THE CAMPAIGN

Stars: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, Katherine LaNasa, Sarah baker, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd, Brian Cox, Karen Maruyama and Josh Lawson.
Writers: Shawn Harwell and Chris Henchy.
Director: Jay Roach

Rating 3/5

The Campaign will split the vote between those who would have liked a smarter take on the immorality of modern politics and those that get a big laugh out of a character nicknamed ‘Tickleshits’ because he poohs when overstimulated.

Director Jay Roach nailed super-smart dissection of the political landscape in his great small-screen works Game Change (his take on Sarah Palin’s 2008 odyssey) and Recount (a dramatization of the 2000 Florida voting result), but they seem the works of another director entirely; here, we get the guy who also directed Austin Powers in Goldmember.  

Far more akin to star Will Ferrell’s Anchorman than great political satires such as Robert Redford’s The Candidate or warm-hearted White House fantasies like Kevin Kline’s Dave, The Campaign is from the team at Funny or Die. The comedy collective, overseen by Ferrell and long-time producing partner Adam McKay, specialises is bite-size webisodes of hit-&-miss skit humour, usually scatological in nature, and that’s a perfectly apt description for this, their seventh feature together.

Ferrell is Cam Brady, a North Carolinian congressman, perennially unchallenged each election year, supping at the crooked teat of big business while shtupping everything that moves. His wealth suggests a Romney-like Red State-caricature, his philandering a Clinton-esque charmer; it is one of the many hedged bets the production takes in its stance on real-world politics.

Brady’s stranglehold on the top spot is threatened when manipulative billionaires The Motch Brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow, in roles that unmistakably reference Don Ameche’s and Ralph Bellamy’s Duke brothers in Trading Places) need a patsy to help push through a planned Chinese manufacturing plant that would destroy the economy of the district. Their puppet is Tourism Center director Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), a family man of considerable naivety, long the embarrassment of his power-broker father Ray (Brian Cox) and preppy creep of a little brother, Tripp (Aussie Josh Lawson).

The stage is set for a tit-for-tat series of increasingly cruel (and preposterous) one-upmanship pranks to win the electorate’s approval. As Brady’s world unravels, Ferrell brings his typically vivid and fearless comedic A-game, but it is Galifianakis who gets most of the film’s biggest laughs as the sweetly buffoonish Huggins. The decision to play him as an ambiguously effeminate yet happily married man reminds one of Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick alter-ego.

The primary shortcoming is that The Campaign is perfectly happy to be the same foul-mouthed, frat-boy romp as we’ve all seen before from Ferrell and co. This time, the smug jerk who finally learns to play nice is a politician and not an egomaniacal newsman, a Nascar champ (Talladega Nights), a combative sibling (Step Brothers) or dim-witted explorer (Land of the Lost), but the template is the same and the schtick familiar.

With the Republican leadership circus over and a presidential campaign in full swing, a more incisive skewering of the process would have been welcome, but the Funny or Die team falls back on broad smut and treacly sentimentality. It is not without some big laughs but, given Hollywood is unlikely to role the dice on two political parodies in the same year, The Campaign is a wasted opportunity to seriously laugh at the backroom dealings that drive the grinding gears of modern democracy.

BULLY

Features: Alex, Kelby, Ja’Meya, Kirk and Laura Smalley, David and Tina Long.
Writers: Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Owen.
Director: Lee Hirsch.

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Screenings - Fri 10 Aug, 11.00am; Sun 12 Aug, 1.30pm; Tue 14 Aug, 11.00am. National release via Village Roadshow commences Thur 23 Aug.

Rating: 4.5/5

The lives of disenfranchised youths dip painfully in and out of focus via the camera of director Lee Hirsch in Bully and the result is an achingly sad, occasionally soaring work.

An in-camera effect the director employs quite deliberately, of the image shifting from crisp to blurry, captures the dichotomy of existence a group of children in the early stages of teenhood experience. For many of them, their idyllic home life where they are able to be express their untainted love for life is the only refuge they have from a world of torment.

A pre-credit sequence that puts the tortuous duality of the victimised life into perspective chronicles the fate of Tyler Long. He was a bright, beautiful boy from a loving family who, having suffered untold torment in secondary school, hung himself in his bedroom closet. His father reflects upon the baby boy he has lost; his mother recounts for Hirsch’s camera the moment they found him.

