Review: THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB

An emergency worker in a call centre gets a call from a girl trapped in a car. Before he can establish the facts there is a burst of machine gun fire and the call goes dead. Oh, it's January of last year and they're in Gaza. Omar, who took the call, has to wander around numb for a few breaths before the girl calls back. She's only eight minutes away, assuming clear streets.

But that doesn't mean they can race out and scoop her up. The IDF are destroying their way from the area and no one can make such assumptions. Besides, there's protocol. The co-ordinator is scrambling around the various points of contact, from the Red Cross to local hospitals still standing and anyone else he can talk to to get the green light for the ambulance to get to the girl unimpeded. Meanwhile, Omar and anyone else at the Red Crescent response center gather around the thread of six year old Hind's voice as she pleads for them to save her. 

Everyone's frustrated. Everyone's angry. They'd run the few blocks if they could  but they wouldn't make it past one or two. They pray with Hind on the line, read her passages from the Koran, attempt to distract her by talking about her life and favourite things. Night is coming on and she is afraid of the dark. The tank that shot up the car and killed the family members around her is coming back.

The audio of Hind's  voice is the original recording. Actors play the parts of the Red Crescent staff. This is mixed with their real life counterparts here and there. The screen is frequently filled with an audio pulse as the sound is recorded, dots that expand and  contract with the sound of the voices. There is not a moment of the running time that allows us to lessen the tension of this situation but writer director Kaouther Ben Hania  provides deftly managed peaks and troughs of action and relief, however slight. We are not given the shock tactic of graphic footage from the scene, staged or authentic because Ben Hania trusts us to be with her film. The cast is unfaltering and we are beside them.

There's little more to say beyond, "go and see this" besides how it will acquaint you further with the frustration, the anger, the futility, the horror, the compassion, the gulf between the lightless ill of military licence, the anguish, the stress, and the clear suggestion that the architects of this destruction felt no guilt.

There is an office window on which the co-ordinator sketches, while on the phone, the various points of contact to negotiate a green light for the rescue. It ends up looking like a loop with a twist in the middle, but it's not smoothly drawn: he's distracted and leaves it looking swollen and misshapen, like a wounded symbol of infinity.

Review: IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT

Vahid, the boss of a garage, freezes when he hears a sound coming from one of his customers. It's a little squeak from a prosthetic leg. It takes him back to days in political prison when the torturer Pegleg was committing atrocities on a daily basis. He follows the man (with young family) home and then kidnaps him and prepares him for summary live burial in the desert. The man's pleas include a challenge to test his claim of mistaken identity and Vahid is struck with reasonable doubt that dances around with his righteous anger. So he phones some friends, or at least others who were imprisoned by the regime at the same time. They need a positive ID.

But they can't quite do it. The closest any of them get is something remembered from the darkness of a solitary confinement cell. Between them they still don't quite have enough to stop them killing an innocent and very unlucky man. By this time Vahid's van is crammed with a wedding photographer, her subjects including a bride to be in tiara and gown, a firebrand, and the war criminal/innocent man  packed into a coffin sized tool box.

Jafar Panahi's thriller has a story that has been told before. It's one that highlights the costs of totalitarian regimes and the crimes against humanity that nurture them. In this case the story has some more urgency, being from the current Iranian situation. Panahi has been a prisoner several times over in the regime's jails as well as house arrest. He has been generally forbidden to make films and famously made one by stealth while under house arrest title This is Not a Film.

Here, he is operating with loosened restrictions and presents this alarming tale in his usual neo-realist style, mixing muscular characterisation with enough comedy to smooth things while the ethics stay centre stage. There is one massive humanity-testing circumstance in the middle act that manages to be both funny and demoralising, another moment where officials expect kickbacks and things that should run smoothly are subject to wrinkles in the tape. 

Panahi does give us a conclusion (no spoilers) which is followed by a tense and almost eerie finale moment, shot with impeccible judgement. At a time when the world's news is loud with the actions of blustering tyrants and forced loyalties to atrocity organisations, we need this film. We need to remind ourselves of the terrifying decisions that await us when the curtain lifts to reveal danger from our own neighbourhoods. Think about it, it seems to call, just think.

Viewing notes: I went to a morning screening which was sparsely attended but did feature a couple of senior women at the back row who talked all through the trailers and commercials and then through the opening coprorate badges that inform that the movie is about to begin. They weren't loud but I hadn't paid to listen to them. I did as I no longer fret to do and turned until I located them and loudly intoned: "Excuse me. Please stop talking." They did, for the entire film. We need to do this more.

Review: SEND HELP

Linda, corporate nerd engine has been passed over a promotion she was promised. The new boss Brad gives it to his friend. Linda plucks it up and confronts him and he gives her a chance to impress on an upcoming business sortie. As the bros laugh openly at her Survivor audition reel, the plane hits turbulence and blows up, crashing into the sea, leaving only Linda and Brad to wash up on the nearby island. Gonna be a long wait for rescue.

Sam Raimi's fable of peeling the veils of civilisation is not the brittle satire I imagined, though it deals with the same elements. Silver spoon Brad is dependent on Linda for his survival, first through his incapacitating injury and then through his incompetence. If they clear that difference there's still her resentment and his contempt. There's a ton to work through. If that sounds a little too much like a corporate training video then rest assured that Raimi is only too happy to supply eye popping gore with black humour and a constant undercurrent of unease. The master cineaste of The Evil Dead is still among us.

A screenplay that keeps things on the boil with wit and eviscerating obervations, nurturing toxic developments in characters as well as the ingredients for collaboration is brought to life by the casting. Dylan O'Brien as Brad is believably dickish but given enough clear intelligence to prevent him from eliciting a measure of empathy. It's his edginess that carries a lot of the tension. But this is still Rachel McAdams' film. She took on a type-reversing frumpy nerd and turned her into a jungle queen with constant conflicts through the survival scenario. It might lead to a splattery end but her growing hardness in the circumstances involves a near visible shedding of the social compliance held contemptible by the business world.

The result is one of the most gripping thiller comedies on offer. Raimi's effortless mix of violence and humour comes to the rescue of some of the most white knuckle scenes. But there's also a softer satire to provide relief from the intensity. Linda's discovery of a waterfall plays like a moisturiser commercial. Brad's breakout escape plan is shown with pathos as well as ridicule. 

The third act suffers from some needless expository dialogue during a scene that would have benefitted from wordless tension as the pair prepare for the big showdown. Then, that showdown is a fine toughened setpiece of conflict between the antagonists who now are both wiser and barer than their starting states, amid the trappings of luxury. The coda, if on the sour side, provides an apt cap.

I like this film more than some of Raimi's other genre outings like The Gift or Drag Me to Hell. Send Help is closer to the more complex A Simple Plan for the depth work done with the characters. The sustain of underlying tension and shifting ethics give even the most benevolent acts a queasy edge. Even when Linda's worst instincts lead her to darkness, we see she's also the victimised office drone and our judgement needs reservation. The choice of Blondie deep cuts Rip Her to Shreds and for the closing sequence One Way or Another is inspired. If you know the songs you'll welcome them here. They are the perfect aperitif and dessert cocktail to a fable that illustrates why civilisation should be earned, not assumed.

