The Whale

There's a very intense mood hanging over this claustrophobic, misery-soaked drama about a depressed English teacher. That first line doesn't paint the rosiest picture, does it? Granted, it's not a barrel but it has a few moments of lightness that trickle through the funk. Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a fella who has let himself go to obesity, thanks mainly to an earlier trauma. His visual performance is pretty amazing, especially when you remember that this is the dashing beefcake from the Mummy films and...ahhhh....Encino Man. He's helped by a flubbery prosthetic suit but, even so, every time he struggles to get up, or shoves some food down his neck, there's a noticeable audience reaction. As good as he is, I don't quite understand the adulation that's been following Fraser around regarding this performance. Maybe it's recognition of the troubles he's been having (apparently, many film-related injuries, a messy divorce and even an alleged sexual assault by a Hollywood bigwig - look it up), maybe it's just that he seems a thoroughly decent egg and people wish him well. He might well have an Oscar on his shelf in a few weeks (though that'd be daylight robbery from Colin Farrell).

You may be thinking that calling the film The Whale is a bit insensitive, but it actually has more to do with Herman Melville's book, Moby-Dick, than Charlie's bulk - though he does cop a lot of shit from his daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink). She is still mad at him for leaving her and her mother, Mary (good to see a typically edgy turn from Samantha Morton). Oh, and she's a proper arsehole too, though it's mildly amusing to watch her wind up the callow missionary, Thomas (Ty Simpkins). Solid support is also provided by Hong Chau as Liz, Charlie's friend and nurse.

Back to Moby - the conceit of the film is that when Charlie thinks he's dying, he reads (or has read to him) an essay about the novel, ostensibly because it's a good piece of writing. This motif occurs right at the start, when Thomas interrupts him at work, and pops up now and then during the film. The final payoff may seem trite to some, endearing to others - I'd side marginally with the latter. And I would have been much more on board were it not for the overt religious metaphor at the climax.

It's an odd little film, this. It's very clearly based on a play (by Samuel D. Hunter) and it's almost wholly contained within the walls of Charlie's dingy apartment. I counted three external shots in the whole film - the opening long shot of a bus dropping someone on an empty road, another long shot of the carpark of Charlie's, and the reverse of that shot. Even the rare balcony scenes were tightly cropped, acting as an 'outside' room. Add to that the 4:3 aspect ratio and the grungy colour palette and you've got deliberately mundane, even unappealing pictures. Maybe that's just director, Darren Aronofsky's calling card - he's not the most exuberant filmmaker going around. It's also an example of the 'ticking clock' film, a film built around a countdown, illustrated by titles marking off the days. This might be a reasonable framing device but it does tend to ratchet up the despondency in a film like this. Look, in saying all that, I didn't mind this film, but it certainly wasn't a fun watch.

The Whale opens at the Luna and Palace cinemas on Feb 2nd.

See also:

Fraser is very good opposite Michael Caine in Phillip Noyce's The Quiet American (2002), and the food scenes put me in mind of Morgan Spurlock's great doco Super Size Me (2004).

Tár

Tár is writer/director Todd Field's third feature after the earnest In the Bedroom and Little Children, and this extends his self-initiated remit of homing in on touchy, difficult subject matter. In this film, Lydia Tár is a famous, and famously headstrong, conductor, who is currently fronting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. She's played by Cate Blanchett in a role that virtually peals, 'Oscar, Oscar, Oscaaaaar.' Blanchett is great, as usual, but she runs very close to, "I'm acting, dahling," at some points - I'm thinking specifically of the on-stage interview session and the lesson at Julliard.

That lesson scene is probably where the film sets out it's stall, but I'm still not entirely sure what Field is saying with it. In this awkward conducting workshop class, Lydia gently, then more insultingly, chides a student for not being able to appreciate the music of composers unlike, or antithetical to, themselves - the old 'art' vs 'artist' conundrum. Do Field's loyalties lie with his protagonist, or with the students? Or is he having a bit each way? It's a fairly balanced handling of the whole 'cancel culture' phenomenon, but going by how detestable Lydia is, I'd say we're gently ushered away from her feelings on the subject. 

