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.

ONLY CLOUD KNOWS (ZHI YOU YUN ZHI DAO)

Stars: Xuan Huang, Caiya Yang, Lydia Peckham and Xun Fan.
Writer: Ling Zhang
Director: Feng Xiaogang

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

There are two clear reasons for Only Cloud Knows to exist – to wring distraught tears from every ounce of its ill-fated romantic melodrama and to sell the spectacular New Zealand countryside as the best possible backdrop to said sadness. Veteran filmmaker Feng Xiaogang is working on a smaller, more intimate scale than some of his past populist pics (Aftershock, 2010; I Am Not Badame Bovary, 2016; Youth, 2017), but the director’s feel for sellable sentiment and capital-E emoting remains as solid as ever.

Based upon the true story of one of the director’s friends, Only Cloud Knows follows distraught widower Sui ‘Simon’ Dongfeng (Xuan Huang) as he recounts a life spent loving his late wife Luo ‘Jennifer’ Yun (Caiya Yang) across both islands of Aoteoroa. The diaspora experience has been a central theme of many of Feng’s works, dating back to his directorial debut, the TV series A Native of Beijing in New York (1993); others include the LA-set rom-com Be There or Be Square (1998) and If You Are The One (2008), featuring Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido.

Working from a script penned by acclaimed author Ling Zhang, the narrative is split in three distinct acts. The first hour covers those happy days spent by the lovers in the Otago township of Clyde, making enough of a living from the small berg’s only Chinese restaurant while coping with an increasing number of existential tragedies (not least of which is an extended sequence in which the pair weep tears for days as they cope with their old dog’s particularly painful passing).

The second hour recalls the earliest days of their romance in late 1990s Auckland, when Simon had a mullet and played the flute, Jennifer thought herself unfit for marriage only to be won over by his persistence and some spontaneous gambling sets them up for life together. The final passage relentlessly pulls at the heartstrings, with the cancer-riddled Jennifer being held in her final hours by a distraught Simon (all of which he recounts to a very patient charter boat captain, who responds appropriately by taking a big swig from his hip flask).

Support players liven up the occasionally heavyhanded scenes between the lovebirds, notably the terrific Lydia Peckham as waitress-turned-bestie Melinda and renowned Chinese actress Xun Fan as landlady Ms Lin, whose own sad memories supply a rewarding subtext. Shot through the prism of grief and memory, Oscar-nominated DOP Zhao Xiaoding (House of Flying Daggers, 2004; Children of The Silk Road, 2008; The Great Wall, 2016) borrows a rich, primary-colour palette from the master of grand weepies, Douglas Sirk; plot wise, the other clear inspiration is Arthur Hiller’s Love Story (1970). 

Those not in tune with the ripe pleasures to be had from time-shifting romantic tragedies will struggle to make the final handkerchief-filling scenes; if The Notebook, The Lakehouse and/or Somewhere in Time are kept in a drawer under your television, Only Cloud Knows is for you.   

Despite the cast and crew’s best efforts, the true on-screen stars are the green fields, rugged mountains and autumnal shades of The Land of The Long White Cloud; shepherded into life with the aid of The New Zealand Film Commission, the dreamy drama represents another international co-production triumph for the progressive local sector.

SCALES (SAYIDAT AL BAHR)

Stars: Basima Hajjar, Ashraf Barhoum, Yagoub Al Farhan, Fatima Al Taei, Haifa Al-Agha and Rida Ismail.
Director/writer: Shahad Ameen

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE: November 21, 2020 at the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival.

WINNER: Best Film, 30th Singapore International Film Festival’s Silver Screen Awards; November 30, 2019.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Recalling Niki Caro’s Whale Rider in its melding of tribal mythologies and patriarchal defiance, Shahad Ameen’s Scales is an altogether darker fantasy work marked distinctive by its potent social relevance and chilling imagination. Set against a monochromatic dystopian landscape on the rocky foreshores of a dead sea, where the ‘sea maidens’ of lore survive on the villagers’ offerings of young girls, the Saudi director’s debut feature (a reimagining of the concept she introduced in her 2013 short, Eye & Mermaid) is fairy-tale horror of the highest order.