Review: 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE

Almost no time has passed between the end of the last one and the opening of this one. Young Spike is facing an initiative fight to the death with one of the other Jimmys in the gang. He wins but not how you'd reckon it and is then part of the gang of marauders in Jimmy Saville costumes. We also see Dr Ian from the last film, wandering around his bone temple and finding something unusual in the behaviour of the local alpha infected zombie. Then we meet some of the folk from an uninfected settlement who escape an infected encounter and run home only to find that the Jimmys have invaded their house. Times could be better.

Through a series of ultraviolent encounters we learn that the Jimmy's, under the hand of the self appointed Lord Sir Jimmy Crystal, roam the land, dispatching the infected in cartoon but very effective fashion as well as spreading the message of a twisted morality based on his experiences as a child. If you have seen the previous installment, this Jimmy is the boy who tries to take refuge in the church where his father is vicar to permanently scarifying effect. Keeping the kids of the gang, his fingers, in check with the constant threat of violence, his leadership is drawn entirely from fear and the spectre of Satan. Jimmy's conferences with Satan are imaginary but effective in building a culture of dread.

Ian the doctor, tends his memento mori, the columns of bones he has built from the decades since the outbreak. His response to the infected is measured, death in self defence but professional curiosity when observing a pause in the behaviour of some of them. One such, a mountain of an infected man, seems to understand the danger of Ian's blowpipe with its sedating dart. Ian has a project.

I won't reveal more plot. This film measures that out in digestible doses. I will say, however, that this is the most engaged I have felt throughout the whole running time of any of this series, including the original (which I loved up until the final act where it got weirdly cute). The injection of Nia DaCosta into the blend has helped. She has dispensed with the indugence of Danny Boyle's diluting influence, allowed the violence to speak for itself, and let the darkness of the tale take its own energy. It works. It's very violent, and it's scary which is more than I can say of the rest.

Jack O'Connell as Sir Lord Jimmy (the order wanders) is fearsome with his pauses, near reasonable ponderances, and sudden lethal judgements. The suggestion that he doesn't believe his own preaching gives him a danger beyond the average villain, toward a barely contained explosive malevolance. Ralph Fiennes does what he does, making himself wlecome while mumbling through old New Romantic song lyrics or putting on a magnificent cabaret to an old Iron Maiden classic. Alfie Williams as boy Spike holds his own, torn between the conscience he brings from his former life to playing the motions as a Jimmy. Erin Kellyman as the dynamic Jimmy Ink makes us doubt at every turn. 

The cinematography, a pleasing, clean and rich digital video, emphasises the indifference of green, wind blown nature which seems impatient to be done with these violent things running through it. Music, by Hildur Guonadottir is stealthy, squeaking here, roaring there, in step with the look and feel.

I was more captivated by this late entry to this long standing franchise than any other of the entries that I've seen (never bothered with 28 Weeks Later). This is because the guest director seems as though she has worked to make something that is effective whether it is standalone or seen as part of a series. Danny Boyle's 2002 original was a mostly good film, ruined by a hasty conclusion and apparent need to appear cool. I found 28 Years Later self-subverting with its overly comfy presentation of the survivor colony and its laddishness. Did writer Alex Garland feel the same? The absence of those over-warmed tones in Boyle's films is welcome. Perhaps, the mooted final sequel which purports to be about redemption will fulfil the promise of this stylistic detour. I doubt it but doubts are part of wishes.

Review: NOUVELLE VAGUE

Paris 1959 and a group of young filmmakers is getting its moves in front of crowds who are lapping it up. All but Jean Luc Godard who has yet to make a feature. The group is called Nouvelle Vague or New Wave (literal translation) and they are already known for stretching the tenets of mainstream cinema. All but Jean Luc who, as a prominent film critic, is now ready to make his own movies. Banging together cast crew, funding and a notebook full of ideas, he makes A bout de souffle or Breathless which becomes one of the most influential films of its time and beyond.

So we get hustling, manipulating, scheming and a lot of philosophising as the project takes shape with rising stars and one bona fide Hollywood actress, a script by established Nouvelle Vaguer Francois Truffaut, and funding enough for a tight  ninety minute thriller. But from Jour Un, Jean Luc has other plans which are a mix of get the basic thing done and do what he feels like at the time. But is the auteurism he's been promoting in his journalism a real thing or just ego? Is his dismissive treatment of the creative input of Jean Seberg just more old guard or genuinely sup par to the genius of Godard?

There are many more talking points and your answers will vary depending on your knowledge of this cine-history and how you consider the portrayal of the characters (particularly Godard and Seberg). This loving and brassy tribute to the film and what it did to the spirit of the Nouvelle Vague will either engage you consistently or leave you wondering why anyone cared, now or then. 

Indy Royalty Richard Linklater, himself the author of audacious films among the more conventional, clearly elevates Godard as a figure. If anything, it's the figure rather than the person flailing at that eminence. So much of Godard's dialogue feels drawn from his writing or interviews. The former is the more fiery and the latter more caged and difficult. Jean Luc Godard really did make a banged-out noir in Breathless and he realy did subvert it with jump cuts and subversions of convention and when you see it for the first time you well might marvel at seeing tropes for the first time they happened on screen. The movie is the work of a concentrated mind who carried his practice with discipline. The whimsical contrarian we see here is more a wich fulfilment than a figure from history.

But that's not a problem when you pit Linklater's own practice against Godard's and understand the strength of the umbillical at play. Linklater's movies don't really resemble Godard's but there is a clear likeness in the certainty behind them. For all the seeming formlessness of films like Slacker or Dazed and Confused, the sprightly invention of the Before series or Waking Life, he is more contemporary and more American. His tribute is not a thanks for technique but pluck and resolve.

I did appreciate the avoidance of a historical story that refused to shoehorn the names of famous people into the dialogue. When depictions appear, the actors characters are subtitled clearly for us to recall or forget according to what we will. I will admit that I thought Suzanne Schiffman was meant to be Anges Varda (the real instigator of the Nouvelle Vague, btw) but it's clear who is meant to be who. Some of the face casting for this is marvelous: the lookalikes for Truffaut, Bresson, and Cocteau are pretty fine. There is a coda about what they did next but this is more subdued than the usual where you might get images of the real people filling the screen, as though you can't Google them yourself. Better than that, I guess.

So, what do we have here? Linklater's celebration of cinema as blank screen for exploration could have chosen few equal or better examples of resroucefulness and innovation than this one. If he lets the notoriously difficult Godard off the hook by making him an agent of chaos as a kind of goofy ancestor he also suggests that the difficulty of making cinema has always been there and the few breaks for freedom are to be treasured then' "Bravo!"  But I wonder.

I wonder, for example, if this conscientiously 35mm film production might not have felt more suversive itself if it had been shot on UHD digital video. Godard sang the praises of the accessibility of the analogue video of the '70s and '80s. Losing the dress-up of film grain (and even black and white) might have made the tribute of it all the more sincere by that observation. 