I say detestable but there's more nuance to her than just being an unlikeable presence. She has a few great parenting scenes, and is clearly a driven perfectionist, who has risen to the top of her artistic field, but the audience's sympathies are supposed to lie with the more humane humans that appear in her orbit. Her partner, Sharon (Nina Hoss), her assistant, Francesca (Noémie Merlant) and the co-founder of her organisation, Eliot (Mark Strong), all exude more reason and sense, especially in the case of Lydia's flirtations. Two of the subjects of these dalliances (past and present) drive the plot towards Lydia's trough, and when the inappropriate shit hits the fan, the pile-on begins. 

This final third of the film reminded me of the excellent Jon Ronson book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, and it's curious to note just how much or little remorse Lydia shows regarding her predicament. It's best to leave the finale to be enjoyed (if that's the best term), but there's a lot of meat to chew on the bones of this film, as long as you can tolerate the odd pretentious gristle.

Tár opens in Australia on Jan 26th.

See also:

Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2014) won Blanchett her leading role Oscar, but I reckon her best performance is in Rowan Woods' Little Fish (2005).

(Film stills and trailer ©Universal, 2023)

Babylon

Whatever else this film will be remembered for, it can't be denied that this is uber-confident, scintillating filmmaking from Damien Chazelle. It starts with an elephant shitting all over some dude and charges along at a pace that only allows a breath around 45 minutes in. This is a film that does not give one single fuck, and it's not like this Chazelle fella is Nolan or Spielberg or Cameron, or someone who can call the shots. I may be wrong (wouldn't be a first) but it seems like he had nobody to rein him in. Usually, that's a red flag (à la Tarantino) but here it works wonders. 

Babylon is set in the early days of Hollywood - 1926 to 1932 for the most part - and it focuses on a wannabe actress, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie); a matinee idol, Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt); and a young Mexican fix-it man, Manny Torres (Diego Calva). These three, and others such as gossip writer, Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), singer, Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) and musician, Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), all appear in the opening party scene in a fine example of character introduction. It's an incredibly flamboyant first sequence, that segues neatly into the second great set-piece - location shooting in the dusty hills of Los Angeles. There's a montage between these tent poles of some of the main players getting on with their lives - in an Asian laundry, a horrible bedsit, a poky green-room - that attempts to portray the seedier side of early Hollywood, but it's soon jettisoned for the glitz. 

The balancing act between drama and high farce holds forth in this first hour or so, even longer when the ridiculously fun 'snake mission' sequence is taken into account. After that, the film lurches into a Scorsese version of Chinatown, a roundly positive eventuality in my book. Chazelle has a happy knack of keeping his foot on the pedal and, much like the final section of his breakout, Whiplash, he cranks the energy levels and manages to keep them worrying the peaks. The coming of sound films in 1927 has varying repercussions on the protagonists, and the bacchanalia of the start of the film slowly morphs into something more puritanical. Obscene orgies are just not acceptable any longer. This is underlined by the appearance of a gangster and his horridly grotesque 'party' down an old mine - the 'arsehole of L.A.', as he calls it. It's pretty clear that these two wildly different soirées that bookend the film illustrate how society's perceptions of enjoyment have changed over the course of the movie.

The main characters are based on real people, some obvious (Fatty Arbuckle, Anna May Wong) and some not so (Dorothy Arzner, Dudley Murphy). This IndieWire article explains more. A few of the supporting characters are a bit under-served but at 3 hours plus, I can understand why. The pictures, shot by Linus Sandgren, look fantastic and the editing but Tom Cross is also first rate. Robbie and Calva are excellent (she must be so tired after that shoot) and Pitt has rarely been better - he won the supporting Oscar for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, but he was basically playing himself in that. Here, he takes his rusting charm to another level. He's getting better with age.

