Lassie (2005)

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 9, 2006.

Generations who remember Lassie as the star of a long-running US TV series may not be aware that the heroic collie originally hailed from Yorkshire by birth as well as descent. She returns to her roots in this new film, written and directed by UK heritage specialist Charles Sturridge: it's a straight adaptation of Eric Knight's 1942 novel Lassie Come Home, first brought to the screen in 1943 and the basis for the whole Lassie phenomenon.

While Knight's love of dogs is plain on every page of his novel, Lassie Come Home is also a story about class. Handsome, intelligent and loyal, Lassie is a physical and spiritual aristocrat who nonetheless makes her home in a poor coal-mining village. When her owners fall on hard times, they're forced to sell her to the Duke of Rudling (played here by Peter O'Toole) an irascible old buffer who has his own interest in "breeding". Lassie is transported to Scotland, but escapes and sets out by herself on the road home, meeting a variety of friends and foes along the way.

This is a difficult story to get wrong. Fred M. Wilcox's 1943 version is simple but perfectly scaled, concentrating on Lassie's heroic journey and giving her ample space and time to dominate the screen. Indeed, the most memorable sequences are those without human actors – Lassie leaping a fence, swimming a turbulent river, or taking shelter in a cave and gazing mutely at a flock of sheep.

The new Lassie lacks this purity: Sturridge concentrates more on the human melodrama, and ramps up proceedings with spectacular scenery, emphatic editing and newly invented subplots. It's the eve of the Second World War, and men at all social levels are signing up for the army. Meanwhile the Duke's granddaughter Cilla (Hester Odgers) is sent away to boarding school, where she plans her own daring escape.

On its own terms, the film is intelligently sentimental – and rarely patronising to its child audience, unlike much "family entertainment". Sturridge evidently feels at home in the period to the point of conservative nostalgia, only faintly satirising a social order where dogs, working men and aristocrats all have their proper place. Happily Lassie herself (or rather the dog who plays her) remains innocent of any possible implications; whatever fictional dangers threaten, you can still see her panting cheerfully, waiting to be fed.

Matching Jack

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 19, 2010.

It is pleasant to see Melbourne again through the eyes of Nadia Tass and David Parker, one of Australia's most durable narrative filmmaking teams (Tass directs while Parker, unusually, doubles as scriptwriter and cinematographer). In Matching Jack, the city retains all the charm it had in their early hit Malcolm (1986): a goods train passing under a bridge, a punk getting off a tram, a swan dipping its head in Port Philip Bay.

Tass and Parker are best-known for their comedies, but Matching Jack is a shameless tearjerker. Jacinta Barrett plays Marissa, a devoted mother whose young son Jack (Tom Russell) is diagnosed with leukemia at almost the same moment she learns that her husband David (Richard Roxburgh) has been cheating on her for the past sixteen years. In desperation, she tracks down each of David's former lovers in hope that Jack has a secret sibling who can act as a bone marrow donor.

This plot could work on a camp soap like Ugly Betty, but seems painfully contrived here – though Tass and Parker maintain a degree of Australian stoicism, focusing on moral choice as much as grief. For a while we're allowed to wonder how far Marissa's behaviour is driven by a need for revenge on David, but the ambiguity is never emphasised to the point where we might lose sympathy for the character.

The whimsy quotient is upped by the presence of James Nesbitt as a seafaring Irish widower with a head full of quaint fancies and a sick son of his own, played by the elfin Kodi Smit-McPhee. Some viewers may be enchanted by the scene where the two lads escape the hospital and flee to Luna Park – but if Matching Jack were a telemovie, I'd be tempted to switch off.

4.3.2.1.

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 19, 2010.

Written and co-directed by former Doctor Who sidekick Noel Clarke, 4.3.2.1. is the kind of entertainingly bad movie that should have been made in the late 1990s, the last time filmmakers could hope to look edgy by depending on dirty-neon cinematography, non-linear storytelling and Girl Power sentiments.

Our heroines are a quartet of energetic young women from London: a wrist-slitting emo (Ophelia Lovibond), a virginal pianist (Tamsin Egerton), a bi-racial lesbian (Shanika Warren-Markland) and a sassy Yank (Emma Roberts). All four are Best Friends Forever and models of empowerment, in the sense that they exhibit impressive self-defense skills and like to chat about vibrators.

