WETLANDS

Stars: Carla Juri, Christopher Letkowski, Marlen Kruse, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg and Edgar Selge.
Writers: Claus Falkenberg, David Wnendt and Sabine Pochhammer; based on the novel by Charlotte Roche.
Director: David Wnendt

Rating: 4/5

John Hughes meets John Waters in David Wnendt’s sick, stylish adaptation of Charlotte Roche’s corporeal coming-of-age novel, Wetlands. From the star-making central turn by Carla Juri to its stomach-turning portrayal of all that our bodies have to offer, this dizzying, delightful and thoroughly disgusting romp amps up the novel’s rebellious angst and paints those YA years as ones of ‘personal discovery’, in every sense of the term.

Wetlands is not the first film to explore those first sticky fumblings of teenage sexuality, but few have set the stage with a CGI-animated sequence that takes the audience inside a mystical world created by wiping one’s bare nether regions on a public toilet seat. It is an act that stems from defiance, of course; Helen (Juri) is a child of divorce, raised by an unstable mother (Meret Becker) with germaphobic leanings and a distracted father (Axel Milberg) of retarded emotional development.

Helen is hitting her strides as a late teen sexual being and loving every minute of it. She explores herself with all types of fruit and vegetables (ginger is a definite no); randomly indulges in oral sex with strangers, both giving and receiving; enjoys an ambiguously flirty relationship with her bff, Corinna (Marlen Kruse); and, finds fascination in the fluids and feelings that passion produces.

Things go horribly wrong for both Helen and the audience when she nicks her rectum while shaving, resulting in an anal fissure that puts her in hospital. This allows her time to dream of bringing her parents back together, enjoy a blossoming romance with a young nurse (Christoph Letkowski) and ponder a moment from her childhood that she has blocked out over time.

Having explored the heightened, hormone-filled existence of young women from a racially-charged social perspective in 2011’s Combat Girls, Wnendt undertakes a more personal but no less confronting journey in Wetlands. The casting of his extraordinary lead actor aside, the director’s most important contribution is the tone he achieves; lightly comical yet tinged deeply affecting humanism, he is able to portray some truly grotesque acts yet filters them through the playful, inquisitive focus of his protagonist. The boundaries will be pushed too far for some (the ‘pizza’ sequence; the near-fatal lengths to which Helen goes to stay in hospital), but the bravado and sweetness that Carla Juri brings to the role infuses the entire film; evoking the charisma and vulnerability of Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts in their heyday, she is an A-list star of the future.

Ultimately a winning mix of the traditional ‘teen tribulations’ pic and the edgy, fearless mindset of underground cinema (one wag at the screening attended by SCREEN-SPACE called it, “Sixteen Candles meets Trainspotting”), Wnendt’s Wetland is an altogether more buoyant romp than Roche’s book ever was. Key elements of the bestseller have been pared back on-screen (the complexities of Helen’s relationship with the African man who shaves her; the symbolism of her obsession with avocado seeds), allowing the film to construct both a very real central figure and a vivid cinematic heroine for her generation.

Wetlands will screen as the Closing Night film at the 2014 Sydney Underground Film Festival. Full details at the event website here.

ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: THE WILD UNTOLD STORY OF CANNON FILMS

Featuring: Michael Dudikoff, Lucinda Dickey, Richard Chamberlain, Catherine Mary Stewart, Cassandra Petersen, Robert Forster, Bo Derek, Alex Winter, Sybil Danning, Tobe Hooper, Adolfo Quinones (aka, Shabba-Doo), Sam Firstenberg and Gary Goddard.
Writer/director: Mark Hartley.

Screening at Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday August 2 and Tuesday August 12. 

Rating: 4/5

Having chronicled Australia’s unhinged exploitation era in 2008’s Not Quite Hollywood and exposed the madness that was The Philippines film sector with 2010’s Machete Maidens Unleashed!, documentarian Mark Hartley now casts his highly-informed fanboy eye over Israeli-born cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and their renegade 80s operation, Cannon Films, for his latest, long-in-gestation work, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

Hartley’s films play like wildly enthusiastic thesis submissions from the ultimate student of exploitation cinema. Suitably, the Australian director’s latest reveals a rich vein of excess and chutzpah that paints a picture of old-school operators steeped in shameless B-movie showmanship. More importantly, he also captures two individuals whose love for the cinema of old Hollywood fuelled their ruthless business acumen and boisterous egotism (perhaps explaining the presence of alpha-male moneymen James Packer and Brett Ratner, both on board as producers).

