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 that aired on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on February 2, 2023.
(M) ★★★★
Director: Marc Forster.
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mariana Treviño, Truman Hanks, Rachel Keller, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Cameron Britton, Mack Bayda, Juanita Jennings, Emonie Ellison, Peter Lawson Jones.
No one told Otto it was Tracksuit Day.
Like all self-respecting film reviewers, I love being able to tell people that the American remake of a non-English language film is crap by comparison.
Given the opportunity, I will wax lyrical about how Let The Right One In is superior to the (admittedly excellent) Let Me In, or how Niels Arden Oplev's version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is better than David Fincher's (also pretty good) version, or how The Upside is a piece of shit next to The Intouchables.
But I can't do this here, only because I've not seen the Swedish original A Man Called Ove. I haven't even read the original book, so I can't play the beloved "the book was better" card either.
All I can tell you is that A Man Called Otto is a predictable tear-jerker made no less enjoyable or heartfelt by its predictability.
In fact, the large numbers of old ladies commentating their way through the screening I was at and letting everyone know what was happening 30 seconds before it happened couldn't even detract from the film's sweet-but-gooey centre.
The titular Otto Anderson is a misanthropic grump, made acceptably so by America's favourite uncle, Tom Hanks. He lives in a semi-gated community where he ensures that the right rubbish goes in the right recycling bin, that only cars with permits get through the gates, and that the footpath to his door is always shovelled clear in snow season, despite no one wanting to visit him.
Naturally there are sad secrets behind Otto's cantankerousness, and the arrival of some new migrants across the way are likely to shovel the snow right off of Otto's frozen-over heart.
A Man Called Otto is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the plums, and has a wind-up you can see coming from a mile away, but when it hits you it still hurts. The senior Hanks (his son Truman plays the young Otto) brings gravitas to everything he does these days, so even when delivering one of his more obvious performances, he makes the emotions feel real, such is his still-impeccable gift for being the everyman.
Treviño as the vivacious force of nature Marisol is also great, bringing a spark to every scene she's in. Garcia-Rulfo and Britton add welcome comedic touches amid the film's surprisingly dark and traumatic moments, while Bayda and Keller make some of the more obvious contrivances palatable.
Forster does his best with the material, draping scenes with a fitting drabness and a pleasingly organised symmetry to reflect Otto's way of life. The director also manages to weave the film's myriad flashbacks throughout in a surprisingly unobtrusive way.
In lesser hands, and without a star as magnetic yet workmanlike as Hanks, A Man Called Otto would struggle under the weight of its often dark material and matching humour. That it strikes a sweet balance with its desire to warm hearts is a credit also to a deft script. In the end, it doesn't really matter that you can see what's coming like a car with its high beams on. Or by being at a screening full of commentating old ladies.
It's Hottest 100 time again. The 2022 countdown is on January 28, and will once again deliver what triple j listeners deem to be the best songs of the past year, creating a musical time capsule for decades to come.
It will also bring with it much debate. There will be the typical whingeing from people who don't listen to triple j anymore and who preferred it in the '90s or the '00s when they played more Red Hot Chili Peppers or whatever, and who haven't caught up to the fact that triple j is the national youth broadcaster and thus keeps up with the youth and not ageing morons whose musical tastes haven't moved with the times. Get over yourselves, haters. (Oh, and listen to Double J on Sunday, January 29 when they replay the Hottest 100 of 2002 in full.)
When it comes to picking a winner, there are three key indicators - the variousbookies, social media vote counter 100 Warm Tunas, and ARIA chart performance. The first two are somewhat obvious and are usually pretty close (although 100 Warm Tunas was wrong in 2019 and 2016, and the bookies didn't see The Wiggles coming last year). ARIA chart performance is the icing on the cake - only six times out of 29 has the Hottest 100 winner failed to chart in the ARIA top 50 prior to winning.
