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 Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on December 7, 2023.
(PG) ★★
Director: Sam Boyd.
Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Paapa Essiedu, Denée Benton, Jordyn McIntosh, Alan Cumming, Marc Maron, Luis Guzman.
"A podcast, you say? No way!"
Michael Mann remade his own telemovie LA Takedown as Heat. Michael Haneke made two versions of his film Funny Games, 10 years apart. Cecil B. Demille filmed The Ten Commandments twice, 33 years apart.
We can add Richard Curtis to the list. His latest script Genie is an update of his 1991 telemovie Bernard & The Genie, which boasted the immaculate cast of Alan Cumming, Rowan Atkinson, and Lenny Henry (sidenote: Cumming returns, not as the hero this time, but the grumpy boss originally played by Atkinson).
In this new version, the titular wish-granter is played by Melissa McCarthy (not Lenny Henry), who is accidentally summoned by overworked museum curator Bernard (Essiedu) just as his wife and daughter are moving out and he loses his job.
There are limitations to the Genie's powers, but Bernard will do all he can with his infinite wishes (it's not three in this version) to win his family back and find true happiness... just in time for Christmas.
Genie is like an old car. It takes a long time to warm up, and when it starts moving it's creaky and tired as we go through the rigmarole of yes, the Genie is real, and this is how wishes work. On top of this, McCarthy's Midwest accent doesn't exactly fit with her thousands-of-years-old backstory. The film's first half grates as the story's gears clunk and grind, wobbling all over the road.
Around the middle, a subplot involving an unwitting art theft takes the story in a strange yet interesting direction, and things speed up and get moving at a better pace. A midway scene involving Bernard's family getting a real Christmas wish is amusing too, and it helps to gain some goodwill for Bernard and the film itself.
Essiedu is also extremely likeable, which helps overcome the flat and lacklustre nature of the script. By the end, there's enough of a spark in proceedings to make it bearable, and the denouement satisfactory. Even McCarthy manages to make her role work - in fact, by the end she seems well suited to it, Midwestern accent not withstanding.
It's not great though. The jokes are soft and sparse, and there's no shaking the tiredness of it all - this is the thousandth genie fable, mixed with the thousandth family Christmas comedy-drama. The combination never feels fresh, instead it feels like the most the uninspiring pieces of each part.
It's not bad enough to make you wish for your time back, but you won't be adding it to your list of favourite Christmas movies any time soon.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on November 16, 2023.
(M) ★★★½
Director: Nia DiCosta.
Cast: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Samuel L. Jackson, Zawe Ashton, Gary Lewis, Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh.
Hanging out in kids' bedrooms? Not cool, Captain Marvel.
All the headlines around The Marvels have been about its poor box office performance, which totally ignores how fun and entertaining this film is.
The reasons for the flop out of the gates are many, but the main one is surely a lack of promotion thanks to the actors' strike, which dulled the buzz of this worthy addition to the MCU. Had Larson, Parris and Vellani been able to hit the junket tour and showcase the great chemistry they share on screen, then maybe we'd have a different set of headlines.
Or maybe it's that now-legendary "superhero fatigue", a term that's been thrown around for the past decade, only to get quickly forgotten when the next amazing superhero movie rolls around.
But who cares? Despite its flaws, The Marvels is a hoot, and the kind of good-time superpowered jawn that hopefully stirs up some belated word-of-mouth buzz.
It centres on Carol Danvers AKA Captain Marvel (Larson), Ms Marvel (Vellani) and the steadfastly un-nicknamed Monica Rambeau (Parris - but she's Photon right? Or Spectrum?), who find their powers entangled after a run-in with a wormhole phenomena created by alien warrior Dar-Benn. As they investigate further, they discover they're in a race against time to stop Dar-Benn repairing her damaged homeworld at the expense of numerous other worlds, including Earth.
The Marvels ain't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's fun, riding high on the interactions of its stars. If you haven't caught Disney+'s Ms Marvel series then you've been missing out on the bubbly delight that is Vellani, who brings her fan girl enthusiasm to all the best lines in the film. Combined with Larson and Parris, the trio make for a welcome delight.
Oddly, the film's villain is disappointing despite coming from the wonderful moral grey zone Marvel does so well. Like so many other MCU Big Bad, Dar-Benn believes what she is doing is the right thing (see also Namor, the High Evolutionary, Thanos etc...) and is compelling from that angle, but is sadly unmemorable and lacking in charisma, despite Ashton's best efforts.
The action is great, with the "entanglement" of the three Marvels' powers making for some neat CG trickery. The sillier moments are also excellent; better than the emotional beats. The cat-like flerkens are given a hilarious role while a wacky Bollywood-style dance number in the middle is nice, but the relationship between Danvers and Rambeau feels forced.
The combination of it all is unwieldy at times, but by-and-large The Marvels works. It's disappointing this film will be written off as an MCU flop because its superior to plenty of other entries in the franchise that fared better at the box office.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on November 2, 2023.
(M) ★★★½
Director: Martin Scorsese.
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Scott Shepherd, Everett Waller, Talee Redcorn, Yancey Red Corn, Tatanka Means, Tommy Schultz, Sturgill Simpson, Pete Yorn.
"Son, can you direct me to the nearest apothecary?"
Yep, it's long. Like really bloody long. Not quite as long as Scorsese's previous film The Irishman, but that was on Netflix so I could pause it when I needed to go to the toilet. You can't pause a cinema #bringbacktheintermission.
But it's good. Like really bloody good. Scorsese's knack for rich, nuanced storytelling that grows in the darker mud of humanity is unrivalled, and it's in full bloom here. Horrible people doing horrible things for horrible reasons, with the tempo dragging out the tension as we hope for comeuppances - yep, this is what Scorsese does well.
Based on David Grann's acclaimed non-fiction book of the same name, Killers Of The Flower Moon stars DiCaprio as Ernest Buckhart, a somewhat dim-witted returning WWI veteran who ends up at the ranch of his uncle Bill Hale (De Niro) in Fairfax, Oklahoma. The region is rich with oil, all owned by the Native Americans of Osage County, making for a bizarre situation where the Native Americans have all the wealth, but are still treated like second-class citizens.
Ernest falls in love with Mollie Kyle (Gladstone), playing into the hands of his uncle, who aims to take over her family's oil rights by whatever means necessary.
With solid performances all round, a fascinating story, and beautiful cinematography, this is a fine film, as you would come to expect from Scorsese, who hasn't made a bad film since the '90s. Ernest Buckhart is a largely unlikeable doofus committing unseemly crimes, but following him around as it all slowly comes apart is oddly enjoyable, even funny at times, despite the killing and depravity.
But the problem really is the length and the pacing. The first two hours, while fascinating, are slow. It is beautiful and haunting at times, punctuated with increasing outbursts of violence, but it takes a long time to get where it's going, and it's really hard to shake the feeling it could have been shorter without sacrificing the beauty and the elegiac nature.
Scorsese shows his typical reverence for his material and his subjects, particularly the Native Americans, their rituals, and their plight. He has collected a fine cast, his old friend, the dearly departed Robbie Robertson, delivers a haunting final score, and while the postscript of the film is odd, it demonstrates Scorsese's passion..
