Wicked: Part I

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on November 28, 2024.

(PG) ★★★

Director: Jon M. Chu.

Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande-Butera, Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Jeff Goldblum, Peter Dinklage, Andy Nyman.

"Don't shoot - it's Optimus Prime!"

People love to complain about how there are no original ideas in cinema any more; how most movies today are based on existing intellectual properties, whether they be sequels, remakes or adaptations. It's not an unreasonable complaint. Check out the highest grossing films of 2024 - at the time of writing, the highest ranking original film (ie. not based on an existing IP) this year was IF at #21.

While no one has been levelling this objection at Wicked - most people seem pretty amped to see this story hit the big screen - it's a great example of how existing IPs can get re-born, re-spun and re-tooled to make old stories new again. This is a big-budget blockbuster based on a popular Broadway musical based on an acclaimed 1995 novel that re-interpreted the events of a much-loved 1900 novel.

I haven't seen the stage musical or read Gregory Maguire's book, but The Wizard Of Oz is one of my favourite films, and I treasure the original book. With that in mind, I find the revisionist storyline fascinating, and the characterisations of Good Witch Glinda (Grande-Butera) and Wicked Witch Elphaba (Erivo) intriguing. It's also a joy to spend more time in Oz - an itch that Sam Raimi's forgotten prequel Oz The Great & Powerful scratched somewhat a decade ago.

Wicked is a fun story but it goes on way too long - you really feel its 160-minute run-time. So many of the musical sequences drag on, the worst offender being Popular, which is a fantastic song that could have achieved the same outcome at a quarter of the length, while Dear Old Shiz and Dancing Through Life eventually also wear out their welcome. 

Musically, the highlight is Defying Gravity, an absolute belter of a tune. But am I the only person perplexed by the weird '90s pop-ballad production sound? Of all the eras and styles of music to emulate sonically, why that one?

Erivo and Grande-Butera do a stellar job in the leads, handling the musical numbers with ease, and flexing their dramatic chops equally impressively. Erivo nails the weariness and frustration of Elphaba, while Grande-Butera's cartoonish take on the wide-eyed Glinda is disarming despite the character's self-absorbed nature. Yeoh is also excellent, while Goldblum is perfectly cast as the Wizard himself.

But back to the length. It's an issue because a) the film feels long in places, but b) because we get too much song instead of some much needed plot. A central element of the story is an apparent uprising against one section of Oz society, but we see so little to demonstrate it. There's one bit of graffiti, some mutterings, and a clandestine meeting (with a song, naturally). It's a lot of tell, not show, and it's hardly enough to convince viewers of the large-scale racism purported to have riven Oz.

As with most Oz films, Wicked looks amazing, and it's a fun world to hang out in. Its ideas about the nature and perspective of good and evil are strong, as is its inspection of otherness and racism and fitting in. And, it bears repeating - Defying Gravity is a killer moment. 

It has a heart, a brain and courage, but Wicked spends a lot of time singing and dancing when it could be storytelling. 

Red One

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on November 14, 2024.

(M) ★★

Director: Jake Kasdan.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J. K. Simmons, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Kristofer Hivju, Nick Kroll, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Wesley Kimmel, Reinaldo Faberlle.

"Gwar, you say? No, never heard of them. I'll check them out."

The current craze in Hollywood is franchises. Unfortunately this means a lot of films are getting made with the starry-eyed approach of setting up a potential film series, while forgetting to make a good movie worthy of a series first. 

It’s a particularly fatal flaw in Red One, though it's actually just one of many major problems besetting this huge-budget Christmas turkey. The film is so intent on world-building that its story of Santa (Simmons) getting kidnapped becomes unnecessarily flabby early on and never recovers.

It also struggles to nail down who the main character is - another reason for the early flabbiness - with Dwayne Johnson's uptight North Pole security chief Callum Drift battling it out with Chris Evans' douchebag-with-a-heart-of-gold Jack O'Malley for top honours. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - movies can have more than one lead protagonist - but this particular jostling for poll position slows the narrative, and is another reason Red One stalls out of the blocks.

If it's not clear yet, most of the problems in this film are in the early stages, where the filmmakers seemingly choose world-building and The Rock over a sensible narrative structure. Allow me to explain.