An interesting thing to note this year is that 100 Warm Tunas has introduced an "experimental" machine learning (ML) process into its algorithm to help offset its past errors. Its a good way to counter discrepancies in the results, including the fact that metal and rock songs often rate higher in the Warm Tunas than they actually finish. I've added both Warm Tunas predictions - with ML and without ML - for completeness, although at the time of writing ML hadn't been applied to some songs.
I've also added in the thoughts of Patrick Avenell, who is an aficionado and unofficial historian of the countdown with some serious form in predicting the Hottest 100. He's the guy triple j goes to for expert opinions on the Hottest 100 (and I do too, as you can read here).
And just for shits and gigs, I've added in Spotify streams and YouTube plays (which is a rough sum of film clips and lyric vids), because the more stats the merrier.
Why it will win: Gang Of Youths have four top 10 finishes under their belt, including a #6 last year, so voters obviously have a soft spot for them. With seven songs in the voting guide this year, including their beautiful Like A Version (LAV) of Travis' Why Does It Always Rain On Me?, Gang Of Youths are likely to have at least three or four songs in the 2022 countdown. Warm Tunas predicts three, with the other two way back in the count, opening up the field for In The Wake Of Your Leave. This potentially means less of a split vote, which may have undone them in 2017 when they had three songs in the top 10. Patrick Avenell has also given In The Wake Of Your Leave his blessing. Could this finally be Gang Of Youths' year?
Why it won't win: The bookies are slightly less certain about this song than Warm Tunas and Patrick are, and when you add in the Machine Learning (ML), even Warm Tunas has some doubts. And while its Spotify and YouTube numbers are strong compared to the other Aussie songs here, In The Wake Of Your Leave lacks that all important crossover factor of an ARIA chart placing. Some argue that's becoming less integral for a Hottest 100 win (last year's Wiggles' win was a good example), but history still says you need to have snuck into the ARIA top 50 to get a #1 here.
Why it will win: Again, Warm Tunas likes this better than the bookies. In fact, the vote aggregator liked it so much early on that it had this as the only song likely to give Gang Of Youths a run for their money (it's softened on this prediction somewhat, especially since the introduction of ML). BPM have had 12 songs in the countdown over the years, and got as close as #4 in 2020 with Cherub, which was a beautiful but very unlikely-seeming top five entry. Compared to Cherub, Stars In My Eyes sounds more like a #1. The love for them on triple j is huge - fans voted their 2022 album Weirder & Weirder the #2 album of the year, just ahead of Gang Of Youths' Angel In Realtime. This is BPM's best chance yet to win.
Why it won't win: BPM got to #21 last year with Sunscreen, a song that's had almost twice as many Spotify listens as Stars In My Eyes despite being released only four months earlier. They've also never had a charting single (Gang Of Youths have had two scrape into the top 50), and the bookies don't even see this going as high as Cherub did. And of the songs listed here, it's comparatively low on the Spotify and YouTube numbers. This all suggests BPM's lack of mainstream crossover could see them denied again.
Why it will win: triple j listeners love the absolute shit out of this band. Spacey Jane's Here Comes Everybody was voted best album of 2022 by triple j listeners, and there are seven SJ songs in the voting guide to choose from. 100 Warm Tunas is tipping five of those will make the countdown, and while this kind of thing can split the band's vote, it's worth noting Queens Of The Stone Age won in 2002 with five songs in the 100. Spacey Jane have already had eight songs in the countdown since bursting onto the scene in 2019, including a #2 in 2020 and #3 last year. They've got good Hottest 100 form.
Why it won't win: Oddly, this is the least streamed of the three Spacey Jane songs predicted to go high. The bookies and 100 Warm Tunas both rate this a solid #4, and it doesn't seem to have the crossover appeal or X factor you'd expect for a #1. And while you should never write off the much-loved Spacey Jane, it's hard to see this track being as iconic as Say Nothing or In The Wake Of Your Leave.
