THE QUARANTINE HAUNTINGS

Stars: Lauren Clark, Elizabeth Wiltshire, Darren Moss, Jack Marshall, Jenna Edwards, Bailey Skelton, Peter Sumner and Troy Harrison.
Writers: Bianca Biasi, Rebekah Biasi, Arnold Perez, Josh Sambono and Stephanie Talevski.
Director: Bianca Biasi and Arnold Perez.

Rating: 3/5

Co-directors Bianca Biasi and Arnold Perez deliver a skilfully crafted calling card pic with their psychological thriller/ghost story mash-up, The Quarantine Hauntings. Exhibiting a solid understanding of genre machinations, the pair make up for a lack of narrative inspiration with sufficiently solid scares. Cable TV and digi-download viewership amongst those who appreciate high ambition on a low budget is assured.

A hectic 24-hour handheld shoot at the infamous Quarantine Station on Sydney’s most northern headland is central to both the plot and the pic’s marketing. (Urban legends have proven popular of late with Oz filmmakers; Carlo Ledesma’s The Tunnel [2011] explored the abandoned subterranean network under Sydney, while Dane Millerd took on the legend of the Yowie in There’s Something in The Pillaga [2014]). Although fully restored for the tourist trade, the old hospital site once housed the seriously ill in archaic conditions during the nation’s early colonial period. The high mortality rate led to its reputation as one of the east coast’s most haunted sites, home to several spectres that have allegedly appeared to the unsuspecting for many years.

One such apparition is Jolene (Dalisha Cristina), aka ‘The Girl in The Pink Dress’, a 9 year-old who passed away as medicos bickered over her treatment. Seen in flashback (with veteran character actor Peter Sumner supplying some old-school villainy), Biasi and Perez employ slick post-production trickery to create a nightmarishly immersive vision of poor Jolene’s final moments.

Thematically, the film adheres (at times, tenuously) to such horror genre staples as grief, memory and regret. Key protagonist Jasmine (a particularly fine Lauren Clark) continues to struggle with the death of her father; bff Skye (Elizabeth Wiltshire) offers positivity, guiding her through boyfriend dramas (Daren Moss’ douche-y Cameron) and parental discord. Always nearby is Skye’s younger brother Blake and his offsider Zac (respectively, Bailey Skelton and Jack Marshall) in the smart-mouth comic relief roles that would have been played by Corey’s Haim and Feldman thirty years ago, and little sister Eva (an underused Jenna Edwards).  

The reckless recital of an ancient incantation summons Jolene from beyond and the angry spirit seeks out kindred dark soul Jasmine, who has holed up with the group of friends to sleep off antidepressant medication. One moment of true terror, a darkly lit scene during which the extent of Jolene and Jasmine supernatural bond is revealed, is the stuff of nightmares. The unfolding of broader plot points becomes both overly familiar and unnecessarily convoluted, but the performances overall are natural and engaging and few of the clichés will register with the film’s target teenage demographic.

The second and third acts combine lots of references to classics of the genre – a character notes that the diary that contains the spell “looks like the Necronomicon”; Cameron’s late night snacking turns into a homage to a similar scene in Poltergeist; and, Jolene’s muted colour and long black hair unavoidably recall the Yurei spirit seen in J-horror classics Ringu and Ju-On: The Grudge.

Also embraced are the ‘shaky-cam’ techniques and ‘real-world’ lensing (security cameras, mobile phones, etc) that have been refined in standard bearers The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. Most of the late night panic at the quarantine station is deliberately hard to decipher; the result is more disorienting than terrifying, but achieves enough chills to satisfy.

SCREEN-SPACE was a grateful guest of the production at The Quarantine Hauntings premiere, held at the Quarantine Station site ahead of a limited local theatrical season.

PAPER PLANES

Stars: Ed Oxenbould, Sam Worthington, Deborah Mailman, Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke, Ena Imai, Terry Norris, Peter Rowsthorn, Julian Dennison and David Wenham.
Writer: Steve Worland and Robert Connolly.
Director: Robert Connolly.

Rating: 2/5

Although it is tempting to be swayed by the ‘…but the kids’ll love it’ point of view, highly respected director Robert Connolly’s change-of-pace family pic Paper Planes is folksy, heavy-handed whimsy that barely finds its wings before crashlanding.

