This week I watched two science fiction films and got me thinking
It
started with the sequel to Avatar, which I got curious about because
the original film was a cultural phenomenon that led to a brief flurry
of 3D movies.
I liked the experience of 3D, possibly because it
made me sentimental about the time I saw Creature From The Black Lagoon
as a small child.
3D worked well with the alien landscape of the
Avatar movies and there were films like Life Of Pi that I regretted not
seeing in the cinema to enjoy the effect.
However, it always
seemed like the 3D novelty wasn't going to last and I was aghast that
the local Roxy Theatre in Leeton spent tens of thousands of dollars
investing in it.
Cinemas had largely abandoned the format by the
time the sequel to Avatar arrived and I'm curious whether there will be
any 3D screenings of the third film in the series.
One thing I
liked about the original Avatar story was the way it contained elements
of Metropolis, particularly the use of a robot to infiltrate resistance
to capitalist industry.
The titular avatars are attempting to
support mining on the alien planet and the sequel takes the colonial
narrative into the sea, where it presents a version of the whaling
industry.
It's kinda grim, given how whaling persists today, but the audience gets to cheer the big fish smashing boats.
The next film I watched was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which is a Luc Besson film I had missed.
He's a director who would probably have been cancelled for various reasons if he was American.
There's
a curiousity about the themes in his work for me, since I first
reviewed Leon The Professional and thought the relationship between that
character and a girl was also unlike the material from Hollywood.
Valerian
is a natural successor to the successful film The Fifth Element, which
again has a big age gap between the central characters, and in many ways
I thought the recent film was more polished and better paced.
As I reflected on the two films I watched this week I found myself admiring the sci-fi elements from Valerian over those in the Avatar sequel.
Besson's
film had so many more wow moments, where I'd shake my head at the
imaginative twists, and it was surprising to see Herbie Hancock in there
too.
Afterwards I read Wikipedia to see what I could learn and was surprised to read
the French director had been influenced by the first Avatar film:
Then I read an interview with Besson where he criticised Hollywood movies for being too dark.
It prompted me to reflect on how much angst appears in American stories, and I appreciated the fun I'd had watching Valerian.
France has a great reputation for film and sometimes
I find myself wishing that Australia had stronger quotas for local
content, because our film industry has diminished in recent years as US
productions gain tax-breaks to produce their blockbusters in our
country.
There are many qualities of our local stories that I wished could be represented in more movies.
Another
film I watched this week was Two Hands, which was called an Australian
version of Goodfellas but really deserves to be recognised without that
US lens.
After years of enjoying Bond movies it looks like the brand has been undermined from within
That's the key news in the resolution of the squabble between the Broccoli family, whose production deal oversaw all those great films, and Amazon Prime, who thought they bought ownership of the franchise with the MGM catalogue.
It is sad to see that in real life the billionaires win, given that Amazon Prime is owned by an increasingly villainous-appearing member of the megarich who has undermined journalistic integrity and pointlessly flown rockets at great environmental cost.
I'm surprised more hasn't been made of this outcome, particularly after Bond was killed off in the last movie.
The one thing that might persuade me otherwise is if they now develop a decent series that explores how Bond was recruited by MI6, possibly drawing on the long history of spies being drawn from elite British universities to reveal how blindsided that country is to recognising merit outside of socioeconomic demography.
If there's one thing that I like about Donald Trump it has to be his enthusiasm for The Village People
I expect he also responds to the upbeat energy in their music which, aside from tempo, often uses composition tricks like minor key verses to make those major key choruses really pop.
It reminds me how 'Gloria' by Laura Branigan was used by Alan Jones, the conservative radio "personality" who opened his show with the song but defined himself as a disgrace for agitating for violence in the lead up to the Cronulla race riot of 2005.
Anyway, before we get into that sort of ugliness behind the tunes, who can't help but be moved by the Village People's well-crafted hits?
The sight of him dancing to their gay disco music something that I find myself enjoying about the recently re-elected US President.
I am of the option that it takes cultural forces like the Village People to raise a child and will share my own here.