The sacrifice of young women (disturbingly portrayed in the film’s opening frames) is believed by the village elders to ensure bountiful fishing and enduring prosperity. When young father Muthana (Yagoub Al Farhan) defies the tradition, saving his baby daughter Hayat from the creature’s webbed claw, it is believed he brings ill fortune to his people and a lifetime of derisive shame to his child. Twelve years later, Hayat (the remarkable Basima Hajjar, 15 at the time of shooting) spends her days fending of bullies, staying clear of bitter elder Amer (Ashraf Barhoum) and trying to find a niche for herself somewhere between the responsibilities of the boys her age and the dark destiny facing the girls.

When her bitter mother Aisha (Fatima Al Taei) gives birth to a boy, her fate seems sealed; at the next full moon, she will be led to the water’s edge and given to the sea maidens. However, she survives and is re-evaluated by the men folk when she drags a creature from the deep to her village square.

There is sly humour at work surrounding the relationship between the mermaids and the men in Ameen’s otherwise steely, serious narrative. The elders fear the wrath of the women of the deep but govern ruthlessly women of their own kind. The dichotomy of this suggests their beliefs, based on age-old traditions, are confused and kind of ridiculous. In a broader context, the villager’s relationship with the ocean creatures represents how false beliefs and a society’s adherence to outdated dogma can eventually tear a community apart.

Hayat scratches at dry skin on her feet, skin that turns to scales when she gets them wet; the physical change that 12 year-old girls experience is central to Hayat’s complexity. The young woman (whose name means ‘life’ in Arabic) fights for her survival with a determination that slowly dawns on her and with the fierceness that the men fear in her underwater sisters. Like Paikea, portrayed by Oscar-nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes in Caro’s adaptation of Witi Ihimaera’s Maori fable, Hayat is a truly modern heroine of understated resilience and, quite literally, the future of her people.

As pure genre cinema, Scales lands some truly mesmerising scenes, not least of which is the terrifying moment a mermaid, dragged from the sea, crawls toward Hayat across a ship’s deck. DOP João Ribeiro proves a master of the black-&-white mood and composition, both on land and at sea; shot on the jagged, majestic coast of Oman, Scales is a gorgeous looking film. The final moments, drenched in the hope that a new and prosperous future lays ahead, are wondrous frames of film.

Representing one of the strongest feature debuts to ever emerge from the region, Shahad Ameen announces herself as that most special of filmmakers - a storyteller that can work timely subtext and scathing commentary into a great work of fantasy.

THE UNSEEN (KAGHAZ-PAREH HA)

Writer/Director: Behzad Nalbandi

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

One of the most confronting and heartbreaking cinematic works of the year, Iranian graphic artist Behzad Nalbandi’s The Unseen speaks to the inhumane treatment and hopeless futures of derelict and homeless women taken from the streets of Tehran. Utilising cardboard stop-motion artistry to ensure the anonymity of and provide a rare freedom for his subjects to have a voice, Nalbandi’s 5-year project is both a stunning visual work and bold indictment of Iran’s ongoing adherence to brutal patriarchal rule.

The five women that the director speaks with are, figuratively and literally, ‘cardboard people’, the derogatory term used in his homeland to describe those that live in boxes on the street. When international dignitaries are due to visit, police and government officials round up the homeless population of the capital and crowd them into shelters; the men are released after a few days, but the women are not. They become wards of the state, their freedom dependent upon a family member collecting them.

Many of the women have fled abusive men, including fathers, siblings, boyfriends and husbands; most have been raped and/or had drugs such as meth, heroin and crack forced upon them, with several turning to prostitution in exchange for shelter, clothes or the next hit. Once incarcerated in the government-backed ‘shelters’, they have little chance of ever being released.