Writing with Steve Worland, whose last feature screenplay was the stomping dance pic Bootmen in 2000, Connolly foregoes the smarts of his more mature work (The Bank, 2001; Three Dollars, 2005; Balibo, 2009) to win over his target demographic with trite dialogue and plotting that grinds through the feel-good tropes. There is exuberance in the staging but not an ounce of real-world emotion in the narrative, which manufactures cute contrivances in place of genuine heart and accomplished storytelling (such as that found in the Oscar-winning animated short Paperman, also featuring the folded flying phenomenon).

The key protagonist is poor country kid, Dylan (Ed Oxenbould), a self-sufficient tween-ager who lives with his emotionally distant father Jack (Sam Worthington) on the dusty outskirts of Walerup in the Western Australian hinterland. The setting represents a return to the troubled dad/spirited son outback milieu that Connolly handled with far greater skill as producer on the Eric Bana 2007 vehicle, Romulus My Father (Bana returns the favour with an executive producer’s credit here).

The pair are doing it tough, with Jack struggling to deal with the grief of having lost his wife, Cindy (supermodel Nicole Trunfio, in flashback) only five months before. That said, Dylan seems to have bounced back pretty well from the loss; Oxenbould’s one-note performance conveys none of the shattering sense of loss a boy his age must be experiencing. The actor’s greatest struggle is more often with breathing any life into his strained, cumbersome lines.

Bouncing between Dylan’s home life and time spent in the company of cool maths teacher Mr Hickenlooper (a fun Peter Rowsthorne), these early scenes rarely ring true, mired in a struggle to establish a believable tonality. Dylan suffers at the hands of funny fat-kid bully Kevin (Julian Dennison), whose actions seem particularly callous given the recent tragic past; Grandpa (Terry Norris) is a randy old codger (wink-wink scenes with Dylan as he skips between bedrooms at the local nursing home are off-putting), who encourages his grandkid’s imagination but seems ignorant of the financial strife his grief-stricken family is in.

A chance school visit by a paper plane whiz kid leads Dylan to discover that he may have otherworldly skill in the art of A4 aeronautics, when his first attempt soars through doorways, down corridors and, ultimately, beyond the horizon. This early scene establishes that the ‘paper planes’ of the title won’t be paper at all but CGI renditions, capable of extraordinarily dexterous mid-air manoeuvrability. It’s a ‘go with it or be left behind’ challenge by Connolly, whose film soars or sinks on how willing its audience is to suspend disbelief in several key moments while also demanding a very real emotional involvement it never earns.

Dylan’s new skill takes him to Sydney, where he meets ambitious competitor Jason (Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke, playing villainy so broadly he might twist his moustache if he were old enough to have one), lovely Japanese entrant Kimi (Ena Imai) and ex-champ-turned-administrator, Maureen (Deborah Mailman, laying on the ‘comedic support’ schtick). Also on hand is David Wenham as Jason’s dad Patrick, a wizened ex-pro golfer who flits in and out of a handful of scenes as if he was above the whole endeavour.

The plot beats a very familiar path from here on in, with competition heats determining who goes to Tokyo for the Paper Plane World Championships conjuring some undeserved moments of faux excitement. The only left-field surprise in the third act is one character’s skill at securing cash for a plane ticket and getting from rural WA to the Japanese capital in less than a day.

Full disclosure: your reviewer’s 9 year-old daughter had a remarkably better time watching Paper Planes than her dad did. Granted, given all the shortcomings with which reviewers are likely to take issue, there is something to be said for the film’s efforts at a certain joie de vivre, especially at a time when children’s films exist mostly to spruik a toy tie-in.

BEYOND CLUELESS

Narrator: Fairuza Balk.
Writer/director: Charlie Lyne.

Rating: 4.5/5

Detractors will claim Charlie Lyne’s clip-umentary Beyond Clueless, a vivid, captivating study of 90’s teen cinema, over-intellectualizes a period in the history of the genre that does not warrant such profundity. I mean, how deep can a Freddie Prinze Jr movie really be?

Yet Lyne, a UK-based cultural commentator and loud-&-proud teen movie advocate, affords the period that began with Amy Heckerling’s masterpiece Clueless and closed out with the Tina Fey-scripted Mean Girls a deeper sociological insight than it has ever undergone before. Beyond Clueless is an artfully rendered, thesis-like appraisal of the resonating relevance of such undervalued films as Idle Hands, Disturbing Behaviour, Can’t Hardly Wait (pictured, top), Bubble Boy, The Girl Next Door, Jeepers Creepers and Eurotrip, works derided by most film scholars (if they ever considered them at all).