When The Empire Strikes Back arrived at cinemas in 1980 (or maybe 1981 in Australia), I was seven years old.
That film doesn't remain in my memory for reasons that I'll explain, but it was impossible to avoid the impact of George Lucas' franchise through my childhood.
Many, many hours were played with figurines in the likeness of characters from the Star Wars universe.
In fact, I recall getting my first lesson about sex from watching my cousin acting it out with a Princess Leia figurine.
Before getting to the disco, I remember the triumphant feeling of leaving the first Star Wars movie about three years earlier.
While I would've been four I remember ascending the stairs from Canberra's Civic cinema with a feeling of excitement.
It was the same screen where I saw the original James Bond movie Dr No around the same time.
Maybe I'd had a birthday, because I came into possession of a Han Solo hand-blaster that I put into my little orange lunchbox and remember pretending to be the famed British spy while being babysat.
So when the sequel to Star Wars arrived a few years later I was enthusiastic to see it.
However, I wasn't alone.
The first opportunity to watch the Empire film came while I was being babysat by my aunt, who lived in Sydney.
All through my youth the movies released would be staggered and it wasn't something I really understood until I was writing film reviews while at university.
There was a limit on how many screens could show a new release film that was determined by the number of physical copies of the movie.
So films would arrive in Australia and screen in the state capitals, like Sydney, before moving on to the regional centres, like my hometown of Canberra.
The new Star Wars movie was hugely anticipated and, when my aunt asked about seeing a film, quickly became the focus of our plans.
I think we might've gone to the cinemas in George Street and joined the queue leading toward the box office.
At the point of buying tickets where we learned there was only one available and three of us needed seats.
The next screening was going to be too late for a seven- or eight-year old.
Since we had travelled into the city and didn't want the trip to be wasted, my aunt and her friend asked what else was showing.
I don't know what the options were but they bought tickets for Can't Stop The Music.
Although I've seen the film a number of times now, I still remember how quickly my disappointment shifted as Steve Guttenberg roller-skated through New York streets singing along to 'The Sound of the City'.
It would be a couple of years later that I gravitated toward the Police Academy movies from that familiarity with Guttenberg, but it's interesting now to see his resemblance to Jacques Morali.
Morali was the producer who developed The Village People concept and shaped their material:
The film somehow manages to make the story quite wholesome and Americanising the role of Morali by making him Jack Morell, as well as heteronormative with the addition of a love interest played by Valerie Perrine, who I recognised from Superman.
While Princess Leia might've acted out those early lessons in sex education, it was the pneumatic way Perrine's breasts appeared to float in a hot tub in The Village People movie that might have been the moment that I knew I was straight.
It seems ironic in hindsight that a camp movie celebrating gay subculture gave me this personal insight.
Can't Stop The Music is a musical biopic that reflects a version of history through the lens of what was considered palatable for a mainstream audience at the time it was produced.
This is to describe that the film fails to capture accuracy, but as a musical shows the kind of fantasy where characters burst into song and sets change to show desires beyond the scope of reality.
It's the kind of energy and representation that offers relief for those who are unhappy and reflects a kind of delirious enthusiasm totally in line with the crowds I see surrounding Trump.
Even though there's a dissonance between the increasingly overt homosexuality that a contemporary audience recognises in The Village People and the conservative Christian ideology that's defined the US Republican movement since around the time that the film was released.
It's that dissonance which defines our post-truth and "fake news" era, where so much doesn't make sense while explosions of colour (or colourful rhetoric) provide distractions.
Just as the film Can't Stop The Music glossed over the details that defined its origins to sell more records for The Village People, we're seeing their music continuing to be used by businessmen to dazzle audiences.
The
popularity of the biopic can be traced back to the first feature-length
film, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). It feels as though in recent
years this genre has gained pace and I suspect that it is the format
through which an increasing audience engages with historical narratives,
which make sense of contemporary times.