On a minor downer, I reckon the coda when Manny comes back to L.A. in 1952 was slightly unnecessary, trowelling on thick the love letter to old Hollywood. This and the whole debate Pitt has with his theatre wife (Katherine Waterston) about 'high art' are really the only dud notes for me, though not dud enough to diminish the film too much. Babylon is bombastic, hilarious, spectacular, debauched and utterly mesmerising. 3 hours seemed like 30 minutes.

Babylon is showing in most cinemas now. If you fancy a bit of old-school razzle, see this on the big screen.

See also:

Chazelle's Whiplash (2014) is fantastic, and a close relative to the above could be Michael Hazanvicius's The Artist (2011).

(Film stills and trailer ©Paramount, 2023)

The Amazing Maurice (Me) (Kids)

Readers of Terry Pratchett will probably be all over this animated adaptation of his Discworld children's novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. For fellow neophytes, let me fill you in. Maurice is a talking cat and he runs a scam akin to the Pied Piper's gig of ridding towns of rats. The rats are also intelligent, but aren't fully aware of Maurice's intentions - basically greed, it seems. They're under the impression that he's trying to help them find their Shangri-La, a magical island where animals and humans coexist in harmony. This chimeric wonderland is in a book that we're introduced to at the start of the film, narrated to us by Malicia, voiced by Emilia Clarke. The rats presumably found this book somewhere and revere it as their holy tome, but they're later sympathetically disabused of this notion of 'rat heaven' (perhaps a nod to Pratchett's own form of benign atheism?). Could it be that what they've been searching for all this time is actually right here (or there, in ye olde worlde fantasy Europe)? 

Aside from this theme of hope fulfillment, there's also a strand of kicking against inequality - the evil Boss Man wants equal footing, or more, and his methods have a similarity to Magneto's, as opposed to Maurice's rats and their Professor Xavier stance. There's a moral quandary for Maurice and a sidebar relationship for Malicia with Maurice's faux piper, Keith. Not to mention Malicia's anxiety over becoming just a part of someone else's story. Lots going on in this.

The story is framed a little too cleverly, with Malicia narrating AND appearing in the story. There are mentions of framing devices and foreshadowing and many, many breakages of fourth walls. The whole film threatens to come off the rails with all this meta-structuring but it just manages to save itself, mainly thanks to oodles of weirdness. There's a homicidal 'real' Pied Piper, a pit fight sequence that sparks the film into life, and a late appearance of the Grim Reaper and his associate bone rat, the Grim Squeaker.

Hugh Laurie as Maurice, David Tennant as the wisest rat, Dangerous Beans, Gemma Arterton as Peaches, and David Thewlis as Boss Man are all great fun, but Emilia Clarke's Malicia reaches peak irritation pretty quickly (this is more down to the writing and direction than her performance, though). The writer Terry Rossio has some pretty underwhelming credits to his name (Shrek, The Lone Ranger, many Pirates of the Caribbean films, etc.) and the co-directors, Toby Genkel and Florian Westermann are experienced but neither are household names. Nevertheless, they've done enough to keep two kids engaged and two adults reasonably amused (small sample size, I know).

The Amazing Maurice is playing in many cinemas now, though I'd reckon it'll be done by end of school hols.

See also:

The Rescuers (1977), directed by John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman and Art Stevens, was a sweet, animated rodent-based film. We probably wouldn't have had David Thewlis as the main baddie in this, were it not for Mike Leigh's brilliant Naked (1993), so there's a long bow drawn.

Worst of 2022 - End of Year Report

2022 was a fine year for film...but some stinkers crept through and gummed up the piping (in fairness, many of them were not actually from last year). Enjoy.