Over the course of a weekend they part ways to embark on various solo adventures, reuniting for the action climax. There's an idiotic plot about a bag of stolen diamonds, but crime-fighting proves less of a challenge for the girls than working through more mundane issues with their obnoxious or over-protective families.

Among the leads, Warren-Marland and Roberts seem to be having the most fun, though no-one can match the impact of Michelle Ryan in a brief appearance as a slinky jewel thief. By design, most of the male characters are pathetic or worse (one of the exceptions is played by Kevin Smith, in a cameo that spoofs his highly-publicised battle with a US airline).

It's far from clear what audience Clarke and his co-director Mark Davis are aiming to please with this hectic concoction, especially as the pseudo-feminist message dissolves in a fog of lechery whenever the camera gets near a bedroom. All the same, it's hard to dislike a film that suggests either a belated sequel to Spice World (1997) or a Guy Ritchie version of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (2005). I regret to say I enjoyed nearly every minute.

Four Lions

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 19, 2010.

Four Lions could have been a sitcom, though necessarily a short-lived one. A farce about Islamic suicide bombers seems a risky idea, but the British director Chris Morris and his co-writers have hedged their bets by modelling their characters on those in a show like Only Fools And Horses: a group of hapless lads stuck in a dead-end existence, willing to embrace any scheme that might lead them to a better world.

Best-known for “controversial” TV projects such as the current-affairs spoof Brass Eye, Morris reportedly put years of research into this first feature. But Four Lions makes no attempt at realism: most of the characters are stupid in unlikely, sitcom ways. The dumbest is Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) who wears a box on his head in a jihad video rather than show his face on camera. The most belligerant is Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a Muslim convert whose rage is clearly fuelled by major sexual and psychological issues. The comparatively “normal” one is Omar (Riz Ahmed), who looks like a Middle Eastern version of Robert Carlyle and serves as our main identification figure – though more than the others, he appears to be acting out of staunch, reasoned principle.

Morris has a finely-tuned ear for speech rhythms, and gets frequent laughs from blending the language of militant Islam with references to celebrities like Gordon Ramsay and chain stores like Boots. The message seems to be that terrorists are just like ordinary Britons, except when they aren't; Four Lions is open to interpretations from both left and right, as either a plea for cross-cultural understanding or a statement about the banality of evil. More than anything, the film works as a conceptual prank, a parody of the supposedly universal cliches of “humanist” cinema; to ram this point home, Morris has Omar tell his little son a bedtime story based on Disney's The Lion King (1994). In a later mock-inspirational scene, our hero grows discouraged, and considers abandoning his plan to blow himself up. But his devoted wife (Preeya Kalidas) urges him to listen to his heart, and he pushes on.

Splice

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 19, 2010.

There are some things man was not meant to know – nor women neither. Or so it appears from Vincenzo Natali's Splice, a clever low-budget horror film that tackles the ever-controversial subject of genetic engineering. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley star as Clive and Elsa, a romantically-involved pair of medical researchers named, ominously, for the leads in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Brody and Polley are contrasting types: a brooding six-footer and a small, blonde livewire. But they make an unusually attractive and plausible screen couple, both convincingly sensitive, brainy, and self-involved. Far from the dour mad scientists of tradition, the characters fancy themselves as hip mavericks: when not dressed for the lab, Elsa gets around in a black leather jacket, while Clive wears T-shirts with nerdy slogans, sports a rock-star fringe and greets a colleague with a “double-helix” high-five.

Their dynamic is zany enough for screwball comedy (considering what follows, Splice could have been titled Bringing Up Baby). But from the outset the relationship shows signs of strain: sex is a rarity, and when Clive proposes starting a family, Elsa quickly cuts him off. Instead, their creative energies are channelled into their work: their proudest efforts are two blobs of protoplasm dubbed “Fred” and “Ginger”, who are confined to a tank where they orbit each other in a grotesque parody of courtship.

Clive and Elsa may not be ready for parenthood, but when their bosses threaten to cut funding for the lab, Elsa locks herself away to splice together a range of human and animal genes, creating a mutant creature known as “Dren” (Delphine Chanéac). Initially visualised as a skittering alien, Dren soon evolves into an adult-sized humanoid with a tail, webbed feet, and a sharp mind of her own. (She communicates in English by re-arranging Scrabble tiles, at one point spelling out the word “TEDIOUS”.)