Evans' Jack is a type of character known as an "audience surrogate". He's the character that knows as much as the audience knows, and as he is drawn into a new fantastical world or situation, we, the audience, learn how this new world/situation works by watching the audience surrogate learn and experience it. Think Dorothy dropping into Oz, Alice heading into Wonderland, Frodo stepping out of the Shire, or Neo discovering the Matrix exists. For the most part, we know what they know, and we learn as they learn.

In Red One, after a flashback to Jack's youth and a brief scene in a mall, we enter the fantastical world of Santa and his sidekick Callum Drift. We are taken to the North Pole and introduced to a mythological realm that is new to us, filled with giant reindeer, polar bears, elves, the works. It doesn't take long for Santa to get kidnapped (this isn't a spoiler, it's basically the film's selling point), sparking a chase sequence filled with plenty of dubious-looking CG.

Then we meet Jack, our audience surrogate. He's some kind of hacker/private eye/bounty hunter, and has a loose and unclear connection to the kidnapping, but he's very much from the real world (even if he's cartoonishly "bad", thus setting up a painfully obvious arc where he is going to reconnect with his estranged son and discover the meaning of Christmas or some shit).

At some point, these worlds are going to collide. In Red One, that takes way too long to happen. And  when it does happen, we have to go through the rigmarole of watching Jack learn about Santa and the giant reindeer and all the rest of it. Which we already know about. So there is no surprise or tension in Jack's discovery. If it was funnier, maybe it would be excusable, but watching Jack find out that Santa is real and that he's been kidnapped just becomes tiresome because we already know it.

(For a really great example of how bad this needless repetition can be, I recommend Green Lantern.)

By this point we're close to 40 minutes into the film. That's a lot of time to waste with effectively retelling stuff. One can’t help but wonder if the reason for taking us to Red One's mythical world to start with, instead of having the audience discover it while Jack does, is because of Dwayne Johnson’s presence as top-billed star and producer. It would make much more sense to bring his North Pole security chief in when Jack enters the mythological world, but instead we get a first act where Johnson's Callum is the lead character, and then another first act where Jack is the main character. 

(Are you bored yet?)

The film never recovers from there. The momentum is lost, which impacts the odd-couple relationship of Callum and Jack and the general pacing of the film. It also makes it hard for the script to zing, so it's never funny enough, despite the best efforts of Evans. 

It's also painfully predictable. Evans’ Jack is despicable, but in that annoyingly unrealistic way - the perfect-looking alcoholic, who is amazing at his job but shit at being a dad, and we just know where it's going to end up. 

Far be it from me to tell screenwriter Chris Morgan how to do his job - I mean the dude's written seven Fast & Furious movies, including the good ones. And there's likely a fair amount of producer/director meddling involved here to get this weird, bloated, repetitive first act to happen, and the screenwriter is just trying to keep the more important people happy.

But if this is what Red One is, don't expect a Red Two.

Joker: Folie a Deux

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

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Todd Phillips.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wild Robot

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

(PG) ★★★★

Director: Chris Sanders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alien: Romulus

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

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Fede Álvarez.

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

"Honey, I'm home."

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Deadpool & Wolverine (no spoilers)

(M) ★★★★

Director: Shawn Levy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the MCU, Deadpool.

Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam

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

(M) ★★★★

Director: David Terry Fine.

Dirty Pop is now screening on Netflix.

Spot the manager.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fly Me To The Moon

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

(M) ★★★

Director: Greg Berlanti.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

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

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Mark Molloy.

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

The Golf Cart Bandit was finally brought to justice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside Out 2

This is a version of review appearing on ABC Statewide Mornings across regional Victoria on June 27, 2024. 

(PG) ★★★★

Director: Pete Docter.

Cast: (voices of) Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Lilimar, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Paul Walter Hauser, Yvette Nicole Brown.

The sequel light was going off at Pixar headquarters.

I still stand by what I said - Inside Out is the greatest Pixar movie there is. It's superlative script took its Herman's Head-like premise and infused it with sparkly fun and sincere sentiments that examined the trials and tribulations of pre-teen life. It turned emotions into characters into themes into plot points into everything. And it did it all effortlessly, but with hilarity and heart.

Can a sequel top that? Or even match that?

Of course not. But Inside Out 2 is smart enough to follow the tried-and-true path of sequels since time immemorial - do the same thing, but more. It falters along the way, backing itself into a corner so that it has to find the most ridiculous way out, but it's still a stunningly real coming-of-age story told predominantly via an absurdist blend of pop-psychology and Pixar pizazz. 