[Click on the titles of the bottom three for links to full reviews]

10. The Gray Man (2022)

The Russo Brothers tried to bring their money-bagging to Netflix and seemed to be doing ok, until the film apparently dropped off a cliff after the first week - though it's very hard to trust the 'box office' returns of streamers. At any rate, this wasn't great, wasting the star wattage of Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling and specifically Ana de Armas and Jessica Henwick. It was positioned as a franchise with an open ending but let's hope they reconsider. Not the worst (obviously, there are nine to come) but a solid disappointment.

8. Moonfall (2022)

Nobody should be surprised that Roland Emmerich has made a dud here, but the cast maybe should have known better. Halle Berry is a fine actress and Patrick Wilson is underrated, even Donald Sutherland pops up for a cameo (I say 'pops up', in fact, he's in a wheelchair for his few seconds of screen time). The cast isn't the issue, it's just a flat out stupid story. The Moon is getting closer to earth and perhaps there's a sentient being involved. So the plan is to nuke the lunar mutha! I can't think of anyone who might have liked this, outside of some QAnon fruit baskets.

7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

The first Venom in 2018 was bad enough. This one added another symbiote in the human form of Woody Harrelson to try to raise the stakes. Tom Hardy has some fun and he's the best element to the film, but the whole thing is paced badly, it can't find a consistent tone and crucially, it's boring. 

6. Wild Wild West (1999)

I hadn't seen this late 90s flop but someone (Parizad) had it in their top 5 a year or two ago, so I thought I'd give it a crack. Well, the best I can say is that it's 'of its time'. Kevin Kline is a solid comic actor, Ken Branagh goes fatally over the top and Big Willy Smith is at the peak of his zeitgeist. But it has either aged very badly or it was never any good. I'll plump for the latter. When the annoyingly nostalgic song is the best thing about a film, you know something went wrong along the way.

5. The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn't Kill (2021)

This is an odd one. Perhaps it lost me in translation but this Japanese film about an almost mythical assassin who is obliged to not kill for a year (due to storyline considerations) is interminably dire. It tries to be funny and sure, some of the humour works better for the local audience, but wow, it's rubbish. The acting is broadly broad, most of the set pieces are workmanlike at best and the plot has zero initiative or originality. It only sneaks in one spot higher than its predecessor (see below) thanks to a passable scaffolding fight scene.

4. The Fable (2019)

The original and the worst (just) of the Fable 'canon'. Stupidly unfunny lead character, played irritatingly by Jun'ichi Okada, nonsensical plot contrivances, and shoddy acting all around. This is based on a manga but how it got a sequel greenlit, I can't begin to fathom. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

3. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Taika Waititi has a lot of credit in the bank, with the refreshingly odd Ragnarok adding to his Kiwi stuff (Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, etc). What happened with this 4th Thor film, then? Probably hubris, I'd reckon. It's tonally all over the place and smug, with overcooked sentimentality and attempts at zany set pieces unbalancing the dish. Only Christian Bale comes out with any kudos. This is maybe the bottom of the bag for the MCU - the only way is up?

2. After Blue (2021)

What an oddity. Usually, I'm all over nutballs films but this French sci-fi muddler with student filmmaker sensibilities boiled my piss no end. The story, if it can be called that, sees a young woman and her mother tasked with hunting down 'Kate Bush' on a planet with no dudes but stacks of cheap looking landscapes, peopled with pretentious antagonists. At a tad over 2 hours, you really need your wits about you to stay awake. 

1. See How They Run (2022)

It's a shame to put this at the top (bottom) of the list, as it stars two of my favourite actors in Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell, but it's so pedestrian and dull that I really had no choice. Set around a murder during the original run of The Mousetrap, the story had potential. Sadly, the 'creatives' behind it either didn't have the chops or things broke down in production, though going by the credits of the director and writer, I'd favour my first guess. Not at all funny, boring and annoying is a fine hat-trick of shite.

