Gattaca

Here's a quick test: Name four science fiction movies that made you think. Contact, 2001, Blade Runner, and... well, Independence Day was pretty good at making you think you'd wasted your money. Sadly, while SF in general becomes more relevant every day, in the movies technology means mindless special effects and the future is a great place to blow stuff up. That's what makes Gattaca stand out: A science fiction movie without special effects is rare enough, but when it's more concerned with ideas than action, you'd better make sure you haven't wandered into an old Twilight Zone retrospective by mistake.

In this version of the future, tinkering with your kids genetic nature to create perfect offspring is common practice, which may be good news for the superkids but it's a bit of a downer for those conceived the old-fashioned way. Vincent (Ethan Hawke) was dealt a bad hand from birth, but despite his bad eyesight and heart problems, he refuses to let his imperfections and society's discrimination defeat his dream to go into space. To get inside the rocket-launching Gattaca corporation, Vincent takes on the genetic persona of the perfect but crippled Jerome (Jude Law): He may have to carry samples of Jerome's urine for tests and sprinkle his hair and skin flakes everywhere he goes, but for Vincent that's a small price to pay to get into space. But when the only person at Gattaca who suspected 'Jerome' wasn't all he said he was is found murdered - with Vincent's eyelash on site - a week before Vincent's leaving for Titan, the police investigation seems certain to leave him firmly earth-bound.

As a murder mystery this is uncompelling, and as a romance - with the icy Uma Thurman as a sub standard Gattaca staffer who falls for what she believes is top-grade genetic material - it's far from memorable, but its creepy vision of an antiseptic future populated by sallow-faced pretty boys in tailored suits saves it from complete failure. A world where your every move can be tracked and your life is mapped out at birth is a pretty worrying (and frighteningly likely) prospect, and here it's played for all it's worth - it's just a shame that the rest of this film is so forgettable. Gattaca is different and interesting enough to make it worth a look, but it's more of a curio than a classic.

Anthony Morris

(this review appeared in Forte#154)

The Glimmer Man

Marlon Brando is back and he's kicking heads in The Glimmer Man... oh wait, that's Steven Seagal. Yep, the fattest man in action is even heftier in his latest outing, and to hide it he's wearing even stranger jackets and lots of black (tip for Steve: You can put a black sheet over a couch, but it still looks like a couch - and so do you). Still, he's the man to beat when it comes to slapping guys around and impaling them on anything that just happens to be around, and fans'll be glad to know he doesn't hold back on either. Then again, going by his rapidly expanding waistline (he eats dinner on-camera here), Seagal's not one to hold back on anything, especially if there's salt on it.

Story-wise it's Steven Seagal meets Seven: It's raining a lot, there's a serial killer called 'The Family Man' on the loose, and two miss-matched cops team up to track him down - only here the serial killer's got something to do with the Russian mob, there's an evil conspiracy to frame one of the cops (Seagal) for the killings, and the other cop (Keenen Ivory Wayans) gets to say lines like "I'm gonna go suck on some deer penis". All the usual Seagal elements are here - everyone says how great he is (Wayans says "He took 'em out like Bruce Lee, only better." - maybe he meant "fatter"), he craps on about the wisdom of the East, he wears love beads and jackets made out of tinfoil, he's got a mysterious CIA hitman past, and he slaps people around a lot.

The problems start when they introduce a plot, because when Seagal's idea of conducting a freelance autopsy involves cutting out a dead woman's breast implants you know this isn't exactly Silence of the Lambs. The editing during the fight scenes is so incoherent they make no sense at all so they fit in well with the plot, though you've got to give points to a movie with a credit card that cuts peoples throats and overall they're still more interesting than a Barbra Streisand film. This may be just as silly and mindlessly enjoyable as all of Seagal's other films, but it's obvious he's just marking time 'till he achieves his dream role - Jabba the Hut in the new Star Wars movies. Hey, he's already got the chins for it.

Anthony Morris

(this review appeared in Forte#132)

Grace of my Heart

From the mid fifties through to the late sixties the Brill building in New York was the home of a thriving musical community, and no-one was more vital to its' stream of hit records than songwriters like Enda Buxton (Illeana Douglas). She left Philadelphia for New York with the hope of becoming a singer, but manager Joel Millner (John Turturro) wanted her for her songs, and before long she was churning out the hits for $150 a week. She also became Denise Waverly - her rich-girl past didn't sit well with her gritty urban lyrics - and it was as Denise that she met Howard (Eric Stoltz) who was first her writing partner, then her husband, then the father of her child, then - after he cheated on her - her ex-husband. And that was just the first in a very long series of heartbreaks as she travelled through the music business during the sixties - she'd write hit after hit, she'd make friends out of enemies (Patsy Kensit), she'd marry a spaced-out teen idol (Matt Dillon), but she'd never be happy until she could sing her own songs.