In the first film, Riley was 11 and grappling with the pressures of moving to a new state, a new school and new life. Here, she's 13 and off to ice hockey camp, where she has to struggle with a combination of new emotions, new pressures, and a new-found desire to fit in. Meanwhile, in the control room of her mind, her core emotional team of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust find themselves on the outer as the Puberty Team of Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment take over.

Aside from its predecessor, it's hard to think of a coming-of-age film that is as realistic as this that doesn't include a romantic arc. Riley's inner struggle is the focus - the main villain is her own Anxiety, while the hero is her own Joy. What was true in the first film is true here - the anthropomorphism of her emotions is not just a cute stunt. It digs into the very nature of self as we determine who we are as we get older. There's a line here that asks whether Joy becomes less relevant as an emotion as we get older, and ouch, that hurts.

The whole thing is incredibly relatable and, as with the first film, it's wonderfully written. Her emotions are fully fledged characters and they're also pivotal to the plot and the film's thematic core. And once again, the jokes are strong, the world-building is incredible, the production design fun, and there's enough silliness to appeal to the younger kids who are yet to experience the heavy themes firsthand.

Pixar's real triumph is making something that anyone who was ever a teenager can probably relate to. Whether it be doing stupid stuff when we've let Anxiety take the wheel or lying about who we really are in order to fit in or bottling up our emotions to try and get by, Inside Out 2 sees you, knows you and is you. 

The biggest flaw is a deus ex machina that helps dig the characters out of a massive hole in the final act. Having pushed its heroic five original emotions to breaking point, the script struggles to unbreak things. What makes matters worse is that it throws back to the worst part of the movie in order to save the day, thereby repeating the mistakes made earlier.

But there is a lot to love, the main thing being the emotional struggle that its teenaged heroine and her ragtag team of feelings face as they try to find their place in the world and not ruin the rest of their lives. Being a teen is tough, and Pixar gets it.

Jim Henson: Idea Man

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on June 13, 2024.

(PG) ★★★★

Director: Ron Howard.

"I love you, man."
"I love you, frog."

I love The Muppets. When people ask me my favourite movie of all time, which they often do, I give them three: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Wizard Of Oz, and The Muppet Movie. The Muppets was my favourite TV show as a kid. Hell, Animal was my imaginary friend when I was a kid. We went to the Noorat Show together.

I watched every episode of The Muppets Show when I was young, and I love the first two Muppet films - The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper (and deeply respect The Muppets Take Manhattan). But I'm not a completist. I've seen the 2011 reboot and its sequel, but I still haven't watched The Muppet Christmas Carol or Muppets From Space, nor have I gotten around to watching Muppets Now or Muppets Mayhem. It's almost as if a significant part of The Muppets died for me when Jim Henson did.

Watching Ron Howard's touching but honest portrait of Muppets' creator Jim Henson takes me back to that childlike wonder I had for those ridiculous marionettes/puppets and their oddball antics. They were bizarre creations, even back in the '70s and '80s, and continue to be. And at the heart of the weirdness and heartfelt insanity - at least in the glory days - was Henson. 

So much of Henson was imbued into everything he did, not just in The Muppet Show. Kermit was his alter-ego, but his aspirations for a better world shone through in his work on Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock. His boundless artistry, his passion for classic storytelling, and his desire to push the limits of a long-ignored artform are part of what made The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth so great. 

These are the things that Howard brings to the fore in the documentary. Early on, we see a clip of Orson Welles calling Henson "a genius" and it's hard to disagree. Through Henson's experimental early work and formative years honing his craft in advertisements and late night TV, we get a picture of a driven and immensely talented young man.

That drive had its downside, and Idea Man doesn't back away from that. His children had to work on his creative projects in order to spend time with him, and his wife rarely saw him or got her dues or got to contribute, despite her obvious skills. Everything gets sidelined - even his health - to make way for his artistry.

It's part of the tragedy buried in this beautiful documentary, along with his early untimely death. Henson crammed more in to one life than most people would into three, but it came at a cost. He burned bright and fast.

Unfortunately Idea Man is also too bright and fast. An ideal beginners guide, it will frustrate fans who have heard much of this before. Howard has access to some previously unseen material, which still makes it worthwhile, but the bulk of the content is familiar territory. The best bits are the recollections of his co-workers - for more of that, check out the doco Muppet Guys Talking.