Golan and Globus emerged from an Israeli production community with a great deal of commercial credibility; their 1978 lowbrow teen romp, Lemon Popsicle, had become a domestic blockbuster and the pair became flush with cash. The more senior Golan had stars in his eyes and set about acquiring floundering outfit The Cannon Group, with an eye towards conquering the US marketplace and taking the world by storm.

Hartley’s parade of willing actors, executives and colleagues represents a major coup for the production (the likely contributing factor for the very long period between its inception and MIFF 2014 premiere). Each recall the heady days of Cannon Films ascendency, reminiscing with a mix of face-palming disbelief and warm-hearted sentiment, accompanied by a myriad of clips. Generation X-ers who spent weekends paying overpriced rental rates to watch Cannon ‘stars’ such as Lucinda Dickey, Michael Dudikoff and Catherine Mary Stewart will inevitably feel the glow of sentimental warmth upon seeing their aging heroes; serious film buffs will warm more to the likes of Franco Zeffirelli and Barbet Schroeder, who contributed some of Cannon’s more credentialed works (1986’s Otello and 1987’s Barfly, respectively).

Befitting a glimpse inside the ruthless world of B-movie maneuverings, there is some snark dished out to celebs who refused to be involved (in particular, a brash, young starlet named Sharon Stone) and on those who good-naturedly appeared on camera (Death Wish series director, the late Michael Winner, who acknowledges his occasionally prickly take on creative control). Largely anti-hagiographic, Hartley also rakes his subjects over the coals; in one hilarious montage, they are labelled all manner of insulting terms (both Golan and Globus refused to appear in the film, instead authorising their own bio doco, The Go-Go Boys).   

The film often focuses on Menahem Golan’s superb up-selling of dubious elements (the sad rehashing of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish franchise; the infamous Superman IV debacle; the pointless insertion of T&A) and the subsequent box-office fortunes. This approach largely sidelines the role that the VHS boom played in the company’s bottom line. Presumably, the global impact of the home video craze is a subject best saved for its own doco, but Hartley’s decision to focus on anecdotal making-of memories and “What was I thinking?” mock-remorse robs his film of some important contextual information.

Nevertheless, Electric Boogaloo (after Cannon’s famously misguided 1984 break-dancing sequel, although for no discernible reason) is an undeniably fun, insider look at the business of show. Mark Hartley’s factual films are a passionate collector’s take on the obsessive drive to be creative; whether it be low-budget Oz-ploitation practitioners, the insane fearlessness of Pinoy production methods or the battering-ram ambition of two Israeli showmen, the Australian director understands their motivation and affords them the respect and affection they deserve…and then some.  

(Note: The version reviewed was awaiting some final post-production elements. Due consideration has been given to its incomplete status).

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, John C Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio Del Toro and Laura Haddock; featuring the voices of Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper.
Writers: James Gunn and Nicole Perlman; based on the comic book by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.
Director: James Gunn. 

Rating: 4/5 

It never soars to the wildly subversive comic-book craziness that he conjured in 2010’s cult gem Super, but director James Gunn’s vividly idiosyncratic spin on Marvel’s renegade misfits, Guardians of the Galaxy, certainly represents a bracingly fizzy cinematic blast to the increasingly formulaic 'summer superhero' format.

Given the entire budgets of his past efforts amount to a week of craft services on a tentpole franchise starter of this scale, Gunn doesn’t forego his trademark eccentricity and engagingly off-kilter grasp of character to over-indulge his expanded canvas. Instead, he backs his established strengths while also revealing an artist's eye for colour and scale, ensuring his first mega-budgeted work is a beautiful looking film. The space-scapes and interplanetary worlds he creates and the menagerie of alien types that people them are truly wondrous at times.

In sublime creative synch with fellow scripter Nicole Perlman, Gunn bravely kicks off his blockbuster debut with a surprisingly downbeat prologue, introducing our hero, Peter Quill, as a boy experiencing the death of his cancer-riddled mother in the early 1980s. As he runs crying into the foggy night, an alien spacecraft nabs him, setting in motion a life spent drifting amongst the stars, forging a meagre living as a collector of tradable junk.

This adult Quill, aka self-proclaimed ‘Starlord’, is played with raffish charm by Chris Pratt, perfectly embodying the archetypal ‘reluctant hero’. Caring for very little except the mix-tape of classic rock tunes his mother made for him (in what is surely the best use of ‘classic rock’ oldies since The Big Chill), Quill is suddenly thrust into importance when he finds an elaborate orb that contains an ‘Infinity Stone’, an all-powerful energy source that can lay waste entire planets and that every villainous dictator in the galaxy wants.