Do we need more cinephiles praising Breathless? It's like the Unknown Pleasures T-shirt of the cinema world, the universal brand qualifier that those who touch it never need to experience for themselves. You want to really celebrate indy filmmaking and its impact on mainstream cinema? Tell the story of making Night of the Living Dead. A bunch of antsy advertisers cobbling a no budget game changer in defiance of their own lifestyle. It's less comfortable but it could hit home harder.

As an undergrad in the early '80s, I was as wowed as anyone by Godard. I smoked then, and more than I'd like to admit, smoked Gitanes or Gauloises if a shop offered them. I tired my coffee black (too young, didn't work) and foraged around for as much French as I'd forgotten from school. In perparing for seminar papers and essays on Godard, I would test my ideas with flow charts and once, delivering a seminar half joked by leaving out the second syllable of his surname. But Breathless, to me, once seen, felt like a fun first album in a career that, in its first decade, went rapidly from cute art house to violent, radical and anti-conventional. Those are the titles I think of first when thinking of Godard: Weekend, Tou va bien and, at the very top, the extended essay of life in consumerworld Two or Three Things I Know About Her. Breathless feels like a square in an old Valhalla calendar after them. And Godard (as admitted in the coda of this film) did not stop developing and confronting in the decades afterward.

But this is really beside the point. If you want to bring the kids to Shakespeare, find the easiest one and let them have at it. It took a little while after the advent of high quality home video on DVD for the Godard back catalogue to appear but it eventually recieved deluxe treatment and when I bought into that and watched them again I was again exilharated by what I saw and felt. So, ok then, 's a good film.

Review: NUREMBERG

War's over and all the Nazi high command who haven't killed themselves or themselves been killed, the ones who can't bring themselves to fall on their cyanide capsules are clumped together in a military prison. The question arises about whether to dispatch them with nooses or put them on trial. It's not cut and dried. Hang them and you blow your justice wad, expose them and maybe, just maybe, you avoid another Versailles generation ready for mobilisation for World War III. So they are to go on trial and Major Douglas Kelley, army shrink, is called in to assess them psychiatrically (and also get clued in to the best approach to crush them publicly). He's on it from the off, champing at the bit to meet the seniormost Herman Goering.

Kelley wants to examine evil. If it's something that can be dissected and anatomised, it's something that can be treated if not prevented. Also, it would make for a kickarse pop science book. He's young but seasoned and, to begin with, no match for the manipulative Goering. The plot device is a familiar one whereby the investigator risks seduction by the monster he needs to control. But that's really just mechanics, a little more is on offer here.

Bug eyed Rami Malick appears gives a fragile vulnerability to Kelley, a professional too young to quite get around the lived-in and wily war criminal. As Goering, Russell Crowe turns in an intimidating performance. By that I don't mean that his character is intimidating, that's a given, but his study of the narcissist whose brutality lies hard beneath his charm fills the screen. This is not eerie villain like Hannibal Lecter whose condition allows him a gleeful self awareness, Crowe is showing us someone who either doesn't know or doesn't care about how he appears to anyone else on the planet. This risks audiences writing him off as impenetrable and unworthy of time but Crowe prevents this through personability and an amoured guile. There is a famous image of Goering at the Nuremberg trials. He's sitting in the witenss box, looking to one side and smirking, to himself the sole occupant of the room with the power to drive the proceedings. Crowe has come a long way from his skinhead leader Hando in Romper Stomper but, also, it's as though he's stepped out of Hando's self-image. It's one of the most assured performances I saw on screen in the past year.

The film saves itself from its Netflixy historical drama where writerly scenes parade with cute facts and timeline dialogue. It does this by pushing the central dialogue between Kelley and Goering into pockets of energy that contrast with the more conventional presentation. This brings to the fore some of the ugly irony of the need for a portrait of brutal history at a time so dangerously loud with it. Nuremberg rises above its interest as a period drama because it is made knowing that its audiences are bewildered by the double talk of narcissistic warmongers who get away with eyepoppingly punishing justifications or, worse still, counter accusations (yeah, it's us watching your devastation who have the problem). Horribly, this is one of the most relevant movies on screen at the moment. Go for Crowe's performance and stay for the thinking.          

Review: IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU

Linda is a psycho therapist with problems of her own. Her husband is always away on his job captaining a ship. Their daughter has a condition that requires a high maintenance care routine that involves an intestinal tube and an eating regime that is not working. One of Linda's patients is a depressed mother who abandons her infant during a session and disappears, literally leaving Linda holding the baby. The roof of her rental collapses and floods the place, forcing her and her daughter to a fleabitten hotel. Her own therapy sesions with a colleague are grdinging into difficulty. I could go on like this movie does but my commitement to mercy is vetoing that. It's this and more for almost two hours.

Linda and other characters are almost always shot in closeup and kept to the centre of the widescreen frame, forbidding the visual freedom of the aspect ratio. It creates an unsettling claustrophobia. There are a few jump scares to agitate your popcorn but the film plays without an act structure, rendering the constant series of stressful scenes exhausting to watch. It's not a comment on the pressure being exhausting, it really is draining to sit through. A late moment of a character throwing herself against more powerful waves works as a poignant symbol, or would if we hadn't already sat through almost two hours establishing the same thing in a virtual loop. There is no relief until the final image.

But even that last life affirming shot feels more like an "ok" rather than an "oh right". The onslaught of tightening oppression for the running time is unrelenting. This means that Eraserhead, Come and See and Martyrs offer more relief. Think about that.

It makes me think that this is a writer's film, an exercise in devising a constant series of cruel challenges but little to keep them in a coherent thread. The symbolism - a birth canal hole in the roof that gushes like water breaking, an umbilical scene involving that tube, the tide of the nocturnal beach standing in for an unfeeling nature and all of modern life. Through this, through a multitude of expressions and actions lived and done by Linda, we get to know her only very slightly. She deals with each challenge in turn, some more effectively than others. We get the overall arc of her resiliance but almost nothing of the origin of her drive. In one scene she dirupts a support group by turning its mantra around before fleeing the scene. This plays a little like black comedy but I could only register it as bleakness. Linda should be well enough established to buy her way out of most of this, even if only to dent the pressure. She seems to opt into it with no suggestion of mental damage that might prevent her from it.

What works is an assured helming with effective cinema skills to at least evoke all this in style. Also, this is Rose Byrne's career best performance. However little my regard for the conception of this constant barrage of woes that Linda faces, Byrne provides everything from tempests of fury to a visible struggle against implosion and carries her place at the near constant centre of the screen with solid compulsion. All the cast do well but all are in her shadow.

My exhaustion from seeing this film left me baffled. Did writer/director Mary Bronstein (impressive in a significant role on screen here) have an explosive urge to construct this repetitive torment? I don't expect Pollyanna but some character constructing space would have welcomed me in more and allowed me to travel with it rather than constantly keep from resisting it. If you see it, see it for Rose Byrne. She's a revelation.

Review: FRANKENSTEIN

Frankenstein was written as a horror story for a readership whose fear of gods was as real as taxes. Of all the big stories of the genre, Frankenstein is often the least scary. It needs a push. Boris Karloff taking a child's game too far made my favourite version horror. Later interpretations looked into philosophy, the issues that spring like ballistic missles from the notion of creating sentient life. So, when Guillermo del Toro came up with his I was already in line. But I wasn't expecting a horror tale.

