Movie, music and TV reviews by Matt Neal, a Rotten Tomatoes-accredited ABC Radio film critic (also an author, musician, journalist and all-round okay guy).
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on September 3, 2021.
(G) ★★★½
Director: Cal Brunker
Cast: (voices of) Iain Armitage, Marsai Martin, Ron Pardo, Will Brisbin, Keegan Hedley, Lilly Bartlam, Kingsley Marshall, Callum Shoniker, Shayle Simons, Yara Shahidi, Randall Park, Dax Shepard, Jimmy Kimmel.
"If you bury it deep enough, I'm sure it will be fine."
If you've shelled out money for Paw Patrol "movies" in the past, you've been ripped off. A few times over the last couple of years, the brains behind this insanely popular kids series have basically slapped two or three episodes together and whacked them on the big screen as is. You end up paying full cinema prices for stuff the kids will see on the Nickelodeon channel soon enough, if they haven't seen it already.
Not this time. The Paw Patrol team have made a proper movie with proper cinematic animation - not the short-production-schedule, mass-produced, made-for-kids-TV kind of animation their previous "big screen" efforts have boasted. And it's actually good.
The film sees Ryder (Brisbin) and his team of pups head to the big smoke to do some saving of the day. As usual, they're up against Mayor Humdinger (Pardo), whose ambitions for Adventure City put lives in danger. But can the pups handle life in the city?
With the animation pushed to the next level (and it really does look good), the writers can do the same. More ambitious but fundamentally the same show the kids have always loved, Paw Patrol gets a big-screen update actually worthy of putting on the big screen. The action is dialed up, but so are the emotions and the stakes.
Much of the film's heart centres on Marshall (Armitage) as he struggles with being back in the place where he was abandoned. The story has great things to say about overcoming fear and doubt, finding inner strength, and about rising above your background and circumstances, with the latter theme amplified by new character Liberty (Martin), who proves her life on the streets can actually be a virtue for the team.
It would have been nice for every character to get an arc instead of just two, but at least we get a good storyline that's smarter than a lot of kids movies. Yes, it's still a "toyetic" adventure with the added irritant of having a soundtrack to sell, but the jokes land and the added theme on the importance of listening to scientists is good too.
At the bare minimum, you would hope the Paw Patrol: The Movie entertains the kids and doesn't bore the parents. That it's actually kinda fun, looks good, and is mildly thoughtful is a very welcome bonus.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on August 20, 2021.
(M) ★★★½
Director: Liesl Tommy
Cast: Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Kimberly Scott, Albert Jones, Audra McDonald, Marc Maron, Tituss Burgess, Skye Dakota Turner, Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Brenda Nicole Moorer, Tate Donovan, Mary J. Blige.
"Transdermal celebration, caused a slight mutation in the rift..."
It’s hard to think of an artist more universally revered and loved than Aretha Franklin. And it’s hard to think of an actress more suited to playing her than Jennifer Hudson.
Hudson doesn’t actually look like Aretha, but she gets Aretha. And best of all, she can sing like Aretha - hoo boy, can she sing like Aretha.
The Oscar-winning actress takes this biopic to another level, dragging it out of its paint-by-numbers storytelling. All the clichés are here - the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles - but Hudson’s performance and the reverence given to the music elevate the film above its cookie-cutter moments.
Starting with her childhood before jump-cutting suddenly to Aretha on the verge of her first record deal, the film is painfully slow to get going. While most of the set-ups in the opening half hour pay off later, Respect kicks off more like a Wikipedia entry than a riveting embodiment of one of the 20th century’s greatest artists.
But things get into a rhythm when Aretha’s career does. The undercurrent of bad men and under-appreciated talent comes to the fore as we watch her churn out an incredible array of ignored albums while falling in love with the wrong guy, before finally stumbling her way into fame.
