Gregg Araki

“My movies always come to me as a series of images,” says the writer-director Gregg Araki. One of the starting points for his latest, Kaboom, was a mysterious image of a naked youth moving down a corridor – seen initially in long shot, bathed in light like one of the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

This turns out to be part of a dream recounted by Smith (Thomas Dekker), a sexually versatile college student with piercing blue eyes and a non-specific sense of dread. The film tracks his encounters with friends and lovers over the course of a few packed days, as he strives to solve a mystery and prevent his worst fears from becoming real.

At 51, Araki has been a prominent part of American independent filmmaking for over twenty years. Over the phone, he's laidback but easily roused to enthusiasm; his sentences are punctuated with “like”and “you know” but he rarely seems in doubt about what he wants to say.

Typically working with low budgets, Araki plans his films shot by shot, illustrating his scripts with drawings he compares to Egyptian hieroglyphics. “I think it comes from reading so many comic books when I was a kid.”

He adds that of all his films, Kaboom is probably the most influenced by this stylised, graphic novel aesthetic. “As a filmmaker I'm not very interested in documentary reality,” he says. “My movies are not at all about a handheld, shaky camera and no lighting.”

While writing the script, Araki let his imagination run wild, not knowing in advance where the plot was headed. “I know as a moviegoer, one of my peeves about ninety-nine percent of movies is, like, they're so predictable and so formulaic,” he says. “I know where the movie is going, and it's taking forever to get there.”

At the same time, he describes Kaboom as “the most autobiographical film I've ever made.” (After all, Smith is a cinema student, as Araki once was himself.) “I wanted to make a film about that time of your life when you're completely an unwritten book,” he says. “When you're starting school or college, and you don't know what you're going to be, or what your sexuality is, or where your life is going to take you.”

Araki says that he didn't want Kaboom to be “campy in a sort of wink-wink sense,” and gives credit to his actors for grounding the film in emotional reality. “It was really important, as outlandish and crazy as the story gets, that they believe in those characters and they believe in those situations.”

Comparing his own college experiences to those of young people today, Araki says that one major difference is a more relaxed attitude to different forms of sexuality. “I was always in that sexually ambiguous, experimental place,” he says, “but I think that mind space has become much more prevalent.”

Another obvious change is the rise of social media. Mobile phones and the Internet figure so prominently in Kaboom they help define the visual style. “Like, half the script is text messages and computer screens.”

At one point Smith suggests that cinema itself may soon be obsolete, but Araki doesn't entirely share this pessimism. “I hope there is always the option of the pure cinema experience of going to this church-like theatre with a bunch of strangers and having this ritual experience in the dark together – that everybody doesn't just end up consuming media on their laptop, on their own.”

Araki remains best-known for his 1990s films such as The Living End (1992) and The Doom Generation (1995) which typify the angry, punk-rock energy of the movement that became known as New Queer Cinema.

Kaboom returns to the same apocalyptic themes, but with a difference. “I'm older, I'm hopefully wiser, and I'm much more centred,” he says. “I think that sensibility is reflected in the movie, in the sense that there's kind of a warmth and a fondness to the treatment of the characters and also, particularly, their sexuality. There's a generosity towards them that is perhaps not in my earlier films.”

For Araki, the film captures both the excitement and the terror of being young and unsure of the future. “I remember, when I was in that time, being extremely angst-ridden and confused,” he says. “Everything seemed so catastrophic and traumatic."

“But from the vantage point of being older, you realise, those were, like, some of the best years of your life. Because it was really all about the experience of growing and changing, and these are the adventures that will shape you into the person that you're going to be.”

With thanks to Asha Holmes and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.

Kaboom

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 25, 2011.

Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a Californian college student with a major in film studies, but for the most part going to class seems to be the last thing on his mind. When he's not hooking up with both guys and girls, he's hanging out with his wisecracking lesbian friend Stella (the precociously assured Haley Bennett, last seen in Joe Dante's The Hole) or fantasising about his muscular roommate Thor (Chris Zylka), who's apparently straight despite his careful grooming habits. Then there are the weird dreams he's been having, involving men in animal masks and a mysterious dark-haired woman (Roxane Mesquida) who reappears as Stella's new, tempestuous girlfriend in waking life.

After venturing into art cinema (Mysterious Skin) and stoner comedy (Smiley Face) writer-director Gregg Araki has returned to his trademark provocative style, and it is good to have him back. Well up with the best of his 1990s work, Kaboom is silly, lurid, sex-obsessed and a whole lot of fun. The images are simple, brightly coloured and edited for maximum punch, with frequent mobile phone conversation enabling some nifty split screen effects; the dialogue has a similar tongue-in-cheek audacity (in a typical zinger, Stella compares the prospect of helping Smith play detective to “sucking a fart out of a dead seagull's ass”).

Both euphoric and sarcastic, Kaboom is powered by the constant collision of opposing ideas, with beautiful bodies set against images designed to elicit mundane disgust (a dog turd, a dish of macaroni and cheese). Araki's 1990s films set out to push audience buttons while treating the modish idea of “transgression” as a joke in itself. Kaboom is comparatively light-hearted, yet Smith's sense of impending doom is more than just an ironically referenced cliché. In the heightened world imagined here, no identity is secure and every encounter, sexual or otherwise, is a step into the unknown. The possibilities are thrilling but also alarming: life goes by quickly, and there's no time to waste.

Battle: Los Angeles

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 17, 2011.

American science fiction traditionally has a subversive, anarchic edge. Even George Lucas sides with the rebels against the Galactic Empire; even Steven Spielberg understands that E.T. needs to be protected from the government. Perhaps that's why the horribly disappointing Battle: Los Angeles, directed by Jonathan Liebesman, hardly feels like SF at all: it's basically a flag-waving war movie where the enemy happens to be from outer space. The attitudes ("Kill everything that isn't human") are pure Starship Troopers (1997) without the irony; the frantic style, all rapid pans and nervous zooms, seems more closely modelled on the first reel of Saving Private Ryan (1998) minus the blood.

Ultimately the task of saving the planet falls to a single platoon of Marines, most of them interchangeable aside from Aaron Eckhart, looking and acting like John Wayne's little brother, and Michelle Rodriguez (who else?) as the token chick. The saddest thing is that Battle: Los Angeles has no respect for its aliens, who fail to inspire the slightest frisson of horror: rickety, semi-robotic figures staggering across the horizon, something between Star Wars stormtroopers and the inflatable men outside car dealerships. The possibilities of the setting go unexplored – no fireballs burning up Hollywood Boulevard here – and while the invaders are presumably responsible for the deaths of millions, there's barely a civilian corpse to be seen.

Last Train Home

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 17, 2011.

The crowds that surge through Lixin Fan's observational documentary suggest the tide of social change in China made visible – though the underlying forces at work are plainly too vast and complex for any filmmaker to grasp, let alone summarise for the benefit of the viewer. Fan uses one family to stand in for the bigger picture: Chen Suqin and Zhang Changhua, a middle-aged couple who have travelled far from their village to work in a garment factory in Guangzhou. Every Chinese New Year, they get to return home for a couple of days to see their children, who are otherwise cared for by grandparents – an arrangement especially resented by Qin, their teenage daughter.

It's a good film, perhaps a little too pretty for its subject. Both in the city and the countryside, Fan (or his cameraman) has an eye for whimsical detail: a discarded sneaker, a spider's web, a mob of chickens pecking for seed. One especially lovely overhead shot shows a mass of pilgrims huddled together in the rain, bare-headed or huddled under brightly coloured umbrellas: like looking into a jar of sweets. But while the crowd scenes have a certain guaranteed authenticity, the glimpses of conflict behind closed doors are more ambiguous. “This is the real me,” Qin yells at the camera at one especially tense moment; still, we're left to judge for ourselves how far she and her family function as conscious actors in their own private drama.

