LISEY'S STORY

Stars: Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Joan Allen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dane DeHaan, Ron Cephas Jones and Sung Kang.
Writer: Stephen King, based on his novel.
Director: Pablo Larraín

Eight episode limited series; screening on AppleTV+.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

From source material that Stephen King cites as his most personal novel comes a work that feels like an arthouse, post-horror spin on the tropes and themes favoured by the author. It’s the ‘arthouse’ and ‘post-horror’ elements that explain the presence of star Julianne Moore and Chilean director Pablo Larraín, both of whom wield executive producer might (with producer J.J. Abrams also weighing on) on the AppleTV+ limited series, Lisey’s Story. 

Allowing the most successful author of all time to script every installment of the 8-episode arc may have proven one creative visionary to many. Everyone involved seems determined to draw something deep and meaningful out of the King bestseller and craft a work of precise beauty, layered plotting and dark psychology. And while moments of Lisey’s Story convey all those things, it’s never wholly convincing or, more’s the concern, compellingly scary. Compared to recent adaptations of the author’s work, it represents a marked improvement over CBS’ ill-conceived reworking of The Stand, but falls well shy of last year’s HBO stunner, The Outsider. 

King’s novel was published in 2006, written while recuperating; one account says it was pneumonia, the other complications from his being struck by a van in 1999. The writer’s wife Tabitha took advantage of her husband’s downtime and cleaned up his office, packing many of his half-works and scribblings into boxes. King imagined this is how his workspace would look after he died, an image from which his most heartfelt narrative grew.

The utterly committed Moore plays Lisey, the widow of publishing phenom Scott Landon (Clive Owen), who was struck down by an assassin’s bullet two years prior. While continuing to struggle with her grief, she also wrangles her relationship with her sisters, the short-fused Darla (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the often catatonic Amanda (Joan Allen). At the same time, her late husband’s scumbag colleague, Professor Dashmiel (Ron Cephas Jones) wants Scott’s unpublished writings and acquires the services of Landon’s most unstable superfan, Jim ‘Dandy’ Dooley (a legitimately unhinged Dane DeHaan; pictured below) to convince Lisey to give them up.

Beyond these real world concerns are the realms of imagination and fantasy that symbolise Scott’s memories. The murky psyche of the late author is represented by a creepy aquatic amphitheatre known as ‘Boo’ya Moon’, populated by a shrieking Lovecraftian giant formed from howling humans and home to Amanda in her worst moments. Lisey begins to understand her husband’s sad past, brought to life in horrific flashbacks to Scott’s boyhood abuse at the hands of his father (an unrecognizable Michael Pitt). With that insight comes the ability to travel between worlds, giving Lisey control of a new destiny, albeit one that walks a dark path filled with physical terrors and raw memories.

Pablo Larrain draws superbly etched character work out of his female leads (Jackie, 2016; Ema, 2019; the soon-to-be-released Spencer) and his work with Moore excels at exploring the sadness and longing in Lisey. But King’s fantasy/horror elements prove altogether more challenging for the director; he stumbles in his conjuring of menace and foreboding, often too enthralled by image over substance (the usually reliable DOP Dharius Khondji proving another overqualified hired hand not in tune with the material).

Lisey’s Story is the end result of a lot of mismatched top-tier talents, although crucial shortcomings fall largely at the feet of writer King. Moore and especially Owen gurgle out his dialogue, which is often not dialogue at all but repetitive cues that infer meaning while actually having none (“Babyluv?”, “Babyluv…”). That it remains watchable at all, and there are moments (mostly from DeHaan as the most celebrated of King’s archetypes, the ‘crazed fan’) that are certainly watchable, Lisey’s Story is a textbook case of its parts being greater than its whole.

THE TEST: A NEW ERA FOR AUSTRALIA'S TEAM

Features: Justin Langer, Tim Paine, Steve Smith, David Warner, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja, Aaron Finch, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Starc and Marnus Labuschagne.
Narrated by Brendan Cowell.
Director: Adrian Brown.

Available on Amazon Prime.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Not since the summer of 1981, when Australian captain Greg Chappell ordered his brother Trevor to roll the final delivery along the pitch to deny New Zealand any hope of winning, has the national team been held in such low esteem as it was in the wake of the 2018 sandpaper/ball-tampering incident against South Africa.

The Test: A New Era For Australia’s Team begins at that low point in Australian cricket history. Captain Steve Smith and opening batsmen David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were banned from the sport for a period, after Bancroft was filmed damaging the ball to help it swing against the dominant South African batsmen. Warner was deemed the mastermind, while captain Smith (and, ultimately, coach Darren Lehmann) took responsibility and bore the brunt of the reprisals.

