SHADOWS Contactless Friday 22 2020 8.30 SBS on Demand + Messenger: ALFIE (1966)

When I was running Shadows at the ABC Gallery one of the regulars, a much older man, often complained to me about the more obscure films I showed. He accepted that that was part of my brief but said that he would show titles from the great trove of cinema classics that were easily available. I replied that my purpose was provide a kind of stand-in for the recently deceased Melbourne arthouse scene and show a mix of old and new that were difficult to access. Some of those might well be classics but probably wouldn't include Breakfast at Tiffany's or Casablanca. Good films, of course, but if you only show classics you never get to statements that the classics overshadowed, the cries from the margins and the fog beyond the mainstream. So, why the bloody 'ell am I showin' Alfie?

Well, it does look like one of those auld cinema classics with a '60s birthdate and a cast that includes Michael Caine and a host of other great UK players. But I'm putting it on as the two times I've seen it I had different responses. As a young cinema student ripe with cultural snobbery and political righteousness (and a very small handful of life experiences) I found myself looking around what I diagnosed as Alfie's misogyny and nihilism. Decades later, I saw it again and recognised through the laddish fourth wall confessions a growing sadness beneath the cockiness.

If you don't have a similar history with this title you might simply enjoy the slightly hard edge given to swinging London that the pop group movies left out. It's from a time when working class people could realise plans careers and affluence. Keith Richards famously remarked that the better money and end of enforced military service gave rise to the greatness of British youth culture in the '60s. Into this success they carried the impetuousness of an extended adolescence and an exuberance that probably seemed endless at the time. Caine brings to Alfie a harder face than today's Mockneys and would today be depicted with a kind of knowing affectation. Here, at least, it feels real.

So , let's watch Alfie.

SHADOWS Contactless: May 15 8.30 Netflix Party: CAM

Have you ever had your credit card hacked? Ever been impersonated on Facebook? Bother have happened to me. Initially, the sense of panic freezes your thoughts and the first thing to cross your mind is that the thief is the one they'll believe, not you, the original. When that passes and you begin the reversal process, calling the bank, warning your social media friends, and your reason returns, you will still remember how little it took to throw you into chaos. Now imagine that happened at work.

Alice is a cam girl. She performs for an audience she never sees who comment in a chat sidebar and pay her to do things. Her audience is male, at the numberless nerve endings at the other end of the web cam. The greater the dollar count, the more extreme the act. Alice knows her job and is good at keeping things this side of bad. But then she hears about herself going much further. So far, this could be another doppelganger story. But we're dealing with bigger impacts, here. This doesn't have the intimacy of The Double or William Wilson, it's global and the stakes are rising as the ever hungry spectators, safe in their own bedrooms, grow in numbers and only want more.

Co-writer Isa Mazzei drew from her own time as a cam girl and was initially interested in making a documentary. But the more the writing team thought of it the more they knew they needed the realm of fiction and its devices to tell the tale. While this is only one aspect of the cam girl's lot pushed to extremes it confronts us with the value we put on her and her choice of profession and how our anonymity allows the illusion of limited involvement. The internet didn't create this it just allowed it to intensify. Owing as much to Klute as the more obvious call of Videodrome, Cam lets us in to where we protest we never tread.

SHADOWS Contactless: May 8, 8.30 SBS on Demand: THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

After decades of struggle and massive setbacks, Terry Gilliam finally made his film about Don Quixote. The production troubles made for such a compelling tale that the documentary (made as a dvd extra) became a film in its own right. That film, Lost in La Mancha, is highly recommended and, if it were better available, I'd set it as homework. Gilliam didn't quite shrug but got back up and made what was easier to make but still within his preferred vision. And then finally this most recent resurrection of his lost project emerged, recast and reshot. And few seemed to notice.

That's a shame as it works perfectly well. Does it match the massive epic put in mind by all the legend about it? Nothing could. It does, however, present a lean and cleverly told tale of confounded hubris which some might well observe feels autobiographical. But all this is meta business. The film stands on its own without crutches of pity or worthiness. It's strong and it's fun.

Adam Driver is arguably a superior choice to the more famously cast Johnny Depp. Jonathan Pryce reunites with Gilliam from the days of Brazil and proved reliable. If you watch Lost in La Mancha you'll understand why that's important.

If this seems all a touch too convoluted and self-clever recall only how much of a struggle it was to get to the screen and how each peak and plummet might have affected its creator and forced him to reflect on where he has come from and why he still must fight for each new project. It's about past and present at every turn, how we are forgiving of ourselves in retrospect but disappointed at the way we have turned out now. This is a story of careers and so is the story of how we have lived. Gilliam went through windmills of disappointment bringing it us and has more than earned our attention.

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.