Guided by the tonally rich narration of 90’s bad girl Fairuza Balk (her most famous film, Andrew Fleming’s witchcraft-clique thriller The Craft, is deconstructed in Lyne’s first volley of insight), Beyond Clueless utilises footage from approximately 200 films to paint a vast, incisive portrait of the teen experience as captured on film. Broken into chapters, Lyne and his sublimely talented team of editors tackle the very issues that teenagers and teenage films confront daily – the multi-tiered social structure of high-school; the us-vs-them sense of rebellion; discovering one’s sexuality, whatever form it takes; the existential struggle to find your own place on your own terms.

Each chapter rounds out with a montage of images that drive home Lyne’s conjecture to the beat of UK band Summer Camp, who provided an original soundtrack to the film. It is entirely fitting – most great teen films were driven by carefully chosen music that, until recently, would also top the album charts, and the music is eminently collectible. It adds immeasurably to the film’s high point, a spellbinding sequence of bloody, brutal images set to a driving metal riff that conveys the compulsion some teens develop for violence as an outlet.    

If the revered works of 80s auteur John Hughes define the moment when contemporary cinema gave teenagers a fresh, honest voice, Beyond Clueless teaches us that the life, loves and psychology of the turn-of-the-century teen were a harder-to-define mix of individualism, alienation and rebellion. Granted, these are all traits that have helped explain away the angst of teenagers since the dawn of man, but the eve of the new millennium brought its own unique period of ink-black uncertainty and rose-coloured hindsight. Teenagers felt the brunt of this tide of change; filmmakers tackled their concerns as best they could. Beyond Clueless captures the complexity of that brief but essential moment in a generation’s formation with great insight and deep humanity.

Director Charlie Lyne will preview Beyond Clueless and front a Q&A series across the U.K. from January 13. The film will screen in Australia at the Perth Underground Film Festival in February.

IN DARKNESS WE LIVE

Stars: Mon Confiado, Alex Vincent Medina, Gerald Napoles, Imelda Schweighart, Gloria Sevilla and Katy Fernandez.
Writer/Director: Christopher Ad Castillo

Rating: 3.5/5

The intriguing output of Christopher Ad Castillo takes a decidedly twisted and shadowy turn in his latest, the bloody and often bewildering In Darkness We Live. The deliberately obfuscated narrative and grimy aesthetic won’t win over those who came down hard on his last film, the under-appreciated thriller The Diplomat Hotel, but there is no denying he is a keen craftsman with vivid, idiosyncratic storytelling instincts.

From an opening sequence that ‘rat-a-tats’ with Tarantino references, the Filipino auteur pummels into a second and third act homage-of-sorts to the bloody crime thrillers of Takashi Miike, the splattery body-horror of the French extremist movement and the flash-forward/back machinations of David Lynch’s dreamlike oeuvre. Castillo wears his filmic inspirations on his sleeve, that much is certain, but he displays the confidence and skill to make the references his own.

Audiences get a glimpse of what’s in-store from a credit sequence in which a terrified man, sodden with blood, lurches through thick undergrowth before being met by an ominous hooded figure. Soon, two black-suited tough guys (a stoic Mon Confiado; a fiery Alex Medina), with an offsider (Jerald Napoles) bleeding to death in their car, face-off in the aftermath of what we learn is a botched high-stakes robbery (ala, Reservoir Dogs). Watching on with a chilly indifference is Imelda Schweighart as the cold-hearted femme fatale, recalling both Pulp Fiction’s Honey Bunny and Natural Born Killer’s Mallory Knox as the film’s quietly unhinged, super sexed-up grindhouse x-factor.

Lost and without gas, they stumble into the jungle night and upon a vine-enshrouded mansion, home to a quivering young woman (Katy Fernandez) and her all-seeing grandmother (Gloria Sevilla). It is once inside the shadowy halls of the house that Castillo revs it up a notch, upping the mystery and the terror with a supernatural element in the form of little-known Filipino ‘Angel of Death’ myth, Ang Kumakatok (That Who Knocks). The filmmaker’s twisting of the psychological knife into his protagonists leads to the same ruthless vigour when they ultimately unleash upon each other. Suffice to say, the denouement is not for the faint-hearted.

