Spotlight

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Tom McCarthy.

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup.

"Maths? Everyone knows journalists can't do maths."

SINCE 1976, the benchmark for films about journalism has been All The President’s Men.

That tightly scripted drama used strong dialogue, a healthy sense of realism, and great performances – shunning flashiness, contrivances or gimmicks – to tell the true tale of how two reporters helped bring down a president.

Spotlight deserves to be uttered in the same breath as All The President’s Men. It is an equally taut, thrilling and authentic depiction of the press uncovering gross abuses of power.

In this case it is the Catholic Church’s cover-up of widespread child sex abuse in the Boston area, as investigated and uncovered by a team of reporters at the Boston Globe in 2002.

Centring on the paper’s “Spotlight” investigative unit of three journalists and an editor, the film follows their attempts to pull on the thread of one lawyer’s claims that the church had been systematically covering up the heinous deeds of one paedophile priest, unravelling a real-life scandal that not only shook the city and its Catholic community but also shone a light on the actions of priests and church officials across America.

It’s a story that unfortunately resonates around the world, particularly in Australia, where Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy’s own investigations helped trigger the ongoing royal commission into child sex abuse within the Catholic Church in this country.

Spotlight’s delivery does its subject matter justice. It’s a prime example of what some people may deride as a “people talking” movie, and as such it lives and dies by its cast and its dialogue, but there is nothing terminal here – just a gripping investigation that flourishes in the hands of its actors.

Ruffalo is the pick of the bunch, getting the best outburst in the script, but Keaton is not far behind as Spotlight department head Walter Robinson, a Boston native coming to terms with the malignant roots the Catholic Church has spread through his beloved city. An understated Schreiber is also good as incoming Globe editor Marty Baron, but there isn’t a bad turn to be found here – Oscar-nominated McAdams, Broadway regular James, and the always-brilliant Tucci are in fine form, while even the minor players are top-notch. Michael Cyril Creighton has a scene-stealing turn as an abuse survivor that is typical of the depth of talent on show here, but all are aided by a screenplay that creates well-rounded characters with ease.

Subtle direction from Tom McCarthy, matched by an equally subtle Howard Shore score, give the film a few necessary nudges, but Spotlight is a triumph of script, cast, and editing. The latter helps keep things ticking along, using the continual barriers and hurdles thrown in front of the journalists to help mount the tension, create surprises, and deliver an emotional punch at a slow-burning but satisfying pace.

Ultimately it succeeds because it puts the audience side-by-side with the reporters as they dig their way through a city that lives quite literally in the shadow of the Catholic Church, allowing us to share in the incredulity, disgust and frustration as the facts are presented. There is no need to dress anything up, and Spotlight largely works because it doesn’t try to do so.

Of the five Oscar nominees for best film that I’ve seen in the past 12 months, Spotlight is the most worthy winner.

How To Be Single

(M) ★★½

Director: Christian Ditter.

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie, Leslie Mann, Nicholas Braun, Damon Wayans Jr., Jake Lacy, Anders Holm.

"You chug like a toddler!"

FOR a film to pass the Bechdel Test, it must feature just one thing – a conversation between two female characters about something other than a man.

The test started as a joke in a comic strip but has become a useful tool for analysing gender inequality in movies – roughly half of the features released by Hollywood fail the Bechdel Test.

Many films fail despite having plenty of good female characters because those women never have a conversation (like The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, for example), so the test certainly isn’t the be all and end all of analysing equality. ​How To Be Single would probably fail the test too, despite its four key players being female and targeting a female audience, because every conversation relates to men. It’s hard to say whether this showcases another shortcoming in the Bechdel Test, or whether it highlights something else that’s wrong with Hollywood. Or neither.

Either way, it’s an unfair test to apply to this particular film, seeing as how its raison d’etre (for better or worse) is exploring heterosexual singledom from the female perspective, and therefore every scene relates to one character or another assessing their very existence through the prism of either being a) with a man or b) without a man.

Central to this navel-gazing is Johnson’s Alice, who “consciously uncouples” from her boyfriend Josh (Braun) in an attempt to “find herself”, with the intention of getting back together again once she completes her mission.

Throwing herself into the solitary life, she gets to know partygirl Robyn (Wilson), moves in with her gynaecologist sister Meg (Mann), and shares a one-night stand with Tom (Holm), who is tentatively forming a friendship with Lucy (Brie).