Why it will win: If the machines and bookies are to be believed, Flume is in line for a rare double. Powderfinger is the only act to ever win twice, but Flume is primed to equal that record. Say Nothing is the only ARIA top 20 single in the Warm Tunas top five, and has the most streams of any Aussie expected to go high. This counts for a lot in terms of mainstream crossover. This is the song to beat.
Why it won't win:It's hard to see anything beating Flume, who has seven songs in the voting guide. Maybe that will work against him and split his vote, but all signs are pointing at Flume. triple j's early post that it was a close vote is the only piece of information that will raise some doubts, along with the the fact that Warm Tunas places it third in terms of hard numbers. Maybe the AI is wrong.
New Gold - Gorillaz feat. Tame Impala & Bootie Brown
Why it will win: If Gorillaz get in at all, it will give Damon Albarn Hottest 100 entries 30 countdowns apart (Blur were in the inaugural 1993 poll with For Tomorrow at #90). Albarn's cartoon hip hop/pop act hasn't charted since 2010, but that might just give it cross-generational voting - throw Tame Impala's chorus hook on to Albarn's undying appeal, and you could see the votes coming from wide-ranging demographics. The song did sneak into the ARIA top 50, so there could be enough elements to get this home as a dark horse.
Why it won't win: The bookies have this a solid sixth or seventh, and its Sportsbet odds have been gradually lengthening in recent weeks. Patrick Avenell doesn't even have it in his top 10, and Warm Tunas doesn't see it getting higher than #5. For all it's cross-generational, mainstream-meets-triple j coolness, New Gold probably isn't going to get to the top. It's also worth remembering that hip hop songs are still a rarity at #1, with just two rappers winning in the last nine years.
B.O.T.A (Baddest Of Them All) - Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal
Why it will win: The bookies love this, and they sometimes seem to know something others don't. Warm Tunas' machines think this will do a lot better than the hard numbers say - it's one of the biggest improvers when ML is applied. It's also been a top five single in Australia. Female vocals have won twice in the past six years. Add all this up, and BOTA could be the best chance at knocking off Flume and MAY-A.
Why it won't win: Maybe too commercial for triple j listeners' tastes (though that line is often hard to find these days). But of the big ARIA-charting hopefuls (include Joji and Steve Lacy in that group), this has had the fewest streams. And Warm Tunas doesn't see it even cracking the top five, despite what the bookies say.
Why it will win: This is the underdog (pun intended) in this race. When triple j asked fellow musos who they'd voted for, King Stingray came up the most. Lots of people would love to see an indigenous #1, and there's a lot of love for King Stingray. They were the #14 most-played act on triple j this year, #5 in listeners' favourite album of 2022, and had two songs in last year's countdown. Warm Tunas is predicting three songs in the top 50 for King Stingray. And when you look at the difference between the two bookies listed here, and between Warm Tunas with ML on and off, it's hard to pin down where exactly this song could finish. Can all that love and support carry them to the top on a wave of positive feels?
Why it won't win: Warm Tunas' machines say this is one of the most over-represented songs in terms of hard numbers. And Aussie guitar rock definitely shows up higher in the Tunas than it does in the Hottest 100. There's a lot of goodwill behind this band, but its numbers are all over the place. Bookies don't agree, Warm Tunas and its machines don't agree. This one would have to come out of nowhere to take the prize.
And here are some other songs destined to do well:
This is a version of a review that aired on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on January 19, 2023.
(M) ★★
Director: Noah Baumbach.
Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Lars Eidinger.
"I know I'm dressed like a judge, but I'm not actually a judge."
To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unfightable foe, etc, etc.... In the case of some directors, the impossible dream is to film the unfilmable novel.
For David Cronenberg, it was William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch. For Terry Gilliam, Hunter S Thompson's Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. The Wachowskis had a crack at David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Zach Snyder tackled Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel Watchmen. And now Noah Baumbach has taken a stab at Don DeLillo's post-modern masterpiece White Noise.
