8 stars

The Royal Hotel

Travel all over the countryside, they said, see the sights, they said

dir: Kitty Green

2023

The film festival of “Australians are terrible” continues, except now it’s updated to 2023.

Yes, what I did was recently watch and write about a classic Australian film about people in shitty mining towns being appalling human beings and drinking themselves stupid out of sadism, masochism, boredom and existential dread. That film was Wake in Fright, and it’s about as nasty a depiction of what a lot of true blue, dinky di, fair go, Aussie Battlers were like 50 years ago, and will be 50 years into the future, unless the sweet meteor of Death wipes us all out or that orange pile of earwax achieves the highest office of the land in his country of origin yet again.

And now, The Royal Hotel is the special of the day, the main course of a movie depicting how shitty Australians are (mostly men but women too) to each other but especially to women. Backpacker women. Canadian (allegedly) women. But women, especially.

Two young “Canadians” (they’re really not, but they think everyone hates Americans) party in Sydney like it’s 1999, or until their cash runs out. Visa conditions being what they are, they find work at a remote pub many hours west of Sydney, so far away that it’s South Australia. As far as I could tell there’s a pub, and a mine, and an endless supply of shitty men to hassle them, and nothing else.

Hugo Weaving, playing somewhat against type, since in recent roles he’s been more of a kinder, gentler kind of guy, plays one of the roughest and nastiest types of Hugo Weaving roles that I’ve seen in ages. And he played Agent Smith for crying out loud.

He is abrasive and shocking as the publican, well, shocking to the girls, and he’s not even trying to be that much of a prick to them. Unlike many of the pieces of shit pub owners I’ve come to know and loathe over the years, he’s not even the one directly sexually harassing the female staff. But he does see it as a condition of employment that the girls be pliable and all ‘golly gee oh you’ as they constantly get harassed by the patrons.

The explanation of which beers are which, and how that corresponds to buttons on the register, is a classic piece of workplace fuckery, of something that makes perfect sense to those who know the system, but means absolutely nothing to a newbie.

Rating:

8 stars

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The Blackening

But you could at least give it a red hot go

dir: Tim Story

2023

I will be the first to admit, and honestly have to be the first to admit, that I am not the target audience for this movie. My opinion about this movie, like all my opinions about anything, are therefore even more important / authoritative than usual (ie. utterly worthless).

I am, however, a fan of movies / pop culture, and in the American context, of Black cinema / African-American cinema. I went into this assuming this flick, ostensibly a horror flick, was specifically about playing with the tropes of horror movies in terms of how poorly they serve African-American characters usually, but what I ended up getting was vastly different.

Tim Story is probably best known for directing Barbershop way back in the day, if he is known by international audiences at all. I am not sure that he would be well known as the director of the pretty terrible Fantastic Four movies, or the very ordinary Ride Along movies, or the terrible *belches loudly* Think Like a Man movies.

So, whatever. I have no doubt he has fans, and that he’s a talented, commercial director, in all senses of the word. He is a very successful African-American director, and he certainly has knowledge and a feel for how African-Americans are portrayed in movies, because he’s in the business of portraying them for fun and profit, and has been for decades.

This flick is replete with references that will fly by most people, I would guess, and I say that as someone who gets the references, but only because I’ve watched everything and remember all the dumbest, lamest trivia from any old tv show you care to mention. I also remember the various controversies that arose with many of those shows, like who got fired and why, and who they were replaced with, because… Well, I don’t really have an explanation for it.

Rating:

8 stars

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Good Grief

Always laughing, why are they always laughing?

dir: Daniel Levy

2024

So, with the new year freshly upon us, I thought in the spirit of new beginnings and optimism, I’d watch and review a movie about a dour group of depressed people navigating grief and loss in their late 30s early 40s.

Why not.

Good Grief is perhaps the laziest play on words you could imagine, while also being a keen Charlie Brown - Peanuts reference that, yes, is mostly about a character dealing with his grief over the recent death of his husband Oliver (Luke Evans).

But really the film is mostly about not dealing with grief.

Our introduction is a delightful Christmas party where Oliver bullies people into singing individual parts for a singalong, except for the one person Sophie (the great Ruth Negga) who he insults by giving her a handcrafted pair of maracas to play, since she is, by all estimations, tone deaf. Oliver is charming and a force of nature, and beloved by all, so it’s triply cruel that mere minutes after saying goodbye to his husband Marc (Dan Levy, who also directs), he is killed in a car accident.

