CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP

Stars: Conan O’Brien, Andy Richter, Jeff Ross, Steve Kroft, Eddie Vedder, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jim Carrey, Jack White, Jack McBrayer, Jon Hamm, Kristen Schaal and Mike Sweeney.
Director: Rodman Flender.

Rating: 4/5

Having apprenticed his way through the early-dawn timeslot as he waited out his rightful position next-in-line for the Holy Grail of American television – host of NBC’s The Tonight Show – Conan O’Brien assumed the mantle...for seven lovely months. But when his predecessor Jay Leno wanted the hosting gig back after the failure of his 10.00pm variety show experiment, the brass called in O’Brien, cut him a big cheque and ushered him off the lot. Sure, it was more convoluted and all parties lawyered up, but the impact and outcome was the same; Conan O’Brien had been screwed and the showman was devastated.

As captured in Rodman Flender’s sad, insightful yet very funny documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, the Boston native, with his prodigious talent and towering red mane (he jokes he looks like Jimmy Neutron by way of Tilda Swinton), took his schtick on the road to battle the anger and depression that congealed within him following the brutal betrayal. Though it is essentially a performance piece filled with backstage insight, this compelling work refuses to skimp on the man’s motivations for getting back in touch with his people. He hates NBC; he hates Jay Leno (at one point, he imagines a telegram from Leno that asks, “What’s it like to have a soul?”). But O’Brien loves his audience; he loves performing. The film captures the exhaustive healing process he had to endure to emerge (relatively) cleansed.

Early scenes, many shot with O’Brien’s wife and family in their home as the concert tour comes into focus (caustically title ‘The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour’, mocking the conditions of his payout arrangement), portray a man struggling to keep hold of that spark that has driven his creativity to date. His humour has always been biting*, yet his genuine warmth has kept him onside with audiences; in 2010, Conan O’Brien is a bitter man and he struggles with concert content that he is determined to not let become a surrogate psych-session. He also finds the role of ‘celebrity’ challenging, with several scenes depicting just how annoyed he can become when the sacred seal of backstage privacy is broken.

The bitterness over his high-profile shafting never fully melts away (having arrived in an all-but deserted Eugene, Oregon for his first live gig, he wryly observes, “I should be talking to Barack Obama now, or playing guitar with Springsteen...”) but nor does the obvious affection for the die-hard fans who clearly adore him. Surrounded by a well-established professional circle (notably his committed if long-suffering PA Sona Movsesian and sidekick Andy Richter) and driven to provide a unique high-energy concert experience smothered in lashing of meta self-mocking, Conan O’Brien clearly both can’t and won’t stop.

*I became a fan after this monologue classic from Late Night, circa 2006: “News is that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt have broken up, mostly because one of them wanted to have kids. Same reason The Jackson Five broke up.”

HOUSOS VS AUTHORITY

Stars: Paul Fenech, Jason Davis, Elle Dawes, Kev Tuamata, Vanessa Davis, Kiri Schmitt, Angry Anderson, Garry Who and Barry Crocker.
Writer/Director: Paul Fenech.

Rating: 2/5

The word that comes to mind over the course of Paul Fenech’s Housos vs Authority is ‘relentless’. There are more specific adjectives that describe, in greater detail, particular elements of this big-screen adaptation of a TV show only a small but dedicated viewing audience tuned in for. But for now, let’s stick with ‘relentless’.

It is a film that, for every single second of its utterly over-stretched 108 minute running time, refuses to waste a single frame on stillness. Whether it might be for an anticipated laugh, a much-needed breath or a glimpse of warmth, Fenech’s frantic ode to white-trash Australia is one of the most…well, relentless films ever to assault a mainstream audience. And assault its audience, and just about every cow held sacred by middle-class Australia, this film most certainly does.

