Film Shapes

Christopher Nolan is one of the few active directors who can entice punters to the cinema (along with Denis Villeneuve), and they've come out in droves for his latest, a retelling of Homer's The Odyssey . Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who is co-opted to join his overlord, Agamemnon, in his attack on Troy. After near 10 years of siege, culminating in the Trojan Horse event, the silly bastard then decides to take the scenic route home, and gets plumb lost.  What follows is a technically brilliant rendering of mythical nonsense made to feel real. Odysseus's mini-fleet of three ships and maybe 100 (?) men run into several hardships, notably the Cyclops; a small army of huge men called the Laestrygonians; the sorceress, Circe; and some salacious sea nymphs. These set pieces are fantastic, especially the Cyclops (played by TARS voice from Interstellar , Bill Irwin), and Circe's cottage, where she has a way with greedy menfolk. Samantha Morton is almost best...

This film, screening at the Nordic Film Festival , is a slightly slapstick telling of the attempted coup in Finland in 1930, where ex-President Kaarlo Ståhlberg and his wife were kidnapped and driven across the country by the right wing fascist Lapua Movement. It's tied together by a best on ground performance from the Finnish Glenn McGrath, Jussi Vatanen (it's astonishing how much this guy looks like Pidge - scroll to the bottom and decide yourself). He plays Eero Kuussaari, a colonel desperate for respect and promotion. This frustration and feeling of inferiority drives him to drunkenly order a young crew of right-wing activists to kidnap Stahlberg (Pertti Sveholm) from his country home. They don't bargain on Mrs. Stahlberg (Riitta Havukainen) insisting on joining them.  Director Samuli Valkama has made a clever little historical comedy drama with current reverberations, considering Finland's place as a potential bulwark to Russia in Europe. The events of this film ta...

Two to One (or Zwei zu Eins ) is a true life heist film that holds up a light to the haphazardness of German reunification but is ultimately about fairness and belonging. In short, the main characters are slowly losing their jobs as East Germany prepares to rejoin the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union and her satellite states. Maren (Sandra Hüller) and Robert (Max Riemelt) are having an unemployment party when an old friend of the couple, Volker (Ronald Zehrfeld) returns from years abroad.  Disenchantment in the neighbourhood drives the trio to investigate the strange movement of army trucks to a local underground facility. A distant relative still works there and so is summarily co-opted to help them gain access to the 'bunker'. There they find bags and bags of disused East German marks, very soon to be out of circulation. Disappointed, they grab a bunch of notes anyway, more as a keepsake than anything else. When a door-to-door salesman offers to take the old curre...

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...

There is an awful lot happening in The Critic , on screen and off. Ian McKellen is the central pivot as snobby theatre critic, Jimmy Erskine, his venomous pen the scourge of many playwrights and actors in 1934 London. The film is based on an Anthony Quinn (not that one) novel called Curtain Call , with apparently one whole plotline (about a serial killer) removed. Patrick Marber (screenwriter of Closer  and Notes on a Scandal , as well as many other stage and TV credits) clearly decided to jettison that particular thread in favour of focussing on Erskine and the other players, including Gemma Arterton's actress Nina Land and Mark Strong's Viscount David Brooke, who has just taken proprietorship of the newspaper Jimmy writes for, The Chronicle. Brooke doesn't really approve of Erskine's writing style, or lifestyle (he's a vaguely closeted gay man who likes a bit of 'rough trade'), so he's under pressure to keep his nose clean. But a scathing, nasty revie...

This is a 'talking heads' documentary about the famous (or infamous, depending on your outlook on life) Scala cinema that operated in London's King's Cross from 1978 to 1993. It's a snapshot of an era - this place was the muster point for a ragtag group of misfits during Thatcher's uncompromisingly nasty reign. There's a fantastic array of interview subjects: actors Ralph Brown (who used to work there) and Caroline Catz; comedians Adam Buxton and Stewart Lee; directors Ben Wheatley, John Waters and Mary Harron;  musicians Matt Johnson (The The) and Douglas Hart (The Jesus and Mary Chain); as well as numerous less well-known folk who attended screenings or worked at the Scala in some capacity.  The celebrity tales are fun but the meat comes from the staff - in particular one pretty tense retelling of a suicide at the theatre. And the building itself, still erect and acting as a nightclub not far from King's Cross Station, is the star of the film. Built ar...

