The Marvels

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on November 16, 2023.

(M) ★★★½

Director: Nia DiCosta.

Cast: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Samuel L. Jackson, Zawe Ashton, Gary Lewis, Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh.

Hanging out in kids' bedrooms? Not cool, Captain Marvel.

All the headlines around The Marvels have been about its poor box office performance, which totally ignores how fun and entertaining this film is.

The reasons for the flop out of the gates are many, but the main one is surely a lack of promotion thanks to the actors' strike, which dulled the buzz of this worthy addition to the MCU. Had Larson, Parris and Vellani been able to hit the junket tour and showcase the great chemistry they share on screen, then maybe we'd have a different set of headlines.

Or maybe it's that now-legendary "superhero fatigue", a term that's been thrown around for the past decade, only to get quickly forgotten when the next amazing superhero movie rolls around.

But who cares? Despite its flaws, The Marvels is a hoot, and the kind of good-time superpowered jawn that hopefully stirs up some belated word-of-mouth buzz.

It centres on Carol Danvers AKA Captain Marvel (Larson), Ms Marvel (Vellani) and the steadfastly un-nicknamed Monica Rambeau (Parris - but she's Photon right? Or Spectrum?), who find their powers entangled after a run-in with a wormhole phenomena created by alien warrior Dar-Benn. As they investigate further, they discover they're in a race against time to stop Dar-Benn repairing her damaged homeworld at the expense of numerous other worlds, including Earth.

The Marvels ain't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's fun, riding high on the interactions of its stars. If you haven't caught Disney+'s Ms Marvel series then you've been missing out on the bubbly delight that is Vellani, who brings her fan girl enthusiasm to all the best lines in the film. Combined with Larson and Parris, the trio make for a welcome delight.

Oddly, the film's villain is disappointing despite coming from the wonderful moral grey zone Marvel does so well. Like so many other MCU Big Bad, Dar-Benn believes what she is doing is the right thing (see also Namor, the High Evolutionary, Thanos etc...) and is compelling from that angle, but is sadly unmemorable and lacking in charisma, despite Ashton's best efforts.

The action is great, with the "entanglement" of the three Marvels' powers making for some neat CG trickery. The sillier moments are also excellent; better than the emotional beats. The cat-like flerkens are given a hilarious role while a wacky Bollywood-style dance number in the middle is nice, but the relationship between Danvers and Rambeau feels forced.

The combination of it all is unwieldy at times, but by-and-large The Marvels works. It's disappointing this film will be written off as an MCU flop because its superior to plenty of other entries in the franchise that fared better at the box office.

Killers Of The Flower Moon

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on November 2, 2023.

(M) ★★★½

Director: Martin Scorsese.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Scott Shepherd, Everett Waller, Talee Redcorn, Yancey Red Corn, Tatanka Means, Tommy Schultz, Sturgill Simpson, Pete Yorn.

"Son, can you direct me to the nearest apothecary?"

Yep, it's long. Like really bloody long. Not quite as long as Scorsese's previous film The Irishman, but that was on Netflix so I could pause it when I needed to go to the toilet. You can't pause a cinema #bringbacktheintermission.

But it's good. Like really bloody good. Scorsese's knack for rich, nuanced storytelling that grows in the darker mud of humanity is unrivalled, and it's in full bloom here. Horrible people doing horrible things for horrible reasons, with the tempo dragging out the tension as we hope for comeuppances - yep, this is what Scorsese does well. 

Based on David Grann's acclaimed non-fiction book of the same name, Killers Of The Flower Moon stars DiCaprio as Ernest Buckhart, a somewhat dim-witted returning WWI veteran who ends up at the ranch of his uncle Bill Hale (De Niro) in Fairfax, Oklahoma. The region is rich with oil, all owned by the Native Americans of Osage County, making for a bizarre situation where the Native Americans have all the wealth, but are still treated like second-class citizens.

Ernest falls in love with Mollie Kyle (Gladstone), playing into the hands of his uncle, who aims to take over her family's oil rights by whatever means necessary. 