Provided with unofficial access, Nalbandi (always off-screen) gently probes and compassionately listens while the women relate the downward spirals of their lives. The details are relentlessly shocking and almost always stem from toxic male influence and the systemic abuse women have traditionally suffered. All contend with chronic mental health ailments and are addicts struggling with sobriety (Iran is in the grip of a hard-drug epidemic, with over 6.5 million users). The recounting of the life paths that have led the women to their involuntary incarceration makes for shattering testimony.

The women’s voices are given an on-screen avatar thanks to the director’s remarkable skill with cardboard of all shapes and contours. The interview room in which the sessions took place is recreated, as are the broken streets and askew structures of Tehran’s landscape. Facial details, comprised of precisely coloured and intricately layered material, give true personality to the women (they are given a pseudonym and their ages are revealed, but little else other than what they tell us). In one lump-in-the-throat moment, Nalbandi comments on the beauty of one women’s eyes, soliciting a sweet giggle and the corresponding facial expressions which resonate profoundly via the cardboard artistry.

Revisiting the institution several months after completing his recordings, Nalbandi learns some of his young interviewees have died; ironically, the number of women being held has increased far beyond the capacity of the facility (a meagre staff roster and only 30 beds service over 90 detainees). There is no avoiding the bleakness of The Unseen; this is not the kind of factual film that ends on an upward trajectory of hope or spruiks advocacy. Such false niceties would not honour the daily struggles and aimless destinies of the film’s five souls, each a life ruined by dark forces beyond their control.

Nominated for BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM at The 2019 Asia Pacific Screen Awards, to be held Thursday November 21 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. 

STAY OUT STAY ALIVE

Stars: Brandon Wardle, Brie Mattson, Sage Mears, William Romano-Pugh, Christina July Kim, David Fine and Barbara Crampton.
Writer/Director: Dean Yurke.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Hoary old horror movie tropes still have a lot of life left in them if Dean Yurke’s Stay Out Stay Alive is any indication. The debutant director rakes over such well-trodden ground as Native American curses, creepy old mines and college kids who should no better than going bush, yet within those familiar parameters he delivers a convincingly scary spin on just how ugly human nature can be when tempted by greed and twisted by paranoia.

Like a million other films in the history of horror cinema, Yurke introduces his protagonists packed into a minivan, riffing on the pros and cons of camping deep in the woods. Gregarious blonde Bridget (Brie Mattson) is all giggly and flirty with her jock bf, Reese (Brandon Wardle); studious Amy (Christina July Kim) is focussed on her PhD paper, barely registering her nerdy guy Kyle (William Romano-Pugh); and, making up the numbers, just-dumped Donna (Sage Mears), who feels her solitary status so much it makes her wander into the night as her matched-up friends party by the campfire.

When Donna falls into an abandoned mine, her attempted rescue leads to the matter-of-fact discovery of a gold seam. No one considers the ease of its uncovering particularly strange, until clues point to a) the mass death of past visitors to the pit and b) a curse placed upon the woods by a Native American Chief, whose ghostly tribesman may still haunt the region (Yurke based it upon a legend stemming from the Mariposa Indian War of 1851, during which the son of a tribal elder was killed and the region was believed placed under a vengeful curse).

The production’s decision to cast actors slightly older than your average cabin-in-the-woods horror kids works in favour of the deeper themes at play and serves to elevate the psychological drama of Yurke’s narrative. Relationship dynamics, patriarchal hierarchy and middle-class entitlement all surface as rapidly as the storm waters that threaten the valley, each bringing a heightened and masterfully sustained tension between the characters. Yurke bounces jauntily through the prerequisite first act genre beats (phones don’t work, check; sexy tent action, check; red herring scares, check) before settling comfortably into the meat of his drama.

