GIG REVIEW: mclusky* - Corner Hotel, Melbourne, January 15, 2020

mclusky*
Corner Hotel, Melbourne
January 15, 2020

mclusky* don't do sentimentality (they also don't do capital letters, which is really fucking annoying).

They do biting irony, scathing wit, unintelligible yelling, obtuse absurdism, humourous anecdotes, sweary politeness, and catchy if often atonal rock music. But sentimentality is not a weapon in their impressive onstage arsenal.

But for 20 seconds on a Wednesday night in January, frontman Andrew "Falco" Falkous dropped the acerbic armour and admitted that mclucksy*'s recent Australian tour would most likely be the final time Aussies got to see this slightly modified version of the influential "Welsh" punk band grace a stage, and hinted that this made him a little sad.

(Are any of the band members even Welsh? They're frequently referred to as such, but Falco isn't Welsh. Is it just cos they formed there? Do I need to do research?)

With his guard down, Falco informed the crowd at The Corner just how special the Australian tour had been, and what it meant to be able to bring his old band* down under for what was probably the last time.

All bands say this kind of shit. But for a band for whom sentimentality is in short supply, it means something a bit more than the typical gig pleasantries. Speaking with Falco after the gig, he confirmed that he'd meant everything he'd said - that they might not be back again, and that it had been a bit emotional. I promised I wouldn't tell anyone that he'd gotten genuinely sentimental on stage, lest I ruin his famed persona as the kind of straight-talking non-bullshit-taking raconteur who's probably never cried at a good film.

Oops.

Look, he even fucking smiled on stage.

Anyway, this is a belated review that mainly aims to talk about how fucking good mclusky* is, just like that time I wrote a really fawning ode to Future Of The Left two months after the gig (and which Falco read and that made me unfeasibly happy).

Firstly, that asterisk. That's Falco's way of separating this version of the band, which features the hulking Damien Sayell of The St Pierre Snake Invasion on bass and vocals in place of original member Jonathan Chapple. Chapple's non-appearance appears to have been his choosing and not a result of any lingering animosity, which turned out to be a plus because Sayell is a fucking legend who plays a right-handed bass left-handed, enthusiastically dives into the crowd, happily sings a few numbers, and will honour a shout and buy you a VB if you buy him one.

He's an absolute fucking unit, this guy.

mclusky* were one of those bands that finished up just as they were getting dangerously good. Their wonderfully titled debut My Pain and Sadness is More Sad and Painful Than Yours was merely a warm-up for the good shit. Across two excellent subsequent albums - Mclusky Do Dallas and The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not on Fire - released in 2002 and 2004 respectively, they hit their stride and found some modicum of success. Sadly, by the end of 2004, they were no more.

But as ways lead on to ways, things happened and they came back, albeit briefly it seems. Their second Corner show in Melbourne - the last of their Aussie tour before a quick jaunt around New Zealand - was fiery and funny. Brimming mostly with songs from ...Do Dallas and ...Not On Fire, it was wonderfully raucous and goddamit it looked like Falco was actually having fun.

They played all their "hits" - Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues and She Will Only Bring You Happiness being key among those - before finishing with their triple-j-endorsed favourite To Hell With Good Intentions. They even wheeled out a B-side (No Covers) in their 21-song set, with only There Ain't No Fool In Ferguson as a notable omission.

Edit this setlist | More mclusky setlists

(Falco later explained he didn't want to play Ferguson because it didn't "sound as good as it should". Which is fair enough.)

Lachlan Ewbank from DZ Deathrays joined the band on stage for a couple of numbers, which was around the point Sayell decided to sing a song in the midst of the crowd. Shit went right off. It was just one of many joyous highlights of the night.

And that's one of the great things about mclusky* - they're joyous, in a darkly hilarious way. Their gigs and music are fun, despite lyrically plumbing the depths of humanity. You can't be a band with a song called Fuck This Band (and the merch to go with it) without a sense of humour. You can't sing about shitter bands than yours getting famous because they have better haircuts than you unless you can laugh about it. Otherwise you'd end up a miserable piss-wreck. And from what I can tell, mclusky* are not miserable piss-wrecks. They're a bunch of rock-music-loving fellows who still get a kick out of 15-year-old songs regarding cowboy killers, taking more drugs than touring funk bands, and other abstract notions that I haven't fully comprehended yet. And they still get said kick because these are good songs that sounds great when played live and are fun to play live. So why the fuck not?

