Month: August 2018

The Meg

Rated: MThe Meg

Directed by: John Turteaitub

Produced by: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Belle Avery and Colin Wilson

Written by: Dean Georgaris and Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber

Based on: MEG, the bestselling novel by by Steve Alten

Starring: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing.

The depths of the ocean. Unexplored. Unknown. Unconquered. Sound familiar?

I must confess that the scifi premise, used many times before in better and/or smaller productions such as Jaws (1975) or Piranha (1978), intrigue me. While the cast of Jason Statham made me lower my expectations to rock bottom.

>A deep-sea submersible—part of Mana One, an international undersea observation program off the coast of China—has been attacked by a massive creature and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean… with its crew trapped inside.

In the film, Statham plays Jonas Taylor, an undersea rescue diver who was the best of the best before a terrifying brush with a massive creature powerful enough to crush the hull of a nuclear submarine. The traumatic attack took the lives of two friends and put Jonas into voluntary drydock. When Megalodon emerges once again and threatens the lives of Mana One’s crew, Jonas becomes their last and only hope.

I love a big monster movie just like anybody else but I hate when a trailer plays with my feelings as a viewer, teasing a bigger version of the classic Jaws and delivering what’s nothing more than a louder film.

The irresistible combination of over-the-top special effects and a great soundtrack is not enough to scratch the surface of the story. Half way through the film I became more concerned about the fate of the gorgeous little Yorkshire Terrier paddling around the Megalodon than of the weak romance orchestrated between Jason Statham and award winning Chinese actress Li Bingbing.

If there is anything to be afraid of, is that The Meg has become one of the year’s few Hollywood surprise stories, making $45 million in one of the highest debuts of the year. Meaning that more such a films may well be on their way to feast from the box office once again.

Submergence

Rated: MSubmergence

Directed by: Wim Wenders

Based on the novel, “Submergence” by: J.M. Ledgard

Screenplay Written by: Erin Dignam

Cinematographer: Benoît Debie

Produced by: Cameron Lamb along with Wim Wenders and Uwe Kiefer

Starring: Alicia Vikander, James McAvoy, Cerlyn Jones, Reda Kateb, Alexander Siddig and Hakeemshady Mohamed.

Based on the novel written by journalist J.M. Ledgard, Submergence opens the door to soaring cliffs and underwater twilight, to the senseless violence of women buried and bashed and foreigners imprisoned while Jihadists make suicide vests.

This is a movie of contrasts, where bio-mathematician Danielle Flinders (Alicia Vikander) and British Secret Service agent James More (James McAvoy) meet at a hotel on the Normandy coast in France.

Danielle’s a professor and believer in nature with a drive to understand the depths of the ocean down to where there’s no light, just darkness, searching for the origin of life to show the world there’s life in darkness.

Scottish agent James believes the world’s about power, that education is secondary – he wants to save the world by stopping terrorists from setting off bombs. His mission is to travel to Somalia to find the men responsible, to put his own life at risk to save others.

They meet; they fall in love. They each have a mission where they may never come back.

Submersion is a romance. The eyes meeting, searching to reveal the other. Yet, there’s this thread of water and life.

We’re introduced to the happy professor as she works on the discovery of the origins of life on earth; her research to compare samples with those from Mars, ground breaking.

Dani’s whole being is about work and what it means to the world.

She’s then drawn into a smaller world, a bubble – where love is like death; where apart she realises she’s never been lonely before.

To which her colleague Thumbs (Cerlyn Jones) replies, ‘Welcome to the planet’.

The film floats around with one storyline flowing into the other, from the underwater world viewed from a submersible hundreds of kilometres below the surface, to the stark desert sun where James is chained, waiting interrogation – waiting to get back to Danielle.

I drifted in and out of the film with the meeting of the British operatives to the lovers discussing life, to the science of photosynthetic life that creates through light to the organisms of darkness who live on chemicals – director Wim Wenders gives poetry to the perspective.

I liked McAvoy as the Scottish operative who falls in love – he’s a witty and likable character and quite a different role with more warmth and less crazy than his recent previous roles in such films as, ‘Split (2016)’, ‘Atomic Blonde (2017)’ or even ‘Trance (2013)’. I admit I’m a big fan.

Alicia Vikander as the mathematician was slow to warm as she falls for the Scotsman.

They’re a couple I found more believable apart than together.

I didn’t believe their love for each other as much as their passion for life because there was so much reasoning involved.