Shot on a shoestring and reliant upon an occasionally intrusive soundtrack of thumping metal riffs to cover sequences that would have called for expensive foley work, there is no denying the rough-hewn edges of In Darkness We Live. Yet the handheld camerawork is employed with tremendous skill, only called upon to enhance proceedings, never cradle them. The twist ending (mostly) makes sense if you allow the film a few liberties, which is no problem given the adrenalized momentum that Castillo conjures.

54 DAYS

Stars: Michela Carattini, Glenn Millanta, Greg Wilken, Michael Drysdale, John Michael Burdon, Matt James, Byron Sakha and Dianna La Grassa.
Writer/director: Tim Lea.

54 Days will have its Australian Premiere at the SciFi Film Festival on November 16. 

Rating: 3.5/5

Thoroughly deserving of a place in the canon of Australia’s ‘nuclear threat’ cinematic sub-genre, survivalist drama 54 Days spins its Twilight Zone-type scenario into an all-too-real study of desperation and despair. A slick exercise in close-quarters tension, it represents a solid calling-card effort for debutant helmer, Tim Lea, who exhibits an assured directorial hand.

The Oz sector has offered some idiosyncratic visions of a nuclear world order; notably, of course, the Hollywood-funded adaptation of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and George Millers’s post-apocalyptic Mad Max trilogy, but also such fine works as Ian Barry’s The Chain Reaction (1980), Dennis O’Rourke’s 1985 documentary Half Life: A Parable for the Nuclear Age and Michael Pattinson’s thriller, Ground Zero (1987). With its enclosed dynamics and young person’s perspective, 54 Days most closely resembles John Duigan’s 1984 drama One Night Stand, which focussed on four teens locked inside the Sydney Opera House and contemplating their mortality as an inevitable atomic blast inches closer.

For Lea’s protagonists (first introduced in his short-film precursor to this feature), war descends upon them as a rooftop party is in full swing. The late 20-somethings, typically consumed with such minor woes as boyfriend troubles and getting richer, flee as a mushroom cloud (convincingly rendered by the effects team) envelops the horizon. Five make it to the building’s fully-outfitted bunker – Michelle (Michela Carattini), a party-girl in the thrall of a secret affair with strapping hero-type, Nick (Michael Drysdale); Michelle’s on-the-outer bf, Anthony (John Michael Burdon), already history in the eyes of Michelle’s bff, Liz (the striking Dianna La Grassa); and jittery Yank, Dirk (Greg Wilken).

As the realisation dawns that their resources will soon expire and that survival means the sacrifice of one of the group, tensions understandably run high. Each reacts in a way that reveals their true selves; some with grace and gravitas, others with a ruthless need to survive that proves shocking. A little harder to comprehend is one character’s descent into a madness that results in a friendship with a cockroach; the bug’s skilful conveying of emotion should surely earn a support billing mention. Casting aside certain elements that come with low-budget, first-time efforts and forgiving occasional asides that derail the tension, the narrative that emerges is a compelling one, the denouement particularly disturbing.

Special mention should be made of production designer Skye McLennan for the detail-rich bunker interior and DOP Nathaniel Jackson for superb use of shadow and spot lighting. One point sure to raise eyebrows is the production’s decision to identify the aggressors as ‘The Chinese’, a risky proposition given that very little back-story is provided into the international state-of-affairs that would prompt such an attack; detractors may point to this as an anachronistic nod to racial stereotyping in much the same way as the threat of a nuclear strike between advanced countries seems far less likely in 2014 than it did in 1985. 

STALINGRAD 3D

Stars: Mariya Smolnikova, Yanina Studilina, Thomas Kretschmann, Pyotr Fyodorov, Sergey Bondarchuk, Dmitriy Lysenkov, Andrey Smolyakov, Aleksey Barabash, Heiner Lauterbach and Oleg Volku.
Writers: Sergey Snezhkin, Ilya Tilkin.
Director: Fedor Bondarchuk.

Screening courtesy of the 2014 Russian Revolution Film Festival.

