Review: THE HUNT

One of the cardinal rules of film criticism - even for bedroom-guitarist critics like me - is NEVER to damn a film for what it isn't. This is distinct from saying a comedy isn't funny or a horror movie isn't scary; that's just calling them out for not doing their jobs. No, whingeing about the absence of whatever it is about the film in front of you means that you are not describing that film. It is invalid as criticism. My distaste for Wes Anderson's films can never come from a wish that they were less twee/what they are. So, when I spoil this review right now by telling you how little I like The Hunt it is entirely based on what I saw between its credit sequences. While that's only right it's really bugging me because I'm straining against comparing it to another film. Let's see how I do.

A woman in luxury is texting with a friend who mentions the weekend's hard core fun when they'll bag a few "deplorables". Cut to a flight in a private jet filled with arrogant one-percenters. Suddenly an oafish passenger starts panicking and is subdued with eye-popping violence. Cut to lush green pastures where a group of industrially gagged people find each other but get popped off by grenades, bullets and arrows. They disperse for their lives. The hunt is on.

From this point there be spoilers so that's all the plot you're going to get here. However, you'll already have understood that it's about highly-placed liberals picking off rednecks in exactly the kind of fashion that hard-right privilege might be depicted. So people are bad all over at all levels? Not quite. This film, for its sins, does at least have some cards up its sleeve with some genuinely clever twists. So, does it work as satire?

Well, once you get over the opening twist of liberals becoming the same monsters they deplore you need somewhere to go before it just becomes an overstretched SNL skit. So, into the mix comes Manorgate, the right wing rumour come true. That's still good satire and it's still funny. But while there are pot shots aplenty at conspiracy thinking an imbalance emerges as the film itself starts to take sides. It has to do this if it wants to engage us but the way it does it starts feeling sleazy quickly.

While the hillbillies-with-modems jokes are developed to be broad here and subtle there every self-correcting liberal joke ends up as a grating replay political correctness. This means that the self-styled disenfranchised lower orders gain a little dignity and their delusional paranoia a symptom of political impotence and information poverty. It also suggests that only the comfort of extreme privilege can allow compassionate thinking which just ends up as cavernously hollow rhetoric.

The emergent protagonist (there are some funny red herrings early on with this issue) can be seen as apolitical or at best political by experience. This is necessary for the narrative alone as it keeps her struggle clean. And then in the inevitable showdown when the opposing forces are reduced to their convictions you get the big ironic reveal. It's delivered in a line of foreshadowed dialogue and it works. But, then, after the big battle and the elegant coda you realise that it doesn't. If the issue is about a misapprehension it still led to a group of leopards changing their spots. So, is everyone, high or low, left or right, really just this venal and homicidal? Is there a point, then? Even the most flamboyant or cardboard thin satire must work within its own structure. It's the comedy not being funny thing: this satire hoists itself on its own petar.

It's slick. It's bold. It's action packed and engaging. It just can't convince me that it isn't just constantly dissing me. This time, that's not a compliment. This film professes an even hand with its players but when the underdogs are actually underdogs regardless of their imagined influence and the overlords are just their real life opponents in disguise the resulting irony is just loud and lazy and, finally just self-defeating. That characters can discuss George Orwell at a moment of crisis is a writer's wink and it comes from the sort of person who wouldn't use air quotes when intoning the term "snowflake". Cynics feel entitled to be considered wise. If you consider cynicism indistinguishable from wisdom then have I got a movie for you.


PS - And I didn't have to make that comparison after all that.

The Hunt is available on Apple Movies/iTunes for the price of a full cinema ticket, not the more usual seven or eight dollars of a new release. Be aware of that.

SHADOWS Contactless: 8.30pm Friday May 1: ANTIVIRAL (SBS on Demand)

Syd is embezzling from his employer. So what? Normal enough crime drama stuff. Well, it's what he's stealing. He works at Lucas Clinic, a company that sells the illnesses of the rich and famous to the poor and aspirant. And he sneaks samples past the industrial security to sell for himself. The death of the star he took it from dies and Syd becomes a target.



This is not a horror film. If it were paced more tightly it might be a thriller but its interest does not lie there either. With superfans not only buying copyrighted viruses with installed digital rights management, there is a grey market in meat grown from the stars' DNA we are in the realm of heavy satire. And we must recall or be informed that satire isn't always funny.

There is elephant DNA in this film. It was written and directed by the son of someone whose surname has become an adjective in cinema history. You might think Brandon Cronenberg, if he chose to become a filmmaker at all (rather than a sand sculptor or a bud driver) would elect to prove himself an individual by not making such a ... Cronenbergian piece. Why not a sprightly rom com or a fashionable live musical? Because he had an idea and pursued it. If you look at it beyond the synopsis you will see the work of a young writer/director toiling seriously to bring his story to the screen. Besides, times being themselves, we might be in dire need of another Cronenberg walking amongst us.

