MY YEAR OF LIVING MINDFULLY

Featuring: Shannon Harvey, Neil Bailey, Amit Bernstein, Judson Brewer, Willoughby Britton, Vidyamala Burch, Nicholas Cherbuin, Richard Davidson, Gaelle Desbordes, Elissa Epel, Anna Finniss, Timothea Goddard, Daniel Goleman, Dan Harris, Craig Hassed, Amishi Jha, Willem Kuyken, Marc Longster, Kimina Lyall, Kristen Neff, Hilda Pickett, Matthieu Ricard, Mogoas Kidane Tewelde, Nicholas Van Dam, Marc Wilkins and Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Writers/Directors: Shannon Harvey and Julian Harvey.

Available to watch FREE at the My Year of Living Mindfully website until June 3. Also available for pre-order on digital and DVD.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

“[Mindfulness is] the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD; Professor Emeritus at University of Massachusetts. 

Undertaking a kind of Super Size Me for the psyche, journalist/filmmaker Shannon Harvey puts her body and mind on the line in the name of mental health science in My Year of Living Mindfully. Diving deep into the layered application of meditative practices as a healing tool, the award-winning health sector scribe chronicles just how effective centering her consciousness to combat physiological and psychological ailments can be.

A sequel-of-sorts to her 2014 mind-and-body doc The Connection, Harvey opens up about the growing toll that a combination of modern living (stress, insomnia) and ages-old afflictions (lupus) is having on her dangerously imbalanced inner-self. From that starting point, she begins her investigation of and complete immersion within the use of meditative mindfulness, seeking out the professors, practitioners and proven beneficiaries for whom the determined restructuring of one’s focus through concentration has been life-changing.

As a front-person for this journey of self-discovery, Harvey is an engaging protagonist, owning personal doubt in her ability to apply herself to the yearlong commitment and not hiding her own insecurities as her treatment demands introspection (husband and co-director Julian Harvey remains mostly off-screen, but admirably supportive). She also exhibits her award-winning skills as a journalist, with increasingly complex academic theorising from the many leaders in the field at her disposal presented with clarity.

The most profoundly human of the on-screen stories are those Harvey uncovers within her ‘case study’ subplots (of which she is the final subject). After many years as a warzone reporter and dealing with subsequent mental scars by self-medication, TV news presenter Dan Harris had an on-air breakdown in 2004; with her whole life ahead of her, Vidyamala Burch became a paraplegic after a car accident, aged just 24. Both relate the stark horrors their lives presented to them and the recovery process that eastern philosophies and meditative mindfulness inspired.

After 70-odd minutes of pristine hospital rooms, university halls and leafy Sydney surrounds (at one point, we accompany Harvey on a 10-day bush retreat), my nagging skepticism that ‘mindfulness’ was another wealthy white-person privilege grew louder. Almost on cue, Harvey addresses just such concerns with the production wisely shifting the third act to a Middle East refugee camp to gauge the impact of meditation on some of the most emotionally damaged humans on the planet. 

It is a decision that speaks to the deeply existential endeavour at the core of the mindfulness movement. While the science-based medical/sociological studies presented are fascinating and crucial to understanding meditative consciousness, My Year of Living Mindfully is ultimately about how effectively it has and can, with increasing knowledge of its benefits, serve all mankind in the face of the mental illness epidemic gripping the planet.

100% WOLF

Voice cast: Ilai Swindells, Jai Courtenay, Samara Weaving, Magda Szubanski, Rhys Darby, Akmal Saleh and Jane Lynch.
Writer: Fin Edquist; based upon the novel by Jayne Lyons.
Director: Alexs Stadermann

Available to rent in Australia from 29 May on Foxtel, Fetch, Apple, Google Play, Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The frantic, funny, family-friendly animated energy that powered the likes of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania to global box office heights ought to earn 100% Wolf a similar number of eyeballs when word spreads what a cracking piece of all-age entertainment it is.