Gunn’s first act deftly establishes the galactic landscape and the character conflict, although there were some mutterings at the screening attended by Screen-Space that this early section was too convoluted, the political evil-doings that define the conflict dragged down the first half. Not so for this reviewer, as the detail pays off in character empathy and tangible tension as the film progresses.

The Guardians coalesce organically, their individual agendas and dark personalities entirely believable. It is to script’s credit that such empathy is found in this ragtag bunch of losers, given they include an entirely CGI-crafted giant tree/biped hybrid called Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel); a fiery-tempered Raccoon-like experiment gone wrong named Rocket (Bradley Cooper, in a great voice-over performance); Drax, a mountain of man-muscle out for vengeance (MMA legend Dave Bautista); and, the green-skinned warrior-woman Gamora (the supremely physical and superbly photogenic Zoe Saldana). Their nemesis are just as richly observed, key amongst them Michael Rooker’s Yondu (one of the original Guardians in the early print editions, though no such reference is made here), Lee Pace’s Ronan the Accuser and Karen Gillan’s Nebula, whose lithe figure and striking blue skin tone is set to dominate the cosplay universe in the years ahead.  

Lumbering this jaunty, funny, irreverent work with the Marvel label should ensure a solid opening weekend, but truth be told the film’s weakest elements are those that bind it to the template the comic giant demands of its adaptations. Gunn works wonders with a thrilling effects-heavy finale, but the carnage too closely resembles the final frames of The Avengers, Captain America: Winter Soldier and some parts of the Thor movies; it is one of the few moments in Gunn’s otherwise wonderfully original vision when audiences may utter, “Yeah, seen that before.” The studio’s demands that franchise starters have sequel-ready plot devices also dictate that characters are established here (amongst them, Benicio Del Toro’s The Collector and Josh Brolin’s barely glimpsed Thanos) to clearly serve and only fully develop in later instalments.

The counter to such claims is that those concessions are a small price to pay to allow James Gunn and his creative team access to Guardians of the Galaxy lore. It seems an ideal melding of filmmaker and material, with low-budget genre graduate Gunn (watch for a cameo by mentor and Troma Studios founder, Lloyd Kaufman) bringing all his cool-kid confidence, pop-culture savvy and fan-boy enthusiasm to his debut in the big league.  

ROAD TO PALOMA

Stars: Jason Momoa, Robert Homer Mollohan, Wes Studi, Lisa Bonet, Sarah Shahi, Michael Raymond-James, Chris Browning, Timothy V Murphy and Steve Reevis.
Writers: Jason Momoa, Robert Homer Mollohand and Jonathan Hirschbein.
Director: Jason Momoa.

Rating: 3/5

Putting the reworked Conan flop behind him and eagerly expanding on his muscle-defined personality in Game of Thrones, Hawaiian he-man Jason Momoa, his visage recalling at times that of a mid-career Steven Seagal, carries just about all his broad shoulders can muster in the dusty desert melodrama, Road to Paloma.

As noble renegade/wanted man Robert Wolf, Momoa cuts a mythic figure against the desert landscape, perpetually drenched in that ‘magic hour’ glow that cinematographers like feature debutant Brian Andrew Mendoza adore. DOP is about the only role Momoa doesn’t take credit for in this low-budget but slickly-produced B-movie, which represents the actor’s feature directing debut as well as first-up producer and screenwriter credits.

Wolf is on the run having beaten a man to death who raped his mother (he’s the hero, remember.) Life as a fugitive seems to suit the bike ridin’, tough-but-tender Mojave tribe decendent, who slips in and out of bars, stripjoints, diners and family get-togethers with ease. He frequents the home of his policeman father Numay (Wes Studi) on occasion. A chance meeting with troublemaking muso Cash (co-writer Robert Homer Holloman) sets in motion an open road friendship that is a bit hard to swallow at times. Why is Wolf pairing off with this unpredictably violent loser while trying to maintain a low profile?

Having taken a few sexy moments to bed real-life spouse Lisa Bonet’s hippy chick and to act as rescuer of a rape victim, Wolf makes tracks to the home of his sister Eva (Sarah Shahi, pleasingly natural) to collect his mom’s ashes and make for the sacred mountain grounds. All this while, unhinged federal agent Williams (a seething Timothy V Murphy, clearly the movie’s true villain) and local lawman Schaeffer (Chris Browning, offering some nice character-based comedy just when the production needs it) are closing the net on our unsuspecting anti-hero.

