinders University and has a passion for Hong Kong cinema. It has Edison as a young cop on the trail of a computer hacker who was once his best friend. Now the hacker has stolen an American robot from an international convention. The FBI is on the trail as well, but hey, a certain honour is at stake here.
It's a romp, but under the glitz and the hair gel, says Mike, it has things to say about cross-cultural tensions and Hong Kong identity.
Run, Fat Boy, Run
06/03/2008
English comic Simon Peg is Dennis, a chubby loser who wants to win back the girl he left pregnant at the altar five years ago by entering in the London marathon and running against her new fiancé Whit, a smarmy American fitness fanatic (Hank Azaria). With Thandie Newton as the girl and Dylan Moran from Black Books as the best friend, director David Schwimmer has a lot of talent to work with. But the comedy seems toned down for a crossover audience stateside. Mild and disappointing.
Trash and Treasure: Penny Malone on 'Auntie Mame'
06/03/2008
Today University of Queensland film studies graduate Penny Malone on the 1958 Auntie Mame, directed by Morton DaCosta. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Patrick Dennis, it's about an orphan who goes to live with his free-spirited socialite aunt in the 1920s. Under her care he learns invaluable lessons as he watches her weather the storms of the Great Depression, love and loss. The character of Auntie Mame became such an American cultural icon of cheery, can-do optimism that the story has had various incarnations on stage and screen, including a 1974 film with Lucille Ball, but this version, with Rosalind Russell, is Penny's favourite.
Trash and Treasure: Matt Vesely on 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure'
28/02/2008
Continuing our series of Trash and Treasures where we invite in recent film school graduates -- Flinders university film graduate Matt Vesely has chosen the 1989 comic buddie flick Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, directed by Stephen Herek.
It stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as two high school slackers who spend more time on their garage band than their studies and now face military school if they can't pass their end-of-year history presentation. But a visitor from 600 years into the future arrives in a time machine, claiming he's a fan of their music and has a plan to help them. Travel into the past and meet the flesh and blood people from their history books. Here's Matt, talking to Jason.
Meet The Spartans
28/02/2008
Meet The Spartans is a spoof on last year's historical action epic 300. It's a comedy for the YouTube generation -- sight gags, short skits and bodily fluids -- peppered with homosexual innuendo and soaked with pop culture references. Not all of it works, but I loved the take on the pit of death scene when King Leonidis (Sean Macguire) kicks not just the Persian emissaries down the hole but Britney Spears (with baby) and the judges from American Idol. If that doesn't sound like a laugh-out-loud moment for you, you've been warned.
The Bucket List
21/02/2008
This is another one of those old codger comedies which presumably pay the bills for Jack Nicholson and in this case Morgan Freeman. Two men wind up side by side in a cancer ward. Nicholson plays a spoilt millionaire who's made bucketloads from his no frills private hospital chain (which is why he has to share a room in one of his own hospitals). Freeman is a garage mechanic who has put his kids through college, and settled for a disappointing marriage. They fight and bond their way through chemo and make a list of things they would really like to do before they die.
The best thing, possibly the only worthwhile thing in this film are the chemo scenes, as Jack Nicholson staggers through. There are some things in life so awful, as a friend said to me recently, you have to laugh. And Jack here actually comes up with some original if gruelling comedy.
The rest is entirely plastic, predictable and, as I said, shameless, down to the homilies. Bah humbug.
Talk To Me
21/02/2008
Don Cheadle plays Petey Greene, who left prison and got a radio gig in Washington DC in the sixties, having discovered he could talk the talk as a DJ on the prison radio. Black music stations were owned by white men in those days, and managed in this case by a buttoned-down black executive (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who hates everything the loud-mouthed Petey stands for.
The film is extremely entertaining, as Petey cons and scams his way into a job as a DJ on station WOL, and is caught up in some of the radical events of the times. Cheadle is a brilliant loudmouth, and it evokes the era well. Sadly, actress-turned-writer-director Kasi Lemmons forces the story into a standard biopic career saga, playing off the manager's ambitions against Petey's discomfort away from the streets. If Lemons had left the legend right there at the time of Greene's role in the Washington riots, it could have been a memorable film. It's still well worth a look for Cheadle's cheeky performance.