The pic’s supernatural visitations are superbly creepy; one sequence late in Act III, in which one character is confronted by spirit animal manifestations of the murdered Natives, is particularly chilling. Bringing legitimate horror movie cred is an extended cameo by the great Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, 1985; From Beyond, 1986), whose off-kilter ‘Ranger Susanna’ represents another memorable turn in her indie horror-led career resurgence (You’re Next, 2011; Lords of Salem, 2012; We Are Still Here, 2015; Beyond the Gates, 2016; Reborn, 2018).

Despite its mid-budget pedigree and occasionally underground setting, it should be no surprise that Yurke’s debut looks so damn good. With 25 years behind him as one of Hollywood’s most respected digital artists and long ties to employer Industrial Light & Magic (who facilitated post work on the film), Yurke delivers a thrilling, visually engaging close-quarters shocker. Hard to believe with his CV he’d need to impress with an ambitious, accomplished calling-card work, but he has; 2½ decades into a distinguished b.t.s. career, Dean Yurke the director has arrived.

Stay Out Stay Alive - Official Trailer from Dean Yurke on Vimeo.

  

MIDWAY

Stars: Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Darren Criss, Tadanobu Asano, Geoffrey Blake, Jun Kunimura, Brandon Sklenar and Etsushi Toyokawa.
Writer: Wes Tooke
Director: Roland Emmerich.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

While the subject matter recounts the political, personal and military machinations of one of the defining moments in U.S. combat history, the truer battle raging on-screen in Roland Emmerich’s Midway is the clash between Oscar-bait war epic and rousingly cornball B-movie.

The German-born filmmaker sets the bar high from Act 1, with a fully immersive reconstruction of the attack on Pearl Harbour, the history-altering event that dragged a bruised and battered America into World War II. In its wake, we are introduced in piecemeal fashion to the square-jawed types charged with resurrecting national pride – Naval attaché Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson), the intel genius whose knowledge of empirical Japanese ways could not stop the December 7 attack; hotshot cowboy pilot Dick Best (Ed Skrein), who you just know will put it all on the line for his country; Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz (Woody Harrelson), the leader who rallied his men and applied a warrior’s cunning to strike back; and, Admiral ‘Bull’ Hallsey (a cantankerous Dennis Quaid), stoic and blustery as only vintage Dennis Quaid can be.

Midway continues Emmerich’s bigscreen obsession with military heroics and the dynamic of men facing seemingly insurmountable odds against a mighty enemy. Previously, Emmerich’s bad guys have included aliens, sea monsters and the weather; he presents his most human foe yet in the form of the Japanese forces, especially the masterminds behind the Pearl Harbour strike and the everyman soldiers and seaman who followed their orders (the film is dedicated to both American and Japanese casualties).  

Emmerich is a director known less for his nuanced and careful consideration of themes and subtext and more for his ability to make things look awesome when they blow up. To this end, Midway unfolds in a manner that is pure Hollywood disaster epic, with a vast cast punching out none-too-subtle scenes of surface emotion that cut right to the heart of their plight. This kind of structure and plotting is meat and bones for Emmerich, whose work has run the gamut from the ridiculously sublime (Independence Day, 1996) to the sublimely ridiculous (Godzilla,1998; The Day After Tomorrow, 2004).

But the rat-a-tat of Emmerich’s storytelling streamlines the intricacies of naval combat; legitimate tension builds as ships, planes and deciphered codes criss-cross the screen. Although his characters have little depth, they are archetypes that stand for something in the theatre of war, or at least war movies. Emmerich’s affinity for B-movie tropes is matched perfectly with a story of true red-white-and-blue patriotism; he embraces his familiar story beats with a narrative clarity that has been absent in all his past efforts bar the unforgivably entertaining White House Down (2013).