As calmly cool and immensely likable as Momoa plays Wolf, there’s an underlying thematic current that favours vigilantism and revels in the ‘blood, booze and bikes’ alpha-male mentality. Road to Paloma is a sort of ‘reverse Easy Rider’, the film in which counter-culture dropouts biked the countryside in the face of conservatism; here, the good guy is the all-American leather-clad biker, rightfully dishing out his own form of justice in defiance of the liberal laws of the land.

Which may be over-reading what is ultimately a muscle-flexing but rather meandering road movie in search of a purpose; some mutterings about the unfair nature of the current legal system don’t really amount to much. But director Momoa progresses through the episodic plot with confident skill, although he may have had a few words with his leading man about easing back on the Rock-like charm (Wolf is murderer on the run, after all).

For a vanity project designed to broaden the industry’s perception of this TV season’s favourite hunk, Road to Paloma makes for a watchable, workmanlike, intermittently convincing and compelling western-noir potboiler.

GIRL RISING

Featuring the voices of: Cate Blanchett, Priyanka Chopra, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, Selma Hayek, Alicia Keys, Chloe Grace Moretz, Freida Pinto, Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington and Liam Neeson.
Writers: Marie Arana (Peru), Doreen Baingana (Uganda), Edwige Dantical (Haiti), Mona Eltahawy (Egypt), Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone), Zarghuna Kargar (Afghanistan), Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia), Sooni Taraporevala (India), Manjushree Thapa (Nepal) and Loung Ung (Cambodia).
Director: Richard Robbins.

Rating: 5/5

Advocacy documentaries tread a troublesome path for many. The causes and calls to action they represent are always worthy and very few doubt the dedicated passion needed to bring ‘the message’ to the masses. But they can also slip into preachy tirades; their cinematic form is consumed by the filmmaker’s intent, and audience belief in the cause is muted by a heavy-handed film experience.

Director Richard Robbins, whose keen eye for factual film narrative earned him DGA and Oscar nominations for 2007’s Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, tackles the shameful practice of gender-based abuse and intolerance in his artful, achingly moving work, Girl Rising. Specifically, this highly literate yet effortlessly engaging film examines social practices across vast cultures that deny education and freedom of speech to young women.

The film recounts the true stories of nine girls, whose journeys differ in detail but who have all experienced oppression and denial of formal learning. In a bold move that expanded the scope and greatness of the project, Robbins sourced female writers from each of the territories and asked them to represent the girl’s story in words rich in their understanding of the native culture.

Underlining Robbins’ ambitious vision was the securing of A-list stars from six different countries (among them Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Prianka Chopra and Chloe Grace Moretz) to narrate each episode. The richness and compassionate readings quickly negate any concern that their involvement is ‘stunt casting’; the emotion is plainly evident in several of the recitals. Additionally, Liam Neeson provides bridging dialogue for scenes that present startling facts (beautifully handled by young women bearing large cards and choreographed lovingly) about the impact upon communities when girls are denied the right to learn and contribute.

Girl Rising is not an exercise in ‘man-bashing’, as some may fear. Where the role of men culturally dictate the subjugation of girls, it is presented as fact, but more often the film identifies the great benefits strong men can play in helping their society break free from out-dated, often brutal traditions.

There is an understated evenness and precise clarity employed Robbins and the production’s ‘guest directors’ Ramaa Mosely (Afghanistan), Chris Wilcha (Nepal) and Jenny Lee and Gareth Smith (Sierra Leone). Their film celebrates the strength, intellect and spiritual beauty of women, convincing its audience with the gentlest but firmest of hands how significant a resource for positive change exists yet is too often denied our world.

‘Advocacy Cinema’ has found a new, strong standard-bearer in Girl Rising; one hopes it drives the forceful change needed in our global community as powerfully as it represents a creative shift in the genre. 

For further information on the Girl Rising movement, visit the official website.

WILLOW CREEK

Stars: Alexie Gilmore, Bryce Johnson, Peter Jason and Tom Yamarone.
Writer/director: Bobcat Goldthwait 

Rating: 3.5/5

Having displayed a stylish eye and intellectual voice with his fierce filmic tirades on America’s ugly obsession with fame, parental dysfunction and sexual peccadillos, Bobcat Goldthwait has earned the right to get a little bit silly with his latest film, the Bigfoot-hunting/found-footage romp Willow Creek.