Queer Horror

A version of this article appeared in The Age, March 17, 2011.

“I think there's a beauty in the monster,” says the Melbourne playwright and horror buff Lee Gambin. “The monster is the alien Other, and as much as that's a negative thing, it can also be a source of empowerment.”

As part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Gambin is presenting the lecture and clip show It Came From The Closet!, billed as an exploration of queer themes in classic and modern horror cinema. By his account there's no shortage of examples, taken from throughout the history of the medium. “There's a kind of an interesting queer subtext throughout every single Frankenstein film,” he says, “the idea of a man making another man.”

This subtext becomes overt in parodies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), but Gambin says it can equally be felt in the original Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), both directed by the openly gay James Whale. “There's a whole lot of references to unnatural birth processes,” he says. “There's the bonding between Frankenstein and his servant, who create this monster together. There's also the idea of the monster as this alien being, who is misunderstood and displaced in the world.”

Gambin describes Frankenstein's creation as a “monster of pathos", menacing yet sympathetic. Another example he gives is the Creature from the Black Lagoon, especially in The Creature Walks Among Us (1956). “The monster is trying to be cured by scientists,” he says, “which kind of reflects the way that gay people have made accommodations throughout their history to try and make the straight world feel more comfortable with itself.”

Other sections of It Came From The Closet! will focus on stereotypical queer villains such as the lesbian vampires beloved of Britain's Hammer studio, or the transvestite serial killers in films such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991). From today's vantage point many of these portrayals look deeply homophobic, but Gambin argues they form an important part of the history of queer representation on film.

“I'm doing the talk from the perspective of someone who really loves the movies,” he says. “I think it's sad when certain groups don't get represented, and I'm a fan of stock characters, so I'm not opposed to the sissy character or the butch dyke character, I'm fine with it. Some people aren't, and that's fine as well.”

Rango

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 12, 2011.

By the standards of a computer-animated talking-animal Hollywood kids' flick, Rango is trippy stuff indeed. The opening reel features a cameo from the heroes of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1997), plus the first of many interludes of sung narration from a mariachi band of owls. We're a long way from the land of Pixar, closer to the kind of psychedelic slapstick cowboy noir that might have been conceived by the Coen brothers in the days of Raising Arizona (1987), with some aid from the creator of Ren and Stimpy.

Yet for a wacky, free-form extravaganza, Rango remains strangely conventional in some respects, which is not too surprising given the creative team: the screenwriter John Logan, whose credits include The Aviator (2004) and Gladiator (2000), and the director Gore Verbinski, who turned Johnny Depp into a icon beloved by all ages with his Pirates of the Caribbean saga. Here Depp supplies the voice for the chameleon protagonist, a showbiz wanna-be initially known as Lars; the pet of a human family, he whiles away the lonely hours in his terrarium by acting in do-it-yourself stage plays opposite such co-stars as a wind-up goldfish and a headless doll.

Like all cartoon chameleons, Rango has the ability to blend into the landscape by changing the colour of his skin; he's also a fast-talking trickster who can reinvent his personality at will. The essence of his character remains strangely undefined: even his appearance presents a puzzle. The kink in his skinny neck suggests a permanent question mark; his tiny pupils set in bulging eyeballs give him a panicked look, like a Tim Burton version of Kermit the Frog.

One certainty is that his career in amateur theatre is going nowhere. “What our story needs is an ironic, unexpected event that will propel the hero into conflict,” he announces, just before an bump in the road throws him out of the family vehicle onto a highway running through the Western desert. This brand of self-referential humour would be more amusing if Logan wasn't so truly dedicated to the screenwriting gospel of the “hero's journey” – following Lars on his path to self-realisation while winking at the adult audience every step of the way.

