BLADE RUNNER 2049

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Jared Leto, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, Hiam Abbass and Sean Young.
Writers: Hampton Fancher and Michael Green.
Director: Denis Villeneuve.

Rating: 3.5/5

Having muddied to the point of audience disinterest the mythology of one blockbuster property in the quest for ‘something deeper’, Ridley Scott’s existential musings on origins and creation continue in Blade Runner 2049. Thankfully, in the hands of self-proclaimed disciple Denis Villeneuve, the themes that consume the creator's mind are granted a more finely-attuned grace and depth than they were in the Scott-helmed Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

Bleached bleak yet breathtakingly beautiful in the hands and eyes of DOP Roger Deakins, the sequel that seemed entirely unlikely to Warner Bros and Ladd Company backers who saw red on the first film ultimately befits the legacy of its origin. Blade Runner 2049 embraces the enormous shadow cast by Blade Runner 1982 by crafting a vast immersion in scale and vision, as well as indulging fans the rose-coloured sentimentality with which they fuelled the legend of Scott’s 1982 masterpiece-in-hindsight.

On board as one of the six executive producers (from the somewhat worrying roster of 16 producers), Scott has re-engaged scribe Hampton Fancher to revisit America’s west coast thirty years after the events of his first script; co-writer David Peoples did not return, with Michael Green (Logan, 2017) getting a screenplay credit, having earned Scott’s trust as a story contributor on Alien: Covenant. The writing pair has conjured an expanded setting that recalls key elements from the first film’s neon metropolis aesthetic while crafting new landscapes of desolation and decrepitude.

In 2049, the blade runner cops are themselves ‘skinjobs’, replicants tasked with retiring late model Nexus units deemed too dangerous for mortal relics like the legendary but long-gone Rick Deckard. Blade runners now look like Ryan Gosling’s K, introduced to as he deals with a gentle giant (Dave Bautista) deep in the solar power fields that pass as America’s farmland. In the roots of a long dead tree (‘origins of life’, remember), K makes a discovery that soon reveals a shattering secret that hints at the creation of a new form of life.

That’ll do plot-wise, as most of the critical community have promised the film’s distributors not to divulge key details. Suffice to say (as hinted at in the trailer), Harrison Ford makes a compelling return to his third most iconic character, the script affording him moments of emotion that call on the ageing star to deliver some of the most genuinely moving work he has ever done. Gosling is a sturdy if chilly presence, allowed the time over a whopping (and occasionally testing) 163 minutes to gradually emerge as a more-human-than-human android character (thanks immeasurably to the presence of Ana de Armas as his holographic love interest). As industrialist Niander Wallace, Jared Leto again stumbles as a big production’s central villain, his monologues of sociopathic malevolence sounding a bit too ‘Adam West’ for a film craving deep intellectual connection.

Denis Villeneuve does genre films as darkly-hued psychological explorations, more concerned with the journey than with the destination. As remarkable as it is to reference such films with regards to a Hollywood sequel, Villeneuve’s vision of future-noir hails from 70’s Soviet science fiction, specifically Andrey Tarkovsky’s landmark work Stalker. Under his director, the Oscar-bound Deakins fills every inch of the frame with an artist’s understanding of shadow and light, colour and monochrome, just as Tarkovsky’s lensman Aleksandr Knyazhinskiy did.

His visual obsession with making fleeting moments in time grand experiences means Villeneuve’s storytelling can create issues with endings (see Prisoners, or, Enemy, both 2013; even, for some, Arrival, 2016) and he can’t avoid a sense of anti-climax here. Perhaps that is what drew him to his first sequel - the thought of applying his penchant for inconclusive denouements into a franchise sequel. This is a bridging episode, with character arcs left unresolved and plot developments hinted; all the bluster that the production brings to the closing moments (both physically and, less convincingly, emotionally) can’t hide the fact that after 163 minutes, a satisfying third act eludes him.

One can’t help sense that producer Scott’s true desire is to construct another multi-episode franchise arc driven by origin issues, a la his convoluted Alien hexalogy. In one moment that lasts a mere handful of frames, a bald, muscular Nexus prototype instantly recalls the ‘engineers’ from Prometheus. Does BR2049 share less DNA with BR1982 than it does with recent instalments of Scott’s increasingly irrelevant horror space-opera? (In our Alien: Covenant review, we noted nods to Blade Runner and the replicant mythology).

Fittingly (and, perhaps, thankfully), that’s all in the future; for now, this flawed but ambitious, long but beautiful continuation of a classic can spend its time maneuvering to forge its own lofty genre status.