The contrast of the scientist, the solider, the extremists who believe Jihad is life after death – this is what I found interesting.

As Wenders states:
“What I really hope is on a rainy Thursday night in Bristol or Detroit or wherever you are, when you come out of the cinema, your perspective of the planet, on your own habits, is just altered slightly. You will realize how large the world is, how varied it is, but also how fragile it is.”

Overall, I found Submergence a quietly absorbing and interesting escape.

C’est La Vie

Rated: MC’est La Vie

Directed by: Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano

Written by: Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano

Produced by: Nicolas duval adassovsky, Yann Zenou, Laurent Zeitoun

Starring: Jean-Pierre Bacri, Jean-Paul Rouve, Eye Haidara, Benjamin Lavernhe,  Gilles Lellouche, Vincent Macaigne and Alban Ivanov.

What would you do if you were minutes away from serving main course to a wedding party of 200 guests and the food was ruined? While this would have to be any event planner’s worst nightmare, this is merely one of the catastrophes looming over the ‘sober, elegant, chic’ occasion that Pierre (Benjamin Lavernhe), the self-obsessed groom, has ordered for his special day.

C’est La Vie is a behind the scenes look at 24 hours in the life of wily, irascible wedding planner, Max Angeli (Jean-Pierre Bacri) and his unruly, uncooperative and inattentive staff as they attempt to orchestrate a 21st century wedding extravaganza in a 16th century château, complete with dodgy wiring.

If Max is to survive this reception with his reputation and his business intact, he will need to draw on 30 years of his of experience in the trade, but he has his own troubles too. His lover has insisted that he leave his wife and until she sees some action Josiane (Suzanne Clement) is brazenly pursuing one of the waiters. At the same time, Max is feeling so jaded that he is secretly negotiating the sale of his business. Or he would be, if only he could master the predictive text function on his phone. Unwittingly, Max has invited his buyer to, ‘come and lick me up’.

Much of the humour in this ensemble comedy derives from language wielded with the precision of a chef’s knife fileting the hapless creatures laid out on the cutting board; especially, the exquisitely barbed insults flying between the staff from the various departments—catering, music, photography, even lighting and special effects—as they each seem to vie to undermine the other. Filmed at the Château de Courances, the setting is breathtaking, while the subtle cadences of Avishai Cohen’s musical score add layers of texture to the slow burn of the script.

Contrary to the expectations set up by its publicity, this film does not follow the well-established Hollywood tradition where a series of disasters, each more cringe-making and improbable than the last, ramp up to a great, big, rousing finale.  While I heard several chuckles and a few belly laughs from the small audience during the pre-screening, the experience was more a smile in the dark than a roll about in the aisles kind of thing. Rather, this film plays with verisimilitude, relying on artful misdirection to produce something that is so deliciously absurd and quirky that it confounds expectation.

In a scene that does break with the sense of realism, two of the hopelessly distracted staff manage to lose the groom. Quite literally. And nobody, not even his bride, seems to mind. It is in this moment, when chaos threatens to ruin everything, the staff show that they have the single qualification that counts in their line of work. They know how to party. Under any circumstances.

As the bemused international crew observes, ‘The French, they’re really something else.’ And this comedy is quintessentially French, right down to its beautifully crafted, easy to read, subtitles.

Crazy Rich Asians

Directed by: Jon M. ChuCrazy Rich Asians

Screenplay by: Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim

Based on the novel, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ by: Kevin Kwan

Produced by: Nina Jacobson, p. g. a., Brad Simpson, p. g. a., Jong Penotti, p., g., a.,

Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Harry Shum Jr., Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Nico Santos, Jing Lusi, Carmen Soo, Pierre Png, Fiona Xie, Victoria Loke, Janice Koh, Amy J Cheng, Koh Chieng Mun, Calvin Wong, Tan Kheng Hua, Constance Lau, Selena Tan, Nevan Koit, Amanda Evans.

Like Rachel Chu’s (Constance Wu) ‘auspicious nose’ I’m feeling very lucky watching Crazy Rich Asians just before going on holiday to Singapore – but trust me, I’m flying economy!

Watching Crazy Rich Asians does make you feel glamorous and extravagant, thrown into the world of the superrich.  And not just rich, old money rich.

Rachel may be an NYU Economics professor, but she doesn’t know what she’s getting into when travelling from New York to Singapore to go to her boyfriend, Nick Young’s (Henry Golding) childhood friend’s wedding.  And to meet his family…  The family… The Youngs.

