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. 

2020 OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL

Reviewed at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, Cremorne, Sydney on March 5, 2020.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Those special humans that feel an attachment to the world’s great bodies of water are unshakeable in their bond. Sportsman, adventurers, explorers, whether upon or below the oceans, lakes and rivers of our planet, are so steadfast in their connection to ‘The Big Blue’, it takes a rare filmmaking talent to convincingly represent their passion on screen.

The Ocean Film Festival understands both its audience and its contributing filmmakers like few events of its kind. Once again guided by Festival Director Jemima Robinson, the 2020 incarnation exudes a more pure sense of celebratory ‘oneness’ than perhaps any other edition in the festival’s history. At the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace on Sydney’s north shore last night, the evening was enhanced by pre- and mid-show live musical accompaniment, an understated sponsor presence and warmly professional hosting skills that further united the sell-out crowd.

The two-tiered program featured seven films, beginning with the playful, funny A CAMEL FINDS WATER (Dir: Ian Durkin; 8 mins; USA), an account of how a discarded, landlocked hull was resurrected to its former glory, now serving as a run-about for two British Columbian surfers, Trevor Gordon and Tosh Clements. Evoking the same sense of joy that one derives from stories of damaged animals finding  new owners, A Camel Finds Water (pictured, above) is a short, sweet story celebrating a destiny fulfilled.

The true tragedy of how global warming has impacted polar bears is starkly conveyed in BARE EXISTENCE (Dir: Max Lowe; 19 mins; USA). Detailing how bears now need to spend long periods on shore instead of hunting seals in the open sea, Max Lowe’s bleak, beautiful film defines the connection between a township, its people and the plight of the increasingly desperate wild animals they live with. In one tragic turn-of-events, his cameras capture an act of infanticide brought on by starvation. Presented in conjunction with the conservation group Polar Bears International, it is a sobering work.

Nature’s wonder at its most beautiful and brutal is also central to the mini-feature DEEP SEA CORALS OF POLYNESIA (Dirs: Ghislain and Emmanuelle Bardout; 36 mins; France). Having achieved fame for their dives under the North Pole ice flows, Ghislain and Emmanuelle Bardout seek warmer climes in French Polynesia, where they join a team of biologists deep-diving to 170 metres to discover previously unknown forms of coral. The azure beauty of the region and emotional sense of discovery is shattered in one extraordinary moment when, in a frenzied defence of its territory, a black-tip reef shark turns on one diver; the footage is terrifying.

The second half of the evening began with SCOTT PORTELLI: SWIMMING WITH GENTLE GIANTS (Dir: Stefan Andrews; 10 mins; Australia), a profile of the acclaimed undersea wildlife photography as he interacts with humpback whales. Not for the first time this evening, like-minded audience members related audibly with the film, emitting sounds of awe at footage of mothers and their calves. Similar warmth was clearly felt for a very brief short that profiled Grace and Phil Hampton, an octogenarian couple who, in July 2017, entered the Guinness Book of Records as ‘The Oldest Married Couple to Scuba Dive.’

The 2020 Ocean Film Festival wraps up on two works of staggering visual beauty. Utilising the structure of a traditional surfing ‘road movie’, A CORNER OF THE EARTH (Dir: Spencer Frost; 26 mins; Australia) accompanies pro-surfer Fraser Dovell and his boisterous bros on a sort of ‘Endless Winter’ odyssey to the black surf of the brutally picturesque Arctic (accompanied by the night’s best soundtrack); then, a forty year-old canoe journey into Alaska’s majestic Inside Passage comes full circle, as a family’s legacy is fulfilled in THE PASSAGE (Dir: Nate Dappen; 25 mins; USA).

The spiritual connection that audiences shares with filmmakers, their protagonists and the environments on-screen make these sessions some of the most deeply rewarding on the festival calendar. That affinity for and understanding of what programming an environmentally-themed film event means to their patrons is one of the great strengths of the Ocean Film Festival.

The 2020 OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL (AUSTRALIA) is currently screening at selected venues across Australia. For all ticket and venue information, visit the event's official website.

