Film Shapes

Sean Baker has been making low budget, grungy-looking films for a while now, so it was probably a bit of a surprise when he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Anora . The first third of this stripper/sex worker story pings along at a nice pace. It begins to go slightly baggy in the middle third but recomposes itself for the home straight. Mikey Madison plays Anora (or Ani), an erotic dancer in a club where it looks like the majority of the dosh comes from private lap-dances - she has issues with her boss not paying health insurance and holiday benefits. Madison is a natural in this medium (my notes for this say "Is she an actual stripper? Check.") One night, Ani is requested to translate and maybe dance for, a young Russian guy, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), who immediately takes a shine to her and invites her to come to his place the next day. Ani realises she's hit pay dirt when she arrives at his mansion, and his goofy, sweet nature endears him to her even more. Post-sha...

This Bhutanese comedy drama is part of the Perth Festival and it follows the country's attempts to move from a monarchy to a democracy in 2006. In the small town of Ura, a novice monk, Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk) is tasked with finding two guns for his Lama, played by real life monk Kelsang Choejay. He's not told why but he gets on with the job. At the same time, a 'fixer/tour guide' from Thimphu, Benji (Tandim Sonam) gets a gig driving a newly arrived American, Ronald (Harry Einhorn) around the country in search of a particularly valuable US Civil War rifle. You might be able to see where this is going... This is satire in deep cover. It might even be satire adjacent, such is its mildness. This is not a bad thing. At times I felt like I was experiencing an old Ealing comedy, or maybe a low-key Ken Loach. The government sends officers around the country to run a mock election to show people how to vote, and one of them, Tshering Yangden (Pema Zangmo Sherpa) wanders through...

This Perth Fest entry is a very black comedy with a large splosh of Muriel's Wedding about it. Ronnie Lipsick (Jackie Van Beek) has high hopes for her daughter Audrey (Josephine Blazier) to succeed as an actress. Ronnie had some of her own fame years before in Australian TV and is now stage-mothering Audrey to within an inch of her life. But Audrey is a proper arsehole to everyone, including her sister with cerebral palsy, Norah (Hannah Diviney), and her romantically conflicted father, Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), so when Audrey's melodramatic antics see her slide off the roof of the house and into a coma, the family have mixed feelings about the situation. Ronnie incongruously decides to pose as Audrey in order to be accepted onto the acting course she had her signed up for. Nobody seems to notice, Norah begins to be more accepted by Audrey's friends (and boyfriend), and Cormack turns his meekness around, reinvigorating his sex life with Ronnie. The family feel guilty...

My first taste of the Perth Festival schedule for the coming season was a 'hybrid' film called The Wolves Always Come at Night , directed by Gabrielle Brady. The term 'hybrid' really just seems to mean tweaking the traditional methods of documentary production, in this case, adding some clearly set-up shots and situations, but also, calling on the subjects to help in the writing process. This film is about a family of goat farmers in Mongolia whose difficult existence is made even harder by an unforeseen event that forces them to relocate to the city. The family are led by mother, Zaya Dashzeveg and father, Davaa Dagvasuren, and Brady made the film with their input in mind. She says; Our intention was that Davaa and Zaya have agency within the making of their own story. So, in working together as co-writers, we were able to shape the story together. They would share ideas for what could be filmed and I would translate this into the cinematic language for the film. It...

Here's a nice surprise. I find Japanese anime to be hit and miss, and the first look at this boof-headed feline didn't promise too much, but Ghost Cat Anzu knocked the bails off. It riffs on the Ghibli theme of children being forced to grow up quicker than they should, with 11 year-old Karin (Noa Gotô) as our focus. Her dad's a bit of a scally and he does a runner while visiting his father at his temple home in a sleepy town, leaving Karin alone with kindly grandad and huge, anthropomorphic cat, Anzu, voiced by Mirai Moriyama. Karin wanders the town, waiting for dad to return and meeting various locals, while being casually monitored by Anzu. The pace is a little pedestrian but the shenanigans make up for this. Anzu is pulled over by the police and told he needs a license to ride a scooter, though he protests that he's not actually a human, so surely these rules don't apply. He works as a masseur but also takes a gig to scare birds away from the river, roping Karin...