I've never seen Falco refer to mclusky (with or without asterick) as "punk" - he talks about rock music a lot, but never punk (I'll stand corrected on this). But mclusky are punk in the best, truest, and funnest meanings of the word. And this is entirely because they aren't trying to be punk; they aren't trying to be anything. They're just being, and they don't take anything seriously outside of playing the songs properly and in tune.

Hopefully they'll be back. But if Falco's sentimental moment in Melbourne is anything to go by, they probably won't.

In which case, thank fuck for Future Of The Left.

This is a very good article about the mclusky* reunion.
As is this one.

Bombshell

(M) ★★★★

Director: Jay Roach.

Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Rob Delaney, Mark Duplass, Liv Hewson, Allison Janney, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Malcolm McDowell, Ben Lawson, Josh Lawson.

Yes, but who dealt it?

The #MeToo movement officially hit in 2017 with the fall of Harvey Weinstein, but you could argue it began a year earlier with the resignation of Fox News svengali Roger Ailes. In the lead-up to Donald Trump's nomination as Republican candidate, Trump's good pal Ailes faced a growing wave of accusations from past and then-present female staff at Fox News, leading to Rupert Murdoch's insistence that Ailes leave the company Ailes had run for 20 years.

Last year, that important battle fought by a number of brave women was dramatised twice. First as the Showtime mini-series The Loudest Voice, with Russell Crowe as Ailes. And hot on its heels was Bombshell - the first major movie of the #MeToo movement. It too tells of Ailes crimes, but unlike The Loudest Voice, it's biggest focus is the women of the Fox newsroom.

Through the eyes of real-life experienced anchorwomen Gretchen Carlson (Kidman) and Megyn Kelly (Theron), as well as ambitious young producer Kayla Pospisil (a composite character played by Robbie), Bombshell examines the culture of Ailes' Fox. When Carlson launches a sexual harassment lawsuit, it impacts an already besieged Kelly, while Pospisil is also facing her own troubles. In the end, all roads lead to Ailes.

As Carlson notes towards the film's end, she doesn't want you to like her - she wants you to believe her. So let's leave aside the politics of Carlson (and indeed Kelly), much like the film itself does (although Kelly's infamous "Jesus was a white guy" comment does get an airing).

What's important here is the film's truth-to-power storyline, and the way it examines the inadvertent complexities of it all. Characters weigh financial concerns and job security against holding a sexual predator to account. The price of silence, the ripple effect on friends and family, and the notion of betrayal in the sisterhood are all explored in an intriguing, if-not-perfect fashion.

It's an important story that's largely told well. Some early dialogue to camera, as well as its switching narrators is messy but bearable. But once Bombshell dispenses with its tics and gets down to brass tacks, it's continually compelling.

A lot of that comes down its killer cast. Robbie gives an unflashy turn, but it's one of the best performances of her career, while Theron and Kidman are their usual brilliant selves, with Theron and Robbie more-than-worthy Oscar nominees. Credit also to Lithgow for making Ailes both slimy and human at the same time. McKinnon is also excellent in a small role, and McDowell is great in a small cameo as Rupert Murdoch.

It bears repeating that the make-up work by Kazu Hiro (who previously won an Oscar for his work on Darkest Hour), Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker is remarkable, in particular the transformation of Theron into Kelly. Less recognised has been the way Theron nails Kelly's voice. Together it's a mesmerising job by all involved.

Bombshell is flawed but with its triumvirate of talented women out front, it's a strangely riveting and fascinating telling of a story that deserves to be told.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood

(PG)  ★★★½

Director: Marielle Heller.

Cast: Matthew Rhys, Tom Hanks, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper, Maryann Plunkett, Enrico Colantoni.

"Say it again... to the puppet's face."

In this era of milkshake ducks and #MeToo, Fred Rogers feels like a figure from another dimension. The wholesome, gentle children's TV presenter died in 2003, before the time when cynicism destroyed everything. He lived in an age when being pure and edgeless were still admirable and attainable qualities and not merely covers for something horrible and malignant.

