Glen (Chris New) and Russell (Tom Cullen)

A first glance an English film about a relationship between two young gay men, one of whom lives in a council estate apartment, invites comparisons to films such as My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) and Beautiful Thing (Hettie Macdonald, 1996). The sexuality of the two men in Weekend and their developing relationship is the foremost focus of the film, while the lower socio-economic setting is recognisably that of an English kitchen-sink drama. And yet while not to diminish the significance of earlier films exploring gay identity, Weekend is something of a revelation in its sophisticated yet heartfelt depiction of the brief affair shared by swimming pool attendant Russell (Tom Cullen) and artist Glen (Chris New). For a start, Weekend is neither a coming out story nor a coming-of-age film. The characters – and presumably a lot of the target audience – are beyond such narratives. Instead the film looks at the shifting needs, desires and attitudes experienced by Russell and Glen during their affair.

Visually writer/director Andrew Haigh creates a strong tension between the different ways Russell and Glen present themselves in public compared to how they express themselves privately. Weekend alternates between mostly static long and medium shots of the characters in public spaces, such as nightclubs, bars and motorways, with intimate handheld close-ups of just their faces, to capture moments of private conversation and intimate body language. This is further enhanced by the sound design where the noises that the audience hears in the long and medium shots are those heard by Russell. This technique indicates how Russell experiences a private life (suggested by the sound design) that is different to his public life (suggested by the long and medium shots). Glen, on the other hand, is more open about expressing his sexuality so doesn’t separate his private and public life in the way he interacts with the world. Such themes are further developed as the pair debate what it means to live as a gay man, to what extent do some people still have difficultly understanding gay sexuality and to what extent is that their problem. One of the many joys of Weekend is seeing such complex issues being discussed so frankly and honestly by characters who are most qualified to discuss them.

An extension of the perception theme is in the film’s commentary on the way straight audiences respond to homosexuality. Many previous films depicting gay sexuality, especially the ones that aren’t exclusively pitched at gay audiences, have historically shielded away from actually showing gay sex. Films such as Philadelphia (Jonathan Demme, 1993), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) and Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008) are commendable for their part in introducing gay narratives to wider audiences, but they were still extremely coy about showing the physical side of male same-sex relations in a way that films about straight couples are not. In Weekend this issue is scrutinised when Russell questions Glen about his art project, which involves making recordings of previous lovers describing how they met and then eventually had sex. Russell – who keeps a private typed diary as a contrast to Glen’s public recordings – argues that gay men don’t like talking about sex publicly and straight people don’t want to hear it; hence, the absence of expressions of gay sexuality in popular culture.

The debate about Russell’s art project can clearly be applied to Weekend itself, and the film does possess a fascinating self-reflexivity in the way it questions how it will be received. This self-awareness also reveals just how considered Haigh has been in the way he directs the film’s sex scenes. At one point Glen half jokingly mentions that the only audience for art expressing gay sexuality are gay men who want to see cocks. Haigh therefore avoids showing cocks and overtly pans the camera just above the waistline to draw attention to his deliberate decision to defy expectations. By visually removing such an obvious symbol of male sexuality, but by still suggesting it so as not to deny its significance, the sex scenes contain a rawness, frankness and explicitness without ever being graphic or indulgent. The result is several scenes where sexual acts express the physical desire and emotional connection of the characters in a way that is rarely seen in cinema of any kind.

It would be a shame if focusing on the stylistic techniques and themes of Weekend suggested that it is a didactic message film, because it is ultimately a very moving love story. The intensity that comes from the film is a result of its willingness to intelligently engage in issues of sexuality, identity and representation, not despite it. The film’s biggest triumph is one of its final shots that begins as a public wide shot and then slowly zooms into a tightly framed private close-up. It signals an important final moment of character development and delivers a powerful emotional surge for the audience. During the zoom, off-screen characters yell taunts at the pair and Russell’s glare at them is almost directed straight at the audience to confront us with our own potentially unevolved or childish uncomfortableness with gay sexuality. Nevertheless, the pair have their private moment in the public space, although in a brilliant masterstroke Haigh drowns out a piece of key dialogue with on-screen noise. It’s a similar technique to the one used by Sofia Coppola in Lost in Translation (2003), but in Weekend it has more resonance due to the play on private/public space throughout the film that results in a moment so private that not even the audience get to fully share it.

Weekend is one of the most impressive films ever made about love. Haigh’s confidence and intelligence as a filmmaker, has resulted in a sincere and emotionally engaging film. At first glance Weekend seems to have much in common with My Beautiful Laundrette and Beautiful Thing, but the film it really does evoke is a far older English romance/drama about social conventions. That film is David Lean’s 1945 masterpiece Brief Encounter and Weekend is arguably its modern day reincarnation.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

George Smiley (Gary Oldman)

Everything the audience needs to know about the tone of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is established in the opening scenes. It’s 1973 and the Cold War in England is not being played out in high-tech James Bond-style labs, but in dank and dusty rooms where the head of British Intelligence is a dishevelled and elderly man known as Control (John Hurt) sending agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Hungary on a secret mission. In Budapest, where the sounds of children playing are juxtaposed with the sight of two fighter jets tearing across the sky during a beautiful slow establishing shot camera pull, the mission goes wrong. An innocent bystander is shot dead, which is treated as an unfortunate detail in a world of international subterfuge. Thus begins this highly accomplished spy thriller/drama. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson delivers the same diffused visual style and melancholic atmosphere in this new adaptation of John le Carré’s 1974 novel that he so successfully employed on Let the Right One In (2008).

Alfredson’s command of film style and his respect for the intelligence of the audience is evident during the opening title sequence, which brings the story up to speed and establishes character relationships simply through the body language and facial expressions of all the key players. The graphic matched editing and the almost noirish jazz score further enhance the sequence, which presents the professionally complex yet personally lonely world of the aging agents. Everything about this film is economical – dialogue, acting style and visual style – so that from the very opening shot the audience are themselves playing the part of spies, attempting to piece together information and looking for clues.

Throughout the film the overcast, grainy and colour-drained visuals emphasise the cold emptiness experienced by the intelligence operatives. Characters are frequently filmed boxed in by their surroundings; framed by small windows and other rigid geometric shapes. Their world is one of restrictions, deceitfulness and moral ambiguity. The cinematography is like surveillance; shots begin from a distance and then hone in on the ‘target’. There is a mist that seems to hang over the entire film, suggesting the mesh of secrets and betrayals that conceal everything seen on screen. Gone are the days of the ‘gentleman’s war’ when working for the British government or army was something to be proud of and open about. Instead there is the new world where nothing is genuine anymore and the slow-burning exhaustion and resignation to ethical compromise of working in intelligence, tears friendships and relationships apart.

As the ironically named George Smiley, Gary Oldman rivals Ryan Gosling in Drive for deadpan and minimalist acting. They both play machine-like characters who are seemingly programmed to unquestioningly perform a specific function. Throughout Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Oldman delivers a slow, still and precise performance – exemplified in one early scene when he calmly releases a bee from a moving car – to indicate Smiley’s methodical institutionalisation into the role of the spy. Like Gosling’s Driver character, things break down when Smiley breaks his programming and acts on human impulses. While this breakdown propels the main narrative in Drive, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy it is part of the back-story that happens before Smiley is ‘shelved’ and then brought back out of forcible retirement.

The significance of Smiley’s relationship with his wife comes late in the film, but midway we discover the personal attachment that he forged with a failed attempt to turn the mysterious and unseen Soviet spy Karla. In one of the most stunning shots of the film, Oldman as Smiley almost addresses the audience directly in a close-up as he tells the Karla story. It’s a rare scene of emotional exposure where the audience gets up close to this withdrawn and secretive man who betrays through expression and delivery how he got too personally invested in a situation. This is also the scene where Smiley reveals his doubts about the justness of what he does, explaining that Karla realised that neither side had much to offer, hinting that he perhaps suspects the same.