TOURISM

Stars: Nina Endô and Sumire
Writer/Director: Daisuke Miyazaki

Reviewed at HYPERLINKS: A Static Vision Film Festival, in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, February 23^rd, 2020.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Two adorably clueless Japanese millennials stumble across adventure, anxiety and a (slightly) more expanded world vision in Daisuke Miyazaki’s Tourism. Starring the giggly girly duo of Sumire and Nina Endô as the bffs who live in the moment so as to record the moment, this dreamlike, free-form odyssey speaks to the teen and twenty-something audience in a film language that may prove too distractingly self-obsessed and directionless for some.  Which would be a shame, because it’s a sweet, likable, spirited insight into embracing friendship and defying alienation in the mobile-device age.

When a contest win provides Nina with two airline tickets to anywhere in the world, she is so ignorant of the world beyond her style-centric young life that she has no notion of where to go. Her friend Su (the actresses use their real names) spins her iPad to re-centre Google Earth and, after a few false starts (Yemen, Honduras), they settle on Singapore as their destination. The journey is all selfies, shopping malls and food courts (including a cool impromptu public dance sequence); Nina and Su are disappointed at the usual tourist sites (at the iconic Merlion Park water statue, they observe, “I thought it would be bigger”) and soon gravitate to the familiar sounds of commerce and capitalism.

In a moment of cataclysmic tumult for any young person, Nina looses her phone and becomes separated from Su. Lost, alone and unable to convey her desperation, Nina unwittingly undertakes her first true immersion in a lifestyle and culture not entirely her own. Led further astray by a well-intentioned good Samaritan, she wanders through diaspora communities; Indian and Muslim enclaves become her Singaporean experience. Found alone and sad, she is befriended by a young man who welcomes her into his home, where his extended family feed and dote on her.

Writer/director Miyazaki paints a generously upbeat picture of Singapore, having one character comparing it to Disneyland. One doubts a pretty, young, lost woman stumbling through the backstreets of any big city would have had quite the relentlessly positive experience that Nina enjoys, but Tourism (there’s irony in that title, to be sure) is a film that is imbued with a goodwill and blind sense of unironic hopefulness that is infectious.

Fuelling the pic’s positivity is undoubtedly the fact that it is a narrative feature drawn from an art installation project depicting modern life in the city, partly funded by Singaporean officialdom; the other component is a montage feature called Specters, which uses clips from the director’s previous works to portray modern civilised living. What does surprise is that Tourism so expertly melds splashes of social realism with a heartfelt sense of character, regardless of (perhaps even, despite) its origins.

Given that film employs mobile-phone framing (vertical and horizontal), ‘selfie-stick’ sequences and 4^th-wall shattering, direct-to-camera storytelling – all the love-or-loathe signposts of new-age film storytelling – the result is an engagingly old-fashioned story extolling the virtues of social engagement and experiential living.

GUNS AKIMBO

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Ned Dennehy, Grant Bowler, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Milo Cawthorne and Rhys Darby.
Writer/Director: Jason Lei Howden

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Two of young Hollywood’s most compelling career trajectories smash into each other with bloody, gleeful giddiness in Jason Lei Howden’s sophomore feature, Guns Akimbo. A splattery, smartly satirical Truman Show/Running Man mash-up for the content-obsessed millennial masses, this head-spinning horror show pits Daniel Radcliffe against Samara Weaving, with the worldwide web watching their increasingly OTT bloodbath unfold.

In the wake of such all-or-nothing lead roles in Horns, Swiss Army Man, Imperium and Jungle, Howden’s follow-up to his 2015 cult hit Deathgasm represents another fearlessly idiosyncratic choice for Daniel Radcliffe (pictured, top). As video-game coder and anti-troll troll Miles, the ‘forever Harry Potter’ excels as the couch-bound nobody whose anonymous postings unwittingly hurtle him into an ultra-violent online gaming landscape known as ‘SKIZM’. Abducted by channel head/tattooed-skull heavy Riktor (a brilliant Ned Dennehy), Miles awakens to an unforeseen development – his hands have been surgically attached, with little finesse, to two high-powered handguns.

