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dir: Mike Nichols
I'd rather put the cover of Closer in the review than any picture of those vile people
It’s not about the masterpiece Joy Division album that Courtney Love and probably some of you, your uncles or your mums lost their virginities to. It’s not about the Nine Inch Nails song that made the phrase ‘I want to fuck you like an animal’ part of popular parlance. But it is about fucking. Specifically, it’s about the way that the need for sex brings people together and destroys them. It’s about the way in which honesty causes more heartbreak than the cruellest lies. And it’s about what sad creatures we humans truly are.

As a four-hander, with four fairly well-known actors, the film continually betrays its stage origins as a play. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t exactly kill my mother over the prospect of getting enough cash to buy tickets to get to the theatre on a Friday night, but I don’t necessarily dislike movies that come across as stagey. I love decent acting and good dialogue, so a movie which is all dialogue isn’t a problem for me. Those that hate talky gabfests now know they can avoid this film like the plague. And the rest of this review, presumably.

I didn’t necessarily like this film. This is a hard film to like, and that’s not because of the presence of Julia Roberts. It’s hard to like because it’s pretty depressing. Depressing isn’t bad when it’s Schindler’s List or Requiem for a Dream, but one doesn’t usually expect to feel like opening their wrist and neck veins when watching something that’s packaged as a cluey romantic melodrama. Then again plenty of people feel like opening a vein in lieu of watching Julia Roberts ever again.

In a sparsely-filled cinema, I could see several couples that had come along expecting something quite different from what they actually got. Two couples walked out. That’s not to imply that there was any Dario Argento-type action involving someone getting stabbed, eviscerated and strangled all in the same scene. I think they were bored, mostly. I didn’t find it boring per se, but by the same token I didn’t find it all riveting. The best bits are the nastiest, all the same, and any sweet bits are undercut by the knowledge that people are about to fuck things up in the worst way.

These kinds of films like to purport to being an honest look at male-female relationships, or any relationships for that matter, peeling back the layers of ego and self-interest to reveal naked, raw torment lurking under the skin of the most in control characters, but really, it’s a bit pretentious. Actually it’s very fucking pretentious sometimes. That doesn’t mean these films are without merit. The characters don’t have to be overly down-to-earth or mundane to be ‘real’. They seem real, and they speak and act realistically when in a similar situation to what you might recall or imagine yourself to be in; you start squirming because you know what they’re talking about. And I had several moments like that during this film. It probably says more about me than it does about the film, but at the very least I can say that some parts of the overall story resonated with me, which is fairly rare. Those of you that regularly inflict my reviews upon yourselves (you fucking masochists) know that most films have little if any impact upon me, whether I like them or not.

dir: Oliver Hirshbiegel
The man himself, who is now, and for all eternity, trapped in a Jewish deli where they never get around to serving him
To a lot of people it might seem redundant making another film about World War II, because for those of us not born in the 80s, other than JFK's assassination, the Vietnam War and Abigail's breasts on Number 96, no event had as profound an impact upon the last century as WWII did, and there is no shortage of movies or tv stuff devoted to the occasion.

Even if people don't know the details regarding Uncle Adolf, his life and death or the frightening power he once held, they know at least that he is one of history's nastiest villains.

So who needs another movie about the downfall of the Third Reich? Maybe Holocaust deniers, anti-semites and warmongers need to have versions of these films made and have ye olde worlde VHS copies fisted into their various orifices. But the rest of us think we know all there is to know about it.

Even if Downfall isn't necessary, it's still damn compelling. A film that successfully captures and gets across the surreal atmosphere of Berlin towards the end of the war has to be vital viewing for those with the time, patience and inclination.

dir: Joshua Marston
So there's a downside to the cocaine industry, you say?
Ah, drugs. Drugs are great, drugs are good. They’re fun, they let you sometimes have a great time, and they make inanimate objects, surfaces and other people seem more interesting than they actually are.

I’ve heard that they have a downside as well, but frankly I can’t see it. Drugs are simply wonderful. In case you think I’m talking about the wonders of modern pharmaceutical drugs and medicines, think again! I’m talking exclusively about illegal Class A drugs. The ones that cost a fortune and make awful people very wealthy. They also garner you a dirty cell and a cellmate who calls himself “The Stallion” if you get caught selling or smuggling them, but that’s a small price to pay, surely compared to the bountiful and constant fun they can bring.

Maria Full of Grace is a movie about two main topics: a teenage girl called Maria (played well by Catalina Sandino Moreno), and the way that drugs sometimes gets smuggled inside human receptacles into the United States from Colombia. You wouldn’t have thought it, but it’s a harsh and dangerous process, and the people who control the trade are thoroughly vile individuals who are as likely to kill you as say “Good Morning Captain” to you if the mood takes them.

dir: Clint Eastwood
My, what a muscley back you have.
Old Man Clint. It’s hard not to love him, especially when he makes films as good as this. Many will see this purely as an exercise in Oscarbait, but I disagree. I think Clint’s made plenty of films (I think about 25), has received a shitload of praise and awards over the years, and doesn’t need the added hassle of having to tailor everything to that end. I think he just likes making movies, especially since he’s 75 and isn’t really on the celebrity carousel for the column inches in the supermarket mags.