When I
was at university my interest in studying history came from the film
studies major that carried me through my first undergraduate degree. The
unit called History On Film forced me to sit through Forrest Gump
(1994) and allowed me to write an essay on The Elephant Man (1980),
which was an early David Lynch movie that impacted me as a child. That
latter film was analysed through the lens of narrative to show how it
referenced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein story, for example.
Storytelling
has always drawn on the significance of other narratives to give
meaning and resonances and there are so many ways, from explicit
acknowledgment through to allusions or Shakespeare's famous plays within
plays. Soundtracks are also employed to great effect and there are
songs that have become cliches in movie trailers from overuse in
creating meaning. The musical biopic uses these techniques with the
added benefit of blurring diegetic and nondiegetic songs, through having
music performed by characters transformed into overtures.
An
aspect of storytelling in contemporary films, particularly those
influenced by Hollywood, has been a preoccupation with structure and, I
think, biopics often suffer from feeling like they've put a lifetime of
experiences into a mold like a biscuit-cutter to give them a certain
shape from the pacing of emotional beats. Academy Award-winning
screenwriter Michael Arndt has discussed a structure that is widely used
beyond biopics to create a satisfying ending through linking character
and contextual arcs —although, I'm not going to elaborate too much on
that here.
It does a good job of
explaining the outrage that accompanied Dylan's move to electric
instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, although I get the
impression from reading reviews from younger viewers that this is
possibly not as remarkable these days. In the film you already see
Johnny Cash performing with accompaniment from an electric guitar.
In
some ways I think the film's focus on concluding with Newport fails
to achieve those arcs mentioned earlier for character and their context.
Maybe this is part of what led one reviewer to write that the film
"lacks purpose," which surprised me as I found it gave me a new
appreciation for what Brian Eno calls the "scenius" -- where the milieu
of an artist becomes a focus, rather than the individual.
In
the cinematic version of Dylan's origins a good deal of the events
shown include those roles played by Joan Baez and a Sylvie Russo, who is
largely based on Suze Rotolo and she was significant for politicising
the folk singer. It's hard to imagine that a song like 'Blowin' In The
Wind' could've pushed his career along without either of these women.
It's their place in the film that prompted me to write, as I think the
equivalent of the Frankenstein moment in The Elephant Man is a bit early
on where Dylan and Russo/Rotolo discuss Picasso. The film could have
shown that Dylan made his own visual art in the 1960s, but I feel the
brief reference to the famous Spaniard is highlighting how we view that
painter's career through the influence of his muses.
A
Complete Unknown is a fun film and I found the music particularly good.
It left me feeling like clapping throughout! In particular I thought Ed
Norton brought a great dad-like energy in his role as Pete Seeger.
There weren't many people at the screening I attended, so go see it soon
if you want the cinema experience.
Watched this yesterday and it's the first film in a while where I've wanted to watch it again almost immediately
The story follows a dopey dude into an unbelievable conspiracy and ends with a most unlikely conclusion for an American film.
Lots of laughs and also lots of codes, which may or may not reveal the identity of The Dog Killer if you look further into the film online
If you liked "Inherent Vice" or Coen brothers' comedies like "The Big Lebowski," although this one draws more heavily on Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and "Rear Window" than the brothers' Raymond Chandler influence.
It's got a heap of adult-oriented material though, so not suitable for a general audience.
Director Warwick Thornton has been going from strength to strength in his filmmaking
In some ways it’s only a short distance from the contemporary tragedy of Samson and Delilah to the 1920s setting for the neo-western Sweet Country (which comments on Australian race relations with a plot like something John Ford would direct), but he’s quickly established himself.
Thornton has a confidence in his control of what he shows viewers, particularly in action that happens offscreen, and his style seems almost disproportional to the work he has produced.
With The Beach Thornton puts himself at the centre of a powerfully understated experience that appears ridiculously cinematic for a six-part television series, thanks to his son Dylan River.
It opens with Thornton arriving at a remote beach shack on the Western Australian coast and ends with him leaving, while the supporting cast amounts to birds, an animal (spoiler?) and some tasty sea creatures.