A long film is only bad when it feels long, and across its first two acts, Killers Of The Flower Moon feels long. But it's still a worthwhile journey, despite it taking a bloody long time to get where it's going.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on October 19, 2023.
(M) ★★★★
Director: Fisher Stevens.
"And then I kicked another goal. And after that, I kicked another goal...."
I know this sounds stupid, but the main thing I learnt from this four-part Netflix doco series was how great of a player David Beckham was. I honestly had no idea. I've only ever had a passing interest in soccer, mainly when the Socceroos or Matildas are in the World Cup.
Beckham, to me, was a soccer player with a huge profile. He was tabloid fodder. He was married to a Spice Girl. He was good-looking enough to be an occasional model. I figured he must have been a half-decent player, but it never occurred to me he was one of the all-time greats.
So from that angle, this doco is fascinating. His rollercoaster career - the highs are remarkable and the lows even more stunning - makes for incredible and surprisingly emotional viewing. When you throw the off-the-pitch stuff into the mix - his romance with Victoria Beckham, the relentless paparazzi, his topsy-turvy relationship with the public - it makes for a heady combination of glamour and glory.
It would be hard to mess up this treasure trove of content and thankfully Stevens' doesn't. His unrivalled access and all-star cast of talking heads really sell it, capped off by some canny editing by Michael Harte. The deeply personal nature of it all is amplified by moments where interviewees look seemingly right down the barrel to watch replays of football matches, capturing their reactions in intimate detail.
This intimacy is evident in the level of control Posh & Becks have over it all. They're using the doco series as therapy - Victoria Beckham admits as much towards the end - but they brush past some things and lean into other moments. The affair allegations get a mention, but its brief and the "other woman" Rebecca Loos is never named, let alone interviewed. The whole thing is only as intimate as the Beckhams will allow, and while it's remarkably candid, it's still somewhat stage-managed.
But it's ultimately fascinating, not just as a summation of a remarkable football career, but as a study of tabloid media gone wild. Part-therapy and part-brand reclamation on the part of its subjects, it's nonetheless a riveting insight into a pop culture phenomenon and an intriguing study of sporting prowess.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on October 5, 2023.
(MA15+) ★★★½
Director: Elizabeth Banks
Cast: Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ray Liotta, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Brooklynn Prince, Christian Convery, Aaron Holliday, Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Ayoola Smart.
Cocaine Bear's brother Weed Bear preferred to sleep.
Cocaine Bear is a great bad idea, the kind that happens at 3am after too many edibles, and then you wake up two days later and find you've written a script in a fever dream you don't remember, and the script is Cocaine Bear, and it's not bad, and then you polish it up and it's actually really good, and somehow Elizabeth Banks ends up directing it and you're like "holy shit, Elizabeth Banks, she was great in those Pitch Perfect films and The Hunger Games, and she directed Pitch Perfect 2, which was pretty good, although she was also in and directed part of Movie 43, which is one of the worst movies ever so there's that", but she does a great job directing this film based super loosely on the real life bear that died after eating 34kgs of cocaine that was thrown out of a plane in 1985 and when I say loosely I mean very very loosely, because, like, no one knows anything about what the real Cocaine Bear did before it died though its a pretty safe bet that it talked incessantly at a party and was super annoying and didn't sleep for 36 hours but this movie imagines the bear as a psycho killer, running through the woods of Georgia off its guts on charlie, attacking everyone it comes across, but what's really wild about this movie is that its actually really good, like the script is actually really good because this is basically a B movie right, except it's really well acted and the script gives a few of the characters half-decent arcs so we care about them in between the cavalcade of face-ripping and disembowelling wrought by Ol' Queen Cocaine Bear herself because did I mention this is hella-gory, like you see dudes get their guts ripped out and their heads blown off and someone does a pretty brutal slide along a road and it's messed up and all looks super-convincing, like, even the bear looks pretty good at times, great work Weta, but somehow the film is hilarious and I guess that comes back to that solid script again, which just works, like, it sets a great tone that says "yes, this is batshit crazy, we know its batshit crazy, but sometimes batshit crazy can be good, like, hear me out, what if we treat this shit serious and shit, but, you know, the whole time it's about a bear that's ripped off its tits on candy" and that's what I love about it, because it's really funny and really brutal but it's damned entertaining and it is some high-quality B movie stuff, and holy shit you've gotta see the trailer, here, here, I'll show you, no, right now, here watch this, watch this...
...right, like, they got a surprisingly rad cast for it, see, like Keri Russell, remember her from Felicity, but she's been in heaps of stuff since then and she's really good as a mum protecting her daughter and it's like a metaphor for a Mama Bear protecting her cubs, and Ice Cube's son is in it and he played Ice Cube in Straight Outta Compton (isn't that wild?), and his name's O'Shea Jackson Jr, in real life I mean, not in this movie, in this movie he's called Daveed, and Alden Ehrenreich is in it too and he was Han Solo in that Solo spin-off movie and damn that was great and I wish they would make a sequel, oh yeah, and he's in this and he's really good, oh and this is one of Ray Liotta's last movies so there's that, but anyway, this is how you do a B movie properly, 'cos what you do is you lean into the insanity but treat it seriously like 'holy shit that bear just ripped that dude's head off' but the characters are as freaked out as you, and yeah it's kinda dumb in places, but I was surprised by how good it was, so, yeah, there's that.
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Frank Oz, Peter Mayhew, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker.
"Join me... and together we'll watch every episode of Clone Wars."
Why is The Empire Strikes Back considered the best of the Star Wars films?
Movieweb says it has the best lightsaber duel of the series (really?), and points to the budding romance, the plot, the character development, and the plot twist. The Nerdstash cites the expansion of the universe, the score, the storyline juggling, the quotable dialogue, Darth Vader at his most menacing, the darkness, that ending, the romance and the character development. Reel Rundown mentioned all this, the pacing and more.
All this is true (except for the bit about the best lightsaber duel), but there's one thing that doesn't get highlighted enough in the discussion around Empire: emotion.
The late great Roger Ebert hit on it in 1997 when he noted that it's "because of the emotions stirred in Empire that the entire series takes on a mythic quality that resonates back to the first and ahead to the third".
There are a couple of key emotional moments I noticed during my squillionth watching of Empire recently. I was watching it with my seven-year-old, who was on his second viewing, which helped me have fresh eyes on it, highlighting the difference between Empire and A New Hope. They're just little things, but given the billions of words that have been written about Empire over the years, they struck me as underappreciated yet significant things that haven't been written about enough.
Firstly, let's talk about the emotional impact of... Chewbacca. Check out this moment.
If that video doesn't work or gets deleted due to a copyright claim some day, I'm trying to show you the moment when the Rebel commanders on Hoth decide they have to close the shield doors for the night, despite Han and Luke still being lost out there in the icy dusk. As the doors close with a thunderous "doooom", Chewie howls like a dog on a full moon. It's primal, yet it's heartfelt. Chewie cares so much about Han, he howls, as if in pain. And in turn, we care. Take Chewie out of that scene and it has a scintilla of the emotional impact it would otherwise have.