Rating: 2.5/5

As David Ayer’s Fury, featuring Brad Pitt and a tank full of combat movie stereotypes rolls through Australian cinemas, so to does Russian cinema’s own equally grand and cornball World War II melodrama, Stalingrad. Despite some stunningly realised technical work, Fedor Bondarchuk’s action-packed opus creaks under a rigidly antiquated narrative that bears a far closer pedigree to Michael Bay’s fanciful Pearl Harbour than Steven Spielberg’s gritty standard-bearer, Saving Private Ryan.

At US$30million (and with Columbia Pictures international distribution arm attached), it is one of largest production’s ever undertaken by the Russian film sector. Yet scripters Sergey Snezhkin’s and Ilya Tilkin’s dialogue and drama never come close to matching the visuals crafted by Bondarchuk’s production design team. Topped-and-tailed by an expensive Japanese earthquake sequence so as to create an unnecessary flashback device, audiences are then plunged into Stalingrad 1942, specifically a section of the city that has been cut-off after the German troops ignite vast fuel supplies (the sight of Russian troops bursting through walls of flame, fully ablaze and impervious to pain, gives an early indication as to the purely cinematic degree of heroism to be expected over the next 2 hours.)

Holed up in the crumbling remnants of a once opulent tenancy are five rugged, chummy Russian soldiers, led by the scowling, war-weary Gromov (Pyotr Fyodorov). Much like the societal cross-section represented by Pitt’s tank-crew, Gromov’s men are all types yet act as one; they find one more thing to bond over in the form of 18 year-old Katya (Mariya Smolnikova), a doe-eyed and determined lass who also happens to be a crack-shot with a telescopic sniper’s rifle.

The German forces are represented by Kapitan Kahn (Thomas Kretschmann, Europe’s hammiest leading man; see Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D), who keeps the pretty blonde peasant Masha (Yanina Studilina) hidden away to rape at his whim while also falling in love with her, and Khenze (Heiner Lauterbach), the bald tyrant of a head officer, who spits out some of the film’s unintentionally funniest lines (“These damn lice can’t even let a man die without making him itch.”)

Battles scenes are suitably brutal, as befitting one of the most bloody conflicts in modern military history, but are shot in such purely cinematic terms they barely suggest the real-world horrors soldiers from either side would have faced. Slow-motion hand-to-hand combat, complete with CGI blood-splatter (ala, 300) and ‘bullet-cam’ (ala, The Matrix) are used and re-used; one sequence, in which the Russian’s bounce a shell off a tank hull with pinpoint accuracy, is just plain stupid.

The director lathers his brave infantrymen in a warm, nationalistic glow, which is admirable but also detrimental; so one-dimensionally heroic are his band of brothers, audience connect as they would with a ‘James Bond’ or ‘Indiana Jones’ type. One should walk away exhausted and deeply moved by the courage these men displayed in the face of a tyrannical force. Instead, Fedor Bondarchuk's bloody battle epic celebrates the excesses of war cinema far more effectively than it does the heroism of his countrymen. 

INTERSTELLAR

Cast: Matthew McConnaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine, Topher Grace, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn and David Gyasi.
Writers: Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan.
Director: Christopher Nolan.

(PLEASE NOTE: Some MINOR SPOILERS re scene detail and broad plot)

Rating: 2/5

Deep into Christopher Nolan’s vast, verbose space opera Interstellar, crewmember Romilly (David Gyasi) sits with his ship captain, the experienced space jockey Cooper (Matthew McConnaughey). The conversation turns to the science of wormholes, those time-and-space defying pathways that are spoken of as fact by scientists in movies. Romilly takes a pencil and a small piece of paper, draws two ‘x’s on either end of the paper and folds the crosses together. He punches the pencil through the point where the ‘x’s meet, and says to Cooper something like, “And that’s how wormholes work.”

It seems a pointless scene that set your critic pondering as to its purpose. Cooper, a seasoned spaceman, would know what a wormhole is, so Romilly need not do this for his benefit or the mission’s. Instead, Romilly could only be speaking to McConaughey in his other key role in the film, that of audience conduit.

At some point in the narrative’s development, someone with clout (besides Nolan, clearly) felt that this B-movie hokum, inflated to a ridiculous degree by chalkboard’s full of formula and endless blatherings about mathematical astrophysics and gravitational singularities, needed to be more clearly explained to us Earth-bound ‘audience’ types. So Romilly’s Space Science 101 scene is inserted, essentially providing Nolin a voice to whisper, “Here’s what I’m talking about, paying public, plain and simple.”