It is a forthright challenging way to start a film, but it puts its audience on note that what you about to see has consequence, is about the life and death of children. We soon meet Kelby, a strong, pretty girl whose coming-out leads to social pariah status; learn of 12 year-old Ty Smalley, another suicide victim driven to a desperate act by evil older children; and, suffer through the fate of Ja’Meya, a Mississippi teen whose last-resort act of brandishing a gun on a school bus leads to a period in mental health detention. 

The saddest/sweetest victim is Alex, his awkward appearance, vacant stare and gangly physicality making him easy prey. His efforts to attach himself to schoolyard cliques leads to beatings, while every bus trip is filled with abuse. An early scene in which he lovingly wrestles with his younger sister comes back to haunt him (and the audience), when it is revealed she is teased just for being his sister; when he tries to make sense of why who he is should impact her, she says “Because people think you’re weird”. His heartbreak filled the preview screening room that SCREEN-SPACE attended.

To the film’s slight detriment, Bully has a narrow focus set against America’s Midwest Bible-belt region; I found myself wanting to know what a bullied child’s life is like in the multicultural volatility of Los Angeles or the prep-school elite of the US East Coast. The communities in focus still deal with problems by organising town hall meetings and plonking brutal advocates of bullying in the vice-principal’s office. Villains emerge in the form of paper-pushing line-towers, in particular Alex’s student superviser, Ann Lockwood, her smug grin a cover for a sanctimonious career ass-coverer who refuses to consider measures to protect the victims.

The bullies are occasionally asked to answer for their actions, but one senses Hirsch understands his film is not a turning point but a call to arms; he overplays the modern documentary trait to fill the final half-hour with website prompts and movement preaching, but one can hardly blame him given the closeness he obviously shared with his subjects.

Frankly, these are minor shortcomings that merely point to a passionate factual-filmmaker getting somewhat over-enthused in his feature length debut. Having been deeply moved by Bully, it is hard to imagine any critic begrudging the technically-proficient Hirsch the lengths to which he goes to tell the sad, spiritual stories he has uncovered. Ideally, it should lead to a cross-country wave of like-minded projects, exposing the evil that dwells in our children’s places of learning.

Director Lee Hirsch will be joined by anti-bullying advocate Ruby Rose, headspace youth ambassador Joe Pellucci, Project Rockit representative Rosie Thomas, SANE's Jack Heath and Dr Judith Slocombe from The Alannah and Madeline Foundation at the MIFF Special Presentation "Bully: Screen to Schoolyard" on Tuesday, August 14 at the Forum Theatre's Festival Lounge.

THE SAPPHIRES

Stars: Deborah Mailman, Chris O'Dowd, Jessica Mauboy, Shari Stebbens, Miranda Tapsell, Tory Kittles, Eka Darville, Lynette Narkle, Kylie Belling, Don Battee, Judith Lucy, Rhys Muldoon, Georgina Haig and Gregory J Fryer.
Writers: Tony Briggs and Keith Thompson.
Director: Wayne Blair.

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Screening - OPENING NIGHT, Thur 2 Aug, 7.30pm.

Rating: 2.5/5

Charming import Chris O’Dowd stands above a frustratingly predictable song-and-dance show in Wayne Blair’s The Sapphires. Though it touches upon such hot button issues as racism, the Vietnam War, self-determination via social change and the stolen generation, there is an anaemic shallowness to the film’s exploration of them that suggests palatability and sentimentality were higher priorities than social commentary.

The pulled-punches in terms of thematic insight would have seemed less obvious had the more crowd-pleasing elements been handled with greater skill. Instead, the film hamstrings itself with some bland, episodic plotting, just-ok musical numbers and a cringing reliance upon anachronistic ‘Strine (the ‘strewth’ and ‘drongo’ laden scripts for both Red Dog and now The Sapphires indicate the broadly-played Aussie stereotype is alive and well).

Additionally, overstated 60s iconography abounds, including a grab-bag of clichéd period music (Soul Man; Hang On, I’m Coming; I Can’t Help Myself, and so on). Though Blair’s vision expands the action, the stage play origins are obvious in the films structure, which allows for a show-stopping tune at regular intervals whether the drama needs it or not.

