Film Shapes

Sorry We Missed You is Ken Loach's follow up to 2016's I, Daniel Blake and it mines a similar vein of problems with modern British society. In this case, it's the 'Zero-hours economy', whereby companies can keep workers on call or franchise (virtually 'non-employed' employees), leaving the way clear for mass exploitation. Not a new thing, sure, but the loosening of regulations to allow this kind of economic fascism shows just what kind of politics rule the roost these days. Loach is a master at this genre, he's been doing this kind of film for years, and he's getting even more angry if these last two films are anything to go by. The focus of this film is the Turner family, specifically husband and father, Ricky, shaggily played by Kris Hitchens. He naively (or desperately) agrees to the terrible conditions set out by the foreman of a parcel delivery company, Maloney, played by Ross Brewster. This guy is a prime prick but Brewster imbues him w...

So by my workings, this is Rian Johnson's fifth feature and his career would look explicable were it not for the lumping great behemoth of his fourth film. Brick in 2005 - low budget, clever reworking of hard-boiled detective fiction. The Brothers Bloom in 2008 - appreciably higher budget, more well-known actors but still quirky and indy. Looper in 2012 - interesting time travel sci-fi with Bruce Willis. So far, nice little trajectory. But wait, what's this? A FLECKING STAR WARS FILM!?! Fast forward a couple of years while the online invective wears off and here we are at Knives Out , which is, for me, his best film yet. On the face of it, this is a murder mystery 'whodunit', set mostly in a lovely old country home. The quaintness goes a little further with Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc, a southern US detective with an eloquent turn of phrase. But underneath, Knives Out is a scathing attack on the 'haves' of society and what they'll do to k...

I feel a bit guilty about this now but I decide to skip the option of seeing Martin Scorsese's latest film at the cinema and wait a week or so for its Netflix release. As with any film, it would have been better on the big screen but it's what it is. The Irishman tells the story of Frank Sheeran, an Irish-American mafia hitman, and his links to the disappearance of union boss, Jimmy Hoffa. The film is based on a book by Charles Brandt called 'I Heard You Paint Houses', which refers to the blood from the exit wound of a hit. Martin Scorsese returns to the themes of criminal loyalty, machismo and the side effects of this kind of lifestyle, which pervade films like Goodfellas , Casino and even back to Mean Streets . The running time of 3 and a half hours may seem off-putting but there was nary a point where I felt my attention flagging and credit must go to writer, Steven Zaillian and Scorsese's (anything but) regular editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. And, of course, ...

So, here's an odd thing. A week or so ago, I got an email from a film distribution/production company in California asking if I was keen to review a film they are rolling out. I figured I'd give it a go. The film is a Danish animation called Den Magiske Juleaeske , or anglicised to  Finding Santa. Now, right off the bat, I admit to not being a fan of Christmas, and therefore Christmas films in general. Clearly, this film wasn't made with my demographic in mind. The director, Jacob Ley, has form with this kind of children's animation in Denmark and I assume there's a market for it, especially at this time of year. But it's not for me. The story follows an irritating orphan named Julius who loves Christmas but has to confront the possibility that Santa isn't real. He's bullied by other kids in the orphanage and is drawn into a magic realm where he's lumped with the task of rescuing Santa and Christmas. The antagonist in all this is a camp Kra...

A stupidly hot Saturday morning was a great time for the Luna Leederville preview screening of Francois Ozon's new film, By the Grace of God . This is a drama set in Lyon, based on real-life, current events surrounding the crimes of a paedophile priest, Bernard Preynat. The catholic church of Lyon and its high-ranking officials, including Cardinal Barbarin, were found to have known about his actions for some time and not acted upon this knowledge. The film starts with one of the victims, a now 40-something family man, Alexandre, discovering that the priest who abused him was returning to work with kids in the Lyon area. This sets off a chain of emails and calls to the diocese, culminating in a weird, arranged meeting between Preynat, Alexandre and a church psychologist. The frustrating formality of the church culture in these scenes forces Alexandre's hand and he ultimately feels he needs to involve the law, rather than relying on the church to gets things done. Here's...

This latest Terminator film is nominally number 6 in the series, though it appears to be doing a retcon of numbers 3, 4 and 5. And fair enough, as they were, for the most part, shit. Dark Fate picks up 25 years after T2 and is the first film since that one to star Linda Hamilton. She gets top billing here too, but I think the star turn is Mackenzie Davis as augmented arse-kicker, Grace. She plays the Kyle Reese character, sent back to protect a Sarah Connor saviour from being terminated by the machines of Legion ( Dark Fate's  version of Skynet). That saviour is Dani Ramos, played by little-known Colombian actress, Natalia Reyes. The interplay between the three female leads is well handled, with mistrust and confusion dominating. At one point, Dani asks why the machines are after her and is told by Sarah that they aren't afraid of her, they're afraid of her womb. I read this as a swipe at OWAMs (Old, white, American men) and their attempts to control abortion, in p...