But it's hard to go wrong with such great talent discussing such a great talent. It's an oddly heartwarming and heartbreaking tale, told beautifully. Howard has enough sense to let much of Henson's own art tell the story, along with the voices of those who knew him well, including Henson himself, and some excellent behind the scenes footage. Henson was gone too soon, and this doco is a great gateway into his incredible legacy.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on May 30, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: George Miller.

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Lachy Hulme, George Shevtsov, John Howard, Angus Sampson, Nathan Jones, Josh Helman, Charlee Fraser.

Hemsworth was left profoundly disappointed by the human zoo.

Go back and watch the original Mad Max film from 1979. The vehicular violence and sense of dread is there, but it doesn't feel even remotely like it's sitting in the same franchise as, say,  Fury Road. It's an even wilder difference than watching the first Fast & Furious next to Fast X.

But here we are with the fifth film in the Mad Max saga, which, again, looks nothing like the 1979 original. Hell - this film doesn't even need Max - just the "Mad" bit. It's about the utterly insane world Miller has built - a post-apocalyptic wasteland in Australia's red centre where hordes of bikies and armoured oil tankers traverse the desert, leaving behind a trail of blood and body parts. 

As the title suggests, this is about Furiosa, a character introduced in Fury Road and played there by Charlize Theron. This is her origin story, showing us how this one-armed bad-arse, now played by Taylor-Joy came to be such a one-armed bad-arse. It tracks her from her childhood, whisked away from a hidden utopia in the Wastelands, and thrust into the very worst that humanity has left to offer.

Whereas Fury Road largely ditched conventional movie furniture such as dialogue, character development and arcs in favour of balls-out action and ludicrous car chases, Furiosa is, by comparison, a more refined and traditional film, if such a thing can be said of a movie where a person is drawn and quartered by five motorbikes. Miller knows his world well, and revels in its dust, blood, and madness, but much like he did with Mad Max II and Beyond Thunderdome, we get to see how that world shapes the people who live in it.

Furiosa still keeps its furniture to a minimum. Despite playing the titular character, Taylor-Joy only gets a couple dozen lines, and is left to convey a lot with a steely look and a sneer, which she does admirably. The physicality of the role is key here, and she pulls it off the necessary amount of determination and desperation. 

The lion's share of the lines go to Hemsworth as the nasally voiced wannabe-warlord Dementus. It's a great performance, suitably demented, and somewhat restrained when you consider how off the hook this could have been played. Hemsworth keeps it fun amid the death and destruction, and even makes him vaguely empathetic in places. In the Aussie actor's growing CV, it's not only one of his most interesting and against-type roles, it's also easily one of his best.

The real star is Miller though. His world gets to sit in centre-stage more so than any previous Mad Max film. This is a look at how the Wastelands functions, even hinting at how it got here. It's insane, but beautiful and intricate in its bonkersness. And it looks incredible, a few dodgy bits of CGI aside. The elaborately orchestrated chases and battles are here, though somewhat diminished in the shadow of Fury Road, but once again, this is high-octane stuff. The stuntwork is remarkable, the cinematography stunning, and Miller's direction throws you facefirst into the dust, grit and whirring propellers. 

The inevitable question is "where does this sit compared to the rest of the saga?". While painted with many of the same colours as Fury Road, it's a different beast that doesn't quite wow like its predecessor (or Mad Max II for that matter), but is great nonetheless. Furiosa is the third best Mad Max film to date, and that's nothing to scoff at.

Freud's Last Session

(M) ★★★

Director: Matthew Brown.

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Orla Brady.

"Touch The Box & Stare At The Floor" was a very popular old-timey game.

This piece of revisionist history asks a curious question: if psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud got together with author C. S. Lewis, what would they talk about?

It's not a question most people ever considered, but it was the premise of Armand Nicholi's book The Question of God, which in turn formed the basis of Mark St Germain's play Freud's Last Session, which is the source of this film. So there's at least two people who had given this hypothetical some thought.

So what would they talk about? The answer, according to this talkfest, is God. The film pits Freud's atheism and wit against Lewis' Christianity and heart. While they chat, Germany invades Poland, and Freud's daughter Anna struggles to break free of her father's psychological grip on her.

The main reason to see Freud's Last Session is for Hopkins, who churns out amazing performances with regularity and shows no sign of slowing down at 86. His Freud is at the end of his life, but his spark and intelligence remain as bright as ever. It's a performance that shifts in a heartbeat from fiery to funny, and Hopkins does a magnificent job of capturing the humanity and hubris of the famed psychoanalyst. His Austrian accent may be wonky, but his skills as an actor are not.