If you want one of those, go back to James Whale's breakthrough, or Terrence Fisher's bold return for Hammer (there are a few but Curse is the OG). Del Toro's aim, if you are familiar with his work, would never be generic horror. And this is not.

After a prelude at the North Pole where Frankenstein and his creature are discovered at the end of the story, we enter into what we might comfortably assume will be most of the rest with Victor's story. This is told by Oscar Isaac in a dependably layered performance and takes him from blustering science hero to one horrified and contemptuous of his own creation. Shorter roles by Charles Dance as his bullying father and Christoph Waltz as his later sponsor fill things credibly. 

But then we follow the creature's tale we find out why most of the acclaim for the performances in this film have gone to Jacob Elordi's turn as the creature. Elordi whose beauty is concealed beneath slabs of prosthetics has just enough of his face and his eyes to use for his emotional responses as they appear and develop. Brutalised as his creator projects his own shame on him, echoing both Baron Frankenstein senior and an imaged god's distaste, he is withdrawn and almost mute. In later scenes where his interacition with the outside world complicates, Elordi feeds us painfully gradual inches forward. He plays it as a survival story.

Spanning both these tales is that of Elizabeth, Victor's frustrated love interest and the one who introduces the creature to kindness and a kind of love. She is played by Mia Goth who steals every single movie she is in. Goth's talent is complexity and here she shows it progressively as, scene by scene, her physicality reveals her to be Frankenstein's superior in avante-science, adding compassion to discovery with the kind of fearlessness that defies her constricting times. It's less than a leading performance but it's one you'll be taking away with you.

So, while Del Toro's Frankenstein is not the shrieking pop piece of James Whale or the near psychedelic showreel of Terrence Fisher, it does allow us room to ponder the spiky issues of the story in deliberate pacing (Del Toro can make two hours plus feel quite breezy) and some of the most beautiful imagery you'll see this year. It might not scare you but you'll have something to think about.

Review: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

A couple in the centre of a revolutionary cell Pat and Perfidia join in lots of fun activities like mass releases of border crossers and city wide power failures when Perfidia come across oaken martinet Captain Lockjaw. Perfidia stages a bizarre captor/captive scene with the soldier. He digs it, though or because he's renedered a sub, and pursues an encore. Over time she gets pregnant and has a daughter, ostensibly to Pat. When the gang gets busted Pat is plunged into hiding as Bob with the child. Perfidia makes a deal and flees south. Or did she? Young Willa has been told family legends that her mother died a hero. Others in the greater secret diaspora think she ratted them out. When Lockjaw gets his funny handshake opportunity to join an elite vigilante group, he has to pursue the evidence of his inter-racial failing to present cleanly and ascend to macho right Valhalla. 

Confused? You might be. This is an adaptation of a novel by Thomas Pynchon whose fairy tale named characters tote assault weapons and whose plots wind like medieval ornaments. I haven't read Vineland (nor anything but short stories by Pynchon) but what I do know is that Paul Thomas Anderson has apparently tamed Pynchon's sargasso plotting to deliver a cogent and engaging (if overlong) movie. You might not be able to keep up with all the great crowd of characters but you'll get the centrat quartet and more significant players and enjoy some well turned action and typical wry humour along the way.

The cast is not just on game but at the hands of a warmly capable actor's director and deliver. Leonardo DiCaprio is constantly funny as the punch drunk ex-agitprop operative who almost remembers what it was like three decades ago. Teyana Taylor is intimidatingly solid as a revolutionary who gets everything she wants out of what she encounters. Benicio Del Toro has a lot of fun as a martial arts instructor from the old revolutionary days who turns on a dime without a shift in his pulse. Sean Penn is given a dark, demonic other side to his ambitions to rid the galaxy of everything unAmerican, raging here and icy there. And, at the eventual centre of the quest, Chase Infiniti presents a teenager whose cool conceals a cheated mother's cosmic anger. And so on; in a Paul Thomas Anderson joint, you will end up knowing everyone.

The final act reminded me strangely of Boogie Nights, with important differences. Where Anderson's breakthrough hit used the porn mill to arrive at extended family values, One Battle After Another goes through that to pursue something more like a nature/nurture pride of craft. The culmination of the thrilling car chase along an undulating highway delivers a revelation of an intergenerational exchange. It really is a step forward for Anderson.

This is a film whose slickness masks anger. Because of the timelines of production, it would have been on its way before the Trump victory last year but it feels like a response to it. Perhaps it was more like an imagined worst case scenario. We marvel at the Rube Goldberg like falling into place of the evasive tactics of the networks and the warmth of craft of their organisers and we do begin at the border, such a centre of the worst excesses of the campaign. Anderson might well have chosen his material as a warning but found that it was more like a report.

I find it interesting that both he and the comparable Darren Aranofsky have landed on much more straightforward fare for their releases in the first year of Trump Secundus. We could also add Ari Aster's Eddington. America's social and political woes are benefitting from a surfeit of pummeling pushback from the arts. While that might come across as a big so what in light of the terrifying compliance of the nationwide cult, it can still serve as a beacon. May it glow.

Review: FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES

A young couple in the '60s go to the opening of a new skyscraping landmark in their city. By Rub Goldberg increments, the building explodes and collapses, killing everyone, just after he proposes marriage and she confesses pregnancy. Cut to now and uni student Stephanie is being robbed of her sleep because she keeps getting woken by nightmares about the building disaster. She gets back home mid-semester to track down the truth and exorcise the terrors. A visit to her grandmother clears a lot up, including the horrifying news that she and her current family also are in line for Death's ire because Aunt Iris cheated and lived. So, this is a franchise film and we are in for a series of orchestrated kills and circumventions.

As that is the entire plot, I'm going to leave it there, keep this short and rant a little.

I saw the first Final Destination movie at the cinema when it was a new release. It was fine, some very inventive kills and a cameo by the great horror icon Tony Todd (most famous for Candyman). The franchise kept going, essentially repeating and riffing on audience expectations. What's wrong with that? Nothing at all, that's the way horror franchises are meant to work and it's why I avoid most of them. So, what's my problem with this one?

Well, it's historical. The first one was released in 2000. This was a time when mainstream horror had grown bloated by big budgets which saw them paralysed by massive CG effects but also a smoothing of any scares that might alienate the maximisation of their audiences. From the top dollar blandings of Coppola's Dracula and Branagh's Frankenstein, Blade, the cruddy remake of The Haunting, Darkness and too many others, Hollywood's snatching of the genre meant it got richer and stupider and stopped working. The maverick hit Blair Witch Project white anted this over the next decade and horror once again, aided by accessible technology, had a healthy undercurrent. 

This happens in cycles and we're once again at the peak of one whereby ineffective garbage like this, the Waniverse (Conjuring etc.) and so much else, rules the cinema screens and the streamers with nice and toothless horror. What is different this time is that the undercurrent is not affected by this and remains active and successful. So, again, why should I care about this one, can't I just live and let live?

