Joker: Folie a Deux

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on October 17, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Todd Phillips.

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, Leigh Gill, Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, Bill Smitrovich, Sharon Washington, Connor Storrie.

Coming this year to Netflix - the hit new reality show, Clown Court.

The most surreal moment of Joker: Folie a Deux comes after the credits have rolled and the DC Comics logo comes on the screen and you go, "oh yeah, that's right - this is a film about a Batman villain". Joker was a long way from what you'd expect from a so-called "superhero" movie, but its sequel makes Joker look like Superman 2. 

This is the most un-comic-book comic book movie you could think of it. It's a gritty prison drama, a bonkers courtroom thriller, and a jukebox musical, all rolled into one overlong mess.

Bold and daring, Joker: Folie a Deux is also deluded. It's a ridiculous misfire that takes an awful long time to get nowhere and struggles to say anything coherent along the way.

Picking up about two years after the original, it follows Arthur Fleck AKA Joker (Phoenix) as he meets  and falls in love with fellow Arkham Asylum inmate Harley Quinzel (Gaga). Meanwhile Fleck is preparing for his big day in court for the murders of the five people he killed during the events of Joker. 

Folie a Deux is a reaction, a rejection even, of its predecessor, and I kind of admire that. Much as the first film left its Batman roots far behind, this one is at pains to leave Joker behind. Phillips throws out pretty much everything that made the first film great (except Phoenix's incredible performance), and has made a film that anyone who liked the original will probably hate, especially those dipshits who saw the main character as some kind of hero to idolise.

The truly great thing about Joker was its political and philosophical premise - how does a society make a killer? Here, there is no such fascinating idea to dig into. There are fleeting notions about killer worship and the media, which could be seen as an admirable cinematic reaction to some of the idiotic takes on the first film. But these themes flutter past like bats in the night. 

Amid these half-baked talking points are two stars doing great work on gorgeous sets, captured by great cinematography. Phoenix and Gaga bring complexity to their famous comic book villains, and have fantastic chemistry. Their musical performances are also great, even if there are too many and they go on too long.

Elsewhere Gleeson and Keener are their usual fantastic selves, even if their roles are as thin as the comics their characters never actually appeared in. Steve Coogan also pops up briefly to chew a bit of scenery, though he has the most interesting role outside of Phoenix and Gaga.  

I didn't hate Joker: Folie a Deux - like I said, I kind of admire the film. It takes real balls to not only reject the reactions to the original movie, but to also potentially make a movie that the original audience wouldn't want to see, complete with songs from the '30s to the '60s. So kudos there. But Folie a Deux is an overlong disappointment that wanders along, being mildly interesting without ever being good before hitting a suckerpunch ending that comes too late for anyone to care. 

The Wild Robot

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on October 3, 2024.

(PG) ★★★★

Director: Chris Sanders.

Cast: (voices of) Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O'Hara, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames.

"Fantastic? You're barely Average Mr Fox."

It's ok to cry at films. If you ever needed permission to bawl at a film, I give it to you. Cry your little heart out. God knows I do.

Just about every family film, especially these days, wants to make you cry. But their efforts are often undone by their own smart aleckness - so many CG-animated outings have some kind of fourth-wall-breaking meta-ness to it, or a single character who's there for the wise-crackin' and the wise-crackin' alone, and this tends to undo the emotional core too frequently. I'm looking at you, Trolls/The Secret Life Of Pets/The Boss Baby etc.

By comparison, The Wild Robot is a welcome throwback to a time of film-making when things weren't so smug. It hints at old-school Disney in its big-hearted sentimentality, with a visual dash of old-school Studio Ghibli in its pastel-paint look, and even a touch of The Iron Giant in its story of a robot learning to love. It is many old things wrapped up in something new, and it's a wonderfully uncynical creation.

Based on a couple of kids books by Peter Brown, The Wild Robot is the story of Rozzum 7134 (Nyong'o), a robot that accidentally washes up on an inhabited island. Desperate to fulfil its programming, Roz learns the ways of the local animals and inadvertently becomes the surrogate mother of a gosling.

Beautifully animated, the film buffs out its sharp digital edges with a hand-painted finish. Similarly, it takes its modern robot protagonist and plants it in an old-fashioned story about kindness, purpose and motherhood. There are still the frenetic CG sequences for the young ones wowed by colour and movement, but it's a great mix of a new approach to old approaches.

Nyong'o's voicework is exquisite, evolving as the robot does, while Pascal sounds unrecognisable as a fox, which is the closest the film comes to the token wise-crackin' character. They head an incredible team of voice actors - Hamill, O'Hara, Rhames, Berry and Nighy are all great and perfectly cast.