THE FLORIDA PROJECT

Stars: Bria Vinaite, Brooklynn Prince, Willem Dafoe, Valeria Cotto, Christopher Rivera, Caleb Landry Jones, Macon Blair, Karren Karagulian and Sandy Kane.
Writers: Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch
Director: Sean Baker

Rating: 4/5

The resilience of childhood innocence works hard to beat down real world hardship in The Florida Project, a slice-of-hard-life drama that pulsates with a rawness and compassion all too rare in modern cinema. Set almost entirely within a gaudy Florida hotel peopled with the disenfranchised and forgotten, director Sean Baker’s neo-realistic eye for humour, honesty and heartbreak has crafted a slow burn, potent commentary on America’s struggling underclass. 

In the shadow of Disney World (the original ‘Florida Project’), the strip mall and 2-star motel burg of Kissimmee clings desperately to a more prosperous past, when families of tourists filled the rooms and frequented the ice-cream parlours and fast-food chains in greater numbers. The Magic Castle Motel has become home to six year-old Moonee (the extraordinary Brooklynn Prince), a tough talking, indomitable spirit whose passion for life and take-no-shit survival instincts sees her rule over her own self-styled magic kingdom amongst the noisy sprawl’s highway sidewalks, back alleys and abandoned buildings.

Moonee’s ballsy bravado keeps her above the din of desperation, a trait she has adopted from her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite). Foul-mouthed and heavily inked, Halley has no idea how to mother except in the purest of forms; she adores her daughter but hates the world, clashing with all in authority and finally turning to soliciting to pay rent on their dishevelled motel room. The compassion of sturdy hotel owner Bobby (Willem Dafoe, Oscar-bound) is tested many times over, his resolve to maintain his establishment’s crumbling façade only matched by his tough-love care for Moonee and dwindling patience for Halley’s outbursts and excuses.

Working once again with co-scripter Chris Bergoch, Sean Baker has captured this vibrant yet precarious part of US society in most of his features to date. From Four Letter Words (2000) to Take Out (2004) to Prince of Broadway (2008), Baker has examined fringe dwellers clinging to hope in the face of mounting hardship; both Starlet (2012) and his last film, the acclaimed Tangerine (2015), featured protagonists determined to shoehorn their personalities and perspectives on life into a society that has pre-determined their course.

Like many of those works, The Florida Project soars in its first act with a freestyle joie de vivre that suggests Moonee and her friends Scooty (Christopher Rivera) and Jancey (Valeria Cotto) exist happily in defiance of their lot in life. Baker’s colourful and energetic opening stanza, however, proves every bit that ‘crumbling façade’ that Bobby tries to paint over; or, in grander terms, symbolises the happy face but corporate coldness of the all-pervasive Disney empire and the country in which such entities prosper, above its people. The director has a flair for rich character, tart dialogue and splashy production design that feels buoyant, but Baker’s America is ultimately a sad, hopeless landscape. His films are filled with damaged but wondrously joyous humans for whom the society formed upon 'The American Dream' has no time or place.

HORROR MOVIE: A LOW BUDGET NIGHTMARE

Featuring: Craig Anderson, Gerard Odwyer, Bryan Moses, Robert Anderson and Dee Wallace.
Director: Gary Doust

Rating: 4/5

Eighteen years after the soul-crushing realities of self-funded film production were exposed in Chris Smith’s landmark documentary American Movie, director Gary Doust puts a warm but no less anxiety-inducing Australian spin on the tribulations faced by the next-to-no-budget auteur in Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare.

Craig Anderson had runs on the board after the TV comedy success Double the Fist (he earned a 2015 AACTA Award for Best Comedy Directing), but the dream was to helm his horror feature script Red Christmas. Nearing 40, Anderson’s life was moribund, reduced to sleeping on the floor of his small office studio surrounded by his VHS tapes and (admittedly impressive) collection of Stephen Pearson prints. Existence hits a low point when a painful condition demands mature-age circumcision. Anderson is frank and funny about the increasingly dire state of his life, which bottoms out with the pathetic reality of having to have his adult foreskin removed while still on his mother’s Medicare card.

Doust had exhibited a natural talent for capturing the torment of a low budget shoot as far back as 2002 with his own award winner, the terrific Making Venus. His affinity for and incisive understanding of the filmmaker’s experience, nurtured during his tenure as head of the film collective Popcorn Taxi and in his doco series Next Stop Hollywood, affords him a sweet and trustful rapport with his subject. Footage inside the Anderson family home, where the desperate director asks his financially stable brother for a loan, provide for a rare kind of awkward intimacy; Anderson’s snowballing anguish over budget/crewing/schedule/union conditions make for some truly stomach-tightening and heart-tugging moments of factual filmmaking.