A fairly packed house at Morley Event cinemas for this Saturday evening screening of Joker . Lots to chew over in this film and it's been fairly beaten around and praised in equal measure, from what I've read. Two people I know were pretty down on it and another really enjoyed it. Me? Kind of in the middle, actually. The best aspect of the film was the atmosphere, the look, the similarity, in this regard, to films from the American New Wave of the 1970s. There are lots of influences here - Taxi Driver , The French Connection , Blow Out (incidentally seen on a Gotham City cinema marquee, along with Zorro the Gay Blade ) and The   King of Comedy are just the ones I can think of. The performances are mint, especially Joaquin Phoenix, who is really staking a claim to being the best American actor going around at the moment. His turn in Joker put me in mind of a film he made recently for Lynne Ramsey called You Were Never Really Here . Both films required physical transfo...

I caught this oddity in Taipei at the Q-Square cinema near the Taipei Main Station. And the queue was actually a square, 25 minute waiting block. Just made it into the screening on time. Seeing a film in Taiwan was pretty similar to other countries, the main difference being the steep, stadium-style seating. And there were pricks with their phones on, just like any other place. Fucking philistines. So, onto  Ad Astra . This is one of those big(ish) budget 'indy' films so admired and supported by Brad Pitt and his production company, Plan B. Pitt stars in this one and James Gray directs, with Hoyte Van Hoytema as DP - and supremely well-shot it is. There are lots of things to enter in the positive side of the ledger.....and almost as many in the negative side. One of the highlights is the already mentioned cinematography. Vast space vistas juxtaposed with claustrophobic interior shots and weirdly tinted off-world living areas give  Ad Astra  a fairly unique look and...

Popped along to the Luna the other night with Roly to see The Nightingale , Jennifer Kent's second feature after The Babadook . I've been vacillating about this film since then. I can't quite decide if I liked it or not and that's the nub of things. It's a beautiful film. And it's an unsettling film too. Set in 1825 Tasmania, it's humming with violence and the constant threat of it. This has apparently been a major turn-off for some audiences, with walk-outs and folk staying away from screenings. As confronting as this sexual and racial violence is, I reckon it's required viewing, especially for Australians unaware of our history. But I think the 'story' of the violence detracts a bit from the themes of trauma, companionship and trust that Aisling Franciosi and Baykali Ganambarr portray so well throughout. The story is a pretty straightforward revenge journey and the scenes of the Tasmanian bush are amazing to see, betraying the horror...

The first time we tried catching Dogman at the Luna Leederville the showing was sold out, so we returned the next day. I reckon the full house may have had more to do with the fact that there were 24 seats in the screening room than any 'buzz' around the film. This was selected for competition at Cannes and Matteo Garrone is a fairly big name in Italian cinema, what with Gomorrah and Reality to his credit, but a sell-out? Hmmm. Anyway, Dogman is not a film based on the popular kids book, nor is it some kind of werewolf drama. It's Garrone's bleak look at the dodgy side of Italy - drugs, violence, poverty and unhinged masculinity (the only females in the film are the Dogman's ex(?)-wife and daughter). The dogman of the title is a dog groomer/kennel owner, played by relative unknown, Marcello Fonte and for all his simpering unlikeability, he's pretty good in this, his first lead role. He actually won the Best Actor award at Cannes for the role. There a...

A lucky day off on Thursday, so off to see the much anticipated new film from Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood . Quite a few things to chew over here so I'll start at the middle. Not really, just thought I'd go for a little QT humour....hello? Hello? Hmmm. There's a lot to like about this film and a fair bit not to as well. Let's start with the positives. Tarantino really knows how to get the best out of his actors. Leonardo DiCaprio is great in the role of a fading TV gunslinger who can see the sunset of his career approaching. His attempts to handle this twilight are precious and DiCaprio aces it all. There's an especially mint section where he's playing head villain in an episode of Lancer , directed by Sam Wanamaker (which seems to have actually happened ). DiCaprio's character, Rick Dalton, has been on the turps the night before and he's having some trouble remembering his lines. His over-acting in these scenes and subsequent meltdown i...

Well, it's been almost a month since I saw Spider-Man: Far From Home and I have to admit, I've been dragging my heels on this one. It's not because it's terrible, though it wouldn't be far off the bottom of the Marvel pool. I think it's a deflation factor. Coming so soon after the Endgame colossus, this just didn't grab anything for me. It might also have a bit to do with my antipathy towards the character of Spider-Man. He simply shits me. Tom Holland is a charismatic, winningly gormless presence but sadly, he's not enough to win me over. That said, Spidey in the other Marvel films has been fun and reasonably interesting but in these stand-alones, I'm not having it. There's a case to be made that the best part of this film is the post-credit sting. Not the mid-credit sting, though the return of J.K. Simmons is a good move by the Marvelii. The final sting asks some questions and sets up some tasty possibilities for Marvel's fourth...