Fenech’s Franky, a brash, juiced-up boy-man who scores threesomes and outruns cops on a daily basis, agrees to take his posse of cartoonish, crass buffoons to Ayers Rock. Packed into an RV they have stolen from a local bikie gang (headed up by rock icon Angry Anderson), Franky’s crew consists of Islander idiot Kev (Kev Tuamata), Kev’s nympho girlfriend (Vanessa Davis) and Aussie roughheads Dazza (Jason ‘Jabba’ Davis) and Shazza (Elle Dawes). Dawes is the film’s rough diamond; underneath her vulgar facade, she takes Shazza on a (comparatively) strong emotional arc and, to her credit, somehow manages to engender audience empathy.   

There are no traditional 1-2-3 punchline set-ups in Fenech’s shock-&-awe approach to humour. Instead, you are expected to find laughs in quick cut-away shots of cops being beaten with rubber thongs, dwarf dope-dealers in souped-up wheelchairs, gangs of skeletal drug addicts who rip off anything not nailed down, the graffiti tagging of Uluru and the implication that Prime Minister Julia Gillard surfs internet-porn in her office.

None of these elements are inherently funny, but the writer/director hurls crudity and tactless imagery at his audience at such a breakneck pace, whether any of it sticks is irrelevant. One must assume that broad, big caricatures of just about every ethnicity (with particular attention paid to white Australians and their iconography) is what Fenech’s fanbase is after; in that regard, Housos vs Authority sticks to its guns with a veracity that can’t be discredited.

The mainstream media will (and has) gotten all uppity about the Fenech’s physical splat-stick  and reliance on expletives. But Bruce Beresford kicked off his career with the Barry McKenzie films; Housos vs Authority is not so far removed from those bastions of Ocker bad taste (Beresford’s leading man, Barry Crocker, makes a telling and well-judged cameo). Also, debate can rage on as to whether social satire that makes broad fun of class stereotypes is done out of respectful understanding or downright meanness; it is a stance I argue when downplaying the worth of The Castle or Kath and Kim.

Did I find Fenech’s foul-mouth assault on political correctness funny? Not really, and I’ve scored it accordingly. But it’ll play well to those that know and live the housing commission lifestyle and films that understand their target demographic are rare, so it is not without merit.

In a heartfelt gesture, the film dedicates itself to the memory of Australian enetertainment industry icon Ian Turpie, who starred alongside Fenech in the project's original small-screen incarnation.

SKYFALL

Stars: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Albert Finney and Javier Bardem.
Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan.
Director: Sam Mendes

Rating 4/5

The traditional pre-credit action sequence that lets the audience know that latest Bond adventure has begun also lets the audience know exactly what they can expect from Skyfall, the 23^rd instalment chronicling the adventures of Agent 007.

Walking into focus through the speckled darkness of an Istanbul apartment block, Daniel Craig’s MI6 super-agent stalks the killers of his colleagues, their corpses littering an apartment fragmented by light and splattered with blood. It is a scene that brings real world violence into the action-figure realm; Bond movies have been mostly bloodless affairs, despite much twisted villainy. The opening to Skyfall feels real; the last gasp of a dying agent called Ronson is burned into both Bond’s and the audience’s psyche.

Soon, though, Bond is out into the harsh light of the Turkish day and hurtling along its streets in a car/motorcycle chase that at different intervals skims along rooftops, involves a grader and ends in a fistfight atop a speeding train. The sequence is preposterous but wholly involving and carries with it a vengeful, purposeful mean streak. Welcome to Bond 2012.

Director Sam Mendes brings a great deal of thematically dark psychology to his first foray into Bond-age. The plot spins on a computer hard-drive MacGuffin but rarely has a film-maker seemed so clearly disinterested in his film’s central device. Instead, Mendes and scripters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan ruminate on the ageing relevance, mental struggle and physical decrepitude of their central character and the doddering image of the organisation for whom he provides secret service.

The film’s exploration of the value of wisdom over muscle is further enhanced by the central role that Dame Judi Dench’s ‘M’ and, late in film, Albert Finney’s ‘Kincade’ contribute; if the film hits the box-office heights expected of it, two septuagenarians may emerge as the year’s biggest action heroes.  As Bond, Craig is literally reborn onscreen as a damaged-model 007 yet one who must face a world of futuristic wonder (as captured in an incredibly vivid sequence set in Shanghai) and a villain steeped in technological wizardry.