The year is 1830. A ship is on its way to New Zealand, the captain charged with delivering lay preacher, Thomas Munro (Guy Pearce) to Epworth, a British settlement on the fringes of M āori territory. Making landfall down the coast  to pick up some lumber, Munro comes across some trouble between two tribes. Long story short, he becomes the ward of a young woman, and off they sail to Epworth. Upon arrival, the snooty townsfolk don't take too kindly to Munro's 'inclusive' forbearance, but they have external issues to concern them as well. They are renting their land from the local tribal chief, Maianui (Antonio Te Maioha), whose daughter is the woman in Munro's care, Rangimai (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne). As well as this, a hard-case chief, Akatarewa (Lawrence Makoare) - seen earlier meting out some rough justice to Rangimai's fella - has designs on Maianui's land. Tinderbox potential. Director (and co-writer) Lee Tamahori has a really eclectic showreel, from hi...

This was the film chosen to preview the Spanish Film Festival for 2024 and it's quite the heart-wrencher. Based on a true story, from a book by Francesc Escribano, it tells of Antonio Benaiges (Enric Auquer), an idealistic teacher from Catalonia, who takes up a position in the small town of Bañuelos de Bureba in 1935. This town is probably like many others of the time - conservative, religious and fearful of outsiders. It's also full of kids who haven't seen the sea, which brings us to the title. Discovering that his charges have no idea about the sea, Antonio promises to take them on a trip to the Catalan coast, and much of the film is about his attempts to get permission from their inflexible parents. The depressing backdrop to all this is the impending Spanish Civil War between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Antonio ruffles a whole pelican's worth of feathers, from the politically pragmatic mayor, Alcalde (Antonio Mora), to the Snape-ish priest, the suitably ...

I caught this second episode a couple of days after the first one, while the world of Dumas' Musketeers was still fresh in my mind. It picks up very close to the cliffhanger ending of the first, with D'Artagnan (François Civil) in a spot of bother after watching his fancy, Constance (Lyna Khoudri) possibly being abducted, and then taking a club to the head. As with the first episode, this is a fairly dense film, full of 'script' events and a near exhaustive roll call of characters to facilitate. Martin Bourboulon and his writers, Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de le Patellière pay their due respects to Dumas by trying to squeeze as much in as possible in a relatively short runtime. And mostly, it works. It's as entertaining as the previous film, albeit with a markedly different tone. The story continues as King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel) has finally declared war on the Protestant terrorists, camped in La Rochelle on the west coast of France. The Musketeers make thei...

Here's another version of the Alexandre Dumas classic, the latest in a long line of adaptations, possibly starting in 1903, but probably most famously directed by Richard Lester in the 70s (or the Douglas Fairbanks film in the 20s, if you want to go back that far). This one, directed by Martin Bourboulon, is given all bells and whistles - it was filmed together with its second part, The Three Musketeers: Milady  and they had a pretty sizeable budget, apparently. I'm guessing a lot of those Euros went on the stellar cast - Vincent Cassel as Athos, Romain Duris as Aramis, Eva Green as Milady, and Vicki Krieps and Loius Garrel as the Queen and King. All on sterling form, though it's François Civil as the lead, D'Artagnan and Lyna Khoudri as Constance who must take the plaudits. The innocence of their burgeoning romance is the heart within the film that all the religious and political arteries feed into.  The story is slightly convoluted but it all spins around the affairs ...

