KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi and Scott Shepherd.
Writers: Eric Roth, Martin and David Grann. Based on the 2017 book by David Grann.
Director: Martin Scorsese.

Rating:  ★ ★ ★

The latest match-up of Marty, Leo and Bobby is based on journalist David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book, which investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s. Big oil deposits were discovered beneath their native title-held land and the state court awarded rights and all profits to the Osage people.

But cunning capitalists devise a plot to eliminate the Osage. White settlers marry themselves to Osage women, binding themselves by wedlock to the Osage oil receipts, and soon any full blood relatives in line for the money are found dead. Officially, the count of the wealthy Osage victims reaches 20, though likely hundreds more were killed. The book details the newly formed FBI's investigation of the murders, as well as the eventual trial and conviction of cattleman William King Hale as the mastermind behind the plot.

The lead character in the book is investigator Tom White. In the film, he’s played by Jesse Plemons, though doesn’t make an appearance until about the two hour mark. Instead, Scorsese’s protagonist is returned WW1 serviceman Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo di Caprio. He’s not a very interesting or complex character, and Leo gives one of his less convincing performances, but he does provide Scorsese with a device upon which to pivot his plotting with flashbacks that slowly reveal Ernest to be an easily-manipulated and violent tool of cattleman kingpin William ‘King’ Hale (Robert de Niro). 

Scorsese’s key interest in this narrative is the criminal machinations of the plot, which is no surprise given his career has almost exclusively been that type of film. Women in Scorsese films are usually victimised or bullied into sadness, mostly present to show what scumbags his lead characters are, like in Raging Bull or The Wolf of Wall Street or Casino or Goodfellas or Taxi Driver or Gangs of New York (that is, if they are present at all, like in The Irishman or The Departed).

He casts the brilliant Lily Gladstone as Osage woman Molly, the strongest sister in a family of strong women...or so we are left to assume. She is smart and sensitive and proudly Osage, but she’s subservient and naive when it comes to the actions of her brutish husband, Ernest. With her whole tribe dying around her, Ernest (and Scorsese) keeps her quiet by plying her drugs and deceit…until good white man medicine saves her and she gets a brief moment to confront Ernest about his actions.      

Molly is a support character in what should be her story. Instead, Scorsese gives more screen time than he should to toothless hillbilly henchmen or, even more worryingly, one-dimensional depictions of Osage as violent drunks or mentally unwell or noble but nonplussed. Although he exhibits his usual technical flair and filmmaking bravado, Scorsese skirts around the issues that could’ve been addressed to tell a story we’ve already seen him tell.

VIOLETT

Stars: Georgia Eyers, Angela Punch McGregor, Sam Dudley, Valentina Blagojevic, Simon Lockwood, Mani Shanks, Kingsley Judd, Jay Jay Jegathesan and Suzi Aleqaby.
Writer/Director: Steven J. Mihaljevic

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

VIOLETT is the Closing Night feature at The 2023 A Night of Horror International Film Festival. For session details, click here.

Steven J. Mihaljevic displays a true auteur’s vision in his second feature, the dark psychological drama Violett. A grieving mother spirals deeper into her own inner darkness when she employs familiar imagery from her missing daughter’s past to help cope with her misery. But the images she conjures are filtered through her rage and desperation, resulting in a nightmarish modern fairy tale that the Perth filmmaker presents in pitch black shadows, rich primary colours and brilliantly-realised bleakness.

As Sonya, the young mother struggling to define the line between shattered reality and corrosive insanity, Georgia Eyers delivers a star-making performance of achingly tangible anguish. Her face a pall of ashen anxiety, her eyes hollowed by corrosive sadness, Eyers (having worked with her director on his debut feature, The Xrossing) crafts a potent examination of guilt-ridden remorse. The actress has a lock on ‘shattered young woman’ roles at present, with her empathetic performance in Nick Kozakis’ Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism also gaining great notices.