By the time the Red Christmas shoot gets underway in regional New South Wales, Doust and his camera are deeply embedded within the on-set dynamic. Personalities emerge that bring Anderson into sharper, deeper focus – actor Gerard Odwyer, a Down Syndrome sufferer who proves to be accomplished actor and strong emotional core, for both productions; first AD Bryan Moses, often the voice of reason amidst the madness (he and Anderson co-directed the 1999 Tropfest winning short, Life in a Datsun). Not for the first time in her career, leading lady Dee Wallace (pictured, above) proves a winning (and suprisingly sweary) presence and inspires her director to stretch his talents.

The final stages of Anderson’s Red Christmas journey provide insight into the end-to-end process of envisioning, realising and selling your work (including a post-production stretch on a cruise ship that seems slightly incongruous given the penny-pinching woes that make up so much of the film). In practical terms, Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare should be required viewing in film schools nationwide for its matter-of-factness. The film truly soars as an endearing character study; an examination into the determination and borderline delusion it takes to make one’s vision a reality. In Craig Anderson, Gary Doust honours the archetypal passion-fuelled dreamer of great cinematic lore.

HORROR MOVIE: A LOW BUDGET NIGHTMARE will have its World Premiere at the 2017 Adelaide Film Festival. Session and ticket information can be found at the event's official website.

(Footnote: SCREEN-SPACE attended 2016 Sydney Film Festival screening of Red Christmas, but did not publish a review. We did provide a 2.5 star rating on our Letterboxd page.)

KUSO

Stars: Iesha Coston, Zack Fox, The Buttress, Shane Carpenter, Oumi Zumi, Mali Matsuda, Tim Heidecker, Hannibal Buress, Donnell Rawlings, Anders Holm, Regan Farquhar, David Firth and George Clinton.
Writers: Steven Ellison, David Firth and Zack Fox.
Director: ‘Steve’, aka Flying Lotus.

CONTENT WARNING: Some details in the review may offend.

Reviewed at The Factory Theatre as part of Sydney Underground Film Festival; Closing Night selection, Sunday September 17, 2017.

Rating: 2.5/5

When John Waters asked Divine to eat a fresh dog poo in Pink Flamingos (1972), or Pier Paolo Pasolini tortured the innocents in Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975), it was cinema that confronted its own power to influence and defied standards of decency within society. They were frames of an altered reality, a dangerous and challenging new use of the art form. The most important (frankly, only) consideration that arises after watching Kuso is, ‘Can cinema still perform that function?’

The debut feature from musician and hip-hop artist Steve Ellison, a.k.a. ‘Steve’, a.k.a. Flying Lotus, features a scabby, pustule-covered young man having sex with the mouth of a cancerous talking boil that has grown on the neck of his equally putrid girlfriend. The sequence comes after 90-odd minutes of raucous bad taste; penises are pierced, faeces are smeared, eyeballs are consumed then regurgitated, all set to a soundscape of screeching incoherence. Kuso is an anthology film, the segmented narrative able to afford Ellison greater opportunity to explore his scatological, menstrual and anal fixations.

Of course, that all sounds pretty ‘shocking’, as was certainly his intention above all else. There is very little indication this film has any greater ambition than to disgust and disturb the audience that will seek this out when search engines turn up…oh, let’s go with ‘Giant Anus Cockroach,’ or ‘Laser Ray Abortion’. It is all set in a post-earthquake L.A., where the freshly scabby population has turned moronic (turned?) and transdimensional portals exist that allow hairy creatures with TV monitor faces to live amongst us. Maybe Ellison is working some satirical angle, commenting on the nature of modern living or the destruction of society by the media or something like that, but it seems unlikely.

But is it possible for cinema that sets out to shock to achieve the genuinely shocking anymore? Kuso is certainly distasteful, but can make-up and prop department versions of shit, piss, cum and blood really disturb when those who seek those diversions can surf all night to their heart’s content. Society’s standard bearers for ‘goodness’ will feel compelled to rise in defiance of ‘art’ like Kuso, whether that be the current generation of trigger-happy PC-enriched snowflakes or the ageing ultra-conservative baby boomers that initially embraced then abandoned counterculture principles. But is the content worthy of their fight? Might they just be wagging fingers at a naughty little boy who drew the movie equivalent of a pee-pee on the wall with his new box of digital crayons?

The film’s debut at Sundance was met with walkouts, although subsequent reports indicate this was less about paying customers being rattled by the content and more about industry types realising there was little more to Ellison’s film than bluster and bravado.