His mission is simple – for the entertainment of the millions who watch SKIZM, Miles has 24 hours to kill holdover champion Nix (Weaving) or die trying. Subplots develop (to varying degrees of worthiness), but the real thrill in Guns Akimbo mirrors the experience of the film’s online spectators – watching the carnage mount as Miles, Nix and Riktor propel themselves towards an inevitable confrontation.

Matching Radcliffe’s physical action/comedy prowess beat-for-beat, Samara Weaving (pictured, above) further solidifies her burgeoning reputation as Hollywood’s most exciting Australian actress (sorry Margot, but it’s true). Coming off Mayhem, The Babysitter and Ready or Not (and with a starring role in the upcoming summer comedy, Bill & Ted Face the Music), Weaving is carving a unique niche for herself with bold, bloody, funny character choices in offbeat vehicles as original as Radcliffe’s oeuvre. In hindsight, their paring seemed inevitable and their chemistry proves a treat.

With exteriors shot in Auckland and studio work lensed in Berlin, Jason Lei Howden has overseen a truly international production yet maintains a hyper-kinetic indie sensibility that suits the madness perfectly. He leaves no directorial technique on the table, revving up his action and actors to new heights, just when it seems unlikely anything is left to mine. The gunplay is constant and unashamedly gratuitous; a workplace firefight is played for laughs, although in this time of mass shooting hysteria it may draw ire from some sectors.

The entire feature is boisterous, surface-level fun, but there is some precise skewering of the web-society culture that breeds a vulgar aberration like SKIZM and the many different types that populate it (most of which, ironically, would be the key demographic for this film). Smartly cast well into the support parts (amongst them, the director’s Deathgasm star Milo Cawthorne and the increasingly common bit part from Rhys Darby) and highlighting cinematic stunt work and effects imagery at its premium, Guns Akimbo ought to turn its limited theatrical exposure into long-term cult status.

FANGORIA x MONSTER FEST and MADMAN FILMS will present Guns Akimbo at nationwide Special Event Screenings on Friday February 28^th. The film will go into national release on March 5^th. For venue and ticket information, click here.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

Stars: James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Adam Pally, Tika Sumpter, Neal McDonough, Lee Majdoub and the voice of Ben Schwartz.
Writers: Patrick Casey and Josh Miller.
Director: Jeff Fowler.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

SEGA are very late to the party, but the videogame behemoth’s first deep dive into the Hollywood blockbuster pool* has been worth the wait. After a bumpy detour down the rocky road of social media, Sonic the Hedgehog hits the ground running in Paramount’s crowdpleasing, funny, spirited comedy/adventure romp.

Since its debut for the SEGA Genesis system in 1991, the little blue hedgehog with a cracking turn of speed has been a console megastar and inevitable talk of a film adaptation has been around almost as long. In 1994, it was set to film at MGM, then Dreamworks circled a treatment before Hollywood put it in the ‘too hard’ basket (the shadow of rival Nintendo’s mega-bomb Super Mario Bros darkened the prospects of many vidgame adaptations at the time). Sony Pictures Animation acquired the moribund rights in 2014 but stuttered, allowing Paramount to snap it up (the ‘mountain studio’ come to party, substituting the game’s gold rings for their own ‘flying stars’ in the opening logo).

SEGA execs have treated the brand extension of their flagship property with kid gloves, and some may say that the eventual emergence of Sonic as a ‘Roger Rabbit’-type funny-guy in a safe, middle America-set live-action/animated hybrid lacks daring ambition. But with the motor-mouth funny-guy Ben Schwartz voicing the confident critter and a bare-bones but effective narrative that allows for comedy and action beats to breath, debutant feature director Jeff Fowler (working under the wing of his hitmaking production partner, Deadpool director Tim Miller) exhibits storytelling skill and commercial instincts.

The fantasy landscape of the videogame is the setting for the film’s prologue, and it looks beautiful. Under threat because of his special power, toddler Sonic is plunged through time and space to Green Hills, Montana, where he grows into a remarkably well-adjusted albeit very lonely teenage blue hedgehog. In a momentary fit of pique, his energy surge blacks out the town and is noticed by military types, who descend upon the burg. Escaping their prying technology, Sonic is thrust into the life of Sheriff Tom Wachowski (a typically game James Marsden, who worked a similar schtick in the 2011 Easter Bunny dud, Hop) and they hit the road to San Francisco to recover Sonic’s missing pouch of gold rings.