While each of these were considered unfilmable for different reasons, some worked as films and some didn't (I'd say Fear & Loathing and Watchmen worked amazingly well, the others in varying degrees of 'less so'). Baumbach's largely faithful rendering of DeLillo's 1985 novel stumbles because of its fidelity to the source, showing up one of the key differences about the two mediums of book and film - what works on the page doesn't always work on the screen.
The film follows the Gladney family, led by death-obsessed parents Jack (Driver) and Babette (Gerwig). Jack is a lecturer who specialises in Hitler, while Babette is an energetic aerobics instructor, and over the course of their previous marriages they have accumulated four precocious children who are hungry for information.
Their lives are thrown into chaos when a train derailment sparks an "airborne toxic event", sending a plume of potentially deadly gas into the sky over their town.
Baumbach captures the absurdist satire of DeLillo's text, which pokes at the neuroses of comfortable middle America, including its obsession with death, propensity for misinformation, and fascination with supermarkets. These themes are explored with regular wit, and delivered in a barrage of overlapping dialogue that often segues off into non sequiturs and seemingly random diversions. While often funny, it soon becomes frustrating, and regularly sucks the pace out of the film.
While things kick off in the middle of White Noise's three sections (the airborne toxic event bit), the first one drags, while the third act sees the film grind in an uncomfortable and difficult direction. This final part feels like an entirely different movie with a much darker tone that sits at odds with part two's whimsical absurdity, which is like Catch-22 meets an '80s disaster movie.
Driver and Gerwig are valiant throughout, as is Cheadle who drops in for nonsensical asides. They obviously relish the odd dialogue and the requirement to play it straight, and if not for them the film would be an utter disaster.
Instead it just feels like brave attempt at something different that ultimately falls flat. It's an experiment that's not without its moments, but its central themes end up feeling forced or unfulfilling.
Some people find white noise soothing and listen to it to help them sleep. Others find it annoying. And that pretty much sums up White Noise.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on January 19, 2023.
(M) ★★★★
Showrunners: Alfred Gough & Miles Millar.
Cast: Jenna Ortega, Gwendoline Christie, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Hunter Doohan, Percy Hynes White, Emma Myers, Joy Sunday, Georgie Farmer, Christina Ricci, Moosa Mostafa, Victor Dorobantu, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Iman Marson, Isaac Ordonez, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán, William Houston, Fred Armisen.
Watching The Cure live in concert is always more fun as a family.
The secret to a good cover song is finding the things that make the original unique and great, and doing those bits right. You can throw out everything else so long as you nail the ingredients at the heart of the song. Then you're on a winner.
The same is true of a reboot. Case in point - Wednesday, a reboot of The Addams Family, which began life as a newspaper cartoon in the 1930s before becoming over a dozen different TV shows, movies and animated series across the past 60 years or so.
Yes, there are the kooky characters, including Uncle Fester and The Thing, which require a certain level of fidelity to the source material. But at its core, The Addams Family was about a love of the macabre and a fascination with the darker aspects of human nature, all the while being true to your weird self. And that's what Wednesday never loses sight of, even when its taking its nearly-century-old characters into uncharted territory.
What better way to hone in on those darker pockets of society than through a teen drama focusing on the Addams' daughter Wednesday, where the heightened emotions of adolescence can really help dial the darkness up to 11? Throw in a murder mystery and a Hogwarts-like school that celebrates not being "normal", and you have the perfect setting for Wednesday Addams' latest adventure.
Wednesday, played with perfect unblinking goth grimness by Jenna Ortega, is as unsettling as you would hope, but by placing her in a school filled with other outcasts, her weirdness is less bracing. This is part of the series' success. The show is less interested in Wednesday as an anachronism in the modern world, and as a result is able to focus more on who she is and what makes her tick. If Wednesday is too weird for the weirdos of Nevermore School For Outcasts, then why is that, can she ever be accepted, and what happens when other people actually understand what she's going through?