Ah, the villain. His name is Silva and he is played by Javier Bardem (only the second Oscar winner to do play a Bond baddie, A View to a Kill’s similarly blonde-coiffed Christopher Walken being the other). Like Bond’s first-reel entrance, Silva is brought into focus from deep in the frame but, unlike 007’s silent but deadly prowling, he does so while mouthing one of the great bad-guy monologues. Bardem has created a truly seething and repulsive adversary (something missing from the Craig-era instalments to date), his motivations and methods pathological and convincingly frightening.

Mendes has crafted a Bond film that succeeds on a fullness of fresh detail and vision while still honouring the mythology and chronology of the series. The reinvention of the iconic ‘Q’ character as Ben Whishaw’s hipster-nerd tech-geek could have gone very bad; of course the producers are pandering to the next generation of Bond fans by skewing this character younger, but it is done with wit and balance.

So too the staging of the action sequences, which pulsate with modern-movie energy yet take their inspiration from classic-movie set-ups; a teeth-rattling shoot-out at a parliamentary hearing in the middle of London could have come from any number of great bar-room gunfights from the cinema of the wild west. A bulky mid-section and a what seems like a few too many endings means that Skyfall probably isn’t The Greatest Bond Film Ever, but it is certainly the pick of the modern era incarnations (Goldeneye onwards).

Where it does excel is in the deepening of the man behind the myth. The plot leads to a confrontation back where it all began; not the legend of Bond the agent but the emotional complexity of James the boy. If Skyfall takes its action cues from the Bourne movies and the last Mission Impossible film, it mirrors that other great Brit-lit hero, Harry Potter, in it’s lead character’s arc. Parental figures and familial legacy are central to the importance and impact of Sam Mendes’ story and Ian Fleming’s stylish protagonist becomes a more real but no less exciting figure because of it.

LE GUETTEUR (THE LOOKOUT)

Stars: Daniel Auteuil, Mathieu Kassovitz, Olivier Gourmet, Nicolas Briançon, Francis Renaud, Luca Argentero, Arly Jover and Violante Placido.
Writers: Denis Brusseaux and Cédric Melon.
Director: Michele Placido.

Rating: 2.5/5

The slickly commercial aesthetic that Italian director Michele Placido (The Caiman; Tulpa) applies to his French crime thriller The Lookout helps to soothe the affect of some creaky first-act clichés and rather loopy third-act developments.  

Topped and tailed by pulsating action and featuring a charismatic turn by Mathieu Kassovitz, scriptwriters Denis Brusseaux and Cédric Melon certainly can’t be accused of leaving anything on the table in their telling of a story that goes to the brink of absurdity on more than one occasion. The film generally keeps audiences on side with a flair for the grand set-piece and a narrative momentum that suggests with each increasingly nutty plot twist, just about anything might develop.

Chief Inspector Mattei (a grizzled Daniel Auteuil) has been tipped off to a major heist that is set to go down in downtown Paris. The police operation is thwarted, though, when a sniper opens fire on the gendarmes, wounding several. Mattei’s connections lead him to Kaminski (Kassovitz), that rare breed of marksmen high on Interpol’s watchlist after a post-service criminal career.

Not everything goes the robber’s way. One of their crew, Nico (Luca Argentero) is wounded and must be mended by disgraced doctor, Franck (Olivier Gourmet), who resides far from prying eyes in the French countryside, where he plies a new trade in supplying addicts with black-market morphine. At first an incidental character, Franck soon emerges as the film’s most insidious criminal, an outright psychopath whose penchant for torturing naked women spins what was a multi-handed crime melodrama, à la The Usual Suspects, into a nasty, Seven-style stomach churner (horrible violence is perpetrated against women in the film).

The convolutions of the plot are too often predicated by coincidental happenings and events that defy natural laws. Exhibit A would be in the film’s opening shootout, when Kaminski navigates several flights of stairs in the time it takes for the wounded cop he overpowered on the rooftop to cover the same distance in a lift. It lends itself to a moment of tension that brings the sniper and Mattei face-to-face, but upon reflection is preposterous. A late-stage revelation that is designed to deepen the backstory between the two key conflicted protagonists is a further step too far.