Adapted from the bestselling 2009 YA-fantasy novel by expat British author Jayne Lyons, director Alexs Stadermann and scripter Fin Edquist (reteaming after the success of 2014’s Maya the Bee Movie) pitch the excitement level high from the first frames. A pack of werewolves bound over moonlit rooftops (recalling the artful imagery of Bibo Bergeron’s A Monster in Paris), before rescuing humans from a burning house. Along for the adventure in preparation for his transformation from human boy to teen wolf is Freddy Lupin (Ilai Swindells), son of the clan’s ruling high-howler Flasheart (Jai Courtney), a position that Freddy is predestined to fulfil.

Six years later, the night of his first ‘transwolftation’ is an embarrassing disaster; in a whirl of supernatural mist, Freddy transforms not into a snarling lycanthrope but instead a fluffy white poodle. Banished from werewolf society, he befriends street-tough mutt Batty (Samara Weaving) and becomes entwined in a good-vs-evil battle, pitting him and his unlikely dog-friends against villainess The Commander (US import Jane Lynch) and his own family black sheep, Uncle Hotspur (Rupert Degas, putting his spin on Jeremy Iron's intonations in The Lion King, which this film occasionally recalls). Also in the narrative mix are book favourites Harriet and Chariot, aka Freddy’s terrible cousins (Adriane Daff and Liam Graham, respectively) and wolf hunter Foxwell Cripp (Rhys Darby, lightening up the central bad guy of Lyon’s book).

The clear subtext in both the book and film is one of accepting that which makes us unique, of celebrating the individual. Metaphorically, Freddy is faced with a struggle against both his family’s expectations and his changing body, a universal conundrum for pre-teens. Double-down on the symbolism of his appearance (that shock of very pink hair) and overt non-alignment with gender stereotypes and our hero, and his movie, prove far more fearless than they might first appear. Parents, older siblings and enlightened tots will appreciate the character depth in the midst of all the frenetic slapstick, staged with giddy efficiency by Stadermann and his top-tier contributors.

Backed by the Oz sector’s governing body Screen Australia, with state-based financiers Screenwest and Create NSW on board, and produced by leading animation outfit Flying Bark Productions with the help of post-production house Siamese, 100% Wolf has a pedigree that demands international exposure. Already a hot literary property, the feature will go into German-speaking territories via distribution giant Constantin Film, while 26 short-form Freddy Lupin adventures are being co-produced by Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Germany’s Super RTL; in January, a vast merchandising line was introduced at the International Toy Fair.

That is a lot of responsibility being placed upon the fluffy poodle-shoulders of our protagonist. But, as 100% Wolf teaches us in the midst of a lot of giggly fun and colourful adventure, when given the opportunity to defy expectations and choose your own path in life, anything is possible.

EXORCISM AT 60,000 FEET

Stars: Robert Miano, Bai Ling, Bill Moseley, Lance Henriksen, Kevin J. O’Connor, Robert Rhine, Kyle Jones, Silvia Spross, Kelli Maroney, Matthew Moy and Adrienne Barbeau.
Writers: Robert Rhine and Daniel Benton.
Director: Chad Ferrin.

Rating: ★ ★

The premise of Exorcism at 60,000 Feet reads like the opening to an inappropriate gag your drunk uncle barks out at Thanksgiving dinner. “Did you hear the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the dwarf on a flight to VietNam…,” it begins and, before any of your relatives can wrestle the sad, sick family jester to the ground, he screams and spits his way through a waffling, weird, wildly offensive mess of a joke.

In genre-speak, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet is that most dangerous meld of film types - the horror-comedy, which implies a measured balance of chills and giggles. Director Chad Ferrin, who impressed a few years back with the bloody urban thriller Parasites, doesn’t nail either horror or comedy with any degree of inspiration or skill. With co-writers Robert Rhine and Daniel Benton having to share some of the blame, Ferrin pitches for Airplane-meets-The Exorcist, but crash lands well short of the destination.

Like a lot of good comedies, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet opens on the mass murder of a family. Robert Miano plays hardened padre Father Romero, who arrives too late to save the deceased but just in time to identify the evil entity as ‘Garvin’, the resurrected spirit of his army buddy from ‘Nam. For some reason, he needs to return Garvin to VietNam, booking passage on the ‘hilariously’ titled Viet Kong Airways, the offensive moniker only made worse by its anachronism - will the target audience of first-time pot-smokers even know what is being referenced?

