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Tuesday, 30 June 2009 |
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 In cinemas Thursday [PG]
Directors: Carlos Saldhana & Mike Thurmeier
Runtime: 94mins
"When you’re on a good thing…" as they say. And we all know how clever "they" are. In this case, they have opened the wallet for another instalment of the Ice Age franchise, and who are we to argue? This is eminently safe territory. After all, Ray Romano and Queen Latifah are on board. I can’t speak for Queen Latifah – she has an amazing voice, and I’ll concede she can act, but her performances in Taxi and Bringing Down the House put me off for life – although everyone loves Ray, right? (Well, actually, I find him really cloying and forced, but I’ve heard that other people who like him, so what do I know?)
In No. 3, Romano’s mammoth Manny has the jitters in the lead-up to the birth of his first child with Ellie (Latifah), and no precaution can be left unimplemented, to the despair of ‘the herd’ – you know: the animals saved by Manny and his mates from certain destruction in previous episodes. But Manny’s mates are feeling a little left out among all the pre-birth fuss, especially the brainless sloth Sid (John Leguizamo), who is already distressed at the news that the disillusioned – and kind of unfulfilled – Diego (Denis Leary) is planning to sharpen up his sabre-teeth and move on in search of more exciting climes.
This all leads Sid to undertake an unwise adoption of three very large, apparently abandoned eggs. The resulting calamity on hatching threatens the herd, and endangers Manny and his mates as they set off into a strange underground tropical paradise to rescue the hapless Sid. I’m sorry, I have to say this: it’s a slightly ridiculous plot, and we’re also talking about a world where mammoths and sloths can talk, but squirrels and dinosaurs cannot, so why by pedantic? But then, I was freaked out about the talking autos in Cars, so what’s new?
Of course, this is a Fox production, so there are very few risks taken. As a result the laughs are all there, and those looking for a little British humour can take heart in Simon Pegg’s fearless Buck, who isn’t afraid to let truth interfere in the telling of a good story. For mine, however, I’ll always be happy to watch the dialogue-free adventures of the single-minded Scrat (Chris Wedge), and his new love interest Scratte (Karen Disher). Does an acorn have to stand in the way of true love? Perhaps not…
***
TIM MILFULL  Be first to comment on this article
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Tuesday, 30 June 2009 |
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 In cinemas from Thursday Jul 2
Director: Glendyn Ivin
Runtime: 100mins
Last Ride may be a road movie about a father and son, but that dismissively easy summary doesn’t do justice to its powerful drama. Hugo Weaving plays Kev, a petty criminal on the run with his young son Chook, played by Tom Russell. Kev and Chook – those are quintessentially Aussie names and this movie, with its wide open spaces and endless dusty roads, probably couldn’t have been made anywhere else.
Weaving gamely loses himself behind tattoos, stubble, VB tinnies and ockerisms like reckon and maaate while Russell is the kind of unselfconscious child actor you quickly forget is acting and who never relies on a cute look to get through a scene. Hopping from one stolen car to the next, the two of them flee from an ambiguous crime that is slowly hinted at through flashbacks as they trek across South Australia. Those flashbacks are also used to fill in an imperfect history of the two that still seems idyllic compared to their current lifestyle, composed as it is of sleeping on benches and eating stolen food. Moments of genuine tenderness between the two are isolated between stretches of danger and bleakness. It’s like Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, only instead of the apocalypse there’s a much more personal disaster haunting the characters and driving them on.
Kev is a complex character whose flurries of violence are usually followed by squalls of regret and apology, who obviously loves his son but knows on some level that he’s in the running for a mug that says World’s Worst Dad. When his son asks why he went to prison, Kev’s response is to ask which time he means. He’s manipulative, vengeful and he hurts everyone around him. Against the odds, Weaving manages to find just enough humanity in Kev to make us sympathise with a character whose actions are often detestable, for which he should win an award. Also award-worthy are director Glendyn Ivin’s pacing and sense of place. The entire movie meticulously constructed; it feels literally flawless.
Last Ride is sometimes a harrowing experience, exploring a family dynamic that goes beyond dysfunctional, but doing so without sermonising or demonising. It’s a dynamic that some will doubtlessly find extremely resonant. While it’s about familial love and the bond between father and son, it’s also about realising that sometimes that bond can do more harm than good and when it should be broken.