Generally speaking, Empire gives Chewbacca a lot more depth. It's only little things - a surprise hug for Luke on Hoth, Chewie's concern and frustration at finding and then repairing a disassembled C-3PO on Cloud City, his efforts to take on Vader and his stormtroopers to save Han from being put in carbonite - but it speaks volumes. Chewie is a more well rounded character, and suddenly the world he inhabits feels richer, as do the relationships between everyone.
(I was going to gripe about the bit in The Force Awakens when Leia consoles Rey instead of Chewie after what happens to Han, but I'm going to internalise the rage and move on.)
Those emotions are even better illustrated by the white-hot sexual tension between Han and Leia in Empire. From her unwittingly incestuous kiss with Luke intended to inflame Han's jealousy, through to Han's "I know" retort to Leia's declaration of love, it's one of the most rewarding arcs of the movie. And that's saying something.
But when you get down to it, the other big key arc is all about emotion. The whole "No. I am your father" reveal, even before the prequels and sequels and all the rest existed, threw a new emotional light over the entirety of what had come before in Empire. The film instantly flips from being about a supervillain hunting down the kid who blew up his doomsday device and becomes a haunting tale of a father who reveals his true identity to his son in the hopes he will join the family business (except the family business is ruling the galaxy). The emotion of Empire peaks right as the film flips, revealing layers of heart, complexity, pathos, and inter-relationships we didn't even know existed until that point.
It might seem like a little thing, but it speaks to the differences between A New Hope and Empire. The former is intent on mythmaking and creating a kind of highly entertaining space opera never seen before in its time. The latter does that, but at a level of emotional intensity the first film could only dream of.
Obviously the latter cannot exist without the former, and Empire has the benefit of standing on the shoulders of its giant predecessor. But whereas A New Hope's greatest triumphs are in its storytelling, its groundbreaking special FX, and its remarkable legacy, Empire has all that and one extra key ingredient - emotion.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on September 21, 2023.
(M) ★★★½
Director: Kenneth Branagh.
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarcio, Michelle Yeoh.
At any moment, someone was going to start either the Time Warp or the Macarena.
Kenneth Branagh is something of an enigma as a director. Even when he was known primarily as a Shakespearean adapter, he would bounce from one seemingly unconnected film to the next, shirking the idea of a style or particular approach so as to remain invisible as a director. Nothing has changed as his career has progressed. Sometimes he shifted gears with a disconcerting clunk that left the engine lying on the road, other times he took the wheel of a film like a Formula 1 driver - for every failure (Artemis Fowl, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), there has been an incredible, perhaps unpredictable success (Thor, Cinderella, Belfast).
Now it seems, instead of diving back into The Bard between these varied projects, he picks up an Agatha Christie tome. A Haunting In Venice completes his trilogy of directing and starring in Christie adaptions, and while it may seem like Branagh is on familiar terrain again, this is unlike any of his previous Poirot outings, or indeed anything in his back catalogue.
Taking place on a stormy night in a Venetian palazzo, 11 people have gathered for a séance. But before the night is out, the number of ghosts in the building will increase thanks to a murderous guest among the party. And it's up to the famed Belgian detective to emerge from retirement and save the day.
Unlike Branagh's past Poirot films Murder On The Orient Expressand Death On The Nile, A Haunting In Venice deviates dramatically from its source. Ostensibly taken from Christie's 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party, the film bears little resemblance to the book, yet has all the trademark plotting of Agatha Christie, aped to perfection by screenwriter Michael Green, who did a fine job on ...Orient Express and ...Nile.
But where the story feels like its predecessors, the look and style of the film do not. Branagh leans into the ghostly elements to summon a psychological thriller that's a world away from the train- and boat-bound whodunnits of before. This is a classic horror, filled with Dutch angles and brooding darkness. It's more unsettling than scary though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Branagh overdoes it a bit though. There are long stretches where every shot is framed oddly or tilted or characters are a little too close to the lens. Yes, it's unnerving, but the effect becomes tiresome as opposed to cumulative. This repetition adds to the bizarre sensation that the film is longer than his previous Poirot outings, when in fact it is the shortest of the trilogy.
Thankfully the mystery is a good one, that unravels with care, even though the effects of the storm that keeps everyone confined to the palazzo for the night are barely invisible the day after. Coupled with the pacing, these are the only real downsides.
Once again, Branagh has assembled a cracking cast, led by himself as the magnetic but increasingly broken Poirot. The pick of the bunch are Yeoh as a medium who may or may not be the real deal, Dornan as a doctor with PTSD, Fey as a long-time writer friend of Poirot's, Reilly as a grieving opera singer, and the precocious Hill as a disturbingly grown-up child.
It's doubtful Branagh's Poirot trilogy will be remembered in years to come with the same passion as, say, Rian Johnson's similarly arranged Knives Out films, primarily because they don't crackle with the same energy or eccentricity. But they are fun diversions no less, and though A Haunting In Venice is more grim than grin, it's a well made throwback to a time when whodunnits could also make the hairs on the back of our necks stand up.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on August 24, 2023.
(PG) ★★★★
Director: Anthony Stacchi.
Cast: (voices of) Jimmy O. Yang, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Bowen Yang, Jo Koy, Nan Li, Stephanie Hsu, BD Wong, Ron Yuan, Hoon Lee, Andrew Pang, Andrew Kishino, Jodi Long, James Sie, Dee Bradley Baker.
Sticks were in, broomsticks were so passe.
The 16th century Chinese folklore story known as Journey To The West is perhaps one of the most adapted tales of all time. Dozens and dozens of live action and animated versions exist across both the big and small screens. And with its 100 chapters, there is plenty of fodder in Journey To The West to fill dozens more adaptations in the centuries to come.
This glossy, high-energy Netflix CG animation is the latest, but it's one of the most accessible. Pacey and punchy, it's a short, sharp introduction to the titular character that has just enough depth and characterisation to temper its ferociously fast action sequences and to ensure all ages are thoroughly entertained.
The film is essentially the origin story of the Monkey King, or the first seven or so chapters of Journey To The West. It follows the hero from his birth out of a meteorite to his quest for immortality. Along the way he steals a magical stick (Li) that becomes his weapon of choice, and reluctantly teams up with a young peasant girl named Lin (Hoang-Rappaport).
To call The Monkey King frenetic is an understatement, but there is a level of control and visibility to its rapid-fire storytelling and fight scenes that is very welcome. It knows when to take a breath and squeeze a character moment in among the scattergun gags and hyperactivity, and it knows how to make a set-piece easy-to-follow despite moving at a million miles an hour.
Stacchi, whose background is in special effects and storyboarding, brings so much verve and energy to the film. There are some interesting flourishes of individuality - a montage of Monkey King taking on 99 demons is shown in a flashy paintbrush style, Stick's voice is Mongolian throat singing, and there are some choice heavy metal originals in the soundtrack. These elements help make the tropier bits of the storytelling feel refreshing, surprisingly fun, and super awesome.
The Asian-American voice cast is excellent, with Yang channelling Chris Rock as the star of the show, Hoang-Rappaport brings the heart as Lin, and the iconic BD Wong showing up as Buddha. The characters are memorable and some of them feel a bit different to what we might see in a normal kids film - Monkey King's arrogance and egomania is certainly unique.