Well, no. It's always worth calling out how a mighty genre can turn into soft serve and rake it in when stuff much tougher still struggles for clicks in the margins. A string of selfconsciously clever kills of people I cannot care about doesn't cut it. When I can be reassured that folk like the Philippou brothers are here to stay and will keep pushing their own envelope so that the big overstuffed popcorn muck like this can take its rightful place in the family safe section.

Tony Todd's cameo in this was his final screen performance before his death last year. It is the sole poignant moment in this movie and, for all its brevity, outclasses the rest of it. In memoriam.

Review: CAUGHT STEALING

When Hank agrees to look after his neighbour's cat in their Manhattan apartment block he quickly finds out how much trouble that has landed him when a pair of Russian mafia thugs beat him unto death's door and reveal a whole mini cosmos of bad behind them. Hank coulda been a baseball player, he is haunted by nightmares of why that didn't happen. Where others might feel like a failure, he reasons that he likes his job at the bar and loves his girlfriend and has pretty much what he needs. He doesn't want what the bad guys want but they have their ways and he's bargaining over riches he isn't pursuing as the stakes get deadly and real. Maybe he should just given the cat some of the tuna from his bagle and gone to the shop, but circumstances won't have that. It's 1998, before the whole world went off. At least there's trip hop on the radio.

After Black Swan, Noah, Mother, and The Whale, Darren Aranofsky might well have felt the need to make something more straightforward, something with a beginning, middle and end in that order that made hard narrative sense. I actually like his more allegorical work but watching this muscular crime thriller made me glad that he can turn something out like this, still. 

Austin Butler reminds me of a young Brad Pitt without the macho bluster. Ok, maybe not in Dune II but certainly here where his Hank lives with development paralysis that he will probably have for life. I won't spoil why he didn't make it into the baseball league but the reason is deep seated enough to give him painful nightmares many years after the incident. The more we learn of this the better we see that he's keeping his head just above the surface tension. He still hasn't quite confronted the possibility that he is destined to be just like the old characters who are his bar's regulars and owners. If he has a motivation it is to keep everything the same as it is now. He keeps the trouble of his past behind a placid face. It's this story's job to turn that into a rictus of agony.

And as this is an Aranofsky movie, we get all this with a layer of kitchen grease and a sheen of beauty. Yvonne (a luminous Zoe Kravitz) and Hank facing each other after racing to get their kits off is sweaty, smelly and alluring, a workaday erotic. Manhattan's weary old streetscapes are both enlivened through action and loom from the weather as indifferent artefacts. Goose that I am, I didn't look out for sight of the pre-2001 Twin Towers but the scene to scene setting doesn't need them. Portishead on the radio feels more like the time. As the storms of violence enter or converge, it's almost a comfort to think of the era before the crazy quilt we live under now.

The lightness beneath the mounting brutality and suspense is kept low. This is necessary to allow us to persist through some convincingly choreographed violence and very dark morality. It's nothing like the knockabout goofiness in the trailer which makes it look like mid-period Coen brothers, but the lightness is where the warmth resides and its supply is kept to a constant undercurrent. Aranofsky's helming is nothing but confident as he keeps the easier comedy from the extreme characters dangerous rather than comic.

A strange aspect of this movie is the sight of fine grain in a film that was shot on 8K digital. I can't find out why that is beyond assuming it was the same kind of process to make it look like film that other titles have used. The strange thing about that is that it immediately reminded me of how Madonna's 90's single Erotica had a sample of vinyl record noise imposed on its entirely digital soundstage. Portishead, heard on the soundtrack along with a host of other trip hoppers from the era, used samples of their own jams to build their sound. Aranofsky's use of the grain, here, feels like a sneaky kind of nostalgia. The pummeling violence, informed by Asian cinema choreography (but not campily, the way Tarantino uses it) stops the spread of that nostalgia. It's an odd moment of detail.

So, it works. Tim Smith's punk works. The Hassidic gangsters work (though their last line is too cute to work) and the setting of the last of the late nineties before the craved new world of runaway found footage success, mobile phone movies, unbridled internet turned capitalist captors and the mainstreaming of political fantasy. This was a time when a Hank could confront in clear lines, the worst of his faults and seek to rise to invention and success. Is this Darren Aranofsky's own farewell to the era that wtinessed his rise with Pi, another story about a talented nice guy beseiged by violent interests. It is harder to be that now, harder to discern the lines. It's the clarity we miss, even if we know it was also illusory. This is fun, it has grave concerns but it's still fun.

Oh ... stay for the end credits.

Caught Stealing is currently on general release.                                                                                                             

Review: DANGEROUS ANIMALS

Tucker, solid wall of salt beef, shows tourists who take him up on his offer of cage dives that sharks are not the worst things in the water, or on it. After a demo of this, we meet young Zephyr who has come to the Gold Coast from the U.S. to escape bad family and surf it away on the big waves. A few chance encounters later, she's on Tucker's boat, waking up to the sight of another abductee. Things could be better.

From this point, as you might expect, this is a tale of action and survival, the only unknowns how far it's going to be taken. At the heart of comparable contests like The Shallows or Gerald's Game, we also need to follow a character's growth and developing strength.

Jai Courtney gives a Tucker whose only emotion is satisfaction from the torment of others. We see this in the prologue scene and we get nothing further. He needs to be most directly comparable to the sharks that his business promises. They are only making their living but Tucker has the choice that makes him worse. Courtney brings a brick shithouse's phsyical force and animal tirumph to render him easily intimidating even before his shows of violence. 

Hassie Harrison's Zephyr is young and damaged, just enough spark left to try and kick against her past through her skill and the freedom of the waves. She is in stark contrast to her fellow prisoner Heather whose trauma is still too recent to smooth over. She, as we, needs Zephyr's fight and in a dialogue of character reinforcement that gets away with sounding a little too written as it feels like the only spark of hope in a starkly bleak situation.

Director Sean Byrne gives us an extension on his action chops as the scene widens out from his previous work to the open water and Tucker's almost medieval torture devices and the threat of the sea itself. There is little point in revealing more plot detail in what is kept to a lean two-hander with support and a constant feed of deeds. This film works exactly as intended and declared which is a lot more than I can say for a lot of similar outings. Faint praise? Not if you see the movie.

Review: DROP

After a prologue of a woman, Violet, facing an extreme DV situation, we cut to her more ordered and stable life years on. She has decided to brave leaving the house and try the dating scene again. The guy seems perfect, hunky but self-effacing. The restaurant is impossibly swanky with dizzy views of the city from its skyscraper setting. Violet's early but her date is keeping her updated with messages and apologies for lateness. An aging suit mistakes her for his blind date and after laughing about it they clink glasses as fellow explorers of later stage romance search. 

When the guy, Henry, arrives the chemistry is immediate. Then during the small talk, she gets a drop on her phone, a challenge. She ignores it and all the subsequent ones until the sender shows her his hack of her home security system with a balaclava-ed intruder waving a gun in the living room. What do they want? Henry. Dead. Nope, they already thought of the police or her telling Henry. They can see and hear her. She has to kill Henry with a phial of something lethal, planted in the towel dispenser in the loo. She has to think fast and well.

