Drift

A version of this review appeared in The Age, May 2, 2013.

It seems natural for Australians to make sport films, but the results are usually disappointing: probably we get too much of the real thing on TV. Latest to give the genre a go are Morgan O'Neill and Ben Nott, co-directors of this loosely fact-based surfing drama set on the Western Australian coast in the early 1970s. Myles Pollard from McLeod's Daughters stars as Andy Kelly, a good-natured young dude who drops out of the rat race to start a surfwear company with his brother Jimmy (Xavier Samuel) and a couple of mates, taking plenty of time off to ride the waves.

Though the non-committal title might lead you to fear the worst, Drift is by no means as incompetent as Blinder or as irritating as Save Your Legs!  The period is captured with affection, there's a well-curated pop soundtrack, the surfing sequences have some fleetingly impressive moments, and the scene where Andy refuses to sell out to big business evokes a pang of nostalgia. But there's just not enough substance here for a feature film: the various subplots – a row between the brothers, a tangle with local gangsters – are awkwardly contrived and all too easily resolved.

Rather surprisingly, the standout actor is hometown hero Sam Worthington, cast against type as a hippie photographer who drives a psychedelic bus and mostly observes the goings-on from a friendly distance.  For once, this generally stolid actor seems to be having fun – perhaps because he senses, rightly, that very little is at stake.

Australian International Experimental Film Festival 2013

A version of this article appeared in The Age, April 30, 2013.

“I think there's a small ember that's glowing,” says sue. k. (she favours the lower-case spelling) when asked about the place of experimental film in Australian culture. Lately she's been fanning the flames as director of the Australian International Experimental Film Festival, an annual Melbourne event since 2010.  The 2013 program is the most ambitious yet, with six sessions of shorts running through to May 4 at Loop Bar in the city.

As sue. k. points out, experimental film is an artform that tends to fall through the cracks compared to mainstream cinema or gallery art. With no government funding, AIEFF depends entirely on box office takings and entry fees paid by filmmakers. Still, she says, responses to screenings are nearly always positive, even from viewers unfamiliar with the experimental tradition.  “There are people that come in off the street, and they're quite surprised.”

The festival kicks off on Wednesday night with Two Wrenching Departures – a 2006 feature-length video by US underground legend Ken Jacobs made in tribute to his late friends Bob Fleischner and Jack Smith, previously immortalised in Jacobs' underground classic Blonde Cobra (1963). A study in motion that slows down and transforms old footage of Fleischner and Smith, the film is described by sue. k. as intensely emotional – in her view, the way experimental cinema ought to be.  “It needs to be able to hit the audience in the guts as well as the head.”

Another film that fits that bill is The Realist, the latest from AIEFF favourite Scott Stark, which screens as part of the "Spacing the Line" program. A Texas-based filmmaker with a day job as a computer programmer, Stark has long experimented with the possibilities of stereoscopic photography, the technique that serves as the basis for 3D. By flickering between two slightly different versions of the same still image, Stark is able to bring inanimate objects to life – in this case, department store dummies who come to resemble the yearning, trapped protagonists of a plush soap opera.

Like many films screening at AIEFF, The Realist was completed on digital video.  But despite popular opinion, sue k. maintains that film – in the photo-chemical sense – is far from being out of date. In fact, she says, film can be cheaper than video nowadays, particularly if you're “bucket processing” – that is, using a makeshift darkroom at home. “It doesn't cost much to buy a Super-8 camera on eBay,” she observes. “A 16-milimetre camera costs a bit more...but then it's twenty, thirty dollars for a roll of film.  You're laughing to a certain degree.”

Whatever medium is chosen, the most important thing is that makers treat their materials honestly.  “There are a couple of works I've seen this year that are clearly shot with those nasty little iPhone applications that give the look of film, and that's not the way to go. If you work with digital, you work with digital.  Full stop.”

Iron Man 3

A version of this review appeared in The Age, April 27, 2013.

If a choice of superheroes must be made, I'll take Robert Downey Jr's wisecracking Tony Stark over Christian Bale's growling Batman any day of the week. While the Iron Man films show respect for comic book tradition, they also maintain an appropriately goofy tone, fondly mocking their hero – a billionaire inventor who flies around in a high-powered robot suit – for his vanity, petulance, and overall absurdity.

Last year, Joss Whedon's much-hyped superhero team-up The Avengers saw Tony battling extra-dimensional gods and monsters alongside the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Captain America (Chris Evans). This probably represented the best that can be done nowadays within the limits of the format – basically, a talky ensemble comedy punctuated with explosions.

One might expect a similar level of irreverence from Iron Man 3, directed and co-written by the gifted vulgar postmodernist Shane Black, who's been out of action since his inspired action-comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (also starring Downey) in 2005. As he proved there and elsewhere, Black has one of the most distinctive sensibilities in popular cinema – part old-fashioned romantic, part Hollywood insider, part snickering twelve-year-old boy.