With solid performances all round, a fascinating story, and beautiful cinematography, this is a fine film, as you would come to expect from Scorsese, who hasn't made a bad film since the '90s. Ernest Buckhart is a largely unlikeable doofus committing unseemly crimes, but following him around as it all slowly comes apart is oddly enjoyable, even funny at times, despite the killing and depravity. 

But the problem really is the length and the pacing. The first two hours, while fascinating, are slow. It is beautiful and haunting at times, punctuated with increasing outbursts of violence, but it takes a long time to get where it's going, and it's really hard to shake the feeling it could have been shorter without sacrificing the beauty and the elegiac nature. 

Scorsese shows his typical reverence for his material and his subjects, particularly the Native Americans, their rituals, and their plight. He has collected a fine cast, his old friend, the dearly departed Robbie Robertson, delivers a haunting final score, and while the postscript of the film is odd, it demonstrates Scorsese's passion..

A long film is only bad when it feels long, and across its first two acts, Killers Of The Flower Moon feels long. But it's still a worthwhile journey, despite it taking a bloody long time to get where it's going.

Beckham

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on October 19, 2023.

(M) ★★★★

Director: Fisher Stevens.

"And then I kicked another goal. And after that, I kicked another goal...."

I know this sounds stupid, but the main thing I learnt from this four-part Netflix doco series was how great of a player David Beckham was. I honestly had no idea. I've only ever had a passing interest in soccer, mainly when the Socceroos or Matildas are in the World Cup. 

Beckham, to me, was a soccer player with a huge profile. He was tabloid fodder. He was married to a Spice Girl. He was good-looking enough to be an occasional model. I figured he must have been a half-decent player, but it never occurred to me he was one of the all-time greats.

So from that angle, this doco is fascinating. His rollercoaster career - the highs are remarkable and the lows even more stunning - makes for incredible and surprisingly emotional viewing. When you throw the off-the-pitch stuff into the mix - his romance with Victoria Beckham, the relentless paparazzi, his topsy-turvy relationship with the public - it makes for a heady combination of glamour and glory.

It would be hard to mess up this treasure trove of content and thankfully Stevens' doesn't. His unrivalled access and all-star cast of talking heads really sell it, capped off by some canny editing by Michael Harte. The deeply personal nature of it all is amplified by moments where interviewees look seemingly right down the barrel to watch replays of football matches, capturing their reactions in intimate detail.

This intimacy is evident in the level of control Posh & Becks have over it all. They're using the doco series as therapy - Victoria Beckham admits as much towards the end - but they brush past some things and lean into other moments. The affair allegations get a mention, but its brief and the "other woman" Rebecca Loos is never named, let alone interviewed. The whole thing is only as intimate as the Beckhams will allow, and while it's remarkably candid, it's still somewhat stage-managed.

But it's ultimately fascinating, not just as a summation of a remarkable football career, but as a study of tabloid media gone wild. Part-therapy and part-brand reclamation on the part of its subjects, it's nonetheless a riveting insight into a pop culture phenomenon and an intriguing study of sporting prowess.

Cocaine Bear

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on October 5, 2023.

(MA15+) ★★★½

Director: Elizabeth Banks

Cast: Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ray Liotta, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Brooklynn Prince, Christian Convery, Aaron Holliday, Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Ayoola Smart.

Cocaine Bear's brother Weed Bear preferred to sleep.