Hot on their heels is the villainous Dr Robotnik, played with the unique comic energy of another megastar from the 1990s, one Jim Carrey. In his first fully frantic comedic turn since the underwhelming Dumb and Dumber To in 2014, Carrey certainly looks more mature but proves no less hilariously elastic in the bad guy role. He is clearly having a lot of fun (often at the expense of his unlucky offsider Agent Stone, played with good grace by Lee Majdoub) and his masterful ability to deliver all-or-nothing physical hilarity and throwaway lines is the pic’s biggest asset.

The main question hanging over the delayed release of Sonic the Hedgehog is, was the delay worth it? That is, was it worth sending the film back to the effects team to counter the bleating of the fanboys who lost their collective cool when the Sonic trailer first appeared in April 2019? Well, it was worth it, as the character looks great, although had the film just pushed through the web white noise it probably would have stood on its own merits.

*To date, the only US feature-length live action adaptations of SEGA properties have been Uwe Boll’s House of The Dead (2003) and its sequel (2005), directed by Michael Hurst. In 2007, Takashi Miike directed the Japanese feature Like a Dragon/Ryū ga Gotoku Gekijōban, based upon the Playstation 2 game, Yakuza.

VHYES

Stars: Mason McNulty, Rahm Braslaw, Kerri Kenney, Charlyne Yi, Courtney Pauroso, Thomas Lennon, Mark Proksch, John Gemberling, Cameron Simmons, Tim Robbins, Natalie Mering, Nunzio Randazzo, Jake Head and Christian Drerup.
Writers: Nunzio Randazzo, Jack Henry Robbins.
Director: Jack Henry Robbins.

Available from July 9-19 via Perth Revelation Film Festival's online screening event, COUCHED.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A skit-filled ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’-like takedown of kitsch 1980s media culture develops into a far more prescient and surprisingly moving satire in Jack Henry Robbin’s VHYes. Capturing that moment mid-decade when VCR/camcorder technology fused, allowing American society to change the course of how visual media was created, captured and consumed, this wacky but wise boys-own adventure as seen through the lens of late-night television and self-made home movies won’t connect with everyone (it is shot entirely on VHS and Betacam, for goodness sake!). But for those who lived that cultural shift, it’s a smart, subversive blast.

Framed as a best-friends/suburban-family adventure story (think ‘80s staples like E.T. or Explorers or The Goonies), feature debutant Robbins’ protagonist Ralphie (Mason McNulty) is introduced on Christmas morning 1987, being gifted the latest in home video technology - the camcorder. The character’s name and this setting will invoke to many U.S. viewers Bob Clark’s yuletide classic A Christmas Story, in which a young boy’s dreams were also enabled by a gift that allowed him to shoot randomly with little regard for the consequences.

Ralphie grabs the first apparently blank VHS cassette he can find and starts filming, unaware he is erasing his parents’ wedding day memories. This is a familiar comedic set-up, however it takes on a darker relevance as Robbin’s themes unfold. Soon, the unlimited potential the camcorder affords Ralphie - to both express himself and discover the bold new world that is midnight-to-dawn TV - is capturing hard truths about his household. The innocence of his young mind is being usurped, while the undercurrent of detachment his mom (Christian Drerup) and dad (Jake Head) are experiencing is being unwittingly chronicled. Appearing fleetingly between the insurgent new late-night content, we glimpse their happier times.

Ralphie’s adventures in after-dark television offer up some hilarious parodies of recognisable cable-net ‘80s programming, recalling segments from Peter Hyam’s Stay Tuned (1992), Ken Shapiro’s The Groove Tube (1974) and the anthology Amazon Women on The Moon (1987). Best amongst them include bickering telemarketers Tony V and Cindy, featuring Thomas Lennon’s ‘heirloom-pen’ salesman (“…it literally does everything that a pen can do.”); the basement-shot talk show, Interludes with Lou, hosted by Lou (Charlyne Li); and, the heavily-edited adult entertainment offerings from Cinemax-like porn peddlers, (tonight’s feature, Sexy Swedish Illegal Aliens From Space XXX). Robbins also expands upon comedy shorts he’s previously filmed, including fresh episodes of Painting (and Cooking, Plumbing and Sleeping) with Joan, featuring a side-splitting Kerri Kennedy, and the global warming-themed sex romp, Hot Winter.