Best of 2022 - End of Year Report

Sayonara 2022, it's been a pretty good year for film. This top ten list comes from a neat 100 films (80 first time viewings) and 55 trips to the cinema. It's down a touch from last year but it was harder to complete, with some fine films missing out. So here are my favourite 10 films seen in 2022:

[Click on the titles for links to full reviews]

10. Paris, 13th District (2021)

Jacques Audiard's monochrome ode to the multicultural 13th arrondissement of Paris is light on story but heavy on atmosphere. Lucie Zhang is fantastic in her breakout film - she's one to watch - and Noémie Merlant is top drawer as well. This tale of young Frenchies aimlessly searching connection is probably the most joyously optimistic film on the list.

9. Belfast (2021)

Here's a film I figured would be sentimental and a bit dull, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed this autobiographical story from the point of view of young Ken/Buddy, played by newcomer Jude Hill. It tells of his family living in Belfast through The Troubles and the choices they must make. Ma (Caitríona Balfe) and Pa (Jamie Dornan) are amazing, and the whole film hums with spirit. A film that eschews cynicism and dares the audience to care, successfully for my money.

8. The Innocents (2021)

A Norwegian unsettler, the innocents of the title are presumably the kids that are left to their own devices on a quiet high-rise estate. But are they so very innocent? You be the judge, I'll only say that events take a bit of a turn when they begin to realise they have certain special powers that might be fun to mess about with. Creepy, awkward and unpredictable - not the best traits in a baby-sitter but perfect for a psychological drama like this.

7. Nope (2022)

A fine hat-trick of features for Jordan Peele, this coming on the heels of Get Out and Us. Nope is hard to classify - part thriller, part social commentary, part horror, part comedy.... but all mint. The lensing, by Hoyte Van Hoytema, is gorgeous, be it dusty vistas or creepy night skies and the cast are note perfect - Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yuen, all tear it up. The Jaws riff is great fun too.

6. The Forgiven (2021) / The Menu (2022)

This is unprecedented, but I couldn't settle on the top ten, so I've sneakily lumped these two excellent
Ralph Fiennes starrers together at number six. The former sees Lord Voldy as a bigoted snob taking a trip to North Africa for a bacchanalian party, but a car accident on the way scuppers plans a bit. Great cast here (Jessica Chastain, Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, Saïd Taghmaoui) and a nicely askew view of classism, plus a top notch arc for Fiennes. Quite taut and tense in parts as well. 

The latter film is a class-based satire mixed with foodie culture that actually has the bollocks to commit to its final resting point. Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult are more than able support (Taylor-Joy is more the lead, in fact) and the dialogue is first rate. Blood, haute cuisine, shocks and comic timing all play a part in The Menu. Fiennes is terrific in both of these, though in wildly different roles. 

5. You Won't Be Alone (2022)

Here's a ripping folk/horror tale from Macedonian/Aussie Goran Stolevski, starring Sara Klimoska, Anamaria Marinca and Noomi Rapace. It tells the story of Old Maid Maria, a child-thieving witch who, in fairness, has had a tough old time of it in patriarchal 19th Century Macedonia. It's lovely to look at, shot by Mathew Chuang, and the editing (Luca Cappelli) gives us the sense of a lazy kind of foreboding, something's not quite right here. All the viscera and heavy themes notwithstanding, there's a feeling of calm hope to this fine debut feature.

4. Sundown (2021)

Tim Roth shines in this mysterious, sundrenched resort drama about a man who seems to be excelling at doing bugger all. Quite shocking events occur on his periphery, even involving him, yet he has a happy knack of shrugging it all off. Why? What the fuck is going on here? I'm not about to tell you, but I will say that Charlotte Gainsbourg is in it (also excellent) and the unpicking of the whys and wtfs is one of the joys of the film. 

3. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Martin McDonagh is on song with this tale of 1920s Irish island life, specifically the relationship between Colin Farrell's Pádraic and Brendan Gleeson's Colm, as well as Pádraic's sister, Siobhán, played by Kerry Condon. The three leads are amazing, the dialogue dances out of their mouths and the scenery of the island (west cost of Ireland) is gob-smacking. The McDonaghs have two film in this list (brother John Michael directed The Forgiven), and like Audiard, they're 'hooks' for me - a new film by any of that lot, and I'm in.