After a presentation to investors turns into a gruesome fiasco, Clive and Elsa retreat to a deserted country house (the site of Elsa's traumatic childhood) with their new creation in tow. By this stage the film has moved away from science fiction into the realm of fairy tale. The elfin Dren resembles a lethal Cinderella – which puts Elsa in the position of a wicked stepmother, fighting to keep her protégée under control.

If the term can be used without offense, Splice qualifies as an intelligent B-movie, in which the actors and concepts are strong enough to compensate for a handful of plot holes, stiff expository speeches and iffy special effects. The film is frequently gory and at times undeniably silly, with some of the bloodiest scenes played for intentional laughs. But Natali and his collaborators have a serious statement to make about the danger of using the raw materials of life for commercial gain. What becomes of “human nature” when our DNA is treated as a product to be exploited and potentially improved?

Just as relevant are anxieties about parenting, sex and gender. Clive, Elsa and Dren resemble a dysfunctional nuclear family, and Natali never retreats from the implications of this metaphor, ensuring that his bizarre story remains anchored in emotions uncomfortably close to home.

Inevitably, Natali has been compared to his fellow Canadian David Cronenberg, the great pioneer of “body horror”. But Splice has more in common with Lars von Trier's Antichrist and Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity, two other recent horror films that centre on troubled heterosexual relationships.

In each case, a woman is associated with a mysterious, otherworldly force; her male partner tries to provide a rational perspective, but this proves even less adequate when things go horribly wrong. Like Antichrist, Splice may not please orthodox feminists, but Natali is more interested in raising questions than supplying pat answers. The bleak ending heralds a strange kind of emotional breakthrough, leaving us to wonder what rough beast is waiting to be born.

Man On Wire

A version of this review appeared in The Age, 16 October, 2008.

It happened in 1974, six years after revolutionaries took to the streets of Paris, five years after the first moon landing, four years after Robert Altman's fictional Brewster McCloud launched himself on his ill-fated flight around the Houston Astrodome. Aided by a small team of co-conspirators, the French high-wire artist Philippe Petit slung a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and one fine morning stepped into the void.

There was no police permit for the stunt, certainly no safety net, and to begin with no public to supply applause. But Petit is a natural show-off, and when he recalls his exploits he can't help picturing himself in the eyes of the gathering crowd. Imagine how they must have felt, those New Yorkers scurrying to work 104 storeys below, who glanced up at the sky only to be stopped in their tracks by an unbelievable vision, something never attempted before or since.

It's a hell of a story, and Petit is a mesmerising storyteller, with an extravagantly poetic turn of phrase and the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner. Equal credit should go to the British director James Marsh, who has structured this documentary like a thriller, blending re-enactments with archival footage and recent interviews to cover both the endless months of planning and the fraught hours leading up to the main event. Of course the outcome is known in advance, but this doesn't detract from the suspense one bit.

24 years old at the time of his greatest achievement, Petit may have lacked any social and political purpose, but in some ways he's a representative hero of his era, as well a symbol of the youthful quest for glory at its purest. The towers had to be tackled, because they were there. As for their subsequent fate, this is never addressed directly in the film, and never needs to be. We all know that in the long run what goes up must come down, which is the truth that makes Man on Wire a sad story as well as a triumphant one.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 12, 2010.

It's sometimes complained that Michael Cera “always plays the same character” – but this could equally be said of John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich, and many more of the greatest stars. By now, Cera's frightened-rabbit persona ranks with the most iconic in modern cinema – and he has his best chance yet to cement his immortality as the 22-year-old Toronto bass player who serves as the unlikely hero of Edgar Wright's terrific action-comedy-fantasy-romance Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World.

Scott already has a girlfriend, but forgets about her the moment he catches sight of the pink-haired, aloof Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Unfortunately, Ramona also has baggage, in the form of “seven evil exes” who descend on Scott to engage in one-on-one death matches out of 1980s video games.

Adapted from a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim fuses elements of most of the quirky hits of the last decade. Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Joss Whedon are obvious sources, while the wintry cityscapes and Ramona's changing hair colours recall Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind (2004). Taking a longer view, Wright's dazzling range of distancing devices – aligned to the perspective of a neurotic but chirpy anti-hero – suggest a Generation Y answer to Annie Hall (1977).