On board, the spirit of Garvin (played in terrible make-up by B-movie icon, Bill Mosely) is possessing the passengers, each one a grossly painted caricature of such wannabe comic stereotypes as the roided-up bodybuilder (Luca Pennazzato); the middle Eastern ‘potential terrorist’ (Gino Salvano); the peace-seeking Buddhist (Craig Ng); the anytime/anywhere sexpot (Stefanie Peti); the other anytime/anywhere sexpot (Jin N. Tonic, who shows some comedy chops); and, the Soprano-esque goombah (Johnny Williams). Most unforgivably tasteless is the ‘Mommy with toddler’ passengers, featuring Kelli Maroney (cult favourite from 1984’s Night of the Comet) as the mature-age woman who breastfeeds her obnoxious son Dukie, played by little person actor, Sammy the Dwarf.

Romero teams with orthodox rabbi Larry Feldman (co-scripter Rhine) and the flight crew, Amanda (Bai Ling, playing to the back row) and Thang (an occasionally funny Matthew Moy), to battle the demon, which manifests as a cheap-as-chips ‘green mist’. Garvin’s victims suffer ugly fates to remind the audience this is a ‘horror film’ - clean-cut Brad (Kyle Jones) meets a grisly end while ‘mile high’ clubbing; phone-obsessed millennial Ms Tang (Jolie Chi) must deal with an unwanted demon-pregnancy; and so on. Ferrin earns points for securing the likes of Lance Henriksen (as Captain Houdee...geddit?) and Adrienne Barbeau (pictured, above) for day-shoots, but their involvement is wasted on parts that prove just what good sports they are willing to be to pay some bills. 

The influence of the Zucker-Abrahams 1980 classic is everywhere, most notably in composer Richard Band’s shameless rip-off of Elmer Bernstein’s classic score, but there’s none of the comic pacing or inspired performances that made Airplane so memorable (or The Naked Gun series, which Ferrin also apes). Instead, the humour is of the ‘punch down’ variety - easy, ugly potshots based on race, gender or religion - placing Exorcism at 60,000 Feet dangerously close to the shock comedy stylings of a film like Uwe Boll’s Postal (2007).

That said, praise is certainly due cinematographer Christian Janss, who skilfully mimics the frantic camera moves George Miller employed in his Twilight Zone The Movie episode, ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’, and the effects team working under Joe Castro and Maricela Lazcano, who give exteriors shots of the plane careening through an otherworldly night sky legitimate authenticity. 

CRACKED UP

Featuring: Darrell Hammond.
Director: Michelle Esrick

DARRELL HAMMOND, director MICHELLE ESRICK and BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, author of the book 'The Body Keeps the Score' will be present for a live ZOOM Webinar on Monday May 4th at 4.00pm PST/7.00pm EDT, hosted by ACES CONNECTION founder Jane Stevens.
For further details and free registration, CLICK HERE. 

Available on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

For 14 years, Saturday Night Live star Darrell Hammond was the chameleon of late night comedy, the toast of political satire. His array of on-air impersonations, 118 in all by his own reckoning, mimicking the likes of Bill Clinton, Sean Connery and Al Gore, made him Lorne Michael’s go-to guy for big laughs and one of the series’ most celebrated cast members. 

As with many of the great comedic talents, Hammond’s talent was borne of hardship, as the comic himself chronicled in his 2011 memoir, ‘God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked’. Director Michelle Esrick takes Hammond’s heartbreakingly open account of life as a survivor of child abuse and crafts a profile of an artist that goes far beyond what is expected of the ‘What makes comics tick?’ genre. Cracked Up is an artful, insightful, deeply thoughtful documentary that reveals not just how Hammond came to terms with his past but how it has helped him forge a new, meaningful direction that serves to heal fellow mental injury sufferers.

Framed by the ongoing evolution of his own creative process (the comic is rehearsing a one-man show with director Chris Ashley), Esrick’s camera follows Hammond as he returns to his childhood home in Wisteria Lane, Florida. In small increments, we learn of the extent to which the pre-teen Hammond was assaulted by his mother in a home he shared with a PTSD-suffering father. His first-person recollections of the abuse and his piecemeal memories of the attacks prove gruelling for both Hammond (who occasionally breaks down) and the audience, who should take heed that some of the details are particularly horrendous.