What this minor, throwaway scene achieves, however, is to force the director to break free momentarily from his immense self-indulgence. Interstellar is Nolan pontificating on theories associated with space travel, wrapped in a flimsy story about family values and human one-ness that never really cares whether its audience is emotionally engaged or not. The ‘pencil-and-paper’ scene suggests he would just as soon not have to deal with lesser intellects at all.

The British director has been given free rein after banking billions of dollars with the Dark Knight trilogy and proving an acute storyteller with Inception, The Prestige, Memento and Insomnia. Most young, successful directors channel career momentum into personal, grand-scale projects and, like Nolan, usually reveal themselves to be not quite ready for it and too powerful to be told so. This fall from grace has impacted Coppola with One From The Heart; Spielberg with 1941 (then again, with Empire of The Sun); Cameron with The Abyss. Most recently, Wes Anderson (with The Darjeeling Limited), George Clooney (on Monuments Men) and Jason Reitman (with Labor Day) have had those moments.

The first sign that Nolan may have peaked previously is in his use of such an immense canvas to merely rehash overly familiar motifs. We get more vast landscapes (including, yes, an icy one); the ‘tubular world’ effect that inspired awe in Inception; clunky, black, angular machines designed to reflect real-world tech. And he revisits an increasingly disengaging intellectual preoccupation with the abstract nature of time and physics, used so captivatingly to explore ‘dream time’ in Inception and ‘memory’ in Memento yet ploddingly dull and confusing here. Nolan has more to prove before he can start self-referencing.

In the early passages of the story (scripted by Nolan with regular collaborator, brother Jonathon), references arise that suggest the fun stuff is always just around the corner. Teasing references to poltergeists and aliens; an underground government secret lab, conveniently located only a couple of hours from Coop’s home; giant dust storms that are symptomatic of the collapsing world ecosystem. But once Cooper and his team of astronauts are on mission, the pacing grinds, Nolan settling into 90-odd minutes of mission parameter status updates. Occasional personal interactions in the form of video messages from loved ones back home re-energise both the crew and the audience. (His role as Executive Producer on the Johnny Depp dud, Transcendence, was perhaps an early-warning sign that Nolan was becoming too enamoured with techno babble as reason enough for a film’s existence).

The actors strive to be as big as the director’s vision, each afforded their own quivery lipped, welled-up burst of grand histrionics. McConaughey’s ‘everyman genius’ Cooper is basically the same character played by Mark Wahlberg in Transformers: Age of Extinction, a Red State, good-guy mechanics whiz who has settled into life as a stay-at-home single dad. In an opening scene that hints at the full-blown overstatedness to follow, ‘Coop’ has the smarts to electronically hijack one of those pesky drone thingys and rewire its fancy innards to work his harvesters (machines that, in one inexplicable scene, gather themselves around his home like dogs at dinner time).

Co-star Jessica Chastain delivers her version of a paycheque performance, which is still fine; Hathaway overcomes a sense of miscasting to have some good moments; Wes Bentley and Casey Affleck are underused; a warbling Michael Caine, indecipherable. When an uncredited A-lister turns up to kickstart the third act, Interstellar begins to feel more like those disaster movies that Irwin Allen used to make, bulging with enough star wattage to keep our eyes on the screen and not rolling to the back of our heads.

And then there is that big, beautiful, blank void called ‘Outer Space’ and the challenge to fill it with all the awe and wonder Nolan and his visual effects team can muster. It is what every one will be talking about when the film hits theatres, as it should be; the scenes that look like 2001 A Space Odyssey are as good as anything since 2001 A Space Odyssey. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema integrates his images seamlessly with that of the FX crew, achieving that grainy, wideshot, ultra-realism reminiscent of IMAX documentaries. The images are, as Dave Bowman would say, wonderful, but do not integrate as effectively with the character’s plight as the space-scapes of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity or Ron Howard’s Apollo 13.

After 170 minutes and a final act twist that proves more late-career Shyamalan than peak-form Nolan, one is left wondering whether the experience was worth the commitment. In striving to outdo himself, Nolan has only highlighted his limitations, providing his primed fan base with an empty space vessel that makes a lot of noise.