Smiley is not the only character to come undone by moments of personal attachment as other characters in the film’s multi-layered narrative are also shown to either compromise themselves professionally due to personal feelings or to have to make painful sacrifices. And this is the core of what makes Tinker Tailor Solider Spy such a compelling and remarkable film. Within its tale of double agents and international intrigue are a series of micro narratives about love lost and denied. It’s no great insight to comment that by taping photos of Smiley and his colleagues onto chess pieces, Control reduces them to players in an elaborate game where sacrificing individuals is a necessity to achieving the ultimate goal. Perhaps the deepest sense of sadness that comes from the film is that all the people involved are aware of this and yet mostly continue to play their part, regardless of consequences and uncertain as to why.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz)

Martin Scorsese’s passion for cinema has long been evident. His filmography is filled with titles that not only reference cinema of the past, especially Italian and classical Hollywood cinema, but push the development of contemporary cinema. Scorsese’s ability to look lovingly to the past and excitedly toward the future is further exemplified by his work in restoring and preserving older films while continuing to challenge himself artistically. Hugo is a perfect encapsulation of Scorsese the artist, film historian and pioneer – a technologically advanced 3D spectacle celebrating the craft and imagination of early cinema.

The visual splendour throughout Hugo is mostly derived from its 1930s Parisian train station setting. The light and colour of the production design are heightened to create an expressive fairy tale world, which nevertheless remains grounded in a recognisable reality without ever slipping into overt whimsy or Magic Realism. The true visual flourishes occur when the audience are taken behind-the-scenes of the station, into the hidden passages and rooms occupied by the orphaned boy Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield). In these labyrinthine catacombs, Hugo is surrounded by the mechanics of the station clocks he maintains and the automaton he is trying to repair. Echoes of Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis can be felt throughout these scenes while the various mini dramas that play out down on the platforms as witnessed by Hugo evoke Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window.

It is no accident that Scorsese evokes Metropolis and Rear Window since both films are triumphs of how cinematic space can be explored. Like Metropolis Hugo is a spectacle film filled with special effects and like Rear Window the subplots that are literally in the background of the film blend into the principle story. All three films use the technology of the day to explore the boundaries between private and public spaces, and what happens when those spaces are collapsed. In the case of Hugo the technology of the day is the glorious 3D, which creates the best depth-of-field in a narrative film since Avatar (James Cameron, 2009). Illuminated specks of dust floating in the air feel like they are in front of your eyes and in one notable scene Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Inspector Gustav, is given a dramatic close-up where it looks like his head will float out of the screen like a giant blimp.

Hugo coming out from his hidden world to befriend Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), a stallholder’s granddaughter, is an important collapsing of private and public spaces in the narrative. While working together to first recover Hugo’s confiscated notebook and then to repair the automaton, the pair discover a piece of at-the-time forgotten film history. While most cinephiles will recognise early in the film what this piece of film history is, seeing it slowly revealed and explained for the benefit of the non-cinephile viewers is extremely rewarding, especially as it is based on a true story. The person at the centre of this story has been long overdue for a biopic, but having their life told in a fictional film with them as a secondary character is something they would have no doubt found delightful. They certainly would have adored the wonder, magic and cinematic craftsmanship behind Hugo.

The two images that resonate most throughout Hugo are the clocks and the automaton. The constant shots of clocks and the sound of the ticking on the soundtrack evoke the period of change and progress between the two World Wars, but also the rush away from the past, which runs the risk of forgetting people, events and artefacts that deserve better recognition. The uncanny figure of the lifelike yet artificial body of the automaton is both a symbol of humanity that has been damaged, fragmented and made expendable by war, but also the hope that technology can be a liberating and hopeful force to create a better world. Both are also reminders that we are living in a time where we receive a constant barrage of information, manufactured images and other sensory stimuli to an extent that even cultural theorist and philosopher Walter Benjamin probably could not have imagined when he was examining modernity and cinema in essays such as his 1936 ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (which would have been a nice alternative title for Hugo). It’s likely that Hugo’s Rear Window-style multi-perceptive narrative, the use of 3D and production design to represent city spaces as ever changing experiences, and the Parisian train station and arcade setting would have thrilled Benjamin.

In Hugo Scorsese not only tells an important story about early cinema, but delivers a film that is a passionate and convincing reminder of the essential role art and imagination should play in our lives. Hugo also pays tribute to the joys of reading, which is fitting considering it is an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s 2007 novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Typical of Scorsese it is a nostalgic film, but also a contemporary one. It contains historical commentary on the devaluing of art in times of economic hardship and the damage that war does to the collective souls of a nation – both timeless themes, but particularly applicable to the current era. The best part is that while film buffs will adore it, it hasn’t been made exclusively for them. The main audience that Hugo is intended for is the new generation of filmgoers who may not yet know of a time when cinema wasn’t frequently in 3D and created with computer generated imagery, let alone a time when cinema was silent and in black and white. Being in a theatre filled with young audience members who were engaged with the film and laughing in delight at the early cinema clips, is the final element to what makes Hugo so special. This family film is perhaps Scorsese’s most significant gift back to the art form that he loves so much.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

Top ten films with a theatrical release in Melbourne, Australia in 2011

1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

“A cinematic poem of extraordinary scope and ambition.”

Rarely has picking a favourite film of the year been as straightforward for me as it was this year. I returned to the cinema to see Malick’s The Tree of Life a second time within a week of first seeing it to once more have it engage my mind, stir up my emotions and touch my soul. An all too rare cinematic work of art that dares to be so much more than what most people can even imagine cinema to be.

2. We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)

“This is sensory and visceral cinema at its most compelling and expertly crafted.”

One of the most confronting films I’ve experienced this year was Lynne Ramsay’s intensely subjective and impressionist film, which like The Tree of Life was also a complex representation of memory.

3. Certified Copy (Copie conforme, Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)

“Its beauty, nuanced performances and grace give it the emotional and dramatic weight that make it rise far above being simply an intellectual exercise.”

My most unexpected highlight of the year was this cerebral and charming film where every single element in it contributed in some way to exploring its central question of how do we measure authenticity in art and life.

4. Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011)

“The whole range of human emotion is expressed and experienced during this film, making it a sublime visual accomplishment.”

This tribute/documentary/dance film uses 3D to almost revolutionise cinematic space to convey the power of Pina Bausch’s choreography. As somebody who had previously been sceptical about contemporary dance, Pina made me see the light.

5. Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, 2010)

“A beautiful and satisfyingly melancholic story of mortality, destiny, love and loss.”

This strange and sad film overwhelmed me. The melancholic film style stunningly expresses the novel’s themes of fate and inevitability, without explicitly stating them.

6. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

“A gorgeous fusion of pulp genre cinema with an almost abstract approach to characterisation.”

I admittedly had reservations about Drive the first time that I saw it, but it lingered in my mind enough for me to revisit it. The second viewing removed all doubt and I succumbed to this gloriously stylistic and minimalist neo-noir.

7. Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

“One of the most captivating and overwhelming portrayals of mental illness in a domestic setting since John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence.”

A film that stayed with me long after seeing it, Take Shelter is a tense yet compassionate study of how mental illness can manifest and how it affects not just the sufferer, but also the people around them.

8. Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2010)

“A tribute to kindness, family and friendship without sentiment, easy answers or judgement.”

This has possibly become my favourite Mike Leigh film. The central couple are two of the most wonderfully likeable characters to ever appear on screen.