Cracked Up is a work that delicately balances the most profound aspects of Hammond’s suffering with the journey he underwent to recover from it. At the height of his fame on SNL, he was in the grip of self-medicating with dangerous levels of alcohol; his pain was so internalised, he would function as a performer even while cutting his own flesh, as many as 49 times. His suffering became so pronounced, friends such as SNL producers Lorne Michaels and Steve Higgins stepped in, leading to Hammond’s year-long stint in a mental health facility.

Esrick’s most compelling directorial ploy, aside from the forthright honesty she elicits from Hammond, is the plotting she employs based on the comic’s own colour-based impersonation methods (Porky Pig is yellow; Popeye is blue). Of the hundreds of voices in his head, none are represented by the colour red; the life-changing meaning behind this development and the healing moment it allows Hammond spins the film from the tragic trajectory of childhood trauma into the first steps of healing and acceptance.

For a man renowned for capturing the essence of other men, Darrell Hammond bares his scarred but healing soul like few ever have for the camera. He rarely falls back on his remarkable talent to paint over his pain and when he does, it is such a sadly bittersweet experience that it gives a fresh depth to the relationship he has with his gift. Cracked Up sheds Hammond of the barrier of celebrity he built up and hid behind for all of his adult life. 

Addressing a roomful of fellow mental health sufferers and trauma survivors, he is adored not for doing his ‘Bill Clinton’ but for revealing his ‘Darrell Hammond’. As the final frames of Michelle Esrick’s superb film reinforce, children are sharing the comic’s suffering in any house on any street right now. With Cracked Up, Hammond is only doing what he hoped someone might have done when he was a child - speaking up. 

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE FIFTH KIND

Featuring: Steven M. Greer
Narrated by Jeremy Piven.
Writer/director: Michael Mazzola

AVAILABLE ON:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

So you’re deep into today’s iso-skimming session on your preferred streaming platform and you happen upon Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, the latest speculative-doco from UFO theoretician Steven Greer. You’ll have a look because...y’know, UFO stuff is pretty cool, and much of what makes ‘UFO stuff’ cool is certainly in the mix. Greer’s offsider, filmmaker Micahel Mazzola, has collated all manner of unexplainable points of light glimpsed by shaky-cam; woodlands lit by physics-defying ‘golden orbs’; and, incredulous accounts of bewildered pilots, trying to fathom the black-&-white footage from their cockpit cams.

But Greer, the movement’s opinion-dividing frontman (is he this generation’s Carl Sagan or a new-age P.T. Barnum?), claims to be at such an advanced communicative juncture with beings from beyond that his third feature documentary assumes that they not only walk among us but, if we invite them nicely, they’ll join us around a campfire. This head-first plunge into the maybe-world of extraterrestrial co-existence occasionally hurtles mesmerically into next-level conspiracy theorising, but there is undeniably plenty to mutter “Damn, I knew it!” about for those who want to believe.

The ‘Fifth Kind’ of close encounter (or ‘CE5’) involves the most spiritually enlightened amongst us reaching out with pure thoughts and kindly hearts to the occupants of interplanetary/transdimensional craft and beckoning them to our realm. A combination of Greer’s skill with the anecdote, a bevy of highly-credentialed talking heads and footage of CE5 disciples across the world staring longingly skywards build to a crescendo (and website/app plug) that feels legitimate. Single frames of ‘light beings’ walking amongst remote gatherings of believers and conjecture that these entities travel through portals to appear in our skies instantaneously is fascinating, but non-believers are likely to dig in over such claims.

It is on this point that Greer spins some of the uglier theorising inherent to his point of view. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind posits that Joe Public has been sold a deceptive narrative by a covert government/mainstream news media/entertainment industry cooperative for the last 60 years. Mazzola uses clips from Mars Attacks, Predator, Men in Black and the Twilight Zone episode ‘To Serve Man’, to drill home the notion that the images fed to us are meant inspire fear in alien contact. Blame is placed at society’s feet for its blind subjugation to the 'lies' spun to us; an accusatory stance that states, ‘If you believe the establishment, you are part of the problem’. The hard-sell meanness of such an approach will turn the inquisitive away far quicker than harmless pseudo-science and new-agey spiritualism.