DECODING ANNIE PARKER

Cast: Samantha Morton, Aaron Paul, Helen Hunt, Corey Stoll, rashida Jones, Alice Eve, Maggie Grace, Ben McKenzie, Richard Schiff, Marley Shelton and Ben McKenzie.
Writers: Steven Bernstein, Adam Bernstein and Michael Moss.
Director: Steven Bernstein.

Rating: 4/5

Although some detractors will single out it’s bare-bones storytelling style as a flaw, there is something ingratiatingly refreshing about the narrative frankness of Decoding Annie Parker. Debutant director Steven Bernstein’s two-tiered heartfelt drama defies its Movie-of-the-Week premise with an integrity all too rare in modern cinema.

Reflecting the decades in which the story unfolds, the assured narrative beats captured by Bernstein recall the thoughtful, expertly rendered, small-scale dramas (such as Resurrection with Ellen Burstyn or Testament with Jane Alexander) that were once produced by studios and shown by major theatrical chains. A journeyman cinematographer who has lensed Alfonso Cuaron’s Like Water for Chocolate, Charlize Theron’s Oscar turn in Monster and Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy, amongst many others, Bernstein refuses to overstate his visuals, instead settling on a matter-of-fact but deeply engaging real-world aesthetic.

Annie Parker (a wonderful Samantha Morton) comes from a family whose women have suffered the horrors of breast cancer for many generations. In gruelling scenes, she fights her own battles against the disease; between bouts, she seeks out reasons why the affliction impacts her bloodline while tending to her free-spirited, man-child husband (Aaron Paul) and the life they have created.

Concurrently, Bernstien tracks the medical team led by Dr Mary-Claire King (Helen Hunt), who is determined to find a link of any kind that will shed light on the moribund, bureaucratic state of cancer study. The film seamlessly shifts between Annie’s struggles and the medico detective work of the research team, coalescing decades of real-life developments into a smooth, compelling retelling of events.  

The director coaxes wonderful support turns out of a cast that goes on forever - Alice Eve, Ben McKenzie, Rashida Jones, Marley Shelton, Maggie Grace, Bradley Whitford, Richard Schiff, Bob Gunton, the great Corey Stoll – all of whom must have worked below-scale to help get what is clearly a labour of love to the screen. There’s a passion to tell this story with an understated urgency and profound empathy that can be felt in every frame of this terrific film.

For further information on all aspects of breast cancer, follow these links:
Australia: National Breast Cancer Foundation
United States of America: Breast Cancer Research Foundation
United Kingdom: Cancer Research UK
France: International Agency for Research on Cancer

BIG HERO 6

Voice Cast: Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr, Genesis Rodriguez, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk, Maya Rudolph and Stan Lee.
Writers: Robert L Baird, Daniel Gerson, and Jordan Roberts; based n the Marvel comic by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T Seagle.
Directors: Don Hall and Chris Williams.

Rating: 3/5

Wondrous feats of new generation effects technology service some old school tropes in Big Hero 6, the latest exercise in brand expansion from the Disney/Marvel monolith. An all-but-forgotten property from the comic giant’s distant past is resuscitated by Mouse House magicians, who apply dazzling digital wizardry to bolster a narrative that borrows from just about every family hit of the last half decade.

Co-directors Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh, 2011) and Chris Williams (Bolt, 2008) are tasked with creating an Avengers-style super-hero pic within the thematic parameters of the Disney canon. In their favour is raffish boy-whiz protagonist, Hiro (Ryan Potter), a spunky, spiky-haired tween with a head for state-of-the-art robotics and a rebellious attitude that threatens to derail his future. Raised without parents, it becomes the role of his big brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) to guide his sibling’s future, introducing him to ‘The Nerd Room’ – a free-thinking, high-tech workspace where Tadashi creates mechanical wonders alongside lab buddies Go-Go (Jamie Chung), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr) and Fred (the ubiquitous T.J. Miller).

Tadashi’s special project is a medical droid named Baymax (Scott Adsit), a based-in-fact ‘bot whose joints and limbs are protected by soft-to-the-touch inflatable nylon. Soon, Baymax is in the sole care of Hiro and both are hurtled into a mystery that involves corporate espionage, a hurriedly constructed revenge plot and the mass destruction of a shimmering cityscape (again). Littlies may find a confrontation set in the baddies lair a tad confronting, although parents will appreciate the dexterity and craftsmanship as all creative elements meld into the film’s best sequence.