Cocaine Bear is a great bad idea, the kind that happens at 3am after too many edibles, and then you wake up two days later and find you've written a script in a fever dream you don't remember, and the script is Cocaine Bear, and it's not bad, and then you polish it up and it's actually really good, and somehow Elizabeth Banks ends up directing it and you're like "holy shit, Elizabeth Banks, she was great in those Pitch Perfect films and The Hunger Games, and she directed Pitch Perfect 2, which was pretty good, although she was also in and directed part of Movie 43, which is one of the worst movies ever so there's that", but she does a great job directing this film based super loosely on the real life bear that died after eating 34kgs of cocaine that was thrown out of a plane in 1985 and when I say loosely I mean very very loosely, because, like, no one knows anything about what the real Cocaine Bear did before it died though its a pretty safe bet that it talked incessantly at a party and was super annoying and didn't sleep for 36 hours but this movie imagines the bear as a psycho killer, running through the woods of Georgia off its guts on charlie, attacking everyone it comes across, but what's really wild about this movie is that its actually really good, like the script is actually really good because this is basically a B movie right, except it's really well acted and the script gives a few of the characters half-decent arcs so we care about them in between the cavalcade of face-ripping and disembowelling wrought by Ol' Queen Cocaine Bear herself because did I mention this is hella-gory, like you see dudes get their guts ripped out and their heads blown off and someone does a pretty brutal slide along a road and it's messed up and all looks super-convincing, like, even the bear looks pretty good at times, great work Weta, but somehow the film is hilarious and I guess that comes back to that solid script again, which just works, like, it sets a great tone that says "yes, this is batshit crazy, we know its batshit crazy, but sometimes batshit crazy can be good, like, hear me out, what if we treat this shit serious and shit, but, you know, the whole time it's about a bear that's ripped off its tits on candy" and that's what I love about it, because it's really funny and really brutal but it's damned entertaining and it is some high-quality B movie stuff, and holy shit you've gotta see the trailer, here, here, I'll show you, no, right now, here watch this, watch this...

...right, like, they got a surprisingly rad cast for it, see, like Keri Russell, remember her from Felicity, but she's been in heaps of stuff since then and she's really good as a mum protecting her daughter and it's like a metaphor for a Mama Bear protecting her cubs, and Ice Cube's son is in it and he played Ice Cube in Straight Outta Compton (isn't that wild?), and his name's O'Shea Jackson Jr, in real life I mean, not in this movie, in this movie he's called Daveed, and Alden Ehrenreich is in it too and he was Han Solo in that Solo spin-off movie and damn that was great and I wish they would make a sequel, oh yeah, and he's in this and he's really good, oh and this is one of Ray Liotta's last movies so there's that, but anyway, this is how you do a B movie properly, 'cos what you do is you lean into the insanity but treat it seriously like 'holy shit that bear just ripped that dude's head off' but the characters are as freaked out as you, and yeah it's kinda dumb in places, but I was surprised by how good it was, so, yeah, there's that.

REWIND REVIEW: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the Greatest Films Of All Time, as determined by my incredible spreadsheet, which is detailed and regularly updated here.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Irvin Kirschner.

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Frank Oz, Peter Mayhew, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker.

"Join me... and together we'll watch every episode of Clone Wars."

Why is The Empire Strikes Back considered the best of the Star Wars films?

Movieweb says it has the best lightsaber duel of the series (really?), and points to the budding romance, the plot, the character development, and the plot twist. The Nerdstash cites the expansion of the universe, the score, the storyline juggling, the quotable dialogue, Darth Vader at his most menacing, the darkness, that ending, the romance and the character development. Reel Rundown mentioned all this, the pacing and more.

All this is true (except for the bit about the best lightsaber duel), but there's one thing that doesn't get highlighted enough in the discussion around Empire: emotion.

The late great Roger Ebert hit on it in 1997 when he noted that it's "because of the emotions stirred in Empire that the entire series takes on a mythic quality that resonates back to the first and ahead to the third". 

"This is the heart," Ebert wrote.

There are a couple of key emotional moments I noticed during my squillionth watching of Empire recently. I was watching it with my seven-year-old, who was on his second viewing, which helped me have fresh eyes on it, highlighting the difference between Empire and A New Hope. They're just little things, but given the billions of words that have been written about Empire over the years, they struck me as underappreciated yet significant things that haven't been written about enough.

Firstly, let's talk about the emotional impact of... Chewbacca. Check out this moment.