Whether he is a channeller of profound consciousness or a pitchman par excellence (most likely, a bit of both), Greer knows how to produce a speculative documentary that takes hold of the viewer and refuses to let go (for a whopping two hours, no less). The craft he and Mazzola employ to keep hearts and minds engaged even while eyeballs are heading backwards is often remarkable. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind won’t make you believe any more than you do, nor will it spin too many sceptics 180°, but it will help us understand the complexity of a different set of beliefs. 

THE WILLOUGHBYS

Featuring the voices of: Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews, Martin Short, Jane Ktakowski, Seán Cullen, Alessia Cara and Ricky Gervais.
Writers: Chris Pearn and Mark Stanleigh; based on the book by Lois Lowry.
Director: Chris Pearn.

Available on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★

The plot to The Willoughbys sounds like a Netflix kind of pitch; four children, including two creepy twins, plan patricide and matricide to rid themselves of selfish, abusive parents and willingly render themselves orphans. But instead of the streaming platform’s umpteenth must-watch true-crime mini-series, director Chris Pearn delivers the network’s second animated family adventure, an adaptation of Lois Lowry’s darkly hued but sweet natured children’s book.

Having helmed the flavourful, frantic, if hollow sequel, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, Pearn offers a similarly colourful if slightly too contrived retelling of Lowry’s bestseller. The story’s protagonist is put-upon pre-teen Tim (Will Forte), the eldest of the four Willoughby children and the least likely to show any sign of inheriting the family’s distinctive feature, a deep red moustache. His sister Jane (Moana songstress Alessia Cara) is a dreamer, but one who curtails her longings to help care for the twins, both called Barnaby (Seán Cullen). The parents (Martin Short, Jane Krakowski) are despicable people, self-obsessed and petulant, who cast Tim to the basement coalpit each night and refuse to feed the children for days on end.

Inherently dark material (one winces at what a Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro adaptation might have looked like), but Pearn’s animation style is richly textured and wildly imaginative, the visuals softening the jagged edges. Proceedings are lightened up further thanks to the droll narration of The Cat (Ricky Gervais); the introduction of the boisterous Nanny (a wonderful Maya Rudolph); and, shifting the location at crucial points to a candy factory run by the larger-than-life Commander Melanoff (Terry Crews).

Early on, Jane finds new purpose in her life and Pearn amps up the slapstick when a mischievous baby enters The Willoughby’s home (exhibiting agility not unlike Jack Jack Parr), but the character soon fades away. It is one of several spasms of undeveloped material that feel like the adaptation was unable to overcome leftover chapter-beats from its source material. One sequence, in which the four children ‘Home Alone’ prospective buyers, feels like an altogether different short film entirely. A third act that sends the kids to Sweezerlund spins the film into pure fantasy and appears to be setting up a predictably feel-good conclusion, but credit to the production for staying true to the narrative’s darker themes, up until the final frames.

The Willoughbys is too hit-miss to achieve the instant classic status bestowed upon Netflix’s debut cartoon feature, the Oscar-nominated Klaus (2019). But if the storytelling stumbles, Pearn and his animators certainly deliver colour and movement in a manner that is sure to enthrall the under 10s.

PLANET OF THE HUMANS

Featuring: Jeff Gibbs, Richard Heinberg, Richard York, Nina Jablonski, Ozzie Zehner, Adriann McCoy, Philip Moeller, Steven Running, Steven Churchill, Sheldon Solomon, Josh Schlossberg, Catherine Andrews, Adam Liter, Pat Egan, Van Jones, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva.
Director/writer: Jeff Gibbs

Available free for 30 days on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

“How long do you think we humans have?,” asks frontman Jeff Gibbs in the opening frames of his Green Industry takedown doc, Planet of the Humans. The answer? If Earth’s recovery is left in the hands of those that spruik loudest for industrial reform, it’s a lot less than you think. Steeped in executive producer Michael Moore’s steely brand of deep-dive investigative conjecture and finger-pointing , the pair paint a bleak picture of a near future that mankind’s very existence is irrevocably condemning.