This tale of triumph over (a lot of) tragedy is perhaps a bit too downbeat for some, though there are quite a few laughs scattered throughout, and not just from the appalling hairstyles on the heads of the male cast. On the surface this may not look like a chick flick, despite writer/director Allison Anders being responsible for films like Gas Food Lodging and Mia Vida Loca, but any film where all the male romantic interests are scum (well, maybe not complete scum, but not exactly good guys either) sure isn't a film for the guys, but at least this has a lot more to it than something like Waiting to Exhale. Buxton's story, while interesting, is never really involving enough to draw you in despite a great performance from Douglas (after a while her heartbreak becomes a little too predictable), but the music's catchy, the acting's fine, and overall this is likeable enough to make it worth a look. Anyway, where else are you going to see J Mascis, someone playing the theremin, and Bridget Fonda in a cameo as a lesbian in the same film?

Anthony Morris

(this review appeared in Forte #133)

Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda is the kind of Australian film we don't see much of these days. Intelligent and quirky we get plenty of, and this has those qualities in spades, but it's also set in Australia's past - that place strip-minded by countless period dramas until the slightest mention of it has audiences wincing from sudden Sigrid Thornton flashbacks. Then again, if those period pieces had been made with half the spark and class of this film by Gillian (Little Women, The Last Days of Chez Nous) Armstrong, perhaps seeing a horse and cart travelling down a dusty track wouldn't automatically send audiences to sleep.

While Lucinda (Cate Blanchett) is growing up independent and headstrong in outback Australia in the mid-1800's, on the other side of the world in England shy and quirky Oscar (Ralph Fiennes) has received his calling from God: To become an Anglican minister. It's while following this path that he first discovers the joys of gambling, an activity he sees as being far from sinful so long as it's done solely to help the poor. Back in Australia Lucinda's on her own with a sizeable fortune after the death of her mother, and a life-long fascination with glass soon sees her buying the Prince Rupert glassworks in Sydney town.

Before long she's also swept up by the thrill of gambling, and it's after a trip to England to purchase the latest glass-blowing equipment that the film's two characters finally meet, as a guilt-ridden and water-phobic Oscar happens to be on the same ship heading to Australia, fleeing England as penance for his uncontrolled gambling. But he soon finds things for him aren't that much different in Australia, with only his stifled love for Lucinda keeping him out of the pit of gambling-related despair he sought to escape. Fired with passion, he comes up with a grand, crazy scheme: To build a church out of glass and transport it north to the rough'n ready town of Belligen. It's a tragedy waiting to happen, and for Oscar it doesn't wait long.

For a movie about characters fired by passion, this is more a film of the head than the heart. Based on the Booker-prise winning novel by Peter Carey, it suffers from a common problem with translating books to film: So much of making the cross-over successfully hangs on calculating what to remove and condense that often getting the story right wins out over capturing the feel. That's not to say this is just a dry, intellectual exercise - Fiennes and Blanchett both give fine performances, with the red-haired and fidgety Fiennes compelling from start to finish - but there's never any real chemistry between them, and without it all the twists and turns and symbolism of the story never really take hold. Armstrong's created a beautiful and never boring film packed with often suprising imagery, but despite it's many pluses it's just a little too cold at heart to ever really warm to.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte)

Dating the Enemy

About the only thing that all the successful Australian films of the last decade or so have in common with each other is that they've been the type of thing you can't get anywhere else. Hollywood wasn't making Strictly Ballroom-style films, nor were they going for the Muriel's Wedding market, and the one they did make for the Priscilla crowd (remember Too Wong Foo...) sank without a trace. Some say cultural cringe, others say the Americans are just too good at movie-making for us to compete directly, but for whatever reason, local films that go head-to-head with what Hollywood does best usually end up being joked about on comedy shows before the week is out. Which is why you've got to admire the bravery of those behind Dating the Enemy, because a romantic comedy about a couple who swap bodies - yep, it's that old Freaky Friday deal again - is not exactly breaking new ground in any direction, no matter how charming and funny it might turn out to be.

Tash (Claudia Karvan) is a mousey science journalist, Brett (Guy Pearce) is a straight-forward music reporter, and if you don't think opposites attract then you need to go to the movies more often. Problem is, by their first year anniversary (which, romantically enough, is on Valentine's day), Brett has found himself a high-profile job hosting a music show that's turned him into a red shirt wearing geek with an ego inflated to twice normal size, and now they're so opposite it looks like their relationship is coming apart. But after a full moon and some fizzy special effects, they wake up in each others bodies - he's a she, she's a he, and they're both about to get a pretty good look at how the other half lives.

Films like this live or die by how well they can persuade you that the two central characters actually have swapped bodies, and on this score at least this film has little to worry about. Pre-swap, Karvan and Pearce exaggerate their characters respective natures - she's really shy and quiet, he's a total extrovert - to such a cartoony extent it's almost annoying, but after the change they're both pretty convincing as each other, and by the end they've actually made the premise of this seem almost natural. The gender-swap jokes fly thick and fast after a fairly slow opening, with plenty of self-fondling and surprise revelations, but even with a pretty strong set of laughs this gets a bit aimless around the middle before heading off to an ending that's about as surprising as a light coming on after you hit the switch.

