Film Shapes

Who can take a mirror? Sprinkle it with goo? Cover it with viscera and an intestine or two? The Candy Man. Oh, the Candy Man can. That's where my mind strayed during this film - thinking of a variation on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In this version, Gene Wilder turns his hand to child-killing, and you don't have to stretch your 'pure' imagination too much to see that Wonka's not too far removed from that. So, I blame that song being played over the opening credits for my wandering thoughts. This film ( Candyman , not Wonka ) is a remake of/sequel to the 1992 original of the same name, where a crazed ghost (?) is summoned to kill anyone who's thick enough to say his name in the mirror five times. The new version, directed by Nia DaCosta and co-written and produced by Jordan Peele, attempts to update the story by making it about gentrification of the projects (incidentally, a word that means bugger all to non-Americans, I'd reckon) and seems to go s...

This Hungarian film is a slow-burning little gem. It balances itself somewhere between mysterious, psychological thriller and slyly satirical, deadpan comedy. And the amazing thing is you don't really notice what a number it has done on you until well after it's finished. Natasa Stork plays Márta, a successful neurosurgeon who decides to return home to Budapest to meet up with the man she met and fell in love with at a medical conference in the US. A planned rendezvous on a bridge doesn't eventuate and so Márta tracks down János, played by Viktor Bodó, to his hospital, whereupon he claims to have never met her in his life. Is he lying? Is she losing her mind? Could it be both? These questions are played with through the film and, though on the surface, they are answered, there's still lingering doubt about events just passed and crucially, preparations for the future. The final shot is an absurd flourish, reminiscent of a few Coen Brothers films, and close to a belly la...

Here's a film nobody really anticipated - the life of Martin Bryant in the months prior to him killing 35 people in Tasmania in 1996. The film is very careful not to mention him - his name isn't uttered once, hence the anadrome of the title (see: Trebor mints or the Harpo production company). Director Justin Kurzel says he was " incredibly scared " of the script when he first got it, and the film was shot in Victoria to avoid rubbing local rawness if shot in Tassie. The previously linked Guardian article by Kelly Burke  details the understandable reasons some people have for objecting to the existence of Nitram . While I see their point entirely, I reckon it's an important film as it deals with a part of our recent history that most of us would rather forget. No harm in picking open some old scars, checking what's inside. Caleb Landy Jones, as the lead, is superb, not least because he's a Texan doing a perfect cover version of a maladjusted, Aussie skegg f...

A young Amazonian girl bounding around on a tree like Mowgli in The Jungle Book opens this Peruvian/Dutch/German co-production. We soon discover that this is the Ainbo of the title, and that her best friend, Zumi, is about to be crowned leader of their tribe. A relatively quick whip- round of characters introduces us to the two leads; a smarmy village thug called Atok; Zumi’s father and current tribal chief, Huarinka; Ainbo’s foster mother, Chuni; as well as two ‘loopy’ spirit guides, Dillo and Vaca (a bespectacled armadillo and a clumsy tapir). The environmental theme is also introduced early on, in the form of dying fish and disease in the village, attributed to a curse but, as we find out later, the result of something more real, and more troubling. Ainbo is convinced by her spirit guides to embark on a trek to find a magical root that will save the village. On her journey she must deal with various perils, ranging from a pursuing Atok, and a gigantic sloth in his volcano home, t...

Marvel's phase 4 is gathering pace with Shang-Chi following on the heels of Black Widow (though the Johansson vehicle would ideally have been released in 2020). This is a relatively unknown character in the Marvel universe, at least to a non-com like me, so the prospect of a new avenue was semi-tantalising. In a nutshell, there's nothing really new here, but also nothing terrible or disappointing.  Simu Liu and Awkwafina play 20-something slacker mates in San Francisco, working as valets and singing karaoke into the wee hours. A pretty gnarly bus incident sets the plot into action and the ABCs (American Born Chinese) find themselves in Macao looking for Shaun's (Shang's) sister, Xialing, played by newcomer, Meng'er Zhang. Cue another mintox fight scene, this time on wooden scaffolds up the side of a high-rise, reminiscent of classics such as Drunken Master 2 and um, Rush Hour 2 .  Here is where the daddy issues ramp up, as the legendary Tony Leung enters the game...

So, how do you like your Cage? It's a common cry to suggest that he's either overcooked or raw ham but I reckon that's pretty reductive. Sure, he's often bonkers and he has been in some absolute shite, I'll concur with that. But to say he's doing something extraordinary in Pig , simply because he's NOT opening his eyes as wide as possible or moving his head around way too frenetically, is falling for the (probably unintentional) deceit. He's fine here, understated, measured, with a few great little speeches and I'd agree that it's one of his better performances. But go easy on the adulation just because he's quiet. Pig is a story about a man who has to deal with loss - and the pig is only the most recent one. Cage plays Rob, a reclusive Oregon forest dweller, who makes a small crust collecting truffles for a callow fellow from the city restaurant trade, Amir, played by Alex Wolff. Equilibrium is suddenly upset by the pig-napping incident and...

Here's a brutally tense, Kiwi kidnap thriller from first time feature director, James Ashcroft. A family of four - mum, dad, two teenage sons - drive to the (mostly) uninhabited mountains, somewhere in NZ. A relaxing holiday is the plan. Enter two ne'er-do-wells, Mandrake and Tubs (Daniel Gillies and Matthias Luafutu), and things start to get messy. Mandrake's line sums up the dread - "That point right there is probably going to be the time you wished you'd done something" (or words to that effect). What follows is surprising and pretty hard to forget. As this kind of genre film goes, Coming Home in the Dark hits all the likely beats. Victim can't react for obvious fear. Stakes increase. Baddies get more desperate and cruel. Rapprochement is attempted. Revenge is promised. Escape is close but wait, oh no, it isn't. And so on. This film differs from something like Wolf Creek in that there's a simmering, underlying secret that links the victims and...

Readers be advised this blog entry contains the names of Aboriginal people who have died. This feature documentary from director/journo Allan Clarke aims to bring awareness to the Bowraville murders, still unsolved after 30 years. I have to admit, being a teenager at the time and not living in NSW, I don't remember the case, but the film does a great job of putting you right back there. And it's fucking harrowing. A brief summary - between September 1990 and February 1991 three Aboriginal children, Colleen Walker-Craig, Clinton Speedy-Duroux (both 16) and Evelyn Greenup (4), disappeared from the same street in Bowraville, a small town in northern New South Wales. Not long later, the bodies of Evelyn and Clinton were found in bushland along the same road. Colleen's body has never been recovered.  As the film explains, it was police incompetence, actually racist carelessness, that prevented any thorough investigation, and it wasn't until a high ranking Sydney homicide det...