Aside from occasionally cursing at the challenges of the setting, his addresses to a group of chickens serve as a device for monologues as Thornton reflects on his life.
I had difficulty forgetting that there would have been a crew watching from outside the frame in those moments, but did not doubt his skills cooking sumptuous fusion meals from a few jars of supplies and meat from the surrounding landscape.
It’s remarkable that the economy in the storytelling required only a couple of scenes showing city life, especially a collection of beer glasses, to give a context for his reasons to escape to the beach for about two months.
Much of the pleasure in watching this holiday is the foraging and cooking he undertakes, but the deeper character development is told with symbols like the flashy jacket he takes off and doesn’t put on again.
In Thornton’s productions the Australian landscape becomes a leading character and The Beach will have you wanting to find your own isolated beachside shack, although this one was apparently purpose-built.
From the opening scene we learn the central character, Charlie (Logan Lerman), has been working through a personal issue as he writes a letter to an anonymous friend
Then he’s beginning high school and struggling to fit in, before he befriends a couple of older students and soon has a social life that involves partying with their cohort.
A memorable scene is when he first meets Sam (Emma Watson) and the camera takes Charlie’s perspective to see her face lit with a halo from the nightlights at a football game.
It’s soon clear that he is attracted to her, although part of that interest seems to stem from the kindness and compassion she offers after learning Charlie’s lost a close friend.
While this film is described as a coming of age story, it’s interesting that threshold is not crossed through the loss of virginity.
The key plot development sees characters develop a sense of maturity through recognising the impact of trauma.
However, the film isn’t as heavy as this theme might suggest and is remarkably restrained in the way it handles the material.
Director Stephen Chbosky developed the screenplay from his own novel and the film maintains a quick pace that uses a variety of music to express character and mood, both within scenes and accompanying them.
The soundtrack is excellent and enhanced by Michael Brooks’ understated score.
I’ve watched this a couple of times now and found a lot to admire in the use of camera angles and flashback scenes to convey the internal world of the characters.
Watson’s acting carries a lot of the film, as she is required to cover a range of emotions, while accompanied by an energetic performance by Ezra Miller as her stepbrother.
There were many points where I thought I could guess the direction of the film only to be wrong, and I really enjoyed being surprised.
Booksmart (2019) is a teen comedy that begins with a familiar setting and then gently pushes against expectations
The two lead American characters are friends who, facing graduation, realise they’ve sacrificed high school romance in the pursuit of grades and a place at college.
If the film was made a decade earlier someone might say “YOLO,” but it’s way more contemporary.
That the characters are named Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) is the first step away from the usual male perspective, then Amy’s interest in same-sex romance is another difference to so many teen comedies.
Early on there’s a scene where Molly is seated in a toilet cubicle and overhears fellow students insulting her. It’s a scene that’s been done elsewhere, yet the first time I’ve seen it delivered in a unisex toilet.
Given the current debates about gender fluidity in Australian high schools, this film recognises the current generation are more adept at discussing sexuality than their parents.
Before the end of the film there’s an inferred romantic relationship between a teacher and a student, as well as some drug use, yet Booksmart doesn't make a moral judgment.
Despite the gross-out-style humour and sexual gags, the film has a sweet sentiment as the characters realise how mistaken they have been in their malicious gossiping about fellow students.
Olivia Wilde’s debut shows remarkable strengths in her direction, particularly the pace and a diverse supporting cast of authentic characters. She also includes good visual jokes in onscreen details.
As it neared the ending, I had a thought that 'Destroyer' (2019) was a kind of remake of 'Bad Lieutenant' (1992)
It’s not that simple and not quite as harrowing, but Nicole Kidman rivals Harvey Keitel in her performance as a bad cop.
As Detective Erin Bell she shows occupational hazards, including alcoholism and distant family and corruption.
Part of the appeal of watching this film was the frumpy twist on the usual icy Hitchcock-blonde-type role Kidman might normally inhabit. Here that aloofness is like a wounded animal.