In all fairness, there is a little bit more. The various narrative strands are bookended by some wildly imaginative montage animation, as if Terry Gilliam had helped Charles Manson with his film school assignment, and one truly beautiful CGI-rendered sequence features frozen chickens being launched by an immense spacecraft over Los Angeles (pictured, above). In 'Smear', the best of the anthology segments, a diarrheic mutant schoolboy connects with a giant sphincter in the woods as a sort of surrogate father, affording Ellison a modicum of sentimentality to fill his frame with some warm composition. There is no denying that some passages achieve the truly nightmarish, though that accomplishment brings further disconnect from character engagement, an element desperately lacking in most of the film.

Loud, objectionable, occasionally funny but mostly trying, the visual experimentation and adherence to all things ugly quickly grows tiresome. By the time Ellison unveils the ‘neck boil sex’ moment, Kuso has devolved into a filmic manifestation of a high school boys’ diary, filled with gross, puerile wanderings of the mind that might shock the kid’s mom, but just bring raised eyebrows from everyone else.

IT

Stars: Jaeden Lieberher. Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Olef, Nicholas Hamilton, Jackson Robert Scott, Owen Teague, Logan Thompson, Jake Sims and Bill Skarsgård.
Writers: Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman; based on the novel by Stephen King.
Director: Andy Muschietti.

Rating: 4/5

The new millenial obsession with all things 80s may have reached its zenith with Andy Muschietti’s spectacularly terrifying and terrifically satisfying retro-riff on Stephen King’s bestseller, It. Condensing the source material’s mammoth narrative into a workable 135 minute film has taken some lithe restructuring, yet what remains is a lovingly faithful rendering of the themes, characters and milieu of the landmark horror tome. And, for all the warm familiarity and unexpected sweetness conjured by the production’s adherence to nostalgia, ‘horror’ it most certainly is.

Muschietti leaves no one guessing just how horrifying his adaptation will be with a rain-soaked opening setpiece that perfectly visualises King’s unforgettable first pages. Drawing upon his origins as a short-form horror visionary (his 2013 feature debut, Mama, was a reworking of his own 2008 mini-movie), the director’s masterly pre-title sequence could stand alone, called ‘The Taking of Georgie Denborough by Pennywise the Clown’. As both a tone-setter for the frights to come and an introduction to King’s most iconic horror figure, it is the ideal primer.

Act 1 jumps several months ahead to the final day of the school year, the thrill of summer vacation tempered by a town on edge; a curfew keeps the children indoors after dark, so prevalent is the threat of unexplained disappearance. A tightly packaged and deftly handled piece of scripting brings to vivid life the friends who call themselves The Losers Club. Georgie’s older brother, stutterer Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) is coping with his grief by surrounding himself with best buds, including momma’s boy Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), nerdish Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) and bespectacled Richie (Finn Wolfhard, stealing every scene). This group of under-the-radar types spend their days dodging bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton, channelling a young Kevin Bacon) and firing off coarse insults about each other’s mothers (the other 80s King property It most resembles is Stand By Me). Soon joining the group are fellow outsiders, big-boned history buff Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), orphaned Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) and the older but no less alone alone Beverly Marsh (the film’s breakout star, Sophia Lillis).

A key theme in much of King’s oeuvre is facing and overcoming that which you fear the most, and each of the group must contend with grotesque manifestations of what haunt their young psyches. Muschietti proves his mettle in this regard; it is no small accomplishment that, in a film that features so grotesque a representation of terror as Pennywise, a whole series of equally nightmarish creations populate the screen. Of all in the group, it is Beverly’s pubescent transformation into womanhood (and her implied abuse by a lecherous father) that carries with it the most profoundly disturbing and ultimately moving challenge to overcome.

Capturing the decade extends beyond the precise costuming, hairstyles and production design flourishes. Muschietti adopts a strong stylistic adherence to 80s cinema, employing that most Spielberg-ian of camera movements, the ‘dolly-in close-up’. A memorable sequence involving a slide projector evokes specific memories of the Spielberg-produced/Dante-directed Gremlins; The Goonies is another Spielberg production that courses through this film’s DNA. Veteran South Korean DOP Chung-hoon Chung tones down the overtly 'cinematic' richness of some of his most acclaimed work (Oldboy, 2003; Lady Vengeance, 2005; Stoker, 2013; The Handmaiden, 2016), only employing his consummate skill with colour, shadow and movement when the film earns that indulgence. The result is a film that draws a distinctively well-defined line between the bright warmth of a summer friendship and the otherworldly void of the supernatural. 

After the very public casting (and recasting) of the role made famous by Tim Curry, the burning question is how the relatively unknown actor Bill Skarsgård (son of Stellan) cuts it as one of the purest visions of supernatural evil in modern literature. With one pupil cocked askew and a stalagmite of spittle heading south from his pursed, crimson lips, Skarsgård’s Pennywise recalls both Freddy Krueger and, somewhat unexpectedly, ‘Ed’, the most unhinged hench-hyena from The Lion King. Under the prosthetics and grease paint (and occasional CGI enhancement), Skarsgård goes to hell and back to craft a truly malevolent creation, utterly believable as the black soul of King’s cursed small town.