Opposite him, and more than holding his own, is Goode. It must be daunting to go head-to-head with Hopkins at the best of times, let alone in a role that Hopkins once played (he was C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands back in 1993). But Goode is solid, ensuring his Lewis is just as human and full of inconsistencies as Hopkin's Freud.

The script helps to ensure both characters get an equal arsenal in their battle of wits, but it's too timid to pick a winner. The film spins in circles as each takes it in turns to get the upperhand in this stagy talkfest, which is fine, but there's no real plotline to pull us through. Parts of the debate are interesting, but without any stakes, development, growth, story, or revelations, the movie fizzles out by its ending. The subplots of the war and Anna Freud (played with fire and passion by Fries) are intriguing but occasionally intrude into the flow of proceedings. 

These aren't deal-breakers though. The film is predominantly a well-acted conversation, and for the most part that works. The Godfather of Psychoanalysis and the Creator of Narnia certainly make for an interesting last session.

Civil War

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on April 18, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Alex Garland.

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nelson Lee, Nick Offerman.

Close Encounters: The Remake.

If this movie had come out 10 or 20 years ago, I would have told you its premise was preposterous. A new civil war in America? Ridiculous!

But now... not so much. The idea of the United States becoming not-so-united is painfully possible. Which gives Garland's new film an uneasy edge to it.

That's not the point of Civil War though. Yes, it's about a war tearing America apart, but it's less about the specifics of that war, and more about war journalism, and the role it plays in our world, and the effect it has on those who see this reporting and those who do the reporting. It's about the importance of truth and journalism, the battle between media and propaganda, and the cost of it all.

Civil War follows a group of reporters on their way through the war zone that lies between New York and Washington DC. They aim to reach the President himself and score a rare interview with him before the war ends, in the hopes of getting answers and holding him to account for his actions, which have torn America apart and caused untold damage.

It's easy to complain about the lack of pure politics in Civil War. No, this isn't an anti-Trump polemic (though you can draw your own inferences) or a dissertation on the state of America today (again, do your own reading between the lines) or a foreboding warning (though it does feel disturbingly prescient). 

That's not the story the film is trying to tell. Instead, this is Apocalypse Now from the journalists' point of view. Like Willard's journey up river to find Kurtz, their cross-country trip is a descent into the madness of man, or America (but without too many specifics), with their Kurtz-like figure happening to be the President of the USA.

More interesting is the ways the four main characters deal with and process the horror and violence around them. Dunst's veteran war photographer Lee is hollowed out and emotionally dead, Moura's Joel uses booze, weed and adrenalin to get him through the days and nights, Henderson's old-timer Sammy has seen some shit, but maintains a level and understanding head about it somehow, and Spaeny's Jessie is the newcomer/audience surrogate who's about to be shredded and re-sculpted by what lays ahead. Each performance is distinct, defined, powerful and true.

Then there's Offerman's president, wisely hidden away by Garland so that he only appears in two scenes. But his distinctive voice resounds throughout, spewing propaganda via the airwaves, making the president loom over proceedings like a blood-spattered Star Spangled banner.

Garland's direction regularly thrusts us into the action, either by charging headlong into shootouts or by ramping up the tension to uncomfortable levels. The quiet moments, in between where the journalists get to breath and exist, are occasionally blunt, but usually their full of character and nuance.

There are many great films about journalism - Spotlight and All The President's Men are top of the heap. This isn't too far behind.

Irish Wish

(PG) ★★

Director: Janeen Damian.

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Ed Speleers, Alexander Vlahos, Ayesha Curry, Elizabeth Tan, Jacinta Mulcahy, Jane Seymour, Matty McCabe, Dawn Bradfield, Maurice Byrne.

"You did leave the park brake on right?"

I was expecting this to be utter shite.

It wasn't. 

It was still shite, but it wasn't total irredeemable shite. 

So praise be to St Brigid for small mercies, I suppose.

Built around the lingering star power of Lindsay Lohan and some pretty bits of Ireland, this paint-by-numbers rom-com is destined to become a rainy hungover Sunday go-to for those who desire a brain-off love buzz. And that is all.