Not unlike how Neil Jordan adapted the ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ story to evoke complex adult themes in his cult classic The Company of Wolves, so too does Mihaljevic borrow from dark fairy tale iconography to portray his take on Sonya’s grief. Most arresting of all his twisted visions is Jay Jay Jegathesan’s street artist monster ‘Victor’, fashioned on Australian kid-TV favourite Mr Squiggle. Also certain to haunt audiences is Simon Lockwood’s hideous The Candy Man, whose finger-food specialty is the stuff of nightmares.  

While not quite a ‘Keyser Soze’-size final reel rug-pull, Mihaljevic certainly shows a brazen confidence in how he plays out his narrative, in a move that adds further depth and dimension to his leading lady’s performance. The other key contributors are DOP Shane Piggott, whose emotive use of bold colour and sodden blackness is exquisite, and Australian acting legend Angela Punch McGregor, a towering presence in an all-too-rare big screen role.

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

Stars: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Wes Tank, Doug Mancheski, Luis Rico and Jay Brown
Writers: Mike Cheslik, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews
Director: Mike Cheslik

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

 Screening: SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL, Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th of September at Dendy Cinemas Newtown.

When his turn-of-the-19th-century applejack distillery is razed from under his ruddy nose by some of the titular critters, our hero Jean refocusses his life goals in the giddily adorable Hundreds of Beavers, director Mike Cheslik’s impossibly winning spin on love in the time of Castor canadensis.

From the ruins of his booze factory, Jean (played by Ryland Brickson Cole Tews with the kind of honed comic timing that Oscar should note, but won’t) is cast into the north-eastern snowscapes of the USA, every effort he undertakes to resurrect his capitalistic dreams thwarted by the buck-toothed rodents (as well as rabbits, raccoons, wolves, fish and a pesky woodpecker). 

It is only when Jean falls for ‘The Furrier’ (an exotic Olivia Graves) and tasked by her father (Wes Bank) to deliver one hundred beaver pelts if he wants her hand in marriage, does the down-on-his-luck but always upbeat woodsman find the drive to succeed. The whole gloriously madcap, ‘Looney Tunes’-y spectacle ends on a scale so grandly inspired, its exalted status in film history is assured.

Pummeling elegantly through slapstick setup, sight gag and lo-fi effects mastery over the course of their delirious romp, Cheslik and writer/leading man Tews craft a monochromatic masterwork ripe with the DNA of the silent film classics of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. 

The pair earned a cult following amongst the indie crowd and cryptid fanatics with 2018’s Lake Michigan Monster, an equally daft no-budgeter that only unravelled when the dialogue delivery couldn’t match the visual magic. Almost entirely spoken-word free, Hundreds of Beavers will up the cult numbers hanging on their every frame considerably, as well as convince critics and audiences that there is strong pulse left in the ambitious filmmaking flourishes of yesteryear. 

ALIENS UNCOVERED: THE GOLDEN RECORD

Writer/Director: Clive Christopher

Rating: ★ ★

The latest polished piece of wildly speculative UFO gibber from showman theorist Clive Christopher is more of the same from the media mini-mogul, who's The All Tales Channel and previous ‘Aliens Uncovered’ pics hue to the style guide he employs here. There is no denying his earnest approach to the eternally-popular E.T. mystery is eminently watchable, but the Arizona-based filmmaker takes some big swings here that don’t often connect. 

A not-entirely cohesive potpourri of pseudo-scientific conjecture, public domain sound-bites, eyewitness accounts and staged dramatics, Christopher takes the 1977 launch of deep-space probe Voyager that contained ‘The Golden Record’, a collection of planet-defining facts that were known as The Sounds of Earth. If you’ve seen John Carpenter’s Starman (if you’ve read this far, I’m assuming you have), you’ll recall Jeff Bridges reciting The Rolling Stones’ lyric, “I can't get no. Satisfaction”, a pop-culture snippet he learned from Voyager’s shiny disc. 

