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Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood… The Book.

July 30, 2021by CJ1 Comment

Quentin Tarantino has stated in interviews that his novelistic version of his own movie Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is borne of an intriguing conceit: that, as a reader, you’re meant to imagine that the book came first, and the movie is the movie adapted from the book by a director called Quentin Tarantino. Depending on how much time you have for the man (and I have a lot), it’s either a delicious or a slightly twee conceit, but knowing it going in makes the book more fun.

For a start, there are differences. A good example is an early scene (in both the book and film) between Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie) and his potential new agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino). In the book – which is meant to have been written first, remember – that scene occurs in Schwarz’s office. In the film, it’s at Musso and Frank, a fabled Hollywood restaurant, as though Tarantino as director (and adapter of the book) re-set the scene into a more lively, cinematically interesting location. It’s gamesmanship, and it’s fun.

More importantly for serious fans, there’s more information, such as a biggie: we find out explicitly whether Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) knowingly killed his wife. Indeed, we find out a lot more about Cliff, and it’s enough to raise Pitt’s eyebrows: he may not have knowingly been playing the character we find in these pages.

These are both entertaining and lively elements and make the book worth a read. There are about three chapters, however, that elaborate on the mythology and backstory of Lancer, the western TV show Dalton guest stars on. These sections see Tarantino writing in a pulp fiction western style for his own amusement, but – for me at least – they committed a sin found nowhere else in the entire body of the man’s work: they were boring. Fear not; they’re easily skipped, without disrupting the rest of the book.

It’s a fun experiment that will clearly appeal almost entirely to fans of the film. There are many of those – it was a massive hit, making three hundred and seventy-five million dollars worldwide – and they will likely be as entertained as I was. Plus, now they’ll know whether Cliff pulled that trigger deliberately.

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Perfumes and Shiva Baby

July 17, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

Perfumes (Les Parfums)

Australian Cinemas now (where open; Sydney TBD)

* * *

Perfumes is an escape: charming, light, almost care-free. Most of all, it showcases the enormously appealing talents of co-leads Emmanuelle Devos and Grégory Montel. She’s been a known quantity for decades and a full-fledged movie star since the turn of the century; he’s on the rapid ascent, fulled by his popular character on Call My Agent. She plays a perfumer – a fragrance creator – whose peak days in the industry are behind her, and who currently sells her olfactory skills for commercial uses, such as disguising industrial odours. He plays the chauffeur she hires and comes to rely on. It’s not a romance – it’s more surprising and slyer than that – but it is comfortably and happily a performance vehicle; the plot is completely secondary to the delight in seeing these extremely talented screen actors share that screen, which they do throughout the movie, in cars, on trains, in hotel rooms and restaurants, and in some delightful countryside. Smells like a nice time, non?

Shiva Baby

Australian Cinemas from 29 July (where open)

* * * 1/2

Krisha was my favourite movie of 2015, and I guess it’s now old enough to have influenced younger filmmakers. Emma Seligman, Shiva Baby’s writer and director, sure is young enough to have been heavily influenced by Trey Edward Shults’ debut masterwork: she was only twenty-four when she made Shiva Baby, wearing her influences on her sleeve. Her film is the same length as Schults’ (give or take a few minutes), the soundtrack – especially the plucked strings – is incredibly similar, the pacing is comparable, and there is a climactic moment clearly harking back to the famous ‘turkey drop’ in Krisha. But Krisha was a family drama dressed in horror clothes, whereas Seligman has made a family drama draped in comedy, even as it may be as terrifying as The Shining for anyone with any hint of social anxiety.

It’s not laugh-out-loud but it’s full of very witty lines, and culturally it’s all-in: this is a truly Jewish movie, taking place in close-to-real-time at an outer-borough or upstate New York shiva (baby!). We follow Danielle (an excellent Rachel Sennott) as she encounters her best friend and occasional sexual partner, her sugar daddy occasional sexual partner, and all the assorted family and friends who need to know why she’s so thin and what she’s doing with her life. It’s a slender premise but executed with great panache, so nimble, fluid and confident that it’ll be over before you know it. Recommended indeed.

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This Is Pop; Can’t Get You Out of My Head

July 1, 2021July 1, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

Even if you missed the whole Boyz II Men and auto-tune manias, don’t skip the first two episodes of Netflix’s new 8 x 44 minute music doco series This is Pop, which uses that band and that band-aid as jumping-off points for a fascinating and enormously entertaining examination of movements in the history of modern pop music. (I nearly jumped to episode three, about Swedish pop dominance, which would have not only made me White Boy Extreme but denied me 88 incredibly fascinating minutes). Copious upbeat interviews with everyone concerned, most of them comfortably ensconced in their been-there-done-that-made-some-money-doing-it contemporary lives, mix joyously with plenty of clips but, most importantly, plenty of context. This is extremely well scripted stuff, put together with clear knowledge and passion. Fans of pop music podcasts will be delighted to finally see the faces of Jason King and Chris Molanphy, two of the show’s resident talking head experts. A total binge with fabulous music.

Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, available on YouTube for those of us who can’t watch it in the UK on BBC iPlayer, is the latest work by BBC video journalist Adam Curtis. Told over six episodes of one and a quarter hours each, it’s a political, philosophical and psychological history of the 20th century, a kind of “this is how we got here” thing where “here” is the seemingly insurmountable political polarisation now obvious in the populations of countries like the US and the UK. It looks at the roots of conspiracy theories, failures of various radical movements throughout the 20th century, the enduring trauma to British people over the fall of empire, and a million other things. What makes it mesmerising is the footage: Curtis has free access to the entire BBC archive, which is the world’s largest, and he constantly deploys amazing imagery you’ve actually never seen before, all used very skilfully to make an intriguing argument. This is a monumental work of documentary art, enthralling, enveloping, gripping and vital. Your brain will thank you for it.

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My Zoe

June 16, 2021June 16, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

Opening in Australian Cinemas on Thursday 17 June.

* * * 1/2

Julie Delpy is known for a deep and diverse body of acting work, including Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise pictures, but since 2002 she has directed and written or co-written seven feature films that are also admirably ambitious in the breadth of their styles, genres and themes. The general vibe has been comedic, but her latest, My Zoe, isn’t concerned in the slightest with making us laugh. For awhile – its first act – it is a lacerating, astute rendering of a custody battle; the barbs, insults and low-blows delivered by Delpy’s character Isabelle and Richard Armitage’s James are painfully well observed: this is how couples really fight. Then it becomes a devastatingly sad parental medical drama, as the child over whom they are warring, the titular Zoe, suffers a particular affliction. But just after the halfway point, it really turns, and a few tiny technological clues we’ve been given over the first hour – blink and you’ll miss ‘em – quietly reveal themselves as signposts that we’re in a world that is either a little in the future or slightly alternate to our own; the third act is, thrillingly, quiet, controlled, clinical sci-fi.

This deeply sad film really got its claws into me. Delpy’s monastic constraint renders the sensational subject matter devoid of sensationalism; everything is austere, calm, precise. She uses no score, there are no obvious visual effects; nothing is played for effect, only truth. Isabelle is a flawed, complicated character, whom Delpy plays with zero vanity (and, seemingly, zero make-up). There are some motivational leaps in the second half that may put off some viewers; others may find the whole situation too distressing. I was entranced by the film’s deeply somber mood, its sober tone, and its audacious honesty: I was in for Delpy’s dark ride.

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In The Heights, Elvis, Halston

June 10, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

In The Heights

Opens Friday USA

Australian Advance Screenings now

* * * *

Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ musical In The Heights is ecstatic cinema, a huge, friendly, rabidly upbeat celebration of some pretty phenomenal music, mostly exceptionally sung and arranged. There are some jaw-droppingly pleasing moments of inspired choreography and in general all the ‘big numbers’ are supremely well staged. It’s a bit mawkish, but never insultingly so. It’s like a huge musical feel-good alternative Do The Right Thing, where the characters respond to an urban New York heatwave and blackout, not with a riot, but with fireworks, community coherence, and, of course, song and dance. A bunch of original Hamilton cast members are here, placing In The Heights firmly in a MirandaVerse, and everything about it feels like a very good prototype for Miranda’s masterpiece to come. If this is this good, imagine what a fully realised cinematic treatment of Hamilton by this teamcould be.

Elvis Presley: The Searcher is an HBO documentary series (two parts, each two hours) from 2018 which has recently debuted on Netflix. It’s personal and intimate, using audio from musicians (including Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen), friends, contemporary bandmates and, vitally, Priscilla Presley, over much archive footage and photography and using Elvis’ 1968 comeback special as a kind of dramatic fulcrum. Like any doco about Elvis – and there have been many – the footage of Elvis himself is the most captivating; there is a lot of it here, and the result is a pretty comprehensive, enlightening and ultimately worthy addition to the Presleyverse. I adored every minute.

There is a moment in Halston, Netflix’s five-part, Ryan Murphy-produced (melo)dramatic rendering of the designer’s life and career, when Halston (Ewen McGregor, weirdly cast) is being urged to cut costs. When told he could stop buying orchids, he flatly refuses, saying, “Orchids are part of my process. Can’t put a budget on inspiration.” It’s a good line; unfortunately it’s one of the few. The production design is fabulous (as it should be) and so is Krysta Rodriguez as Liza Minnelli. But the script is woeful, with dialogue no human being would say, should say, or could say with any sense of truth. If you want pretty dresses, though, they’re splendidly recreated here.

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My Name Is Gulpilil

May 21, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

Opening in Australian cinemas 27 May

* * *

Molly Reynolds’ feature-length documentary My Name Is Gulpilil may not be quite what you expect. While it does feature clips from many movies the remarkable actor David Gulpilil has appeared in, from his one-man show, and from his life as documented by news crews and others over the course of a big career, it is not, nor does it aspire to be, a comprehensive study of that career. Rather, this is an intimate, melancholic and poetic portrait of a dying man.