Above all else, Emmerich and his visual effects team have crafted a heart-pounding vision of combat. Whether immersing his audience in close-quarter dogfights high in the sky or imagining the immensity of an aircraft carrier’s destruction, Emmerich’s battle scenes recall the mighty war stories of classic Hollywood lore by way of the technology of today. Some green-screen backdrops look a little tinny, but the ferocity of the Japanese zero squadrons descending upon Pearl Harbour and the steely-eyed vengeance with which the American forces regain the upper hand is thrilling film-making (the pilot’s eye view of dive-bombing a targeted vessel is vertigo-inducing).

Midway is that kind of war movie that captures both elements with an integrity that is hard not to admire. Recounting a pivotal wartime moment, Roland Emmerich has honoured the men who emerged damaged but victorious, as well as those that fought honourably in defeat; in telling the tale, he has made a war film wrapped in patriotism but thrilling enough for the modern American audience. Somewhere between Michael Bay’s cartoonish Pearl Harbour and Christopher Nolan’s pompous Dunkirk stands Roland Emmerich’s stirring Midway, and it emerges as the most watchable of the three.

BLOOD VESSEL

Stars: Nathan Phillips, Alyssa Sutherland, Alex Cooke, Robert Taylor, Christopher Kirby, John Lloyd Fillingham, Mark Diaco, Vivienne Perry, Troy Larkin and Steve Young.
Writers: Justin Dix and Jordan Prosser.
Director: Justin Dix

Screening at FANGORIA x MONSTER FEST 2019 from October 31-November 4. Check the official website for session details.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Blood Vessel plays like the movie equivalent of the best cover band you’ve ever seen. Grab-bagging iconic moments from classic genre films and pumping them full of fresh energy, director Justin Dix and his ensemble of committed players offer a ripping high-seas yarn that plays as both a joyous homage to beloved horror tropes and a bloody nightmarish adventure in its own right.

The sophomore feature for effects guru Dix (his 2012 calling-card debut, Crawlspace, earned praise and profit on the genre circuit) is set during the final months of the Second World War. The Axis forces are settling scores by defying wartime convention and have torpedoed a hospital ship; the survivors, a potpourri of international characters representing the combined Allied effort, have been set adrift in a life raft.

Manliest and most level-headed amongst them are the Aussie, Sinclair (Nathan Philips) and Russian, Teplov (Alex Cooke); U.S. military might coms in the form of square-jawed Malone (Robert Taylor), upright African-American hero Jackson (a terrific Christopher Kirby) and whiny New Yorker Bigelow (Mark Diaco); flying the English flag are a nurse, Jane Prescott (Alyssa Sutherland) and cowardly code-breaker, Faraday (John Lloyd Fillingham). There is a twinkle in the eye of every performer, each recognizing that the quality dialogue and opportunity for impactful drama does not often exist in these types of old-school horror romps.

Suffering from starvation and exposure, the group are happier than they should be when a lumbering German minesweeper emerges eerily from the fog. Weighing their fatalistic odds – die slowly at sea or quickly at the hands of a crew bearing the Nazi flag – they decide to board, affording Dix the opportunity to stage an exciting action set piece to kick off proceedings. The already frayed racial tension amongst the group must soon cope with such developments as a ship devoid of crew, bar the occasional gruesome discovery, and a secured section deep below-deck that carries ancient Romanian types best left undisturbed.

Dix and co-writer Jordan Prosser clearly know and love their B-movie inspirations, and they treat that knowledge with respect in crafting the character dynamics and narrative beats of Blood Vessel. The ‘haunted/mysterious ship’ sub-genre is a rich one; Alvin Rakoff’s Death Ship (1980) and Steve Beck’s Ghost Ship (1980), most notably, but also Bruce Kessler’s 1978 TV movie Cruise into Terror and Amando de Ossorio’s 1974 Spanish shlockbuster, The Ghost Galleon, both of which exhibit elements used to great effect in this new Australian entrant.