Director Adrian Brown’s polished and insightful Amazon Prime documentary series chronicles the resurrection of the squad and the baptism of fire they had to endure at the hands of the global media, rabid international crowds and, most importantly, the Australian public. The very fact that the series exists at all, with a great deal of its eight episode arc unfolding within the previously untouchable ‘inner sanctum’ of coach’s and player’s personal space, is testament to how desperately damaged the iconic brand was in its homeland.

New coach Justin Langer (pictured, below) is tasked with rebuilding team culture, confidence and public trust, and The Test highlights what a sturdy, passionate traditionalist the former Australian opener proved to be in a role that needed just such an unshakeable integrity. The playing and coaching group visit the Western front in northern France, where young Australians fought and died on foreign soil for their country. Langer’s aim is to re-establish in his young group the responsibility and heritage that comes with representing a nation.

Brown’s camera then follows the team as they undertake a very rocky path to redemption. Series losses in England, the sub-Continent and, over a particularly soul crushing Australian summer, against archenemy Virat Kohli’s Indian super-side, expose tension, disappointment and frustration. Newly appointed captain Tim Paine, as resolute a character as Langer, emerges as a true modern leader, aware of the mindset of his young charges and not above unforgiving self-analysis.

Crucial to the rebuilding of team character are the inevitable positional shifts within the playing group. A run of outs for One-Day captain Aaron Finch expose the mental anguish associated with the risk of being dropped from the squad; Langer’s often merciless, hard-edged demands run afoul of veteran batsman Usman Khawaja, the pair clashing in one memorable encounter.

While Warner’s return to the fold is somewhat underplayed, Steve Smith’s unique personality and influence on the team’s fortune becomes the unavoidable focus. By episodes 7 and 8, which recount the team’s return to Ol’ Blighty to retain one of sport’s most famous trophies, The Ashes, the thrill of the contest and the complexity of the personalities have melded, resulting in utterly captivating drama where the stakes are clear and the emotions are raw.

The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team is also a superb technical triumph, with game footage, editing and the accompanying sound design making the action as involving as any follower of the sport could hope for (and which any non-disciple ought to warm to in no time).

Offshore cricket fans, most of whom found icy joy in watching the Australian team’s fall from grace, may find the reformation and rebranding of our team a slightly less emotionally engaging experience than your average Aussie fan. But The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team, like most great sports documentaries, achieves greatness not for what it reveals about a sport, but what universality it reveals amongst the disparate spirits who have come together to play it.

TRACK: SEARCH FOR AUSTRALIA'S BIGFOOT

Featuring: Attila Kaldy, Yowie Dan, Tony Jinks, Duo Ben, Gary Opit, Neil Frost, Mathew Crowther, Robert Grey and Robert Venables.
Director: Attila Kaldy

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Global sightings of bipedal hominids, aka Bigfoot, and the number of documentaries chronicling those sightings have long since passed tipping point. A search of any of the streaming providers will reveal a thriving genre subset that posits every possible theory on the ‘real story’ behind the elusive, mythical beast; from ‘missing link’ and ‘undiscovered ape’ to ‘alien life form’ and ‘inter-dimensional visitor’, Bigfoot films are a big industry.

Australia has its own legendary ‘forest giant’ and so it has its own documentarians contemplating the nature of the beast. Most notable amongst them is director/producer Attila Kaldy, a veteran of almost two decades of speculative supernatural small screen content. His latest mini-feature is Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot, an engaging, often introspective examination as much of the men who hunt the mythical creature as the creature itself.

Kaldy transports his audience deep into the rugged Blue Mountains hinterland 90 minutes west of Sydney. A majestic section of the Great Dividing Range and some of the most dense eucalypt bushland on the continent, it has long been thought to provide a vast home to Australia’s alpha cryptid, the Yowie. It takes little time for Kaldy to introduce us to his first expert, ‘Yowie Dan’, himself a popular figure amongst believers and sceptics alike.

Dan (pictured, below) has the best footage to date of an alleged Yowie – a few frames captured quite by accident on a solo expedition deep into the lower mountain region. Kaldy utilises parapsychologist and cryptid witness Tony Jinks to verify the authenticity of Dan’s footage in an extended sequence that goes a long way to convince that something unexplainable was filmed. The mid-section of the film affords a lot of time to Rob’s Gray and Venables, of fellow investigation outfit Truth Seekers Oz, who recount their own encounters.