Mads Mikkelsen stars in this 18th century historical drama with epic overtones. He plays Ludvig Kahlen, an ex-soldier with a strong urge to cultivate the Jutland heath in Denmark. The Royal Treasury toffs think he's mad but, as the King wants the heath developed, Kahlen is given permission to try (and probably fail). So, unto the wild. It sets out its stall early when Kahlen musket balls an outlaw's chin. The bloodlust doesn't return for a while, but when it does, it's pretty shocking. In the meantime, Kahlen has to deal with farming a virtually barren landscape with very little help. A local priest, Anton (Gutsav Lindh) leads him to a couple, Ann Barbara and Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen and Amanda Collin), who will work for next to nothing, as they are on the run from a malicious land-owner. We meet said richo, Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg) soon enough when he invites Kahlen to dinner to dissuade him from his attempts to settle - more folk on the land would ...

Ridley Scott's latest film, following the underrated The Last Duel and the rated House of Gucci,  is a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte (probably no need for the surname). It traces his rise, post Madame Guillotine, through Robespierre's Reign of Terror, to his sweeping victories in battle and finally, to his exile. All the while, his romance with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) frames the narrative. It's basically a grand historical rom-com, if you find yourself as tickled by the ripe dialogue as I was. Joaquin Phoenix plays the general with his usual weird panache and his delivery of some of these crackers is top fun. He tells an English foreign minister, "You think you're so good just because you have boats!" And to Josephine he proclaims that, "Destiny has brought me to this lamb chop."  Phoenix is on his regular top form but Kirby is brilliant as the enigmatic widow who allows herself to be wooed by the little guy. She puts her expressive eyes to good...

This perfectly-tuned biopic of the father of the atomic bomb has the Nolan stamp of assuredness upon it. The opening gives us scenes of a young-ish Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) getting to know himself and quantum mechanics, intercut with a couple of hearings - a congressional one with Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) attempting to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and a more secretive one to decide on Oppenheimer's security clearance. Sounds pretty dull, to be fair, but Nolan seems to realise the potential for yawns, so he keeps this whole first act zipping along, with constant, escalating music (by Ludwig Göransson) and tight editing (by Jennifer Lame). Oppenheimer breezes through this flurry and arrives at the central driver of the story - the recruitment of scientists to the Manhattan Project, run by Matt Damon's General Leslie Groves. It's around this time in the story that Oppenheimer starts to realise the potential for destruction that his work entails - he j...

As per the film's title, this is all about the last legally sanctioned duel in France. In 1386! Wikipedia gives a more recent 1547 and Ridley Scott himself directed a film (his first) in 1977 called The Duellists , set around the early 1800s, though I take it the duels in this film were not judicial. Anyway, The Last Duel is a pretty fine film. It's neatly structured into three parts, though crucially, not three acts. Each part is named 'The Truth According to....', covering the main characters, played by Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer. These are Jean de Carrouges, Jacques Le Gris and Marguerite de Carrouges respectively. Add Ben Affleck's delicious portrayal (replete with quality swears) of Count Pierre d'Alençon, and you have some excellent turns; just the right side of smallgoods. The 'three truths' structuring will, of course, conjure thoughts of Rashomon (and the many examples of  films or TV shows using the Rashomon Effect), but the icing...

I think I'll jot down a few thoughts on films I see at the cinema throughout the year. Here we go. I saw The King's Speech at the Windsor Theatre in Nedlands (?) on Jan 3 on a rare trip back to Aus. I went with my wife, Liam and Satomi on a pretty warm afternoon. The cinema was full of oldies, possibly attracted to the regal theme, maybe to the discount prices, so getting a couple of choc bombs took a bit longer than planned. I must admit, I had high hopes for this film and I wasn't disappointed. It's well written, tightly-paced and nicely underplayed by the leads. The scene where Logue (Geoffry Rush) calls Perth crowds 'enthusiastic' went down understandably well. Firth is very good, Rush also, and the rest of the cast chip in with solid support, especially Michael Gambon as King George V, domineering father of VI. I thought the best scene was where Mrs. Logue comes home to find the King and Queen in her house. Helena Bonham Carter plays this really w...