5/26/15: He’s Got the World Up His Ass

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abusive relationships, America's Cup, Andy Canny, Angus Sampson, Australia, Australian films, based on a true story, Chris Pang, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, corrupt law enforcement, crime thriller, dark films, dramas, drug dealers, drug mule, drug smuggling, Ewen Leslie, film reviews, films, Fletcher Humphrys, foreign films, Geoff Morrell, Georgina Haig, Hugo Weaving, Ilya Altman, Insidious, Jaime Browne, John Noble, Leigh Whannell, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, Noni Hazlehurst, period-piece, Richard Davies, Saw, set in 1980s, set in Australia, Stefan Duscio, The Mule, Tony Mahony, writer-director-actor

If you think about it, being a drug mule has to have one of the worst risk-to-reward ratios of any job, roughly equitable to being the royal food taster in medieval times. Let’s see…you get to swallow multiple, latex-bundled packages full of potentially lethal narcotics, any of which could burst, come open or leak out into your stomach, flipping the hourglass on what could be the last, miserable moments of your existence. If this works out, you then get the white-knuckle thrill-ride of attempting to bypass police, customs, airport security and drug enforcement officials, often in countries where illegal drug possession carries a life sentence (if you’re lucky) or something a bit more permanent (if you’re not).

Get through all of that in one piece and you still have to deal with whomever gave you the job in the first place: historically, drug traffickers haven’t been known to be the most trust-worthy folks, so there’s still every possibility that you’ll get a bullet to the face instead of an envelope of cash for your troubles. Of course, if it all works out perfectly, well…you get to repeat the whole process all over again, rolling the dice anew every step of the way. Small wonder they don’t talk about this one on career day, eh?

While drug mule might not be the profession of choice for most, there’s always a first time for everything: under the right (or wrong) circumstances, the role of smuggler’s little helper might be the only one available. This, of course, is the crux of actor Angus Sampson’s co-directorial debut (he shares the role with Tony Mahony), the appropriately named The Mule (2014). Pulling triple-duty, Sampson co-writes, co-directs and stars in the film as the titular character, a meek, down-trodden nebbish who, quite literally, ends up sticking his future right where the sun doesn’t shine. In the process, Sampson and company come up with one of the most intense, unpleasant and genuinely impressive films of last year, a roller-coaster ride where the weak of stomach would be well-advised to keep a bucket close at hand, while those who like their entertainment pitch-black might just find a new favorite for their collections.

Set in Melbourne, circa 1983, we meet poor Ray Jenkins (Sampson), the kind of salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar guy who seems tailor-made for getting screwed over in film noirs. A rather simple TV repairman who’s really into his footie team, loves his mom (Noni Hazlehurst) and step-dad (Geoff Morell) and can chug a pint of beer faster than most folks can blink, Ray seems to have a pretty decent life. He’s also lifelong mates with Gavin (co-writer Leigh Whannell), who happens to be the captain of Ray’s football team…when he isn’t trafficking drugs for the team’s president, the by-turns jovial and terrifying Pat (John Noble), that is.

When the team decides to take a trip to Thailand to celebrate the end of another successful season, Gavin and Pat see it as the perfect opportunity to bring back another half key of heroin. Although he initially refuses Gavin’s request to help mule the drugs, he changes his tune once he realizes that his step-dad, John, is up to his eyeballs in debt to Pat: if Ray doesn’t help, Pat and his over-sized Russian thug will take John apart and put him back together upside down.

Once Gavin and Ray get to Thailand, however, Gavin calls an audible: he purchases an extra half key of product with the express purpose of selling it himself, without Pat’s knowledge. Despite changing his mind and wanting out, Ray is manipulated into swallowing the entire key of heroin, separated out into a multitude of condom-wrapped packages. With a gut full of drugs and enough anxiety for an entire continent, Ray makes it back to the Australian airport but gets busted after he acts like the kind of twitchy idiot who normally, you know, mules drugs.

Separated from his family, his mates and his normal life, Ray is taken to a motel by a couple of hard-ass detectives, Paris (Ewen Leslie) and Croft (Hugo Weaving), after he refuses to either admit to smuggling drugs or submit to a stomach x-ray. Paris and Croft make the situation quite clear: they’ll keep Ray there, under 24-hour surveillance, until they get the drugs…one way or another. From this point on, it becomes a (literal) fight against the clock, as Ray does everything he can to make sure that the drugs stay right where they are. The record for a mule keeping drugs in his system is 10 days, Croft smugly tells Ray: if he can “hold it” for longer, he’ll be a free man.