COALESCE: A CITY COMPOSED

Featuring: Megan Jonas and Jordan Ignacio.
Director: Joshua J. Provost.

WORLD PREMIERE: Fer Film International Film Festival, September 2-6, Ferizaj, Republic of Kosovo.
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE: flEXIff Experimental Film Festival, September 23-24, Sydney, Australia.

Rating: 4.5/5

The connectivity of creation that artists share is examined with profound beauty and sensitivity in Coalesce: A City Composed, the inspiring debut feature from Phoenix-based filmmaker, Joshua J. Provost. An intimate account of the formation of a uniquely envisioned art installation in the Arizona capital, the film can rank amongst its many fine accomplishments the re-imagining of the director’s rather unremarkable hometown as, in the eyes of these beholders, a place actually quite beautiful.

Imbuing Provost’s work with a spiritual centre are his subjects, artist Megan Jonas (pictured, top; on location in Phoenix) and composer Jordan Ignacio. Born-and-bred Arizonian Jonas creates unique and beautiful landscapes of Phoenix’s most mundane features; telephone wires, traffic intersections, footpaths, fuse boxes and alleyway weeds are all featured in her paintings, which Provost’s tight but non-intrusive camera captures from blank canvas to stunning life. East Coast muso Ignacio (pictured, below), aka The Languid Current, is a self-taught instrumentalist and master of the atmospheric aural soundscape.

Coalesce: A City Composed features four works by Jonas that capture her city as it transitions daily between light and dark. The artist forwards stages of her paintings to Ignacio, now embedded in his own Phoenix digs, who uses her work to inspire music that would eventually accompany the paintings during a season at Phoenix’s Grand ArtHaus Gallery, from December 2016. In hushed, intimate tones, Provost’s on-screen collaborators speak of that which inspires, influences and ultimately determines the essence of their art, all while it finds form before our eyes.

Provost is clearly in the same creative headspace as his subjects; from capturing their inspiration with a precise insight to giving over his film to their commentary unhindered by clunky voice-over, Provost affords Jonas and Ignacio the space and respect needed for true freedom of expression. Rarely has a film been so in tune with the ‘artistic process’, or conveyed with such clarity the workings of the artist’s mind.

Coalesce: A City Composed ends with a flourish of bravura film-making that is a breathtaking coming-together of all three art forms. Each painting takes shape before your eyes, via daring post-production wizardry, to the compelling strains of the richly-realized soundtrack; three distinct disciplines creating one beautiful piece of art. A final nod to the locations that inspired the paintings/music/film is a heartfelt touch by Provost, who has crafted a deeply engaging film of intelligence, integrity and sincerity.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN VENICE

Stars: Bruce Willis, John Goodman, Thomas Middleditch, Jason Momoa, Famke Janssen, Emily Robinson, Jessica Gomes, Kaleti Williams and Adam Goldberg.
Writers: Mark Cullen, Robb Cullen.
Director: Mark Cullen.

Rating: 3/5

As the afternoon orange bathes California’s Venice Beach neighbourhood, imagine Hudson Hawk barrelling along Abbot Kinney Boulevard, collecting John Wick as he enters from Brooks Avenue, before both are rammed by the Inherent Vice bus on Main. The resulting tangled mass in the middle of the intersection would be Mark and Robb Cullen’s Once Upon a Time in Venice.

Conjured as a free-spirited vehicle for the charms of their leading man in his wisecracking heyday, the brothers Cullen reteam with Bruce Willis to try to right the wrong that was 2010’s Cop Out, the Kevin Smith-directed travesty that put a handbrake on Tracy Morgan’s film momentum. Mark’s directing debut is equal parts crime thriller, family drama and Cal-noir detective story, complete with some tone-deaf stereotyping and cute dog moments. The goofy, off-kilter riff on LA sleaze fits within a genre highlighted by better films like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Thomas Pinchon adaptation, The Coen’s The Big Lebowski or Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (Renny Harlin’s The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, too, but whether that was superior is a maybe).

Like the traditional fairy tales from which the film takes its title, Once Upon a Time in Venice has a storyteller, in the form of John (Thomas Middleditch), a nerdy intern/protégé for ex-LAPD cop Steve Ford (Willis), a not-very-successful private-eye sliding further into the underworld morass he mostly frequents. The film opens with a patently ridiculous sequence in which Ford, having bedded his client’s daughter Nola (Australian supermodel Jessica Gomes), escapes her family thugs by fleeing naked into the night on a skateboard. The entire gag takes a long while to play out (the money shot - close-up on a set of buttocks most definitely not those of the 62 year-old Willis), though it is infused with the kind of nutty energy that Willis last exhibited in his 1991 megaflop, Hudson Hawk (a film that has since acquired an army of ‘guilty pleasure’ defenders, including yours truly).