Disoriented and parched, Lars staggers across the desert toward the town of Dirt, introducing himself to the furry or scaly locals as “Rango,” a mythical gunslinger from a land beyond the sunset. Impressed by his flair for braggadocio, his new friends appoint him as sheriff, which starts to look like a dubious honour when it emerges that there are few other surviving candidates for the job. Having taken on the mantle of a saviour, Rango now has to rise to the occasion – aided by the usual rag-tag band of helpers, including an iguana named Beans (Isla Fisher) who talks like a more excitable version of the heroine of True Grit.

The strengths of Rango lie in the brilliant character designs and in Verbinski's gift for parodic action sequences, burlesquing everything from spaghetti Westerns to Apocalypse Now (1979). Logan's verbose dialogue is too pleased with itself to be genuinely funny, aside from occasional ventures into outright surrealism (“If this were heaven, I'd be eating Pop Tarts with Kim Novak”). Still, it's well-nigh impossible to dislike a film that features walking cactii, a giant rattlesnake voiced by Bill Nighy who shoots bullets out of his tail, a villainous tortoise (Ned Beatty) modelled after the John Huston character in Chinatown (1974), and a cameo by the poncho-clad Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant) in person.

Part of the subject of Rango is the enigma of Depp himself: a chameleon in his own right, famed for altering his voice and look from one film to the next. This could be considered his second “acid Western” after Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995) – or his third, if Fear and Loathing counts. Given these reference points, adult viewers might well start to wonder about the real meaning of Lars' existential quest; almost the first creature he encounters along the way is an armadillo (Alfred Molina) injured in a highway accident, who talks in mystic riddles and promises “I'll see you on the other side.”

At this stage, we already know that Lars has a talent for fiction: could it be that his subsequent adventures in Dirt are simply another story he is telling himself, perhaps a hallucination as he lies dying in the middle of the road? Heavy, man, heavy.

Models On Film

A version of this article appeared in The Age, March 10, 2011.

“Who am I?” wonders the vapid male model hero of Ben Stiller's fashion industry satire Zoolander (2001), as he gazes like Narcissus at his reflection in a puddle. Even he can't help wondering if there's more to life than being “really, really good-looking”.

Models of both sexes get a bad rap in the movies, whether they're portrayed as airheads or as bitchy, vain opportunists: like Zoolander, they often have little sense of identity to call their own. Defined by the gazes of others, the characters played by Julie Christie in John Schlesinger's Darling (1966) and Hanna Schugulla in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) flit between lovers as readily as they shift from one pose to the next.

It's telling that films about female models tend towards the tragic or Gothic, while a male model is rarely anything but a joke. “Men act, and women appear,” the critic John Berger famously wrote, summing up the sexist division of labour that runs through the history of Western art.

Yet when a model becomes the centre of a film narrative, it's often hard to say where acting begins and appearing leaves off. The heroine (Angelina Jolie) of Michael Cristofer's made-for-cable biopic Gia (1998) is perplexed by her own gift: what is it exactly that she's good at? And how far do the qualities she conveys on camera overlap with her “real” self?

One of the main jokes in Zoolander is that models are paid for doing little or nothing – but films about modelling most often come to life when they prove that the job calls for both energy and skill. An uncanny scene in Frederick Wiseman's documentary Model (1980) shows a young woman altering her “look” in response to instructions from a photographer, widening and narrowing her eyes in ways far removed from any normal grammar of facial expression. “A little more sophisticated now...you know what I'm saying, a little bitchier. Tighten it up a little now. That's it, that's it.”

Much of the fascination of Wiseman's film lies in a hard-headed view of beauty as a natural resource, with a commercial value that can be measured down to the last milimetre. William Klein's Who Are You, Polly Maggoo (1966), another satire on the fashion industry, similarly sets out to demystify its subject: reporters persist in treating Polly (Dorothy McGowan) as a riddle to be solved, but from her own perspective she's just an ordinary girl earning her living.