In his opening salvo of fast, fun factoids, the director conjures a conspiratorial web that ties together ex-presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush, iconic astronomer Carl Sagan and the CIA, among other disparate elements, none of which sticks the landing. Dropping in dog-whistle doozies like ‘deep web’ as if the very mention makes them real is counterproductive to inspiring belief amongst all but the most feverish UAP gawkers. 

The mid-section mostly resembles one of those paranormal podcasts whose listeners (i.e., me) will gravitate towards films like The Golden Record, but with pictures. Christopher recounts oft-told stories using already-well circulated recordings, like the weather watcher who tracked lights over Lake Michigan in the mid-90s and the connection between UFOs, comets and the horrible history of the Heaven’s Gate cult. It all amounts to old news being repackaged for a new audience, which is fine, but…you know, old. 

The Golden Record then begins to touch on The Phoenix Lights, one of ufology’s most famous sighting incidents, but pulls up short so as not to pop the weather balloon that will be  Clive Christopher’s next film. Maybe that film will bring full-circle the tidal wave of “What-if”-isms that the director originally posed here, because nothing about how The Golden Record ends references how The Golden Record begins.

ALIENS UNCOVERED: THE GOLDEN RECORD is on selected US V.O.D. channels from July 4. 

MOOMINVALLEY: SEASON 3, EPISODES 4, 8, 12

Voice Cast: Taron Edgerton, Rosamund Pike, Warwick Davis, Bel Powley, Matt Berry, Jack Rowan, Chance Perdomo, Edvin Endre and Jennifer Saunders.
Writers: Josie Day, Mark Huckerby, Nick Ostler, Paula Dinan; based on characters created by Tove Jansson.
Director: Darren Robbie.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

 Screening at the 2023 Children’s International Film Festival from May 27 in Sydney and Melbourne.

Finnish author Tove Jansson’s sweet and heartfelt Moomins family adventures have entranced European audiences since they were first published in 1945 in the picture book, ‘The Moomins and the Great Flood’. The fairy-tale existence that Jansson envisioned for her creations - a rustic, rural life in a wooded valley, surrounded by fantasy forest denizens and towering, frosted Alpine peaks - has reached iconic status in the Scandi states, and is increasingly adored abroad.

Having conquered family markets internationally over their eight delightful decades (including a 1974 opera, a 1990 animated series that sold to 60 countries, and theme parks in Finland and Japan), the latest incarnation of the Moomins adventures is Moominvalley, the 2019 animated series now in its third season. Three English-dubbed episodes will have their Australian Premiere at the 2023 Children’s International Film Festival, satiating the small but burgeoning Australian fanbase.     

The first of the three 22-minute original narratives is ‘Inventing Snork’, in which cheeky pre-teen Moomintroll (revoiced by Taron Edgerton) tries to help the socially-awkward Snork better understand the value of friendship through compassion. The thematic throughline is accepting people for who they are, a familiar humanistic beat in Moomins’ storytelling. Rounding out the series is ‘Moominmamma's Flying Dream’, a sweet story in which Moominmamma's love of hot air ballooning is rekindled by her son, only for everyone to reach the conclusion that the joys of family is life’s greatest adventure. 

The best of the trio is the middle episode, ‘Lonely Mountain’. Moomintroll cancels his hibernation to find his best friend Snufkin, who has ventured deep into the mysterious Lonely Mountains for some meditative solitude. Moomintroll misses his friend and acts on that self-focussed longing, not realising that Snufkin’s time away helps make him the special friend he is. The range of complex emotions explored in the scenes between Moomintroll and Snufkin is terrific character-driven animation; the grandeur of the region and the harsh realities of both the wintry outdoors and growing up are beautifully realised.

In the three episodes programmed for the festival, we get a good indication as to why the Moomins have remained one of Finland's most beloved exports and Tove Jansson’s exalted status as a teller of meaningful fantasy tales is etched deeply in European culture. The Moomins speak to the profound truths in family life, steeped in the beautiful colours of their homeland and the vivid world of the imagination.