Christopher Landon who has already proved himself a strong director in the thriller and horror corner for the Happy Death Day films and the clever Freaky, gives us a sprightly, Hitchcockian story of invention against threat. This does not bear very close examination, once you take the setups and parade of tension releases along the way, the overall scheme just won't work. But that's situation normal for the genre.

It's also clouded and very pleawsantly by the sheer chemistry between the two leads played by Meghann Fahy and Brendon Sklenar whose interplay and individual actions in the busy setting take our minds well away from the plot holes. The camera is ready to move on call but also assuages us with static setups we need for character. The drops are delivered on screen as large font angled as through projected on to the walls. At one point there is a patchwork of Violet's home security cameras cast around her. These are like freeze frames of her concentrated attention and augment the more typical phone screenshots with a lot more urgency. In showing this kind of flair, we are invited into Violet's anxiety, knowing that, for all the brightness and scale of the notifications they are being read only by her. Add the vertigo of the window-side table and you've got some nice queasy moments of dread.

There's not much more to say about this Blumhouse produciton; it really does what it says on the tin. However, at a time when new genre tales are coming out with bloated running times, this ninety-five minute pacer, wins its slot.

VIewing notes: currently available for hire through Prime

Review: EDDINGTON

Eddington, New Mexico, May 2020. The small western town is in lockdown. The mayor promotes social distancing but doesn't always practice it. The sherrif doesn't believe the virus has made it to the hamlet even though the town drunk is clearly afflicted and roams the streets and bars spreading it to the air around him. Meanwhile, the youth are rising, turning their sort-of distanced keggers into political meetings as the community responds variously to the news, Black Lives Matter and Antifa and calls for defunding the police hit the air. Little Eddington is behaving like big America with protests made of a babel of differing directions and a comgin showdown between the mayor and the sherriff. Don't worry about missing anything, though, everyone's phone is out and it will all be online in varying degrees of truth. 

Ari Aster, one of the wunderkinds of the 2010s, consolidating his early win Hereditary with the epic scaled Midsommar and then confounded most of his fans with the massive fable Beau is Afraid. Now he's back and has his sights on the greater American epic in the manner of Robert Altman's Nashville, Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights or the Coens' No Country for Old Men. The difference, here, is not with approach, they're all of a piece when you look at them, but in how the film suggests not that this is America now but how it happened. The information age that was freeing everyone constrained to remote cultures (or just remote basements) was devoured by capitalism and where once numbers ruled influence usurped democracy. So, instead of an America seen through porn or country music or greed, we see how the invading pandemic appears and then is exploited to transform a flawed but functioning elder democracy into an atomised mess.

While it is clear to see parallels between the characters and the COVID years' public figures, Aster doesn't labour it by being too declaritive. Neither Sherriff Joe nor Mayor Ted evoke a Trump. The conspiracy star Vernon doesn't have to correspond to any particular figure, being so all purpose. Are the terrorist-like groups Antifa, a false flag Klan, or something evern weirder? No idea but they do fire real rounds. But when we see the resulting order, the society that emerges from the rubble of the medical, cultural and political tornado, we know that we are watching types that now walk our earth in positions of authority, having once been lax lawmen, blithering conspiracists or centrist town elders.

Joaquin Phoenix offers a finely tuned and nuanced Joe who's ok at keeping the peace but doesn't handle the confusion of his times well. When one of the rioters assuages a loud protest by manipulating it into silence, Joe walks off, seeing the result is good enough. It's a performance that warns us that he will break, that his voice at the higher end of his register will gun it into a big guitar through a Marshall stack distortion. At the more Zen end of the spectrum, the I'm-in-everything Pablo Pascal as Mayor Ted Garcia, shepherds his consituents into living the right way until he needs to have a fundraiser BBQ and all the regulations loosen. The meeting of these two forces at that occasion is the point where the chaos takes full spark.

Emma Stone has few lines but her torn character takes heart-rending life when she is embraced by Austin Butler's Vernon, a soft spoken rabble rouser. Young Cameron Mann makes one of the biggest transitions from well meaning teenager to the lightlessness of the ultra right.Aster's talent lies in the smoothness of all of this. The film does feel long but also crafted. It's the craft that keeps us there; from the rich digital cinematography and dolby atmos audio mix to the warmth of the performances across the board to the rallying cry to look to as much truth as you can find, it's in the craft

Viewing notes: a small morning session at Kino was blissfully uneventful. Eddington is on gerneral release.

Review: TOGETHER

After a prologue that will remind you of John Carpenter's The Thing, we meet Tim and Millie who are about to move a little out of town to a lushly forrested country house. As partners, they are on a plateau where things have got a little too routine and their youthful hopes are dragging into inertia. At a sendoff, Millie proposes marriage in Millenial fashion and Tim bungles it with hesitation before an anticlimactic acceptance. Their night together features pillow talk that would render anyone in a long term relationship icy. Is it just a dream? Established in their new place, they whimsically go for a hike, find the location of the prologue, enjoy a bonding moment and wake up fused together at the calf muscles. That bit is not a dream.

Michael Shanks's debut feature of his own script (more on that later) wastes no time in establishing the dull pain of this part of a relationship and how the magical fusion the couple is suffering is directly punishing their drift. The central couple is played by real life couple Dave Franco and Allison Brie who immerse themselves into roles that, while they once might have been poignantly close to their real lives, might serve on ly as distant memories as recriminations about their progress as professionals and partners come up as part of daily conversation. The interesting thing about this depiction is that it swerves away from comedy when it might have gloried in it.

As such, it is more like an early '90s indie as directed by David Cronenberg with both flinty candour about coupledom and sex and body morphing ick. We are given a generous ramp of development before we get to the crucial moment when the central conceit is made flesh (so to type) and when the concept prevails and the expected twists and turns take place, the film falls into mechanical efficiency. Thanks to the stars, this works as they work hard to give us cause for empathy despite the writing presenting two entitled ocnsumer grade narcissists.

Also of note is the casting of Damon Herriman. Herriman has already played Charles Manson twice as well as a handful of other edgy nutjobs and he plays them for all they're worth. As fellow teacher Jamie at the school where Millie works, he's instantly offputting, mixing insinuation with a kind of Ikea-assembled charm. His quiet queasy menace sustains to the end.

This film arrives on screens under a cloud, being the subject of a lawsuit for plagiarism from an earlier Australian film called Better Half. I haven't seen that but I can tell you that the case is not just a plain stealing of an idea. I'll leave it to you to harvest the details but it does hamper the reception of this finely wrought film that unusually examines the creepier aspects of long term relationships so candidly. Does Better Half do the same or simliar? Well, I'd like to see it.

Until then, I'll be happy enough recommending this strange tale as an energetic and substantial essaying of the dangers of intimacy and the look of it when it's forced.

Viewing notes: Not only was I up for a free ticket due to my club membership at Kino, I had the whole screening to myself, a kind of reverse experience from the annoyance of Monday's cinema outing. Together is currently on general cinema release.