Each has their own take on relationships. Meg is happy being alone, Lucy dedicates her life to finding her “soul mate”, and Tom and Robyn see being partner-free as an idyllic state that allows for endless conquests.

With its intersecting story threads, How To Be Single feels a bit like a 20-something version of the 30-something love exploration He’s Just Not That Into You (unsurprisingly, both films are based very loosely on books by Liz Tuccillo). But where He’s Just Not That Into You worked well with its ensemble cast, entertaining arcs, and multi-faceted look at relationships, How To Be Single feels stilted and episodic by comparison. So much focus on Alice’s story gives the other characters short shrift – you could cut all of Brie’s scenes and the movie would be punchier and more streamlined, through no fault of Brie’s, while Mann’s storyline is out-of-place and adds little.

It actually feels more like you’re binge-watching a TV show – some weird composite of Girls, New Girl, 2 Broke Girls, and probably some other show with “girl” in the title – on fast-forward, rather than sitting through a single feature-length movie.

The film works best when it’s picking apart rom-com clichés, which it does well, or when Wilson is in full flight. She makes the first half of the film her own with her brash humour, with Johnson a good foil in their straight woman/funny woman pairing.

But How To Be Single falls apart halfway through when its narrative suddenly leaps forward three months in a jarring move it never recovers from. Again, it’s only Wilson and Johnson that salvage it but even that is a struggle as their relationship is pushed to unnecessary limits as the movie collapses in a pile of awkward revelations and resolutions, with a baby thrown in for good measure.

At its best moments, the film is laugh-out-loud funny, with full points going to Wilson for saving the day. Its cast is likeable, particularly Johnson, but How To Be Single has nothing meaningful to say. Ultimately its enjoyable enough, but flimsily pieced together and largely disposable.

Deadpool

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Tim Miller.

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T. J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapičić.

"Oh my God is that Thor making out with Iron Man?"

ANOTHER week, another superhero movie.

It certainly feels that way, and many are wondering if we’ve hit ‘peak cape’ and how much more milk can be drained from this box office cash cow before audiences start yawning at the sight of another hyper-powered origin story or heroic team-up to save the galaxy.

The comic book well is unfathomably deep – the Marvel and DC archives go back to the 1930s, plus there are any number of other graphic novel houses (Dark Horse, Image, and IDW to name but three) with equally worthy catalogues to adapt. So how does Hollywood avoid inflicting superhero fatigue on movie-goers?

The answer potentially lies in finding new ways to tell these increasingly similar-seeming stories. Which brings us to Deadpool, a superhero movie that strives to be different (and succeeds) in many blood-soaked and swear-littered ways.

If you’ve never heard of Deadpool, there’s a good reason. He’s not an A-list comic book character like Spider-man or Batman, and he hasn’t been around as long as the likes of Superman or even Wolverine. He’s a cult favourite from the Marvel stable, which means that if you have heard of Deadpool, you are super-excited about this movie (and the good news is you won’t be disappointed).

Created in 1991, a bastardised version of Deadpool popped up in the 2009 film Wolverine: Origins, where he was played by Reynolds. But that take on the character was largely derided as an insult to comic book fans. Reynolds, to his credit, kept pursuing a “proper” Deadpool film and when test footage for such a movie was leaked in 2014, the fans went nuts (in a good way). The studio finally greenlit the project and here we are.

The result is exactly what fans wanted. Deadpool is known as The Merc With The Mouth, renowned for his curse-riddled and violence-heavy approach to dealing with baddies, with his signature trait being a predilection for breaking the fourth wall – he’s the comic book character that knows he’s a comic book character.

This film version brings all that to life perfectly, with Reynolds lapping up the dirty jokes and the writers laying the in-jokes on thick.

Reynolds is the key to it all. Not only did he help get the movie into production, he relishes the opportunity to bring Marvel’s most inappropriate superhero to life in true-to-source fashion. This is Reynolds in Van Wilder mode, taking regular potshots at the Wolverine: Origins version of the character, his own good looks, and his other comic book misfire Green Lantern.

By making a Deadpool film the Deadpool fans really want to see, the movie is deliberately niche, which is refreshing in a lot of ways. There is no broad popcorn appeal here and compared to the bloodless violence and PG glee of Marvel Studio’s heavy-hitters, this is a wonderfully puerile claret-soaked swear-fest. It’s also bloody hilarious and hands down the funniest superhero movie ever.