The action takes place in San Fransokyo, a richly textured, beautifully rendered world that melds the architecture and ambience of the northern Californian city with the neon aesthetic and ancient Asian influence of Japan’s capital (it is never clear whether this is a future world or an alternate reality). Disney Animation, applying in-house technology developed for the project, have created a truly artistic palette of detail and colour that is at times breathtaking to behold.

And yet Big Hero 6 manages to dull its impact by overplaying the influence of superior works. Both visually and narratively, The Incredibles, How To Train Your Dragon, ET The Extra-terrestrial, Iron Man and ParaNorman are invoked; surging microbot weaponry looks to have been derived from the same software used for The Green Lantern or Spiderman 3; as stated, the broad daylight demolition of a metropolis recalls Marvel tentpoles The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy (and seems like overkill in a kids flick). Big Hero 6 has dreams beyond the corporate landscape from which it has emerged, yet remains bound to the template set by its creators.

The ace in the hole is Baymax, who scores big laughs and generates warmth and good will that ultimately proves more crucial to the film than it should have to be. The core relationship between Hiro and his synthetic surrogate guardian pans out warmly and should play well with all audience quadrants, as it was clearly intended. Suffice to say, toy sales will soar over Christmas.

LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU

Featuring: Richard Stanley, Marco Hofscneider, Fairuza Balk, Robert Shaye, Graham ‘Grace’ Walker, Rob Morrow and Edward R Pressman.
Director: David Gregory.

Screening at the 2014 A Night of Horror / Fantastic Planet Film Festival. Session details to be annouced soon. 

Rating: 4.5/5

A riveting, rollicking study of counter-culture creativity clashing with the early days of Hollywood’s corporatization, David Gregory’s Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau transcends the standard ‘making-of’ format and emerges more an ‘undoing-of’ study in psychological torment and film sector hubris.

Gregory’s filmography cites over 100 DVD-extra snapshots of the directorial mind at work, as well as the highly-acclaimed features, Forget Everything You Have Ever Seen: The World of Santa Sangre (2011) and What’s in the Basket (2012), a retrospective study of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case trilogy. This vast experience has clearly proven to be the perfect training ground, as his latest ranks alongside Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1999) and Lost in La Mancha (2002) as an acutely penetrative account of film artistry in turmoil.

Documentaries that chart the hurdles faced by ambitious film projects have been plentiful of late. Like Frank Pavich’s excellent Jodorowsky’s Dune, Lost Soul… is afforded the good grace and fortune of having a truly eccentric visionary at its core – underground artist/philosopher/academic/author and film director Richard Stanley, a brilliant, enigmatic presence whose plummy accent and intelligent gaze emerge from beneath the broad brim of his trademark Stetson.

Stanley found favour with some of the more adventurous LA executives after his 1990 sci-fi metal-noir oddity Hardware and trippy serial-killer western Dust Devil. He boldly pitched a fresh version of his lifelong obsession– H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau, the nightmarish tale of man’s inner beast becoming externalized. Given a surprising degree of free rein for a newcomer to Hollywood, Stanley’s small, dark vision was soon spiralling out of control, the self-serving influence of boardroom bullies to the harsh physical realities of shooting in the Queensland rainforest proving to be just two of the elements that led to Stanley’s descent into his own heart of darkness.

Present is the undeniably dark pleasure one derives from watching a slow-motion train wreck take shape. Cast (Fairuza Balk, Marco Hofschneider, one-time lead Rob Morrow and several Australian support players) and crew (from LA maven Robert Shaye to legendary Aussie production designer Graham ‘Grace’ Walker) flesh out the reality of events that have long since formed into legend. Thoroughly entertaining are the accounts of Marlon Brando’s grand eccentricity, replacement director John Frankenheimer’s methodical boorishness and Val Kilmer’s utter dick-ishness.

But it is the broader insight that Gregory explores in Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s The Island of Dr Moreau that proves most satisfying. Stanley’s planned film was perhaps the last of its kind – a wild, unsafe gamble on a director’s mad, complex, thematically rich studio tent-pole. It shares a pedigree with the likes of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or Jeunet’s & Caro’s The City of Lost Children - expensive visions left bloodied by horrible births that clawed their way to cult status. To Hollywood’s great shame, Richard Stanley’s vision of Wells’ hellish utopia never materialized, but its legacy makes for an appropriately insane real-life narrative every bit as brilliantly mad and maddening as the fiction promised to be.