9. I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Ficarra and John Reque, 2009)

“Manages to walk a line between hilarity and tragedy throughout, with unexpected moments of sadness that are not undermined by the comedy surrounding them.”

After seeing this at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2010, I was so pleased for it to finally get a brief, albeit small, cinematic run this year. This romantic-comedy with its ultra-dark undertones is the funniest film I’ve seen in years.

10. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010)

“While 127 Hours celebrates the achievement of an individual under extreme duress, it is also a critique of individualistic behaviour.”

Danny Boyle pulls out every trick in the book to convey the range of emotions and thoughts experienced by Aron Ralston. The resulting film is a thrilling survival story, cautionary tale and character study.

Honorary mentions

Selecting my top ten films was relatively easy this year, however, finding another ten films to list as honorary mentions was extremely difficult given that the standard of cinema that I saw this year was extremely high. Nevertheless, in alphabetical order, here goes:

Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard (Lynn-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein, 2011)

Hanna (Joe Wright, 2011)

The Illusionist (L’illusionniste, Sylvain Chomet, 2010)

Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010)

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010)

Mad Bastards (Brendan Fletcher, 2010)

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux, Xavier Beauvois, 2010

This Is Not a Film (In film nist, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, 2011)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)

This Is Not a Film

Top ten unreleased films

Many of my highlights from the year are from films that were either only screened at festivals (in my case mostly during MIFF), during special seasons or went straight to DVD. The follow films are the best films that I saw this year, which weren’t given a full theatrical release and to the best of my knowledge aren’t scheduled to receive a general release in 2012.

How to Die in Oregon (Peter Richardson, 2011)

Inni (Vincent Morisset, 2011)

The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, 2011)

Michael (Markus Schleinzer, 2011)

Polisse (Maïwenn Le Besco, 2011)

Restrepo (Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, 2010)

Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (Matthew Bate, 2011)

Surviving Life (Přežít svůj život, Jan Švankmajer, 2010)

Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011)

The Turin Horse (A torinói ló, Béla Tarr, 2011)

Inni

Top ten retrospective screenings and re-releases

While these lists are obviously personal, this next list is more so since it is dependant on what screenings I happened to make it to out of the many to choose from. To try and narrow the field down somewhat, I’ve restricted myself to films given full re-releases in their own season, films shown as part of a special event and films shown as part of curated seasons (for example those shown at the Melbourne Cinémathèque in what I think was one of their best years and I wish I attended more). Some of these are films that I was revisiting for the umpteenth time and some were new discoveries, listed alphabetically:

American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) at the Astor Theatre

Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Sophisticated Madness: Classics of American Screwball Comedy season

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) at the Astor Theatre

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s You Can’t Go Home Again: The Ballard of Nicholas Ray season

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) – screened at the Astor Theatre’s 75th Anniversary

Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad, Alain Resnais, 1961) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s The Garden of Forking Paths: The Films of Alain Resnais season

Offside (Jafar Panahi, 2006) – Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne Film Festival charity/protest screening for the imprisonment of Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof

Once Upon a Time in China (Wong Fei Hung, Tsui Hark, 1991) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Phantoms & Fireworks: The Incredible Adventures of Tsui Hark season

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) at Cinema Nova and the Astor Theatre

Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: The Films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder season

Last Year at Marienbad

And there you have it, 40 films – 30 new and 10 old – that most fuelled my passion for cinema during 2011. I was pleased to have been able to write full reviews about nearly all the new films and the three major re-released films I listed, so please click through to those reviews for more details about why I embraced those films to the extent that I did. This year I also particularly enjoyed writing reviews of Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011), A Serbian Film (Srpski film, Srdjan Spasojevic, 2010) and The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994), as well as penning my love letter to Dogs in Space (Richard Lowenstein, 1986).

Thank you to everybody who has read this blog over the year as well as subscribed to it and shared links from it. The readership and number of page views has grown considerably over the year (more than anticipated) so that’s been wonderful. Most pleasing has been the generally high level of discussion that has started to regularly appear in the comments so I’m very grateful for that and I hope in the future I’ll get better at responding to everybody.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks in mid January 2012 when Hugo gets released in Australia, so see you then!

Thomas

PS Debate and difference of opinion are as always very welcome under my reviews, but for this post I’d like to keep things celebratory and focus on the positive cinema experiences from the year just gone.

Also appears here on Senses of Cinema.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

Like the original film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, part four focuses more on the group dynamic of the Impossible Missions Force agents rather than solely on the Ethan Hunt character, played once more by Tom Cruise. Hunt is joined by fellow agents Jane Carte (Paula Patton) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), who previously appeared in the third film, and analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner). Forced to operate without any official support, the team have to stop the codes for a nuclear device falling into the wrong hands while on the run after being falsely accused of committing an act of terrorism.

This time the director is Brad Bird, continuing the franchise’s tradition of bringing in new directors to give each film a unique look and feel. Bird is making his live action directorial début after an extremely impressive background in animation, having worked on The Simpsons and then directing films such as The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Bird knows how to handle cinematic space, making full use of the film’s impressive IMAX sequences during scenes set in Budapest, Moscow and Mumbai. The middle section of the film takes place in Dubai, where the film truly excels, culminating in an exhilarating foot and then car chase through a sand storm. As perhaps a nod to Bird’s animation background, there is an early scenario that utilises a high tech version of the fake wall gag that Wile E Coyote often used to try to trick Road Runner.

The use of elaborate technology in the series somewhat functions in the way that superpowers or magic functions in fantasy films. Characters can achieve the unbelievable with the use of a super computer or some other extraordinary device, which in the real world seems absurd, but in the world of the film is part of the internal logic. Bird successfully inhabits the film with such technology with the right amount of tech speak to make the audience accept what is being seen without getting bogged down in the details. It also helps that most of the devices do have some grounding in the real world.

Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

Most interesting about this latest Mission: Impossible film is the frequency in which technology fails at the critical moment. Far from being a lazy plot device, there is a strong theme of fallibility and unreliability of technology throughout the film allowing the action sequences to be inventive and surprising. This extends to the human characters who all have moments of hesitation and nervousness, and occasionally allow emotions to get in the way of their work. Even Hunt is less than enthusiastic when he realises he is going to have to scale the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This results in a high level of improvisation by the characters throughout the film, making a much more engaging narrative than in the previous films.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is the best film in the franchise so far. The characters are likeable and developed, the scenarios are complex without feeling ridiculous and the action is engaging. This film will benefit from being seen in an IMAX cinema where some of the bigger set pieces will most effectively provoke gasps, especially during the Burj Khalifa scenes from anybody with even a mild degree of vertigo. The whole cast are excellent, especially Renner and also Pegg, who plays a character who has only recently begun fieldwork. Pegg effectively articulate the audiences’ wonder, excitement and delight over the film’s elaborate scenarios and gadgets. Cruise is still the star of the film, but much more part of an overall ensemble than previously, which may make him more palatable to non-fans. Regardless, he looks great running in a suit.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo)

Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo) is resilient. He may be hopelessly in debt, has been left by his wife, can’t take care of his daughter and has problems with gambling and controlling his temper, but he still persists. Fuelled by the mix of love and loathing that comes with sexual jealousy and a muted sense of regret and sadness over having to allow his mother to raise his daughter, Gu-nam needs a way out of his predicament. He therefore doesn’t need too much convincing when crime boss Myung-Ga (Yun-Seok Kim) offers him a large sum of money in return for killing a man. The mission involves getting smuggled out of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China to South Korea, which also happens to be where Gu-nam’s wife has gone.