This is such a fine film and going in blind might just be the best way to see it. It's not that it's a twisty, spoilery mystery, just that sometimes knowing nowt about a film is the best way to appreciate it. Zero expectations and all. So if you want the same groundwork that I had, read no more. . . . . Ok. If you're still reading, let's kick off. This is Andrea Arnold's sixth feature and I really have to see more of her work. It's set in the Kent town of Gravesend, and boy, is that a suitable name for this place. Not far from London, on the river Thames, seems like it's wall to wall chavs out there.  Bailey (Nykiya Adams) lives with her dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), and half-brother, Hunter (Jason Buda) in a graffiti covered squat. Pissed off that Bug wants to get married to newish girlfriend, Kayleigh (Frankie Box), Bailey rebels and follows her brother and his mates on a small-time vigilante mission. Things get messy, she does a runner and ends up sleeping in...

Here's an odd little number about reincarnation and love across the ages, or more to the point, dawning self-determination. Alice Lowe writes, directs and stars as Agnes, a woman besotted with Aneurin Barnard's Alex. Always. In many different time periods. We kick off in 1688, where Alex is about to be executed before Agnes steps (trips) in, and saves him. We zip forward to 1793, Alice this time bored of her pampered lifestyle in a manor house with pets, wigs and servants. Oh, and a disgustingly oafish Nick Frost for a hubby, George. But who's the stalker in time? Is it Agnes? She's the clear favourite. Or the object of her desires, Alex, who for the most part, isn't too keen on reciprocating? Is it the boorish George, who does physically stalk in one of the episodes. It may even refer to the peripheral figures of servant, friend & potential lover, Meg (Tanya Reynolds) or wily Scipio (Jacob Anderson - Grey Worm from Game of Thrones ). To be fair, it's hintin...

Here's the first of a few films I'm planning to catch at the British Film Festival so I'll attempt to keep the reviews relatively brief. This a documentary directed by Stephen Soucy about the legendary filmmaking team, Merchant Ivory Productions. The formidable ensemble consisted of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins. After meeting in 1961, Ivory and Merchant started a fruitful partnership, both professionally and romantically.  The film shows us their somewhat ramshackle early films, made in India, moving on to marginally more assured productions in the US, and finally to the English period dramas they became known for in the 80s and onwards. Together, they made over 40 films, some absolute gems among them. A Room with a View , Howard's End , and The Remains of the Day are probably their best, though you could throw in Heat and Dust , Maurice , and The Golden Bowl as very strong examples of their...

There's a lot to enjoy in this sequel to Sir Ridders' original from 2000. The film picks up about 16 years after the end of the first one, where we find Rome ruled by a pair of foppish twats, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Tasked to expand the empire, General Acacias (Pedro Pascal) leads an attack on Numidia in North Africa, coming up against Paul Mescal's Verus.  Once this speccy set piece is over, now-widower Verus finds himself on route to the fighting stadia, where he catches the eye of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a kind of antiquity Don King. Verus is driven by rage, hungry for revenge on those who killed his wife, but there seems to be more to his story. And those familiar with the original (or anyone who's read anything online about this film) will probably know what, but I'm not about to drop the cat bag. It's beautifully shot by lenser supremo, John Mathieson, especially one silvery sequence near the start where Deaths arrive on a...

Biopics are tough to get right. For every Lawrence of Arabia , there's a Diana , for every Raging Bull , there's an Ali . The film Lee shines some natural light of the life of renowned war photographer Lee Miller, played by Kate Winslet. She gives it full welly in this - physically and emotionally nude, with camouflage painted boobs, close-ups with no make-up, moles, wrinkles, rage and tears. It's very much the kind of 'brave' performance that the Academy loves to reward. The film starts with Miller crustily answering questions to a young man in 1977, and as she remembers things from her past, we head to flashback territory. It seems a fairly cack-handed framing device until we realise why it's happening. A modicum of research reveals that the film is a pretty accurate retelling of Miller's life - first her carefree bohemian days in pre-WW2 France (including her intro to future hubby, Roland Penrose, played by Alexander Skarsgård), then how she started with...

Popped down to Palace cinema in the city for a packed screening of Sand Land , part of the Japanese Film Festival Australia . Created by Akira Toriyama (of Dragon Ball fame), this started as a manga book series in 2000. It seems this film was made slightly before, or at the same time as a TV series covering similar ground. That ground being a Mad Max style wasteland where the water supply is controlled and sold by a rotund King (Chafûrin). An old, local sherriff, Rao (Kazuhiro Yamaji), suspects there's a source of water in the desert a few days drive away and so decides to investigate. Knowing he'll need help, he approaches the gang of demons who live nearby. The demons chosen to accompany Rao are the keen Beelzebub (Mutsumi Tamura) and the less enthused Thief (Chô). The trio head off but are soon beset by issues, including enormous sand snakes, marauding punks and the King's military units. As their vehicles tyres were punctured by said punks, Rao commandeers a tank, set...