The byzantine interaction of characters provides what feels like 100 different speaking parts – the thieves (Nicolas Briançon; Francis Renaud), the cops (Jérôme Pouly), a simpering lady-lawyer (Arly Jover), Nico’s hard-bitten wife (the director’s daughter, Violante Placido) and various gypsies and petty-crim cohorts pop up then disappear with varying degrees of relevance.

Placido is a confident, competent craftsman – along with longtime collaborator, DP Arnaldo Catinari, he gives The Lookout a steely sheen that enhances the ruthless world populated by these immoral players - but not so much that a nagging sense that the whole enterprise is a little bit daft ever fully dissipates.

MARIJINE (MARIJA'S OWN)

Featuring: Nina Violic, Zeljka Sukova, Mila Culjak, Petr Marek, Prokop Holoubek, Marketa Lisa, Cvjetana Lovric and Loredana Presta.
Writer/director: Zeljka Sukova

Rating: 3/5

The latest volley from the new wave of deconstructionist documentarians who seem determined to redefine the factual film-making format is Zeljka Sukova’s Croatian oddity, Marija’s Own. The efforts of three young women to give their late grandmother the send-off she deserves mixes actors and real-life relatives, deep family emotions and electro-pop tunes to generally winning effect, though just when real becomes unreal (and, occasionally, surreal) will inspire debate over its worthiness.

Despite its truncated 62 minute running time, a great deal is learnt about the life and legacy of Marija Violić who, as revealed in a vivid opening collage of family photos and voiceover, was laid to rest in 2004 in an unremarkable grave in her hometown of Rijeka. Though she stated in her final years that no one would miss her when she was gone, the truth is that her influence touched all the women in her family and she is remembered with great fondness.

Her granddaughters - the filmmaker herself, famous local actress Nina Violic and Danira (who, signifying the Sukova's intent to mess with reality, is played by Mila Culjak) – decide to throw a long overdue wake for their nanna, during which they will ask each guest to design an honorary ornament to be placed on the freshly-restored burial site. Fuelled by the overall joie de vivre of the family gathering (and lots of red wine), the scenes in which the feisty female family elders present their ideas is a hoot. Marija’s Own is certainly not a dour trudge through memory and loss but, at its best, a buoyant celebration of family life.

The films shortcomings emerge from the idiosyncrasies imposed upon it via manufactured elements. There is a nagging suspicion that the event, though mostly played-out with warmth on-screen, was crafted with greater enthusiasm for the fictional components; at key moments that require a poignancy only real-life captured on film can provide, a few frames of falseness often prove to be Sukova’s undoing. The director’s decision to shoehorn Czech synth-pop trio Midi Lidi into the already-cramped confines of the dining room setting results in some quaintly endearing moments though more often seems just plain strange.

The film fumbles its ending, which comes to a moving peak involving all the guests gathered around the newly-decorated grave (Ales Suk’s editing in this sequence is top-notch) before descending into an misjudged end-credit passage during which the elderly ladies take part in a music-video clip for the band. Despite all the indulgent add-on elements that Sukova imposes upon her debut work, there is sufficient insight and honesty to transcend the conceit. Most importantly, the spirit of Nanna Violić that imbues the film with a touching resonance remains tangible throughout.

THE MASTER

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Ambyr Childers, Rami Malek, Jesse Piemons, Kevin J. Connor, Christopher Evan Welch and Madisen Beaty.
Writer/director: Paul Thomas Anderson.

Rating: 4.5/5

 

More than any filmmaker working in American cinema today, Paul Thomas Anderson demands his audience’s intellectual involvement. It is a dangerous path to tread and Anderson has paid a commercial price for such lofty ambitions; as universally acclaimed as Boogie Nights, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood were, none of them made much theatrical coin (his most critically-divisive film, Punch Drunk Love, made even less).