The Yellow Sea is divided into four parts with each part given a title that reflects how Gu-nam is perceived by himself and the other characters. The first segment is simply ‘Taxi Driver’, named after Gu-nam’s job in Yanji City in Yanbian. He is so overwhelmingly in debt that his monotonous and subservient job is all that he is. This first segment has something of a social-realist feel. While the film maintains a gritty aesthetic, filmed with handheld camera and shot in the bleakest parts of the various Chinese and Korean cities and towns where the action takes place, the emphasis at the start of the film is the hopelessness of Gu-nam’s situation.

Myung-Ga (Yun-Seok Kim)

Gu-nam has similarities to Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. Not only do they both share a profession, but they are both loners in a hostile environment who become increasingly violent. There is a brief shot in The Yellow Sea where Gu-nam is walking down a small street, looking pensive with his hands thrust into his army jacket, which bears a remarkable visual similarity to the shot of Robert De Niro as Bickle used on many of the Taxi Driver promotional posters. While Bickle’s act of murder is the climax of Taxi Driver, Gu-nam’s act occurs at the climax of the The Yellow Sea’s second chapter, titled ‘Killer’. This whole chapter functions as a tense thriller with Gu-nam attempting to find his wife while planning the assassination he has been sent to perform. He really is God’s lonely man in this section; a man whose future has become defined by how successfully he performs his hit.

The third chapter is a combination of action, fugitive and gangster film, titled ‘Joseonjok’, one of the names used to describe people like Gu-nam who are Chinese of Korean descent. While the urgent and bleak style of the film becomes increasingly used to facilitate extraordinarily choreographed action set pieces, the film also makes an interesting commentary on Joseonjok identity. On the run from both Chinese and Korean gangs, The Yellow Sea writer/director Na Hong-jin seems to be using Gu-nam’s story to suggest that Joseonjok people are outsiders who aren’t fully embraced by either culture.

The final chapter expands the scope beyond Gu-nam’s story to focus on the rival Chinese and Korean gangs. This section is appropriately titled ‘The Yellow Sea’ after the large body of water between mainland China and the west coast of Korea. It is also the sea that Gu-nam is initially taken across, by smugglers who have little regard for the lives of their Joseonjok passengers. The action reaches a fever pitch in this final chapter as the Koreans and Chinese butcher each other. Na Hong-jin alternates between scenes shot in open spaces where adversities come from all sides making escape look impossible, and tightly filmed sequences in confined spaces that are rapidly edited to convey disorientation and panic.

While it does provide a commentary on the geopolitical relations between China and Korea, the shift away from Gu-nam during the final sections does lose some of the film’s intense focus. In particular, there is one too many scenes of Myung-Ga being indestructible and unstoppable as if he is some kind of Terminator. Nevertheless, The Yellow Sea is still an exhilarating film with action that is breathtakingly kinetic and visceral. The traumas inflicted on the human body by knives, axes and even a large bone (there are very few guns in the film) leave visible and pronounced marks that don’t heal between shots. For a film this slickly structured and ultimately over-the-top, it maintains a grim realism.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas)

There seems to be two approaches competing against each other in Puss in Boots. On the one hand, it is an extension of the Shrek universe, which the Puss character (voiced by Antonio Banderas) originally hailed from in part two of the franchise. Puss interacts with other nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters such as estranged childhood friend Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) and outlaws Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris), while on a quest to find the goose that lays the golden eggs at the top of the giant beanstalk. On the other hand, like Rango (2011) the film adopts the iconography of the western, but less overt in its referencing and more aimed at family audiences. Although, the casting of Salma Hayek as Kitty Softpaws, the film’s co-star, does evoke Robert Rodriguez’s wonderful 1995 spaghetti western homage Desperado, which starred Banderas and Hayek. Puss is also clearly a variation on the Zorro character, played in recent films by Banderas.

The merging of a fairy tale world with a cats-in-a-western world means that the universe that Puss in Boots is situated in never quite feels right. It’s inhabited by humans, self-aware cats like Puss and Kitty, regular cats and characters such as Humpty who is literally a large walking and talking egg. While films like the Shrek series and Rango felt self-contained with their own sense of internal logic, Puss in Boots does not. As a result, while it’s a better film than the Shrek sequels, it doesn’t come close to the inventiveness contained within the narrative cohesion of the original Shrek (2001) or Rango. It also falls far short of the other major 2011 computer generated animation, animal adventure film, Kung Fu Panda 2.

Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas)

Despite being an uneven film, there is still much to like about Puss in Boots especially when the film is incorporating cat characteristics with that of an outlaw, with Puss inadvertently chasing after a torch light or using his cuteness like it is the Force. Banderas and Hayek clearly have a lot of fun channelling their cool and sexy action hero personas from Desperado onto Puss and Kitty. Surprisingly Puss in Boots doesn’t mine the potential for cat gags to nearly the extent that it could have.

Finishing with a Godzilla-style sequence that’s hilariously absurd and exciting, Puss in Boots contains an unexpectedly dark redemption message, which is then quickly glossed over. It’s another aspect of the film that is interesting as an isolated moment, but feels slightly perplexing when included as part of the whole film. Nevertheless, for a film with many stylistic, thematic and tonal inconsistencies it is still good fun. The use of first person cinematography in many of the action sequences uses its 3D impressively and the film contains some excellent self-aware split-screen gags.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) and Enoch (Henry Hopper)

Enoch (Henry Hopper) has lost his parents, hangs out with the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot (Ryō Kase) and goes to funerals for people he doesn’t know. He meets Annabel (Mia Wasikowska), a young woman who also crashes funerals and who also has death playing a large part in her life. Despite knowing that circumstance will only allow them to spend a brief amount of time together, the pair enter into a relationship.

Throughout his career director Gus Van Sant has depicted the lives of young people, capturing the way they speak and relate to the world around them with an affectionate sincerity. His films are frequently about young men who are somewhat lost and removed from mainstream society, with death being a reoccurring theme that looms large. All these elements came together brilliantly in films such as Elephant (2003) and Paranoid Park (2007), and they are all present once again in Restless, however, this time something has not worked.

Based on a play by Jason Lew, the dialogue throughout Restless is twee to the extent that it borders on parody. The fusion of cutesy antics, banal teen-speak mixed with philosophical discussion (Charles Darwin is described as ‘the evolution guy’) and hip death-is-sad-but-also-cool attitude seems overtly calculated to appeal to what a marketing company might define as the hipster demographic. This is melodrama and sentiment dressed up as ironic nonchalance, complete with vintage fashion and geek-chic. Wasikowska delivers a respectable performance that attempts to stay true to the tone of the film without completely surrendering in its tedious indulgences. Hopper is less successful, although he does display occasional flashes of his late father Dennis Hopper, suggesting that there is an emerging talent within him yet to be fully realised.

By signposting so early how it will end, Restless does suggest that it may handle its subject matter in a refreshingly unconventional manner or at least with a degree of restraint. That is why the film is most disappointing when it resorts to melodramatic outbursts that don’t feel like they belong in a film so self-consciously trying to distance itself from a run-of-the-mill weepy. To its credit Restless does eventually arrive at a moving and meaningful conclusion, but there are too many annoying moments that it passes through to get there.

Comparing Restless to Van Sant’s previous film Milk suggests that Van Sant is a director whose films are only as good as the scripts and actors he has to work with. That may seem like an obvious point, but worth making because so many aspects of Restless are impressive, just not enough to compensate for the flaws. For example, the cinematography by Harris Savides is astonishing. The film appears to have been mostly shot late in the afternoon in autumn, which gives it a gorgeous melancholic feel and visually evokes the themes of death and time running out. Visually and thematically the film frequently recalls Never Let Me Go although Restless is a far less satisfying film. Had Restless been a silent film it may have been some kind of stylish masterpiece, with its attractive stars symbolically posing through a number of scenes to represent love, mortality and embracing the moment.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Moses (John Boyega), Sam (Jodie Whittaker) and Brewis (Luke Treadaway)

Somewhere on a council estate in South London, hostile aliens have fallen from the sky. A local teenage gang take it upon themselves to fight off the unwanted visitors, but quickly discover they are outnumbered by the pitch-black, bear-like creatures with glowing, razor sharp teeth. Set to a distinctively British electronica soundtrack, courtesy of Basement Jaxx, Attack the Block is a fast-paced and inventive action/science-fiction film with an unconventional set of heroes. Making his feature film directorial début, writer/director Joe Cornish does a remarkable job cutting straight to the excitement and keeping it constant while ensuring that character and narrative development occurs simultaneously. It’s also a film with plenty to say about perceptions and attitudes towards class in England, but the message is contained within the chase and fight scenes.