The idea of having a doppelganger replace us has been around for ages, at least since Dostoevsky wrote his famous novel, The Double , possibly even earlier. Great films like The Machinist , Fight Club , Enemy , Stranger Than Fiction and  Infernal Affairs have all taken inspiration from the source. It's hard, though, to imagine it being done with more verve and ridiculousness than in Aaron Schimberg's A Different Man . This film is a treat. It stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, who has a form of neurofibromatosis (a condition that affects the nervous system), which causes his face to swell up in lumpy tumours. Early on, he meets a new neighbour, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), and they become close friends, bonding over their shared passion for the theatre - he's a struggling actor, she's a hopeful playwright.  Partially due to this new relationship (and maybe the hope of furthering it), partly due to fatigue at his 'abnormal' life, Edward decides to try an experimental n...

This is a very strange film - is it a domestic violence comedy? A neo-realist fantasy? A kitchen-sink musical? All of these sound wrong but director (and star), Paola Cortellesi manages to combine the disparate elements into a unique concoction. Set in post-war Rome, the film opens with Delia (Cortellesi) saying good morning in bed to her husband, Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea), only to receive a hefty backhander. Her reaction tells us this is not an unusual occurrence in her life, as the rest of the family are introduced - a couple of shit-headed boys, a grown-up daughter, and an irascible father-in-law. Cue a glorious slow-motion credit sequence of Delia walking along her local street, getting on with the day's duties. The accompanying musical track is pretty incongruous, another oddity in this head-scratcher of a film (though not as surprising as when an Outkast song bursts in). The story revels in the time and place, and the black and white cinematography, by Davide Leone, is exqui...

We Were Children (or Eravamo Bambini ) is a Calabrian-set drama/thriller about childhood trauma and regrets. A group of thirty-somethings return to the small seaside town of their youth to confront a situation that has affected their lives since the moment it happened twenty years before. The film begins with a police patrol coming across a suspicious bloke in the bushes beside a villa one night. He threatens them with a huge hunting knife and is summarily arrested and taken in for questioning. The story unfurls from here, with detained postie Antonio (Francesco Russo) giving the police some details, and flashbacks helping us with others. These past scenes show a group of friends going through regular teenage issues. Margherita and Gianluca are a sweetly fumbling couple, though Walter might be a spoke in their wheel. Andrea is Margherita's irritating younger brother, and Peppino is the local senator's boy. The sun-tinged Calabrian past is juxtaposed with the more aggressively ...

He Ain't Heavy is the debut feature from Perth writer/director, David Vincent Smith. It's a very prosaic look at addiction and what it can do to the family unit. In this case, the addicted person is Max, played by Sam Corlett. His mum, Bev, is played by Aussie/Italian/British (in that order) screen legend, Greta Scacchi. But the lead, and heart of the film, is Jade, a fantastic Leila George. She's the strung-out, desperate sister of Max, who hits upon a slightly controversial way of trying to get her brother clean. The confronting opening scene sets up the rest of the film - Jade arrives at a house where a ruckus is occurring, namely Max trying to violently force his way into his mum's house. Eventually, he succeeds and buggers off in Bev's car, only to smash it a few metres down the road. Max scarpers quick smart, mum collapses and is briefly taken to hospital. Jade is at the end of her tether and the chance to clear out her recently passed away Grandma's hous...

Woof, it was hard work getting through this one. Francis Ford Coppola, paterfamilias of a filmmaking dynasty (many of whom are a part of this mess), has been sitting on this idea for decades. The kernel comes from the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BCE (thanks again Wikipedia) where a Roman politician, Catalina attempted to overthrow Cicero. By transposing this story over the crumbling American Empire, Coppola is biting off a lot. You'd think if anyone can chew all this, it'd be this guy, who not only gave us the Godfather films, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now , but also paved the way for the new wave of young tearaways of US cinema in the 1970s and 80s. George Lucas, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, among others, all owe some debt to the ground-laying of Coppola. So what happened with Megalopolis ? There's a film in here but you have to clear away the extraneous clumps of dirt hanging onto the edges of it. For argument's sake, let's say t...