Last Ride

There are some things Australian films just don't do well, and they don't all involve big-budget alien invasions. For example, our films are usually lacking when it comes to generating suspense: you might want to know what happens next, but that's almost always because you've taken a liking to the characters, not because they're in a situation where you're actually anywhere near the edge of your seat. And while it might be fair to argue that Last Ride isn't really a suspense kind of film, focusing as it does on the relationship between Kev (Hugh Weaving) a fairly dodgy character who just happens to be taking his pre-teen son Chook (Tom Russell) on a low-budget cross-country journey to parts unknown, that's no reason for it to be as flat and half-hearted as it turns out to be. It gets all the things right that Australian film traditionally gets right: it's very well acted, extremely well shot, and takes full advantage of its setting (the outback of South Australia) to show off both the bush and the landscape itself in a visually interesting way. But fairly early on in the piece it becomes obvious that Kev is on the run from the cops, and as the story unfolds it's not unreasonable to assume that there's a pretty big manhunt going on for them. So for the story to then unfold in a manner that's almost completely lacking in suspense or drama is pretty much a calculated insult to the reasonable expectations of the audience. On the flip side, it's fair to argue that this is a film more about the relationship between father and son than a man on the run from the cops, but with plenty of long, drawn-out scenes that add little to either side of things there's no reason that this couldn't have done both. Last Ride remains a worthy film; unfortunately, we've already got more than enough of those.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #456)

Bruno

UK comedian Sasha Baron Cohen's third movie (hands up who'd forgotten the one with Ali G) once again proves that context is pretty much everything when it comes to his style of comedy. Coming in at a tight 75-odd minutes - he packs so many jokes in you won't mind the short running time - the story is as thin as some of the outfits Austrian fashion reporter Bruno wears: after being kicked off Austrian television for ruining a fashion show, Bruno travels to America to become famous. Of course, this is just an excuse for various comedy set-pieces, from having gay sex with the ghost of his dead boyfriend Milli (from Milli Vanilli) and learning how to defend himself against a gay attacker welding a dildo to trying to broker Middle East peace by getting both sides to agree on humus and going on a hunting trip with a group of increasingly gay-unfriendly redneck hunters. Cohen's not afraid to push things to get a reaction and there's a number of images and scenes here that push the boundaries of good taste for the sake of a laugh, but it never feels gratuitous or overly nasty. Which is kind of a surprise, as various elements in the media seemed all set to denounce this as some kind of homophobic nightmare. Despite the pre-release drama, it turns out Bruno is too much of a sweet but utterly clueless airhead to be a symbol of any kind of lifestyle outside of one driven entirely by a lust for fame. As with Cohen's earlier film Borat, much of the impact comes from seeing the extremely camp and suggestive Bruno interact with real (often homophobic) people, but this time around we all know what to expect so if you're the kind of person who isn't all that good with taking things at face value - that is to say, if you're a bit of a humourless cynic - you'll probably want to annoy the hell out of your friends during the post-viewing discussion by going on about how much of this was staged. If, on the other hand, you're someone who actually enjoys laughing, then you'll get plenty of opportunities to do so here.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #458)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Hollywood blockbusters are pretty much reviewer-proof and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is no exception. That's because, like most blockbusters, it's amazingly good at lowering your expectations. Be honest: so long as you get to see a whole bunch of giant robots wrecking up the place, with a lot of explosions and the occasional shot of American fighter jets whooshing past thrown in, this will pretty much get the job done. And on that level this does everything you could ask for. There are more robot fights than in the first film, there are more robots than the first film, there are bigger robots than in the first film, and there's enough fighting and shouting and exploding going to make pretty much anyone not fully laden with energy drink feel like taking a nap once this all-action two and a half hours is over. But if you're interested in anything at all past the giant robot side of things - and there are a few brief scenes without giant robots here - then this is one big sloppy mess. The plot is one of those plots that's extremely complicated without ever actually getting interesting: the Decepticons (the bad robots) are constantly looking for stuff - their defeated leader Megatron, a bit of the All-Spark left over from the first movie, some giant machine that'll turn out the sun - while the Autobots (the good robots) are working with the humans to kill the Decepticons even though this is such a blatant commercial for US military might it's not exactly clear why the humans even need their robot friends 95% of the time. Then Shia LaBoeuf runs around doing something or other while shots of Megan Fox's arse flash up on the screen, and by the time we get an old man robot with a cane, two robots who talk in ebonics, and a close up shot of a transforming robots' testicles it's safe to conclude that everything that doesn't involve a robot fight is a waste of time. Sadly, because all the robots look basically the same and have this extremely complicated design that only looks cool when they're standing still, pretty much all the robot fights are just a blur of grey metal parts twisting and turning on screen until someone gets their head ripped off, which is nowhere near as exciting as it should be. As big budget spectacles go this is state-of-the-art: as a film for people to enjoy, it still has a lot of transforming to do.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #456)