The parody channels fly by, reflecting precisely the impact on a remote control of a teenage boy’s attention span, until Ralphie settles upon a true-crime special that profiles a girl’s murder at the hands of her own sorority sisters in his very neighbourhood. With best friend Josh (Rahm Braslaw) reluctantly by his side, Ralphie takes his camcorder into the burnt-out shell of a home that was the scene of the crime hoping to record a ghostly presence.

The sequence allows Robbins to come full circle in his skewering of western culture’s obsession with self-image; Ralphie becomes the star of his own handheld-horror film, the kind that came into existence as a by-product of the handy-cam boom (notably The Blair Witch Project, but there were so many). VHYes captures and contemplates the moment thirty-three years ago that has since morphed into the YouTube/selfie/profile-obsessed world that we are slaves to today.

In one final image, Jake Henry Robbins stops just shy of condemning ‘image culture’ entirely – in the credit-roll outtakes, he captures the film’s co-producers, his separated parents Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, having a happy moment on his set. The footage, which lasts mere seconds, impacts like a polaroid, providing a vivid recollection of memories captured in an instant. They are frames filled with warmth for both the viewer and, one assumes, the director and underline his point that not everything needs to be filmed and filtered and posted. Finding the essential truth in singular moments is the true skill to recording personal history.

GO!

Stars: William Lodder, Richard Roxburgh, Frances O’Connor, Anastasia Bampos, Darius Amarfio Jefferson, Cooper van Grootel and Dan Wyllie.
Writer: Steve Worland.
Director: Owen Trevor

Rating: ★ ★ ★

…or, “The Kart-y Kid.”

A young, widowed mum cuts ties with the sadness of her past life and travels cross country to give her teenage son a fresh go at young manhood. There, he finds a new father figure of sorts in an old sports recluse, who bestows wisdom upon his new charge while finding his own new lease on life.

So went John G. Avildsen’s 1984 teen classic The Karate Kid and so goes Owen Trevor’s Go!, which swaps out Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita and ‘The Crane’ for William Lodder, Richard Roxburgh and the inside lane in its shamelessly derivative but generally likable retelling of the familiar narrative. Also gone are the martial arts (except for one quick nod to the source material’s ‘junkyard brawl’ scene), with the dusty, screeching world of go-kart racing providing the new road to realising one’s potential.

Handsome newcomer Lodder impresses as Jack Hopper, a generally upbeat young man despite the loss of his dad (Adam T. Perkins, in flashback) several years prior. Why mum Christie (Frances O’Connor) decides to relocate from Sydney to Busselton, Western Australia when both seem to have overcome the worst of their grief (he died when Jack was 11, a good eight years ago) is never fully reconciled by writer Steve Worland’s sometimes patchy narrative, though dialogue and character represent a marked improvement over his previous work, Paper Planes (2014).

Christie scores Jack an invitation to the birthday party of Mandy (Anastasia Bampos), the best darn mechanic in all Busselton and daughter of local go-kart magnate Mike Zeta (Damian de Montemas, the film’s ‘Cobra Kai’-like villain). The meet will be held at the local go-kart dustbowl, overseen by world-weary crank-pot recluse, Patrick (Richard Roxburgh), whose gruff exterior hides a pain that…anyway, you get the drift. When Jack channels his inner hoon and proves to be a go-kart natural, Patrick and Mandy join his crusade to dethrone Mike’s son Dean (Cooper van Grootel, going full-Zabka) by taking it ‘all the way to the Nationals’.

As in all manifestations of The Karate Kid, the best moment in Go! is the training montage, during which the brash cockiness of the young un’ is worn down by the wise old master with the kid having no idea he is being readied for his new life goals. The ‘wax on, wax off’ scenes are played well (Karate Kid tropes are even referenced in one off-camera comment), as are those final crucial moments which indicate Daniel…I mean, Jack has learnt an important lesson about respecting your elders and growing out of the past. Mid-section has very little to do or say and conjures some minor conflicts without much conviction before getting back to the action.