But it’s not going to attract a big audience. It’s a cult classic in waiting, destined to be seen as the black sheep of the X-Men family (this movie exists – somehow –  in the increasingly convoluted mutant movie series). Many of the gags are tailored to a very specific audience and are as “meta” as possible – when X-Men member Colossus threatens to take Deadpool to see Professor X, the mercenary quips “McEvoy or Stewart?”.

The movie is not without its flaws. The lead character’s back story is weaved throughout a protracted highway shoot-out/set-piece in a slightly cumbersome fashion for about an hour, although it does give Reynolds the opportunity to break the fourth wall with regular hilarity.

The plot would also fail any kind of forensic examination, which is a shame – it would have been nice if the writers had put as much thought into the story as they did the huge number of inventive cusses and insults.

But the movie is a winner because it achieves what it sets out to do, and that is to be the ideal Deadpool movie for the character’s fans. It may be at the expense of winning over a broader audience – and you can knock a star or two off this review if you count yourself in that category – but for the rest of us, this swear-tastic super-outing is exactly what we’ve been waiting for.

Suffragette

(M) ★★★½

Director: Sarah Gavron.

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Natalie Press, Anne-Marie Duff, Romola Garai, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson.

Test cricket had never seen such a volatile crowd.

FROM a modern perspective, it seems utterly baffling that there was ever a need for the women’s suffrage movement.

Much like the civil rights movement or the present drive for marriage equality, it is bewildering that there was a time when such things were necessary to overcome a legal form of discrimination and government-ordained inequity.

In the case of women’s suffrage, it is downright bizarre that there was ever time when the female of the species was not allowed to vote.

As such, Suffragette deals with important issues and events that, although they took centre stage a century ago, are still unfortunately relevant today, as women continue to fight against inequality, discrimination and harassment.

Part-fiction, part-fact, the film has Mulligan’s Maud Watts as our window into the suffragettes’ world. Initially happily married to Sonny (Wishaw), she is a doting mother who works as a laundress – a demanding and dangerous job.

Slowly she is drawn into the suffrage movement, almost by accident, as she witnesses women performing acts of civil disobedience to raise awareness to their cause.

Maud also begins to talk to her friends and discovers many of them are suffragettes, pulling her further into their world as she begins to weigh up what she is willing to sacrifice for a greater good.

As mentioned before, Suffragette deals with important issues and is suitably solemn. Its biggest downfall is it boils these issues and their historical context down into an overly straightforward plot, ditching any complexity for an awkward simplicity.

Thankfully the cast is top-notch and the characters are compelling. Mulligan is excellent as she grows from wide-eyed naif to strident suffragette, Bonham Carter gives a typically seamless turn, and Press, Duff and Garai are also great as women fighting their own battles amid a bigger war.

Also good are the men. Wishaw and Gleeson both play fascinating characters – the former as a confused husband struggling to understand and deal with his wife’s decisions and the latter as a policeman struggling with his own moral code. Perhaps Gleeson’s character could have been better fleshed out, but it’s a strong performance nonetheless.

Although appearing on some posters, Streep’s turn as real-life suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst is a mere cameo, although it does help lend a mythic quality to the character.

On the technical side, the film is fine, if given to an over-reliance on shaky handheld shots more than is necessary. But generally Gavron’s direction is solid, as she paces the story gradually and builds to a satisfying and powerful ending, aided by a strong score from Alexandre Desplat.

As an introduction into the world of suffragettes, the film is good, but feels like an over-simplified take on an important issue.

The Hateful Eight

(R18+) ★★★★

Director: Quentin Tarantino.

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, James Parks.

"You can't make me go to Comic-Con."

TARANTINO’S aptly titled eighth film is most like his first.

A bunch of colourful characters are gathered in one location, each with their own stories and secrets that have led them to that point, each armed and probably dangerous. Things are likely to get violent and blood-soaked as they try to work out who’s working against who.

It could be Reservoir Dogs, but it’s The Hateful Eight. Instead of a gang of thieves hiding out in a Los Angeles warehouse, the leads here are a bunch of misfits that have sought shelter from a blizzard in a Wyoming general store called Minnie’s Haberdashery.