HUNGER

Stars Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Nopachai Jayanama and Gunn Svasti Na Ayudhya
Writer: Kongdej Jaturanrasamee
Director: Sitisiri Mongkolsiri

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

The Hunger of the title is a double-edged kitchen knife in director Sitisiri Mongkolsiri’s cutting, often bittersweet piece of high society takedown. Set in the ostentatious world of ultra artistic fine dining, Hunger speaks of the craving in us all to consume food prepared in a way far more elegantly than being easily digestible requires. This is food as art, and art that carries with it all the emotions, anxieties and eccentricities of the artist.

Hunger is also about craving a status above the social standing into which you are born, an existence that demands thin slivers of your soul be trimmed away to climb above those just like to secure a place amongst the wealthy but grotesquely compromised humans that appear to you to be better…somehow.

Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying plays Aoy, a talented young street chef at her family’s Thai noodle cafe. She discovers what she didn’t know she wanted when a scout for an elite food prep outfit slips her a card emboldened with the word ‘Hunger’. It’s a ticket to the world of Chef Paul’s kitchen; Paul, played with a fierce intensity by Nopachai Chaiyanam, likes her street-food touch, and starts breaking her down so he can build her up in his image (like JK Simmons did to Miles Teller in Whiplash).

Soon, Aoy is letting the family values upon which she was raised slide and the allure of attaining a certain type of ‘special’ social place is taking hold. Paul has long slipped into the amoral world of corruption, wearing the arrogance of existing above the law like a badge. Hunger spirals with an increasing unease towards one of two potential endings - a huge fall from grace, or a moralistic realisation to be careful what you wish for.

Hunger feels a bit overlong, but that only raises the question of what to omit, and that is not easy to answer. It plays equally convincingly as both a large-scale takedown of the vacuous, soulless upper class Bangkok society types, or as a more intimate character duel between Aoy and Paul, with her very humanity at stake. And, of course, it is an absolute feast for food lovers, whether you prefer the noodle cafe nosh or the food-as-art high dining plates.

CHRISSY JUDY

Stars: Todd Flaherty, Wyatt Fenner, Joey Taranto, Kiyon Spencer, James Tison, Nicole Spiezio, João Pedro Santos and Olivia Oguma.
Writer/Director: Todd Flaherty.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A drag performer faces an uncertain future on all existential fronts in Todd Flaherty’s endearing comedy/drama, Chrissy Judy. A major achievement for the multi-hyphenate, who not only gives a charming, star-making lead turn but also wrote, directed and edited this bittersweet slice of gay modern life, this 2022 festival favourite is a big-hearted examination of friendship and community wrapped in a classic show business narrative.

A dashing screen presence, Flaherty plays ‘Judy’, one half of the performance duo ‘Chrissy Judy’, a drag act that once held promise but has been floundering as gigs grow smaller and audiences less appreciative. Wyatt Fenner matches Flaherty’s charisma as ‘Chrissy’, now nearing thirty and increasingly focussed on emotional and financial stability over stardom-chasing pipedreams. 

Once inseparable as friends, Chrissy and Judy are drifting apart; at a Fyre Island beach house with their committed friends, the strain that different life directions is taking on their bond begins to show. Soon, Chrissy departs to start a new life in Philadelphia with his on-off partner Shawn (Kiyon Spencer), leaving Judy on his downward professional spiral and struggling to fill the void left in his emotional fabric by Chrissy’s absence.

Flaherty sets his film up as a classic New York City romance; the stunning black & white lensing by Brendan Flaherty invokes the spirit of Woody Allen’s Manhattan and, for younger auds, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. It is a mood that keeps Judy’s (or James, revealed in a moment of tenderness) journey buoyant, but shaded in dark greys; he reconnects with past acquaintances and instigates doomed flings to try to find new meaning in life, only for the emptiness to become more and more apparent.