In his feature directorial debut, Trevor captures the close-quarters go-kart action with an immersive energy (a professional history filming the Top Gear series proves a bonus), though he can’t breath too much life into perfunctory subplots involving Jack’s new best bud, Colin (Darius Amarfio Jefferson, in the comic sidekick role that was played by Julian Dennison in Paper Planes) and attempts by local cop Barry (Dan Wyllie) to woo Christie. A terrific collection of tunes, old and new, help bolster audience engagement, while the crowd-pleasing ending that you know is coming before you even take your seat hits all the right notes.

THE WAVE

Stars: Justin Long, Donald Faison, Katia Winter, Sheila Vand, Tommy Flanagan, Bill Sage, Sarah Minnich, Monique Candelaria, Ronnie Gene Blevins and Blythe Howard.
Writer: Carl W. Lucas
Director: Gille Klabin

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A riff on A Christmas Carol in which Ebenezer Scrooge swallows The Red Pill is a good starting point for those readying to partake of Gille Klabin’s trippy, challenging, wholly satisfying freak-out, The Wave. The debut feature for the music vid/short film director utilises skills honed over a decade in that visually exciting sector in its representation of one morally wayward man’s descent into a drug-fuelled world of paranoia, psychedelica, time-tripping and life lessons.

With always engaging leading man Justin Long (pictured, above; with co-star Donald Faison) ensuring audiences stay connected despite some often out-there narrative developments, The Wave will play as well with those that dig anxiety-inducing adventures like Martin Scorsese’s After Hours as it will with those still under the influence of whatever helped them just enjoy nine hours of nightclubbing.

Long plays Frank, an insurance lawyer introduced salivating over the career opportunity that denying benefits to the family of a dead fireman will bring. Too long in the professional trenches and with a cash-strapped domestic life teetering on the abyss of banality, Frank decides to connect with his partying workmate Jeff (Donald Faison) for some midweek bar-hopping. The pair are soon doing shots with cool twenty-somethings Natalie (Katia Winter) and Theresa (Sheila Vand; pictured, below), who convince them the night is young (it isn’t) and a party with harder narcotics ought to be their first destination (it oughtn’t).

To impress Theresa and share in some tongue-led dual drug taking, Frank allows himself to be led astray by charismatic dealer Aeolus (a terrific Tommy Flanagan). Much to Frank’s increasing panic, the chemical indulgence leads to a lost wallet, an angry wife, hours of blacked-out time, a nightmarish psychotic episode during a boardroom presentation and, most troublingly, instantaneous jumps in time and place. The misadventures lead to a life-threatening few hours in the company of unhinged lowlife Ritchie (Ronnie Gene Blevins), until Frank comes to terms with his newly-acquired superpower and sets about making right the insanity of his life, past and present.

With Carl W Lucas’ script wisely building character and tension before transitioning into its clever, more fantastical genre twists, Long and Klabin craft an everyman’s journey through an otherworldly landscape that is both familiar but off-kilter enough to intrigue and ultimately amaze. It is to the actor’s credit that Frank is more than just the scumbag attorney/unfaithful spouse the first act of the film allows him to be. Klabin’s faith in Long’s empathic qualities (underused by Hollywood in leading parts, for some reason) pays off when the narrative niftily reveals its ace-in-the-hole. As the hedonistic bud who leads Frank astray, Faison is funny and suitably incredulous when the laws of physics are restructured in front of him; as Theresa, the girl for whom Frank is willing to alter his life’s trajectory after a few minutes in her company, the lovely Vand is well cast.

The transition from real world stability into time-leaping psychosis is made all the more convincing by the rich aural depth the production constructs. Tech contributions from sound design vet Eric Offin and mixer Carlos Garcia’s team heighten the already pretty ‘high’ visuals that Klabin and effects supervisor Eric Thelander conjure. That The Wave works with such transcendent qualities on the heart as well as the head is indicative of the great work done by all departments.

The Wave Official Trailer from Epic Pictures Group on Vimeo.