While Ray is staying true-blue from the isolation of his motel room prison, however, things are a little dicier on the outside. After figuring out what happened, Pat decides that Ray has become too much of a liability and tasks his best friend with the job of silencing him, once and for all. As all of these forces swirl around him, Ray, with the help of his cheerful public defender, Jasmine (Georgina Haig), puts a final, desperate plan into action. Pat and Gavin aren’t the only threats to his existence, however: sometimes, the baddest people are the ones you least suspect.

From the jump, The Mule is a ridiculously self-assured film, the kind of effortless thriller that the Coens used to pump out in their sleep. Despite this being his first full-length directorial effort, Sampson reveals a complete mastery over the film’s tone, triple impressive considering that he also co-wrote and stars in it. There’s never a point in the film where Ray is anything less than completely sympathetic and some of Sampson’s scenes are so unbelievably powerful that it’s rather impossible for me to believe no one saw fit to nominate him for any kind of acting award. In particular, the showstopping scene where Ray needs to re-ingest the packages is one of the most powerful, painful bits of acting I’ve ever seen. The biggest compliment I can pay Sampson is that he actually becomes Ray: it’s an astonishingly immersive performance.

Sampson isn’t the only actor who goes above and beyond, however: if anything, The Mule is a showcase for intense, masterful performances. Whannell, perhaps best known as the co-creator of the Saw franchise, along with James Wan, is perfect as Ray’s best mate/biggest problem. Weaving and Leslie are, likewise, perfect as the bad cop/bad cop duo, with Weaving turning in the kind of terrifying performance that should make folks remember how versatile and valuable he’s always been. Haig does some really interesting things with her portrayal of Ray’s lawyer, adding some shading and subtle deviousness to a character who could have been a crusading do-gooder on paper. Hazlehurst and Morrell are excellent as Ray’s loving parents, with each of them getting some nice opportunities to shine on their own: the scene where Hazlehurst tries to force-feed Ray some laxative-doped lamp is pretty unforgettable, as is the one where Morrell drunkenly confronts Pat and his murderous restaurant employee, Phuk (a likewise excellent Chris Pang).

And speaking of Pat: let’s take a few moments to sing the praises of John Noble, shall we? As an actor, Noble seems to have the singular ability to not only crawl beneath the skin of many a reprehensible character but beneath the audience’s skin, as well: in a long-line of memorable roles, Pat Shepard is, easily, one of Noble’s best and scariest. Riding the fine-line between joviality and cold-blooded, murderous evil, Pat is a perfect villain and Noble lustily grabs the film with both hands whenever he’s on-screen.

While the acting in The Mule is strictly top-notch, it also helps considerably that the actors have such a great script to work with. Loosely (very loosely) based on true incidents in Sampson and Whannell’s native Australia, The Mule is lean, mean and exquisitely plotted, breathlessly swinging from Ray’s motel imprisonment to Pat’s outside machinations with stunning ease. Full of great dialogue, thrilling setpieces and nicely intuitive emotional beats, The Mule reinforces that Sampson and Whannell are one of the most formidable teams in modern cinema. Throw in some excellent, evocative camerawork, courtesy of Stefan Duscio, along with a great score by Cornel Wilczek and Mikey Young, and you have a film that looks and sounds great: there are no smudged brushstrokes or missing lines in this particular “painting.”

To sum it up: I absolutely loved The Mule from start to finish. Smart, twisted, endlessly entertaining and constantly thrilling, it was nothing short of a minor masterpiece. At times reminiscent of the Coens’ iconic Fargo (1996), at other times bringing to mind Sam Raimi’s relentlessly bleak, under-rated A Simple Plan (1998), Sampson’s The Mule still manages to carve out its own unique acre of cinematic real estate. While you might not think that a film about a man steadfastly refusing to take a shit for over a week is your cup of tea, I’m here to tell you to think again: if you like smart, edgy films with brilliant acting, you’d be an absolute fool to pass up The Mule. Suffice to say, I’ll be sitting right here, breathlessly awaiting the next Sampson/Whannell joint: I’d advise you to do the same.