The gang of teenagers are not the type of characters often seen as the heroic protagonists in action films. Kids like the ones featured in Attack the Block usually feature in social-realist films such as Fish Tank and many of the films of Ken Loach, or far worse, in utterly uncommendable films such as Harry Brown where they are portrayed unquestionably as animalistic villains who deserve to be murdered. Attack the Block doesn’t pretend the kids are saints or defend them as simply being misunderstood or troubled. In fact, they are introduced mugging Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a nurse and their neighbour, to establish that they aren’t loveable misfits. They are also the initial aggressors towards the creatures and a major theme of the film is that all actions have consequences.

Ron (Nick Frost) and Brewis (Luke Treadaway)

However, Attack the Block is never preachy or didactic and there aren’t any easy explanations on offer for why the kids are out mugging innocent people. They are never explicitly redeemed or excused, but through the victim/aggressor dynamic that the film explores the boys are certainly humanised to have identities beyond that of criminals. The later experiences shared by gang leader Moses (John Boyega) and Sam while fighting off the invaders facilitate mutual awareness and empathy that goes beyond the first perceptions that the film deliberately offers in the opening sequences. Attack the Block overtly sets itself a challenge by making its protagonists unsympathetic at the beginning and a major part of the film’s skill is in endearing them to the audience without resorting to trite social messages.

The secondary characters of course aren’t as fleshed out as Sam and Moses, but they are still appealing and recognisable social types. Drug dealer Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) desperately wants to be an American gangsta, his deputy dealer Ron (Nick Frost) is a loveable stoner and buyer Brewis (Luke Treadaway) is an awkward middle-class kid caught up in the chaos. The closest the film gets to direct class critique is through the Brewis character who is affectionately mocked for wanting to selectively appropriate aspects of the estate culture – the drugs and music – while being terrified of other aspects – the poverty and crime. Cornish is never cruel about the way Brewis is depicted, continuing the film’s non-judgemental approach towards its characters. Cornish is possibly also mindful that while Sam or Moses are the characters most audiences will lean towards identifying with, large segments of them probably have a lot more in common with Brewis.

Visually Attack the Block is effective on a number of levels. Cornish uses the apartment block’s corridors, stairwells, elevators and small rooms to create several thrilling sequences. The film offers more shocks than real scares, but the creatures look suitably menacing and mysterious. The film is also very atmospherically lit to create lots of suspenseful glows in the distance. This visual style along with the film’s fully rounded characters, energetic music, unpredictability, subtle social commentary and integration of exposition within action makes Attack the Block an extremely strong feature film début for Cornish. It’s also breathtakingly good fun.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Dr Strangelove (Peter Sellers)

Almost fifty years after it’s original 1964 release, Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy masterpiece is still as terrifying, insightful and hilarious as ever. In one regard, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb functions as a time capsule in the way it so brilliantly encapsulates the very real Cold War fears of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union and the more paranoid fears of Communist infiltration in America. However, while some of the players have changed, the threat of nuclear warfare is still a disturbing reality and something that can only really be faced via large servings of comedy. And the overall point of Dr Strangelove still remains: if something were to go wrong with the nuclear bomb, it would likely be due to human error. Furthermore, that error would very possibly be made by an over zealous nut in a position of power.

One of the defining aspects of the USA and USSR nuclear arms race was the mutual assured destruction (MAD) doctrine. The basic idea behind MAD was that if both sides built up enough weapons, then everybody would be too afraid to ever launch the first strike since the guaranteed retaliation would be too devesting. It’s a theoretically sound concept providing that both sides keep up with each other and no renegade element intervenes in the increasingly deadly standoff. In Dr Strangelove the MAD doctrine is represented by the American Plan R retaliation orders and the Russian Doomsday machine. Both are designed to set a counter nuclear attack in motion, be impossible to stop and therefore function as the ultimate deterrent. Enter Brigadier General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden), the renegade element.

Brigadier General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden)

Classic Hollywood cowboy and tough guy actor, Sterling Hayden is perfect as Ripper, playing the role completely straight. Scenes where he justifies launching a nuclear attack, criticises the government for not being equipped to cope with war and rants about ‘the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids’ could have come straight from the microphones of any number of contemporary talk back radio stations. A counterpoint to Hayden’s straight down the line performance is George C. Scott as General ‘Buck’ Turgidson. Scott, another tough guy actor, plays his role in the larger than life manner that Kubrick often demanded from performers such as Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980). What results is Scott coming across as part high school bully, part hyperactive little boy and part fanatical patriot. He blusters through every scene set in the Pentagon War Room, only falling quiet during the occasional moment when hit by a frightening realisation or when feeling admonished.

After Ripper’s office at the air force base and the War Room, the final main setting for Dr Strangelove is on board one of the America B-52 planes that has been sent to drop its deadly payload on Russia. Kubrick shoots many of these scenes in a similar fashion to how he would later film the scenes aboard the Discovery One in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Initially, there’s a sense of mundane boredom and routine to the lives of the crew. Even when they spring into action the focus is on the processes and protocols that they follow. Similar to 2001 the idea is to show how automated the characters are and how their lives are dictated by technology. What makes the B-52 scenes in Dr Strangelove so entertaining is that in this almost sterile world of technology and military procedure, is the heavily Texan accented captain Major ‘King’ Kong (Slim Pickens) who puts on a cowboy hat as soon as the attack orders are confirmed. There’s something so sweet and naive about the way Pickens plays the part, which he does sincerely, and this further adds to the film’s maddening charm.

Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky (Peter Bull) and President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers)

Then there is Peter Sellers, who plays Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the American president Merkin Muffley and the sinister German scientist Dr. Strangelove. Sellers, who had also appeared in Kubrick’s previous film Lolita (1962), is phenomenal in all three parts making Dr Strangelove possibly the only Kubrick film that arguably feels like it belongs more to its leading actor rather than its uncompromising auteur director. With the possible exception of Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979), Dr Strangelove is Sellers greatest performance(s). He’s delightfully proper as Mandrake, endearingly wet as Muffley and completely deranged as Strangelove. The final Strangelove scene, which is largely improvised, is so ridiculous, so over-the-top and so outrageous that if you look closely you can see actor Peter Bull, who plays Russian Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky, desperately trying not to laugh in the background.

Dr Strangelove is one of Stanley Kubrick’s many masterpieces, one of the greatest films about the Cold War and one of the greatest comedies ever made. Isolating particular standout moments is near impossible, although President Muffley’s awkward phone conversation with his unseen Russian counterpart never fails to amuse. The early use of ironic music is also a delight, with a lush orchestral version of ‘Try A Little Tenderness’ playing over the opening titles depicting the sexualised imagery of a plane refuelling and Vera Lynn’s World War II hit ‘We’ll Meet Again’ playing over the film’s final images. Dr Strangelove was adapted from a serious novel titled Fail-Safe, which was more faithfully translated onto the screen by Sidney Lumet, also in 1964. While Lumet’s Fail-Safe is an excellent film, making Dr Strangelove as a comedy was a stroke of genius for Kubrick, who realised that the themes would carry even more weight if the film was funny. Major Kong riding a nuclear bomb like a rodeo horse is still one of the most hilarious and chilling images ever committed to film.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi is an influential, much-loved and acclaimed Iranian filmmaker. As a result of his humanist and socially critical films, he is facing a six-year jail sentence and is banned from making any more films for the next 20 years. In response Panahi and documentary filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb made this ‘non-film’ about his situation, and then had the results smuggled out of Iran.