It's great fun, though it feels a little slight overall and a bit weak thematically. But that doesn't stop it being perfect for all ages, and a great introduction into one of the greatest Chinese stories of all time.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on August 10, 2023.
(M) ★★
Director: Scott Waugh.
Cast: Jackie Chan, John Cena, Pilou Asbaek, Ma Chunrui, Amadeus Serafini, Tim Man.
"Wait - who's leading this dance?"
For a film that went through half a dozen name changes and sat on the shelf for half a decade, Hidden Strike is nowhere near as bad as you would expect.
Yes, it's largely rubbish, and it's only saved from being absolute rubbish by the sheer force of will of Jackie Chan and John Cena, but I have seen far worse films that didn't sit in the can for five years before finding a distributor.
The irrelevantly titled film centres on Dragon Luo (Chan) and Chris Van Horne (Cena), two ex-military men on opposing sides of a tense hostage situation. Dragon and his security team are tasked with rescuing a group of Chinese nationals trapped in an oil refinery, while Chris gets sucked into "one last mission" by his brother, who is part of a gang hired to kidnap some of the Chinese nationals.
But when Chris realises his brother is working for the bad guys, he teams reluctantly with Dragon to get the hostages back.
Aside from the truly horrendous CGI in places, the biggest problem with Hidden Strike is that Chan and Cena are too funny and wacky to be convincing as ex-special forces no-nonsense military types. This is either a casting problem (you got the wrong actors), a screenwriting problem (you haven't tailored the script to the big-name actors that have signed on), or a directorial problem (you've told your stars to be loveable goofballs half the time, and hard-arse soldiers of fortune the other half of the time). But let's face it - people are watching this because Chan and Cena are in it, and when they're being a goofy buddy-film duo, the film is enjoyable. So the script or direction should have changed to make this sit better.
Because without Chan and Cena, this is unwatchable. The story is a so-so mess about an oil heist, with the trailer hinting at a not-too-distant future that isn't evident in the film at all. There's a partial desire to belatedly cash-in on the success of Mad Max: Fury Road - and some of those parts are cool - but largely it's a shiftless mess of '80s action clichés, bad direction, terrible CGI and a weirdly oversaturated colour palette.
Cena and Chan vibe well, and Chan still has 80 per cent of his moves (despite being 64 years old at the time of shooting). As someone who has watched a shitload of Jackie Chan films over the years, I'm very aware that you watch his movies for the stunts, not the story, and if one of his films just so happened to have a strong script it was a bonus. With all that in mind, this is C-grade Chan - nowhere near the best stuff in terms of stunts and scripts, but also not the worst.
There's been an effort made here to make things memorable. Parts of the plot, some characters, a handful of action sequences and that horrendous soft-focus blueish-orangeness that tints everything actually stick out in the memory (for better or worse), but none of those elements are enough to make this good, let alone great.
In summary: hopefully Netflix didn't pay too much for Hidden Strike, but there are bound to be far worse films on the service.
Weird piece of trivia - the man who directed The Godfather and Apocalypse Now also directed Jack, in which Robin Williams plays a 10-year-old trapped in the body of a 40-year-old. The latter is rated 17 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
"From the director of Apocalypse Now..."
Francis Ford Coppola is responsibly for some of the greatest films of all time. His late-career fade-out is also unmatched, but it inspired what is one of my favourite pieces of film criticism of all time. It's by Jim Schembri, a critic I once admired, and its meta-mix of review, in-joke and analysis is something I've thought about for over two decades.
I couldn't find it anywhere online, but being the hoarder that I am, I kept the centrespread from The Age's EG liftout, circa November 9, 2001, and reproduce it here for educational purposes.
***
Every man has a breaking point
JIM SCHEMBRI risks life and limb in search of the truth
A line of palm trees erupts in flame. Helicopters pass back and forth in slow- motion to the sombre chords of The End by the Doors as the camera slowly pans across the burning foliage.
These are the unforgettable opening images of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, the definitive film about the Vietnam conflict and one of the most powerful films about the nature of warfare.
Released in 1979, and for which Coppola risked his house and his sanity, Apocalypse Now has endured as a work of cinematic brilliance that seems ever more fresh with each viewing.
Now, after 22 years of legend-building, Coppola has delivered Apocalypse Now Redux, his greatly extended version of the film. The original ran 153 minutes. The new one, sporting 49 minutes of new footage, runs 202. It's a mess. A sad mess.
To devotees of the film, and of Coppola, it's an utterly confounding mess.
We know Coppola's been off the boil for more than a decade, but was that any reason to mangle his own masterpiece?
Why did Coppola do this? What happened to that great career? Can we, and should we, forgive him?
With my mind abuzz with thoughts of Coppola. I find myself drifting into an altered state of consciousness, sucked into the images and dialogue of Apocalypse Now. I must embark on my own journey to review his career, to analyse Redux and, ultimately, to locate and confront Coppola, who sits in a ramshackle bamboo hut at the end of a long, winding river...
I must find him... to ask questions... to seek answers...
Saigon. Shit.
I'm still only in Saigon.
The walls of this room are closing in on me. In my mind I'm trying to defend the new version of Apocalypse Now, trying to convince myself Coppola has improved on his brilliant original. But the more I do, the closer the walls get and the louder the terrible truth becomes. And the truth is this: watching Redux is like watching Leonardo da Vinci go back to the Mona Lisa and retouching it with crayon.
I must find out why.
—
On a small patrol boat, I chug up-river to confront Coppola. I wonder how it is that one of the greatest movies of all time - one the American Film Institute ranked 28 in its top 100 American films - should find itself the victim of such an ill-conceived reworking by its creator. Could it be a simple grab for former glory? Knowing he now churns out mall-fodder, perhaps this is his way of reminding us of the heights he'd hit. But if he wanted to do that, surely he would grace us with Godfather IV. There's still that final chapter left to be told, the one hinted at in Godfather II, about the Corleone family exerting influence in the White House. Surely that's the swansong he deserves, not this exercise in padding.
The boat makes a turn in the river and I sit on the bow, setting off purple flares and throwing them into the jungle as I reflect on the 49 minutes Coppola's added.
The 1979 film, based on the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness, involves Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) travelling in a patrol boat up a river to locate and kill a renegade commander, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). There are memorable encounters with a gung-ho colonel (Robert Duvall) who loves the smell of napalm in the morning, a bridge under siege, a Playboy bunny concert and a sampan full of civilians whom the crew massacre by accident. But the heart of the film is the tension built by Willard's internal dialogue as he tries to understand the war he's in, and the man he's been told to kill.
In its original form, the film was exciting, lush, seductive, engrossing. Apocalypse Now Redux is simply too long and boring, losing all its tension due to all these new encounters for Willard and the crew.
Compounding this, Willard's now a lot more chummy with the boat's crew, robbing the journey of that delicious icy chasm between the grunts ("rock-and-rollers with one foot in their graves") and the aloof officer.
For about 40 minutes the film is untouched. Only after the classic helicopter attack on the Vietcong village does the first new bit trickle in.