Best of all is the heart of the film. If you're a mum, take your kids, and feel seen. It's a beautiful ode to parenthood, as well as being about survival, kindness, caring, and teamwork. 

It will perhaps be too sentimental for some tastes - "how many more talking animal movies do we need about finding your place in the world?" some bitter and twisted souls may ask. But open your cold robotic heart and find a home for The Wild Robot.

Alien: Romulus

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on August 22, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Fede Álvarez.

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu.

"Honey, I'm home."

Somewhere along the way, the Alien franchise fell out of orbit, like a decommissioned satellite.

It was probably around the point where Alien 3 became a mess in pre-production and then again during filming, and yet again in post-production, which just goes to show that studios and producers can always find multiple new ways to fuck things up, often on the one film.

But franchise fans who suffered through the schlocky Alien vs Predator films and the god-awful Prometheus can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Romulus is the Alien film you've been waiting for. It's like Covenant, but shorn of the fat, and replacing the mythologising and philosophising with entertaining world-building and genuine terror.

In a plot that's not a million light years away from Alien and Aliens, Romulus features a group of young people arriving at an abandoned space station, only to find it home to a horde of Xenomorphs. It's only a matter of time before faces are hugged and chests are burst.

Romulus is a balancing act - it wants to be an homage but not a remake, a child not a clone, a spiritual successor and not a ropey re-tread. Thankfully its largely successful in its ambitions. Its tone and look is reverent to Alien and Aliens, and its plot is very close in many ways to those two films in a back-to-basics way that's refreshing after Prometheus and the more bloated elements of Covenant.

 

In Spaeny, so great in Civil War, we have an excellent Ripley proxy, but the show-stealer is Jonsson as defective droid Andy. His character is by far the most compelling of the ensemble, many of whom are merely there to be Xenomorph fodder. Andy gives some much-needed heart and soul to proceedings, and Jonsson's nuanced performance makes him one to watch.

Romulus nails the brief of telling a new story that fits in with the space-horror-action vibe of the only truly good Alien movies (the first two). It's very much connected to its universe, referencing just about every movie in the series successfully (though do we really need to hear "Get away from her, you bitch!" again?). 

You could argue that Romulus is formulaic or that it hews too close to its predecessors, but you could also argue it's a perfect mix of what made the first two films great. There are new scares and old, and once again you will remember that in space, no one can hear you scream.

Deadpool & Wolverine (no spoilers)

(M) ★★★★

Director: Shawn Levy.

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Aaron Stanford, Matthew Macfadyen.

"You could've just paid the man instead of shooting up his shop."

A film's success is often about meeting expectations. A horror movie should scare, an action film should be exciting, a comedy should make you laugh, and a Deadpool movie should be full of a hilarious mixture of ultra-violence and a hitherto unwitnessed level of swearing.

On that front, Deadpool & Wolverine is an incredible success, and really it's all that matters. The Merc With The Mouth is flat-out funny as he rips down the fourth wall while simultaneously kicking it in the dick. Subtle this is not. And the added bonus is that Wolverine is along for the ride (as are a handful of unexpected but very welcome cameos). 

The plot, for what it's worth, sees Deadpool (Reynolds) approached by timeline cops the TVA (as featured in the TV series Loki) with a very special offer that will spare him from the demise of his universe, which has been left unstable due to the death of its "anchor being" Wolverine (Jackman).

Deadpool heads off on a journey across the multiverse to find a new Wolverine to help him save his timeline, which leaves them both trapped in The Void facing off with a dangerous mutant named Cassandra Nova (Corrin).

If you didn't like the previous Deadpool films, don't bother with this. D&W is for Deadpool fans and MCU completists... and that is all. It's filled with enough profanity to kill a nun, and throws its violence around like it's going out of fashion. It's a sweary, bloody gagfest that will have a certain type of juvenile sense of humour in stitches from start to finish. 

It's also full of some marvellous superhero cameos, most of which are set-ups for the kind of meta in-jokes that make Deadpool movies so much fun for those in the know. This is Deadpool's first foray into the MCU (thanks to Disney buying 20th Century Fox), so that meta-ness is dialled up to 11 as the filmmakers get a bigger toybox of characters to play with. And there's a real sense of joy that comes with that - every wink and nod at the audience seems to fill Reynolds with genuine delight.

There's a perverse joy to how insane this is. That Jackman snikts out the Wolverine claws one last time (maybe/probably?) for this immature swear-fest is funny in itself, and the number of high-level cameos being wasted here is gold. Perhaps the only downside is that Corrin's delicious performance as Cassandra Nova is too good for a film that is essentially an endless parade of dick jokes dressed up in spandex.