But even in steering away from issue-based social satires to giggly genre thriller, Goldthwait exhibits a technical skill and ease with relationship politics that belies the material. The ex-Police Academy funnyman has emerged as one of the most unique and interesting contemporary independent filmmakers, thanks to his skill with such edgy material as God Bless America (2011), World’s Greatest Dad (2009) and Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006). One senses that Goldthwait penned the Willow Creek script not so much to indulge in genre elements (which he handles with a pro’s touch) but more to explore the emotional intimacy between the leads, which ultimately result in bracingly effective scares.

Those leads are the wonderful Alexie Gilmore as the sharply observant, lovely every-girl archetype, Kelly and Bryce Johnson as Jim, a wound-up boy-man all giddy over his first serious foray into Sasquatch forest. Determined to revisit the site at Bluff Creek in northern California where Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin captured ‘that’ footage of an alleged bigfoot on October 20, 1967, Jim has dragged Kelly along to share in the experience, despite being fully aware of her utter disbelief regarding all things mythical in the woods. Goldthwait captures their fun, friendly banter and sweet, sexy chemistry (plus a hint of big-city arrogance) with a deft touch; both actors (longtime collaborators with the director) are entirely engaging and endearing.

After the obligatory scenes found in this type of wilderness thriller (eccentric locals, including a memorable hillbilly singer/songwriter, warn them away; tough-guy woodsman threatens them), Jim and Kelly find themselves deep in thick terrain and growing increasingly ill at ease with their surroundings. The slow-burn storytelling will frustrate gorehounds after blood and guts action but Goldthwait rewards his audience with a gripping 19-minute, single-take night time sequence that is gleefully nerve-shredding. The pair stumbles through another day, disoriented and frightened, until another night descends…

Goldthwait has yet to have a directing career backslide, so Willow Creek does not represent the energising found-footage jolt that The Bay did for Barry Levinson or sxtape did for Bernard Rose. But the film does confirm that in the hands of a skilful filmmaker, the much-maligned genre still has a great deal to offer. Comparisons are unavoidable to the grand-pappy of backwoods handheld mayhem, The Blair Witch Project, but Goldthwait brings enough inventive freshness and convincing terror to the format for Willow Creek to stand on its own two (big)feet. 

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Jack Reynor, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Titus Welliver, Sophia Myles, TJ Miller, Thomas Lennon and Bingbing Li.
Writer: Ehren Kruger.
Director: Michael Bay.

Rating: 0.5/5

No one expected director Michael Bay and the shareholders at Paramount Pictures to expand the art of cinema when they okayed a fourth Transformers film; we all get that these films only exist to drive quarterly earnings and fuel the ‘business’ of showbusiness. But nor was anyone envisioning just how insultingly low the creative team were willing to stoop to grind out their product. In ‘fast-food cinema’ terms, Transformers: Age of Extinction equates to one of those beef/bacon/cheese/beef monstrosities; those who dream it up know how horrible it is, but they also know everyone will want to try it for a couple of weeks.

The resurrection of Optimus Prime by good ol’ boy junk merchant Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg, going through the everyman-hero schtick with a couldn’t-care-less ambivalence) is at the heart…no, wrong word…centre of the narrative. After the destruction of Chicago in the last (and, up until now, worst) Transformers epic, Prime has hidden as a rust-bucket rig in an abandoned picture palace. This setting allows Bay and writer Ehren Kruger (who wrote two good movies over a decade ago – Arlington Road and The Ring – before descending into Hollywood hackdom) the films only flourish of ironic ‘wit’ – the crotchety old gent theatre owner (great character actor Richard Riehle, wasted here) complains that all they make sequels and remakes nowadays.

Yeager, with his dimwitted surfer dude stereotype offsider Lucas (TJ Miller) cracking wise by his side, get the truck back to the family homestead and begin the repair work to bring the Transformer hero back to life (Yeager is an amateur robotics expert, you see). But that is an illegal act, as all alien robots have been deemed enemies of the state, and soon black-suited, comically overstated ‘federal agents’ are tearing up the farm to find Prime.

The first act set-up is pure idiocy, with Yeager painted in very broad brush strokes as the square-jawed, blue-state archetype, every shot of him bathed in the dusk/dawn glow of sunlit heartland purity, a gently unfurling American flag always at the edge of frame. Yet Yeager is so relentlessly dimwitted and lacking in self- awareness, it becomes unclear as to whether the production is celebrating or mocking traditional American values.