Given the saint-like nature of Mr Rogers (whose TV shows were to Americans as Play School is to Australians), there is only one equally wholesome choice to portray him in this quasi-biopic. And that obvious choice doesn't disappoint. Tom Hanks, deservedly earning his first Oscar nom in 19 years, is the real reason to watch this patchy but well-meaning look at an American cultural icon.

If you're wondering why Hanks' Oscar nomination was for best supporting actor and not best actor, it's because the film is based on a real-life article that in places is as much about the writer as it is Mr Rogers. The film follows award-winning journalist Lloyd Vogel (Rhys) as he tries to pen a short fluff piece on Mr Rogers for Esquire magazine. But Lloyd is grappling with his own troubles and is beset by his own cynicism, which makes him wonder if Mr Rogers really is the saint everyone believes him to be.

If you want an in depth examination of Fred Rogers, you'd be better off watching the acclaimed doco Won't You Be My Neighbour, but for an introductory understanding of his impact, this is a good starting place. Making Mr Rogers a periphery character in this story is a surprisingly neat way to explore what made him so amazing (which is what made the original article so great), although if you find Lloyd Vogel's bitterness hard to take it, it will ruin the movie for you.

The idea of making a movie about Mr Rogers without directly focusing on Mr Rogers is one of those things that probably seemed on paper like it might not work, but it does. Unfortunately, some of the other ideas that maybe seemed like good ones on the page don't succeed.

The biggest example of this is the use of one of Mr Rogers' shows as a framing device, right down to the Rogers' Neighbourhood-style miniatures used instead of exterior establishing shots. It's distracting and hokey, failing to deliver the charm it was intending to conjure. For some reason, this kind of thing only seems to work for people like Wes Anderson, when it draws you further into a world, rather than remind you that you're watching a movie.

Elsewhere though, Heller's direction is solid, managing to find a fascinating mix of normal, weird and mythic in Mr Rogers. A lot of this is thanks to Hanks. Getting the most unhateable actor in America to play one of the most beloved American cultural figures is a home run before you even step up to the plate, but Hanks imbues Fred Rogers with a level of humanity that somehow makes him all the more saintly. Hanks' outstanding turn totally overshadows a solid performance from Rhys, as well as fine support from Cooper and Watson.

Much like Mr Rogers' shows, A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood will seem heartfelt but hokey to modern eyes. But the love of its subject matter shines through, largely due to the kind of performance that only Tom Hanks could deliver.

Jojo Rabbit

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Taiki Waititi.

Cast: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson, Taika Waititi, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, Archie Yates, Stephen Merchant, Alfie Allen.

The reboot of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner was... different.

Seeing the descriptor "Oscar-winner" next to the name "Taika Waititi" is a beautiful thing, and we have this astounding black comedy to thank for that adjective becoming a reality.

The director-writer-actor has been blazing a trail since his second film Boy, which broke box office records in his native New Zealand and highlighted Waititi as an immense talent. To say that talent has blossomed with Jojo Rabbit ignores his previous amazing films - it's more like the Academy has finally caught up to his greatness.

This tightrope-walking comedy/war film follows Jojo Betzler (Griffin Davis), a 10-year-old Nazi living in Germany in the twilight of WWII. An enthusiastic member of the Hitlerjugend (so much so that Hitler (Waititi) is his imaginary friend), Jojo is shocked to discover that his mother (Johansson) is helping a Jewish girl (McKenzie) survive the war.

Hitler as played by Taika Waititi is a comedic masterclass, painting the fuhrer as both figment of young Jojo's imagination and dream father figure/mentor. Part dictator, part absent dad, but all man-child, he’s not a million miles away from the dad Waititi played in Boy. He's also artfully continuing a long line of buffoon Hitlers that dates back to Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

It's through Waititi's Hitler, and indeed the rest of his masterful adaptation of Christine Leunens more-serious novel Caging Skies, that Jojo Rabbit laughs at its Nazis and their idiotic beliefs. All the while it walks the fine line of doing this while not laughing at the seriousness of the situation. At its darkest moments it is heartbreaking and even chilling, yet around this, it's hilarious.

This is the core of what makes the film so good and why it is such a worthy winner of the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Jojo Rabbit is breathtaking in its ability to switch from humour to horror, from dark to light, from thoughtful to absurd. Its snappy editing and canny direction from Waititi also helps, but it is the script that really shines.