Iron Man 3 contains a fair number of amusing wisecracks along with other recognisable Black tics (Christmas tunes, torture scenes, gratuitous use of the word “ficus”). But the film remains a factory product rather than anything more personal. Black's love of the outrageous and profane has been curbed for the sake of younger viewers; the action sequences are mostly routine, with little gained by conversion to 3D; and the plot traces an over-familiar redemptive arc, where Tony must regain his humanity with help from his friends.

As we learn early on, the mindblowing events of The Avengers have left Tony shellshocked and prone to panic attacks (a logical development of Downey's “wired” schtick). Meanwhile, a new enemy appears in the form of ethnically ambiguous jihadist the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) whose latest bomb puts Tony's bodyguard Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) in hospital.

Out for revenge, Tony unwisely invites his latest nemesis to go one on one at the clifftop mansion-cum-laboratory which he shares with longterm sweetheart Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). For her part, Pepper is so fed up with Tony's moping she's willing to be charmed by rival inventor Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) a former geek who has reinvented himself as an 1980s-style corporate sleaze with slicked-back hair.

To solve the mystery that links Aldrich with the Mandarin, Tony has to head out on his own, at least as far afield as Tennessee. Still, the script is designed so he always has an audience for his wounded narcissism, whether it's his friend Jim Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Pepper, Happy Hogan, a hero-worshipping kid (Ty Simpkins), or simply the sentient computer (voiced by Paul Bettany) that controls his high-tech armour.

Even more than most superhero blockbusters, the Iron Man films are built around the paradox of a charismatic star who virtually disappears whenever the computer-generated action kicks in. Once Tony is locked into the suit, he could be anyone (despite occasional close-ups of his straining face). This explains why a hyper-verbal ironist like Downey seems perfect for the role: in a sense he's able to stand back from the story, functioning as an observer-narrator like Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean saga.

Looked at another way, Tony's irresponsible behaviour patterns – his boasts, his tantrums, his fleeting but heartfelt admissions of helplessness – are essentially those of a child; the Iron Man suit allows him to feel powerful and safe at the same time, an infantile fantasy we're winkingly invited to share. Naturally, Black knows exactly what he's doing and is willing to tell us so: in a final monologue, Tony explicitly refers to the armour as a “cocoon”. Of course, if he truly intended to get rid of this self-protective technology, the series would have to end – and if Downey wants to break out of his own immensely profitable rut, he ought to try a genre where artists are given a little more freedom.

Antiviral

A version of this review appeared in The Age, April 25, 2013.

Imagine a world of celebrity worship run rampant, where fans yearn to be physically close to their idols at any price; where it's normal to eat steak grown from celebrity stem cells, or pay to be injected with a celebrity disease.  A world much like our own, except, when you think about it, not really. This is the alternate universe envisaged in Antiviral by the young writer-director Brandon Cronenberg, who happens to be the son of the “body horror” legend David Cronenberg, and who has frankly set out to enter the family trade.

Truth be told, it's disconcerting just how much Cronenberg junior borrows from his dad – the drolly morbid eroticism, the pulp-intellectual dialogue (“I'm an approximation of myself”), and the “clinical” Canadian style. The entire city (Toronto, presumably) seems like an extension of Syd's laboratory. Costumes are generally monochrome, and blank, pristine surfaces dominate – the better to display, by contrast, the messiness of organic matter.

The lead actor, Caleb Landry Jones, appears to have little flesh of his own; a thin, pale young man who wears his red hair pulled back in a ponytail, he could pass for the offspring of Tilda Swinton and Crispin Glover.  He plays Syd March, a technician at one of the labs that specialise in harvesting celebrity diseases (of a mostly harmless kind). After Syd injects himself with one of these, he becomes far sicker than expected and has to hunt down a cure, at the same time fending off sinister forces who are, literally, out for his blood.

For all the “ick” moments, the film remains too self-conscious and abstract to build much of a cult. The satire on celebrity culture has none of the pop verve of a director like Richard Kelly, and the thriller storyline is basically a device for dragging things out. Still, as his character's condition worsens Jones comes to life, hunching and writhing to increasing effect (frequently he's filmed from behind – this is a performance where the shoulders play a major role).

Antiviral is a calling card for a director who has some potential, at least if he can manage to get his father's influence out of the system.  Stretching a point, the film might even be taken as a metaphor for this dilemma.  At any rate, you have to wonder what family holidays with the Cronenbergs can be like.

The Company You Keep

A version of this review appeared in The Age, April 18, 2013.

No-one would think of the benignly progressive Robert Redford as any kind of radical. Still, this manhunt thriller proves to be a study of the legacy of the New Left – specifically, the Weather Underground group, which waged war on the American government in the early 1970s.