However, the bewildering first act is Shakespearean compared to an extended mid-section which may represent the worst second act in scriptwriting history. Stanley Tucci, reprising his shrill paycheque performance from previous instalments, and Kelsey Grammar amp up the villainy as techno-entrepreneurs who have adapted the Transformer mechanics into new weaponry behind the government’s back (the current administration is stoopid, get it?) Wahlberg, his tarty-Barbie Doll daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz, Bay’s latest shameful fanboy fantasy take on womanhood) and her Irish (?) boyfriend, Shane (Jack Reynor) run and shoot and yell a lot, with no discernible impact on the plot for over an hour. From that point on, Transformers Age of Extinction is an unforgivably dull showreel of mindless carnage and mass destruction coupled with an extraordinary disregard for time, place, life, logic, physics…everything, in fact, but its own boorish, bombastic existence.

Other elements that grate include a new level of grotesque product placement (I know, the whole film is ‘toy brand product placement’, but…really, Bud Light?); the perpetuating of ‘Are we still doing this?’ stereotypes, mostly racial (all Asians know martial arts) and gender specific (the only women to make it in the corporate world are 20-something models in mini-skirts); and, blue-screen effects work that looks amateurish for a 2014 film budgeted at a stomach-turning US$165million.   

Bay has bludgeoned a throne for himself in the Hollywood upper echelon that has allowed for final cut on a series of insanely over-priced sequels. Above all other Hollywood by-products, these clunking mechanical behemoths need a committee of bureaucrats to keep egos like Bay’s in check. That his latest effort runs to 165 incoherent minutes is arrogant self-indulgence of the highest order and indicative of a hubris that will ultimately lead to an industry’s equally immense fall from grace.

JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM: SNAPSHOT REVIEWS OF THE REVELATION DOCOS

The documentary feature strand at the 2014 Revelation Perth International Film Festival makes for a daunting viewing schedule. Each of the 20 films represents a unique vision of life from every corner of the globe. With thanks to the festival organisers, SCREEN-SPACE has seen several of the works programmed and offer our thoughts, however brief, on the RevFest docos that explore the world we live in today…

HAPPINESS (Dir: Thomas Balmes; Finland/France/Bhutan; 80 mins; Trailer)
Having captivated global audiences with his 2010 hit, Babies, French filmmaker Thomas Balmes delves deeper into the harsh existence and insurmountable spirit of children in Happiness. His focus is the charismatic Peyangki (pictured, above), an eight year-old boy sent to a monastery by a tough mother at precisely the moment his homeland, the mountainous monarchy of Bhutan, gets television and the internet. Breathtaking photography counterbalances the intense intimacy of Balmes’ subject; the story is about the boy, but the boy’s story encompasses his village life and the changing face of an ancient culture. 
Rating: 4/5

TINY: A STORY ABOUT LIVING SMALL (Dirs: Christopher Smith, Merete Mueller; USA; 66 mins; Trailer)
The ‘tiny house movement’ is leading the charge to downsive mankind’s centuries-old footprint. Chris Smith and Merete Mueller (pictured, right) chronicle their own efforts to construct a mobile home of barely 120 square-feet, yet which affords them the comforts of ‘MacMansion’-style living. The everyday characters driving the momentum to smaller, smarter dwellings populate this sweet, down-home slice of the new Americana; the ‘message moments’ are tempered by the personal story of Smith and Mueller, whose construction frustrations and romantic maturation give the film a compelling warmth.
Rating: 3.5/5

HARLEM STREET SINGER (Dirs: Trevor Laurence, Simeon Hunter; USA; 76 mins; Trailer)
Directors Trevor Laurence and Simeon Hunter recount the remarkable story of The Reverend Gary Davis, a blind southern black man who rose from tobacco warehouse busker to become one of the influential American guitarists of the 1960s. His unmistakable, incomparable blues/folk pickin’ made him hero to the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary, The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, not too mention the young boys who heard him play and sat at his feet to learn his craft. Though the film never skimps over Davis’ boozing and womanizing, Harlem Street Singer emerges a grand celebration of a man who redefined an artform.
Rating: 4/5