It doesn't hurt to have a great cast playing it out either. Johannson is excellent in a difficult role, Rockwell brings beautiful depth to a character that could easily have been cartoonish, while the two juvenile leads of Griffin Davis and McKenzie give turns beyond their years. Merchant is also good in a small role as a Gestapo agent, while Yates is a scene-stealer as Jojo's best mate Yorki.

Topped off with a nicely anachronistic score, Jojo Rabbit is a superb piece of filmmaking on every level. Hilarious yet heartfelt, it is yet another great movie from Waititi.

REWIND REVIEW: The Castle (1997)

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Rob Sitch.

Cast: Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Anthony Simcoe, Sophie Lee, Wayne Hope, Tiriel Mora, Eric Bana, Costas Kilias, Charles 'Bud' Tingwell.

Blackface on Hey Hey, It's Saturday - always hilarious.

I was invited recently on to Jono Pech's excellent podcast Comedy Rewind, which re-examines funny films from a bygone era and looks at whether they're still funny, and whether they've aged well. Our topic was that great Aussie comedy The Castle. Here are some links where you can listen to us dissect the film in great depth.

Listen via Apple Podcasts

Listen via Spotify

Or you can read this blog. Or both.

An argument can be made (and which I make in the podcast) that The Castle is the greatest Australian film of all time. Sure, it's direction and production values sometimes mirror those of a very competent student film. There is nothing flashy about it and there's not a single shot that isn't covered in the first 10 minutes of an introduction to shot composition.

But The Castle captures the essence of our nation and its people in a manner unlike any other Aussie-made movie. It looks to the edges of its capital cities (and theoretically beyond) and shows us what makes our little Aussie battlers so fair dinkum, true blue and dinky-di, without a crocodile or a can of Fosters in sight.

For those of you who haven't seen it and have stumbled in here by accident, The Castle is the story of the Kerrigan family, who live on Melbourne's fringe next to an airport on contaminated soil in a house that is perpetually under renovation. To others, their home seems like nothing special (or worse), but to the eternally optimistic Kerrigans, it is their castle. And when the airport attempts to compulsorily acquire the Kerrigan house (and the houses of their neighbours) to build a new runway, the Kerrigans decide to fight back.

Made on the cheap (AU$750,000 in 1997), The Castle was the debut film from ABC Late Show comedians Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy, Santo Cilauro and Tom Gleisner. They had already moved on to "more serious" endeavours after their two-season cult breakthrough sketch show, notably classic satire Frontline. And while The Castle is also a "serious" production, its simplicity and quick gestation make it seem like a summer holiday project, which is part of its charm. The screenplay reportedly took just two weeks to go from concept to completed screenplay, filming lasted 11 days, and editing took another two weeks. Done. Print it.

The Castle works so well because it understands Australians. It's also hilarious (even 23 years on), but its humour comes from this understanding of what makes Aussie suburbia tick. Its characters are caricatures, but they're on message and not too far over-the-top. Everyone is subtly overacting in a beautifully broad and ocker way (especially the never-better Michael Caton), which heightens the hilarity because it still feels real - despite the overacting, most Aussies, especially those out in the country, knows people like the Kerrigans. These "dialled up" performances are most noticeable when legendary actor Charles "Bud" Tingwell turns up. His naturalistic performance highlights the lower-middle class nature of the Kerrigans, making them even funnier, but showing the great Aussie divide between the inner-city and everywhere else.

The Castle's key message is the beauty of those who live in the "everywhere else". The script portrays them as cultureless but passionate, casually racist but caring and compassionate. They're uneducated doers and dreamers, with simple tastes, living lives of simple means. Most importantly, they are trusting, neighbourly, fun-loving, encouraging, big-hearted, and aspirational. They rate family above of all things. with the ability to own their own slice of Australia a close second.

For all the perceived negatives in that big pile of adjectives, The Castle never looks down on the Kerrigans. The only people who do that are the villains, AKA the airport lawyers, and they get their comeuppance. The Kerrigans' flaws (their culturelessness, their casual racism, their small-thinking) are merely part of their make-up and even their charm.

Here's the opening scene:

Their casual racism, in particular, comes with a complete lack of malice. Indeed, it's coupled with a heartwarming level of acceptance of the non-Anglos in their life, including their son-in-law Con (a scene-stealing Eric Bana, in his film debut) and their neighbour Farouk (Costas Kilias, who has since become a magistrate). It also helps to magnify the significance of patriarch Darryl Kerrigan's realisation that "this country's got to stop stealing other people's land" - a beautifully profound moment hidden among the jokes about the Trading Post and Dale digging holes.