Lohan plays Maddie, literary editor to star writer Paul Kennedy (Vlahos). Her unspoken crush for Paul festers in the lead-up to Paul's wedding back in Ireland, sparking Maddie to make a wish to a mischievous St Brigid (Bradfield). The wish sees Maddie become the bride-to-be, but a handsome photographer (Speleers) puts a kink in her Irish wish.

This is as poorly directed and sloppily written as you would expect. The magical twist of the wish is set-up in a rushed and haphazard manner, despite the film having ample opportunity to establish it earlier. Characters don't talk or act like real people. There is an entire subplot involving Maddie's mum (Seymour) that is presumably included only to beef up the run time because it adds zero to the film - leaving Seymour on the cutting room floor would have saved her the embarrassment of being in this dud. It would have been the humane thing to do.

The film even looks off in places, and doesn't do Ireland justice. Too much of the story is stuck in a mansion set and some sections feel like we've stumbled into Disney's version of Ireland. For a film called Irish Wish, it doesn't capitalise on the promise of its title. There's one moment where a character is driving his convertible and makes a comment about the scenery to another character and the film doesn't cut to a shot of the scenery. In Ireland. Is this a travelogue rom-com or not?

So what saves it from being utter shite? Ed Speelers. He manages to make the dumbest dialogue work, and his chemistry with Lindsay Lohan is sparkling. Speeler's performance pulls Lohan up to his level when they share the screen. Lohan can obviously act, but it's only when she's sharing the screen with Speelers that we get to see that.

Irish Wish isn't going to win any awards, except for maybe a Razzie or two, but at least two of its leads give it a craic.

Wicked Little Letters

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on April 4, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Thea Sharrock.

Cast: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan, Timothy Spall, Joanna Scanlan, Gemma Jones, Malachi Kirby, Lolly Adefope, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Skinner, Paul Chahidi, Alisha Weir.

The things people do these days with their hair is shocking.

Swearing is great. It's fun. It's probably good for you. It's also frequently hilarious.

What's great about the swearing in Wicked Little Letters, aside from its inventiveness and humourousness, is that it's a metaphor for the repression and oppression of women. In post-WWI Britain, where women can't vote and are frowned upon for pretty much everything, letting loose with a few vulgarities can say so much, as it does in this charmingly potty-mouthed dramedy.

Colman is Edith Swan, the eager-to-please church mouse who cares for her ageing parents in between receiving vulgar letters that are offensive to her Christian sensibilities. Her enraged father (Spall) summons the constabulary, and all fingers point to the letter-writer being their neighbour Rose (Buckley), the unwed Irish mother next door. 

Based on a remarkable but little-known true story, the film is a colourful snapshot of British life in the 1920s, complete with its misogyny and repression. Much is made of Littlehampton's "woman police officer" (Vasan), who was a real person of the time and a convenient part of the film's core message around female oppression.

It will come as no surprise that Colman is fantastic as Edith Swan, the "good girl" of the piece, but also brilliant is the effervescent Buckley as the "bad girl". Both deliver their performances with believability, wit and empathy, with Buckley threatening to steal the show in the flashier role.

A great array of side-characters fill out proceedings, led by Spall's sneering father and Vasan as the plucky officer struggling to stay afloat in a pool of shallow men. There's not a performance out of place, except for Skinner's, whose lines as a dim-witted cop land awkwardly.

The only downside of Wicked Little Letters is its contrived ending. It pulls together its plot strands, particularly the relationship between Buckley's Rose and her daughter (played by Weir), into a slightly mawkish and far-too-convenient scene, and does the same with its climactic capture of the culprit by moving all the key characters into a single location. History can be a tricky thing to turn into a working narrative, and the efforts to do so here feel overly simplistic.  

But it's not enough to write off Wicked Little Letters. For the most part, this is a ferociously funny comedy that uses its foul mouth to tell a spicy tale of subjugation.

Oppenheimer

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on March 7, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★★

Director: Christopher Nolan.

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Dylan Arnold, Tom Conti, James D'Arcy, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich.

"Why yes - we do look dashing in black and white!"

What's left to be said about Oppenheimer that hasn't been said already?

It won all the awards, and deservedly so. While I would've loved Poor Things to have pulled off a surprise best picture win at the Oscars, this was Oppenheimer's year. In 2023, Barbie won the memes, Oppenheimer won the awards, and Barbenheimer won our hearts. 

Oppenheimer is Nolan's best film since Inception. It's easy to wonder why Nolan hadn't won a best film or best director Oscar before now, but his greatest films never fit the Academy Award mould - Memento was too early in his career, Inception was too actiony, and The Dark Knight was too superheroey. The Academy was basically waiting for him to get the formula right, and Oppenheimer does that. Here -have an Oscar or seven.