*****
JODY MACGREGOR Be first to comment on this article |
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Tuesday, 30 June 2009 |
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 Screens exclusively at Palace Centro from Thursday Jul 9 [G]
Director: Luc Jacquet
Runtime: 94mins
March Of The Penguins director Luc Jacquet brings us another narrative of the natural world in the breathtakingly filmed The Fox & The Child, although one with a personal resonance for the filmmaker, based apparently on his own childhood experiences with a wild fox.
The Child of the title – played by the pixie-ish Bertille Noël-Bruneau, who looks like a tiny, freckled, ginger Björk – lives in a picturesque alpine location with her parents (who we never see), and one day spies a fox hunting for food on the edge of a forest. Enchanted, she returns day after day, hoping to entice the fox closer. She succeeds, and in doing so begins a playful friendship that leads her to encounters with wolves and bears, deep mountain caverns, and a greater understanding of the relationship between humans and wild animals.
First and foremost, The Fox & The Child is a film for children – a simple tale told with extraordinary clarity and a genuine sense of innocence and wonder. No other humans – beyond the hand of a hunter on a rifle’s trigger – is seen in the film beyond The Child. Animals however, enjoy a much greater amount of screen time – from badgers to snow-voles, hedgehogs to salamanders, Jacquet’s experience as a wildlife filmmaker is put to very good use.
The film is no documentary though, and dramatic scenes link the moments of quiet wonder, including a surprisingly thrilling chase scene when a lynx decides The Fox looks like a tasty morsel (cats chasing dogs? Madness!) There isn’t much time given to realism (The Child’s accidental overnight stay in the woods after some cave exploration results in her being grounded for only a week. Most parents I know would probably move to the city if their kid went missing in a wildlife reserve with several species of predator wandering about), and the gradual tameness of The Fox becomes more and more like the wish-fulfilment fantasy of a child. There’s no real depth to be found; the lessons are simple, and the English narration by Kate Winslet – while perfectly serviceable for the under-10s – will eventually start to make adults feel like they’re back in pre-school being told a story by a visiting member of the royal family. Another distracting blow is the poor French-to-English dubbing of The Child’s regular one-sided chats with The Fox. If Bertille sees the English version before she grows up, she’ll probably develop a complex about having an imaginary speech impediment.
Despite those complaints, the wildlife and nature scenes are filmed in such glorious widescreen – the camera soaking up all the beauty of four seasons in the French Alps – that it’s hard to remain unmoved by the sights on screen; all of them refreshingly CGI-free. Some kids may be bored by the lack of whiz-bang flashiness, but children of a certain temperament with a curiosity about animals will adore this movie – after all, who wouldn’t want to have their own real live fox buddy to wile away the summer with?
***1/2
TOPHER HEALY Be first to comment on this article |
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Tuesday, 23 June 2009 |
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 In cinemas from Thursday [PG]
Director: Anne Fontaine
Runtime: 110mins
Coco Avant Chanel tells the rags-to-riches story of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel (Audrey Tatou). It follows her from the orphanage where she and her sister are abandoned by her father, to the cabaret bar where she sings the song that gives her that nickname, to the tailor’s shop where she works as a seamstress, to the château where she associates with the wealthy and finally to Paris where she becomes a fashion designer. Along the way, Chanel attempts to find her place in pre-war French society where her only options seem to be being a seamstress or being someone’s mistress.
She’s also torn between two lovers, the degenerate French officer Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde) and English business tycoon and polo player Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel (Alessandro Nivola). It’s interesting to see the Englishman portrayed as the exotic one, surrounded as he is by stereotypical, boorishly extravagant French fops. His comparative simplicity speaks to Chanel’s preference for elegance and her distaste with French women’s fashion – tight corsets, hats that look like cakes and flouncy white dress-trains. She’d much rather dress like him, in blazers and polo shirts.
Pursing her mouth – this is as serious and still as Tatou has been in any movie I’ve seen – she rejects her era’s fashions to make her own clothes by taking scissors to the outfits of the men in her life in some of the movie’s best scenes. She wears pants, refuses to ride side-saddle and generally does all of the things women do in period movies to show how forward-thinking they are, only it’s all true. In liberating herself from corsets she happens to invent modern French chic and the little black dress as well as bringing about the flapper look of the 1920s while she’s at it.
However, Coco Avant Chanel sidelines this story about changing fashions and attitudes in favour of a love story. It ends in the early days of her rise to fashion goddess and empire founder; this is ‘Coco Before Chanel’. It’s one of those biopics like Walk The Line that focusses on the early years of its subject’s life when it’s all young love and rising ambition, at the expense of later struggles and more complicated issues. Half of her story goes untold in favour of another love story. Fortunately it’s a good love story, well-performed. The costumes, appropriately enough, are excellent.