Loosely adapted from the true story of four women of the Yorta Yorta clan who sang together in the late 60s and 70s (unlike in the film, only two, Laurel Robinson and Lois Peeler, toured Vietnam), the film is at its best when establishing the conflicted bond that the group shares. The mother-hen is Gail (Deborah Mailman), an all-too-confrontational, downright unlikable young woman who, much to the actress’ credit, remains the emotional core of the film.

There is deep-seated animosity between Gail and her cousin Kay (a fine Shari Stebbens) dating back to Kay’s forced removal from her family as a child and subsequent shunning of her roots. Though this subplot offers some good melodrama (a bout of fisticuffs between the two, for example), the stolen generation issues lack a potent focus.

The other singers are Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), a firebrand with a lust for life and, more specifically, American soldiers; and, Julie (Jessica Mauboy), the youngest but most level-headed of the group and certainly the most talented. Neither character is developed with much conviction over the course of the film, though Mauboy exudes all the front-girl charisma that her pop persona suggested she would.

An over-extended but funny opening sequence set during a country pub talent show introduces ne’er-do-well Irishman Dave Lovelace, who introduces the girl group to the wonders of soul music then hitches a ride on their star-making trajectory. As Lovelace, Chris O’Dowd is the ace up the sleeve that Blair often relies upon to enrich scenes of unfocussed drama.

The opening shots of an unusually lush outback landscape hint at an artistry that is only occasionally realised. Cinematographer Warwick Thornton seems entirely at ease in the idyllic bushland setting of the girl’s mission home (a very different slice of indigenous life to the one painted by Thornton in his acclaimed 2009 directorial debut, Samson and Delilah), but a tinniness infuses the Vietnam-set sequences. Tightly-framed versions of Saigon and US military bases clearly constructed in the wilds of the Oz bush aren’t very convincing, though a dramatically-staged attack that occurs during one of the girl’s final shows most definitely is.   

SIDE BY SIDE

Features: Keanu Reeves, Martin Scorsese, Vilmos Zsigmond, James Cameron, David Fincher, Wally Pfister, Dion Beebe, Vittorio Storaro, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, Donald McAlpine, Michael Chapman, Walter Murch, Greta Gerwig and George Lucas.
Director: Chris Kenneally

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Screenings - Sun 5 Aug, 1.30pm; Wed 8 Aug, 4.30pm.

Rating: 4/5

 

Capturing a paradigm shift in the life cycle of the American motion picture, Chris Kenneally’s remarkably captivating doco Side by Side only occasionally teeters over into the kind of hard-to-decipher techtalk that threatens to distance average moviegoers. For the most part, it is an enthralling collection of A-list talking heads arguing their stance on the digital-vs-film debate.

Hosted by an omnipresent Keanu Reeves, exhibiting far more warmth and personality than he has in any of his last half-dozen acting parts, Side by Side darts and weaves between the most savvy of Hollywood’s directorial talents, each of them espousing on the pros and cons of new camera technology. Such erudite and informed speakers as Scorsese, Fincher, Soderbergh, Cameron, Rodriguez, Linklater, Nolan and Lucas (though, oddly, no Spielberg), as well as cinematographers and technical craftsmen from the field of in-camera technology, all speak with a fierce passion for their preferred medium.

Reeves has worked with several of the filmmakers on past projects and engages them on their views with an informed and open interviewing style. Those new to the debate won’t feel lost for long; easy-to-grasp graphics describing the technology under scrutiny ensures the debate is easily comprehended. The doco will lose some when it delves into the benefits of the latest digital-camera workings; if the word ‘Red’ is still just a colour to you, the 70 minute mark is perhaps a good time for that bathroom break.

Enlivened by scene clips from dozens of films and propelled forward by a determination on Kenneally’s part to keep things fluid and fascinating rather than argumentative and academic, Side by Side is top-tier festival fodder and a must-own DVD item for any film buff. It will ultimately become a time-capsule document of a point in the film industry’s history when a line in the sand is drawn by one faction and defied and crossed by the other.

Oh, and it was shot on digital.