The title has the ring of a 50s B-movie, the kind about a lost spacecraft that finds itself on a distant planet populated with some horrid lifeform. That ‘horrid lifeform’ is us; as Agent Smith said, “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.” Planet of the Humans makes the double-barrelled point that population growth will be the death of us all (“Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide,” Gibbs observes in his narration) and that we may have been fatally misled regarding those in whom we have put the trust to right our highway to Hell.

Strong words decrying the human race’s abuse of its status as the single dominant species on the planet bleed into a series of revelations about the insidious takeover of the green movement by capitalist interests. Gibbs offers up a bullet-point history of our understanding of climate change and impact of pollutants; in 1958, only five years after the postwar wave of industrialization swept across America, director Frank Capra made a short film warning of the long-term cost. From that point on, environmental activism has fought Big Industry, while all the time Big Industry increased its influence over lawmakers and commercial hold on the sector.

Gibbs narrows his focus in the film’s homestretch, ripping into the likes of once-were-eco-warriors Al Gore, Bill McKibben (pictured, above; left, with Gibbs), Richard Branson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for their interests in green-tinged business fronts for billionaire investors and Wall Street snakes. Also exposed as profit-driven hypocrisy is the ‘biomass/biofuel’ sector, a developing faux-green industry that guts forests and burns carcinogenic garbage utilising practices that unbelievably fall within the government guidelines for ‘sustainable energy’.       

In his feature directorial debut, Gibbs (who produced Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Fahrenheit 11/9 for Moore) proves less the personality than his regular collaborator. However, understanding his lifelong commitment to environmental causes gives Gibbs’ occasionally onscreen/mostly offscreen role an intensity that serves his advocacy aims well, even if his delivery is a bit dry. That said, he bites hard when he has a point to make; his final frames, which tragically portray our impact upon those with whom we share this world, are gut-wrenching.

Unavoidably, Planet of the Humans is a downbeat journey, often in spite of factual filmmaking that is energised and driven in its storytelling. Its message is, more or less, “Hey, we trusted the same people you did, and they’ve shafted us.” Gibbs offers no ‘If you want to help...’ call-to-action at the film’s end; instead, he imparts crushed resignation, implying we had our shot and we blew it. We are further down the path towards our own destruction than any of us knew, except for those steering us there.

Happy Earth Day, everyone…

THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Featuring: Ellen Page, Ingrid Waldron, Michelle Paul, Jolene Marr, Dorene Bernard, Michelle Francis-Denny, Carol Howe, Rebecca Moore, Paula Isaac, Marian Nichols and Louise Delisle.
Directors: Ellen Page and Ian Daniel.

Available on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Ellen Page returns to her Nova Scotian roots to document the ongoing exploitation of traditional indigenous lands in There’s Something in the Water. With her ‘Gaycation’ collaborator Ian Daniel sharing camera duties, the Oscar-nominated actress puts her celebrity to good use highlighting the scourge of environmental racism, as it impacts the First Nations people of Canada.

Taking as her starting point the bestselling book by Dr Ingrid Waldron, Page goes deep into her homeland’s heartland to reveal both the human and ecological scarring caused by close to 60 years of government neglect and callous corporate profiteering. Establishing her familial ties to the eastern Canadian maritime province and recalling an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show where she passionately addressed the ongoing abuse of indigenous entitlement, Page pinpoints three economically-challenged regions that have long been sacred to the traditional owners but have become shameful monuments of capital-C capitalism.

The first stop is the southern township of Shelburne, historically significant for the role it played in the mid-19th century America as a drop-off point for the Underground Railway; at one point in the country’s history, it had the highest population of African-Americans in Canada. However, in the 1940s, a waste dump was established on the town’s outskirts and remained open until 2016, the resulting stench and seepage of toxins into the water supply now thought responsible for generations of cancer fatalities. 