This Is Not a Film documents Panahi’s response to no longer being able to create cinema. With a sly sense of humour that never fully overshadows his anguish, he speaks of future projects that will never be and his love for cinema’s unpredictability. It is also a wicked act of defiance with Panahi and Mirtahmasb finding whatever loopholes they can to make a film without technically doing so. Finally, it is an intricately crafted work about the art of filmmaking, filled with deliberate ambiguity about what has and hasn’t been staged.

Working within great restraints can result in remarkable films. Panahi proves that here and triumphs over a regime trying to silence him.

Originally appeared in The Big Issue, No. 393, 2011

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Anna (Saskia Post) and Sam (Michael Hutchence)

I first saw Dogs in Space (written and directed by Richard Lowenstein) when I was in my twenties, some time in the late 1990s, about a decade after the film was released in 1986. It was a revelation. I’d never seen a film that felt so distinctively Melbourne in a way that I could recognise. Also, up until that point, I’d never seen an Australian film that felt so influenced by New Wave European cinema in its almost anarchic abandonment of traditional narrative structure. I had seen plenty of ‘worthy’ Australian art-house films (which I also love and cherish) but not something this playful and rebellious. It was instant love. I remember on at least two occasions introducing friends to Dogs in Space, and their response was always one of anger: ‘Why the hell haven’t you shown this to me before?’ they demanded.

And yet, Dogs in Space  is about Melbourne in 1979, when I’d only been alive for a few years. I’m not at all qualified to comment on the authenticity of what takes place in the film. It feels slightly exaggerated, but the testimonies in the 2009 documentary We’re Livin’ on Dog Food suggest that it’s not. What I did identify with was a spirit; the legacy of which I was experiencing at the time, living in share houses in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. Like the Dogs in Space characters, I was a middle-class kid from the suburbs who was somewhat ‘slumming’ it – too old to live at home and too young to commit to anything that felt like a real job. And that’s what the film captures – the desire of youths to deconstruct themselves from mainstream society and rebuild themselves into something ‘real’, regardless of their background. Dogs in Space makes a point of reminding the audience that punk in Australia was a cultural movement embraced predominantly by the middle-class, but that didn’t make it any less charged or meaningful.

The film begins by defining how it situates itself within Australian culture. After brief 1957 archival footage of early Soviet space launches, which includes sending Laika the dog into orbit, Dogs in Space opens with a menacing shot of a beat-up car idling in the night. One of its very rough-looking occupants sticks his head out of the window and, in the most nasally Australian twang, snarls to an unseen passer-by, ‘Hey! Dog-face! Show us your snatch!’ The scene looks like it belongs to any number of Ozploitation films of the era, combining a Mad Max aesthetic with distinctly bogan pub rock culture.

It’s a very specific image of Australian identity and one that is introduced at the start of Dogs in Space so it can be quickly shot down in flames. There are other faces to Australian culture and until then, and mostly since, those faces are not given much attention. These alternate faces are of course the punks of late 1970s Melbourne who are introduced in the film, camping outside a David Bowie concert. The car-load of obnoxious bogans screeches up to torment them, but are quickly dispensed with and sent on their way. This film is not for them, or those who identify with them. Instead it’s for a subculture that briefly thrived in inner-city student share houses and venues around Australia, whose legacy introduced and developed some of Australia’s most celebrated music.

The film’s title sequence then concludes with a slow approach shot of the film’s main setting: a run down house in Richmond filled with various occupants who are either living there legitimately, squatting, or simply hanging out. Over the top of the soundtrack different pieces of media float by: the opening titles of Countdown, a station identification for iconic Melbourne radio station Triple R and Molly Meldrum talking about the Bowie gig. The various characters who filter through the house are an assortment of musicians, political activists and folks just wanting to have a good time. They have sex, listen to music, take drugs and throw parties. One of them is even trying to study for his engineering exams.

The almost complete absence of a narrative allows the film to simply indulge in scene after scene of chaotic activity. Some characters we get to know, some are just fleeting fragments. Orchestrated long shots convey the energy and excitement of gigs and parties. Strands of music performances and conversations flow in and out of the film to make it a series of impressionist fragments that, once combined, make some sort of brilliant sense.

The soundtrack, produced by Ollie Olsen, is one of my favourite film soundtracks from Australia or anywhere else in the world for that matter. It includes songs by Iggy Pop, Gang of Four and Brian Eno plus an assortment of songs from Melbourne’s ‘little band scene’. Many of the songs are played in the film by the original performers, including Marie Hoy (who delivers one of the greatest covers of Rowland S. Howard’s ‘Shivers’), Primitive Calculators and Thrush and the Cunts. Then there are the songs sung by Michael Hutchence, lead singer of pop group INXS and the film’s star. Hutchence’s character in the film is based on Sam Sejavka from The Ears, so appropriately Hutchence performs a couple of Ears covers, including the titular ‘Dogs In Space’. However, the stand-out for me is ‘Rooms For The Memory’ as it’s a brilliant fusion of post-punk and pop, linking the period the film is set in to the period the film was made in, and making it a catchy and eventually devastating song to finish the film with.

And what about Hutchence, in what would sadly be one of his few acting roles? As the hedonistic, wild, self indulgent, magnetic and handsome Sam, he’s a bizarre Aussie Jim Morrison: reptilian, lecherous, pretentious and extraordinary. He is instantly recognisable as a creative genius who, through self-indulgence, is screwing up his life and the lives of those around him. You start off thinking Sam’s a bit of a prat and then get seduced by his carefree confidence and charismatic recklessness. This is all turned on its head in one of my favourite scenes when his mother shows up to do his laundry and bring him a hot dinner. Not only is his persona demythologised, but you also see the true extent of his selfishness and lazy sense of entitlement. And yet he is so confident, so carefree and so likeable, making him a wonderfully chaotic antihero to structure a chaotic anti-film around.

Luchio (Tony Helou) and Tim (Nique Needles)

Then there is Saskia Post as Anna, Sam’s beautiful and tragic girlfriend who knows he is leeching off her, but can’t help being drawn back to him. Post provides the heart of the film, looking after the more vulnerable drifters who come through the house and being patient and tolerant of Sam, way beyond the call of duty. She radiates every time she is on screen with her combination of punk attitude and classical Hollywood beauty. The rest of the supporting cast are too extensive to mention and I latch onto somebody new on every viewing. However, I have a particular soft spot for Tim (Nique Needles) who looks so sad while pretending he was going to quit the band that have just kicked him out. I also love Chris Haywood’s cameo as the uncle with the chainsaw, and poor old Luchio (Tony Helou) who is trying to study for his exams amid the parties, band rehearsals, noisy sex and general mayhem – I once had a Luchio year.

Dogs in Space is one of the very few Australian films that reflects an Australian identity that I can relate to, even though it depicts a period and scene that I never knew. It’s affectionate and critical of Australia’s middle class punks; celebrating the scene while also providing a mournful coda for how it would all come to an end. Energetic, youthful, frequently hilarious and ultimately so sad, Dogs in Space is an Australian counter-culture classic to which I continually return, and introduce to new like-minded friends – who are inevitably annoyed that I haven’t shown it to them sooner.