KILLER JOE

Stars: Matthew McConnaughey, Thomas Haden Church, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple and Gina Gershon.
Writers: Tracy Letts, based upon his play.
Director: William Friedkin.

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Screenings - Fri 3 Aug, 11.30pm; Wed 8 Aug, 9.00pm.

Rating: 4/5

Awright, awright, longtime fans of Matthew McConnaughey. That Oscar speech we all hoped he would someday give but never really believed would ever eventuate seems a whole lot closer, thanks to his brilliantly evil titular psychopath, Joe Cooper, in William Friedkin’s trailer-trash noir gem, Killer Joe.

McConnaughey riffs off equally complex and blackly funny characterisations from Emile Hirsch, Thomas Haden-Church, Gina Gershon and Juno Temple to deliver a figure of commanding centrifugal force in this tummy-tightening slab of dusty, delirious immorality.

As the smalltown lawmen making blood money as a soulless hitman, the actor puts behind him a decade of limp rom-coms and shirtless tabloid pap-shots in one great performance. We can only hope it’s a kicker to a new phase in McConaughey’s career, where he delivers on the promise Hollywood held for him when he debuted his Newman-esque matinee idol screen presence in his first lead role, 1996s A Time To Kill. That same year, he impressed as charismatic lawman Buddy Deeds in John Sayles’ small town murder-mystery Lone Star, a character that could be seen as a forebearer of the dark soul he plays in Killer Joe.

Based on scripter Tracy Lett’s stage play, Killer Joe is the story of Hirsch’s Chris Smith, a desperate, petty loser deep in debt to bad people. When he discovers his ailing mother is heavily life-insured, he hatches a plan to off her with the help of Ansel (Haden-Church, equally Oscar-worthy), his droll, seen-it-all-before brother-in-law. Ansel’s brash wife Sharla (Gershon, whose on-screen introduction is priceless) and innocent teen-vixen daughter Dottie (Temple, a Teri Garr-like presence destined for a career of stealing films in great support parts) soon become caught up in the ridiculously ill-conceived murder plot.

That his films are still being sold by ‘From The Director of The French Connectiom and The Exorcist…’ taglines gives some indication to what a dichotomous curse those films were to the career of William Friedkin. After years in the critical and commercial wilderness, he has refocussed his output to deliberately small character pieces. The 2006 paranoid fantasy Bug (also a Letts adaptation) divided opinion, but few could argue Killer Joe is the work of a spent-force director. His handling of the extended, single-setting denouement (one of the few passages that point to the material’s stage origins) is a master-class of film tension.

Despite the small-room settings of many of the film’s key scenes (trailer kitchens, strip clubs, pool halls), Killer Joe feels broad and vast in its scope. The characters fill the screen beyond the edge of the frame; they make larger-than-life the viewing experience, even when five adults are crammed inside four tight walls, as is often the case. The dialogue crackles; the tension, palpable. Killer Joe is driven by a narrative momentum that enthrals. Even when McConnaughey is not onscreen, it is a cracking piece of character-driven entertainment; when he is, it something greater again.

STORM SURFERS 3D

Features: Tom Carroll, Ross Clarke-Jones, Barton Lynch, Grace Carroll, Kelly Slater, Paul Morgan, Mark Mathews, Paul ‘Antman’ Paterson and Ben Matson.
Writers/Directors:  Justin McMillan and Chris Nelius.

Rating: 4/5

The psychology of its passionate subjects and the majesty and might of the great waves they live to ride are captured with clarity, in every sense of the word, in Storm Surfers 3D. Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke-Jones are growing old as gracefully as leathery waxheads can and directors Justin McMillan and Chris Nelius grasp with insight what it means to crave young man thrills with an ageing body and mind.

It is this very human side to their film that will see Storm Surfers 3D play to festival crowds and arthouse/doco audiences and not just packed surf club halls. As giddyingly involving as the sports action is (and, at times, it is positively vertigo inducing), it is the themes of mateship, ageing, fatherhood and legacy that resonate most profoundly.

Full-time big wave surfers, the more introspective Carroll and spirited wildman Clarke-Jones travel the world conquering open ocean breaks and tight, shallow reef barrels that sometimes top 30 feet and carry several tonnes worth of water pressure. Clarke-Jones seems immune to the effects of age, both physically and mentally, but Carroll is portrayed as a man facing the importance of his own mortality.