Review: WEAPONS

One night, at 2.17 in the morning, all but one of a primary school class get out of bed, go out the front door and run into the dark with their arms arched like wings. The community, in a show of communal reason, blame the teacher who is dismissed from her position and turns to vodka for assistance. She's as haunted as anyone and feels the kind of guilt that cannot be assuaged philosophically. Meanwhile, in a series of chapters that cover the same time period in the ensuing days, a cop, a homeless addict, a parent and the school principal, all make their way through the mystery of the disappearance. And then things start coming together.

Zach Cregger gave the world in 2022 the wrong-footing and heart-winning Barbarian whose sudden shifts and rug pulls revealed all of the skills of his comedian beginnings to expose his love of comedy's obverse, horror. Weapons is what his fellow Americans call his sophomore effort and it reminded me, if only in how the differences between debut and follow-up appear, of the Philippou brothers' second feature Bring Her Back. In both cases there is an intensification of elements key to the first outings and a downturn on the humour. Both are subtler than their predecessors but also nastier.

The creepiness of missing children has been an infrequently recalled trope in horror cinema and the first title Weapons reminds me of is The Brotherhood of Satan with its small town aridity and eeriness. We also get a kind of Pennywise in the figure of Gladys. By the time you meet her you'll understand why I say that, so it's not a spoiler. Shallow comparisons aside, though, the ruling mood here is the uncanny, things that almost make sense stop short of it set free the dogs of menace.

Casting here is as fine as Barbarian with the young female lead of the hour Julia Garner as the strong woman rendered fragile by the circumstances and the atmosphere of resentment and hatred around her. She doesn't miss a beat. Josh Brolin as his usual welcome lug with a heart. Amy Madigan renders her every breath unnerving. If each of these weren't offering the best they had the twisted tale would unravel about half way as the artifice begins to show. They do what all good performances do in delicate plotting, distract with organic warmth. One thing demanding mention here is the aid that Cregger's tracking camera gives with the sense of queasiness (at one point making the skeletal junkie figure tower and demoralise). A solid directorial strategy.

As the plot and its matter appear more clearly, with some unnecessary clarification in the narration, we are taken home to a conclusion that, for all its supernature, makes sense. While I was continually engaged over the long two and a half hour running time, I did begin to miss the persistent restraint of the horror behind the horror in Barbarian. That said, I'd much rather watch this than almost anything currently offered by MIFF this year. Yes, that's a hobby horse but it's still true.

Viewing notes: I went to see this at Hoyts in the morning and al was dandy until a small group of  wagging teenagers sat to one side near the front, kicked their shoes off and started talking. I turned and glared at them until I got their attention, a small wave from one of them who nodded when I put a finger to my lips. Their droning mumble lowered to whispers. It rose again as the soundtrack volume swelled and then didn't subside until I glared again. As the credits rolled and the lights came up. I caught the eye of one of them and asked why he had to talk all the way through. I almost instantly regretted it as he responded as though I was a teacher with a kind of feeble excuse that they had been whispering. I reminded him that I had heard them and added that I paid for a ticket to see and hear the film and not him. No reply. I saw them looking for an unofficial exit as the rest of us filed out. I went out into the light of day wishing I'd used the truancy card but then reasoned that it wouldn't have had much of an effect. You go in the morning of a week day and this happens.

Review: VIDEOHEAVEN

Can you remember the last time you went to a video shop as part of your domestic routine? The weekend night you weren't going out or the movie marathon you organised with your friends, or maybe on a whim a mid-week catchup with something you missed at the cinema? It really was a while back, wasn't it? You might have forgotten your local one. Mine was a place called Video Busters and had a massive floor space and a big expansive range from the latest hits to obscure continental gore fests. In 2012, I was housebound with a leg in a cast and in two months, while I was recovering, the entire block that housed that shop, the chemist and the medical clinic had all been redeveloped. The shop did re-emerge further down the road and kept up the ice cream and snacks it had been selling to keep things afloat. But a lot of the stock was on sale. I picked up a few Asian horror titles I didn't know and pretty much left it there in the street to end its life. It had gone by the close of the year.

This film is not the documentary I had assumed it would be but a deep diving essay into the market, the cultural phenomenon and the social space of the video shop through its decades long history. Instead of talking head recollections from former owners and staff, we get the flinty tones of Maya Hawke talking us through an epic three hour examination.

At first, to allow us an appreciation of it scale, we are treated to a compact history of the technology and its rapid commodification that affected both cinema attendance and tv habits to install itself as a constant rival to previous standard business. One thing that such a stretching vista omits is how a flop at the cinema could be a durable hit on home video. That surprised me.

Otherwise, the chaptered sections begin to specialise. Aspects like the social arena of the spaces and its depiction in movies and TV shows, the figure of the video store clerk in feature films as toxic cinephilic gatekeeper, the language of cinematic taste in rom coms, and the depiction of the business in popular culture as it waned against the tide of convenience offered by streaming services. Carpeted by TV and movie clips that expand from instant illustrations to a series of deep dives, the arc describes the passing of an institution by cultural change from the ground up, just as TV and home video itself had. 

I watched this as a MIFF stream on ACMI 3 and intended to slice it into digestible pieces but, after some initial resistance as I got used to the chalk and talk approach, I just let it absorb me whole with its subtle but mesmeric repetition and massive supply of quotes. Depictions of video shops in fiction were far more prevalent than I recall and chosen to provide solidity to the discourse. Instead of the nostalgic to-cameras I was worried about, I was engaged to compulsion by this revisit to a thing that folk of my age down to millennials will remember as a dependable part of the weekly roll. While, I didn't wander, check the phone or interrupt the stream for too long, I know I missed quite a few points and might well seek this on physical media to cover everything that slipped by. I know it's ironic but it suits.

Viewing notes: As I'm not buying into the stress of MIFF this year, I'm choosing very few things to see and was happy to stream this through the ACMI3 app. This looked and proved essential. I am glad I didn't have to put up with the distractions of contemporary festival audiences for three hours in a cinema but enjoyed this in the cloister of my lounge room. I'd recommend that approach.

Review: 40 ACRES

After an agrarian apocalypse, the most precious thing is arable land. North America has become a land of self sufficient farms. So you are going to get raiders, invaders, post-urban imperialists to move in and take over. We open as the Freeman family's place is getting taken. The rough and ready land pirates move through the thin grain crop. They are surrounded in the thick by eerie whistles. In a matter of minutes, they are all lethally dispatched. C'est la vie.

The entirety of the first and second acts are spent on character and family development and it takes on the distinct feel of a literary adaptation: deep characterisation, back story, leisurely pacing, chapter titles. Then a detail is revealed and everything breaks. This makes for a riveting final act but at the time it occurred to me how forgiving we are of a pedestrian beginning when act 3 is action packed.

And then, as the credits rolled and I and my companion stood and made our way out, it occurred to me that when the action is so heavily concentrated at the business end, how eager we will overlook the ease of the falling final action. Anyone who has done their thinking about narrative structure will consider these statements naïve singsong but I've seldom seen a film where I was so keenly watching my own responses.