Colonel Kilgore, standing on the beach he's so keen to surf, ushers a Vietnamese mother and child on to his personal helicopter for medical attention. This, after his helicopters have strafed her village. It highlights the contradiction in Kilgore, the conflicting warrior impulse to kill and to save. It turns out to be the only new scene in Redux that's worthwhile.
What follows is a knockabout comedy sequence about Kilgore's surfboard, which Willard steals with the help of the other men on the boat, Chief (Albert Hall), Clean (Laurence Fishburne), Lance (Sam Bottoms) and Chef (Frederic Forrest). As the boat hides under trees on the banks of the river, Kilgore's choppers go in vain search of the board.
Like the other new scenes in Redux, it adds nothing good to the film and distorts its original shape, throwing off-balance moments that were beautifully poised. "Some day this war's going to end," was Kilgore's original, memorable exit line. Now it's lost in the jumble of misjudged comedy that follows.
The Playboy bunnies, who appeared only in the concert scene in the original, now feature in meaningless, fumbling trysts with the boat's crew when they stop at a run-down US medivac station. As objectified, unattainable sex symbols in the original, their fleeting, teasing appearance underscored the youth of the soldiers, many of whom may have been seeing a woman for the last time. By reducing them to easy lays, the original point is sacrificed for the unremarkable statement that these boys are horny. We really didn't need to see the girls again.
Easily the most contentious addition, however, is the French plantation sequence. This is where, shortly after Clean is killed, the boat encounters a group of French people who have been in the jungle for generations and who were fighting the Vietnamese for decades before the Americans got involved.
In Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the excellent 1991 documentary by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, on the tortured making of the film, Coppola is asked about the sequence. He says without reservation that he was unhappy with the entire segment because he didn't get the cast he wanted. We even see footage of him telling the cast the scene "no longer exists".
Now it's back, in its entirety. What are we to make of Coppola reinstating something he openly declared was mediocre? Are we supposed to disregard what he said and declare what a great bonus it is? Does Coppola think we all have amnesia?
The boat chugs on, snaking its way past an enclave of film critics who have gone native. One wades through the water holding a suitcase, trying to reach the boat, but I gun the engine and outrun him. Safe again, I steady the boat and increase speed as my desire to confront Coppola grows. I grab the folder stuffed full of press clippings, tear through the "TOP SECRET" seal and examine the contents.
The dossier on Francis Ford Coppola's career is the tale of a once-great artist in a tailspin. A genuine visionary who left indelible stamps on modern cinema in the 1970s, he appears to have lost both his nerve and his touch. Redux is a sad symptom of that decline.
At first glance it's hard to believe such a career could go so far off the rails. The man has enough major awards to support a king-size mattress and base, including a clutch of Oscars: best director, film and screenplay for Godfather II; best screenplay for The Godfather, best screenplay for Patton, et cetera et cetera. Among his larger triumphs are smaller works that reflected the level of his personal and artistic commitment. The Rain People (1969), a moving domestic drama about a housewife who goes on a road trip to sort out her life, began shooting without a finished screenplay. Coppola put his faith in his cast to complete his vision. The Conversation (1974), with Gene Hackman, about a paranoid surveillance expert, took Coppola years to make. It, too, went into production before the script was done. The result was a classic example of Coppola's artistic instincts paying off.
In the late 1960s, after showing promise with the flop musical Finian's Rainbow (1968), the comedy You're A Big Boy Now (1967) and the horror film Dementia 13 (1963, for Roger Corman), Coppola sensed the creative dangers of working in the Hollywood studio system and saw the need for his own independent studio, American Zoetrope.
The first two Godfather films earned him Oscars and millions, giving him the clout to get production started on Apocalypse Now, which had been simmering since the late 1960s. The film still stands as the quintessential expression of Coppola as visionary, the man who puts himself on the line for his art. As Hearts Of Darkness vividly documents, Coppola nearly went nuts making Apocalypse Now, for which he put up his own assets to cover the $16 million needed when the film ran over budget.
Then things went truly pear-shaped. With the legendary failure of One From the Heart (1982), Coppola overreached by a long shot. Attempting to make a musical comedy-romance with meaning, he recreated massively expensive Las Vegas settings in the studio.
The film was also meant to demonstrate Coppola's concept of "electronic cinema". This was where extensive pre-production, rehearsals on videotape and storing the screenplay on computer disk to allow for easy restructuring was meant to result in huge savings of time and money.
It backfired. The film's budget shot into the stratosphere - $25 million was a lot in 1982 - and its troubled production was regular news. In the end, Coppola produced a technically dazzling film, but one so dogged with well-publicised financial problems and bad reviews ("One of the worst movies I've ever seen," said Judy Stone, of the San Francisco Chronicle, "It's cold and mechanical... the heart is missing," wrote Pauline Kael, of The New Yorker) it bankrupted him and sank Zoetrope. Still, it showed he had balls.
By the time Coppola got to the overstylised juvenile-delinquent drama Rumblefish (1983) and the beautiful-looking, messily directed The Cotton Club (1984), he was still leaving his mark but was clearly beginning to slip. Gardens of Stone (1987), a drama set in a cemetery where the dead of the Vietnam War are buried, was the first Coppola film that didn't bear his fingerprints.
With Tucker: The Man and his Dream (1988), Coppola's fluid visual style and love of strong performances were back on track in his loving tribute to legendary car maker Preston Tucker. It was a box-office dog whistle.
Alas, Godfather III (1990) is the last known sighting of Coppola's unmistakable style.
The 1990s showcase Francis Ford Coppola the multiplex filler, not the artist and visionary of yore - Dracula (1992), John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997), the comedy Jack (1996), in which Robin Williams plays a 10-year-old boy. If you didn't see Coppola's name on the credits, you never would've dared guess they were his films.
In the dossier I find a host of reviews that concur.
After seeing Dracula, Christopher Sharrett of USA Today wrote: "The last nail in the coffin... for a director whose sagging career has been of much speculation and concern for more than a decade."
Gene Siskel of The Chicago Sun-Times. "Jack is anything but vintage Coppola. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to point to a single image that is distinctive.'
Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune said Jack was "... sunny, humane and high-spirited, done with real technical finesse. But from Francis Ford Coppola? It's like watching Rembrandt sit down to labor over an elaborate doodle for two hours".
As for The Cotton Club, The New York Times' Vincent Canby declared the film demonstrated "no special character, style or excitement".
It's depressing reading, and one by one I rip the reviews and drop them into the wash of the boat as we near Coppola's compound at the end of the river.
Then, as the sunlight glints off the river into my eyes, a thought strikes me.
We mourn when an artist dies before their time, before we feel they've given us their best. By that measure, surely we should at least be grateful that an artist in decline, sad as that is, has nonetheless graced us with their best work. They may now wallow in financially successful mediocrity (Jack, Dracula, Rainmaker were all money-makers), but we can still cherish the time when these artists risked all to give us their soul. So, as the boat enters the compound, I think perhaps we should forgive Coppola this indulgence with Redux, however misguided we believe it to be.
Before I have a chance to swing the boat around, however, his minions swarm aboard, tie me up and carry me off to meet him.
I'm taken into a hut and thrown down near a dark corner. It smells like slow death in here. I look around. Posters of his Oscar winners, once resplendent and glorious, now faded and cracked, peel off the walls. There are film canisters everywhere. The labels say they contain offcuts, deleted scenes and alternate takes from Coppola's greatest movies.