A father of three daughters, Carroll spends the first half of the film sitting out the big rides with a shoulder injury, then struggling with his confidence when the chance to get back out their presents itself. Periods of reflection and of two friends offering insight and concern for each other provide a soulful element to Storm Surfers that make it one of those sports films that transcends its action component.

It must be said, though, that the action is grandly presented. The use of crisp, top-tier 3D technology is occasionally too impressive; there were several moments when twinges of seasickness kick in. But first-person camera work that puts the viewer on the board with Carroll and Clarke-Jones is totally immersive; helicopter shots of vast banking walls of deep blue water are spectacular. The camera team’s stunning cinematography represents some of the finest applications of the technology in factual filmmaking ever seen. 

Painting a far more enchanting portrait of Australia’s surfing brotherhood than Macario De Souza’s grubby 2007 doco Bra Boys, Storm Surfers affords two surfing icons a fitting tribute by showing them as extraordinary everymen. Whatever effort it took to get the film’s images, both intimate and expansive, it plays as wonderfully naturalistic on screen. Like the great waves Carroll and Clarke-Jones tackle, the film reveals an occasionally turbulent depth to the towering image the two men project.

THE THREE STOOGES

Stars: Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes, Will Sasso, Sofia Vergara, Craig Bierko, Larry David, Jane Lynch, Stephen Collins, Jennifer Hudson, Kirby Heyborne and Kate Upton.
Writers: Mike Cerrone, Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly.
Directors: Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly.

Rating: 3.5/5

There is more than enough nyuk for your buck in The Farrelly Brother’s The Three Stooges. Surely representing the furthest that Hollywood has reached back for a reboot opportunity, this energetic no-brainer is at its best when (re)capturing the slapstick violence of Larry, Moe and Curly’s golden era; it works less well when riffing on easily-lampooned pop culture references. The semi-serious biopic that this project began as (quite incredibly, to star Sean Penn, Benicia del Toro and a voluminous Jim Carrey as Curly) is still one of Hollywood’s great missed opportunities, but this re-energising of arguably film comedy’s most undervalued performers is a more than fitting tribute.                  

Multi-hyphenate siblings Peter and Bobby – kind of low-brow cinema’s answer to Joel and Ethan Coen - have never fully rediscovered the dim-witted comedic joie de vivre that enlivened their hit debut, Dumb and Dumber, a film that grows in estimation as every year passes (yes, There’s Something About Mary is a classic, but the comedy is smarter and the plotting more structured). After three regrettable duds in the form of The Perfect Catch, The Heartbreak Kid and Hall Pass, they certainly seem to have got their mojo back with The Three Stooges.

The film ambles through a straight-outta-the-‘50’s ‘save-the-orphanage’ plotline as a means by which to allow Larry (Sean Hayes), Curly (Will Sasso) and Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos) to wreak vengeance upon snotty, immoral types. They include conniving siren Lydia (Sofia Vergara), her imbecilic lover Mac (Craig Bierko, whose delivery of the word “Penguins?” gets one of the films biggest laughs) and greedy businessman, Mr Harter (Stephen Collins). Caught up in the midst of high society, the eye-poking, hair-pulling idiots are a blissfully self-ignorant force-of-nature, bringing undone back-stabbing schemes and adulterous liaisons without a single clue as to how or why.

Split into three title-carded parts (a further nod to the comedy team’s short-feature filmography), the movie aims high in both its complex staging of physical gags and its dependence upon the audience’s willingness to just go with the elevated nuttiness of it all. Not all of it entire works; the decision to make Moe a reality TV star, unleashing him upon the unsuspecting sub-human numbskulls who populate MTV’s The Jersey Shore is too hit/miss (and will date the film instantly).

A lot of it works wonderfully, however. Perfectly-pitched performances by the three new Stooges, each one given their own moments to shine, and a sweetly sentimental line in brotherly love ensures that a paper-thin plot is of no consequence at all when it comes to the laugh-to-running-time ratio. Everything in the orphanage is hilarious, which is as it should be; a nunned-up Larry David and such diverse talents as Jane Lynch, Jennifer Hudson, Brian Doyle-Murray and supermodel Kate Upton play off the Stooges’ shenanigans with obvious glee.