Such a fate will also most likely befall The Master, his expansive, picaresque slice of American ambition and the tortured individuals who both suffer at its feet and exploit its virtues. However artfully-rendered (and The Master is a work of refined artistry), the intertwined psyches and complex dynamics of a life shared between a half-crippled, spontaneously-violent drunk and a delusional cult-leader con-artist is not the kind of narrative mainstream audiences usually embrace.   

The film’s extended opening stanza is light on plot but rich in character. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) drinks to deal with the responsibility of a late-stage WWII naval life but soon finds his post-traumatic self struggling in a sane society. He stumbles across a cruiser that is hosting a members-only party for family and followers of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a boisterous, corpulent alpha-male whose disciples adhere to the self-awareness techniques outlined in their charismatic overseer’s book, ‘The Cause’.

The directionless Quell is consumed by Dodd’s manipulative mastery; in an extended mid-section that cross-cuts between the stillness of Dodd’s questioning glare and the twisted facade of Quell as he becomes achingly aware of his life’s failings, Anderson’s abstract rhythms peppered with memory-filled mini-flashbacks begin to define the co-dependent nature of the two men. It is the first of two sequences that constitute the methodical psychological breaking down of Quell’s addictive, violent, repressed-memory self.

Viewers not already enthralled by Phoenix’s mannered, mumbling (Brando-esque, if you must) portrayal of Quell will struggle with these sequences; he’s a tough character to like, even when his cold-hearted manipulation by determinedly guarded mentor Dodd reduces him to a bawling wreck (every character’s self-centred devotion to ‘The Cause’ prevents the film from becoming as emotionally engaging as many will pine for over the 137 minute running time).

Anderson has acknowledged that There Will Be Blood was his John Ford/John Huston picture; The Master drifts into Terrence Malick territory (the opening tropical island sequence directly recalls the first moments of The Thin Red Line). Towering above his contemporaries, Anderson has matured incredibly as a craftsman in the relatively short period since the ‘razzle-dazzle’ days of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. His sparse words, too, are acutely attuned to the dark nuances of his characters (including Amy Adams’ steely-eyed wife and protector) and the speech patterns of the 1950s upper-crust Eastern US seaboard setting.

Detractors have called the film too vaguely ambiguous, ploddingly slow or point to characters that are all artifice and construct. For some, there is an icy, heartless chill to the carefully-captured frames that allows for no emotional payoff nor exhibits enough on its mind to warrant Anderson’s and DP Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s stunning images.

But The Master, while probably not Anderson’s ‘best’ film, may be remembered as his most important and unarguably most ambitious. An intimate yet vast story of a damaged man’s self-acceptance at a time when his country was struggling with its own dark, repressed demons and the hope of a brighter future, The Master snapshots that moment when America had a choice - lead or be led. In Phoenix’s classically fallen soul Freddie, Anderson still finds a glimmer of hope in his protagonist’s redemption. The profound sadness of The Master stems not from the horrors of one man’s past life but rather in its capturing of the beginning of his society’s end; a nation’s future, full of potential, forever compromised by a generation’s blind adherence to a false prophet’s lies.

LE PRENOM (WHAT'S IN A NAME?)

Stars: Patrick Bruel, Valerie Benguigui, Charles Berling, Guillaume de Tonquedec, Judith El Zein and Francois Fabian.
Writer: Matthieu Delaporte, based on his play.
Directors: Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere.

Rating: 3.5/5

The verbal dynamics of a dinner-party gone very bad are played-out with action-movie intensity in writer Matthieu Delaporte’s adaptation of his own hit 2010 play. Recalling the brio of such chamber-piece melodramas as Edward Albee’s Whos’ Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Yasmina Reza’s Carnage and Ira Levin’s Deathtrap but with a lightness of touch reflecting its origins in great Gallic farce, this compelling if occasionally too boisterous work never quite breaks free from its origins but is a vivid piece of cinema nonetheless.