Truly, there's something here for everyone – the cynics and the romantics, the hipsters and the nerds, the music lovers and the video game freaks. The calculation could be off-putting if the film wasn't executed with such panache. Wright's British genre riffs Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) rank with the best comedies of our day: here he pushes their lessons one step further, cutting the narrative to the bone and establishing a fast-slow rhythm that kills every time (in a typical gag, a preparing-for-battle montage stalls for a few endless moments as Scott ties his shoelaces).

Not content with alternating between mundane angst and comic-book whimsy, Wright has them co-exist on screen at nearly every moment, embellishing shots with doodled sound effects or explanatory titles. An otherwise straightforward scene might divert into animation or transform into a sitcom complete with laugh track; the pop culture references are so frequent and fleeting no-one could be expected to grasp them all the first time round.

All this technique is focused, justified and encapsulated by Cera's performance, which places Scott's “vulnerability” firmly in quotation marks. He's always ready to overdo his winsome smile or mumble a punchline – anything to stay a beat away from expectations. Adorable enough to be plausible as a romantic lead, he avoids making undue claims on our sympathy: like Mickey Mouse or Charlie Brown, he's the little guy who never stays down for long, a ready-made cartoon character.

In a sense Scott Pilgrim resembles a feature-length string of advertisements, and it could reasonably be asked what Wright is trying to sell. Long essays will no doubt be written on the ambiguous gender politics of a film in which the fey protagonist is regularly berated by a string of more assertive women, including his know-it-all younger sister (Anna Kendrick). Wright is something of a moralist at heart, but here he manages to have it both ways, enabling us to recognise Scott as a callow jerk while insisting (like Wes Anderson) that even the wimpiest man-child needs to discover his inner warrior.

On the other hand, souful melancholy isn't really Wright's bag: there's an emotional reserve to his sensibility that prevents him from trying to break our hearts. The central romance remains more conceptual than fully-realised, and a sardonic epilogue demonstrates that despite all his ordeals Scott's self-satisfaction has suffered barely a dent.

There are a few niggling objections: the soap opera plot occasionally feels congested, presumably a result of trying to do justice to a comic that unfolds at a more leisurely pace. The Evil Exes themselves aren't quite as funny as they should be (aside from the last and most deadly, played by an actor who in retrospect seems the only possible choice). Such quibbles aside, Scott Pilgrim already feels like a cult classic, destined to be loved, revisited and quoted for many years to come.

The Nothing Men

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 12, 2010.

This first feature from the Australian writer-director Mark Fitzpatrick began as a play and still feels like one – which isn't wholly a bad thing, given the ingenious way Fitzpatrick limits most of the action to a single location.

A group of workers are made redundant, but have two weeks to go before they receive their payouts. Daily, they turn up to an empty factory where they have little to do but drink, play cards and exchange macho taunts, with their foreman Jack (Colin Friels) usually running the show. If they desert the premises before their time is up, they risk being sacked without compensation; in theory, any one of them could be a spy for the boss, but suspicion falls chiefly on David (David Field), a mysterious newcomer.

Despite the promise of this set-up, Fitzpatrick lets himself down by allowing his leads to give blustering, obvious performances, and piling on melodramatic coincidences rather than developing the initial idea. As a director, he shows some imagination in getting value out of a confined space, but there are also some pointlessly flashy camera angles and elementary errors (such as depicting both sides of a phone conversation – a quick way to defuse claustrophobia).

A few moments recall Reservoir Dogs (1992), which might give some sense of where the story is headed. Well before the forced, violent climax rolls around, Fitzpatrick has clearly lost track of whatever he meant to say about the foibles of Australian men.

The Expendables

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 12, 2010.

If Sylvester Stallone were a rock star he'd be happy with three chords and a beat. As a moviemaker, he's all about the crack of breaking necks and the rat-a-tat of machine guns.

In The Expendables, he stars as the leader of an aging band of mercenaries pitted against an entire army in South America. The film has been hyped as a special event tour by a supergroup of action heroes, including Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li. But most of the grunt work is done by Stallone, looking groggy and barely human, and the tight-lipped Jason Statham.

As a grizzled tattoo artist, Mickey Rourke keeps out of the fray, but gets his moment to shine in a mournful monologue apparently inspired (no kidding) by Albert Camus' The Fall. As this suggests, Stallone is every inch a personal filmmaker – and also a pretty good action director when he doesn't get too bombastic, though I'd rather see a comeback from John Milius or Walter Hill.