The Farrelly’s don’t rely on the trio for all the film’s big laughs; just typing ‘Pokher, Keester & Wintz’, the name of a proctology partnership, has reduced me to tears and the brother's final-frames appearance to warn kids off mimicking the Stooges antics is priceless. But they could have, so lovingly realized is this reworking.

THE IMPOSTER

Features: Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide, Charlie Parker, Nancy Fisher, Bryan Gibson, Codey Gibson, Bruce Perry and Phillip French.
Writer / Director: Bart Layton.

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Screenings - Sat 11 Aug, 9.00pm; Fri 17 Aug, 6.30pm.

Rating: 4.5/5

Bart Layton’s The Imposter begins with an incident that shatters a family and rocks a community. Thirteen year-old Texan teenager Nicholas Barclay, the epitome of the blonde-hair, blue-eyed All-American youth and all the promise that description held in the summer of 1994, disappears without a trace on his way home from a neighbourhood basketball game. Three-and-a-half years later, the family is all but resigned to the fact that they will never see Nicholas again.

Until into their lives comes a young man hailing from Spain, by the name of Frédéric Bourdin.

An artfully constructed docudrama that ranks among the very best of this hard-to-define genre, Layton’s film is a riveting account of the man who assumed a missing boys identity and managed to fool a family, a township and a federal government before it all began to unravel. The details of the deceit, however, are just the first steps on the incredible journey that the abused spirit and sad memory of Nicholas must endure.

The Imposter morphs effortlessly from scene-to-scene - a noir-ish mystery thriller, a crime-scene procedural, a drama chronicling a family’s anguish, a facts-only documentary – yet exists as a fluid single entity of profoundly impactful force. Every one of the talking heads are captured within a frame rich in detail and production prowess; behind-the-scenes contributions not usually heralded as part of the factual films, such as lighting, set design and music, are all employed with precision and subtle but unforgettable resonance.

Layton is helped immeasurably by both the geographical scale of Bourdin’s ruse (his life of crime has extended to many countries, including Australia) and by a group of subjects who each have deeply-rooted emotional ties to the case. The most compelling of them, of course, is Bourdin himself, who immediately strikes one as both a charming, erudite Frenchman and a clinical sociopath. Audience assumptions are shattered, though, when some third-act finger-pointing suggests young Nicholas’ family may have more to do with the boy’s disappearance than first thought.

The Imposter has been justifiably compared to The Thin Blue Line, master documentarian Errol Morris’ similarly-themed 1988 work that was so influential it would lead to a murder case being re-opened and an inncocent man being released from prison. The Imposter’s impact may not extend to that degree despite a final shot that offers hope that it someday might. Nevertheless, Layton’s superbly cinematic film certainly exposes one of the great acts of heartless fraudulence in modern history and the egos, emotions and procedures that combined to let it be so.

THOSE WHO KILL: SHADOWS OF THE PAST

Stars: Laura Bach, Jakob Cedergren, Simon Kvamm, Lars Mikkelsen, Lars Ranthe, Lærke Winther and Frederik Meldal Nørgaard.
Writers: Morten Dragsted and Siv Rajendram Eliassen.
Director: Birger Larsen

REVELATIONS FILM FESTIVAL Screenings – Sun July 8, 3.30pm; Sun July 14, 2.30pm.

Rating: 3.5/5

A polished, workmanlike police procedural that pulls off familiar tropes with clarity and tense momentum, Those Who Kill: Shadows of the Past is enlivened by its contemporary Copenhagen setting, above-par genre acting and frank gore.

The occasional narrative diversion from the well-trodden path most often taken by serial killer thrillers is enough to give this big-screen airing of one of Denmark’s most popular small-screen properties a focus that mostly compels to the inevitable showdown, which is executed with aplomb.

After a horribly riveting opening sequence aboard a bus, the film settles into a steady stream of clichés that are played very broadly; one gets the feeling that the entire first act is an overplayed set-up that the director Birger Larsen, a veteran of the TV series, is more than eager to subvert.