Then again, cheap shoot as you will, this film does work. It feels like there's a new wow concept every five minutes in the first act and, though the second settles a little too comfortably into development and the intrigue sets in, there is a real punch waiting in the final act, served up with an image that will stay with you. This is a debut film from a young filmmaker with big shoes to fill who would not be lightly forgiven for the slightest flub. Damn me if he doesn't get away with it.

This is the first diversion from the Netflix Party format as it is available through SBS on Demand. This will take discipline and coordination. We'll use Messenger for comments. I'll leave a guide in a post on the Facebook page.

Shadows Contactless: Friday 24/04/20 8.30 pm (Australian EST): UNDER THE SHADOW

This is a horror movie. Settle down, keep your seat and hear me out.  Like all horror cinema at the ideas-first end of the spectrum, it has something to say beyond "boo!" It's a tale that uses a malevolent force to say some very strong things about a way of life and a balance of power. And it's about folklore.

Early 1980s, Iran has deposed its autocrat Shah in a revolution but also plunged centuries back in time by replacing him with a theocracy. As a rocket attack happens out of an office window, Shidah is informed that, despite her studies, she is barred from practising medicine as women are no longer allowed to be doctors. Even if they were, she has a record of student protest which would have cancelled her plans anyway. Back home, her husband, also a doctor, backpedals on his support for her and says it's for the best. He gets drafted soon after and is assigned to the front against Iraq. Shidah must keep to their flat and raise their daughter alone. Into this tightened situation creeps a strange dark force. At first, Shidah passes it off as stress but the force itself has other ideas. She knows one thing for certain: it is dangerous to stay in the flat and dangerous to be seen in the street by the militia. Flight or fight?

Narges Rashidi, as the beset Shidah, grew up in war torn Iran, taking shelter against the conflict just as her character must. She brings that lived experience to her role as a mother who cannot afford to give in to a universe that seems to have suddenly turned hostile. Avin Manshadi as her daughter Dorsa is equally essential, displaying a believable, if unnerving, affinity with the force.

Babak Anvari would still be unable to make this film in his native Iran. He had to emigrate and find support from Qatar, Jordan and the UK to produce the film with a principal shoot in Jordan. To its credit, the film it still banned in Iran.

If you have seen the J-Horror classic that is Dark Water you might find more than a few simliarities. If you notice these things you'll remember that Yoshimi is so bound by her culture that, even in moments of crisis, she remembers to remove or put on her shoes if she's in or leaving the apartment. There is an echo here and it's a sobering one. It has to do with female head wear and that it has become an essential to Shidah's world as a political point will stay with you.

Yes, it's a horror film. I dislike attempts to dress genre up in clothes like "elevated horror" or "serious horror" when the same sense of fear is evoked in more mainstream fare like action movies or thrillers. There are, from memory, two moments that you could call jump scares but they are both earned by the narrative and need to be there. There is no gore. And at one hour and twenty-four minutes this film is not going to tax the attention span of anyone who watches movies on a regular basis.

Your couch, sir or madam. I dare ye!

Shadows Contactless: Netflix Party Friday April 17 8.30 pm : COLOSSAL

Gloria has pushed everyone she knows to the limit, fired from her job she partys with anyone she can find and then gets fired from her relationship. She slumps back to her hometown in a bid to recover and meets up with a guy she knew from school. He has issues of his own. Hey, a problem shared .... It doesn't take long for the combined repressed anger to surge out but it isn't the way you'd expect as reports of a giant monster destroying the city of Seoul blast on to the tv screen. When Gloria looks at the beast she can't help noticing it moves the same as she does. Oh so THAAAT'S what the prologue is about!

Nacho Vigalondo's strange fable is a darkly comic journey into the recesses of personal vaults and their murky secrets and demons, going beyond the simple monster=equals anger on the surface. This a talenot just of power against power but of understanding power. Vigalondo's third film (after the extraordinary and lean Timecrimes and the compelling if flawed Open Windows) sees him smooth out the seams where good ideas press against the need for narrative and he has a solid cast led by Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis to provide a chemistry that both plays into and defies any rom com expectations we might get. It's all about the build and the build is good.

Your chair! .... Your couch!

See you on Friday.

SHADOWS Netflix Party Friday April 10@8.30 pm (EST): THOROUGHBREDS

"You know, the thing about this town is, the sawdust smells fantastic. But you are still in a hamster cage."