The fulfilling tenderness of the gay lifestyle, or the showbiz community, or the family unit are all explored in Flaherty’s effortlessly affecting script, but it is ultimately Judy’s re-evaluating of what defines him as a human that drives Chrissy Judy. LGBTIQA+ audiences will appreciate the knowing nods to the gay-specific life (including some occasionally frank language and sexual content), but Judy/James’ story is a universally recognisable one, and told with a degree of intelligence and empathy that is rare.

65

Stars: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman and Nika King.
Writers/Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

There was a filmgoing era, not that long ago (certainly not the 65 million years referenced here), when the dark shadow of ‘tentpole cinema’ did not loom so large as to dwarf films like 65. Films such as Christian Duguay’s Screamers (1995) or David Twohy’s Pitch Black (2000) were given time to breath during their release; they would build reputations as well-told, mid-tier sci fi action/thrillers with smart scripts and committed leads and grow appreciative audiences with word-of-mouth.

65 is that sort of film. Adam Driver (pictured, above) dons his ‘movie star/action hero’ hat as Mills, the pilot of a deep-space expedition craft that spectacularly crashes after straying into an uncharted asteroid belt. Gripped by survivor guilt, he is about to end it all when he learns one of the cryogenically frozen crew is still alive - teenage colonist Koa (Ariana Greenblatt; pictured, below). The pod they must launch to rendezvous with the rescue craft is 15 kilometres away; the terrain is prehistoric Earth, inhabited by the great, snarly thunder lizards of yore.       

It is a cracking premise upon which to build some old school Hollywood thrills, and that is what co-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods pull off with their feature debut; they earned the keys to the studio coffers after their script for A Quiet Place hit big. 65 is a similarly lean but skilfully realised genre exercise; a two-hander that is emotionally bolstered by Mill’s longing for his terminally-ill daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman) and Koa coming to terms with the loss of her parents in the crash.

If the forced-together father/daughter psychological complexity of The Last of Us has you in its grip, you’ll likely draw comparisons with the HBO hit series; the handful of hardcore sci-fi fans who also saw Pedro Pascal and Sophie Thatcher in Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl’s Prospect (2018) will nod knowingly, too . The emergence of Ellen Ripley’s maternal streak alongside Newt in James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) is another clear influence. The ‘ticking clock’ device that Beck and Woods employs is legitimately nail-biting and spectacularly envisioned, offering an element of inventiveness in a film that sometimes wears its influences a bit too prominently on its spacesuit sleeves. 

With Driver earning above-the-title credit and the high-concept ‘dinosaurs-vs-rayguns’ narrative recalling event films like Jurassic Park or Starship Troopers, there is the expectation of commercial filmmaking grandeur about 65. If that’s what you (or the studio) was expecting, that’s not this film; 65 is a taut 93 minutes of sweaty tension, appropriately scaled action and surprising tenderness. The modern film distribution model won’t allow 65 to find its most appreciative audience in its initial run, though it will certainly grow in cult stature.

SUMMONING THE SPIRIT

Stars: Krystal Millie Valdes, Ernesto Reyes, Jesse Tayeh, Isabelle Muthiah, Sean Sisson, Robin Magdhalen, Jasmine Sinclair, Lacy Todd, Jimmy Garcia, Bruce Jennings, Alan Burrell, Benta Fitzmorris and Lauren Lopez.
Writers: Zach Carter, Jon Garcia
Director: Jon Garcia

Reviewed at Miami Film Festival, March 6 2023.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

The legend of Bigfoot represents two base fears we have as humans - the threat posed by the alpha creatures with whom we share the planet, and what is left of the natural (or supernatural) world that we are yet to comprehend. And movies that feature The Great American Ape (or any of his/her global equivalents) usually reflect that; horror/thrillers about being stalked and/or attacked while trespassing on their terrain.

Jon Garcia’s Summoning the Spirit does not entirely jettison the elements that have largely defined ‘Sasq-ploitation Cinema’. His feature opens on two a-hole attention-seekers who have their dream of fighting their deliberately-lit forest fire brought to a big, hairy-fisted full-stop; by the end-credit roll, there has been skull-crunching and dismemberment aplenty. But with co-writer Zach Carter, Garcia also explores The Creature as one spiritually tied to not only its woodland surrounds but also a specifically human trait - empathy.