LED ZEPPELIN PLAYED HERE (Dir: Jeff Krulik; USA; 80 mins; Trailer)
Underground legend Jeff Krulik (pictured, right), that great gonzo archivist of America eccentricity (Heavy Metal Parking Lot; Ernest Borgnine on the Bus; I Created Lancelot Link), tackles the mystery surrounding the alleged appearance of supergroup Led Zeppelin at the nondescript Wheaton Youth Hall, Maryland, in the chilly winter of 1969. Krulik’s fluid, playful and engaging work is a terrific piece of detective storytelling, as well as a great Modern Music History 101 lesson; a vivid collection of aging promoters, record company execs, small-town fans and grey-haired musos, Led Zeppelin Played Here captures the early days of the rock music industry with a giddy glee.
Rating: 4.5/5

THE MAN WHOSE MIND EXPLODED (Dir: Toby Amies; UK; 77 mins; Trailer, below)
Drako Oho Zarhazar modelled for Salvador Dali, appeared in the films of Derek Jarman and led a wildly hedonistic lifestyle that made him the toast of the progressive thinking community. But by 2012, Zarhazar lives the hoarder’s life in a cramped flat in Brighton, England, his slowly disintegrating mind stimulated by hardcore pornography, a scattershot memory and self-abuse. Director Toby Amies befriended the eccentric and captured their interactions in a series of increasingly harrowing, intimate moments. The heartbreaking story of an unique friendship; bring tissues.
Rating: 4/5

FREELOAD (Dir: Daniel T Skaggs; USA; 65 mins; Trailer)
Ten minutes into Daniel T Skaggs raggedy, ‘hobo-hemian’ odyssey, it is tough to find much love for the coarse, self-focussed social dropouts who bum rides on America’s unsuspecting freight rail network. But their brattish arrogance and ‘f**k you’ posturing is peeled back by a filmmaker determined to uncover the truth behind the tattoos and chains; these kids are smart, determined, independent and legitimately at odds with society expectations. A love letter to the rebellious spirit, Freeload is also a bittersweet account of alienation and finding a sense of family while living a boxcar lifestyle.
Rating: 3.5/5

FAITH CONNECTIONS (Dir: Pan Nalin; India/France; 115 mins; Trailer)
The Kumbh Mela is the largest socio-religious gathering on the planet, an event that sees 100 million Hindu pilgrims travel to the junction of three spiritual waterways in Allahabad, India. Pan Nalin (Samsara, 2001) presents an epic yet intimate account of lives that both define and are influenced by the sea of humanity around them. Though unwieldy and overlong, Faith Connections is nevertheless a remarkably insightful film, full of stunning images and imbued with a strong sense of family and personal growth.
Rating: 3.5/5

WEB JUNKIE (Dirs: Hilla Medalia, Shosh Shlam; Israel/USA; 75 mins; Trailer)
The foreboding tagline ‘How do you de-programme a teenager?’ is explored with stark intensity in Web Junkie, a glimpse inside the medical/military machine that is weening Chinese teenagers off their addiction to online gaming. Sharing directing duties with respected documentarian Hilla Medalia is Shosh Shlam, who explored institutionalized mental health care for Holocaust survivors in her award-winning Last Journey to Silence in 2003. Their free form, peak-around-corners style deprives the film of structure but ensures moments of often brutal honesty.
Rating: 3.5/5 

DEAD SNOW: RED VS DEAD (Død Snø 2)

Stars: Vegar Hoel, Orjan Gamst, Martin Starr, Jocelyn DeBoer, Ingrid Hass, Stig Frode Henriksen, Hallvard Holmen, Kristoffer Joner, Amrita Acharia and Derek Mears.
Writers: Tommy Wirkola, Stig Frode Henriksen and Vegar Hoel.
Director: Tommy Wirkola.

Rating: 3/5

Though the blood (and intestines and spinal columns) of the innocent and the undead alike flow just as freely as five years ago, returning director Tommy Wirkola favours the jocular over the jugular in the opportunistic follow-up to his surprise 2009 hit, Dead Snow (aka Død Snø).

The fresh plot follows on from the final moments of the first film, as Martin (Vegar Hoel), the only surviving cast member, flees the clutches of the dentally-challenged zom-commandant, Herzog (Orjan Gamst). But Herzog’s singularly-focussed undead mind recalls a mission to seize the small but strategic coastal town in which Martin is recuperating.

In a post-op haze, Martin learns that an arm has been reattached to his bloody elbow stump, albeit the wrong one; he is now the owner of Herzog’s evil limb, which has a bloodthirsty mind of its own (a further callback to Bruce Campbell’s Evil Dead hero Ash, who had to fight off his own possessed hand before upgrading to a chainsaw attachment).