Similarly, the film really grinds to a halt whenever it tries to talk about its feelings. It's necessary and it's fine, but the gearbox definitely clunks a few times when Wolverine gets the melancholies. On the one hand, it gives the film stakes to fight for, which is important when both your main characters are essentially unkillable and morally ambiguous.  

It's not going to win over new fans, nor is it going to be mentioned in the same breath as top shelf superhero movies like Avengers: Infinity War or The Dark Knight, but it works. It's exactly what a Deadpool movie should be and kudos to Disney for having the brains and balls to let it be that.

Welcome to the MCU, Deadpool.

Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on August 9, 2024.

(M) ★★★★

Director: David Terry Fine.

Dirty Pop is now screening on Netflix.

Spot the manager.

I was a grunge kid who grew up worshipping at the altar of alternative rock. In the early '90s, I bought Nirvana albums, and stashed my New Kids On The Block tape in a shoebox, never to be played again. The rules of the era were simple. Alternative music was cool. It was real and it meant something. It was made in garages and bars by real musicians, like me and my friends.

Pop, on the other hand, was fake, plastic, soulless and meaningless. It was the real devil's music, admired by vacuous idiots and purveyed by talentless hacks. It was the sound of capitalism and boardrooms. It was manufactured and therefore entirely meaningless and not real.

Of course, these ideas are naïve and overly simplistic - the reality of the music industry, especially in the '90s and '00s is far more nuanced than this black-and-white mentality that I held so dearly in my teens and early 20s.

But watching Dirty Pop makes me think I wasn't so far off the mark.

This three-part doco series (why isn't just a movie?) digs into the diabolical world of Lou Pearlman, who ripped off "mom-and-dad investors" to the tune of around half a billion dollars to fund his lavish lifestyle and voracious appetite. Oh, and to bankroll NSYNC and Backstreet Boys.

This is a story that's been told a few times before, including in the doco The Boy Band Con, which was produced by NSYNC member Lance Bass. But it's a story that bears repeating because it's so crazy, and Dirty Pop repeats it well.

With two Backstreet Boys and a member of NSYNC holding court, as well as a number of Pearlman's former friends and employees, Dirty Pop dives deep into Pearlman's ridiculous ambitions. Their interviews are interspersed with huge amounts of archival footage that keep the story ticking back and forth between the then and the now, but also makes it feel complete and full of emotion.

The ace up its sleeve is Pearlman himself, brought back to life by the power of AI (Pearlman died in 2016). Some will argue that AI has no place in documentaries, but the usage here is intelligent and honest. It takes Pearlman's own words from his autobiography and real footage of the man himself, and uses AI to insert his words into his mouth. It's not misrepresenting Pearlman at all - they're his own words after all - and the doco points out it's doing this every time it does it. 

This aspect of Dirty Pop has been controversial, but it needn't be. They could have used the same words and had someone else read them, or had them appear on screen as text, but instead they put them in the mouth of the man who wrote them. That seems legit to me. It works, it's a cool way to introduce Pearlman's own ideas and voice into the story, and no one is being misrepresented. Get over it.

All that aside, the only real criticism is the sense of repetition that comes from making this three 40-minute episodes instead of a less-than-two-hour-long doco. It's an easy task watching this in one sitting, but the decision to split it up messes with the pacing. There are some questions and details that go begging, and some obvious absentees on the call sheet, but what it's got is good. 

Dirty Pop is great, in fact. It plants its seeds early, letting them grow and bear fruit like a good murder-mystery, and its use of AI is to be applauded. The editing makes the most of its interviewees and tells its story in a compelling way. It will probably leave Backstreet Boys and NSYNC songs humming in your head for days to come, but don't let that dissuade you from checking out this excellent doco miniseries.

Fly Me To The Moon

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on July 25, 2024.

(M) ★★★

Director: Greg Berlanti.

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Jim Rash, Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Anna Garcia.

"Sure is a nice day. Hate to spoil it by doing something 'actiony'."

Let's make something very clear. No, this isn't based on a true story. NASA did not fake the moon landing, nor did they ever intend to fake the moon landing. 

Here's an episode of my podcast explaining where that idea came from, and why it's not true.

But, self-promotion aside, let's make something else very clear - this movie isn't entirely about a fake moon landing. Despite what you may have seen in the trailers and press material, this plot point only enters the film about two-thirds of the way through, helping ramp up the tension and emotion of everything (because the real moon landing wasn't tense and emotional enough apparently).