The film hits all the right notes on the way up, but grinds its gears heading down into the third act, as Aretha’s “demons” take hold and we get to her “difficult diva” stage. The editing and pacing make it seem like this dark phase comes out of nowhere, even though it's been well set-up, narratively speaking. It’s only when we get back to the music that the film finds its voice again, leading us to a beautiful, moving and uplifting conclusion.
Respect distils Aretha's life well, and doesn't hide the icon's troubles, instead portraying them in a way that allows us to her strength in confronting and overcoming these weaknesses. Aretha comes across as a strong but flawed woman, which makes the film a richer experience as a result. Her spirituality and the civil rights movement simmer through the film, adding an extra flavour to the story of her music, even though it skims over important elements, such as her relationship with her children and the circumstances around their births.
Respect can never quite shake the stock standard muso biopic vibes but it's still enjoyable. It's not a bad film but it's not exceptional, even though Hudson is and Ms Aretha Franklin certainly was.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on August 20, 2021.
(M) ★★★★★
Creator: Michael Lucas.
Cast: Anna Torv, Sam Reid, Robert Taylor, William McInnes, Chum Ehelepola, Michelle Lim Davidson, Stephen Peacocke, Chai Hansen, Marg Downey.
Airing on ABC TV, streaming on iView
Would you buy a used television from these people?
All I remember from 1986 is Transformers, He-Man and Crocodile Dundee. Mind you, I was five. Turns out there was a lot of shit going down that year, some of which forms the backbone of this outstanding new Aussie drama set in a Melbourne newsroom.
Chernobyl, Halley's Comet, and the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster are three key incidents that take place during the show's six-episode season, which spans January to April in 1986. While they serve as fodder for the News At 6 team to tackle in their nightly bulletin, they also give each episode a symbolic flavour, representing a meltdown, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and a failure to launch respectively.
These three eps are great, but it's the other three covering the AIDs epidemic, the Russell Street bombing, and the release of Lindy Chamberlain that really take the show to the next level. The way they comment on the media, particularly in the AIDs and Chamberlain episodes, is sharp, while the Russell Street ep has a searing sense of energy rushing through it.
Across the board, the writing is top-notch, and the reproductions of the era are fantastic, from its hair and fashions down to its crockpots and VHS players, not to mention a great soundtrack. But its the vibe of the decade that is fascinating. Homophobia, mental health, racism and sexism are key issues that surge through the series, showing that, sadly, some things never change.
The writing and production design are sharp, but an impressive cast ensures they don't go to waste. Torv's newsreader Helen Norville is a firecracker, but also a beautifully well-rounded character delivered immacutely, going from tough as nails one minute to barely keeping it together the next, all the while feeling like a real person. Reid's reporter Dale Jennings is also amazing. He's keen yet uncertain of himself, and both Dale and Helen have secrets they're trying to come to terms with, which is another driving force in the series. Torv and Reid's abilities to balance the seemingly contradictory natures of their roles is award-worthy
McInnes' fiery newsroom boss Lindsay is another highlight, but really there isn't a single bad performance here. Lim Davidson is particularly great as under-appreciated researcher Noelene, while Hansen does a lot with his smaller role as cameraman Tim. Taylor and Downey are also imposing and impressive as veteran newsreader Geoff Walters and his scheming wife Evelyn.
The Newsreader excels at looking at what made Australia tick against a backdrop of some of the biggest events of the '80s, and while its settings and subject matter seem like the show's greatest weapons, it's actually the heart, humour and relationships conjured by some outstanding writing and delivered by its remarkable cast. These are the things that will have you begging for a richly deserved second season.
Cast: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher, Sam Hardy, Noble Johnson, Steve Clemente, Victor Wong.
September 11 - never forget
Special effects are as old as film. Since the likes of Georges Méliès in the 1890s, directors have found increasingly inventive ways to not only trick our eyes and brains, but to tell remarkable stories they couldn't have otherwise told.
