THE GODMOTHER (aka MAMA WEED)
Australian Cinemas from Thursday 20 May
* * *
Isabelle Huppert can single-handedly left a mediocre film, and she does so with The Godmother, an amiable Parisian crime comedy. Huppert, in every scene, plays a police interpreter who finds herself getting into the marijuana business, putting herself at odds not only with her profession but with her boyfriend, who’s a cop. And guess whom he’s trying to track down?
It’s a neat set-up, the script has many witty moments, and Huppert gamely gives her all. A lurking character comes into her own in the third act, lifting the whole thing towards a conclusion that leaves you feeling, perhaps, that the film was better than it really was, and in a mood to overlook a few of its more ridiculous contrivances.
THIS IS A ROBBERY
Netflix now
This is a Robbery, a new four-part documentary series on Netflix, may exhibit many familiar patterns, tropes and methods – the ‘Netflix true-crime documentary’ is its own genre now – but its fresh in many ways, too. For a start, it’s about robbery, not murder, and art theft at that (how quaint!) Plus, it’s set in Boston, with a whole bunch of Boston characters, and Boston characters are their own thing, with accents and mannerisms and a unique sense of humour.
The theft was at the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, and it was a doozy, perhaps the biggest art heist of all time. The series is propulsive, compelling and fun. I knew nothing about the robbery, despite living in that region at the time; everything around it makes a hell of a story. Wicked bingeable.