In a more unfortunate category mistake, the angry rapist (Chris Sarandon) in Lamont Johnson's Lipstick (1976) can't accept that the smile of model Chris McCormick (Margot Hemingway) is simply an advertising lure rather than a sexual invitation. Yet even here, we're encouraged to believe that a zone exists where image and reality meet: Chris is forced to testify in court that she sometimes has to think “sexy thoughts” in order to seduce the camera.

A variation on this theme is the paranoid notion that models might be replaced by their own images – equating the frozen moment of photography with virtual death. In Irvin Kershner's The Eyes of Laura Mars (1979), a controversial photographer (Faye Dunaway) is haunted by gruesome visions of actual crime scenes, which she unconsciously recreates in her own work for fashion magazines.

Parodying the association of models with static poses, Joel Silverman's Z-grade comedy Death To The Supermodels (2005) casts Australia's Kimberley Davies as a model with the gift of transforming herself into an “inanimate object”; for much of the film, she sits in the background like a performance artist or a living doll, with only an occasional blink to confirm she remains alive and breathing.

Michael Gottlieb's Mannequin (1986), a comic variation on the Pygmalion myth, turns this idea upside-down: here the “model” played by Kim Cattrall is a department store dummy who comes to life at night, inspiring the window-dresser hero (Andrew McCarthy) to new flights of imagination.

A “model” can be either an imitation or a prototype – a figure potentially both more and less than human. Death to the Supermodels maliciously plays on the notion that models are “genetically superior” to regular folk, whose sense of inferiority may spur them to violent revenge.

In Michael Crichton's muddled but prescient science-fiction thriller Looker (1981), a group of starlets undergo plastic surgery that will render them “perfect”, enabling them to be scanned by computer and recreated as walking, talking digital images: models of models, in other words. Though it makes little sense in strict plot terms, it's no surprise that after their “value” – their beauty – has been extracted, they're killed off one by one.

The question raised by many of these films bears on photography and cinema alike: is an image captured by the camera a glimpse of a human soul, or simply a manufactured commodity? And which would we really prefer?

The Company Men

A version of this review was published in The Age, March 10, 2011.

It's been two years since the onset of the global financial crisis, but so far few American films have been willing to tackle the subject head-on. An exception is this dour drama, the feature debut from writer-director John Wells, whose TV background is apparent in his method of cutting between subplots.

Ben Affleck plays Bobby Walker, a sales manager at a Boston transportation company, who is fired during the downturn; as the weeks and months go by, he struggles to find a new job, at least one he deems worthy of his talent and experience. Another strand of the film centres on Gene (Tommy Lee Jones), the second-in-command at Bobby's former company, who grows increasingly unhappy with his role in the downsizing process.

It's satisfying to see the smarmy Bobby get his comeuppance, but there's little social insight here beyond a lament for the good old days when men could find meaning in their work. Wells' direction is plodding and his dialogue often corny, particularly in the scenes involving Kevin Costner as a salt-of-the-earth labourer. Still, the cinematographer Roger Deakins provides a few striking images of abandoned factories, and no film can be dismissed that places Jones and Chris Cooper – two great, crusty American character actors – side by side.

Senses of Cinemagoing

A short contribution to a symposium on experiences of "the motion picture theatre" appears in Senses of Cinema issue 58 (scroll down).

The Rite

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 10, 2011.

This silly and boring supernatural thriller is supposedly inspired by real events, a claim that should be taken with a few massive grains of salt. Colin O'Donoghue stars as Michael Kovak, a young American seminary student (“In my family,” he explains, “you're either a mortician or a priest”). On the eve of ordination, he's shaken by doubts and threatens to leave the church – to the dismay of his sly mentor, played by Toby Jones in the film's one good performance.

As a compromise, Michael agrees to undertake an exorcism training course in Rome, where he meets Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), a Welsh specialist in the trade. From this point onward, The Rite consists mainly of Father Lucas tootling round the city trying ineffectually to drive out demons, while Michael persists in the role of whiny sceptic.