A dark thought passes through my mind. Is he going to "redux" those films, too? The six-hour Godfather? The four-hour Conversation?
There's heavy breathing in the dark corner of the hut. I strain to see a figure shrouded in the gloom. In the half-light I glimpse the outline of that trademark beard and glasses.
He looks at me. He knows what I think of Redux. He knows what I've been thinking about him, what everyone who loves him is thinking: that he's had it, is over the hill, past his prime. Finally, Coppola addresses me.
"Are you an assassin?" he asks in a low, guttural voice.
"I'm a journalist," is all I can say.
"You're neither," he says. "You're a film critic, sent by editors to collect a bill."
He eats a pistachio, swallows a bug, then continues.
"You saw Redux?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are my methods unsound?" he asks.
I think before I answer. "I don't see any method." I gulp. "It looks like self-inflicted vandalism."
"I once was a film maker who could walk along the edge of a straight razor," he says. "The thought of keeping that level of brilliance up all my life to please the likes of you, that is my dream. That is my nightmare.'
"I know what a nightmare is," I say. "I sat through Dracula twice."
He gestures to the guard, who takes me out of the hut and unties me. I'm free to leave. Back on the boat, as the warm tropical rain pelts down, I think. Should I call in the air strike and put him out of his misery?
Perhaps I'm being too demanding, too greedy. So much of film-making today is so bland and commercial, so governed by test screenings and accountants that we pine for the Coppola of old to return and turn things upside-down with his vision, his fortitude and his big, crazy ideas.
He was an auteur who stuck his dick in the wind. He set grand examples. The fact he no longer follows them isn't a crime. The crime is that the new crop of directors - who have the technology, the money, the studio support Coppola could only ever dream of - haven't followed his lead.
I turn the boat around and chug away. Coppola's given us his best. We shouldn't crucify him for downshifting into cruise mode.
I decide against calling in the air strike, at least for now. After all, he may still have one more left in him.
*A key source for this article was the unauthorised biography Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life, by Michael Schumacher (Bloomsbury).
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on July 27, 2023.
(PG) ★★★★
Director: Greta Gerwig.
Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Issa Rae, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Rhea Perlman, Helen Mirren.
"Why walk when you can blade, dude?"
As they say in the classics, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Mattel doesn't give a shit about what they say in the classics. It absolutely owns cake and eats cake here.
By that I mean Mattel has somehow managed to get its most iconic toy into a film that both praises and shreds said toy. The movie is an intelligent satire that deals with the very feminism Barbie undermines and the patriarchy the doll upholds, but it's also a daft goof, filled with dance battles and melodrama. It is a giant ad designed to sell toys, while also pointing out how inane and ridiculous it all is. It even lampoons Mattel itself as a gormless money-hungry corporation, while still celebrating the role it played in creating a cultural icon.
How is this possible? The answer is director/writer Greta Gerwig.
The story follows Stereotypical Barbie (Robbie), who lives one perfect day after another in Barbieland, until some un-Barbie-like thoughts begin to creep into her mind. Desperate to continue her idyllic life, she and her acquaintance Ken (Gosling) must travel to The Real World, where they both learn some brutal truths about how things really work.
The appointment of indie darling Gerwig (Lady Bird, Little Women) and her partner-in-crime Noah Baumbach to write Barbie seemed almost akin to asking Wes Anderson to direct a Fast & Furious movie, but it pays off in droves. Within whatever limits Mattel set, they've crafted a script that's a cutting examination of gender roles and societal expectations that's also filled with air-headed charm. The film gets how problematic Barbie has been, and how emblematic it is of deeper problems in society, and that drives the entire show. Gerwig has a limited yet still startling amount of freedom here, and she goes for broke. She's made a Barbie film that somehow appeals to the grown-up angry woman and the optimistic little girl she once was, all at the same time.
That Gerwig manages to balance the hard-hitting feminist themes with an airy, sparkly pinkness is no mean feat. The amazing production design certainly helps. It revels in the fakeness and has a ball apeing the OG toys. Barbieland is a marvel of set construction and dressing, while the wardrobe department has been working overtime. And it make The Real World look all the more drab by comparison, even though it's just, well, real.
None of this precarious juggling of tones would work without having a Barbie that can deal with both the earnest sentimentality and the ditzy goofiness. Thankfully Robbie is more than up to the task. She delivers an iconic performance in an iconic role, perfectly articulating the humour, naivety and emotion required.
Gosling is also in fine form in arguably the tougher role. Ken's place in the film is tricky to balance, and Gosling seems to thrive in making Ken unlikeable. There are no sympathetic male characters here - sorry guys - and Ken is one of the worst, maintaining a level of idiocy throughout that is hilarious, thanks in no small part to Gosling.
The other standout is Ferrera, who is a grounding presence the latter half of the film can revolve around as it almost spins off its axis. Her performance and her character ensure the final act doesn't go completely off the rails, which is helpful because it's the final act where the film struggles. As any gymnast will tell you, it's hard to stick the landing, and Barbie doesn't quite know how to get its slanted plastic feet on the ground. Act three drags on, putting the film in danger of outstaying its welcome.
Ferrell's presence, as Mattel's CEO, is also tricky to handle because he leans fully into the wackiness. This helps prevent the film from making Mattel anything other than bumbling plot drivers, as opposed to out-and-out villains. It's probably a fair assumption Mattel had a say in limiting the evilness of its own portrayal, because the company's role in the movie is key yet somehow feels tangential.
Barbie is funny and whip-smart. Could it hit hard and push further? Absolutely. But that ignores how remarkable it is that this film got made - they made a Barbie movie for grown-ups about feminism and the patriarchy. Let that sink in for a moment. Absolutely no one had that on their bingo card five or ten years ago.
I've seen five of the previous six Mission: Impossible films, and I'm damned if I can remember a single plot element from any of them. All anyone can recall is Tom Cruise's increasingly bonkers stunts, right? As mentioned in my review for M:I - Fallout, the films tend to become known as The One Where Tom Cruise Climbs The Burj Khalifa or The One Where Tom Cruise Hangs On To A Plane During Takeoff etc.
With that in mind, this Mission has one of the better and more memorable plots of the bunch, though it's still highly likely we'll all come to refer to it as The One Where Tom Cruise Rides A Motorbike Off A Cliff.
The plot, for what it's worth, involves a rogue AI called The Entity. Every world government wants to catch it and harness it, but Ethan Hunt (Cruise) knows it can't be contained, and wants to destroy it.
Much like a Bond film, M:I movies are about a couple of key things - the villain and the stunts. If those are top notch, which they typically are, then we start to make sure the plot makes sense, the performances are good, and the movie doesn't outstay its welcome or make any dramatic mis-steps. The formula is established, so usually it's about following the recipe, and maybe adding some extra flavours along the way.
Dead Reckoning Part One ticks every M:I box, often with flair. It's the best one since the original, waaaay back in 1996, blending a strong plot, a solid couple of villains, and some of the best stunts the series has seen. Tom Cruise rides a motorbike of a fucking cliff, for chrissake, but the final sequence involving a runaway train is fantastic.