But QT’s eighth is also an opportunity to try some new tricks while still being as Tarantino-esque as ever.

Set shortly after the American Civil War, the film is a western thanks to its setting and collection of bounty hunters, cow punchers and gun-toting scoundrels, but at its heart it is a mystery, or rather several mysteries rolled into one.

But as the story escalates and the blood and bullets flow, its dark sense of humour grows, almost to the point of absurdity. The violence sits somewhere between Python-esque and like something out of a horror movie, and it’s part of the film’s undoing, as it paints itself into an increasingly claret-covered, black comedy corner. The final act can’t live up to what has gone before it, nor can it give a satisfying-enough outcome to the many story threads that have become entangled at Minnie’s Haberdashery. It is bloody good fun though.

The first two acts (or five chapters, as they’re arranged here) are great. As a director, QT is fantastic, but as a writer of dialogue there are few better. In the mouths of Jackson, Russell and co, Tarantino’s words sizzle and keep you entertained in spite of the exorbitant running time (167 minutes) and the film’s stagey, confined location.

In fact, Jackson has never been better. It’s a big call, given that he’s been in over 100 movies across four decades, but this is finest performance. Leigh is also a highlight – she’s an oft-ignored actress who has made a habit of doing an excellent job in thankless roles, but she is a scene-stealer here and worthy of awards.

There are no weak links in the cast. Russell channels John Wayne to great effect, Goggins and Roth get the majority of the laughs, and Tarantino proves yet again that he’s one of the few directors that knows how to get a decent performance out of Madsen.

QT seems like he was having fun putting The Hateful Eight together, a point evidenced by the number of returning actors he uses here. There’s a playfulness and a pointlessness (which is also part of the third act’s problem) that are a welcome change of pace after the historic heaviness of Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds. Don’t be fooled though – this is rated R for a reason and does lull you into a bit of a false sense of security.

Ending issues aside, this is another worthy addition to Tarantino’s back catalogue. While nowhere near as flashy, outrageous or energetic as the rest of his films, it is still a fine example of his way with words and his knack for putting together a great cast.

The Revenant

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson, Forrest Goodluck.

"I know there's an Oscar around here somewhere."

WILL Leo finally win an Oscar for his role in The Revenant?

It’s one of 12 nominations for the film, and probably the main one on award-watchers’ minds as it’s the fifth time he’s been shortlisted for an acting Oscar.

If he does win, it will be a worthy one, but something of a cumulative compensation. It’s not his best performance, nor his best role – take your pick from his turns in The Wolf Of Wall Street, The Great Gatsby, Django Unchained, Shutter Island, The Aviator, Romeo + Juliet, The Basketball Diaries or What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? for that superlative. It will be like when his regular collaborator Martin Scorsese won best director for The Departed – it was a great film but not his best, so the Oscar felt like a recognition of previous effort more than anything.

DiCaprio’s performance is one of many highlights in The Revenant. He plays Hugh Glass, a guide working with a bunch of fur trappers in the 19th century wilds of the USA.

When Native Americans attack the trappers, Glass, his half-native son, and the few survivors ditch their precious furs and attempt to flee back to a nearby fort one week’s trek away. But Glass’ situation goes from bad to worse when he is left for dead in the wilderness as winter falls, leaving him with seemingly impossible odds of survival.

The Revenant has a lot going for it. Aside from DiCaprio’s leading turn, and a strong supporting cast headed by Hardy, it is spectacular to look at.

As he did with Birdman, Iñárritu uses his trademark long takes to great effect, pulling off some incredibly complex feats of staging. The opening skirmish between the trappers and Native Americans is done in only a handful of elaborate (and viscerally violent) shots, while the final showdown between Glass and his nemesis is made all the more gripping by being one constant take.

The cinematography is also gorgeous, capturing the desolation, danger and beauty of the landscapes that are as much a character in the film as the cast.

But there is something distinctly lacking. As impressive and jaw-dropping as it is from time to time, The Revenant is unnecessarily long, with Iñárritu too often enamoured with the landscape and the trees and the sky, or distracted by yet another dream sequence. A more judicious edit could have ramped up the intensity of what is a potent story, as its meandering delivery somewhat defuses the power.

Also lacking is some substance beyond being a simple revenge film. Iñárritu’s delivery of Glass’ story seems to aim for some bigger themes, possibly about the acceptance of death, the importance of honour, finding God/peace, man's destruction of nature or relationship with his environment, but none of these themes ring true.