Originally published here on the AFI blog.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Listen to me reading ‘Trick and Treat at Twilight’ on the Little Raven website

Please use your discretion before listening!

Eva (Tilda Swinton)

There’s little actual blood in We Need to Talk about Kevin, but director Lynne Ramsay’s pervasive use of the colour red makes sure that the idea of blood constantly remains in the audience’s mind. One of the most dramatic images comes at the start of the film where Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) is submerged in a sea of red while taking part in the Spanish tomato festival, La Tomatina. The red suggests both the birth of her son Kevin (Ezra Miller) and Kevin’s violence as a teenager. Covered in tomatoes, Eva is stained by Kevin’s actions, just as her house has been aggressively sprayed with red paint. The opening tomato festival scene also establishes Eva’s love for travel, freedom and adventure, all of which were taken away from her when Kevin was born. This plants the suggestion that Eva is wrestling with the possibility that Kevin became who he is because of her resentment towards him.

We Need to Talk about Kevin is set after Kevin’s violent actions with Eva living alone in a state of depression and borderline dereliction. Woven through the basic narrative involving Eva starting a new job and cleaning her vandalised house are her fragmented recollections of all the events that lead up to the day Kevin committed his horrific crime. The film is therefore deeply subjective and is comprised of a series of impressionist memories rather than flashbacks. The audience sees Kevin and his relationship with Eva through Eva’s eyes, resulting in a portrait of Kevin as an almost demonic, and certainly sociopathic, being who rejected his mother from even when he was a baby. It is telling that during the only major scene featuring Kevin in the present and non-subjective part of the film, he appears notably differently to how he is presented in Eva’s memories.

Eva (Tilda Swinton) and Franklin (John C Reilly)

And yet, Eva’s guilt still intrudes, as the film is also full of moments where she is subconsciously questioning herself as a failed parent. There are several incidents where the nature of what may or may not have happened are deliberately left unresolved, further highlighting how Eva then concludes that Kevin is the one to blame. Not that the film suggests Kevin has been falsely accused or somehow justified in his actions, but it does raise plenty of nature versus nurture issues, even though it is not about attempting to reconcile that dynamic. Instead, it is a portrait of a woman living in a state of shock, guilt, emptiness and loss who is trying to process what went so wrong.

Many of the stylistic techniques that Lynne Ramsay has used in previous films are once more utilised in We Need to Talk about Kevin, but they work far better than they ever have before. The unconventional editing weaves Eva’s memories in with the present day scenes and the ironic music is genuinely chilling as it provides the soundtrack to a mild mannered suburban community that will never be the same. Close-ups on particular visual details and amplified sounds create a pattern of reoccurring visual and sound motifs that are effectively atmospheric, but then become emotionally charged when their full significance is revealed. In this way the motifs also function as sensory memories for Eva, further demonstrating how much what the audience experiences is filtered through her interpretation of events. We Need to Talk About Kevin is based on a novel, but Ramsay has made dramatic changes in structure and style for it to function as a film in the most effective way. Fretting about what’s been changed or what’s been left out is redundant and ignores its accomplishments as a film in its own right.

Eva (Tilda Swinton) and Kevin as a toddler (Rocky Duer)

This is sensory and visceral cinema at its most compelling and expertly crafted. You are thrown into the mind of a woman suffering unimaginable despair, self-loathing, anger and bewilderment. At times the tension and dread is close to unbearable, especially when the film begins to hint that it will show something that you really don’t want to see (and because it’s a film of such integrity, the horror comes from the idea of seeing something rather than explicitly seeing it). We Need to Talk About Kevin rivals Alien and Eraserhead for its nightmarish depiction of childbirth and parenthood. It’s a film that will make you want to scream, cry, be sick or punch something. Yet, you won’t be able to tear your attention away from it.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

The Orator writer/director Tusi Tamasese

The Orator is the first ever feature film made in Samoa, entirely in the Samoan language and telling a Samoan story. It is about a farmer who must defend his land, family and ancestry.

When I spoke with the film’s writer/director Tusi Tamasese he discussed the importance of making this film, its visual style and sound design, and some of the aspects of Samoan culture that are depicted in the film.

This interview was recorded on Thursday 10 November 2011 and then played on Film Buff’s Forecast (Triple R, 3RRR 102.7FM) on Saturday 12 November 2011.

Part 1

Download link (running time = 10:08)

Part 2

Download link (running time = 7:20)

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt)

The extent to which a film about sporting statistics can be enthralling is best demonstrated during a series of high stake negotiations over the phone in Moneyball. The two main characters, Oakland Athletics baseball team general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and his assistant Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), are in their small office putting their controversial player trading strategy to work. As the financial underdogs of Major League Baseball in 2002, Beane and Brand have developed a radical new approach to compiling a team to compete with clubs who have bigger budgets and therefore stronger player buying power. Through careful player statistics scrutiny Beane and Brand went after overlooked players who would theoretically become a team capable of winning. For a film about the behind-the-scenes politics of baseball, it is therefore appropriate that a behind-the-scenes sequence is the most exciting moment. Beane and Brand juggle phone calls, negotiate on the run and communicate split decisions to each other while maintaining the illusion of calm conversation on the phone. It’s tense and exhilarating.

With Beane as the extrovert and Brand as the introvert, the pair are a likeable, underdogs odd couple taking on an unfair system. Like the players they controversially select, they are also both under appreciated and underachievers. While far more traditionally ‘heroic’ than the protagonists from The Social Network (written by Moneyball co-writer Aaron Sorkin), Beane and Brand change the rules of the game to suit themselves rather than follow the conventional approach. This attracts substantial criticism and condemnation, with critics of their system applying a disproportionate focus on their losses rather than triumphs.

The criticism that Beane and Brand receive reveals a broader trend in social discourse to discredit methodical and scientific approaches over intuition and common sense, or at least the myth of intuition and common-sense. Within the film the accusations of Beane being out of touch become increasingly defensive to expose just how threatened wealthy and powerful interests are when their dominance is challenged. And since one of the key ways the powerless can challenge the powerful is through methodical strategy and rational thought to expose the flaws in the system, that type of analytical thinking is what is attacked. By making the heroes the guys who use a scientific approach to challenge the status quo, Moneyball pleasingly goes against the Hollywood tendency of deriding intelligence.

Peter Brand (Jonah Hill)

Moneyball is a restrained drama with moments of unconventional excitement. As the film is predominantly from the perspective of Beane, very little actual baseball is shown since Beane was apparently superstitious about attending games. The games are mostly conveyed to the audience in the way they are conveyed to Beane: via brief sound bites on the radio, news reports and text messages from Brand. This keeps the attention on Beane and the execution of his and Brand’s strategy, rather than the typical sport film approach of focusing on the actual game. The film mostly avoids cliché with Beane and Brand’s relationship never going into bromance territory. Some sentiment does seep in during the scenes with Beane’s daughter, but there’s nothing overtly distracting.

A degree of grounding to the film is created through the inclusion of ‘dead time’. Such moments are usually edited out to keep the film zipping along, but Moneyball is full of small and short moments between main bits of dialogue and action to remind the audience of the almost banal and highly unglamorous nature of the machinations off the pitch. Impressively Moneyball manages to convey both a sense of everydayness to what it depicts while also demonstrating the excitement of Beane and Brand’s approach, which would go on to completely change the nature of professional baseball.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Rowland S. Howard

Singer/songwriter Rowland S. Howard hailed from the early Melbourne punk scene where at the age of 16 he wrote ‘Shivers’; a frequently misinterpreted cynical masterpiece about over-dramatised teenage heartbreak. Howard’s abrasive and revolutionary guitar playing drew acclaim from the likes of Kevin Shield (My Bloody Valentine), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Henry Rollins (Black Flag), however, his early career playing in Melbourne, London and Berlin saw him in the shadow of fellow Birthday Party member Nick Cave. A tragic romantic and frustrated artist, Howard found a new surge of professional and personal fulfilment, plus wider recognition, just prior to his death at the age of 50 in 2009.