Topped and tailed with some lucidly over-edited outdoor scenes and a witty voiceover constructed to remind audiences who saw the stage version that this is, in fact, a movie, Delaporte and his co-director Alexandre de La Patelliere spend the other 95% of the film in a single-setting - the lovely apartment of well-to-do middle-class Parisians Vincent (Charles Berling), a feisty intellectual, and Elisabeth (Valerie Benguigui), a public-school teacher. This evening, the married pair have invited their friend, renowned trombonist Claude (Guillaume de Tonquedec), to a dinner party during which Elisabeth’s brother Vincent (a terrific Patrick Bruel) and his girlfriend Anna (Judith El Zein) will announce the name of their soon-to-be-born son.

Established as jokester who walks a fine line in bad taste humour, Vincent announces that the child’s name is also that of a certain Teutonic mass-murderer; not particularly thoughtful, given the hostess’ Jewish heritage and the role her mother, Francoise (Francois Fabian) has played in their upbringing. This jocular miscalculation is the lit fuse that finally sees the evening erupt into a screaming match in which prejudices, family secrets and long-gestating ill-feelings are revealed.

As the good-natured jibes give way to seething temper tantrums, each cast member is given ample opportunity to unleash Angry Acting 101; Bruel and Tonquedec present the most balanced characterisations, whereas Benguigui and, in particular, Berling occasionally take the histrionics to ear-shattering levels. That said, the naturalistic interactions and motivations of all Delaporte’s creations are entirely believable, if clearly bound to their live theatre beginnings; despite the prologue and coda and the best efforts of DP David Ungaro to bring cinematic scope to the apartment setting, What’s in a Name? is essentially a filmed version of the play.

Having long been a writing team (Renaissance, 2006; 22 Bullets, 2010), the debutant directing duo give their actors a lot of frame-space in which to gesticulate, adding to the sense that everyone was still very much of a ‘live-theatre’ mindset (4 of the 5 cast key cast members played their characters during the stage season). The lack of close-ups and meagre use of such stylistic ‘flourishes’ as dolly-shots suggests that Delaporte and Patelliere were both still similarly tied to their work’s beginnings. Which, in this case, may be entirely appropriate; What’s in a Name? exists, soars even, on the precise wordplay of its principles and, in playing to its strengths, ensures it is compulsively watchable.

SAVE YOUR LEGS

Stars: Stephen Curry, Brendan Cowell, Damon Gameau, David Lyons, Darren Gilshenan, Darshan V. Jariwala, Pallavi Sharda, Brenton Thwaites, Grant Piro, Ryan O'Kane, Eddie Baroo, Shibani Dandekar and Sid Makkar.
Writer: Brendan Cowell.
Director: Boyd Hicklin

Rating: 3.5/5

Though it occasionally aims lower than a well-placed yorker, there is no denying Boyd Hicklin’s cricket-themed charmer Save Your Legs is a crowd-pleaser batting near the top of the order. Creamy-flannelled fans should turn out in droves when this traditionally blokish heart-warmer hits Australian screens in late January, just as the long, hot cricketing summer Down Under enters its final days.

Steeped in a purely ‘Strine larrikinism that clearly stems from screenwriter/co-star’s Brendan Cowell’s well-established on- and off-screen persona, this dramatization of Hicklin’s own 2005 documentary offers nothing intrinsically new in the arena of feel-good sporting comedies, but nor did Cool Runnings, The Mighty Ducks or A League of Their Own. This little Aussie film offers every bit as much likability as those Hollywood heavy-hitters and deserves similar audience love.

In 2001, a team of amateur cricketers from the Melbourne suburb of Abbotsford rather fantastically secured sponsorship to tour India and play against some of the subcontinents most revered semi-professional regional sides. The tour was captured by Hicklin and structured into an hour-long factual-film that found favour for its insightful portrayal of mateship, culture-clashing and pure sporting joy.

This fictionalized reworking tells the story of the Abbotsford Anglers and, more particularly, their passionate captain Edward ‘Teddy’ Brown (an immensely likable Stephen Curry). A cricket tragic whose boyhood dreams are beginning to rub unavoidably against the adult responsibility he refuses to acknowledge, Teddy’s main function as leader is to rally enthusiasm every weekend amongst a team of increasingly disparate and aging friends whose connection to the magic of the game is waning. Chief amongst them are the upwardly-mobile ace batsman Stavros (Damon Gameau), hedonistic man-child Rick (Cowell) and Teddy’s oddly-defined, pedantic offsider Colin (Darren Gilshenan).