Inevitably, the film culminates in a nearly wordless bloodbath with a death every few seconds, plunging onward like the world's longest drum solo. That's Stallone all over, less sadistic than obsessive-compulsive; once he finds a rhythm, he just can't stop.

The Ghost Writer

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 7, 2010. See also here.

The truth is we all live in Roman Polanski's world now. It would be unfair to label The Ghost Writer a return to form, since Polanski has never made a bad film or even a half-hearted one. What this nearly perfect thriller does for the first time is to bring his paranoid vision into the twenty-first century – when surveillance devices are everywhere, news travels at the speed of light, and no private space is safe from electronic invaders. Frankly old-fashioned in style, the film plays on the specifically modern anxiety induced by a ceaseless flow of information; every time a mobile phone goes off, it's like an electric shock.

Based on a novel by Robert Harris, this is the most political film of Polanski's career, though its “message” is one of total disillusionment. The writer of the title is a nameless hack (Ewan McGregor) hired to “ghost” the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), a former British Prime Minister with some similarities to Tony Blair. Embroiled in scandal over the torture of terror suspects, Lang has fled to an island on the Atlantic seaboard where he's holed up in a villa resembling a high-tech military bunker. Picture windows reveal low-lying sand dunes, scattered with dry grass waving in the wind: a reminder of the fate of Lang's previous “ghost,” who washed up dead on the shore.

“It's like being married to Napoleon on St Helena,” says Lang's wife Ruth (Olivia Williams). But for any Polanski fan, arriving at this realistic yet abstract setting is like coming home. As in The Ninth Gate (1997), the bleakness is somehow cosy, with reality kept at bay by a storyteller's spell. The formal dialogue has a sententious kind of wit. The supporting characters are recognisable as soon as we meet them, thanks to a technique of semi-caricature that is the cinematic equivalent to a thriller-writer's shorthand; the cast seems oddly assorted until it's realised that Polanski has followed the simple procedure of finding actors who fit the roles.

Lang is boyish and insecure, a onetime Cambridge Footlights performer reliant on matinee idol charm; Ruth is bright, embittered and sexually frustrated; Lang's secretary and mistress Amelia (Kim Cattrall) is faintly pathetic, but glamorous and good at her job. The “ghost” is deliberately more elusive, a likeable fall guy with just enough intelligence to make him an acceptable surrogate for the viewer. It takes a technically assured, highly malleable actor to bring this conceit to life, and McGregor proves an ideal choice: when he looks up from Lang's manuscript to pull a grotesque face, the moment is stamped “Polanski” as firmly as if the director had played the role himself.

Little happens for the first half of The Ghost Writer, but Polanski's films have always been about marking time, keeping us hooked with the promise of revelations to come. Unease is sparked by trivial details: some curious paintings, an old man raking litter. Black-clad bodyguards lurk in the background like soldiers awaiting the call to action. Outside the compound, Lang is hounded by a gang of anti-war protesters, portrayed by Polanski with no more sympathy than he gives to their foes.

The Ghost Writer makes a fascinating counterpoint to Martin Scorsese's recent Shutter Island, a far more flamboyant thriller that juggles some of the same elements: a secluded island, a possible conspiracy, an unreliable hero who serves as our wandering guide. If Scorsese dramatises a hysterical spectator's relationship to the image, the Polanski film is more like a metaphor for the process of filmmaking, undertaken by a small group who shut themselves away to focus on piecing together a story.

In other words, it's no accident that two of Polanski's chief characters are a writer and an actor. But who functions as the hidden director behind the scenes? You'll have to see the film to find out.

Michael Rowe

A version of this article appeared in The Age, August 6, 2010.

It's clear that Michael Rowe hasn't quite got used to being Michael Rowe, filmmaker. Softly-spoken with prematurely grey hair, he wears a pin-striped jacket over a T-shirt and jeans. He answers questions slowly, fiddling from time to time with the chain around his neck.

But when he's asked how it feels to return to Australia after winning the Camera D'Or for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival, he doesn't hesitate. “Amazing, yeah,” he says, a huge smile spreading over his face. “Really, really nice.”