For a film that is probably the greatest Aussie movie of all time, it's amazing to think The Castle wasn't even nominated for best film at the AACTA Awards (then the AFI Awards). All it won was a very deserving best original screenplay gong. The actually-quite-good Kiss Or Kill cleaned up that year but when was the last time you heard anyone mention that film?

By comparison, The Castle lives on. In fact, its greatest legacy is its contributions to the Aussie vernacular. Mention that something is "going straight to the pool room", tell someone they're dreamin', say something is about the vibe or Mabo, or admonish someone with a "suffer in your jocks", and everyone knows exactly what you mean, thanks to The Castle.

No other Aussie film has impacted our lingo as much as this. And no other film summed up our people as simply or as beautifully. The equally quotable Crocodile Dundee had as much of a lasting impact, but it traded in stereotypes that failed to speak as eloquently about Australia. The Castle said what it needed to say with wry humour, a big heart, a nicely exaggerated level of observation, and the greatest gag ever written about jousting sticks.

Midway (2020)

(M) ★★½

Director: Roland Emmerich.

Cast: Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Keann Johnson, Woody Harrelson, Etsushi Toyokawa, Dennis Quaid, Tadanobu Asano, Jun Kunimura, Mandy Moore, Nick Jonas, Darren Criss, Brennan Brown, Aaron Eckhart.

A version of The Village People's In The Navy was imminent.

The bar for modern-era movies about Pearl Harbour is pretty low thanks to Michael Bay. Fellow fan of blowing shit up, Roland Emmerich, gets over that bar, but only just, with his take on Pearl Harbour and its aftermath in WWII movie Midway.

The film, which is reportedly the biggest budget independent film of all time, is a weird mix of the historically accurate and the unforgivably fake. It features some surprisingly bad special effects and dire dialogue, weighing down this often compelling war film. It tells its potted history pretty well, and even gives a bit of time over to telling the Japanese side of things, but doesn't do it well enough to overlook its faults.

After a brief 1937 prologue in Tokyo, introducing intelligence officer Edwin T. Layton (Wilson) and Japanese commander-in-chief Isoroku Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa), the film starts proper at the attack on Pearl Harbour, where Japanese planes decimated the then-neutral American forces stationed at Honolulu.

As the American intelligence team, led by Layton and Admiral Chester Nimitz (Harrelson), scramble to strike back and figure out what the Japanese will do next, fighter pilots such as Dick Best (Skrein) and Wade McClusky (Evans) are itching to get revenge.

For those of us who aren't war historians, Midway tells its potentially convoluted tale of battles, tactics, admirals, pilots and boats with a simple ease. A bit more characterisation wouldn't have gone astray - it's introductions for characters and their relationships is perfunctory at best and eye-rollingly bad at worst - but it does a reasonable job of keeping things moving while often bringing in a lot of new information or new faces.

A miscast Skrein (and his hilariously bad accent) gets good support from some good actors, with Quaid, Wilson, Harrelson, a low-key Evans, and even Nick Jonas performing well and elevating proceedings. Also of interest is Eckhart as Lt Col Doolittle, who led the retaliatory Tokyo Raid. His role, and indeed the whole Tokyo Raid subplot is frustratingly brief - frustrating because it proves to be one of the most affecting and interesting parts of the film. Midway's Japanese scenes are also fascinating, and more of those would have been appreciated.

Equally frustrating are the special effects. The dogfights and battle scenes are great, but in between there is some truly awful green screen stuff that looks like it came out of a film from the '90s. The attack on Pearl Harbour is particularly stodgy. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't pull you out of the reality and horror of the moment and remind you you're watching a bunch of actors in front of a green screen surrounded by some bad fire animations.

But this kind of sums up Midway. For every affecting moment, nice performance, cool sequence and interesting subplot, there is an awkward or just plain bad element to balance it out. These highs and lows help the film feel bloated, and undeserving of its two-hours-plus runtime.

There are far worse war films out there, and Midway could have been a lot worse. As a potted history of pivotal moments of WWII, it's interesting and intermittently entertaining.