Now, these details shouldn’t be important, but they’re important to me: Oliver was the very successful author of a bunch of books that, considering the economic comfort within which the main character is cocooned in, probably makes him the equivalent of a Suzanne Collins / Rick Riordan YA author, rather than a JK Rowling-level threat to the aristocracy. And, this was very nice of him, he even got something for his husband Marc to do by having him do the illustrations in his books, which are a successful movie franchise as well.

The greater meaning behind it is that Marc had previously been a successful painter, or at least someone who painted. But, for whatever reasons (grief, derr, obviously), he stopped painting after his mother died. And instead of ever doing paintings again, he relied on his husband for work and remodelled the kitchen every time Oliver dropped a new bestseller.

Probably not healthy. And now that his husband is dead, well, Marc doesn’t know what to do with himself, and spends a year not doing anything.

Rating:

8 stars

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The Holdovers

I cracked open all these Christmas decorations and all
I got for it was a tiny Giamatti

dir: Alexander Payne

2023

It almost feels like director Alexander Payne and lead actor Paul Giamatti are coasting. Playing to their strengths, working with very familiar scenarios, and putting people in positions that feel like we’ve watched the flick (a long time ago) many times before.

It shouldn’t work, even down to a use of folk music where I wondered aloud “could they not afford a Cat Stevens song for this scene?”, only to have a Cat Stevens song start playing immediately thereafter.

But it did all work for me. It worked beautifully.

It might be set at a posh New England boys school over Christmas, 1970. It might have an intro with old timey studio titles and the (digital effect) of dust and dropouts on the “film” as it starts, but this is a film as old as time itself. It’s about lonely people struggling with grief and loss, finding it very hard to get by in life, forced together by circumstance, in order to learn things about themselves, and come to terms with things.

You know, like every movie that’s ever been made.

However familiar elements might be, it’s still a very strong film. Paul Giamatti playing a curmudgeon? Say it ain’t so! A sassy, straight-talking service industry African-American character who cuts through the privilege and pieties of the main (white) characters? A troubled teen who’s rebelling without really knowing what he’s rebelling against?

I mean…, you could have called it Catcher in the Rye Ice Storm at the Dead Poet’s Society, and only a few people would have batted an eyelid.

If there is a main character who is not Paul Giamatti, it’s Holden, sorry, Angus (Domenic Sessa), whose parents don’t want to see him during the Christmas break. That’s got to hurt. Still, if Angus was the kind of go along to get along chap, one who could make the best of a dire situation, well, he probably wouldn’t be in this predicament if he was a different person. Instead, he’s an isolated jerk who thinks he’s better than everyone else.

There are other boys in this unfortunate circumstance as well, it’s not just Angus, but he doesn’t really have the social skills to connect with them, or seemingly the desire to.

Charged with looking after these unwanted, misfit toys is a teacher who doesn’t really have anything better to do over the Christmas break: Mr Hunham (Paul Giamatti). He is as loathed by the students as he is by most of the faculty, and he has no life outside of the school.

He hates the students and sees the world as one that hasn’t really improved that much since the Visigoths sacked Rome all those years ago. He teaches ancient history, which means Greek and Roman history, and as such thinks their wisdom is the only wisdom worth learning or repeating.

Rating:

8 stars

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The Killer

If he sees you, he will look at you funny

dir: David Fincher

2023

This isn’t to be confused with the legendary John Woo flick that introduced the world to the glory that is Chow Yun Fat, and the idea in movies that you could have a protagonist shoot hundreds of people before going to his eternal reward…

Now, of course, everyone gets to do it, but back then, I assure you, it was new, novel, fresh. Hong Kong fresh.

This The Killer is about a killer (Michael Fassbender) who kills people for money. Not for sexual gratification or anything so crude. It’s a purely financial transaction, which he tries to deliver in a professional and efficient manner.

He talks to us constantly, in his head, as he repeats his bullshit mantras about never having empathy or being precise or whatever, and sticking to his own rules, plan instead of improvise, be ready for every eventuality. Except he can’t even stick to his own rules, a lot of the time.

The voiceover is tiresome, but I think it’s meant to be tiresome. Without it, we’d have very little to go on. The killer rarely talks, and when he does, his words are clipped, as if almost painful.