Rear-projection, stop tricks, matte painting, compositing, rotoscoping, hand-drawn animation, stop-motion, blue screens, match-moving, CG, robotics, miniatures, and motion capture - all these tools and more have been used over the years to do the impossible. Think of believing a man can fly, lightsabers, bullet time, velociraptors, Gollum, and getting whisked to Oz in tornado. Special effects have brought all that and more to life.
Which brings us to King Kong, the godfather of the FX flick. It certainly wasn't the first to do many of the things it did, but it pushed many of the techniques it used to new heights. Stop-motion guru Willis O'Brien and directors Cooper and Schoedsack stood on the shoulders of giants to get a boost up the Empire State Building, raising the bar for special effects to giddy heights.
Empire magazine called it "the grand-daddy (of) today's blockbusters", 1001 Movies You Must See Before Die's Joshua Klein called it "the undisputed champ of all monster movies and an early Hollywood high-water mark for special-effects work", while esteemed critic Roger Ebert, torn between praising the film and lamenting what it inspired, labelled it a "low-rent monster movie (that) pointed the way toward the current era of special effects, science fiction, cataclysmic destruction, and non-stop shocks".
"King Kong is the father of Jurassic Park, the Alien movies and countless other stories in which heroes are terrified by skillful special effects," Ebert wrote.
(This excellent video examines the state of special effects prior to the release of King Kong and how it broke new ground more thoroughly than I probably could.)
But this monster of a movie is more than just its technique. Being the first or best with a technique doesn't usually reserve you a spot on the Best Films Of All Time list - that's why Young Sherlock Holmes (which features the first fully computer-generated photorealistic animated character) and Forbidden Planet (which combined a dazzling array of techniques) are much loved, but rarely held in the same regard as other FX masterpieces like King Kong, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
King Kong and its ilk are more than just their effects. While they're transporting and dazzling, they are merely means to end, which is to tell a tale of humanity's (and Hollywood's) hubris. Just like Jurassic Park did 60 years later, King Kong is the story of men trying to control nature and sell it. In this case, not only does man's actions doom others, but it ultimately dooms nature itself.
Central to these themes of man capitalist-fuelled destruction of the natural world is Carl Denham (Armstrong), a fast-talking director with all the scruples of a tree stump. When he can't find a find an actress to star in his next production because he's too dangerous to work with, he heads to a woman's mission to find someone desperate enough to forego their own safety for his latest vanity project. Indeed, he only secures the services of Ann Darrow (Wray) because she's too vulnerable to say 'no', having been caught stealing a piece of fruit.
Denham never once considers the risk he puts anyone in. Sure, he never asks anyone to do anything he wouldn't do, but he's fucking nuts. The ship he hires loses a dozen men but he doesn't care - he's too focused on making his millions by bringing Kong to New York, where the 20-foot-tall creature promptly goes ape-shit and has to be put down. "It was beauty killed the beast," says Denham in the film's iconic climactic line. No it wasn't, you utter flog - it was you that killed the beast, dooming him the second you took him from his native habitat.
Peter Jackson understood this, re-imagining Denham in his 2005 remake as more of a con man than in the '33 original, and bestowing even more "humanity" upon the poor doomed Kong. He couldn't go that extra mile for the ultimate ending though - Kong falls from the Empire State Building and lands on Denham, killing him. That would have been perfection.
(Jackson's love of the original is evident in his remake, and the fact he recreated a lost scene from the film.)
The pathos drawn from Kong is a tribute to the fine work of O'Brien, Cooper and Schoedsack. While it's unclear what the big ape does with the women regularly offered up to him by the inhabitants of Skull Island, it's clear he cares for Darrow, despite Fay Wray's incessant screaming. Kong moves Darrow to safety on several occasions, and when he turns to check if she's okay right before toppling to his death, it's a touching moment.