Like Rachel’s college friend, Peik Lin Goh (Awkwafina) says, Nick’s like the Asian Bachelor.

And when everyone realises that Rachel’s a Chu but not any Chu worth noting, the claws come out.

Nick’s family are posh and snobby: they’re ‘snoshy’.

To survive, Rachel needs to fight back to prove that love can conquer money.

There’re some great characters here with already mentioned college friend Peik explaining the Singapore world – that they think she’s a banana: yellow on the outside and white inside.  And Peik’s ‘new rich’ family are hilarious with Neenah Goh, AKA Aunty (Koh Chieng Mun) and hubby, Wye Mun Goh (Ken Jeong) and creepy single brother (Calvin Wong) lurking and talking photos at every opportunity.

Based on Kevin Kwan’s New York Times and international bestseller novel, I can see why the story’s so popular.

There’s humour, love, history, the difficulties of relationships – the trial of meeting Chinese-mum-knows-best Eleanor Young (Michelle Yeoh) and the matriarch and Grandmother Ah Ma (Lisa Lu) who knows better.  There’s the story of the beautiful and warm sister, Astrid Young Teo (Gemma Chan) trying to make her husband feel like a man.  And the story of a mother who had to fight and give up her own ambitions of a career for family.

So even with all the money and glitz the story is still relatable.

It’s just that beautiful mansions lit up like a fairy tale castle in the middle of the jungle and rare orchids blooming at night and crazy fashion with golden sparkly outfits and party ships in international waters and fireworks look like so much fun on the big screen.

Sure, it’s over the top.  But why not!

The film’s like a bejewelled party box with a heart-warming romance inside.

I had a lot of fun watching this movie to the extent I’m wondering if I’m becoming a romantic because Nick Young was just so gorgeous and polite and lovely and Rachel’s such a relatable, likeable character: I loved that they were in love.

And there’s more to this film than romance and, ‘love conquers all’, Crazy Rich Asians is also about integrity being worth far more than money.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

 

Rated: MA 15+The Spy Who Dumped Me

Directed by: Susanna Fogel

Written by: Susanna Fogel, David Iserson

Produced by: Brian Grazer, Erica Huggins, Guy Riedel

Starring: Kate McKinnon, Mila Kunis, Gillian Anderson, Justin Theroux, Sam Heughan, Hasan Minhaj.

 

Who do you trust when the person you thought you could trust, tells you to trust no-one? Not even the bartender who just served you a few hours ago or the naked man your best friend has brought home so she can teach him to, ‘use his passive aggressive masculinity for good rather than evil’.

The film opens in Vilnius, Lithuania with Audrey’s (Mila Kunis) boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux) in a local market assembling a makeshift weapon with his woollen scarf and some eight balls, before he fights his way out, leaps from a tall building and speeds away on a conveniently located scooter. Audrey thinks he works in publicity, producing some kind of jazz and economics podcast that nobody listens to.

Back in Los Angeles it’s Audrey’s birthday and her uninhibited, attention-seeking best friend, Morgan (Kate McKinnon), is trying to cheer her up after Drew dumped her by text message. Not that dumping her was Drew’s real agenda.

From the moment Audrey takes over Drew’s mission to deliver his gold statuette to Verne in Vienna, she and Morgan find themselves on the run with nothing but their passports and the clothes they are wearing in a crazy chase across Europe with spies, assassins and double agents at every turn.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

The action is over the top and overwhelming, the script is dazzling, not a plot hole in sight, and the sound design ranges across the full palette from explosions and the ping of high-calibre bullets to the Czech version of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots are Made for Walkin’’, but the heart of the movie is the friendship between Morgan and Audrey. The innate trust they share is in complete contrast to the illusions and fabrications perpetrated by the spies all around them. Even the cheese fondue turns deadly when the spies in the ‘fancy café’ reveal themselves.

Despite lacking most of the basic qualifications required for a career in the international spying trade, Audrey is a terrible liar (she puts way too much detail into her stories) and Morgan cannot keep a secret from her mum (not even dick pics), the pair of accidental spies discover that they do have one of the skills that every spy must have; they have a natural talent for improvisation. A series of speed humps provide an effective way to remove that unwanted motorcycle assassin from the roof of their Uber and a craftily coordinated hugging style of mugging allows them to to lift the passports from two unsporting Australian backpackers when they won’t hand them over voluntarily.