THE FACELESS MAN

Stars: Sophie Turling, Lucas Pittaway, Andy McPhee, Albert Goikhman, Brendan Bacon, Daniel reader, Daniel Facciolo, Lorin Kauffeld, Martin Astifo, Sunny S. Walia, Tom Vogel, Dirk Faller, Damian Oehme, Dave Beamish and Roger Ward.
Writer/Director: James Di Martino

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Exhibiting all the pros and cons of a truly unhinged independent film vision, writer/director James Di Martino allows his film-nerd subconscious to run wild with his first feature, The Faceless Man. If it didn’t propel forward with such a can’t-look-away energy and nightmarish sense of the macabre, you might side with one character when she ponders, direct to camera, “Is this a joke?”   

From the De Palma-esque single-take opening tracking shot (a father/daughter hospital scene that plays far more seriously than anything to follow), Di Martino ticks off references to his favourite filmmakers like he’s renting weeklies from his local video store. The most generic beats are in the establishment of his teen protagonists, five average nobodies who rent a pretty nice country homestead. Most central to the zigzag plotting is Emily (Sophie Thurling, giving her all), a cancer survivor who carries with her a darkness that manifests as the clawed, disfigured monster of the title (its reveal a jump-scare highlight of the film).

Such a premise is enough for most first-time directors, but Di Martino decides that while he has the cameras, he might as well have a crack at a stereotypical Tarantino/Ritchie criminal subplot, too. Seems the kids have purloined a case of top-tier narcotics that mobster Viktor Nov (Albert Goikhman, channelling 80s-era Steven Berkoff) wants back. He and his henchman arrive in the hamlet all guns blazing, only to find the local townspeople have their own anti-drug/pro-violence way-of-life.

It sounds nuts, and it largely is. But there’s a good deal of fun to be had in rummaging through the grab bag of references. If you look hard (hell, even if you don’t), you’ll find none-to-subtle nods to No Country for Old Men, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Scarface, Psycho, Scream, Get Out, the Elm Street films, even Home Alone; directorial styles echoed include those of Nicholas Windig Refn and giallo greats like Bava and Argento. The presence of Aussie acting giant Roger Ward instantly conjures the memory of Ozploitation classics Mad Max and Turkey Shoot and places The Faceless Man in the company of those fearless films from the Oz industry’s 10BA days.

Di Martino has been open about his battle with cancer, and it can be deduced that his love for film played a significant part in his recovery. So passionately does he homage the cult films of his generation, it is easy to forgive the often jagged scene-to-scene transitions. Tonally, the film hurtles from eccentric small town piss-takes (embodied by he-man biker ‘Barry the C**t’, played by a very funny Daniel Reader) to shocking acts of violence (a rape/murder sequence is truly disturbing). It is in Thurling’s performance that Di Martino the writer finds an ally who provides much-needed stability; her handling of his take on a survivor’s mix of anxiety and determination rings particularly true.

No doubt at all that The Faceless Man is a wildly indulgent work; the scale of Di Martino’s ambitious, convoluted vision leaves his own level of craft, that ability to keep his narrative manageable, in its wake. Yet it is that degree of unbridled daring to which the midnight-movie crowd, who gobble up such displays of all-or-nothing genre storytelling, will gravitate. The gore, giggles and film-buff fun that Di Martino delivers oozes ‘cult film’ cred from frame 1.

CATS

Stars: Francesca Hayward, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Robbie Fairchild, Mette Towley, Ray Winstone, Laurie Davidson, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, Naoimh Morgan, Laurent and Larry Bourgeois and Taylor Swift.
Writers: Lee Hall and Tom Hooper; based upon Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’.
Director: Tom Hooper.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Director Tom Hooper set himself a much harder task shepherding Cats to the big-screen than his previous musical adaptation, Les Misérables (2012). Andrew Lloyd Webber’s wildly imaginative, unashamedly odd live theatre smash hit could not be afforded the same instant gravitas as the Oscar-winning reworking of Victor Hugo’s historical epic. The putrid squalor, brutal militarism and class struggles of post-revolution France made Les Misérables immediately relevant and easily analysed by critics and awards season marketeers.