While Fly Me To The Moon is somewhat about faking the moon landing, really it's about selling the Apollo 11 mission to the American people, and the importance and precarious nature of the space race at that time. But more than anything, it's a rom-com, that just happens to be set against the backdrop of trying to get Apollo 11 to the moon.

Johansson stars as Kelly Jones, a high-flying ad exec not afraid to bend the truth to get what she wants. When a shady government agent (Harrelson) brings her into NASA to fix the reputation of the moon mission, it rubs launch director Cole Davis (Tatum) the wrong way.

Fly Me To The Moon is silly and sassy, snappy and jazzy. It plays hard and fast with the truth, but somehow manages to squeeze some heart in among its paint-by-numbers characters. It's disappointingly predictable in places, yet it's also a solid, classically structured rom-com.

As with any rom-com, most of it hinges on the chemistry of the two leads, and Johansson and Tatum are good enough actors to ensure their on-screen relationship is, well, good enough. They never quite sizzle, but their acting chops ensure the film stays on target as it tries to get to the moon. Meanwhile Harrelson appears to be having a ball, dropping in to keep Johansson's character on her toes, and Romano, perhaps surprisingly, gives the film a much-needed heart.

The script is clinically good, to the point where it feels too predictable. Everything works, and it's  sporadically funny, and it manages to bring a small level of surprise thanks to the subplot involving faking the moon landing, which works as a ticking clock device for the plot and a trigger to send the love interests spiralling away from each other at the start of Act III. But both leads have painfully predictable backstories, and the film has a tendency to telegraph a lot of its jokes from a mile away.

Like a good Apollo mission, Fly Me To The Moon follows a safe trajectory with minimal risk, but it achieves its goal, and that makes for a fun voyage.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on July 11, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Mark Molloy.

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot, Luis Guzmán, Damien Diaz.

The Golf Cart Bandit was finally brought to justice.

The key to writing high school essays is much the same as making a belated film sequel - understand the assignment and do your homework.

Aussie debut director Mark Molloy has done both here. He knows exactly what a Beverly Hills Cop movie needs to be, and I'd hate to think how many times he watched each of the first three movies to get that understanding (or at least the first two, no one needs to rewatch Beverly Hills Cop III).

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F AKA BHC4 feels exactly like an Axel Foley movie should. It's a tightly plotted cop procedural punctuated with some solid car chases that lets Eddie Murphy do what Eddie Murphy does best, while giving him good characters to bounce off and ending in the inevitable hail of bullets.

Thirty years on from his disappointing third outing, Detroit cop Foley receives a call from his old pal Billy Rosewood (Reinhold) saying Foley's estranged daughter Jane (Paige) has had her life threatened by a drug gang because of her involvement defending an accused cop-killer. Before you know it, the motormouth cop from the Motor City is back in Beverly Hills, trying to solve crimes while simultaneously trying to patch things up with his daughter.

Molloy nails the tone and style of the first Beverly Hills Cop. It's very much set in the now, but its pacing, its delivery, its humour, and even much of its soundtrack comes straight outta the '80s. This kind of comedic cop movie doesn't really exist any more, replaced by either self-aware send-ups or jokey low stakes affairs where the comedy outweighs the crime. But right from the opening moments, as Foley cruises the streets of Detroit to the sounds of The Heat Is On, this film is at pains to invoke its origins.

What's great about all this is it doesn't feel like gratuitous fan service - only the return of popular character Serge (Pinchot) lands in that territory. Instead, it's about deliberate stylistic choices that celebrate the original. Yes, it opens with literally the same song, but this feels more like it's singing from the same songbook as opposed to doing a bad cover version.

Murphy slips back into the role of Foley with ease. It was this kind of role that left him feeling typecast early in his career (see Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hrs, and Trading Places), but no one does it like him, even 40 years on from the first BHC. His ability to switch from comedic to sincere and back again is effortless and a huge part of the film's charm. There's even a sense of depth and maturity to the character that befits the passage of time.

While it's nice to see Reinhold, Ashton and Reiser back for another outing, and Bacon's ability to play goodie or baddie with equal panache is what makes him so ubiquitous, the highlights of the supporting cast are Gordon-Levitt and Paige. Both go toe-to-toe with Murphy and hold their own. Gordon-Levitt reminds us of his comedic chops, and Paige has a great mix of toughness and vulnerability as the daughter who is bitter towards her absent father.

It's easy to forget what a shake-up to the genre the original Beverly Hills Cop provided - it was Oscar-nominated for best original screenplay and brought some much-needed comedy and culture-clash into the increasingly dour and dark world of cop movies. While BHC4 can never be as groundbreaking, it at least understands what made the first film so great, and does an excellent job of living in that world.