As well as its man vs nature themes, King Kong is, perhaps unwittingly, a sharp dig at Hollywood's treatment of women. Denham couldn't care less about Darrow - she's a necessity for his latest production, and little more. The fact Wray is given so little to do in the film itself is a sharp irony, reinforcing the idea that women were little more than beauties to be ogled by the beasts.
While some of its effects are creaky by today's standards, it's remarkable how well the film stands up. There are some moments where I'm still not 100 per cent how the film-makers pulled it off, such as when Kong places Darrow in the tree prior to the T-Rex fight, or when he undresses her. The final battle atop the Empire State Building is still impressive. "Yes, the giant ape is clearly, to the modern eye, a crudely animated doll," wrote Empire magazine, "but you're too convinced by Kong as a character to notice."
And that's part of how and why this film from nine decades ago has endured. It's immersive, building its sense of mystery beautifully as it establishes a sense of size and scale that is truly impressive. It boast themes about nature, sexuality, patriarchy, capitalism, Hollywood, and the destructiveness of mankind. It gave us a doomed hero unlike any other. And best of all, it made us believe a bloody big monkey could climb the Empire State Building.
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, Peter Bull, James Earl Jones, Tracy Reed.
"Ah yes, I remember Mein Fuhrer well... his foppish hair, that cute moustache, his girlish laugh...."
Stanley Kubrick is not remembered as being a great comedic director. People tend to think about how he transformed genres (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining), pushed social boundaries (A Clockwork Orange, Lolita), and examined war (Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket). They refer to his stunning visuals, thought-provoking subject matter, and meticulous direction.
But Kubrick films often had a sense of humour tucked in there somewhere. Often it was done in a way that made you unsure whether you were supposed to laugh or not - A Clockwork Orange and Lolita are great examples of this, where the subject matter is so confronting and the delivery so absurd you're not sure whether to laugh, cringe, cry or all three at once. As such, Dr Strangelove can lay claim to being Kubrick's only out-and-out comedy.
It's far from conventional though. Aside from the romantic intro music suggesting a sexual connection between two refueling jets, it takes about 10 minutes before you're even sure you're watching a comedy. Much like the plot's creeping tension as a rogue American bomber closes in on its Russian target, the humour sneaks up on you, which is a pretty Kubrickian way to do a comedy.
It's also very Kubrickian to take a non-comedic book as the inspiration for a comedic film. Ex-RAF flight lieutenant Peter George's Red Alert is a disturbing 'what if?' that explored the Cold War nightmare of nuclear annihilation, and George and Kubrick's initial drafts for Dr Strangelove mirrored the book's clinical tone. But as noted in the International Dictionary Of Films and Film-makers (Volume One), Kubrick realised as they were writing that "in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question".
As he told author Terry Southern, "nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic to be treated in any conventional manner".
"He could only see it now as 'some kind of hideous joke'," wrote Southern in his excellent gonzo essay Notes From The War Room.
It's hard to fathom some fifty-odd years later just how bold of a move it was for Kubrick to turn such serious subject matter into a comedy. The Cuban Missile Crisis happened in October 1962, and two months later Kubrick brought in Southern to help give the script some laughs. The world had edged perilously close to mutually assured destruction, and Kubrick basically said "fuck it" and began mining that very edge for LOLs.
(The first minute or so of this trailer is outstanding:)
If Southern's arrival ensured Dr Strangelove would definitely be a comedy, it was the casting of Peter Sellers that ensured it would be one of the greatest of all time.
"During shooting many substantial changes were made in the script, sometimes together with the cast during improvisations," Kubrick said. "Some of the best dialogue was created by Peter Sellers himself."
Sellers has three roles, and it would have been four if not for a sprained ankle. Southern explained that Columbia Pictures thought the only reason Kubrick's Lolita had been a success "resulted solely from the gimmick of Peter Sellers playing several roles".
"I was amazed that (Kubrick) handled it as well as he did," Southern wrote.