Again, while he comes across as flat, I think it’s deliberately flat. His style is the lack of style he deliberately cultivates. There is no looking cool in a tailored bulletproof suit or swinging around wildly in elaborately choreographed sequences with flashy weapons. The one extended fight scene we get is brutal, close-up, and doled out with whatever household weapons come to hand.

Rating:

8 stars

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No One Will Save You

No one else is going to take the bins out for you, either

dir: Brian Duffield

2023

This flick was an experience.

I went in thinking it was a horror flick. I also went into to it thinking that I wish the filmmakers had the confidence to give this a better title, being There is No-one What Will Take Care of You, the first legendary album by Will Oldham of Palace / Palace Brothers / Bonnie “Prince” Billy fame or infamy.

At least I’m guessing that’s the title they really wanted, but they chickened out. I mean, No One Will Save You is direct, punchy, and accurate, but There is No-One What Will Take Care of You, is plaintive, soulful, lyrical and also passive-aggressive, manipulative, mean-spirited; it could be a lament, it could be a threat. There’s a lot potentially going on there.

Piss-weak alternative.

This film is a marvel, in that it is quite experimental in some ways, even as it seems extremely conventional in others. There is no dialogue between characters in this film whatsoever. Our protagonist, Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever), only ever gets to say one line of dialogue in the whole film. And yet there’s acres of storytelling going on. We are left with no doubt as to what’s happened in the past, and what’s going on in Brynn’s terrible present.

Even though it’s tempting to call this a science fiction film, I think it’s more of a horror film, since Brynn fights valiantly to save herself from an uncertain but probably horrible fate. And yet the other factor is that I want to joke about the aliens from M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs coming back to Earth and figuring out how to tolerate water (on a planet five sixths of which is water), to finish the job they started over two decades ago.

Rating:

8 stars

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Clock

All those things dangling over your head. It's a lot to
think about at 3am

dir: Alexis Jacknow

2023

Clock is a disturbing and potent horror flick about how annoying it is to be told you have to have kids when you don’t want to have them.

Honestly, there is no shortage of arseholes on this planet. There’s like 7 billion of them. Soon there will be 8 billion. We are consuming this planet and rendering it inhospitable as we speak. The last thing we need is more people fucking up the joint.

That’s one take a person could make. On the other hand we are told we have these natural biological and evolutionary urges that, were we not to possess them or give in to them, our species would have died out long ago.

Heavens forfend! Sure, we all know the urges to have sex, but thankfully we found ways to make it not always result in pregnancy. But that only counts if you’re not an American woman. If you’re an American woman (or a ten year old child) in a state where abortions are all but outlawed now, you are legally obligated to carry a baby to term even if it fucking kills you.

Sorry, I don’t make the rules, I just recoil in horror from them. Speaking of horror, this horrific flick is horrific not only in what it shows, but in some of the arguments characters have.

There can’t be a form of horror more visceral than horror about pregnancies. There’s nothing that can be more horrifically biological than weaponising those bodily processes against a woman, whether it’s in Rosemary’s Baby, Alien or this here Clock streaming on Hulu.

I’ll leave out mother! because I still have no fucking idea what happened in that Darren Aronofsky movie.

In Clock, our protagonist Ella (Dianna Agron) is perfectly happy not to have children. She is told that she is somehow defective, or wrong, but she just doesn’t want kids. That should be okay, but people in these kinds of stories, and let’s face it in real life too, constantly feel obligated to tell other people what to do. So there’s no shortage of arseholes telling her she’s wrong.

Let the woman be. Let her live her life, and you worry about yours.

Rating:

8 stars

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The Burial

Would you buy a used casket from either of these men?

dir: Maggie Betts

2023

There are no burials in The Burial. I can’t even guess why it’s called such. Sure, it involves funeral parlours, but there’s no specific burial.

Is there a general burial, one symbolising the finality of one’s hopes and dreams finally being put to rest? Is it a reference perhaps to what happens to the Goliath part of this David and Goliath story?

Plus I don’t remember any references in the Bible to how they buried this alleged giant felled by a sling and a stone. Maybe they used a bulldozer, maybe they blew him up like a dead beached whale with dynamite.

I mean, that sounds unlikely, but it’s happened. I’ve seen the footage. You can’t unsee it.