Adapted by screenwriter Lem Dobbs from a novel by Neil Gordon, the story begins in the present, as former militant Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) turns herself in for her long-ago involvement in a politically motivated bank robbery that resulted in the death of a guard. The case attracts the interest of cocky Albany reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf, plausibly cast as the epitome of shallow charm).

After some cursory research, Ben manages to identify another onetime Weatherman, Nick Sloan (Redford himself), who has practised law under an assumed name for the past three decades. His cover blown, Nick goes on the run, aided by one old comrade after another (allowing Redford to shoehorn a wide range of distinguished character actors into proceedings – Chris Cooper, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins). Meanwhile, Ben puzzles over what really happened all those years ago.

None of this is very suspenseful. Redford's ruggedly decent screen personality makes Nick's innocence a moral certainty, nor is there much question about where the film stands on the issue of violent revolt against the state. As a history lesson the film should be treated with caution: there's little detail about the aims and philosophies of the real-life Weather Underground, and the fictional bank robbery appears to be modelled on an incident that occurred long after the group was dissolved.

Redford has a occasional penchant for obvious visual symbolism – using a mirror to suggest Sharon's split identity, or cross-cutting between Ben on the hunt through the archives and Nick on the verge of running out of breath. But mostly he's an actors' director, at his best with straightforwardly handled one-on-one dialogue scenes.

The plot is framed by two such scenes, both involving women who have kept the radical dream alive. In the first, Ben goes to interview Sharon in jail, while in the second Nick catches up with his old flame Mimi (Julie Christie). Sarandon is especially galvanising as a woman whose intensely focused self-presentation wavers just enough to show the layers of vulnerability and genuine steel beneath.  After her character vanishes all too soon, the rest of the story seems redundant.

Cheerful Weather For The Wedding

A version of this review appeared in The Age, April 18, 2013.

Based on an obscure novella by the Bloomsbury Group acolyte Barbara Strachey, Cheerful Weather For The Wedding is a very minor entry in the British heritage stakes, poorly directed by the newcomer Donald Rice (son of the lyricist Tim Rice, best-known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber).

The story takes place over a single day in 1932, at a country house in Devon where the spirited Dolly Thatchum (Felicity Jones) is preparing to marry the stuffed shirt Owen Bigham (James Norton). Swigging rum from a bottle to steady her nerves, Dolly strives to forget her summer fling with the handsome young anthropologist Joseph Patten (Luke Treadaway), who lurks downstairs hoping she'll change her mind.

The supporting characters are stock figures of a mostly grotesque sort.  There's Dolly's imperious mother (Elizabeth McGovern) and gawky younger sister (Ellie Kendrick), plus a hard-drinking dowager (Barbara Flynn), a mischievious small boy (Ben Greaves-Neal) and a bickering middle-aged couple (Fenella Woolgar and Mackenzie Crook) who offer sarcastic running commentary. Some of these comic turns are faintly amusing, but against such a backdrop it's not surprising the central romance never comes to life.

Technically the film is a mess, filled with clumsily handled flashbacks, fussy close-up inserts and floating post-dubbed lines of dialogue.  The actors are often isolated in separate shots and appear to look in different directions when addressing one another: this might be meant to convey something about British repression, but it's unclear if the effect is fully intended.

Olympus Has Fallen

A version of this review appeared in The Age, April 18, 2013.

A hijacked fighter plane is headed for the White House! Panic ensues as Korean terrorists gun down tourists on the lawn, topple the Washington Monument, and plug the American flag full of holes. Ground troops race in and kidnap the President (Aaron Eckhart), who vows never to reveal his secret nuclear missile code. Broadcasting from the Pentagon, the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) calms the American people with his fatherly baritone.

Who will save the day and, by extension, the world? Why, it's Mike Banning (Gerald Butler), a one-time presidential bodyguard with special forces training and a troubled past. Olympus Has Fallen is Mars Attacks! without the Martians, it's Die Hard in the shadow of September 11, it had to happen and it's even dumber than it sounds.

Whatever the real-world resonances, the director Antoine Fuqua keeps the tone light, even cartoonish. The cast is absurdly star-studded (besides the actors named above, the White House administration includes Robert Forster, Angela Bassett and Melissa Leo). The body count is high but individual deaths are only mildly horrific; Mike is rarely at a loss for a profane wisecrack, and at one point brains an adversary with a bust of Lincoln.

With perfect cynicism, Olympus Has Fallen aims to gratify both gung-ho American patriots and a global audience presumed to get a kick out of seeing the US brought low. Fuqua is no stylist, but the film is shot and edited less jarringly than, say, the unwatchable Battle: Los Angeles, and in its stunted fashion it delivers the goods.