But it is not until Drew’s counterpart in MI6 escorts the pair to headquarters that things begin to turn around. Against her best intentions, Audrey might be beginning to forgive the gorgeous secret agent (Sam Heughan) who introduced himself by kidnapping her. While Morgan is awe-struck from the moment she realises that she is in the presence of the Judy Dench of British Intelligence (Gillian Anderson), an austerely beautiful woman with the perfect sneer, who doesn’t need to sacrifice her femininity when she orders some of the most violent operatives in the world to do exactly as she tells them.

If your thing is wild action comedies where two unlikely women have it over them all, then you won’t want to miss them in the most impressive Scandinavian flick turn I have ever seen.

BlacKkKlansman

Rated: MA15+BlacKkKlansman

Director: Spike Lee

Written by: Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee

Based on the Novel by: Ron Stallworth

Produced by:  Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Ray Mansflied, Jordan Peele, Spike Lee, Shaun Redick

Music by: Terence Blanchard

Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Jaspar Pääkkönen, Ashlie Atkinson.

Winner of the Grand Prix Award (Cannes Film Festival 2018)

Based on the true story written by Ron Stallworth, BlacKkKlansman is set in 70s America where the Civil Rights movement of African-Americans’ fight against oppression.

Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) has just landed a job at the Colorado Springs Police Department as the first African-American detective where he has to tolerate fellow cops calling African-Americans’, Toads.  To his face.

Asked to work undercover, Ron infiltrates The Black Student Alliance (AKA the Black Panthers), to bear witness to the words of Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins) – a hint of the undercurrent and message of the film that unfolds under the careful direction of Spike Lee.

From the beginning, from the effect of showing words of film projected across the face of a Ku Klux Klan member (Alec Baldwin) as he’s making a propaganda film like so much red paint, like the words leave a curse of blood on his face; to the warmth of faces turned upwards in admiration of the words spoken by Kwame Ture at the Blank Panther rally, who wants the power to be fair and equal, to say black is beautiful; to say fuck the po-lice; to say, Boomshakalaka.

The audience is left in no doubt of the clear division between the white supremacists/KKK/general public and the African-Americans.

This is a political film. 

Yet the depth of the divide leaves plenty for the ridiculous and funny.

I couldn’t help but be tickled by the idea of a black cop pretending to be a white supremacist, asking to join the KKK over the phone.  To watch as the Klan’s Grand Wizard, David Duke (Topher Grace), is only too happy to help another member of the Klan, no not the Klan, the Organisation – and of course he’d be able to tell the difference if he was talking to a black man because they can’t pronounce their, ‘r’s’ properly?!

You can’t make this stuff up!

BlacKkKlansman

And there’s a cool vibe kicking with the funky-soul disco soundtrack (Terence Blanchard) and 70s red and orange outfits; the film embracing the times of the Mercury marauder, 70 Chrysler 300 and a well-shaped afro.

But there’s a strong undercurrent and message beneath the humour of this film; the rhetoric spewed by members of the Klan sounding all too familiar.

Ron’s partner in the infiltration of the Klan, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), is forced to deny being a Jew over and over when undercover.  He admits to Ron his heritage is something he’s never thought about before.  He’s always been just a white kid.   And then to deny, deny, deny, he’s forced to lie under threat of death by the KKK – it’s all he can think about. 

One could draw comparisons with the Denial of Peter.

The more I think about this film, the more there’s to be understood.

And the way Spike Lee has shown this layered true story, with eyes shining with warmth and conviction and others reflecting the hate of a burning cross, adds a distinctive visual layer drawing you in further.

Setting the film in the 70s lulls the mind into thinking all this hatred is something in our past, only to powerfully highlight this is a terror that continues in our present.

There’s a unique perspective and voice I feel like I haven’t heard before.  Sure, we all know history: the lynching’s, the slavery, the segregation.  But do we?  Really?

Being born in Australia, I can see we have our own history to face.  And our own present.

All I can ask is, are we going to let it happen again?

Re-counting the past from the lips of a survivor in the context of our present makes a powerful and thought-provoking film.

I feel like my eyes have been opened with a new understanding – the way the behaviour of racism looks on screen is so ridiculous it’s funny.  And very, very scary.

Dr. Knock

Rated: PGDr. Knock

Directed by: Lorraine Lévy

Based on the Play by: Jules Romain

Produced by: Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier

Starring: Omar Sy, Alex Lutz, Ana Girardot, Sabine Azéma, Pascal Elbé, Audrey Dana.

 An adaptation of the famous French play written by Jules Romain, Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine (1923), director Lorraine Lévy has brought the story forward in time to the 1950s and has replaced an older white gent with a tall and handsome black, Dr. Knock (Omar Sy). 