Lucky for us, he’s pretty good at it. He’s made a stack of duds as well, don’t get me wrong, but his great films more than make up for it. You can tote up Pink Cadillac, Absolute Power, Firefox, Heartbreak Ridge and those orang-utan movies as evidence of his crapness, but then my rejoinder has to be Unforgiven, White Hunter Black Heart, this here film and maybe Mystic River from the year before. If you take into consideration the great films where he just acted as well, it looks like an incredibly accomplished body of work for one man.

Gong Fu

dir: Stephen Chow
Awful lot of people falling over for no real reason
Who? What? What the fuck? Huh?

Easy. Calm down. Breathe. Relax.

So you may not have heard about the so-called follow up to Shaolin Soccer by Stephen Chow. Unless you’re in Melbourne I don’t know if you can even see it yet unless you wander down to the Chinatown cinemas in the middle of the city’s Golden Triangle (Russell, Bourke and Swanston Streets). And since according to my sources it’s the last Chinatown cinema still operating in Australia, until it starts playing in the arthouse cinemas in a few month’s time (since Sony snatched it up), it may seem a bit pointless reviewing it when those few people who might be interested in seeing it don’t really have the option. Unless they get a pirate copy from someone who looks dodgier than the guy behind the counter at a sex shop.

dir: Kerry Conran
There is no tomorrow for you guys
Kerry Conran had a vision, God love him. This is a man who had a genuine ambition. Ambition is not unknown in Hollywood, to be sure. But this isn’t a case of a guy whose ambition is only to make a film, or to get wealthy, or to fuck high class prostitutes. He had a bunch of ideas for making a very particular film, and he’s been striving for over ten years to get it done. Finally, in the form of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, he’s achieved his goal. There may have been pitfalls and compromises along the way, but in the end he brought his unique vision to the screen, goddamnit. And for that he deserves to be commended.

It’s not a particularly unique or original vision; in a way he’s doing little more than what George Lucas did decades ago when he used his memories of Saturday matinee serials and Amazing Stories-type books and comics to come up with the Indiana Jones and the Star Wars stuff, to the ecstasy of nerds the world over. And sure, more recently many of the same visual and thematic influences turned up, incredibly enough in the recent Pixar treasure The Incredibles.

It is, on the other hand, resolutely his own take on all those elements, which he uses to come up with something he can call his own, even if the origins aren’t that obscure or even remotely forgotten.

And you’ve got to respect that. Unfortunately, it breaks my heart to say it, it doesn’t stop the movie from being a failure. It’s a noble failure for what it tries to do, and the paths of least resistance that it avoids, but it still isn’t that great a film. At best it is mediocre, and that is being kind.

The most unfortunate and cruelest cut for the director is to see a long term labour of love end up looking sub-standard compared to the stuff put out by other people at the same time. If it’d come out ten years ago it (might) have been hailed as a visionary masterpiece, and people would have tried to wrench the crown off of Lucas’ fat head and, after giving it a good wash, crowned Conran as the new king of fantastical science fiction. Today he looks like an also-ran. Like Peter Costello.

dir: Stephen Sommers
Even for a flick with Kate Beckinsale in it, this is pretty dumb
Not that anyone asked, or that anyone wants to know, but I can honestly say that I’ve never paid to have sex with a prostitute, a working girl, a ‘lady of the night’. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a comment on the ladies, I know they do a hard job and they earn their money bringing to fruition the old business success mantra about the customer always coming first. I joke about hookers and cocaine all the time, but it’s just that: a joke. Who can afford that kind of crap when a bottle of decent single malt whisky costs between $60 and $80?

The reason I hold this particular credo, which has nothing to do with morality or personal ethics or anything of the sort, is that I can imagine after money changed hands and business was taken care of, the deed being done, I’d be filled with a profound emptiness inside. It would come from the fact that I had to pay money to get someone to have sex with me, a person who couldn’t possibly even remotely have any tender feelings towards me. Sure, live long enough and you end up having sex with a bunch of people that can’t stand you and whom you can’t stand, for a multitude of different reasons. But at the very least you shouldn’t have to pay cash for it.

dir: Terry George
Don Cheedle with the guy he's playing in the film. Freaky.
Ah, the cinema of guilt. Worthy movies that seem to chide audiences and make you feel bad for a) not having been more concerned when something really bad happened in history, or b) feel even worse for not having seen the film sooner. All your bullshit excuses count as nought in the face of it. So you sheepishly file into the cinema one day, prepared to eat your greens and say it tastes like ice cream even if it doesn’t. Out of stinky, middle-class guilt.