The Hangover

A bunch of mates go to Las Vegas for a bucks night, only to wake up the next morning with no memory of the night before and one of their party missing. Yep, it's Dude, Where's My Car, only with a guy in place of the car. That's actually a little unfair: with this kind of comedy it doesn't really matter what the actual plot is so long as you have some funny performers and some decent scenes for them to go nuts in. Which this does, though maybe not as many as it thinks it has. Guy-centric comedy might be the cool thing right now, but this film - from Old School director Todd Phillips - is actually pretty old-fashioned, despite the occasional currently-cool crude line or bewildering Mike Tyson cameo. And it's this slightly retro feel that makes this occasionally less impressive than you might expect: one of the reasons why a lot of the current film comedies work is a feeling that the guys involved are pushing boundaries and trying something a little new. It may not be strictly true, but it gives an energy to the performances and the script that The Hangover lacks. Again, to stress: this is still a mostly pretty funny film. Zach Galifianakis especially is constantly hysterical as the space case, with Ed Helms (from the US version of The Office) as the angry nerd Stu and Bradley Cooper as the once-cool guy turned frustrated family man not far behind. Any scene with kids and a taser is always going to be a laugh, likewise physical comedy involving smacking a baby's head with a car door. But when an Asian gambler character turns up with an amazingly camp accent, you'd be forgiven for wondering if it was 2009 or 1979, and not in a good way either. Which is the one flaw that stops this from being as flat-out funny as it so often comes close to being: the occasional sense that, rather than being a film where everyone involved is having a lot of fun being silly, they're just ticking boxes on a sheet labelled "Formula for Comedy Success".

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #455)

The Choir

A group of underprivileged people form a choir, their lives transformed by music under the guidance of a charismatic leader. Sound familiar? Well this isn’t the television series about the Choir of Hard Knocks. Instead, it’s a feature documentary following a group of prisoners in Johannesburg’s largest and harshest prison. Their choir leader is a fellow inmate, Coleman, jailed for 24 years for armed robbery. He’s a plump and balding middle-aged man, with teeth missing. He readily admits that his love of luxury is what got him to trouble. But here in the prison he’s a changed man, a mentor and disciplinarian to the group of singers, young damaged men, whom he grooms to compete in the National Prisoner Choir Competition.

Among the group is Jabulani, painfully thin and scarred by knives and bullets, and very very angry. He’s reluctant to submit to authority, and of course he hates being locked up in a place where there are 40 inmates to a cell, and two small meals a day. We hear of terrible violence, of an eye being gouged out by a broken lightbulb, and of men cooped up from 3pm every afternoon until the next morning, with very little supervision. When Jabulani tells of his poverty-stricken childhood, however, of being hungry and bored and hopeless, we see that life outside is not that much better.