Page and Daniel then travel to the far north, to the Boat Harbour region and traditional lands of the Pictou people. In the film’s most personal account, Michelle Francis-Denny tells the story of her grandfather, an elder Chief in the early 1960s, who was conned into signing over rights to the land by local government officials working in tandem with developers of a proposed paper mill. The waterways, known to generations of Pictou as the spirit-enriching Ossay, were ruined within days. Page gives a face to ‘big business villainy’ in archival footage of one John Bates, the aged white businessman whose indifference to the native population’s suffering is chilling (“So what? They weren’t living in the water.”)

Finally, There’s Something in the Water highlights the ‘Grassroots Grandmothers’, a woman’s collective from Stewiacke who take on the Alton Gas Corporation over the plans to dump mined salts into a sacred river in defiance of M’ikmaq treaty conditions. Their battle with local and federal officials (including a sidewalk face-off with PM Justin Trudeau), stemming from their spiritual bonds with the landscape of their ancestry, closes out the ‘past, present and future’ structure of Page’s matter-of-fact account, an approach that highlights the systemic prejudices and ingrained corruption of Canada’s democracy.

It is not the most elegant film; handheld camera work from a car’s passenger seat takes up an inordinate amount of the 73 minute running time. But perhaps a film that captures waves of sewerage vapour gliding towards a helpless population, or recounts the alcoholism and suicides that are the by-product of a community’s collapse need not purify its approach for aesthetic gain. There’s Something in the Water tells an ugly story about the horrendous exploitation of a proud people and their beautiful land, so urgency and honesty over artistry seems entirely appropriate.

ANTRUM: THE DEADLIEST FILM EVER MADE

Stars: Nicole Tompkins, Rowan Smyth, Dan Istrate, Circus-Szalewski, Shu Sakimoto, Kristel Elling and Pierluca Arancio.
Narrated by Lucy Rayner.
Writer: David Amito.
Directors: David Amito, Michael Laicini.

Available in Australia on all digital platforms including Foxtel Store, iTunes, Google Play and FetchTV.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The 1977 horror film Antrum began to travel the festival circuit in the early 80s. Its legend grew after the strange deaths of several festival programmers, each of whom had only just watched the film. In 1988, a screening in Budapest ended in tragedy, when a cinema appeared to spontaneously combust, killing 56 patrons. In 1993, a San Francisco theatre owner dared moviegoers to defy the cursed movie, only to have a panicked audience flee the screening, trampling a pregnant woman to death. The lone print of Antrum, the deadliest movie ever made, was thought to be destroyed…

In Antrum: The Deadliest Movie Ever Made, Canadian filmmakers David Amito and Michael Laicini challenge doubters of the curse to endure the original film. They begin their potentially lethal resurrection of the work with academic, psychoanalytic and festival director types, who put their own spin on the legend of Antrum; then, a ‘Legal Notice’ fills the screen, exempting all who brought the film to you of any claims should you, indeed, die. The film’s header frames blur by, numbers and scratched images merging…

Antrum is the story of a teenage girl, Oralee (Nicole Tompkins), and her younger brother, Nathan (Rowan Smyth), and the gateway to Hell they uncover while trying to recover the soul of their dead dog, Maxine. The pair head to a clearing in the woods, Nathan having been convinced by Oralee that it is the exact point on Earth where Lucifer landed when God cast him out of Heaven. As they begin to dig, chapter headings herald the uncovering of each new underworld layer, until soon the kids’ fading sense of reality and the exponentially increasing grip of insanity are melding.

I hope it is obvious by now that the legend of ‘The Deadliest Movie Ever Made’ is an intricately staged cinematic con-job; there was no Antrum, the doco is a mocko, and any convoluted backstory about dead Hungarian cinemagoers is pure fiction. But Amito and Laicini ensure it all unfolds in an earnestly told and legitimately chilling manner, both their faux-70s filmmaking technique and pretend ‘experts’ convincing. Though shot entirely in 2018, ‘Antrum’ (Latin for ‘cave’) is an authentically arty, folk-horror facsimile that could have emerged from the distant decade.