If the film’s actually good then it’s a definite bonus. Because that way you don’t have to endure watching the film like it’s a trip to the proctologist just so you can convince other people that you are sooooo switched on and overflowing with compassion. Hotel Rwanda is just such a film.

It’s not Schindler’s List, but nor would you want to be. We don’t need another epic like that just yet. It’s still Oscarbait of the highest order, mostly because when a film is about such topics (the Rwandan massacres from the 90s), it feels like the height of insensitivity to raise any objections to even the slightest flaw, to mouth the tiniest of criticisms, you inhuman monster.

Really, it’s not like that. Any film, even one such as this in the genocide genre, still has to work the way that other films work for it to be considered a worthwhile use of my two hours or anyone else’s. It’s not a documentary, so it needs to have narrative, a plot, characters we believe in, a recognisable beginning and end, loud bits, quiet bits and in-between bits. And it’s no exaggeration to say that Hotel Rwanda has all those bits.

When telling such a story you want to avoid it sounding and looking like a lecture. So with a story so big you find at least one person and tell the story of how this massive event affected this person and the people around him, and what they did to survive it. They’ve achieved that here by centring the story around Paul Rusesabagina, a guy who did his darndest to save the people he could when hundreds of thousands of people were being butchered by some pretty nasty people. Don Cheadle does a superlative job in the role playing the guy like he’s just a guy caught up in an impossible situation, instead of some treacly hero. He is really good. I have to wonder why they couldn’t get an actual African actor to play the role but then I guess had they not had one of the stars of Ocean’s 11 and 12 the film might never have been made or at least gotten as much press as it did.

dir: Trey Parker
Keeping the World Safe from Everything Except Them
It's a new world, which looks remarkably like the 'old' world as
portrayed in movies circa the 1980s. The entire globe is defined (as
in European, Egyptian and Korean cities) in terms of distances and
directions from the US. The soundtrack is the power chord laden
empty-headed nonsense as typified in glorious fashion by the title
song 'America? Fuck Yeah!'; a song so good Van Halen are kicking
themselves that they never recorded it. And the jingoistic action is
over the top, constantly explosive and cheesy / ridiculous in the
extreme. In short, this is an 80s action film parody chock full of the
requisite cliches of the era, except with puppets.

Marionettes, to be exact, I guess. I bet the lunatics responsible for
the recent Thunderbirds debacle, a movie I'm sure many of you didn't
even realise had ever been released, are kicking themselves over the
fact that this puppet feature worked out better than their film did,
despite the fact that they had humans and all (though I might prefer
DNA evidence on Sir Ben Kingsley before I can confirm his humanity).
Basically, the pugnacious, malevolent, occasionally brilliant
arseholes responsible for South Park, Cannibal: The Musical, Orgazmo
and BASEketball for some inexplicable reason decided to cash in on the
current level of global unrest with a movie that ridicules the
political bent of pretty much anyone currently alive and several
people already dead.

dir: Cate Shortland
Shave your eyebrows, and the world becomes your oyster
Somersault has garnered rave critical reviews, buzz at overseas film
festivals, and an unprecedented 15 nominations for the upcoming AFI
awards. A person could be forgiven for being under the impression that
this would clearly have to be one of the truly greatest Australian
films made of all time, yea verily. An audience member going in with
such expectations of excellence is surely going to start setting fires
or engaging in self-mutilation as a violent kind of protest when
they're inevitably let down.

dir: James Wan
Is this because of the bad movie reviews I used to do on Recovery?
The day before I had the honour of watching Blade: Trinity. Today I
watched Saw. Tomorrow I should try to find something equally knife
related to watch just to get a hat trick of some variety: Knife in the
Water? The Night of Long Knives, Mack the Knife, er, something with
'spoon' in the title? Anything to maintain the metallic imagery.

Okay well maybe I won't be doing that. What I would also like to do
(but won't, not yet) is watch this film again and see if it's as
enjoyable the second time around. I have to say I was surprised, very
surprised. Pleasantly surprised, not like after a night of heavy
drinking, putting your hand in your pocket looking for your keys and
finding that your fingers are missing. As are your pockets and keys.

Saw is one of those success stories where two young hopefuls put a
script together and shop it around like all the other hopefuls. Except
their script actually gets somewhere, they get funding (miniscule
comparatively, a 1 million dollar budget), they get the press and the
promotion and the film turns out to be a roaring success. Of course the
flick itself is sick, twisted B movie horror trash, but it's decent B
movie horror trash. But you have to admire the way in which these guys,
James Wan and Leigh Whannell got this done.

Also, as I rarely find, you've got to admire a film that succeeds
despite bad acting performances, continual continuity errors and plot
holes you could drive the International Space Station through at a
leisurely pace. What succeeds is the concept, the overall sick concept
to make a pretty disturbing film on a micro budget and genuinely
unsettle an audience. Not in the way that the thought of seeing Barbara
Streisand in a film again is deeply disturbing, but a set up where
there is genuine horror, and scenes where you peak through your
fingers, unsure if you really want to see what happens but unwilling to
miss it.