It's the side players that have been the series' strong suit of late. Rhames and Pegg are always handy to have in your pocket, while Atwell is a stellar addition. Ferguson, sadly, feels underused, having been one of the best things about the past couple of films.
And Cruise, well, he just keeps on cruising. He could do this stuff in his sleep, even at age 60, and obviously ramps up the stunts with each new film to give himself a reason to get up out of the giant bed made of money that he probably sleeps on every night. Ethan Hunt is the apex hero in action cinema - he has no weaknesses beyond his own morality and forthright desire to do good, no matter the cost. He's flawless, which should be boring. Hunt goes against the rules of screenwriting, because he's almost a Marty Stu. The only thing that saves him from this is he sometimes fails, though usually through no fault of his own. In Dead Reckoning Part One, he even saves the day by accident in one incredibly memorable moment that I'm pretty sure some people will hate, but I think is fantastic and hilarious.
The point is that Hunt shouldn't be such a drawcard but he is, and its all due to Cruise. We buy into these films largely because we know it really is Cruise hanging on the side of an airplane or riding a motorbike off a cliff. It's not even about the character anymore. It's about Cruise doing crazy shit.
M:I is so ingrained in its formula now that they can make jokes about it. "He always goes rogue," notes one character, referring to Ethan Hunt. Yes, he does, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
triple j airs its Hottest 100 of Like A Versions this weekend. The segment, now 20-ish years old, has brought in a hugely talented array of artists to create more than 850 covers over the years. Some have been incredible, some have been, well, this one feels like satire (seriously, it's a joke, right?).
But what makes a good cover? Let's explore that question while we try to figure out who's going to win this weekend's countdown.
As with previous Hottest 100s, I've looked at a range of factors to explore the likely contenders. This one's a bit different though. Social media vote aggregator 100 Warm Tunas is still a thing, but there seems to be fewer votes ie. less data for it to work with, which means it could be less accurate than usual. ARIA chart appearances are basically non-existent, but appearances in previous countdowns is definitely a thing. It seems like YouTube plays could be key element, and who knows whether the bookies will get it right this time.
All in all, this might be a tough one to predict. But read on....
Note: All stats and odds correct at time of writing.
Also note: I'm using Sportsbet's odds as an indicator, not an endorsement. Remember: you win some, you lose more. What are you really gambling with? Chances are, you're about to lose. What's gambling really costing you? Imagine what you could be buying instead. Don't be a deadshit. Etc, etc.
Also also note: You can listen to the countdown this Saturday (July 15) from midday (AEST) on triple j and Double J.
Why it will win: Stripping Cher's blockbuster of its autotune and dancefloor excesses, DMA's found a startling ballad at the song's heart. The surprise was part of the cover's appeal, along with the nostalgia for the original. Take note of that last point - most of the favourites to poll well are older tunes pre-2005, brimming with nostalgia, with a notable exception being The Wiggles' LAV, in which the nostalgia lies with the band, not the cover. Warm Tunas has this as a strong favourite, and it's only been wrong twice since it began in 2016. The bookies like it too.
Why it won't win: This only placed #6 in its original countdown - two other LAVs have polled higher. And it's so hyped that maybe there will be a strong cohort of voters pushing against it. Probably not, but you never know.
Why it will win: With a tight band around him, Denzel Curry ramped up the not-so-secret ingredient in Rage Against The Machine's music - the anger - for this ball-tearing cover. Sounding more ferocious than even Zack de la Rocha, Curry's spits his own rhymes (from his track Sirens) in place of Tom Morello's guitar solo and in the process set a then-record for the highest placed LAV in a Hottest 100. If any song if going to top Believe, it's this faithfully furious diatribe against the American military industrial complex.
Why it won't win: Warm Tunas and Sportsbet have this as a very clear second. It really does seem like it's DMA's' countdown to lose, and maybe there are people out there that still don't like rap and/or Rage Against The Machine and who didn't vote for this but those people are weird and you shouldn't be friends with them.
Why it will win: This symphonic cover of Blood has grown in stature alongside the ever-rising star of Gang Of Youths. Originally by defunct-before-their-time Aussie indie folk band The Middle East, Gang Of Youths made it sound like a Gang Of Youths song, without losing any of the passion in the original. In fact, with their string section and Dave Le'aupepe's magnetic presence, they turn that passion up to 11. Gang Of Youths have had six songs in the top 10 of the Hottest 100 since 2017 - they're in fine form for these countdowns.
Why it won't win: There are 13 LAVs that finished in a higher position in a Hottest 100 countdown than this one. The bookies don't rate it much either, and YouTube plays are less than half of those for Believe and Bulls On Parade. Plus, The Middle East's original version is much loved and incredible, don't get me wrong, but it's not as universal as many of the other tunes on this shortlist. Yes, it reached #64 in the Hottest 100 of 2009 and has 59 million plays on Spotify, but, for example, Bulls On Parade has 359 million, Cher's Believe has 491 million, and even The Divinyls' I Touch Myself has 79 million.
Why it will win: We're getting deeper and deeper into hypothetical territory here but let's assume for a moment that DMA's' Believe isn't an unbackable favourite and turn our attention to this cheery-yet-straight-faced rendition of The Divinyls' beloved ode to self love. Lime Cordiale give the song a Lime Cordiale flavour, but it's not a million miles from the original - it's an inspired choice for the band because it suits their winking (yes, winking) sunshiny pop sound down to the ground. In terms of previous Hottest 100 placings for LAVs, this is in the top five, and Sportsbet has good odds on this being a top three finish, despite it only being fifth favourite. And keep in mind, Lime Cordiale have a remarkable 16 Hottest 100 entries in the past five countdowns, including eight top 20 finishes. This could be a dark horse.
Why it won't win: Those YouTube view numbers are well below the previously mentioned covers, and the bookies like this as second or third, but not first. Warm Tunas has this clumped in with a big pile of songs that appear on between 14 and 12 per cent of lists. None of this bodes well for this wonderfully cheeky LAV climaxing at #1.
Why it will win: Here it is: the only LAV to ever win a Hottest 100. One of my friends summed up its 2021 victory as exactly what we needed to cap off a shitty year of pandemic-induced depression. It was a win for hope, fun and positive vibes; a warm blanket of nostalgia created by the band that evoked a million childhoods, playing a classic tune (#7 in 2012) by one of the most popular Aussie acts of the past 15 years. It was a match made in heaven. It was the LAV we never knew we needed.
Why it won't win: It was a time and a place, and there's a deep feeling that the novelty of this has worn off somewhat. It will still hit a slice of voters in the feels, but if Warm Tunas is anything to go by, this medley of Elephant and Fruit Salad is slightly past its use-by date.
Why it will win: Ok, so today I discovered that the bass player on the original version of this song by soft rockers Player was Ronn Moss, aka Ridge from long-running US soap opera The Bold & The Beautiful. Mind blown. That aside, this beautiful piece of yacht rock suited Ocean Alley down to the ground, who rendered it in faithfully smooth tones. This is the fourth highest finishing LAV of all time, and it's popularity on YouTube rivals Gang Of Youths' LAV. Ocean Alley have a Hottest 100 victory under their belts, winning in the year they recorded this cover. Who knows - maybe with Confidence out of the running it could pave the way for this cover from the long-haired band from the Northern Beaches.