Things get personal for our hero after heavies working for local drug kingpin Spyder (a very funny Jason Momoa), rough up the family home of Ford’s sister, Katey (Famke Janssen, deserving of better) and niece, Taylor (Emily Robinson). When they dog-nap the beloved pet, Buddy, the PI undertakes a series of schemes and capers that land him deeper in the mess he has created. All the while, a frantic Ford is working a case involving land developer ‘Lew the Jew’ (Adam Goldberg), whose deal is being scuppered by a mysterious graffiti artist painting X-rated murals of the real estate tycoon (a subplot as puerile as it sounds, though undeniably funny in parts).    

Filling out the ‘old chum’ role here that Danny Aiello played in …Hawk is John Goodman, bringing some welcome comedic skill as Dave, an ageing holdover from 70’s Venice hippy/surfie culture on the verge of losing everything (including his mind) in a messy divorce. He is one of several known names who front up for bit parts, probably because they all live within blocks of the production’s West coast locations; among them are Elisabeth Rohm, Kal Penn, Adrian Martinez, Christopher McDonald and, for a few utterly bizarre seconds, David Arquette.

Only occasionally exhibiting the advance of time, Bruce Willis clearly enjoys an all-too-rare opportunity to flex his brand of on-screen comedic skill. One can see the smooth charm of Moonlighting’s ‘David Addison’, the slapstick energy of Blind Date’s Walter Davis and the scummy antihero of Bonfire of The Vanities ‘Peter Fallow’ in Ford. You may find yourself muttering, “He’s still got it,” if only because, not for the first time in his career, he elevates what could have been misguided chaos into something entirely watchable, even likable.

TEXAS HEART

Stars: Erik Fellows, Daniela Bobadilla, Kam Dabrowski, Lin Shaye, Johnny Dowers, Jared Abrahamson, Blake Clark and John Savage.
Writers: Nick Field and Daniel Blake Smith.
Director: Mark David.

Rating: 3.5/5

A genuinely warm affinity for red state Americana and a flair for strong characterisation generally counter the occasional detour into bumpy narrative terrain in Texas Heart, director Mark David’s solidly staged and well-acted neo-Western. One can easily envision the likes of Montgomery Clift, Robert Mitchum and Walter Brennan filling key roles in a dusty 1950s horse-opera version of this low-key but engaging small-town story.

As Peter, an LA lawyer who has no qualms about servicing the legal needs of disreputable types, Erik Fellows (pictured, above) balances square-jawed movie-star appeal with an empathetic quality that affords him viewer’s goodwill. When a witness stand meltdown derails his defence of the son of an underworld matriarch Mrs Smith (Lin Shaye, having fun playing to the back of the theatre), Peter is marked for murder and must flee his West Coast lifestyle, relocating incognito to the backwater burg of Juniper, Texas (played by Charleston, Mississippi).

Pitching himself as New York novelist ‘Frank Stevens’, Peter fends off the ‘city slicker’ jibes and soon acquaints himself with the lives of the locals. Key amongst them is Tiger (a fine Kam Dabrowski), a young man of challenged mental capacity, and Alison (the captivating Daniela Bobadilla; pictured, below), the homecoming queen burdened with a troubled home life. When Alison goes missing and a case is made by Sheriff Dobbs (Johnny Dowers) against Tiger, Peter drops his façade and takes on the case for the defence.

Nick Field and Daniel Blake Smith’s script teeters on the brink of stereotype at times, but they imbue their characters with an integrity that overcomes the familiarity. The accomplished cast, including Jared Abrahamson (as ill-tempered jock boyfriend Roy) and John Savage (as Alison’s damaged, drunken father Carl) are given enough quality dialogue and conflict to spark the narrative at opportune moments.

Although the title conjures a sprawling landscape, Texas Heart is a film that works best in tight, two-character scenes, such as when Peter connects with Tiger at a football game, or Alison and Peter share their dreams on a late night drive. One particularly impactful sequence, in which Dobbs bullys and coerces Tiger into a confession, inevitably recalls the plight of Brendan Dassey, the 16 year-old youth convicted and sentenced to life for the murder of Teresa Halbech in 2005, whose manipulation by law enforcement officers was uncovered in the landmark documentary series, Making a Murderer.

The genre machinations of the plot are less involving and, at times, not entirely convincing. There is little tension generated by the presence of Mrs Smith’s two burly hitman, who only manage to track Peter down after the lawyer blows his cover in an ill-advised television interview. The director wraps up the criminal element story strands rather perfunctorily, suggesting his heart was far more invested in his characters than the structure that binds them.