***½
JODY MACGREGOR Be first to comment on this article |
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Tuesday, 23 June 2009 |
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 In cinemas from Wednesday
Director: Michael Bay
Runtime: 147mins
Michael Bay’s first Transformers movie exceeded the admittedly pretty low expectations most of us had for a big-budget marketing exercise based on toys, but the sequel has to contend with the fact that the bar has now been ratcheted up. He’s not competing with Pokemon: The Movie any more, he’s competing with a movie that actually didn’t suck.
Set a couple years after the first movie, Transformers 2 finds Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) heading off to college, trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) – who, let’s be honest, is mainly here to bend over and drape herself on a motorbike – and lead a normal life that doesn’t involve any more invasions by giant alien robots. Meanwhile, the Autobots have teamed up with the military to hunt down the last remaining Decepticons on Earth, who make cryptic references to ‘The Fallen’. Cue giant alien robot invasion.
Transformers 2 repeats one of its predecessor’s failings by spending so much time with its human characters that many of the robots never feel like anything more than cool-looking action figures. In particular, the irrelevant new computer hacker Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) seriously outstays his welcome. Even those Transformers returning from the first movie sometimes lack personality, and with the influx of new characters some are hard to tell apart unless you’re eight years old and already own all of the toys. Adding to the confusion, Bay keeps spinning the camera around its subjects, making it tough to see what’s going on or enjoy all of the otherwise frantic and exciting action.
The new Transformers who do stand out are the comic relief characters, and they are pretty funny. In particular the two Autobots who talk like hillbilly wiggers are hilarious (and voiced by Tom Kenny, AKA SpongeBob SquarePants). I didn’t catch their names, so in my head they’ll have to stay Jedbot and Cletustron. Those who grew up with the robots in disguise will be pleased to see updated versions of characters like Soundwave, Devastator and Jetfire to spread the warm tingle of nostalgia through your memories of the 1980s.
Although Transformers 2 is something of a jumble, and it drags out the set-up in favour of rushing through the climax on its way to the inevitable opening for a third entry in the series, there’s enough bombast and spectacle for the kind of action blockbuster it is.
***
JODY MACGREGOR Be first to comment on this article |
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Monday, 22 June 2009 |
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 Screens exclusively at Palace Cinemas from Thursday [MA15+]
Director: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Runtime: 84mins
Jack Charles, the subject of this genuinely touching documentary, is one of Australia’s unknown legends. Aborigine, thespian, homosexual, heroin addict, and burglar, he has lived a life characterised by the crossing of borders. He’s a difficult man to define, and to Courtin-Wilson’s credit, Bastardy is not a film that attempts to do this. It is, rather, a compassionate document of Charles’s life – in his own words – that brings us into the world one of the most inspiring and endearing men ever captured on film. That might sound like an overstatement, but if you think so, you obviously haven’t seen Bastardy yet.
Shot on a variety of 16mm, Super 8, DVCAM and HDV, the film looks (appropriately) like something of a collage as it traces the events of Jack’s life over a period of six years. He spends a lot of time roaming – on one occasion, as he is being driven through a particularly affluent suburb (which he has regularly burgled) – he remarks: "Believe it or not, I own this. I’m patrolling my land." He inspires people on the street with spontaneous song and guitar. He gets sporadic work on film and television sets with some Australia’s most respected performers. He robs houses, almost certainly to finance his heroin habit, and we see him shooting up on a number of occasions. These confronting scenes do not portray a pathetic individual who has failed to adjust to society. Instead we see a man with the courage to live his life, truthfully to himself, and yet in defiance of societal norms.
We learn that Jack is a member of the Stolen Generation and that he was raped repeatedly while in state custody. When he tells us about his one and only love – an adoring man from his youth who was in fact the first person to say "I love you" to him – your heart will melt completely. The strength he exhibits upon being released from a 12 month jail term is astounding, taking it completely in his stride. The wisdom, sincerity, and thoughtfulness he casually expounds are mesmerising. That this is all set to a soundtrack featuring Warren Ellis, Oren Ambarchi, and CosoRosie makes it even more enchanting.
My only criticism of Bastardy is that it didn’t feel long enough to me. Though it seems to suspend time for its duration, I wanted more of Jack. He never outstays his welcome – quite the opposite. I really can’t recommend this film highly enough. Please take the time to get to Palace Barracks and see this in all its glory on the big screen while you can. This is real Australian cinema.
****½
ADAM DODD Be first to comment on this article |
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