Thomas (Jakob Cedergren) is a divisional psychiatrist easing through his last couple of days with the force before a new job in the safer world of psychology academia. It is a pay upgrade that ensures his beautiful wife Mia (Lærke Winther) and son Johan (Benjamin Brüel von Klitzing) can buy that dream house (see what I mean about clichés….?). His partner is Katrine (the striking and strong Laura Bach), a hardbitten cop despite her young age who can’t believe her partner would leave ‘the life’.

After some perfunctory forensic work - the speedy, simple kind often associated with frivolous hour-long ‘CSI’-type shows - it emerges that the bus massacre was the work of Kristian Almen (a truly menacing Simon Kvamm), an ex-patient of Thomas’ not long out of incarceration. The film follows a well-worn path up to this point but soon discrepancies appear in the plotting that spin the film in unexpected directions. And not a moment too soon, frankly; an hour in and my attention was wavering, but the third act is a corker.

Filled with the kind of cop-shop banter and action brio most often associated with mid-range Hollywood programmers, Those Who Kill: Shadows of the Past finds a freshness that comes from its international cast and continental flavours, rather than anything aesthetically or structurally ground-breaking. Perhaps best recalling David Fincher’s Se7en or, more recently, Jonas Åkerlund’s Dennis Quaid starrer Horseman in its willingness to wallow in some supremely visceral physical horror undercut with themes of regret and painful redemption, Larsen’s film doesn’t reach high enough to carry any importance but nor does it fall short of its ambitions to be a solidly dark-natured mystery-thriller.

BUFF

Features: David Stratton, Margaret Pomeranz, Richard Sowada, Jack Sargeant, Peter Rowsthorne, Alan Stiles, Simon Miraudo, Mark Naglazas, Anita Krsnik, Madeline Bates, Jimmy Jack, Stephen Sunderland, Danielle Marsland and Rob Denham.
Writers/Directors: Gavin Bond and Ian Abercromby

REVELATIONS FILM FESTIVAL Screening – Sun July 15, 9.15pm.

Rating: 3/5

A sweet if inconsequential celebration of what educated film types love most about movies, watching Buff is like joining a table of film nerds at a pub and trying to keep up. Which most true ‘buffs’ will do effortlessly, of course; there’s nothing particularly revelatory about anything anyone says, except perhaps exhibition legend Alan Stiles admission that his guilty pleasure is the Troma Studio's 1987 schlock Z-grader, Surf Nazis Must Die. Didn’t see that one coming!

The collated talking heads are all respected voices from most arenas in the world of cinema. They include festival directors (including Revelations own Richard Sowada and Jack Sargeant), new-Gen online critics, actors, scholars and, of course, the ubiquitous ‘David and Margaret’.

Their contributions are in the form of rather straightforward answers to the sort of questions anyone might ask should they be seated next to them at a dinner party – What’s your favourite film? What’s your favourite scene? What’s your least favourite movie? What’s your favourite line? Responses don’t surprise for the most part, but watching the joy with which these commited cinephiles speak about their passion is endearing. (The one exception may be Sargeant, who will put Generation X’ers offside with his hateful dissing of the collected works of the great John Hughes. What the hell!?!)

Directors Gavin Bond and Ian Abercromby (who get Screen-Space onside from the opening scenes, in which they wax lyrical about a personal fave, The Pope of Greenwich Village) were part of the creative team behind the rough-around-the-edges public-access film show Flicktease for close to decade. Their spirited japery, combined with their own buff-ness, is part of the film’s charm (ageing fans will enjoy seeing some footage of the Teaser team in their prime). Less successful are the part-recitations/part-improvised skits that actors Sam Longley and Damon Lockwood perform to provide bridging moments between the natter. Perhaps they exist in lieu of the production’s inability to afford copyright fees on scene clips, though Buff is peppered with movie moments, so that can’t be entirely true.

Given not all contributors are instantly recognisable and some have a less than compelling onscreen presence, Buff feels a little stretched even at 62 minutes. With no particularly stringent point to be made, the ‘I love this!/I hate this!’ to-and-fro wears thin. That said, it is still a joy to get an insight into the generational influence that films have had, to hear that films as diverse as El Cid and Working Girl had the same profound impact on the hearts and minds of those of us sharing a lifelong love affair with the movies. As love stories go, it is one to which many of us can relate.