Which, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. A finer, more compelling and ultimately satisfying drama than it’s initial premise might suggest, Texas Heart is destined to find acceptance and appreciation from those seeking quality alternatives via their home-viewing platforms.

DUNKIRK

Stars: Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Fionn Whitehead, Damien Bonnard, Barry Keoghan, Jack Lowden, Cillian Murphy, Tom Glynn-Carney, James D’Arcy and Harry Styles.
Writer/Director: Christopher Nolan.

Rating: 2.5/5

State-of-the-art filmmaking and showy narrative technique meld uncomfortably with some hoary old war movie clichés in Dunkirk, the latest exercise in borderline bombast from Christopher Nolan. Despite being more aesthetically pleasing than Michael Bay’s garishly executed Pearl Harbour, Nolan’s big film in service of a small story has more in common with that much-maligned war pic than more serious minded award season contenders of past years like Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli or Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.

The enormous undertaking of evacuating 400,000 allied troops from the French port city as Axis forces encircled them is one of the defining moments of World War II. Nolan sets up the immensity of the event with steely grey vistas encompassing the troops as they wait for their rescuers, their despair growing with each wave of terrifying Stuka dive-bombing assault. These establishing shots offer the kind of scale and artistry that have emerged as Nolan’s stock-in-trade but as his narrative unfolds, it becomes clear the director is not particularly interested in the practicalities of troop withdrawal.

We are led through the shivering battalions by Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), who has survived a tragic opening sequence by outrunning his doomed squad before queue-jumping his fellow soldiers by pretending to be a medic then hiding amongst the wooden structure of the evacuation point to ensure his spot when the boats arrive. These hardly seem the actions of a leading man in a tale of heroism, his thin characterisation further hampered by the scale of the production mounted around him. Tommy is joined by a silent French infantryman (Damien Bonnard) and a brash Brit named Alex (Harry Styles, ok in a role that doesn’t ask much of his developing acting chops), bonded by their survival at any cost instincts.

Tommy’s story is folded into three other sub-narratives that intercut in that non-linear manner by now very familiar to Nolan’s fervent fan base. Mark Rylance is Dawson, a patriotic Brit who, with his sons (Barry Keoghan; Tom Glynn-Carney) is amongst the many brave homelanders that set sail for Dunkirk to help recover his fighting countrymen; Tom Hardy is Spitfire pilot Farrier, who darts back and forth across the skies over the beach with his wingman Collins (Jack Lowden), dispersing ME-109’s and Heinkel bombers with ruthless efficiency; and, Kenneth Branagh who, as the evacuation’s senior office-on-point Commander Bolton, is responsible for much of Nolan’s occasionally clunky expository dialogue.

Nolan’s obsession with his fractured narrative structure perfectly suited his past works Memento and Inception (his best film, by some measure). The mechanism muddled the ambitious but fatally flawed Interstellar and is entirely unnecessary, even flagrantly indulgent, in Dunkirk. The showy, jigsaw-puzzle challenge the storytelling poses undermines involvement, only serving to draw attention away from the plight of his protagonists and onto the storyteller himself; one can picture Nolan in front of a chalkboard strategically plotting his structure with cool academic efficiency. Surely the filmmaker’s insistence upon imposing his favourite device upon all his narratives is edging towards Shyamalan-like overkill (and the inevitable marketplace backlash).

As in past efforts, the director relies upon a dense soundscape to throw a blanket over his plotting, leading to the now familiar “I can’t understand what they’re saying!” comments often associated with his work. Muddying up the mix is an overblown score by Hans Zimmer, which determines every scene, however intimate, must build to a crescendo, leading to series of ‘big moments’ that the narrative does not earn. By the time the director reacquaints himself and his audience with the benefits of a more conventional denouement, any investment in the character’s journey has long since dissipated; scenes of ‘big emotion’ in the third act feel capital-C ‘contrived’.

Where the film soars is as an aerial spectacle. Recalling the thrilling dogfight sequences of Guy Hamilton’s 1969 wartime classic Battle of Britain, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and editor Lee Smith capture the nerve-shredding experience of life as a Spitfire pilot, the planes and the airmen afforded the kind of exhilarating hero-worship that is sorely missing from the rest of Nolan’s chilly, unaffecting opus.