Why it won't win: A very popular cover, and will do well, but not well enough. Warm Tunas has it outside the top 10, and the bookies have it outside the top five. The original dates back to 1977 - is it that too far back for the (mostly) young voters of triple j?
Why it will win: There's something bloody magical about this cover. The switch from banjo to bass. Yirrŋa Yunupiŋu singing in language. The direct power of the adapted melody. The absolute epic beauty of it all. It probably shouldn't work but it does, and that's the awesome thing about it. Leaving all the numbers and data and evidence aside, King Stingray's version of Coldplay's breakthrough anthem Yellow hits people in the feels. There are others likely to poll high in the countdown that similarly tug at the heartstrings - Sarah Blasko's Life On Mars? and Regina Spektor's Real Love to name but two - but for true overwhelming emotion, this is the one.
Why it won't win: Numbers are cold. They don't care about your feelings. They don't care that this song makes you fucking cry. They don't care that this is a beautiful moment of worlds coming together. They don't care that this is a rare instance of harmonious unity between the oldest continuous living culture on Earth and the culture that sought to wipe it out. Number don't care.
Fuck numbers.
Dumb Things - A.B. Original ft Paul Kelly & Dan Sultan (2016)
Why it will win: It's kinda cheating to get the original artist to join you on your cover, right? Or is it a secret weapon. Briggs and Trials (aka A.B. Original) got the great man himself Paul Kelly to lay down the choruses while they slay the nation, taking PK's bar-room favourite to new polemic heights. Much like Denzel Curry on Bulls On Parade, or The Herd on I Was Only 19, this LAV shows how rap is an instrument, both musical and of social justice.
Why it won't win: There's a solid top 10 finish ahead for Dumb Things, but it would be an unexpected, but not undeserved, win if it made it to #1.
Why it will win: Alex Lahey and her band (hey, there's G Flip!) play it straight down the line for her rendition of the great emo anthem, taking My Chemical Romance's original and covering it like they love the absolute shit out of it. They ape every bell, whistle and groove change with a punk-rock adoration, nailing a highwire performance that feels like it could fall off at any point but never does. Warm Tunas has this as part of a clump of songs appearing in 14 per cent of votes, which puts it within striking distance of fourth place, but I know what a huge sentimental favourite this is for people, and surely that counts for something right?
Why it won't win: The numbers aren't great on this. In fact it's only the 31st highest finishing LAV of all time, though it was the third highest in its year (behind Lime Cordiale and Denzel Curry - what a year for LAV). There's a helluva lot of love for this one, but not enough to get it across the line for #1.
Why it will win: The bookies rate this highly - even higher than Blood and I Touch Myself. Warm Tunas puts in the top five, ahead of Yellow and Welcome To The Black Parade. It's 10 years old and a lot of people still love it. But perhaps the biggest thing working in the favour of this mashup is that it's a surreptitious way to vote for four covers in one, with references to half a dozen other songs thrown into boot. Featuring Frenzal Rhomb's Lindsay MacDougal on guitar, Kira Puru on vocals, and the same cellist from Gang Of Youths' Blood LAV (Hanna Oblikov, for those who are wondering), it's an all-star celebration of Aussie music that's hard to ignore.
Why it won't win: This is a dark horse, but the medley nature that appeals to a lot of people probably turns off just as many who want to just hear a song, not a mashup, goddammit.
Other songs to watch out for (with original Hottest 100 placing in brackets):
I Was Only 19 - The Herd, 2005 (18)
(Lover) You Don't Treat Me No Good - Chet Faker, 2014 (21)
Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? - Dune Rats, 2022 (23)
Indiana Jones is no more. Or at least so says Harrison Ford and Kathleen Kennedy. Or at least so they say for now. Things may change. Some day, Chris Pratt or someone else will pull on the battered fedora and I'll go and watch the film they make, grumbling all the while before writing a begrudgingly positive review. Probably.
But until that sadly inevitable day arrives, let's mark the end of one of cinema's greatest franchises with a celebratory list. Of course, you know how this list is going to go, but I'm going to write it down anyway.
1. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Every single thing in this film is iconic. The costume, the score, the set pieces, the stunts, the script, the cinematography, the performances, the Harrison Ford. It's hard to fault this unsurpassed highwater for adventure films. Much like how George Lucas took his love of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and turned it into something new and mindblowing with Star Wars, Lucas and his buddy Steven Spielberg reinvented the pulpy jungle-adventure B movies of the '40s and '50s to make the perfect action movie. Everything works. It's a rollercoaster of perfection, barrelling from one incredible moment to the next. Ford's Jones is a very human hero whose tenacity, ingenuity and dumb luck pulls him out of one scrape after another, and it's a goddamn joy to watch.
2. Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
The Indiana Jones films are not renowned for their thematic depth, but it's there if you're willing to look. Raiders is ultimately a story about how the quest for power is its own undoing, Temple Of Doom is about control over the less fortunate, and the light that must stand to fight against the darkness within man, but it's Last Crusade that is the deepest and most poignant of the original trilogy. It's a tale of faith and obsession, and about fathers and sons, and all the prickly issues that come with that. In one of the greatest casting moves in history, Sean Connery joined the franchise as Indy's dad, and this would be a far lesser film without him. The film apes Raiders' tone and pace, and almost equals the original in terms of iconic sequences. The young Indy opening, the tank chase, the Grail challenges - they're all part of the heart-stopping fun that makes this a scintillating widescreen adventure.
3. Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom
The dark one. Hearts are removed, kids are tortured, people are set alight, and brains are eaten (those poor monkeys), but these things don't make it a bad film. In fact it's a great film, another rollicking adventure that tries to take the formula of the first and push it further. Even if some of its set pieces push the limits (the inflatable raft drop, the minecart chase, the rope bridge fight), they're still wonderful sequences that have us cheering from the edge of our seats. With its added darkness comes added tension, and Temple Of Doom hits faster and harder than any other film in the franchise.
An 80-year-old Ford plays a 70-year-old Indy in a bold and often bonkers attempt to give the whip-cracking archaeologist the farewell he deserves. Its themes of regret and life passing us by add layers to the adventure, and also feed into the MacGuffin and the somewhat subdued but solid villain (played by Mads Mikkelsen). Waller-Bridge is a fine companion, and Ford gives his best performance of the series. The opening and ending are iconic, but some of what happens in between drags.
5. Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
Cate Blanchett is a remarkable actress, one of the greatest of all time, but as soon as she rolls up "chewing those wouble-yoos", it's clear Crystal Skull is going to be a goofy disappointment. From its overlong title (why the everloving fuck isn't it just called Indiana Jones & The Crystal Skull?) to its hair-combing, Tarzan-aping sidekick Mutt, this film is more cheesy homage than genuine sequel. And you know what? I like the "nuking the fridge" sequence, I don't hate the MacGuffin, and even in spite of the goofiness, it's kinda fun in places. But there's a lot to dislike. Ray Winstone's Mac is utterly superfluous, Mutt is a caricature, and the script is one bleeding obvious line after the other. Oh, what might have been.