As the early wave of “What the f**k?” reviews suggests, making Cats a relatable movie-going experience for any one not entirely enamoured with the source material has proven a tad tougher. A fantastical vision that requires the kind of suspended disbelief and unskeptical submissiveness for which mainstream audiences (and most critics) are not known, Hooper has undertaken a momentous task of cinematic world building that must at once be tied to its iconic stage roots while also establishing its own need for being. Few contemporary movie works carry that baggage at every stage of their development and execution.

As with the stage production, the narrative is both a relatively straightforward fantasy premise, yet wonderfully nutty. In a London alleyway, a white kitten called Victoria (Royal Ballet principal Francesca Hayward, a striking and angelic presence on-screen) is abandoned, yet immediately finds community with a collection of strays known as The Jellicle Cats. Led by Munkustrap (Robbie Fairchild), the Jellicles are preparing for the arrival of Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), who will oversee a song-and-dance contest from which one cat will receive passage to ‘The Heaviside Layer’ and return with renewed life.

The dramatic conflict comes in the form of Macavity (Idris Elba), a mean-spirited moggie with the ability to whisk away in a cloud of magical mist all those who threaten his quest for life-giving ascension. This includes railway yard ginger Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae), ageing theatrical cat Gus (Ian McKellen) and the film’s comic relief duo, tubby tabby Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) and ‘puss in spats’ fat cat Bustopher Jones (James Corden). Central to Victoria’s journey is the most magical of Jellicles, Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson), and the once regal but now dishevelled outcast, Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson).    

Hooper and his daring troupe in front of and behind the camera have drawn inspiration from the stage-bound cats that have gone before; cast wear anthropomorphic make-up and full body fur-suits, with CGI tails and ears bolstering the effect. Despite family-friendly ratings in most territories, the lithe frames of the dance troupe in their ‘cat-tards’ enhances the inherent sexuality of the feline form. Unlike the vast sets and multiple locations at his disposal for Les Misérables, Hooper is very much studio-bound with Cats, but he utilises the space with remarkable skill; below-the-line contributors such as production designer Eve Stewart and art director Tom Weaving exhibit the best their craft has to offer. In this regard, the production has crafted the near-perfect stage-to-screen work.

In fact, Hooper and his team have nailed the transition in every other regard, too. Hudson finds all the emotion in the signature tune, ‘Memory’, belting out the classic with a combination of rage and hopelessness that tears at you like it should; when given full flight, Hayward is a vision of graceful physicality, embodying both doe-eyed innocence and strong-willed goodness; showstoppers from the stage show hit similar highs, notably Jason Derulo’s ‘Rum Tum Tugger’ and Davidson’s version of ‘Mr Mistoffelees’; and, superstar Taylor Swift vamps it up as Bombalurina, who croons the torch song intro for Elba’s bad guy, ‘Macavity’.

Granted, there are moments that invite bewilderment; the ‘Cockroach Chorus Line’ sequence may ask too much of even the most committed fan. And the familiar comic stylings of Wilson and Corben prove occasionally jarring in the midst of the otherwise all-encompassing Jellicle world.

Andrew Lloyd Webber began writing Cats from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ in 1977, and in the context of that decade’s more ‘out there’ musical endeavours, a play about alley cats being reincarnated seems totally rational. This was, after all, the decade of ‘The New Wave Musical’, which saw the rise of Webber (Evita; Jesus Christ Superstar) and his American contemporary, Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd), while Hollywood tried to keep up by offering such cinematic sing-alongs as The Wiz, Lost Horizon and Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In 2019, foisting such whimsy on a society poised with web-knives sharpened was perhaps the single miscalculation made by Tom Hopper and Universal Pictures; the studio pumped US$100million into the project, which has bounced around the LA and London film sectors for four decades (Amblin Entertainment came close to making an animated version, hence Steven Spielberg’s E.P. credit).

In the new era of ‘fan-service cinema’, Hooper and co-writer Lee Hall have set a new high-water mark. Cats is exactly the stage play experience, compensating for the loss of the live theatre element with its own rich cinematic energy. If issues arise for you such as ‘Where are their nipples?’ or ‘But the ears look weird…’, Cats is already not your saucer of cream, so move on. Hooper’s surrealistic song-and-dance spectacle, steeped in joyous musical theatre lore and rich with the emotions of acceptance and forgiveness, is exactly what we need right now.