With their current season in tatters, Teddy aims high and sets in motion a plan that will see them touring cricket-obsessed India, entirely on the coin of local businessman Sanjeet (Darshan V. Jariwala). It is a tour that takes them deep within the culture and one that allows Cowell and Hicklin space to play with the life-defining qualities inherent to traditional Indian life and how it impacts a group of men who all seem to be at a crossroad in their adult lives.

That said, profound existentialism is not high on the film’s agenda, especially when a good ol’ ‘Delhi-belly’ joke is on offer or the opportunity arises to have an easy shot at such targets as the side-to-side head-wobble (“When they move their heads like that, is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”) or Bollywood cliches (a subplot involving Sid Makkar’s local celebrity status is a bit strained). But when it counts, Save Your Legs is also deeply respectful of its host location (captured beautifully by DP Mark Wareham); a sequence in which Teddy becomes caught up in a vibrant street parade and important moments between the leads filmed on the River Ganges (one involving a running gag centred around the protective ‘cup’ worn by master batsman Sachin Tendulkar) are lovingly staged.

It all comes down to an all-or-nothing game against a snooty private club and its owner that invokes every dramatic neurosis afflicting the team and all the sporting clichés under the sun (or stadium lights, in this case). But that is entirely as it should be. The raison d’etre of films like Save Your Legs is to leave its audience with fond memories and a lumpy throat. In that regard, Hicklin and Cowell prove thoroughly reliable, with occasional dashing flair; they are the Hayden and Langer of Aussie summer cinema.

LOOPER

Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, Pierce Gagnon and Summer Qing.
Writer/Director: Rian Johnson.

Rating: 4.5/5

Looper mashes up tropes from disparate genres that have no right being in the same vision: the hit-man noir, the demon-seed kid-horror, time-travel malarkey. Yet writer/director Rian Johnson, in only his third film and first to afford the 39 year-old some budgetary freedom, has conjured a supremely well-crafted science-fiction thriller that fully delivers on the promise of its out-there premise.

Johnson, whose stylish framing and character-driven self-penned plots have enlivened small scale cult items Brick and The Brothers Bloom, works his huge canvas expertly. Delivering one of the most accomplished visual treats of the year, however, pales next to his achievements as a storyteller; Looper is both a cracking piece of high-brow genre entertainment and, most surprisingly, a satisfyingly emotional journey for both Johnson’s characters and audience.

Though disinclined to give away any of the intricate plotting (and certain that any effort would only serve to confuse rather than enlighten), it is no spoiler to reveal that the film revolves around the back-and-forth realities of Joe (a superb Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his life as a ‘looper’. A brash young breed of hired killers, the loopers carry out the dirty work of gangsters who rule the criminal underworld 30 years hence. Time-travel has been invented and the bad guys send troublemakers back to a pre-determined point in the present, to be eliminated and disposed of by the loopers.

Despite being cold-blooded and calculated in every respect, Joe is not prepared for his old-self (Bruce Willis, perfectly exploiting his ‘damaged action-hero’ persona) to materialise one day. The split-second crack in young Joe’s confidence gives old Joe the room to move, and soon young Joe is being targeted by his murderous boss Abe (Jeff Daniels) for failing to ‘close the loop’. Meanwhile, old Joe is off on his own vendetta – to kill the young boy, Cid (Pierce Gagnon), who will grow into the man who alters Joe’s life irreparably. Of course, Cid’s resilient single-mom Sara (Emily Blunt) has her own pov on the imminent death of her paranormally-gifted child.

Johnson balances all the time-travel/parallel lives intricacies with a remarkably assured hand. Like Christoper Nolan’s Inception and The Wachowski’s The Matrix (and, in the panthenon of great time travel films, Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys), Looper takes some big risks with its narrative but, ultimately, makes its audience feel very smart by never leaving them behind. Johnson then builds upon that audience faith with a slowed-down mid-section that further fleshes out his lead characters and a final half-hour which rocked the house (in itself, the closing of a loop, as it brings the film back to the technical giddiness of its razzle-dazzle opening sequence).