The play is a French favourite and I can see why: the setting a quaint village with its inhabitants fully formed characters that are both delightful, terrible and most importantly all know each other a little too well. 

Dr. Knock, although a stranger, arrives charming and smart and different, sweeping the villiagers off their feet. 

But I wasn’t always convinced of Dr. Knock’s good character. 

Knock, formally a gambler down-on-his-luck, finds fortune when escaping his debts by applying to be a doctor on board a ship, enthusiastically waving to his debtors as the ship departs.

He has found his calling.  After finishing his post, he takes himself to medical school to five years later fill the job of country GP in the beautiful provincial village of St-Maurice.

Conman-turned-GP, Dr. Knock plans on getting rich by making up as many illnesses and treatment plans as he can suggest to his willing patients.  

‘Healthy people are merely unaware sick ones,’ he exclaims to much agreement.

He has an uncanny ability to infect the healthy, explaining to a rich widow the cure for insomnia is to imagine a crab or giant spider eating away at her brain, while extending his fingers and dancing them in front of her eyes like spider legs.

His charm and business sense allow him reverence in the village, all the people thinking of him as a saint.  Except, ironically, the priest (Alex Lutz).

When meeting beautiful Adèle (Ana Girardot) it is the first time we see Knock lost for words and we begin to see the softer side of the man: she recognises him for who he truly is.  Yet the audience is still left to wonder: Is he a charlatan?  A doctor?  Or both?

The film is sweet and amusing with the slapstick humour of the French, alcoholic post office worker falling head first with his bicycle in the village fountain, included.

In the end, I was won over like the villagers as the film elevated above the usual human condition (and health issues!) into something more: you can’t make happiness happen, it just happens.  But you can try.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Rated: MMission Impossible: Fallout

Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie

Written by: Christopher McQuarrie

Based on: Mission: Impossible TV series created by Bruce Geller

Produced by: Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, Dana Goldberg, J.J. Abrams, David Ellison, Don Granger

Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan.

With a mega budget, cracking good use of the original TV show’s theme, endless action-packed chase sequences, exotic locations and enough double crosses to challenge a reality TV show, the latest instalment in the Mission: Impossible series, Fallout, more than lives up to its hype.

For those of us who are not fans of Tom Cruise (surely these are legion), the best movie of his is Edge of Tomorrow, where he is repeatedly killed in a variety of violently pleasing ways and then resurrected the next day to repeat the process – all very good fun.

In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, we have to settle instead for seeing Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt get repeatedly beaten, thrown, punched, stabbed, betrayed and pursued as part of the world-in-peril (again) mission he chose to accept in the pre-credit sequence.

The plot involves a nuclear threat and various international legal and covert parties’ desire to acquire key components ahead of their competitors, either initiating or preventing a new world-wide threat to humanity as we know it. So just business as usual.

Cruise actually broke his ankle while filming one scene (you can see him hobbling off afterwards and he isn’t acting!), so you have to give him full marks for throwing himself so enthusiastically into the breathtaking stunts that litter this two hour plus film like blood spatters at a crime scene.

Mission Impossbile: Fallout

Despite this being the sixth film in the series, it isn’t necessary to be familiar with the five that came before, none of which I have seen. There is enough exposition in the opening sequence and at regular intervals throughout the film to ensure we are sufficiently clued in about each character’s backstory. There are smatterings of amusing dialogue amongst the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team comprising Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson that indicate their shared history, closeness and unwavering loyalty, as well as their expertise in technology, explosives and medicine.

True to its television series origins, there are also a number of double crosses where characters are misled or tricked into betraying vital information. Although these scenarios were generally easy to predict, they were delivered with the requisite gusto and sleight of hand that had the audience relishing each new reveal.

The impeccably staged chase and action sequences are relentless and often very violent, with just enough quiet time in between for the audience to recover before being catapulted into another larger, louder, more explosive one that manages to outdo what has just gone before. Despite all of these action sequences interspersed with meetings with top brass, international terrorists or weapons brokers, the basic storyline remains easy to follow. The best aspect to all this was hearing the audience laugh at each new peril that stoic Tom Cruise faced, which left you wondering, ‘How is he going to get out of this one?’

What stood out most for me was how Cruise’s character retained his humanity and desire to protect the good guys, even under the most trying of circumstances, rather than being a one-dimensional assassin without a moral compass.

Rollicking good fun.

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