Filmed over four years, with remarkable access, by Australian journalist and filmmaker Andrew Davie, The Choir begins as a simple though illuminating look at a prison choir working towards a singing competition. The format, if not the setting, is familiar, formulaic even: the backstories of the participants, the practising, the nerves and anticipation, the moment of performance and finally, the announcement of the winners. The film could have concluded at this point, and it would still be a fine documentary. But the beauty and power of it lie in the fact that it continues down the track, years after that climax. What happens to Coleman and Jabulani after they are released? Can they live in freedom without falling back into crime? What kind of place is South Africa these days, and what hope is there for children living in the shanty-towns of the major cities? Despite the harsh realities depicted, The Choir never loses hope, and reveals in a fresh way the human need to group together to create meaning and beauty in the midst of devastation.

The Choir had a limited (Aust) national release and will be on SBS TV and DVD later this year. A version of this review appeared in edition 331 of The Big Issue magazine.

Rochelle Siemienowicz

The Year My Voice Broke (21st Anniversary DVD release)

Set in 1960s country-town Australia, this is the coming-of-age film that made Noah Taylor a star in 1987, and it’s no wonder. As 15-year-old Danny, a boy in love with his best friend Freya (Loene Carmen), he’s a wonderful mix of sensitivity, awkwardness and sexual longing. He can strum his guitar, wear dark glasses and dangle a cigarette from the side of his mouth, but he’ll never be able to compete with the town’s bad boy, Trevor (Ben Mendelsohn in hyperactive mode) when it comes to getting the girl to fall in love with him.

Written and directed by John Duigan, the film is beautifully shot by Geoff Burton, who captures the spirit of a hot golden summer where childhood dies and adult realities must be faced. A soundtrack heavy with squeaky violin is the only real drawback. This 21st Anniversary DVD contains a number of extras, the best of which is a conversation between Duigan and his three stars, now all grown up but still deeply affected by their experiences of making this film about the ‘summer when everything changed.’

Rochelle Siemienowicz

Terminator: Salvation

A lot of elements went into making the first (and to a slightly lesser extent, the second) Terminator movies classics of the SF / action genre... and pretty much all of those elements are nowhere to be found in Terminator: Salvation. Which doesn't automatically make it a bad film: equalling the first Terminator is a pretty tough act, and within the tight confines of the 21st century action movie franchise there's plenty of things even a movie with 'Terminator' in the title just can't get away with.

What ends up making Terminator: Salvation a bad film - and it's one of those films that has you leaving the cinema thinking you've just had a pretty good time, only to discover that as the hours pass it melts away like a T-1000 dunked in molten steel - is the fact that despite being the first film set entirely in the machine-dominated future only hinted at in the earlier films, there's just no point to it. Again, not a new development: even the second film didn't really have much reason for existing apart from reminding us that director James Cameron was the most kick-ass action dirctor on the face of the planet. But at least the other films (even the much maligned third one) managed to come up up endings that had a bit of weight to them. This ends with our heroes going off into the sunset (seriously), with the War Against the Machines at pretty much the same stage it was when the opening credits rolled and the whole thing feeling like you just watched someone running on a treadmil for two hours. Of course, a few things do happen to space out the various action scenes between man and killer machine: it's the future, killer robots roam a post-nuclear world, and while resistance hero (but not yet leader) John Connor (Christian Bale) grits his teeth between killing robots, former death-row inmate Marcus (Sam Worthington) wakes up after fifteen years dead and wonders why everything's gone to hell. So actually, not a lot happens between the various action scenes. Luckily, those actions scenes are usually pretty good, with director McG showing some decent action chops without ever creating a truly memorable stand-out chase scene (the one thing all three previous films managed). The acting is actually pretty good too, though bad writing leaves just about everyone hamstrung to some extent. And some of the many, many, many callbacks to the previous films (seriously, if you liked a moment or line in the first two films, it's been tweaked and re-inserted here) are kinda fun. But without the time travel, memorable characters, sly humour, creepy horror, warm humanity and leather jackets that made the first film (and to a slightly lesser extent, the second one) so memorable, this is just another fourth installment in a franchise that should have wrapped up at least one film earlier.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #455)