Asif Kapadia's newest doco follows Diego Maradona's time at Napoli, with the occasional glimpses of his life before and after. It focusses on this period (1984 - 1991) as this was Diego at his best and, arguably, worst. I've seen a couple of docos and lots of highlights of Maradona as a player but this is the first film I've seen that balances the two sides - Diego AND Maradona. This dichotomy is best summed up by his old fitness coach, Fernando Signorini - "With Diego, I would go to the end of the world, but with Maradona, I wouldn't take a step." Kapadia treats his subject pretty even-handedly, neither fawning nor condemning, letting the visuals and interviews inform the audience's judgement. On the topic on interviews, Diego Maradona , like Senna , relies purely on old footage to tell the story. There are no new 'interviews' aside from audio of Diego and others played under old game vision or news reports. I reckon this technique is w...

Let me begin this by saying I saw the first Toy Story some years after release (maybe around 2008) and I really didn't like it. Couldn't see what all the fuss was about. So when my kids (and wife) proposed seeing number 4 at the cinema, I was reluctant to say the least. Add to this the necessity of seeing ALL the films in the series before the new one because, well, I want to bring them up correctly, and the task bubbled with dread. But, imagine my surprise when I actually enjoyed Toy Story 2 , wasn't too annoyed with Toy Story 3 and, yes, quite liked Toy Story 4 . This was the first film for the kids at the cinema and there's something to be said for watching kids watching films, especially when they're experiencing a completely new environment. The interest dropped off slightly during the talky exposition points in the film but for the action scenes, they were buzzing. For me, this was probably the first 'kids' film I've seen on the big screen...

Black '47 is a revenge western set in Ireland during the Great Famine of 1845-1849. I saw this at the Luna Leederville as part of the Revelation Film Festival a week or so ago. There was even an intro from an actual Irishman, Dr. Enda Murray, who curates the Irish Film Festival. The story follows a young Irish fella who returns home after fighting with the British Army in various exotic climes. He lands bang in the middle of the famine to find most of his family gone, primarily at the hands of the Brits he was fighting for. Needless to say, this shits him a touch. Though this guy, Feeney, played by the Aussie lad from Animal Kingdom , James Frecheville, is nominally the protagonist, it's his supposed nemesis, Hannah, played brilliantly by Hugo Weaving, who is the real star of the film. It's a clever angle that the villainous Englishman, who murders an Irish rebel at the start, can turn out to be the pseudo-protagonist by the end. A hint may have been that the firs...

I caught a screening of Bong Joon-ho's Palme d'Or winner, Parasite at the Innaloo Event Cinemas on Saturday night. This is a dark satire on class distinctions in modern day Korea, and more broadly, the world. It's weird, funny and shockingly brutal at times. The premise concerns a down-at-heel family of four living in a poor neighbourhood of Seoul, who suddenly get a break when a friend of the son passes a tutoring job onto him. Slowly, the whole family manoeuvre their way into this rich household and much of the bite comes from the way the two sets of families interact. Things take a pretty sharp deviation about halfway through the film, which raises the tension, as well as providing motivation for the themes of class and bigotry to come to the fore. The Bong man is responsible for Snowpiercer and Okja , among other films, but from what I've seen, this is his best work. He gets some great performances from the likes of Jo Yeo-jeong as Yeon-kyo, the wealthy, eas...

Turned up at Morley Event Cinemas for a 10:30am screening of X-Men: Dark Phoenix only to be told it was a BYB showing. What's this, you ask? Apparently, it's a Bring Your Baby session. Ohhh no. But in fact, one quiet baby and a potentially scarred 3 year old didn't cause much fuss. The bloody lights were kept half-dimmed, though. No matter, onto the film itself. This has taken a pasting online and in the film press and I can't quite see why. It's not brilliant but it's a clear head better than Apocalypse and surely a few lengths closer to the post than the Wolverine Origins fiasco. There are some well-structured action sequences that elicited a touch of excitement, some of the performances are solid (Fassbender, McAvoy) and the story plays with a couple of meaty themes - mainly abandonment and sacrifice, much in keeping with the earlier (better) films. But, that said, there are some sizeable missteps. A few of the characters' decisions didn't...

Popped down to the Luna in Leederville this morning to catch Mike Leigh's latest film, Peterloo . This is a seemingly accurate retelling of the 1819 massacre that took place in St. Peter's Field in Manchester, where the constabulary and the army waded into a crowd of thousands with sabres and bayonets. The people were there to hear a famous orator, Henry Hunt, call for national suffrage and to put pressure on the government and the royals. 18 of the crowd were killed and hundreds of others wounded. The knock-on effects of this catastrophe on the reform movement appear negligible, though it did bring about the creation of The Guardian newspaper. History 101 over. Onto the film itself. It's around 2 and a half hours long and it feels every minute of that. The build-up to the massacre involves an awful lot of piss and wind with politicians spewing interminable chunks all over the shop, in the (presumably) wanky vernacular of the day. Oh do tell, sir. On the other ...