If that video doesn't work or gets deleted due to a copyright claim some day, I'm trying to show you the moment when the Rebel commanders on Hoth decide they have to close the shield doors for the night, despite Han and Luke still being lost out there in the icy dusk. As the doors close with a thunderous "doooom", Chewie howls like a dog on a full moon. It's primal, yet it's heartfelt. Chewie cares so much about Han, he howls, as if in pain. And in turn, we care. Take Chewie out of that scene and it has a scintilla of the emotional impact it would otherwise have.

Generally speaking, Empire gives Chewbacca a lot more depth. It's only little things - a surprise hug for Luke on Hoth, Chewie's concern and frustration at finding and then repairing a disassembled C-3PO on Cloud City, his efforts to take on Vader and his stormtroopers to save Han from being put in carbonite - but it speaks volumes. Chewie is a more well rounded character, and suddenly the world he inhabits feels richer, as do the relationships between everyone.

(I was going to gripe about the bit in The Force Awakens when Leia consoles Rey instead of Chewie after what happens to Han, but I'm going to internalise the rage and move on.)

Those emotions are even better illustrated by the white-hot sexual tension between Han and Leia in Empire. From her unwittingly incestuous kiss with Luke intended to inflame Han's jealousy, through to Han's "I know" retort to Leia's declaration of love, it's one of the most rewarding arcs of the movie. And that's saying something.

But when you get down to it, the other big key arc is all about emotion. The whole "No. I am your father" reveal, even before the prequels and sequels and all the rest existed, threw a new emotional light over the entirety of what had come before in Empire. The film instantly flips from being about a supervillain hunting down the kid who blew up his doomsday device and becomes a haunting tale of a father who reveals his true identity to his son in the hopes he will join the family business (except the family business is ruling the galaxy). The emotion of Empire peaks right as the film flips, revealing layers of heart, complexity, pathos, and inter-relationships we didn't even know existed until that point.

It might seem like a little thing, but it speaks to the differences between A New Hope and Empire. The former is intent on mythmaking and creating a kind of highly entertaining space opera never seen before in its time. The latter does that, but at a level of emotional intensity the first film could only dream of. 

Obviously the latter cannot exist without the former, and Empire has the benefit of standing on the shoulders of its giant predecessor. But whereas A New Hope's greatest triumphs are in its storytelling, its groundbreaking special FX, and its remarkable legacy, Empire has all that and one extra key ingredient - emotion.

A Haunting In Venice

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on September 21, 2023.

(M) ★★★½

Director: Kenneth Branagh.

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarcio, Michelle Yeoh.

At any moment, someone was going to start either the Time Warp or the Macarena.

Kenneth Branagh is something of an enigma as a director. Even when he was known primarily as a Shakespearean adapter, he would bounce from one seemingly unconnected film to the next, shirking the idea of a style or particular approach so as to remain invisible as a director. Nothing has changed as his career has progressed. Sometimes he shifted gears with a disconcerting clunk that left the engine lying on the road, other times he took the wheel of a film like a Formula 1 driver - for every failure (Artemis Fowl, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), there has been an incredible, perhaps unpredictable success (Thor, Cinderella, Belfast). 

Now it seems, instead of diving back into The Bard between these varied projects, he picks up an Agatha Christie tome. A Haunting In Venice completes his trilogy of directing and starring in Christie adaptions, and while it may seem like Branagh is on familiar terrain again, this is unlike any of his previous Poirot outings, or indeed anything in his back catalogue.

Taking place on a stormy night in a Venetian palazzo, 11 people have gathered for a séance. But before the night is out, the number of ghosts in the building will increase thanks to a murderous guest among the party. And it's up to the famed Belgian detective to emerge from retirement and save the day.

Unlike Branagh's past Poirot films Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile, A Haunting In Venice deviates dramatically from its source. Ostensibly taken from Christie's 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party, the film bears little resemblance to the book, yet has all the trademark plotting of Agatha Christie, aped to perfection by screenwriter Michael Green, who did a fine job on ...Orient Express and ...Nile. 