Jaime Foxx, for all his health problems this year, which nearly led to him dying, has put in two very solid performances in two flicks that will only be seen on streaming services. It’s a shame because they deserved to be seen by more people, maybe in cinemas, maybe projected onto the sides of large buildings. The other performance was in They Cloned Tyrone, but this performance, at least for the first half of the film, was much bigger and brasher (despite the fact that he played a pimp in the other film).

Willie E Gary seems like a persona created for a movie or for wrestling, but he is a real alive person who walks this earth and does his preacher / lawyer shtick for reals. Foxx plays him, in court, like a preacher expecting the jurors and other members of the court to yell “Amen!” after any of his statements. In case we didn’t figure it out seeing him in action in court, they also show him in a Black Baptist church firing up the locals.

He is immensely successful as a personal injury lawyer, very wealthy, rich enough to be showcased on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous *ugh*. He is vibrant and full of life, and he has an entire entourage of lawyers to both back him up and to keep things real.

In contrast, Tommy Lee Jones, my gods, age has not been kind to you. He plays the role of Jeremiah O’Keefe, the owner of a bunch of funeral homes way down South in Mississippi. He is a dull, destroyed man, whose bad choices in business are in stark contrast to what a good and noble man he is.

Rating:

8 stars

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Appendage

It also doubles as a pro-women's choice / abortion flick
as well

dir: Anna Zlokovic

2023

Appendage, despite the name, which sounds like a prequel to Boogie Nights, is funny and horrifying in appropriate measure, and works in ways and on levels that Cobweb, the horror flick I saw just before it, never does.

This flick works more on a close-up, bonkers queasy physical level, because at first at least it’s about an anxious and stressed out person physically reacting to all the bullshit life throws up for us on a daily basis. We’re not talking about anything radically inventive or brand new – there are countless movies and stories about people and their darker selves, the shadow self that Carl Jung constantly banged on about; the Jekyll and Hyde nature of humanity.

This flick though…

Hanna (Hadley Robinson) is young, and yet stressed the fuck out. She has a wonderful boyfriend (Brandon Mychal Smith), a job as a fashion designer with an acclaimed atelier, an intense best friend (Kauser Mohammed) that she also works with, and she’s blonde, young and white in America. What could she possibly have to complain about?

Well, you know, sorry to have to mansplain things to you, but however matters may look on the surface of people’s lives, none of that necessarily prevents or alleviates the potential impact of trauma, of depression or anxiety on any individual.

The body keeps the score, or so the saying goes. Hanna’s nervous tics in the face of the instances of frustration or disappointment seem to be escalating, and regardless of her polite and pleasant outward demeanour, her insides are roiling, and she is struggling.

And something seems like it’s growing out of her left side, out of her birthmark.

Rating:

8 stars

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Talk to Me

Talk to me, but don't be so creepy, weird hand of Death

dirs.: Daniel and Michael Philippou

2023

Wow. That first five minutes…

This flick starts with a deceptive scene. It has an energy completely different from the rest of the movie. A brother is trying to find his younger brother at a massive house party, calling out his brother’s name, and asking if anyone has seen Duckett.

At least I think it’s Duckett. As one guy yells in response, who the fuck is Duckett? Is that his first name? Why is he called Duckett? It can’t be his surname; why would he be calling his brother by his surname?

These questions will never be answered but will stay with me forever. That whole sequence is a continuous take, and it’s shocking, its climax is shocking, and then the rest of the flick transpires in a different way and in a different register, thank Christ.

And it’s all the better for it. A whole film like the first five minutes would have killed me.

Instead it becomes a much more relatable story about a kid who misses her mum indulging in the supernatural in order to avoid her obvious problems.

I mean, who hasn’t logged on to a Ouija board in a moment of weakness?

Maybe it’s more of a metaphor for disassociation or mental state altering drug use, but within the context of the flick at least, we know all the cool kids are into this latest trend, because everyone’s filming it and making TikToks out of it.

Two siblings have this weird ceramic hand. The experience is, you strap someone to a chair, they hold the hand, and say the fateful words “Talk to me”. Much to anyone’s shock, but not of the people watching this flick, a spirit appears before you. If you then say “I let you in”, for a period of time that’s not meant to exceed 90 seconds, that supernatural spirit inhabits your body, and gives you an incredible experience.

Rating:

8 stars

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8 stars

The Royal Hotel

The Blackening

Good Grief

The Holdovers

The Killer

No One Will Save You

Clock

The Burial

Appendage

Talk to Me

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