2. The Quiet Girl (2022) 

This film was a sublime knockout, so quietly affecting that the key moments have stuck with me for months now. The story is simple - a young girl in 1980s rural Ireland, neglected by her family, goes to live with some elderly relatives for the holidays. What director Colm Bairéad does with this rudimentary outline is not much short of magical. Everything clicks into gear with The Quiet Girl. The lead, Cáit, is played by newcomer Catherine Clinch and she's a special find. The rest of the cast are equally fantastic, the editing is spot on, blimey, nothing here is found wanting. Wonderful filmmaking.

1. Hatching (2022)

Hanna Bergholm's debut feature about a young Finnish girl with a domineering, 'influencer' mother is a stupendously satisfying little gem. It's a satirical body-horror, not too many of them around. Sophia Heikkilä and Siiri Solalinna play the mother/daughter dichotomy at the centre of the film, but on the periphery is the crux - an egg with something inside that may or may not be malevolent. Everything is leading to a resolution of sorts and it certainly delivers on its promise. An immensely watchable film about family pressures and the horrors of growing up. Great stuff.

The odd spoiler or two within this podcast....!!!

Decision to Leave

Park Chan-wook has a fine back catalogue, full of brutal beauty and oddly juxtaposing shots. His 'Vengeance Trilogy' alone (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance) would be enough to give him a seat at the table, but fill that CV out with Thirst, Stoker and The Handmaiden, and there's some heft right there. His latest film, Decision to Leave, won him the best director gong at Cannes back May 2022, and it's a just reward.

The film begins quite rapidly, getting a number of things out in a flurry. We meet two detectives, Jang Hae-joon (played by Park Hae-il) and Soo-wan (Go Kyung-Pyo), learn a bit about their cases, their family life and office hierarchies. While attempting to nail one murder case shut, the body of a climber is discovered at the foot of a gnarly-looking peak. Accident? Suicide? Something more tasty? The dead man's young Chinese wife, Song Seo-rae, impeccably played by Tang Wei (from Ang Lee's Lust, Caution and Michael Mann's Blackhat), is interviewed and cleared, but not before Detective Jang takes a shine to her. There are numerous little details that make this an intriguing viewing - Soo-wan apoplectic that Hae-joon ordered the good sushi for Seo-rae; Hae-joon's controlling but sweet wife, Jeong-ahn (Lee Jung-hyun); Seo-rae burying ravens presented to her by a stray cat; Hae-joon's attempts to beat his insomnia - there are plenty of cards up Park's sleeves.

The structure is interesting as well. The whole film seems to finish (unsatisfyingly) early, only to lurch into a third, more melodramatic act. This is both necessary and slightly disappointing, as there are a few questions of motivation that I couldn't quite get a handle on. It's also where the relationship between Hae-joon and Seo-rae gets knottier, strengthening the characters no end. Park uses all his tools throughout, particularly in placing the two protagonists in scenes where they clearly aren't (or weren't) together. It's discombobulating to begin with but soon becomes a great stylistic flourish.

There are some cracking lines by Park and regular co-writer, Chung Seo-kyung - "Murder is like smoking, it's only hard the first time." - and the plot leans into a Korean noir, replete with femme fatale, a dozy patsy and bodies racking up. This isn't a perfect film, it runs a bit long and there were a few edges I couldn't square off, but certainly there's enough eccentricity and emotion to make this a watchable slice of Korean 'post' New Wave.

Decision to Leave finishes tonight (Jan 1st) at the Somerville Auditorium at UWA for the Perth Festival but will hopefully get a cinematic release sometime this year (2023).

See also:

Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003) and his first film in English, Stoker (2013) are well worth a look, but you can't go wrong with any of his films, really.