As the horror becomes tangible for Oralee and Nathan, so must it have for Tompkins and Smyth; the young actors are, quite literally, put through Hell by their directors. In one shocking scene, Smyth is dragged from a cage and placed in the cast-iron belly of a goat-demon oven. Both are called upon to do hard physical work in the course of their performances, while Tompkins especially conveys the emotional and mental cost of her fight with demonic forces.

There is just enough research afforded the meaning of sigils, pentagrams, biblical references and Latin text to make the ‘cursed film’ construct believable. The film’s bookends - the ‘documentary’ parts - examine key frames, where semi-subliminal imagery of the kind that welcomes demons into our world is revealed. The film is rich with subtext exploring how a young child deals with death, grief and spirituality; ambiguous but compelling parallels are drawn, for example, between Nathan’s connection to Maxine after her passing and his fear and fascination with Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards Hell’s gates.

Most fascinating is the challenge that Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made sets for you, the viewer who wants to know how effective a film that causes madness and death in those that watch it can be. You will register the scratched frames; you may glimpse split-second scenes of torture; you’ll likely see shadows that seem alive, or discordant sounds that unbalance you. Rest assured, it’s all a brilliant fiction; if it wasn’t, this review, deliberately and dangerously leading you astray, would be the work of the Devil...    

EATING ANIMALS

Narrated by Natalie Portman.
Writer/director: Christopher Dillon Quinn; based upon the 2009 book by Jonathan Safran Foer.

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Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

(Producers Natalie Portman & Jonathan Safran Foer. Photo credit: Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The very title itself barely encapsulates the scale of the issue that director Christopher Dillon Quinn and producer/narrator Natalie Portman examine in their collaborative exposé, Eating Animals. A frankly shattering uncovering of the corrosive impact that 50 years of industrial food production has had upon traditional U.S. values, this sad, often shocking, ultimately hopeful work provides further evidence of corporate America’s heartless profiteering in defiance of basic human decency.

Based the 2009 bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals ostensibly looks at the procedures used to mass produce and subsequently cull pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys and cows. The footage, much of which was obtained through hidden cameras by animal activists infiltrating killing facilities, has already been seen extensively on news broadcasts and YouTube. This doesn’t lessen the horror, but it raises the question as to what else Quinn’s production has to offer the discussion.

The director (whose first feature, God Grew Tired of Us, earned Audience and Grand Jury honours at Sundance in 2006) wisely opens up his investigation to include how the industrialisation of farming practices has gutted the American spirit. His cameras spend personal time with farmers who employ traditional methods to raise stock, a practice that has taken the financial brunt of over-development and exploitation in rural communities by multi-national ‘Big Ag’ companies. The crumbling lives that these ‘family farmers’ endure, as well as the fates of two whistle blowers who reveal the mercenary business models employed by corporations such as Perdue and Tyson, make for truly tragic narratives.

Arguably, the environmental impact of the modern factory farm (or CAFO, as in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) may be the most potent argument against their ongoing implementation. Giant pink ‘waste lagoons’ – man-made bodies of putrid water that hold urine and faecal matter from mass swine enclosures – seep into and make toxic the estuaries of middle America. The accompanying odour causes sickness amongst the surrounding townships. Antibiotics, pumped into livestock to offset the diseases and malformations caused by their genetic tampering, infects the food chain all the way to your local McDonalds.

The immorality of ‘Big Ag’ and its manipulation of the democratic process to ensure it has a stranglehold over legislation and lawmakers that would impact its cost-effective operations are revealed (facts that aren’t necessarily surprising to anyone living under the current regime). Also, Quinn deftly places the curse of food sector capitalism in an historical context, with the early ‘70s and the faster, cheaper consumer-driven ethos that fuelled the boom years of the modern fast-food empires seen as Ground Zero for our current malaise.

Natalie Portman’s lyrical narration differs from the usual strategy by which celebrities lend their names to cause films. While her presence ought to help the film’s profile, it is her reading of passages from the source material in accompaniment with wrenching imagery, both visceral and psychological that is most affecting. Her contribution, the understated yet profoundly disturbing aesthetic that Quinn uses to tell this alternate-American story, and the hope that he provides that generations moving forward will adopt better practices, places Eating Animals in the very top tier of investigative advocacy documentaries.