Born in Ballarat, Rowe has lived for the last sixteen years in Mexico – the setting for his prizewinning Leap Year, a low-budget character study of a lonely business journalist named Laura (Monica Del Carmen), who embarks on an increasingly extreme sado-masochistic affair.

Though Leap Year is set almost entirely within Laura's apartment, for Rowe the story has a specifically Mexican resonance. “Mexico has a reputation for being a very macho society,” he says, “and it's strange because when you live there for long enough, you realise that it's an absolute matriarchy, and the power that men wield in society is by and large superficial. The people who really move things and control things are the women. “

In Leap Year, this power dynamic is played out in the relationship between Laura and her lover Arturo (Gustavo Sanchez Parra). According to Rowe, Laura is the one calling all the shots, “but you don't realise that until very close to the end.”

Given the explicit content, Rowe expected the film to be “much more controversial” than has so far been the case. At the screenings in Mexico and Cannes, he says, some of the women in the audience were moved to tears. “Funnily, it doesn't seem to have the same effect on men.”

But not all the reactions have been positive. Rowe describes a recent encounter with an Australian broadcaster who was unsure about giving publicity to a film that depicts violence against women, even of a consensual kind. “I'd forgotten what knee-jerk feminism was like,” he says. “I hope there's not too much of that, because it's just going to be silly.”

The success of Leap Year marks a turning point in Rowe's life, after years spent making ends meet with travel journalism. “I was pushing forty and I was just barely going to make my first film,” he says. “I felt just tremendously old and tremendously behind.”

Now he has the prospect of a professional career, with funding practically guaranteed for his next feature. For personal reasons, Rowe plans to continue living in Mexico, the setting for all three of the projects he is working on at the moment. But he says that in the future he would love to shoot a film in Australia.

“I haven't written in English for years,” he says. “I'd have to come back to Australia and hone my ear for dialogue again, because it's just been too long.”

Role Models

A version of this review appeared in The Age, January 15, 2009.

David Wain's Role Models is a joy for many reasons, not least because it provides the best role yet for Paul Rudd – a gifted comic actor who has never quite been a star, perhaps because so much of his technique depends on self-effacement. For Rudd, as for Bill Murray, it's all about timing and nuance: the flat sarcasm that knows its own inadequacy, the way of holding still and gradually receding from a situation like a man drifting out to sea.

In conception, Role Models is yet another film about men behaving badly. Danny (Rudd) and Wheeler (Seann William Scott) are a couple of thirtysomething Los Angeles no-hopers whose job involves driving round to schools spruiking a caffeine-loaded soft drink called Minotaur while exhorting kids to stay off drugs. Danny spends much of his time staring into the black hole of his existence; Wheeler is a boisterous idiot who loves his work almost as much as he loves casual sex and the band KISS.

After quaffing one too many Minotaurs, Danny blows his top and gets the pair of them arrested. To redeem themselves, they have to sign up for a charity program called Sturdy Wings which finds mentors for troubled youth. Danny is paired with a nerdy teenager named Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) while Wheeler is assigned the problem case of Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thompson), a foulmouthed African-American ten-year-old with a precocious love of "boobies".

The plot that develops from here is obvious enough but Role Models is a formula comedy where the formula works. The jokes are consistently vulgar yet unpredictable; there's a faintly British flavour to the pedantic quibbling on topics like the back catalogue of Paul McCartney or the proper use of air quotes. Even the feelgood sentiment feels earned: Wain is brave enough to commit wholeheartedly to the value of mentorship, while wringing every possible uneasy laugh from the awkwardness of grown men consorting with young boys.

Above all, this is a film that loves its actors, all of whom shine. Elizabeth Banks as Danny's intelligently perky girlfriend is a perfect counterweight to Rudd's moodiness; as the ex-addict founder of Sturdy Wings, Jane Lynch is as lewd and disconcerting as Will Ferrell at his very best. Mintz-Plasse builds on the wonderful work he did in Superbad (2007) and never for a second condescends to his character; Thompson, the newcomer of the group, punches home every outrageous line of dialogue like a pro.

Most comedies climax with a mock battle of one kind or another, but Role Models takes the concept to a brilliantly literal extreme – and ends in general celebration, just as it should.

Vincenzo Natali

A version of this article appeared in The Age, August 6, 2010.