In a flurry of nonsensical narrative developments that highlights the general ‘Looney Tunes’-level of logic to which Wirkola adheres, we meet a trio of US zombie-hunter nerds (Martin Starr, Ingrid Haas, Jocelyn DeBoer); an army of undead Russian soldiers who have their own score to settle with the Nazis; and, buffoonish small-town cops (including the droll and adorable Amrita Acharia) who take far too long to figure out what is going on.  

Returning to his Norwegian homeland after studio struggles on his US debut, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Wirkola takes full advantage of the increased funding afforded his Nazi-zombie sequel. He boldly attempts the same conceptual upsizing that Sam Raimi pulled off when he turned the no-budget cabin-in-the-woods splatter classics Evil Dead 1 & 2 into the time-travel undead-army goof-off, Army of Darkness.

But Raimi carried over the anarchic, inventive essence of the first instalments into his expanded version; Wirkola (co-scripting with his leading man and bit-player Stig Frode Henriksen, who co-wrote Dead Snow) merely applies the bigger-is-funnier approach, the downfall of a great many sequels. There are a lot of disparate elements at play, few of which are maximized; the ‘vengeful arm’ angle peters out and the American trio lack comic focus. Gruesome, mean-spirited gags involving the elderly and babes-in-prams don’t help generate much goodwill, either.

Wirkola is a skillful director; the production values are high and the gore effects good. But unlike the character-based comedy and genuine scares he generated on a miniscule budget first time around, the overall impact of his sequel is less than the sum of its bloody parts.

IMAGINE: LIFE SPENT ON THE EDGE

Featuring:
RIDERS SKI: Jeff Annetts, Sam Favret, Mickael Lamy, Wille Lindberg, Tim Swartz, Drew Tabke, Jeff Leger, Nate Siegler, Casey Wesley
SPEED RIDING: Ueli Kestenholz, Dominik Wicki, Florian Wicki 
SNOWBOARD: Matt Annetts 
SURF: Matahi Drollet, Keala Kennelly, Alain Riou, Hira Teriinatoofa 
WINGSUIT FLYING: Ludovic Woerth, Mathias Wyss 
KAYAK: Shannon Carroll, Mariann Seather, Katrina Van Wijk, Martina Wegman 
KITE SURF: Tetuatau Leverd, Manutea Monnier, Mitu Monteiro, Rony Svarc 
STAND-UP PADDLE: Patrice Chanzy, Aude Lionet-Chanfour.

Director: Thierry Donard

Rating: 4/5

The latest from Europe’s leading sports documentarian, Thierry Donard, is a soulful, contemplative vision that posits the extreme sportsperson as the modern keeper of life’s great truths. Imagine: Life Spent on the Edge may prove too earnestly reverential for those venturing indoors simply for ‘The Rush’, but Donard has crafted an inspiring work that defines a spiritual unity between the athlete, his environment and our search of fulfilment.

Donard, whose Nuit de la Glisse (Night of Skiing) series of films have chronicled athletes pushing their bodies and skills to breaking point, wields the new Go-Pro mini-digicam unit with stunning efficiency and clarity. The sports footage is immersive and, at times, giddying. Skiiers dropped onto mountaintops weave fearlessly down sheer mountain faces as waves of avalanche snow cascade around them; Tahitian surfers glide through the tubes of giant waves; kayakers plunge over Icelandic waterfalls. Genuinely jaw-dropping is the helmet-cam coverage of wingsuit experts Mathias Wyss and Ludovic Woerth, the pair pulling 4Gs as they hurtle past rock cliffs and snow plains.

But the director also invests in an inordinate amount of backstory to provide an intimacy to his subject’s exploits. Champion surfer Matahi Drollet is the focus of Donard’s camera in Tahiti, but moreso for his decision not to ride the Teahupoo break given he has a one month old son. Similarly, Keala Konnelly returns to the ocean that nearly tore her face off in a horrific spill, determined to conquer her demons. Snowboarder Matt Annetts (labelled as a 'soul rider') speaks at length about the support his family has afforded him, allowing him a life of self-discovery via his sport.

Imagine: Life Spent on the Edge dwells not only on the beauty of the sport but also on the value of life balance. This is not a film drenched in sponsor’s tags or glammed-up with the shallow by-products of the macho sports machine (there is nary a bikini-clad beach beauty in sight). What Thierry Donard captures are dedicated, mature individuals for whom an adrenalized existence focuses the mind on what is ultimately most important – integrity, loyalty, family and friendship.