So again it falls on the actors to carry the film, and fortunately both Pearce and Karvan have charm enough to bring this off despite a few rough spots. Pearce might be a smarmy pain as Brett, but as Tash he's both sympathetic and believable, while Karvan also shines once she's playing the opposite gender, giving a swaggering, confident performance that's fun to watch. It's almost disappointing when they have to change back (yeah, like there was a chance they wouldn't), because despite the creaky, worn-out concept, seeing these two act like each other is really what makes this worthwhile.

This may be no better than your usual American romantic comedy but it's easily no worse, so for once supporting the local product may not seem like as big a chore as usual. For the romantically inclined this is worth checking out because it's date film written all over it, but otherwise - despite some very enjoyable performances - this doesn't really make that much of an impact either way.

Anthony Morris

(this review appeared in Forte#121)

Love and Other Catastrophies

Charming, light-hearted and fun, Love and Other Catastrophes is the type of film that actually makes university look like time well-spent. This mix of comedy, romance, and a pretty-near spot-on look at uni life powers along at a steady pace thanks to a likeable cast and some lively direction from first-timer 23-year old Emma Kate-Croghan, and while this may not be the deepest film around, when something's as enjoyable as this you'll be willing to forgive it a lot - even if the two old ladies who walked out of a recent screening at the first lesbian kiss weren't.

Mia (Frances O'Connor) and Alice (Alice Garner) are two film school students on the lookout for a third to share in their new flat. Mia's girlfriend Danni (Radha Mitchell) is less than impressed that she hasn't been asked to move in by the commitment-phobic Mia, and while the two of them are drifting apart, Alice is developing a major crush on campus heart-throb Ari (Matthew Dyktynski), a classic major and male hooker with a heart of gold. Michael (Matt Day) is a med student looking for love - and somewhere else to stay after his flatmates lifestyle of wake-up bongs and early morning vomit gets to be too much for him, and over the course of twenty-four hours they all come together in a pile of love, death, and overdue library fines.

This is more charming than laugh-a-minute funny, though there's plenty of humor throughout, but for all the jokes and the engaging (if nothing special) story of crossed lovers, the real appeal here is the energy that keeps this constantly on the move. Much of that comes from the classy and confident cast, who (apart from the wooden Dyktynski) easily bring their characters to life in a way that draws you into their lives. Sure, some parts grate - especially the self-reflexive film-school sequences - but if you haven't seen this already, don't miss out.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte#125)

Cosi

Australian audiences have a real love/hate relationship with the local product - if it's not a smash like Muriel's Wedding or Babe, it's lucky to get a swift burial in a shallow grave (remember Back of Beyond? Don't worry - no-one else does). There's not much room for moderate success in the world of Australian film, and those movies that avoid the three-day cinema runs of a Billy's Holiday without creating the box office queues of a Priscilla, Queen of the Desert are left to fade from the memory without making any real impression on the Australian psyche. It'd be a shame if Cosi (directed by Mark Joffe) fell into that trap, because while it may not be the best Australian film of the 90's, it's far from the type of comedy where the only laugh you get is when you leave the cinema and see other people buying tickets for it.

When Lewis (Ben Mendelsohn) gets his first directing job, he's too happy to be working to worry that the job is in a centre for the mentally ill. But right from the very begining he's got troubles: At the urgings of Roy (Barry Otto) the patients don't want to put on the variety show the staff planned - they want to perform Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutte. With a cast that includes the junkie Julie (Toni Collette); the repressed Ruth (Pamela Rabe); mentally absent musician Zac (Colin Hay); a manic woman who falls rapidly in love with Lewis named Cherry (Jacki Weaver); the incredably shy and nervious Henry (Paul Chubb); and the pyromaniac bogan Doug (David Wenham), Lewis has enough troubles without trying to translate an Italian opera into English for a group laughed by the hospitals head nurse (Colin Friels) just because "none of them can sing, and the orchestra's comatose". Add to this problems on the home front between his law student girlfriend Lucy (Rachel Griffiths) and his arty sponger mate Nick (Aden Young), and you'd think that Lewis'd be happy to use any one of the endless set-backs as an excuse to give it away, but he struggles on throughout to bring his actors dream to life.

Or at least, that's what it'd like you to think. The biggest problem this film has is that it all seems a bit rushed, and by packing so much in there's never room to develop what happens in depth. Lewis' relationship problems are so hastially sketched that they never pull us in, and the obstacles between him and the play's completion pop up in one scene and are overcome in the next without any real sense of tension. Still, this is primarily a comedy, and on that score this works as well as any recent Australian film: The jokes are good and there's plenty of them, the characters all work, even the ones who aren't insane, and any movie that has a rap song that rhymes "doggy-style" with "paedophile" definately isn't afraid to stoop for a laugh.

Mendelsohn is getting a bit old to play a uni student (here he looks like a young Lance Hendrikson) but his acting skills are never in doubt, and there isn't an actor here who gives anything less than a fine performance. Sure, a lot of them get to be over-the-top nutcases, but even those roles are tempered with a touch of humanity, while those with more normal roles - especially Young with a very smarmy character (think young used car salesman), and the excellent Collette - bring them off with both style and substance. It may be a bit all over the place to make its point about the battle of the sexes, but on the whole this is a comedy that'll get you laughing all the way through and hit or not, there's not enough of those to go round.

Anthony Morris