The director Mikael Hafstrom shows none of the flair he brought to his Stephen King adaptation 1408 (2007). Much of the film is submerged in darkness, but the shadows don't generate any terror; halfway through, it struck me that Hopkins's acting was more restrained than usual, but the goofy climax persuaded me to revise that judgement.

Hall Pass

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 5, 2011.

Filmmakers change, whether we like it or not. Even if they manage to get their long-awaited Three Stooges movie off the ground, it's doubtful that the gross-out pioneers Peter and Bobby Farrelly will again reach the inventive heights of There's Something About Mary (1997) and Stuck On You (2003). Instead, they've moved on to new territory, with a trilogy of films about the eternal gap between men and women: Fever Pitch (2005) deals with the early stages of a relationship, The Heartbreak Kid (2007) portrays a disastrous honeymoon, and now there's Hall Pass, which concentrates on the frustrations of domesticated middle-age.

Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are a couple of regular guys from Providence, Rhode Island: prosperous, outwardly contented, and so horny they can't help sneaking glances at every attractive woman who goes by. “I like sex too,” protests Rick's wife Maggie (Jenna Fischer); what she doesn't like is the suspicion that her partner might be fantasising about someone else. In desperation, she issues Rick with a “hall pass” – which she defines as “a week off from marriage” – in the hope he can get his urges out of his system; while she heads off on holiday with the children, he has the freedom to pursue his desires in whatever direction they lead. Fred's wife Grace (Christina Applegate) takes a little longer to warm to the idea, but after she catches her husband pleasuring himself in the family mini-van, she too decides that a sabbatical could be in order.

So the experiment begins. Swinging bachelors once more, Fred and Rick check into a motel and prepare for a week of guiltless indulgence – but their efforts to capitalise on this window of opportunity prove even feebler than expected. Their first trip out on the town ends after they gorge themselves on steak at the chain restaurant Applebees; bloated and exhausted, they agree to call it a night. As the days pass, matters barely improve for Fred, the dumber and more impulsive of the pair. But when Rick starts getting some attention from Leigh (Nicky Whelan), a pretty young Aussie who works in the local coffee shop, he has to ask himself how far he's really prepared to go.

Dominated by feelings of guilt and constraint, Hall Pass is a long way from the anything-can-happen spirit of the Farrellys' younger days. Still, they haven't lost their instinct for the unexpected comic detail (a glimpse of two cops playing solitaire on duty; the eager grin on a small boy's face when he hears talk of an erotic massage). Equally, they retain a taste for odd physical specimens. As the geekiest of Rick and Fred's friends, the spindly, goggle-eyed Stephen Merchant proves yet again that he can't help being funny regardless of the material; Richard Jenkins livens up the film's second half in a wildly uncharacteristic role as an ancient pick-up artist, smothered in fake tan and sporting a fedora that makes him look like Freddy Krueger.

The Farrellys have a reputation as laidback humanists, but The Heartbreak Kid, a virtual horror movie, was proof enough that the truth is more complex. Their tolerance for human foibles is genuine, but so is the weary revulsion expressed in the scatological gags, the mildly disgusting nicknames for sex acts and the frankness about the humiliations of ageing. Glamour is absent from their universe, along with good taste (one of the funniest sequences here is a tour of a tacky McMansion owned by a nouveau riche couple). It's weirdly touching to see the usually chilled-out Wilson behaving like a dork, in his buttoned-up plaid shirt with neatly parted hair; Whelan may look as if she's ready to pose for a men's magazine, but Leigh (like all Farrelly women) is a blunt-spoken female buddy rather than a seductive siren.

Hall Pass is the Farrellys' most overtly moral film since Shallow Hal (2001), and probably the one that most reflects their Catholic background: beneath all the dirty jokes lies an unswerving respect for the institution of marriage, which is something different from sentimentality over family values. Rick is allowed a single speech about his love for his children, but mostly the kids behave like precocious brats when they're not tucked out of sight. All the same, the message is clear: if you think about straying from the path of monogamy, the consequences will hit you like a ton of bricks. Stick around during the closing credits for a scene with Merchant that makes this point in an especially memorable way.