The new film from Canadian science-fiction specialist Vincenzo Natali tells a story that feels both up-to-date and familiar: the latest version of the Frankenstein myth. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley star as Clive and Elsa, a pair of medical researchers who combine various genes (human and otherwise) to create a mutant creature known as Dren. Within days, she grows to the size of an adult woman, while her "parents" struggle to keep her under control.

“The underlying notion for Dren in my mind was that she was a genetically engineered angel,” says Natali, discussing Splice over the phone from the US. “I was fascinated by this idea of how mythical creatures are now, in a sense, entering our world, courtesy of new technology.”

Splice was originally planned as a short film, which Natali conceived ten years ago with his writing partner Antoinette Terry Bryant. Talking with real-life geneticists, he felt encouraged to speculate further on the possibilities in a field where science fiction is fast becoming fact.

“At every turn, when I would ask if something in the script was possible, they would invariably say yes, and then quite often they would expand on the idea,” he says. “It is definitely not a documentary, and there are things in the film that are unlikely, but there's really nothing in it that is impossible.”

Natali compares genetic engineering to the IT industry, another sector where rapid innovation tends to be driven by youthful, eccentric types. “We're accustomed to seeing scientists portrayed in film as cold, detached individuals, whereas Clive and Elsa are very passionate and very colorful and witty,” he says. “Actually, when I was writing them, I thought of them as being like an independent band, or independent filmmakers. Their relationship to the corporation was rather like working with a film studio or a record label.”

When not in their lab coats, Clive and Elsa display a distinctive geek-chic fashion sense, with Clive in particular sporting an impressive array of science-related T-shirts. “That was something that Antoinette and I invented,” Natali says, “but when I started to go to real labs I found that it was true. I mean, one of the scientists who was on set, a fellow named George Charames, when I met him he was wearing a T-shirt that said 'Born to Clone'.” I thought, you're Clive, you're the real deal!”

Natali is full of praise for both his leads, but says they took quite different approaches to their roles. Brody was keen on improvising in the moment, while Polley, a former child actress, had her lines word-perfect long before the shoot. “But they really got along well,” he says. “They're kind of opposites, but that, of course, is the perfect formula for attraction between couples.”

The third key performer in the film is the French actress Delphine Chanéac, who was responsible for bringing the adult incarnation of Dren to life. “If you see some of the early designs, they look like Delphine, weirdly,” Natali says. “But she was the one truly who engineered Dren's movements, the way she would vocalise, carry herself. I think she's an extraordinary actress, actually.”

In classic science fiction tradition, Splice raises a host of philosophical questions about ethics, human nature and gender. But for Natali, it's most centrally a coming-of-age story – for more than one character – and “a movie about being a parent”.

“It gave me some confidence to enter into that terrain with a female partner,” he says. “It's a little bit like being Clive and Elsa – these two mad scientists making this creature.”

Given the complexity of the issues involved, he aimed to avoid delivering a clear message about the perils of genetic engineering. “Of course it's going to end up as a cautionary tale, being a horror film,” he concedes. “But I didn't want to overstate that.”

“I personally have complicated feelings about this technology,” Natali says. “I think it's a very grey zone, and there's much good that will come out of it, and I think potentially there are some dangerous things.”

Step Up 3D

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 5, 2010.

Musicals are allowed to have silly plots, but Step Up 3D makes Singin' In The Rain (1952) look like social realism. Moose (Adam G. Sevani) is a bushy-haired sprite who arrives in New York City to study electrical engineering, but secretly just wants to dance. He gets his opportunity when he meets Luke (Rick Malambri) an aspiring documentary filmmaker who shares a warehouse apartment with a gang of footloose street kids, while running a nightclub downstairs to pay the rent.

Unfortunately, profits are down (no surprise, as the club doesn't seem to charge admission or sell drinks). So Rick and his buddies face eviction, unless they can raise some money by winning the big dance contest just around the corner. Throw in a rival crew led by a sneering preppy (Joe Slaughter) and the rest isn't hard to figure out.

There's a lot to forgive in Step Up 3D, including some amazingly blatant product placement (the Nike swoosh even appears in the design of the closing credits). But the film also contains some of the best dance sequences of any Hollywood film in decades – all choreographed for the 3D format, one of the first times this has been tried in a feature since Kiss Me Kate (1953).