FIVE FAVOURITES FROM MELBOURNE'S FESTIVAL OF FACTUAL FILM

MELBOURNE DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL: Festival Director Lyndon Stone and his programming team have collated a catalogue of factual films that have wowed audiences at the planet’s most prestigious 2017 documentary showcases. SCREEN-SPACE got a peek at this year’s line-up and offers our opinion of five films that deserve attention, discussion and sold-out auditoriums. Each is a unique vision, certain to engage, infuriate, inspire and enlighten, as all good documentaries should…

MISS KIET’S CHILDREN (Dirs. Peter Lataster, Petra Lataster-Czish; The Netherlands, 115 mins; pictured, above)
A Dutch school marm exhibits a warrior’s spirit, a saint’s heart and...well, a great teacher's patience in this understated yet soaring study of what the term ‘assimilation’ means to a classroom in Holland. Refugee children, each displaying resilience and depth of character beyond their years, are captured with an extraordinary intimacy by the lens of husband/wife filmmakers Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czish. The politics of age and gender are glimpsed in the kids’ behaviour; most profoundly, the impact of the conflict they have fled is slowly expos ed by the filmmaker’s sublime technique. When awkward pre-teen Jorg reveals why he might be less studious than is expected of him, have the tissues ready.
Rating: 4/5
MDFF Screening: July 13 @ 6.30pm.

PLAY YOUR GENDER (Dir: Stephanie Clattenburg; U.S.A.; 80 mins.)
While the gender divide within the American film industry has made headlines of late, little mention has been made of the fact that only 5% of the producers working the panels in the music industry are women, or that only 20% of published songs are by women lyricists. Canadian singer-songwriter Kinnie Starr and first-time director Stephanie Clattenberg pair up to pile revelation upon revelation in this blood-boiling expose of the music sector’s traditional gender bias and ‘glass ceiling’ mindset. That such a film needs to exist in this day and age is outrage enough; that it runs rich with passionate, talented, intelligent woman who have seen their careers hindered by sexism and misogyny demands action. Features such groundbreaking artists as ‘Hole’ bassist Melissa Auf der Maur and drummer Patty Schemel; Sara Quin of ‘Tegan and Sara’; and, ‘The Stolen Minks’ frontwoman Stephanie Johns.
Rating: 4/5
MDFF Screening: July 9 @ 1.45pm.

THE ROAD MOVIE (Dir: Dmitrii Kalishnikov; Belarus; 67mins)
The dashcam phenomena has swept Russia and its territories; insurance scams, police misbehaviour and road rage incidents has led to almost every car being fitted with a windscreen lens. So director Dmitrii Kalishnikov had a lot of footage to work with when he conceptualised a vision of modern Russian life as captured by the population itself. Of course, he indulges in the extraordinary – truck crashes, speedsters on snowy roads, cows being hit (they walk away, incredibly) and the ‘comet footage’ that went viral. But The Road Movie is at its most compelling when it focuses on the voices of the unseen within the vehicle. Waves of emotion emerge in an instant; moments of terror, exhilaration, hilarity, even first love unite in a flowing cinematic essay. In the hands of a skilled filmmaker, Russia’s favourite dashboard gadget has delivered a forceful social experience.
Rating: 4.5/5
MDFF Screening: July 9 @ 9.30pm.

ELLA BRENNAN: COMMANDING THE TABLE (Dir: Leslie Iwerks; U.S.A.; 96 mins.)
She is La grande dame of the American restaurant landscape, the matriarch of a New Orleans culinary clan that has shaped the nation’s cuisine for a century. Ella Brennan makes for a mighty cinematic figure, her iron-willed charisma ideally suited for Leslie Iwerks’ boisterous celebration of spirit, showmanship and determination. Occasionally it teeters on hagiography; viewers aren’t left wondering what a wonderful time is to be had at Brennan’s legendary Big Easy establishment, Commander’s Palace. It’s a minor complaint; one can’t begrudge the party atmosphere Commanding The Table captures and the extraordinary legacy Ella and her clan have forged.
Rating: 3.5/5
MDFF Screening: July 12 @ 6.00pm.  

DOGS OF DEMOCRACY (Dir. Mary Zournazi; Australia/Greece; 58 mins.)
They have become the spiritual symbol of modern Athens, guardians of the streets who exist with dignity intact and the acceptance of the population. First-time director Mary Zournazi captures the stray dogs of the Greek capital with a deeply respectful and compassionate lens, acknowledging the hope they represent to a people who themselves are often portrayed as the ‘stray dogs of the EU’. Most affectionately, Zournazi relates the legend of Loukanikos, a magnificent beast who would fearlessly lead those protesting the government’s austerity measures against riot squad heavy-handedness.  
Rating: 3.5/5
MDFF Screening: July 16 @ 9.30am.

(SCREEN-SPACE Managing Editor Simon Foster is a judge at the 2017 MDFF and will be a guest of the festival)  

The 2017 MELBOURNE DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL screens from July 9-16. Session, venue and ticketing information can be found at the events official website.