In case you've been living under a rock, Oppenheimer is the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Murphy), the father of the atomic bomb. It details his quest to develop the A-bomb through the Manhattan Project, his complicated relationship with his two great loves (played by Blunt and Pugh), his grappling with the destruction his genius wrought on a predominantly innocent populace in Japan, his later anti-nuke campaigning, and the post-WWII efforts in the US to besmirch his name. 

Nolan squeezes all of this into a propulsive three hours. If I have one criticism, it's that Oppenheimer rarely takes a breath - Ludwig Göransson's score is relentless, giving every scene the feeling like its meant for the trailer. There are few quiet moments in this film. There are just some moments that are less intense than some other ones, but only by comparison.

This is not a big deal, and I'm exaggerating slightly, but this is actually why Oppenheimer never feels like three hours long. When the Manhattan Project test is successful and the US bombs Nagasaki and Hiroshima, you might look at your watch and wonder what's left to tell, but the film never stops being compelling.

It would be easy to attribute this to the subject matter, but it would also be very easy to make this dull.  The script, adapted from the Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, sings every step of the way. Nolan even makes the dry physics entertaining with dazzling visualisations of things that I can only assume are dry physics.

Nolan's insistence on doing things the old school way - practical effects, big-arse film cameras - feels a bit like making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself in a digital age, but there's no disputing how good it looks, so maybe Nolan's on to something. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema has always made things look amazing, going back to Let The Right One In, and this, his fourth collaboration with Nolan, looks stunning.

And then there's the cast. There are no weak links. Murphy is immersed in Oppenheimer, chain-smoking his way to utter believability. Downey Jr, Blunt, Pugh, Damon, Hartnett etc are all as great as they usually are. It's no surprise how great this cast is, nor is it a shock that their performances are top notch.

Nolan is a great director and this is up there with his best. It's the bomb.

Sorry.

Force Of Nature: The Dry 2

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

(M) ★★

Director: Robert Connolly.

Cast: Eric Bana, Anna Torv, Deborra-Lee Furness, Robin McLeavy, Sisi Stringer, Lucy Ansell, Jacqueline McKenzie, Tony Briggs, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Richard Roxburgh, Kenneth Radley, Ash Ricardo, Archie Thomson.

"Welp, that's it. I'm fucking lost."

Eric Bana is a good actor. Chopper - amazing. He does great comedy - check out The Castle and Funny People. He's a solid Bruce Banner, a memorable Star Trek villain, and has worked with Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and Joe Wright.

So why do I find him so underwhelming as Aaron Falk in The Dry movies? 

The novel of The Dry is a modern Aussie genre classic - a near-perfect crime novel that was turned into a half-decent movie of the same name. The film's biggest downside was Bana's weirdly flat performance. It's the same in the sequel Force Of Nature, although here he's joined by an equally disappointing Jacqueline McKenzie (another hugely talented actor). 

The pair combine to play an unconvincing cop duo called in to help find a group of women lost in the Aussie bush on a corporate retreat. Each woman has a secret, leaving the cops to wonder what is going on out in the fog and ferns. 

In The Dry, it's Falk's personal connection to events that amplifies the classic story and provides an emotional core. That's missing from the novel of Force Of Nature, but the attempts here to shoehorn a subplot involving Falk's past are confusing, distracting and, well, terrible. 

Indeed, when the film leaves the flashbacks of the women lost in the bush, it suffers immensely. Force Of Nature is a movie of two halves. The half led by Bana and McKenzie never reaches the heights of the other half, led by Torv and Furness.

This superior half is filled with intrigue and emotion. Torv, so great in The Newsreader, makes Alice wonderfully complex - sometimes likeable, sometimes hissable. She's a standout, but along with Furness, McLeavy, Stringer and Ansell, they make their characters feel like real people in a truly dire situation, unlike Bana and McKenzie's Falk and Cooper, who never connect as cops.

Force Of Nature looks great (a few weather inconsistencies aside) and makes the most of some superb location shoots. But the story sits unevenly - its additions to Harper's plot are awkward, and its investigation plot never rings true.

A third and fourth book exist, but it remains to be seen whether they'll be made. I'm not holding my breath.

Damsel

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on March 21, 2024.