"'I have come to realize,' (Kubrick) explained, 'that such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business.' And it was in this spirit that he accepted the studio's condition that this film, as yet untitled, 'would star Peter Sellers in at least four major roles'."
The fourth role was as Major Kong, the bomber pilot who famously rides a nuke into oblivion in one of the film's most iconic scenes.
"Peter Sellers had mastered the tricky Texas twang without untoward incident, and then had completed the first day's shooting of Major Kong's lines in admirable fashion," Southern wrote. "Kubrick was delighted."
That night, Sellers slipped getting out of a car in front of an Indian restaurant in King's Road. The rigours of Kong's role would prove too much - notably moving up and down the ladders in the bomber - and Kubrick allowed Sellers to stick to just three roles, bringing in real-life cowboy Slim Pickens as a last-minute replacement to play Kong.
It is Sellers' characters - the hapless Group Captain Mandrake, the doomed but well-meaning President Merkin Muffley, and the Nazi-turned-US scientist Dr Strangelove - that get most of the best lines and help make the film the memorable masterpiece it is. Muffley's phone call with the Russian president that spends as much time dealing with social graces as it does nuclear annihilation is outstanding, as is his all-time-great line, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the War Room!". Strangelove himself is perhaps the best remembered character, despite only being in two scenes.
Equally impressive, though often overlooked, is George C Scott. People tend to remember him for his serious Oscar-nominated roles in Anatomy Of A Murder, The Hustler and Patton, or his latter darker turns in Hardcore or The Exorcist III, but Scott regularly did comedy, including They Might Be Giants and Not With My Wife, You Don't!. But his turn here as General Buck Turgidson is one for the ages. Along with the deeply troubled General Jack D Ripper (Hayden), he personifies the broken masculinity being satirised by the film.
Turgidson is the war-hungry, sex-mad military man who wishes America had its own Doomsday device, who sees a sexy upside to Armageddon, and who thinks the film's inciting incident is actually an opportunity. Scott delivers all this with gum-chewing glee and gumption, giving the US war room (beautifully realised in German expressionist malevolence by designer Ken Adam) the rogue "cowboy" that it needs to create conflict.
The other two cowboys are Ripper and Major Kong (Pickens). There's a myth that Pickens had never acted in a film before, as perpetuated in this article, when in fact he was very experienced, although it appears to be true that Pickens didn't know he was in a comedy. His cowboy hat and famous scene riding the nuke (which looks terrible, as does all the rear-projected flying sequences in the film) are rightfully iconic and hilarious.
But it's Ripper who is the most fascinating character circa 2021. His conspiracy theories and bizarre ideas about his bodily fluids were written as hilarious absurdism for Dr Strangelove but have been adopted in some form or another by ensuing waves of nutjobs ever since, unaware of how hilariously absurd they are. One of the greatest, most relevant themes of the film is that the stupidity of the few can doom the many, and that theme is as true now as it was then.
Three of the other big themes that would dot Kubrick's career are also here in fledgling and comedic form - humanity vs technology (see also 2001: A Space Odyssey and AI: Artificial Intelligence), the dehumanisation of war (see also Paths Of Glory and Full Metal Jacket), and the curse of toxic masculinity (Barry Lyndon and A Clockwork Orange).
Kubrick's visuals, though more restrained, are also present. The look of the war room, the deep crisp focus in Ripper's office, the long takes, the documentary-style approach to the air base attack - these directorial flourishes are seeds that perhaps bloom more prominently in other films, but help make Dr Strangelove visually impressive in places, distracting from the shitty rear-projection flying sequences.
The film has its detractors. The usually spot-on Incredible Suit doesn't rate it (but at least acknowledges everyone else does), while Leslie Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (sixth edition) calls it "cinematically and dramatically somewhat tortuous and even dull". But for mine, few satires are stranger or sharper, and there are certainly few funnier films that come from a weirder and braver starting point than Dr Strangelove.