The Addams Family's central conceit has typically been based around the spooky clan's abnormal interactions with the real world, but they've always been able to retreat to their weird mansion at the end and wallow in their own kookiness. In Wednesday, there is no retreat for the titular character, which raises the stakes and makes her interactions all the more engrossing. While the film's core mystery - there's a killer on the loose - motivates Wednesday throughout, its how she deals with the unavoidable people in her life and the expectations of her school and society that provide the real drama.
From her colourful werewolf roommate Enid (Myers) to the strident headmistress Ms Weems (Christie), plus a couple of boys taken with her aloof ways, Wednesday is constantly threatened by the scariest beasts of all - friendship, romance, and small-town America. And then there are the murders to solve.
Much has been made of the presence of Tim Burton as a director on the first four episodes, and he certainly sets the tone in a way you might expect from the director of Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow. The requisite misty forests and gothic architecture are present, as is a Danny Elfman score, and Burton's love of "outcasts among the normies" is a key theme throughout.
Wednesday runs the risk of becoming just another teen TV series with a supernatural bent, or just another faulty reboot merely trading on brand recognition. But it's neither of those things, instead throwing a mixture of familiar ingredients into its cauldron to brew up something suitably creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on January 19, 2023.
(M) ★★★★
Director: Rian Johnson.
Cast: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista.
No one was looking forward to the return journey in the tiny car.
The mystery genre feels like its thrived in the world of TV more so than film recently. While seemingly every second TV show in this Golden Age is a mystery - from the new Addams Family reboot Wednesday to the quirky comedy of Only Murders In The Building - finding a good whodunnit contained within two hours or so is a pursuit worthy of a private eye.
In recent years, only Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot adaptations and Rian Johnson's Knives Out have stood out in the cinematic line-up. And thankfully a standalone sequel to the latter is here, and it's even better than the first Benoit Blanc outing.
Craig returns as Blanc, the "Southern gentlemen" who happens to be the world's greatest detective. Here he finds himself inexplicably invited to the island of tech billionaire Miles Bron (Norton), who has called together several of his nearest and dearest "frenemies" for a luxury getaway weekend on his private Greek island.
But the invite is for than just a party - Bron is promising that the invitees will be witness to Bron's murder. And that's just the beginning of the intrigue.
Johnson's screenwriting knack is evident again here, with the entangling of the mystery and the themes at the story's core unfurling in an even more satisfying manner than in Knives Out. Here he skewers the super-rich and the new celebrity elite with a sure-fire wit, whether it be pointing out the idiocy of the Elon Musk-like Bron, or getting laughs from the many social media gaffes of model-turned-fashionista Birdie Jay (Hudson).
The mystery is also neatly manufactured, though it remains to be seen whether repeat viewings reveal cracks or the true talent of the writing. Still the film's mid-point switcharoo is a daring and enjoyable one that is as devilish as it is fun.
None of this would work without a perfect cast, and Johnson has one here to match the stellar call-sheet from Knives Out. Craig is again in riveting form, while Bautista's man-dom dimwit, Hudson's beautiful airhead, and Norton's smarmy tech guru are also a highlights.
However it's Monae who steals the show in a tricky, layered role which she masters via every look, pace and inflection. It's a wonderfully nuanced performance in a film that enjoys its big over-the-top moments just as much as its quiet cleverness.
The mis-directions of the story are a giddy thrill, and the humour is laugh-out-loud in places. The movie revels in its later insanity, building to it well, even at the expense of keeping things believable.
Of course, a good murder-mystery isn't about believability. It's about whether the film can carry out its trickery within the rules of its own perverse logic and the unspoken guidelines of the genre. And in that sense, Glass Onion works perfectly. While it's not as hard-hitting with its satire as it could have been, and a few twists ask a lot of the audience, the film is excellent escapist fun, driven by a top-shelf cast.