Present day Connecticut: the beauty of privilege conceals the same brutal competition as everywhere else but this is the land of the 1% and all of that gets sublimated. Amanda, fresh from her own alleged atrocity, is sent to childhood friend Lily for private tutoring. It's meant to help her grades but really it's about forcing Amanda to socialise. Lily is a top shelf student but awkward to the point of brittleness but it's a brief round of honesty (with some of the best dialogue you'll hear in anything from the past ten years). It's not so much things in common as a kind of trade in skills and it turns into a film noir plan that uses their rarefied world to attack it. Less Strangers on a Train than Conspirators in Paradise, perhaps, but darkly witty, starkly purposed and lean cut.

Olivia Cooke (The Limehouse Golem) turns deadpan into threat and develops it into a wealth of nuance. Anton Yelchin, in one of his final roles before his early death, goes to town with a bad boy who could only ever be a would-be. Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire and House of Cards) impresses as the step-dad: a corporate figure whose business is not as relevant as his success and whose fitness regime gets more of his attention than his marriage. And as his wife, Kaili Vernoff is a woman confined by stolen power: she appears at one point in a hi-tech tanning bed that resembles the kind of coffin you might get in Vegas if you had the money. Finally, it's Anja Taylor-Joy, fresh from her breakthrough turn in the VVitch, who bears the heaviest character arc, using her fear against itself and finding an intimidating strength.

Unlike post Trump fare such as Tragedy Girls or Ingrid Goes West (both good flix, btw), Toroughbreds pares all the potential camp away from the screen, knowing that the image of wealth and social place need only be suggested for the deadly events to take power. The climax takes place off-screen in a single static shot with only the sound and light of a television. That it's chilling is how good this film is.

Join me, won't you?

Notes from Behind the Front Door: Cinema in time of Isolation #1

This will be a series that will go for as long as it needs. I will be listing recommendations from the available video services. This will not be comprehensive and it will be driven by my taste. This means that you are welcome to expand on that in comments, making your own recommendations for me and the community of this blog.

NETFLIX

The biggest game in town as far as paid subscription goes. It also supports watch parties with a Chrome browser addon.

THOROUGHBREDS: like Heavenly Creatures as an episode of Daria. Two daughters of the 1% in Connecticut find that they have more in common than they would ever have admitted. This soon leads to a film-noire style co-operative plan. But what is the real goal here? Dialogue that could have been written by Diablo Cody channelling Samuel Beckett delivered by a very solid cast and almost cruelly lean filmmaking. Try this as a watch party as it will get you talking. I saw this first at MIFF and more recently as my first Netflix Party.

LADY BIRD: Greta Gerwig's solo directorial debut feature completely disarmed me after I was ready to condemn it. Gerwig wrote and starred in the excerable Frances Ha and, together with her creative and life partner Noah Baumbach, has committed some of the most repellent "indy cinema" of the past three decades. So, why does this story of a teenage girl with quirks who encounters narcissistic others, also with quirks, work? Because, unlike anything with Baumbach, it feels genuine. It has real heart and superb performances from the likes of Saoirse Ronan.

STAN

Local precursor to Netflix created by two media giants Fairfax and Nine (which are both the same thing now). More Australian content and a noticeably better selection of films from before the year 2000.

IN BRUGES: Colin Farrell and James Gleason, two Irish hitmen, are out of the country after a hit-gone-wrong (just how wrong I won't spoil) and have to deal with their new setting in the historic Belgian town and each other. Farrell's turn as a motor-mouthed bad boy can be screamingly funny but his motivations just screaming. Gleason, as the centre of gravity, seems overly gentle until you learn how important his patience is. Ralph Fiennes's cockney mob boss has walked out of a Harold Pinter version of The Krays. Clemence Poesy as the chief female role is given far more substance than her type of character usually gets in a story like this and runs with it. Long but constantly diverting.

TRIANGLE: A gang of bright young things sets out on a three hour tour except they don't end up on Gilligan's Island. Wrecked by bad weather they drift until catching sight of a ship. Boarding it, they find it deserted but for some terrifying presences. Things are not what they seem or even when they seem. A mind-warping tale of consequences taken into mathematical complexity only to reveal (after showing all that working) that it can take so little to change a world.

SBS on Demand

The online version of the tv station that always had the most interesting movies. Like Netflix and Stan the titles can fall off the shelf quite suddenly so, if you see something you like watch as soon as you can.

THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT: Intrigue among the landed gentry in Restoration Britain as a commoner artist is contracted to immortalise the lands and wealth of a family. The contract of the title provides the film with a plot about the artist's attempts to game the system while the dreary commission can be done. But who is gaming whom? Peter Greenaway's breakthrough art house hit with its strident Purcell-influenced score, lavish period tableaux and high humour formed a major thread of the cinema of its time, allowing a resurgence of wit both spoken and visual and a hard edged formalism as funny as it was cultured.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS: A tale from within the corridors of Stasi-infested East Germany as an agent gets increasingly involved in a particular case to the point where he seems to lose his old self-definition. Ulrich Muher carries this dark tale with the stoicism expected of his character which makes his transformation weigh a ton.