Carla (Krystal Milli Valdes) and Dean (Ernesto Reyes) have made the tree-change and relocated to a quiet country cabin. There, he plans to write and she plans to raise their expectant child. Tragedy strikes and grief lowers Carla’s defences; soon, she finds herself drawn into the world of a local cult-like group of barefoot chanters and hairwavers who claim a bond with the local cryptid - a hairy humanoid called Schwaniti, or ‘stick native’, who spends its waking hours wandering the woods in what appears to be a contemplative state, until its inner ‘drooling monster’ is called upon.

Garcia and Carter play with the group dynamics of the cult to varying degrees of insight. Dean butts heads with charismatic leader Arlo (Jesse Tayeh), while Carla is wooed by the hippy-dippy charms of the optimistic Celeste (a particularly strong Isabelle Muthiah). But the group’s relationship with the Bush Beast remains ‘mystical’ at best, vaguely ill-defined at worst, unlike Joe Dante’s 1981 werewolf classic The Howling, which found satire and scares in aligning new-age group-think with old-school horror tropes.

The narrative finds its surest footing in slow-boiling the bond between Carla, shattered after the loss of her unborn child, and the Sasquatch. The third act plays out with a satisfyingly ambiguous take on the maternal bond that unites woman and beast. The final frames put into perspective the corporeal ties that bind us all as animals, over the conjured fairytales of the cult’s organised and, ultimately, false faith. 

Summoning the Spirit does what it needs to as a creature feature to satiate monster-movie fans, yet also finds an emotional resonance likely to take many viewers here for genre thrills by surprise.

AVARICE

Stars: Gillian Alexy, Luke Ford, Nick Atkinson, Ryan Panizza, Alexandra Nell, Alexander Fleri, Tom O’Sullivan, Campbell Greenock, Priscilla-Anne Jacob and Téa Heathcote-Marks.
Writers: Adam Enslow , Dane Millerd, Andrew Slattery and John V. Soto.
Director: John V. Soto

Rating: ★ ★ ★

A rocky marriage finds some stabilising shared goals when faced with a brutal home invasion plot in John V. Soto’s slick, enjoyably compelling action/thriller, Avarice. The latest punchy piece of exportable genre entertainment from the Perth-based director delivers on the promise of his pics to date (The Gateway, 2018; The Reckoning, 2014; Needle, 2010); films that don’t reinvent the wheel but that do spin it with skill and energy.

A terrific Gillian Alexy stars as Kate, a top-tier archer with eyes on competition glory but who is also struggling to keep her marriage together. Similarly work focussed, her partner Ash (Luke Ford) is finding himself increasingly sidelined as Kate focusses on athletic goals, a disconnect that teen daughter Sarah (Téa Heathcote-Marks) is beginning to rebel against. Husband and wife decide that a weekend in their upmarket bushland retreat will perhaps positively refocus the family dynamic.

That begins to seem unlikely as a group of elite mercenaries seize control of the home with eyes on Ash’s hefty bank balance. Developments get very Die Hard-y, with Ash umming-and-ahhing about the codes that will complete the transfer, while Kate dons her trusty bow-and-arrow and begins whittling down the invader’s numbers. There are further twists in the narrative’s third act that will placate fans of the single-setting thriller, with Soto also channelling such influences as David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002) and Luis Mandoki’s underseen thriller Trapped (2002), with Charlize Theron.

The bad guys/girl ensemble are an attractively mean-spirited bunch, with Alexandra Nell and Ryan Panizza in particular upping the stakes through their snarling menace alone. Web nerds may get a bit giggly over the apparent ease with which a multi-million dollar account is accessed, but it isn't the first thriller to cut tech corners. The moments that Soto and his pro team of contributors make work - solid character acting, pacy action moments and arrow-on-antagonist payback - make Avarice another mid-budget milestone for the filmmaker.