Another part is Karyn Kusama’s direction, which draws on a long tradition of noir-style LA police thrillers.
When I read Kusama had a mentor in John Sayles*, I better understood the seamless way her films can shift from past to present (particularly 'The Invitation' (2015)).
The uncertainty of whether a scene is past or present is part of the storytelling in 'Destroyer' and, like many detective movies, the audience follows the lead character in attempting to get to the centre of a mystery.
In this case the detective is bleary-eyed and trying to piece together fragments from between gaps in memories, like 'Memento' (2000).
The result is somewhat disorienting but the strength of Kidman’s character kept my interest and the sense of how stresses hollow-out a stone made her performance memorable.
8/10
* Sayles’ film 'Lone Star' (1996) has a wonderful style that uses pans between scenes to underscore the relationships between characters and their histories.
'The Merger' is a local film that's now finding a new audience on Netflix and I regret not seeing it with an audience and sharing their recognition of the Riverina
The plot follows interpersonal politics of a small-town football club as they resolve grief and regret, as well as avoid losing their identity.
Their season is saved by recruiting new players from the migrant community, after recognising their diverse skills and desire to be part of the town.
Working with a predictable collection of characters, this film is a nuanced representation of masculinity as the plot follows a series of emotional arcs framed by sporting scenes.
'The Merger' is really creative in showing character development and kinda conflicts with memory of a news story from that region, where a team was taken to court for urinating on the main street of a neighbouring town.
It was also disorienting that Ganmain was often filmed from the opposite side of the train tracks, so there was an element of going into a 'looking glass' and seeing a reversed image of local landmarks.
I realise now the crux of the film is inverting local binaries by comparing experiences of personal loss. This film has an incredible heart, as well as mild and good-natured humour.
I haven’t watched so many movies but The Platform is probably my favourite release this year
The film follows Goreng as he makes sense of a "Vertical Self-Management Centre,” a kind of prison built into a tower where inmates are randomly assigned to floors for 30-day periods.
A distinctive feature of the setting is a sort of dumb-waiter that delivers meals from a kitchen at the top, with each floor having limited access to food as it descends.
Inmates at the top get first pick, while those at the bottom either starve or resort to desperate means to survive.
Described as “social science fiction” this film is a lot of things.
Horror elements sit within a theatrical setting that ultimately reveals itself as a metaphor for trickle-down economics.
This monster movie breaks convention early on by showing the creature in broad daylight
Wikipedia says 'The Host' was inspired by a local article about a deformed fish with an S-shaped spine caught in the Han River; and an incident in 2000, when a mortician working for the U.S. military reported he was ordered to dump a large amount of formaldehyde down a drain.
There are few scares and little gore, because the real monsters are people and from the opening scene you learn they're often American doctors.
The film includes many characteristics of Bong Joon-Ho movies, such as slapstick in unlikely moments, as well as a dark turn in the second half.
A couple of chase scenes in 'The Host' could be drafts for those in his later film 'Okja' (which benefits from having a much bigger scope in the storytelling) but this film is remarkable for what they've achieved with a small-ish budget.
A mother seeking to save her son from prison offers great motivation for the main character in this film
Bong Joon-ho's ‘Parasite’ brought him wider attention (as well as Academy Awards) and I've found his earlier films interesting for the same focus on class struggle, as well as subversive characters.
There's a Hitchcock influence in ‘Mother’ but, where Alfred was constrained by the Hays Production Code, Bong has opportunity to really challenge an audience's expectations.
The first half of this film is kinda goofy and then the investigation into the case starts to explore darker territory.
Pitched as 'Godzilla' meets 'Lost In Translation' this is a film that links a small town in Canada with Seoul, South Korea
Watched this last night and, while it's not awesome, it's interesting for being an entertaining mash of genres.
I'll try not to spoil the surprises but you can tell from the trailer that it's a monster movie with comedy, possibly romantic comedy and Anne Hathaway is a good comic actor.
The male characters aren't very well developed, which is a shame because I think it's the audience that would benefit from the serious theme that's developed in the film.