The saving grace in many ways is DiCaprio. If the Oscar was an endurance race, he would win hands down. Every single moment of his largely wordless performance is gruelling and DiCaprio maintains the rage across the full two-and-a-half hours.

Hardy is also great if indecipherable at times, and Gleeson is good too, recapturing the form of Ex Machina having been the weakest link in the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

By all reports, Iñárritu put his actors and crew through hell in his quest to capture the savagery and brutality of this story, making for one of the most gruelling shoots since Apocalypse Now.

These stories back up the sensation that The Revenant is the result of a director going mad with power and feeling he can do no wrong. He doesn’t go full Heaven’s Gate – the ill-fated film that sunk The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino’s career – but there are touches of that here, with Iñárritu apparently employing Cimino’s technique of only filming during certain hours of the day to get the right look using only natural light.

At best, The Revenant is a flawed masterpiece. At worst it’s Oscar-bait from a director losing his mind and disappearing up his own butt while he makes his cast and crew suffer on the journey.

Sisters

(MA15+) ★★★½

Director: Jason Moore:

Cast: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ike Barinholtz, Maya Rudolph, John Leguizamo, John Cena, James Brolin, Dianne Wiest, Bobby Moynihan, Madison Davenport.

Fey and Poehler could feel there was something missing
from their lives, but they didn't know what it was.
It was Bunnings.

TINA Fey and Amy Poehler are regarded as a great comedy duo thanks largely to their work on Saturday Night Live and hosting the Golden Globes.

But on the big screen, we’re yet to see them in full bloom together. Their 2008 film Baby Mama received mixed reviews and they didn’t share any screen time in cult classic Mean Girls.

Thankfully Sisters is the Fey-Poehler feature-length team-up many people have been waiting for. While far from groundbreaking, it’s flat-out funny and the perfect vehicle for these hilarious friends.

The pair play the titular siblings, and in a reversal of their Baby Mama roles, Fey is the loose cannon while Poehler is the goody two-shoes. Fey plays Kate, an erratic single mother unable to keep a job, while Poehler is Maura, a divorcee too busy trying to help others to get her own life in order.

When they discover their parents (Brolin and Wiest) are selling their family home, Kate and Maura hatch a plan to host one last party there. It will be just like the huge, off-the-hook gatherings they had in high school. Except this time, Kate will stay sober and be the “party mom” while Maura will get to let her “freak flag fly”.

Plot-wise it’s slight – it’s like Project X for grown-ups – and all the usual party tropes are wheeled out. There’s the insane levels of damage, the one guy who’s really high, the misguided sexual adventures, plenty of drunken antics, the police intervention, and the deep-and-meaningful conversations.

What makes the film stand-out is that all the characters undertaking these typically teenage exploits are 40-somethings searching for a lost youth. It’s this theme of hanging on to or recapturing the past, whether it be through Kate and Maura’s disapproval of their parents selling the family home or with their attempts to stage one last classic shindig, that gives the story a nice angle that adds extra layers to an otherwise generic party movie.

In between, there are subplots about Kate trying to patch up things with her straight-laced daughter (Davenport), while Maura tries to get back into dating mode. These fare less well and serve to slow the film when compared to the steady flow of laughs streaming out of Fey and Poehler and their party people.

The two stars are the saving grace when things waiver. They’re a great team and the way they bounce off each other is the best thing Sisters has going for it. They instantly seem like siblings from the moment we first see them together – peas in a pod yet vastly different, with a natural chemistry and connection that is the glue of the film.

This glue becomes particularly important when proceedings threaten to get too outlandish or the pace slackens –  Fey and Poehler are usually on hand to offer a great (and hugely inappropriate) one-liner to keep things ticking along.

They also have excellent support. Add in their quirky parents (Weist gets to unleash some very inventive swearing), a great cameo from Cena, a nice subplot involving Rudolph as Kate’s enemy, and Moynihan as the unfunny funny guy, and there is a strong-enough team to pick up the slack when the film sags.

Sisters isn’t going to set the world on fire like, say, The Hangover or Bridesmaids, but it’s not too far behind. It’s solid comedy with a consistent train of laughs rolling through it and is the Fey-Poehler movie many have been crying out for.