Bound to inspire heated geek-debate by those inclined to question the logic of time travel principles, Johnson needn’t worry about any post-viewing backlash; his film offers just enough ambiguity to inspire conversation but more than enough smarts to cover its cinematic backside. Tough, tense, tender and trippy, Looper rewards buffs for sticking by genre efforts despite a lot of derivative works. It is the kind of film we hope to find every time we make that trip to the movies.

MENTAL

Stars: Toni Collette, Rebecca Gibney, Anthony La Paglia, Liev Shrieber, Caroline Goodall, Deborah Mailman, Kerry Fox, Lilly Sullivan, Betheny Whitmore, Sam Clark and Nicole Freeman.
Writer/Director: P. J. Hogan

Rating: 3/5

It is impossible not to feel some love for Mental, a coarse, colourful comedy that marks director PJ Hogan’s return to the raucous suburban milieu he captured so memorably in Muriel’s Wedding. That said, it sure is hard too sometimes.

Leading lady Toni Collette and a gaudy seaside enclave peopled by eccentric denizens are just two of the instantly familiar elements in a film that reworks ever so slightly just about every memorable aspect of the 1994 hit. Mental is guaranteed to satiate anyone still pining for the sequel to Muriel’s Wedding that oddly failed to eventuate in the wake of its success (full disclosure – liked but never loved it).

The freedom afforded Hogan upon agreeing to seek a second cinematic lightning-strike has proved a double-edged sword. This is clearly an aesthetic that he adores, but the unbridled joie de vivre he specialises in has also resulted in a deeply indulgent, wildly unwieldy film that ultimately feels as schizophrenic as several of his characters.

The haphazard plot begins with the inevitable breakdown of Shirley Moochmore (Rebecca Gibney), the deluded soon-to-be ex-wife of the town’s sleazy mayor, Barry (Anthony LaPaglia). Their four daughters are largely raising themselves, led by Coral (a fine Lily Sullivan), although each have their own borderline psychosis. With Shirley hospitalized (and largely sidelined from the film’s mid-section, despite most of the first 30 minutes being entirely her tale), Barry picks up hippy/hobo Shaz (Collette) and puts her in charge of the household. Strong bonds are formed and these scenes represent the best moments in the film; Shaz’s cafe showdown with two teen tormentors is a highlight.

However, Hogan loses control of his imagined world in the third act. An awkwardly weighty amount of new exposition is introduced, spinning the film off into its own bi-polar existence. Meagre subplots involving Kerry Fox’s snotty neighbour, Liev Shrieber’s bitter ex-shark hunter, Deborah Mailman’s lesbian mental-patient, Sam Clark’s surfie heart-throb and Caroline Goodall’s doll-obsessed auntie are all loopy artifice but are afforded hefty screen-time. The engaging rapport between Shaz and the girls is jettisoned in favour of a darker, far less credible plot involving Shaz’s sad history. Way over-stretched at 116 minutes, Mental seems to end on at least four different occasions before Hogan grinds the whimsy into gear again…and again…and again.  

As with Muriel’s Wedding, the ace in Hogan’s sleeve is Toni Collette. Though her very broad ‘Strine may be a turn-off for some, she gives her all in a performance that asks her to go beyond the call of duty in some particularly distasteful scenes; Hogan’s penchant for icky physical humour extends to elaborately silly gags about menstruating and lighting farts. Others who register strongly are Gibney, whose startling physical commitment to the role will shock some; Shrieber’s salty curmudgeon, Trevor Blundell; and, the bit players who populate the mental healthcare institution, many of which provide the film’s biggest laughs.

The autobiographical nature of both Muriel’s Wedding and Mental ensures Hogan connects with the character’s idiosyncrasies; the gaudy flair that he splashes about pales next to the affection he has for his characters. The plot may be cumbersome and the humour over-played, but Mental still manages to feel like the vision of a director working from the heart, albeit via an appropriately twisted mind.