Dan In Real Life
14/02/2008
Dan (Steve Carell) is a widower who writes an advice column in a newspaper -- but none of his folksy wisdom prepares him for falling in love again, especially not with his brother's girl. He first meets Marie (Juliette Binoche) fleetingly in a bookstore and something ignites between them, then she turns up on his brother's arm at a family weekend at his parent's Rhode Island lake house.
A film-maker like Woody Allen would have explored this emotional pressure cooker with glee once, but the writing here isn't really for adults -- it's like an adolescent film with middle-aged characters. Carell, a gifted comedian, looks like he's been hung out to dry.
Definitely, Maybe
14/02/2008
A surprisingly entertaining romantic comedy in which Ryan Reynolds plays Will, an ad exec who decides to tell his young daughter the story of how he met mum, the same day he signs off on their divorce. But it's like a whodunnit, because we flash back to the nineties, and we see him dating three women, without any clue as to who is 'the one'.
What sets this film apart is the interesting subplot of Will's very Gen X journey, starting with him working as an idealistic staffer for Clinton in '92 and ending, many disappointments and compromises later, at the ad agency. I think Reynolds lacks the presence of a truly great romantic lead, but the three women (Rachel Weisz, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Banks) make up for that.
Trash and Treasure: Dario Russo on 'Turkey Shoot'
14/02/2008
Continuing our series of Trash and Treasures where we invite in recent film school graduates -- Dario Russo, who just graduated from Flinders University -- is talking about the 1982 Australian exploitation film Turkey Shoot.
Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, it's set in a fascist distopia in 1995 -- a society that puts its subversives into re-education camps. In one such camp, four inmates are chosen for a human hunt. They're released from the prison into surrounding jungle to be pursued by the camp's sadistic commandant, 'Thatcher' (Michael Craig) and his band of aristocratic friends.
Fool's Gold
07/02/2008
This romp stars Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson as a just-divorced pair of treasure hunters brought together for one last quest: to find the booty of a sunken 18th century ship, somewhere off the coast of Florida. They're bankrolled by a fruity old millionaire played by Donald Sutherland, but they have to compete with Ray Winstone's rival operation -- and he's working for a vicious local gangster. It's in the mould of Romancing the Stone, with the sexual tension between the lead pair smouldering away beneath the gags and the action, but it isn't as effervescent as it wants to be. Fair but not great.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
24/01/2008
This is a film I thought I would love. Jud Apatow and Jake Kasdan collaborated to write this satire on the musical biopic starring John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox. Reilly can actually sing -- he was really good in Chicago and we get a fair range here. But the film is a letdown: there are few funny moments and many more disappointing ones when it lapses from satire into simple pastiche. I liked Dewey in his Bob Dylan period, though. It will be worth a look when it comes on television, is all.
Juno
17/01/2008
Months ago, I went to Juno dreading what I knew was an American comedy about a pregnant 16-year-old schoolgirl. I could just imagine the industrial strength teen jokes, the tears, the happy ending.
Even though I knew it was directed by Jason Reitman, who made Thank You For Smoking, I was grinding my teeth. I was wrong.
Juno is a delight. She's the sort of kid who wears flannel shirts, says sharp things and doesn't take easily to authority. There is at least one in every class of 16-year-olds.
Here she's played by the young Canadian actress Ellen Page, who has a sure touch with timing and great emotional clarity. Juno is not at all a mixed up teen; she's likeable, well centred, and intellectually sharp ;maybe a bit of a know-it-all.
She's just not quite emotionally ready for all this. Poor Juno. It was her first time.
But she decides to have the baby. She finds the adoptive parents for it. Her own parents are supportive. She just has to get through the next nine months, right?
Well actually she has to grow up. And in observing, getting close to the pair who will adopt her baby, (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) Juno will grow up.
It's a film which will take you to some unexpected places. And the jokes come thick and fast. Diablo Cody's screenplay is fresh and original. Treat yourself.