That is not to say that this film is too formulaic but when it does enter genre territory it becomes very obedient of it and the narrative beats are palpable. This is eased by the performances which are robust across the board, particularly Danielle Deadwyler as the military-trained earth mother, and Kataem O'Connor as the son and heir trying to work out what kind of person he needs to be for a future as raggedly promised as this one.

There is more made of descendance as a theme, here, than I would have expected. The Freemans came from post-Civil War slaves who moved north across the Canadian border to shake the stigma of bonded ownership. The companion family is native north  American, retaining language and cultural traditions. The encroaching antagonists are weighted to the historically likely northern Europeans. These last seem like the forced but doomed people who have chosen the way of the spoiler that I won't be revealing.

This is where the film does start working for its living and the stakes produced by those issues come into life/death levels. While I can't be recommending 40 Acres as a post apocalyptic scenario I will suggest that its thematic overlay does have merit and the cast do some solid bearing. There are a few too many flaws due to genre-service but, really, it's not the end of the world.

Viewing notes: I saw this as a plus one in an advanced screening at Cinema Nova. A very fine spirited time. On general release in Australia from August 14 2025.

Review: FRIENDSHIP

Craig corrects a misdelivered parcel to his neighbour Austin and inadvertently finds a new friend. Not just a guy you can wave to as you see them in the street but someone to go on adventures with. Craig is in the manipulation business, designing advertising strategies to keep consumers hooked to products. Austin is a weatherman on TV who smokes, drinks and leads a punk band on his nights off. Austin takes Craig to an urban exploration into the old city sewer system which ends in a warm bonding moment. So, it's a bromance? Nope.

At a night with some of Austin's buds Craig pushes through the inhibition he feels was holding him back but it ends in him committing a massive faux pas. What started out as a kind of suburban Fight Club inverts to Craig almost switching roles with Austin who turns all normie after a promotion at work. This is really not going to plan. 

Nothing is, though. Craig's family life is introduced after his wife Tami's successful battle with cancer. One of the first things you hear her say is that she would like to have an orgasm again. Craig, trying to cover the embarrassment announces that he has plenty of his own orgasms. When his son and share a child parent kiss it's on the lips. He notices and remarks on it but it's dropped. On an outing with his son at a shopping centre a middle aged man goes by riding a vehicle that looks like a pig with blinking lights. It's also commented on.

These moments not only save Friendship from ever easing off into cuteness they serve the film's modus operandi: destabilisation. Tim Robinson has built a comedy career on social distress with his I Think You Should Leave sketches. Their approach is transported here to feature length proportions. After Craig's faux pas with the buddies, he's given a dry and unpleasant breakup speech by Austin. He tries joining the smokers at work as they huddle outside but the guy's night in he gets them to at his basement lasts only minutes before he throws everyone out. This film does not allow its audience to get too comfy, even with its frequently bleak comedy.

Robinson fights for our empathy and we are surprised to grant it. Partly, this is due to the victimhood he suffers but it's also due to the motivations of those around him. When he disrupts a customer pitch at work what we notice most is that he's breaking through the falsehood of his own career. But then, we don't feel like cheering the self-destruction. He's neither a golden hearted jerk nor a corporate terrorist like Tyler Durden. If anything, his responses are the sporadically overkilling ones of Leo Bloom in the Producers or Sheldon's in The In Laws, given the switch he breaks it.

To the very end we have to guess where things are going as the stakes of personal antipathy between friends and family soar and the means to arrest the damage increasingly fail. Paul Rudd as Austin's change from urban freedom fighter to rat race running conformist is jolting but his counter in Craig's chaos makes it work (or at least explains it as a necessity). Kate Maras long suffering Tami's choices feel like she is waking from a lifelong fog (reminiscent of  Being John Malkovich's Lotte)

There is a scene toward the end that repeats an early one in which the seeds of imbalance are planted. Its warmth and resolve feel like a  genuine reward. This leads to another that suggests a development in the friendship but is left ambiguous. 

I don't know if Tim Robinson can develop or refine his sketch comedy persona further than he has here. His performance is so committed and solid it suggests that his future career could stay at the one-shot that it feels like or into something else entirely. It's definitely not the stuff of comedy franchises. I'll be interested to see where it does go.

This is one for the cinema. Not because of any high vistas or action setpieces but for the density of its psychology that, while not academically taxing is nevertheless sincere and probing and would be easily missed if your phone was there to distract you. It's to be seen without pause and all the attention you can muster. It's a comedy, not the type that makes you chortle but smile with recognition and even sadness. In the year's offerings so far, it's among the highpoints.

Review: WARFARE

Do you remember Eric Prydz's 2000s hit Call On Me? No? Well, if you ever slunk home after a long Saturday night and chucked Rage on, you'll remember the video. A group of beautiful and fit young women compete for the attention of the hunky gym trainer. Gyrations and pelvic thrusts and Californian perfection in the hair, faces and bodies. All the reward is directed at the male who is standing in for those playing at home. Well, that's how this movie about military violence begins. After enough of the Prydz clip the reverse shot is of a wall of soldiers in action gear grinning and leering and cheering: bonding. You will remember this moment as the film continues. You will need to.

This film has a progress rather than an act structure. It is based on the collected memories of the soldiers who participated in the operation and, while an arc does become clear, what we are watching is military procedure without context beyond that of warfare itself. Ok, got it, roll credits.

Well, the rest of the film is a steady build from the crew establishing their base to starting operations to defending themselves against an elusive enemy. The point of their presence and commandeering the house becomes clear as they identify armed suspects appearing in the neighbouring buildings, the soldiers are drawing them out. When a grenade is tossed in through a window the operation changes from a clean-up job to a siege with increasingly traumatic and brutally violent effects on the men.

A multinational cast of young, intense performers gives us a thickening tension and at frequent intervals, we go back to that bonding sleazy pop video. When we're looking into the body of a soldier halved by an explosion with his internal organs exposed or another's legs hacked by weaponry, we recall the doof doof techno rhythm and the beautiful young things grinding around erotically and wish we were back there when the worst thing was what the men no so secretly wanted to do with those dancers. If that bonded the characters, it now bonds the audience to the movie.

The insistence on depicting the real time events highlights the apparent futility of the operation. What does it mean when a single act of aggression renders the soldiers into automatic motion drilled in by training? And where are we looking when we understand that almost all of what we are seeing is the force and equipment of an invading army? When they are threatened our empathy defaults to them. A poignant single shot before the end credits puts this into perspective.

I am gladdened that this wasn't a found footage movie as the real-time feature suggested. The presentation is the cleanest digital video and multiple setups every scene. About half way through I began to wonder when the point was due to arrive but as that mark drove by it became clear that this was the point: noise, danger, life and non life. While I was happy to emote-along the characters closest to my field of vision, I kept thinking of why they were there. I did not support the war in Iraq. This coloured everything I saw between the two credit sequences and I kept thinking of the ever darkening sleaze of the Eric Prydz video and feeling sick that the erotica and the ultraviolence became indistinguishable. A strong piece that yet must beg for indulgence lest its audience should wise up and walk out.

Viewing notes: I saw this as part of my subscription to Prime. It was a robust 4K presentation. It's available for rent at other sources.