Much of the first half of Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot travels some well-worn paranormal television tropes, albeit delivered in a slick, pro tech package by Kaldy. Green night-vision sequences, monochromatic stagings (including a respectful nod to the iconic 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage), first-person accounts that preach very much to the cryptid choir and a moody soundscape highlighted by an evocative score by Daljit Kundi are effectively employed.

The production explores some new angles in a more compelling final stretch. Cryptozoologists Gary Opit and Neil Frost offer counterpoints to commonly held assumptions (for example, from the bio-geographical perspective, the probability of an Australian ‘ape’ is unlikely) and address such fascinating tangents as the possible existence of a ‘marsupial cryptid’, complete with pouch. The relationship between Australia’s indigenous tribes and the hominid legend is explored, albeit briefly; the ancient people’s perspective on their land’s cryptozoology is worth its own documentary examination, surely? And, to drive home the fear wrought by an encounter with a ‘forest giant,’ Kaldy’s effects team create striking images based upon eyewitness descriptions.

Kaldy leaves a few threads dangling for the doubters. When ‘experts’ stumble upon what they claim to be a cryptid’s nest and shelter, why don’t they collect some hair or scat? Regardless, Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot is a top-tier addition to a crowded, often sensationalised, documentary field. Much like it’s subject matter, one hopes it will be discovered and afforded the respect it deserves.

TRACK: Search for Australia's Bigfoot will be released in North America on DVD and Blu-ray on April 21; other territories to follow. More information about the film, visit the official Paranormal Investigators website. 

PERFECT BID: THE CONTESTANT WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

Featuring: Theodore Slauson, Bob Barker, Roger Dobkowitz, Drew Carey and Kevin Pollak.
Director: C.J. Wallis

Rating: 4/5

The curious case of Theodore Slauson and the role he played in one of the most remarkable moments of television history is examined with an acutely insightful eye and jaunty rhythm in director C.J. Wallis’ hugely enjoyable doc, Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much. The 52 year-old survivor of game show infamy proves to be droll and delightful frontman for his own story, which Wallis recounts utilising first-person recollections, archive footage and some stylishly employed bridging animation.

A head for mathematical detail served Slauson well when his obsession with the iconic game show The Price is Right took full flight during his teenage years in the 1970s. The middle child of a middle class family raised in household where television was the centrifugal force, young Ted began to notice that the prizes on offer to contestants would often be repeated. Slauson took notes, first mentally and then electronically; by the mid 80s, with more than a decade of episodes logged, he knew the exact make, model and, most importantly, price of the entire prize catalogue.

The first half of Wallis’ charming, personality-driven profile affords insight into the rare depths that this brand of fandom occupies. There is not a judgemental frame of footage in Perfect Bid, which could have easily taken a mocking tone towards a man who spent the best part of four decades fixated on a daytime game show. In recounting his time spent lining up for a shot at player stardom and the special brand of ‘audience celebrity’ he became in his own right, Slauson’s ingratiating, self-effacing self-awareness proves entirely disarming.

Of course, most obsessions reveal a dark side. For Ted Slauson, it was in the form of Terry Kniess, whom Slauson befriended while waiting in line in September 2008. Kneiss would become the first contestant in the history of The Price is Right to place a perfect bid in the showcase round, with Slauson screaming numbers in support from the front row of the audience (participation encouraged as part of the show’s appeal).    

At the time, the ‘Perfect Showcase’ was deemed an impossible act; new host Drew Carey, in footage gleaned from his appearance on Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show podcast, recalls how production was halted when the numbers revealed the anomaly and the consequences of such an event were weighed.

Thematically, Wallis touches on the notion of ‘careful what you wish for’. The fan mantra “Loyal Friends and True” that was preached by the show’s producers was severely tested in the wake of the Kniess incident. For Slauson, any notion of aiding in a scam to cheat the show was mortifying, as was the preposterous notion of a vengeful conspiracy in the wake of the sacking of veteran showrunner Roger Dobkowitz and the departure of beloved host Bob Barker (both of whom lend their beaming personalities to the film; pictured, above, l-r Dobkowitz and Barker).

Wallis’ account of the super-fan’s journey guided, in part, by the power of television proves a joy. In relating an everyman’s life altered/enriched/elevated when it crosses paths with his obsession, Perfect Bid: The Contestant That Knew Too Much will speak with a very clear and relatable voice to those who seek it out. However unwittingly, Theodore Slauson dictated his own destiny through a lifetime of commitment and dedication, two of the key components of the great American dream. As is winning one’s fortune on a game show.