Film Shapes

This seventh installment in the Mission franchise keeps up the energy of the previous Christopher McQuarrie helmed films - Rogue Nation and Fallout . The Cruise/McQuarrie partnership has a bit of alchemy about it. There's nothing we haven't seen before with these films, aside from the glare of publicity about Cruise's stunts, I suppose. Plot-wise, they don't reinvent the wheel but, blimey, they've got something . Could be the balance of camaraderie and extremely tense action sequences, or the lack of water-treading, or maybe the sheer star wattage of the Cruiser himself. The gist of Dead Reckoning is that there's a malevolent AI called 'the entity' that has become sentient and has let world governments know that it can infiltrate anything it wants. Obviously, everyone wants to retrieve it and control it, except Ethan Hunt and his usual crew, Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). They want to fuck it up. It's actuall...

Just the lazy six for this year's Rev festival but it was a fun time all round (my balding ginger scone sneaks into the far left of the pic above). Here are the films I saw, descending in order of least to most liked. Dùthchas   ★ ½ A found 8mm footage doco from the island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. The approach could have been better, it's  bit dull - just talking heads interspersed with said footage from the 60s & 70s. The idea of a culture and language on the brink of extinction has merit but it just takes to long to get to the nub. There's a film in here somewhere but the execution needed more oomph and less chat. Holy Shit!   ★ ★ This is a scatological German porta-loo thriller (words I've never said or written in that order before). A dude wakes up in a dunny with a metal rod stuck through one arm, trapping him in this enclosed filth. This is a more disgusting, less claustro version of that Ryan Reynolds flick, Buried . It sets up the story well enough...

This might be the scariest thing to come out of Adelaide since Wayne Weidemann. It's directed by brothers, Danny and Michael Phillipou, who apparently gained some fame and notoriety via a YouTube channel called RackaRacka, which sounds like it was a bogan version of  Jackass .  Talk to Me is a stylishly unsettling possession genre flick, with a couple of great performances attached. Future star, Sophie Wilde plays Mia, a final year high-school student still struggling with the death of her mother two years ago. Bored one night (remember, it's Adelaide), she tags along with her friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and younger brother, Riley (Joe Bird) to a house party where a couple of twats are hosting a séance/possession event. Mia gets involved but the 'rules' state the spirits can only be inside the living body for 90 seconds, else the fuckers might want to stay. Righto, parameters set then. The film really gets going when Riley appears to be channelling Mia's mum fo...

It's time for the annual Revelation Perth International Film Festival and, as usual, there are some enticing films scheduled. It's running over 5 days this year, shorter than previous fests but with just as many films packed in. Screenings start on Wed July 12th and finish on Sun July 16th, mostly at Luna Leederville , but some are at  Luna SX in Freo, and events and other screenings are to be held at The Backlot Perth and WA Museum Boola Bardip . Titles that piqued my curiosity include:  Citizen Sleuth , a true-crime podcast documentary Holy Shit! , a German toilet-based thriller (I think) Dùthchas , a doco about life on the Outer Hebrides Frank + Frank , a WA-made film that looks to be about mid-life male bonding Devil's Peak , a noirish southern US crime drama, directed by local Perth lad, Ben Young a trippy looking French hospital doco called De Humani Corporis Fabrica and a 40th anniversary screening of the Nagisa Ôshima gem, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Rev always ...

This fifth Indiana Jones installment is a fun adventure 'legacyquel' with Harrison Ford showing that while he might lack his old youthful vigour, he certainly hasn't lost his film star aura, or his acting prowess. It picks up the life of our hero in New York in 1969, at the time of the moon landings. He's a relic himself by now and it's a nice touch to bring the moon landings and the astronauts into Indy's orbit, showing the chasm between that whole period as representing the future and Indy's yearning for the past.  A few more plot devices get sucked into this point in time - Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as Helena, daughter of Indy's old chum, Basil (played in flashbacks by Toby Jones); Mads Mikklesen's buttoned-up physicist villain, Schmidt (or Voller); said villain's goons; U.S. agent Mason, played by Shaunette Renee Wilson (in an unnecessary role); and 'real' device, the Alethiometer , no the Archaeopteryx , no, wait the Antikythera, a mecha...

I've had a soft spot for Argentina for a long time, maybe it began with Maradona, and this has bled into their filmic output. There's a real grubby energy in those Buenos Aires streets, or the dusty landscapes surrounding the cities. At least, this is how it comes across, I've never been there myself. Of course, there's an added political angle in many of the Argentinian films I've seen, and this one is no different. The original Spanish title is Un Crimen Argentino ( An Argentinian Crime in English) - odd that they've found the need to change it for us. Anyway, this is based on actual events in Rosario in December 1980 - it kicks off the day after the murder of John Lennon - when a feckless salesman goes missing. Two court clerks are given the case (the role of criminal investigation is slightly confusing in Argentina), putting them, and their boss, Judge Suarez, in the sights of the police/military goons with their 'anti-justice' mentality.  Nicolás ...