The director Jon Chu fills the screen with colour and movement; performers dance directly into the camera, generating a kind of visual drama that eliminates the need for fast cutting. Highlights include a number on a flooded dance floor, another with the crew dressed as neon skeletons, and a Gene Kelly tribute that comes out of nowhere, with Moose and his friend Camille (Alison Stoner) weaving their way along a city street. Though the stars can't act and don't attempt to sing, by modern standards one out of three isn't too bad.

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue

A version of this review appeared in The Age, August 5, 2010.

In today's climate, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue is something of a rarity: a children's film made strictly for kids. Not even the most sensitive pre-schooler could be traumatised by this computer-animated prequel to Peter Pan, in which Tinker Bell (voiced by Mae Whitman) overcomes her fear of humans by befriending a small girl named Lizzy (Lauren Mote). The B story, as they say in the trade, involves a supplementary group of fairies who find themselves trapped outdoors during a storm; this serves the dual purpose of stretching the running time to feature length and advertising Disney's full, carefully multi-racial range of tie-in dolls, now at a toy store near you.

Though the film appears to be set in Victorian England, Tink and her friends are depicted as modern all-American girls, clad in frocks woven from leaves and petals that look glamorous enough for any fairy nightclub. If you're wondering why they're so far from home, the answer is that they came over "to bring summer to the mainland". Useless to complain that J.M. Barrie conceived his heroine as a vain harpy rather than a loyal team player; pedantry is out of place here, and so is anyone over the age of ten.

Melbourne Planetarium Fulldome Showcase

A version of this article appeared in The Age, August 2, 2010.

Nestled near the foot of the West Gate Bridge in Spotswood, the Scienceworks museum is popular with families and school excursion groups, but less known as a destination for film buffs – until now. This year's Melbourne Film Festival includes a series of programs at the Scienceworks planetarium, showcasing large-scale videos made for the Fulldome format.

This is “expanded cinema” with a vengeance – more thoroughly immersive than even a 3D IMAX movie. Your seat moves into a reclining position as the image stretches all around; you stare up at the ceiling and descend into a dream. When the horizon line shifts, the body is tricked into sensing motion, as if on a ship pulling away from the shore.

Having spent the last few years with Scienceworks designing planetarium shows, the season curator Warik Lawrence says that he hopes that the MIFF screenings will encourage a wider audience to open their eyes to the possibilities of the format, which has been around in some form since the early 1990s. Prior to that, planetariums were largely restricted to projecting static images of the night sky (he shows me the traditional “star projector” still used by Scienceworks on occasion, a massive edifice resembling a Star Wars laser cannon).

The medium is still developing, and Lawrence regards the possibilities with excitement. “It's like a space-time machine, because you can transport your audience anywhere. I really feel it's a much more transcendental experience than cinema itself, because it's almost as though the screen disappears.”

The majority of the titles in the MIFF season are Melbourne premieres (and, according to Lawrence, are unlikely to be seen here again). Several come straight from the Fulldome festival in Jena, an annual event which Lawrence attended for the first time earlier this year.

For the moment, creating live-action Fulldome sequences is still a challenge (one technique involves using five separate video cameras, mounted into a single rig and pointed in different directions). Many of the music videos and experimental works in the season rely on computer animation. Others, like Peter Morse's Frozen in Time, seamlessly combine still photographs to take the viewer on a tour through a virtual space – in this case, the remains of the huts erected by Douglas Mawson and his companions on their 1911 expedition to Antarctica.

Planetariums are conventionally used for educational purposes, but Fulldome presentations have equal affinity with avant-garde cinema and with theme park rides. Lawrence says he would like to see more narrative works made for the format in the future; the main issue is figuring out what kinds of stories to tell. “In that particular dome space you don't want to put in close-ups of people,” he says. “It would be very intimidating, overwhelming.”

One favorite he cites from the MIFF season is Alien Action, an part-animated science-fiction adventure made on a shoestring by Dominic Bunning and Ralph Heinsohn, who run a small design studio in Germany. “It's almost War of the Worlds, if you like, but done really tongue-in-cheek. Visually it's just great when you have this gigantic three-legged robot towering over the audience.”

The Germans appear to lead the world in developing the format: Lawrence says that in Hamburg the planetarium stays open late every night for music shows featuring live video mixing, with participation from the likes of electronic composer Jean Michel Jarre. “They fill the dome with smoke and lasers, and they've got packed houses.” If the concept takes off locally, the sky's the limit.