But where the story feels like its predecessors, the look and style of the film do not. Branagh leans into the ghostly elements to summon a psychological thriller that's a world away from the train- and boat-bound whodunnits of before. This is a classic horror, filled with Dutch angles and brooding darkness. It's more unsettling than scary though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Branagh overdoes it a bit though. There are long stretches where every shot is framed oddly or tilted or characters are a little too close to the lens. Yes, it's unnerving, but the effect becomes tiresome as opposed to cumulative. This repetition adds to the bizarre sensation that the film is longer than his previous Poirot outings, when in fact it is the shortest of the trilogy.

Thankfully the mystery is a good one, that unravels with care, even though the effects of the storm that keeps everyone confined to the palazzo for the night are barely invisible the day after. Coupled with the pacing, these are the only real downsides. 

Once again, Branagh has assembled a cracking cast, led by himself as the magnetic but increasingly broken Poirot. The pick of the bunch are Yeoh as a medium who may or may not be the real deal, Dornan as a doctor with PTSD, Fey as a long-time writer friend of Poirot's, Reilly as a grieving opera singer, and the precocious Hill as a disturbingly grown-up child.

It's doubtful Branagh's Poirot trilogy will be remembered in years to come with the same passion as, say, Rian Johnson's similarly arranged Knives Out films, primarily because they don't crackle with the same energy or eccentricity. But they are fun diversions no less, and though A Haunting In Venice is more grim than grin, it's a well made throwback to a time when whodunnits could also make the hairs on the back of our necks stand up. 

The Monkey King (2023)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on August 24, 2023.

(PG) ★★★★

Director: Anthony Stacchi.

Cast: (voices of) Jimmy O. Yang, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Bowen Yang, Jo Koy, Nan Li, Stephanie Hsu, BD Wong, Ron Yuan, Hoon Lee, Andrew Pang, Andrew Kishino, Jodi Long, James Sie, Dee Bradley Baker.

Sticks were in, broomsticks were so passe. 

The 16th century Chinese folklore story known as Journey To The West is perhaps one of the most adapted tales of all time. Dozens and dozens of live action and animated versions exist across both the big and small screens. And with its 100 chapters, there is plenty of fodder in Journey To The West to fill dozens more adaptations in the centuries to come.

This glossy, high-energy Netflix CG animation is the latest, but it's one of the most accessible. Pacey and punchy, it's a short, sharp introduction to the titular character that has just enough depth and characterisation to temper its ferociously fast action sequences and to ensure all ages are thoroughly entertained.

The film is essentially the origin story of the Monkey King, or the first seven or so chapters of Journey To The West. It follows the hero from his birth out of a meteorite to his quest for immortality. Along the way he steals a magical stick (Li) that becomes his weapon of choice, and reluctantly teams up with a young peasant girl named Lin (Hoang-Rappaport).

To call The Monkey King frenetic is an understatement, but there is a level of control and visibility to its rapid-fire storytelling and fight scenes that is very welcome. It knows when to take a breath and squeeze a character moment in among the scattergun gags and hyperactivity, and it knows how to make a set-piece easy-to-follow despite moving at a million miles an hour.

Stacchi, whose background is in special effects and storyboarding, brings so much verve and energy to the film. There are some interesting flourishes of individuality - a montage of Monkey King taking on 99 demons is shown in a flashy paintbrush style, Stick's voice is Mongolian throat singing, and there are some choice heavy metal originals in the soundtrack. These elements help make the tropier bits of the storytelling feel refreshing, surprisingly fun, and super awesome. 

The Asian-American voice cast is excellent, with Yang channelling Chris Rock as the star of the show, Hoang-Rappaport brings the heart as Lin, and the iconic BD Wong showing up as Buddha. The characters are memorable and some of them feel a bit different to what we might see in a normal kids film - Monkey King's arrogance and egomania is certainly unique.

It's great fun, though it feels a little slight overall and a bit weak thematically. But that doesn't stop it being perfect for all ages, and a great introduction into one of the greatest Chinese stories of all time.