Gulpilil was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2017, prompting Reynolds to begin making a film with him, an opportunity for him to tell ‘my story of my story’. The expected narrative was that Gulpilil would plan his funeral, return to his country – Arnhem Land – and die, and the film would end with his death ceremonies. But Gulpilil is still alive, and his stubborn survival thwarted the narrative, allowing Reynolds to, perhaps, over-indulge in what she describes as ‘the luxury of crafting increasingly fantastical shots and of accruing the most remarkable footage’.

Some of that footage is indeed beautiful – the opening shot is jaw-dropping, so good I had to rewind my screener and watch it again – but there is a lot of it, and the film meanders, reflecting, I suppose, the strange limbo both filmmaker and subject found themselves in, while potentially testing our patience. More immediately engaging material includes much of day-to-day living with Gulpilil and his carer Mary Hood, who quietly asserts herself as an indomitable silent witness and extraordinary ‘background’ character: you don’t realise the film is about her and David’s relationship until the film itself does.

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The Godmother and This Is A Robbery

May 19, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

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.

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Creation Stories

April 12, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

Opening In Australian cinemas April 15

* * 1/2

Nick Moran’s Creation Stories is a direct mash-up of 24 Hour Party People and Trainspotting; it’s not even half as good as either, but enjoyable enough if you like both. The milieu is fascinating and the lead performance so committed that it pulls you through a muddy second act.

That performance is Ewen Bremner’s (Spud from Trainspotting), playing Alan McGee, the founding father of UK indie label Creation Records. As we did with Tony Wilson in 24 Hour Party People, we follow McGee as he discovers drugs, discovers Manchester, and discovers bands, including, ultimately, Oasis.

London and Manchester post-punk, throughout the 80s, and into the era of rave and Britpop, are places to be, and the film is most fun as a nostalgic visit. Bremner, in every scene and narrating as well (via a classic ‘interview with a journo now I’m rich and famous’ framework) puts ferocious energy into his McGee; at times it’s almost too loud, too frenetic, too much, but it’s certainly committed. The script is overly convoluted in that muddy second act and the film is so indebted to the styles of its antecedents that it has very little of its own. But, like Bremner, it’s energetic, a bit wild, and, essentially, fun.

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Godzilla Vs. Kong

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021by CJ1 Comment

Now playing in Australian cinemas.

* * *

They must have paid Daniel Day-Lewis an awful lot of money to return to the big screen for Godzilla Vs. Kong, but believe me, it was worth every penny. He brings a seriousness of purpose and a quiet dignity to an otherwise typically loud, typically violent, typically over-the-top monster movie. He chose to go uncredited, but, as it turned out, he has no real reason to be embarrassed.

Day-Lewis plays Charles Stroud, a bio-engineer obsessed with harnessing Godzilla’s powers, and thus throwing his support behind the big lizard for the film’s inevitable climactic show down with King Kong, whose own champion is played by Alexander Skarsgård. Day-Lewis and Skarsgård share multiple scenes together, and, despite the big lizard versus big ape action, their quiet, contemplative discussions on bio-ethics and scientific accountability are the film’s best moments, very well acted, surprisingly well written, and, at times, deeply moving. Expect an Oscar nomination for Day-Lewis next year.

The rest, of course, is big loud action, and as these things go, it’s well done and fun. But it’s the presence of Day-Lewis that makes Godzilla Vs. Kong a surprising must-see of this strange cinema season.

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Golden Voices

March 24, 2021by CJLeave a Comment

Opens 25 March in Australian cinemas.

* * *

Golden Voices is a charming little oddity from Belarusian filmmaker Evgeny Ruman, who clearly co-wrote the screenplay (with cinematographer and first-time screenwriter Ziv Berkovich) from experience. Ruman immigrated with his family to Israel in 1990, along with another 185,227 Soviets from the former USSR. (148,000 went the next year, capping a huge two-year mass migration). His film tells the story of two of them, a mature, childless couple leaving behind a career as ‘dubbers’ – voice actors skilled in speaking Russian dialogue for foreign films. Their arrival in Israel sets them on a new adventure but with new challenges that test their marriage.

The milieu is the most fascinating element here; Ruman paints a vivid picture of a unique expat community that he was clearly a part of. There’s a lot to learn about just how Israel works as it absorbs large immigrant bodies. The couple are able to live within a Russian-speaking community, but they are still strangers in a strange land. Their trials and tribulations are not particularly enthralling, but that land is interesting enough.

	Rod Wise on Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood…
	Peter Young on Godzilla Vs. Kong
	Rodney Roy Wise on The Trial of the Chicago 7
	Rodney Roy Wise on The Dry
	Rodney Roy Wise on Nomadland