They provide a framework, but ‘haunted boat’ movies are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the films to which Dix tips his hat. The German crew’s method of ensuring the horror doesn’t spread (and the lighting and camera angles adopted by DOP Sky Davies to depict the result) visually echoes the discovery of the Norwegian base in John Carpenter’s The Thing; Nurse Prescott’s relationship with a little girl they find on board (played by Ruby Hall, her appearance mirroring that of Lina Leandersson in Let The Right One In) recalls the bond between Ripley and Newt in Aliens; the whole ‘Nazis and the Occult’ angle was the spine of Spielberg’s Raiders of The Lost Ark (remember, “Hitler's a nut on the subject”).

Dix returns that which he has borrowed with interest; while horror buffs will spot the references, attention is never drawn away from the on-screen action. Bathing his supernatural thriller in rich blues, deep blacks and primal reds, Dix crafts a closed-quarters, claustrophobic nail-biter that belies its mid-range budget through the use of skillful set design, expertly rendered miniatures and icky gore effects. Genre festival berths and a long life servicing genre fans hunting for legitimate frights are assured.

SOUTH AFRICAN SPOOK HUNTER

Stars: Matt van Niftrik, Taryn Kay, Ashley Winter, Ella Kean, Paul Dewdney, Daniel Brace, Valentine Landeg, Daniel Rands and Lamin Tamba.
Writers/directors: Kathryn MacCorgarry Gray and Daniel Rands.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Peter Venkman-meets-David Brent in Matty Vans, the plumber/spirit sleuth whose ignominious misadventures fighting paranormal activity in middle-class London are captured in the occasionally riotous mock-doc, South African Spook Hunter. Collaborators Kathryn MacCorgarry Gray and Daniel Rands nail the comic timing and display the genre knowledge needed to pull off this kind of pitch-perfect takedown of those naff supernatural ‘reality’ shows. 

Likable far beyond what any South African millennial ginger deserves to be, Vans is the creation of actor/comic Matt van Niftrik, who works with MacCorgarry’s and Rand’s structured narrative then improvises the hell out of the setting and dialogue. An everyman nobody who struggles in vain to capture evidence of the afterlife (“I thought it was a spirit life light, but it was a girl whose friend was taking a wee behind a tree.”), Matty Vans is a great comic creation; van Niftrik plays both big and small for the laughs, which come unexpectedly and often.

Vans rents a doco crew - cameraman Jono (co-director Rands) and soundman Gary (Valentine Landeg) - who are growing weary of following his enthusiastic but dead-end dives into the netherworld. When suburban housewife Caroline Damon-Murray (Taryn Kay) contacts him with images of possible poltergeist intrusion impacting daughters Paige (Ella Kean) and Amber (Ashley Winter), Matty senses he is onto the case of his wannabe career. Finally, he’ll be spoken of in the same sentence as his media hero, psychic smoothie and the host of ‘Enter Gomorrah’, Danny Gomorrah (Daniel Brace).

Things start to go awry after Vans and his crew move into the Damon-Murray residence. All evidence points to a hoax, with Vans the last to cotton on, but his interactions with the family are ceaselessly funny and his to-camera moments reveal the well-intentioned ambition and integrity in his heart. The twist isn’t that hard to see coming, but the feel-good factor remains high and those seeking a smattering of chills will be satisfied.

Supporting van Niftrik’s character work are MacCorgarry and Rands skill at creating mirth in the detail; their hero’s obsession with The Bourne Identity pays off with a big giggle, and his constant use of the insult ‘worm…’ (a South African colloquialism, we guess) proves exponentially hilarious.

Delivering a mockumentary so consistently funny is no easy feat; it’s why the films of Christopher Guest (Best in Show, 2000; A Mighty Wind, 2003) are spoken of so highly. With its engaging comic lead and a directing team finding a rich vein of the ridiculous to satirise, South African Spook Hunter spinal-taps the supernatural with a gleeful giddiness.