(M) ★★★

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Angela Bassett, Robin Wright, Brooke Carter, Nick Robinson, Shohreh Aghdashloo.

"M'lady, your scaffolding is showing!"

What if the Knight In Shining Armour didn't rescue the Damsel In Distress, and said Damsel had to do her own arse-kicking?

That's the central premise of this surprisingly brutal revisionist fairy tale, which flips a bunch of fantasy tropes on their heads and gives us a dragon-battling heroine who definitely doesn't need a Prince Charming to save the day.

Brown is the titular princess, married off to a handsome prince (Robinson) to save her people, but who finds that wedded bliss is fleeting thanks to a hungry dragon with a taste for royal blood (the actual blood of royalty, not the band).

There's not a lot going on in this fractured fairy tale, but what it does, it does well. Even though the End of Act I Twist is visible from a mile away, the film doesn't take too long getting to it, and from there Damsel straps on its sword and rides into the breach with conviction and a single-mindedness that's impressive. It's only when the film drifts into imagined flashbacks and impossible knowledge that things get off the track, but for the most part it sticks to flipping the script on ye olde Damsel In Distress cliche, and makes it work.

Brown more than holds her own as the resourceful princess unwilling to go down without a fight. The script doesn't make her out to be superhuman, and Brown imbues her with the right mix of determination and fragility. In a fantastical world, she remains believable and empathetic. 

She's the shining light in a strong cast, with Winstone, Wright and Bassett all doing well with what are essentially bit parts in Millie Bobby Brown Versus The Dragon. As for the Dragon, voiced with menace by Aghdashloo, she's an interesting character. The CG is occasionally ropey, which is a let down, but at least it doesn't come off as yet another Smaug clone.

But that's the point here - to not do the things the other fantasy stories do. Somehow it still feels familiar, and the story is either thin or focussed, depending on how you look at it, but it works. Damsel certainly isn't the first film to flip a fairy tale with a feminist rewrite - Tangled and Frozen come to mind - but it does it in a way that is satisfying and true to its intentions. There's certainly a lot more third-degree burns and charred corpses in this one, too.

Damsel isn't going to win any awards, but there are far worse fantasy films out there.

Poor Things

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on March 7, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★★

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos.

Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Margaret Qualley, Hanna Schygulla.

"But why does the Lion not simply eat Dorothy?"

Way back in the early days of this millennium when I was a wee cadet journalist, one of the elder journos, who was always ready with a useful piece of advice, warned me off using the word "unique".

"It's one of the most misused words in journalism," he explained.

"It literally means 'one of a kind', so don't use it when you just mean 'different' and 'uncommon' - only use it when something is truly, literally 'unique' and there is nothing else like it."

After all these years, I feel I can finally use the word "unique".

Poor Things is a unique film. 

It's a steampunk coming-of-age fairy tale, mixed with an occasionally disturbing commentary on the patriarchy and a frequently hilarious exploration of morals and social conventions. It's bizarre, it's laugh-out-loud funny and it's wonderfully weird, yet it's also thought-provoking and confronting. If that's not unique, then I don't know what is, and I fear I will never get to use the word.

Poor Things is the story of Bella (Stone), who is the result of a morally dubious experiment by mad scientist Godwin Baxter (Dafoe). Having spent her entire life inside his lab, Bella is whisked away by a hedonistic cad named Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo) and begins a strange journey of self-discovery in a challenging world.

There is so much to admire about Poor Things. It often looks and feels like the love child of David Lynch and Terry Gilliam, but that's selling it short. Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan give us fish-eye lenses, odd angles, plenty of zooms, pinhole views and every other weird trick they can think of to throw us off balance and show an unfamiliar world in which they can present some sadly familiar problems. It's wonderfully unsettling, and makes the incredible sets and stunning production design even more otherworldly.

Equally otherworldly is Stone as Bella. Her journey from infantile naivety to mature self-awareness is strangely powerful and powerfully strange, and Stone never misses a step along the way. It's a physical role, almost robotic in places, but Stone never stops finding the humanity in the absurdity.

Ruffalo is also excellent as the bon vivant brought to his knees by Bella. His is an equally flashy performance, and Ruffalo shows off his knack for over-the-top comedy as he chews his absurd accent and the scenery at the same time.

Poor Things is proof that there is room for weirdly wonderful cinema in this world. Fans of Lanthimos already knew this, but his latest gives us heart that such unique and inventive film-making can find a home among a wide audience.