The Adjustment Bureau

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 3, 2011.

The premise of this "romantic thriller" is that the world is secretly controlled by a group of mostly white, middle-aged men in suits. As paranoid fantasies go, that isn't too hard to believe.

A onetime student of philosophy and political science, the first-time writer-director George Nolfi seems bent on making an allegorical statement about the nature of freedom. His hero David Norris (Matt Damon) is a promising young senator from New York, who might be the next Obama if not for his tendency to go off-script.

David already has minders to keep him in line, but when he meets the free-spirited dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) on election night, he finds himself at the mercy of a team of supernatural bureaucrats employed by the mysterious Chairman to keep the universe running according to plan. Despite their instant attraction, it seems that David and Elise aren't destined to become a couple; more, they must never meet again.

This is the kind of obvious, adolescent science fiction premise I associate with the work of Andrew Niccol, who wrote the screenplays for Gattaca (1997) and The Truman Show (1998). In fact, The Adjustment Bureau is based on a short story by the one and only Philip K. Dick – but even Dick had enough common sense not to stretch a thin notion beyond a few pages.

Dick's speculations about a cosmic bureaucracy typically had a playful, satirical edge, but Nolfi's control of tone is less sure. Inevitably, the film builds towards an encounter with some kind of divine power – and inevitably, this would-be transcendent ending comes as an anti-climax. Still, Blunt and Damon make a likeable pair of star-crossed lovers: though they're kept apart for much of the film, their chemistry is strong enough to convince us they deserve to triumph over fate.

Wasted On The Young

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 3, 2011.

Shot in Perth, this first feature from writer-director Ben C. Lucas initially looks promising: an Australian version of a teen movie like Brick (2006) or Cruel Intentions (1999) in which high school is imagined as an enclosed world of glamorous vice. Flanked by his entourage, the wealthy, good-looking Zack (Alex Russell), strolls through the schoolyard like an arrogant prince, showing no mercy on Darren (Oliver Ackland), his nerdy, sensitive step-brother. Both boys have their eye on the blonde, ethereal Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens), and when something terrible happens to her at one of Zack's house parties, Darren vows to bring the truth to light.

Though the script might have been inspired by news stories about teen bullying and the dark side of social media, Lucas is far too hypnotised by his own pose of cool cynicism to make any credible comment on the issues of the day. Every aspect of his style reeks of film school mannerism – the steel-blue colour scheme, the studied widescreen framing, the “brooding” sound design. But even on its own terms, Wasted on the Young is an almost total failure: the pacing is deadly, the young actors lack the authority to carry off their improbable roles, and the over-the-top ending falls horribly flat.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest

A version of this review appeared in The Age, March 3, 2011.

For the moment, this is the last hurrah for Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the damaged-yet-sexy goth punk computer hacker with the bad attitude and the genius IQ. The late Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson famously compared the heroine of his Millennium trilogy to a grown-up Pippi Longstocking, but despite her penchant for black leather and facial piercings, Lisbeth is equally a soul sister of the title character in Amelie (2001), another barely-socialised pixie with a childlike, punitive sense of right and wrong.

In Daniel Alfredson's film version of the final instalment of the series, she's mostly out of action – confined to a hospital bed and then put on trial, while her right-hand man Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) tries to dig up dirt on the solid citizens who have abused her over the years. Shot like a routine TV serial, the film (like its predecessors) is basically a bondage fantasy with dubious feminist trappings, anchored by a "thriller" plot almost dull enough to make the whole enterprise seem respectable. David Fincher is now remaking the series in Hollywood, but I wish the task had been handed over to an exploitation buff like Quentin Tarantino: at least he has the courage of his fetishes.