My family seemed to think it was "alright" but, a bit like the Godzilla movies that prompted me to think about geopolitics, I think this film does a good job of putting a thoughtful theme into an entertaining package.
Recently watched Inherent Vice a second time and thoroughly enjoyed it
Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's novel sits between Chinatown and The Big Lebowski, with many of the familiar Chandler-style LA detective plot points.
While there's some ambiguity about the femme fatale, it's got the mess of threads that reveal themselves to be deeply entangled and a sinister (former) psychiatric facility.
The post-'60s setting thrives on paranoia, and I mentioned previously how the film triggered an unsettling moment for me.
Anderson's movies are often grand and, while some of them have felt a bit sluggish for me, I think Inherent Vice should be regarded as a classic.
There are many amazing scenes and incredible performances, as well as revitalising the American Noir genre in a way I haven't seen since The Last Seduction.
Funny thing happened when I was prompted to list my favourite movies of the last decade
My friend Ben is a Movie Nerd and he posted a list of the top ten movies of the last ten years.
I agreed with Inception (2010) and Arrival (2016) and maybe even Fury Road (2015) but, as I looked over lists and considered my own selection, I soon realised my tastes had shifted.
The movies that were most meaningful to me were those I'd watched over and over with my children.
When I saw Scott Pilgrim... (2010), for example, I couldn't wait to share it my son because he would recognise the way it works to include the visual language from videogames and comics.
Even Arrival has recently become elevated because my daughter asks to see it, although I also like the way it incorporates the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as that influenced me in first-year university.
And Whiplash (2014) has gone from being a film that's inventive in the way it presents music, to being a film I'd admire for the influence it had on my son -- who now plays drums after watching it a dozen times or more.
So I realised that, where I'd once been a film critic and would work to objectively justify the films I liked, I now subjectively like films I've come to appreciate after repeated viewings to meet the demands of my children.
As a result, I think the best movie of the decade is Chef (2014).
I've lost track of how many times I've watched this small film made by an actor, writer and director who has shaped many blockbusters, Jon Favreau.
One of the things I've come to enjoy is the way the titular chef rediscovers the joy in his craft through leaving restaurants to start a food truck.
I can't help but wonder if that's also true of Favreau, who has handled films with intimidatingly large budgets but brings his celebrity friends in to play minor parts in this wholesome family film.
My kids, I think, love how the character of the son helps the chef with social media.
I love that I get to put my arms around them on the couch when we watch it.
It was in my last year of primary school that I became obsessed with Japan
This was informed by an interest in samurai and ninjas but probably laid the groundwork for my haiku writing earlier this century to present day.
Aside from exploring martial arts, reading James Clavell's book Shogun and learning to love eating rice, one of the highlights was watching movies by Akira Kurosawa.
My mother saw the ANU film group were screening his work and kindly drove me to see The Seven Samurai.
I sat next to a couple who seemed to be at the film solely to kiss each other but hardly noticed.
In hindsight I can appreciate the skill of his filmmaking, it held the attention of a boy raised on television cartoons for around three hours of black and white storytelling.
The fight scene at the end is still epic.
However, I've also come to appreciate the influence Kurosawa had on other films.
George Lucas has spoken of the C3PO and R2D2 characters being inspired by two peasants in The Hidden Fortress, and the video below shows other influences from that film.
And when I realised the Italian westerns my father liked were remakes of Kurosawa, I became more interested in them.
This week I tried to interest my kids in watching Yojimbo, priming them with the Youtube videos that make Jedi of Kurosawa's ronin.
They didn't watch much of it but I got a new appreciation for the film.
First, the soundtrack is awesome. I've had the track covered below in my head for days.
Second, the scene with the dog holding a human hand is clearing referenced in my favourite movie of all time: Wild At Heart.
And, finally, my interest in film studies has been stirred by the observation that the formerly fascist countries of Italy and Japan both began making westerns in the decades after World War II.
What does it say about the countries that these films focus on a stranger coming into a lawless town and setting things straight with violence?