Directed by Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn, Autoluminescent contains extensive interviews with Howard, who speaks with eloquent and intelligent self-awareness. The documentary also includes revealing interviews with friends, family and colleagues, including Cave, Mick Harvey, Wim Wenders and Lydia Lunch. The resulting portrait of Howard is affectionate, complex and engaging. Most important is the amount of music included in the film, which weaves its way through the narrative to brilliantly encapsulate his legacy.

Originally appeared in The Big Issue, No. 392, 2011

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Ned Rockliffe (Paul Rudd)

Over the years Paul Rudd has distinguished himself from peers such as Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill by frequently playing parts that are closer to the straight-guy roles rather than the overtly funny-guy roles, combining a natural sense of comic timing with genuine charm. Our Idiot Brother is an ideal vehicle for him since it is so essential that the audience like his character Ned Rockliffe for the film to work. Ned is a biodynamic farmer living an alternative lifestyle who after a run-in with the law and a break-up has to couch surf with his three sisters Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) and Liz (Emily Mortimer). Despite constantly meaning well, Ned manages to dramatically intrude on all their lives to create strong resentment.

The core of what makes Our Idiot Brother work as well as it does is how Rudd’s likeability extends to the entire film. There is nothing mean about the humour nor does it rely on creating embarrassment to elicit the uncomfortable laughs. Ned is not destructively clueless to the extent that Steve Carell’s character was in Dinner for Schmucks, nor is he the slightly mean-spirited childlike character that Zach Galifianakis often plays in films such as Due Date. In fact, very early on it emerges that Ned is not an idiot, but his incredible ability to trust and assume the best in people makes him naive. His biggest crime throughout the film is wanting to be helpful, telling the truth and believing what he is told.

Liz (Emily Mortimer), Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel)

Our Idiot Brother is closer in tone to an American indi rather than the broader Hollywood comedies that do rely on more outrageous situations to deliver the big laughs. Our Idiot Brother doesn’t even have too many big laughs and it is somewhat refreshing to watch a comedy that isn’t so desperately trying to make every single moment hilarious. It’s a plot and character driven film with genuine pathos for its characters. All of Ned’s sisters have their own issues and hang-ups that result in friction with Ned, but at no point does the film feel judgemental towards them. The subplots concerning each of the sisters are also resolved differently, demonstrating that not everybody wants or needs to aspire to the same thing. The only aspect of the film that does feel somewhat forced is the depiction of Ned’s ex-girlfriend Janet (Kathryn Hahn) and her new boyfriend Billy (TJ Miller). However, even then the humour is mainly derived from the way Ned and Janet attempt to argue without using confronting language rather than the film directly mocking alternative lifestyles.

While Our Idiot Brother doesn’t quite have the depth of the comedy/drama The Kids Are All Right, there is a similar exploration of family, alternative lifestyles and relationships. The key to why the dynamic between Ned and his sisters works so well is because there is affection between all the characters. It’s the best Rudd has been in a leading role and also showcases Banks, Deschanel and Mortimer as performers who are similarly skilled in straddling the divide between comedy and light drama. Steve Coogan and Rashida Jones are also terrific in important supporting roles.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

Parting is such sweet sorrow
Little Raven is a new publishing house specialising in erotic fiction and they’re starting to put together an anthology of short stories to be published next year. I recently recorded a zombie themed story for them, which most people find rather disgusting so please use your discretion before listening to it!

A recording of me reading my zombie erotica story is on the Little Raven website

Why does anyone give a damn about the Melbourne Cup?
For those of you outside of Australia, there was a big horse race held today. I used to work at the Cup selling bets and as a result I’m not exactly a fan of the day. In my piece for Crikey I explain why.

The full article is available on the Crikey website. For the next two weeks you do need to be a member to read the whole thing, but you can sign up for a free 21 day trial.

Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans)

Director Roland Emmerich makes the type of cinema that is often dismissed as guilty pleasures. His films are usually spectacle driven and often reliant on big scenes of mass destruction to keep audiences passively entertained. However, unlike directors such as Transformer franchise director Michael Bay, Emmerich seems to genuinely love the craft of filmmaking and doesn’t have contempt for the audience. His films deliver the thrills and excitement through a combination of engaging characters, narratives with a reasonably coherent inner logic and actual spectacle rather than a rapidly edited illusion of excitement.

With Anonymous Emmerich has taken one of his breaks from epic disasters to make another period film. Set in England during the reign of Elizabeth I (who’s played by both Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave), Anonymous explores the fun fringe theory that William Shakespeare was a hoax. The idea is that the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans and Jamie Campbell Bower), was the true author, keeping his identity secret to protect his good standing as an aristocrat and to conceal the political motivations behind the plays. The result is a melodramatic film filled with historical conspiracies, political skulduggery and sexual transgressions. It is also a remarkably restrained and complex film that explores the power that popular entertainment has to embed ideological ideas into the minds of the audiences who consume it.

Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave)

The degree of seriousness in which Anonymous peruses the concept that Shakespeare was a fraud is minimal. It’s about as serious as Emmerich’s examination of climate change in The Day After Tomorrow or his exploration of the Mayan calendar in 2012. For Emmerich, the Shakespeare conspiracy is just another high concept to base a film around, no different from appropriating 1950s Hollywood alien invasion films for Independence Day or Japanese monster films for his own Godzilla. The concepts that underpin Emmerich’s films are no more than elaborate MacGuffins so getting bogged down in critiquing the historical accuracy of Anonymous is a somewhat useless pursuit. Taking the events in Anonymous at face value as if it were documentary would also be rather ironic considering how large portions of the film depict the way historical events are recreated in popular entertainment for effect.

Indeed, the most interesting aspect of Anonymous is how it engages with the idea of persuasive entertainment. Not only does the film celebrate the spectacle and excitement of Shakespearian theatre, which was the blockbuster entertainment of its time, but it also draws blatant causal links between audiences being emotionally affected by what they are seeing and then forming opinions based on those feelings. Even though it is the sympathetic characters in the film who are the ones trying to shape popular opinion through the plays, the message is clear: all art is political. One of the most impressive things about Anonymous, a film by a mass entertainment director, is how well it demonstrates the ideological power of popular culture.

Young Queen Elizabeth I (Joely Richardson) and Young Earl of Oxford (Jamie Campbell Bower)

Of course Anonymous itself is an ideological work. While it presents Elizabeth I sympathetically as a person, it overall regards the English monarchy in a rather sordid and critical light, especially in the extent that it is manipulated covertly by the puritan and anti-intellectual Cecil family. On the other hand, the film doesn’t have much time for the ‘masses’ either, since they are seen as a rather simplistic, fickle and easily persuaded bunch, including the illiterate buffoon actor Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall). The heroes of the film are the tormented writers: the Earl of Oxford who must keep his identity a secret and his co-conspirator Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto), the ‘commoner’ playwright whose own ambitions are unfulfilled. It’s a long way from the mildly conservative and centrist social cohesion message of Independence Day.

Anonymous is a curious film that on one level aims to sweep the audience away with its elaborate historical story of fraud, injustice and forbidden love and on another level is exposing the manipulative power of entertainment. Strangely it does actually work on both levels. While the initial time shifts are distracting and its long running time could have been trimmed, it is a remarkably well-sustained piece of cinema. Just don’t worry too much about the historical accuracy. Instead enjoy the various references to Shakespeare’ plays that pop up throughout the film and look out for the moment when the slow clap is seemingly invented during a performance of Hamlet.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011