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.