1/30/15: Toecutter’s Last Jam

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'70s action films, '70s films, A Clockwork Orange, action films, Australia, Australian films, auteur theory, Brian May, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, cops, cult classic, David Bracks, David Cameron, David Eggby, Death Wish, dramas, dystopian future, feature-film debut, Film auteurs, film franchise, film reviews, films, gang rape, gangs of punks, Geoff Parry, George Miller, highway patrol, Hugh Keays-Byrne, iconic villains, James McCausland, Joanne Samuel, law and order, Mad Max, Max Fairchild, Max Rockatansky, Mel Gibson, motorcycle gangs, Movies, Paul Johnstone, post-Apocalyptic, revenge, road movie, Roger Ward, set in Australia, Sheila Florence, Steve Bisley, The Warriors, thrillers, Tim Burns, Toecutter, vendetta, vengeance, vigilante, Vince Gil, writer-director

When George Miller first introduced the world to Max Rockatansky in 1979, I wonder if he could have predicted that the character would be popular enough to warrant reexamination almost 40 years later. With three films in the Mad Max canon and a fourth coming this year, however, it’s pretty clear that Miller’s Australian “Road Angel of Death” has had some serious staying power. While the upcoming Fury Road (2015) appears to follow the template set by latter-day high velocity outings like Road Warrior (1981) and Beyond Thunderdome (1985), the original film, Mad Max (1979), was a much leaner and meaner affair, albeit no less over-the-top and prone to some particular comic-book affectations. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Death Wish (1974) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) while bearing more than a passing resemblance to The Warriors (1979), Miller’s initial outing is a real doozy and one that would go on to influence generations of action and post-apocalyptic films to come.

Kicking off with an epic, 10-minute smash-and-bash car chase between the howling mad Nightrider (Vince Gil) and a group of unfortunate highway patrol officers, we’re thrust into the middle of the action with no info-dump or warning. As things gradually settle down, a bit, we come to discover that this appears to be a rather lawless, possibly post-apocalyptic, society, where cops and criminals duke it out on the dusty highways that stretch across Australia. At first, Nightrider seems unstoppable, a Tazmanian Devil behind the wheel who handily out-runs, out-drives and out-bravados every cop he comes across. Cue our hero, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), the coolest, toughest and most badass patrol officer of the bunch. Max shows up, mirrored shades reflecting back the blistering sun, and proceeds to drive Nightrider straight into an early grave. This, ladies and gentlemen, is his business…and business is very, very good.

Max’s partner, Jim Goose (Steve Bisley), is a good egg and loyal as the day is long, while his superior officer, Fifi (Roger Ward), treats Max like royalty and holds him up as shining example for the rest of the officers. At home, we get to see the softer side of Max: his loving wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel) blows a mean sax and he’s got a cute baby named Sprog. Life seems pretty darn groovy for this Down Under Dirty Harry but there’s big trouble brewin.’

This big trouble arrives in the form of the dastardly Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and his marauding biker gang. Seems that the gang has a bone to pick with Max for snuffing out their beloved Nightrider and Toecutter has sworn vengeance, the bloodier the better. When the gang blows into town to retrieve Nightrider’s coffin, they end up trashing the place, ala an old-fashioned Western, and chase a couple out onto the open road where they destroy their car, chase the guy away and gang-rape the young woman. Max and Goose arrive in time to pick up the pieces, finding the chained, traumatized woman and one of the gang members, Johnny (Tim Burns), so drugged-out that he forgot to run away when the others did.

Faster than you can say Dirty Harry (1971), however, the case gets tossed out and Johnny is released because none of the victims, including the young woman, will come forward to testify. Johnny walks, after taunting the cops, and Goose is furious. When the gang ambushes and attacks Goose in a particularly terrible way, however, Max will have to decide which path to follow, the one that leads to his family or the one that leads to revenge. As Toecutter, his cold-blooded lieutenant, Bubba (Geoff Parry), and the rest of the gang get closer and closer to Max, they will learn one very important lesson: you can do a lot of things to Max Rockatansky but the last thing you wanna do is get the guy mad.

Despite the often grim subject matter (children in peril, rape, collapsing society) and the often intense violence (immolations, dismemberments, semi driving over people), there’s a sense of buoyancy and energy to Mad Max that makes the whole thing a lot closer to a comic-book movie like RoboCop (1987) than to something more serious like, say, The Road (2009) or The Rover (2014). In addition, Miller uses several techniques, such as the wipe transitions between scenes and the jaunty score (courtesy of Australian composer Brian May) that help to elevate this sense of action-adventureism. To be honest, Mad Max often feels like a synthesis of Lethal Weapon (1987) (not specifically because of Gibson’s involvement but more for the depictions of Max’s home-life and the way in which the film’s action constantly toes the “silly/awesome” dividing line) and A Clockwork Orange (the gang’s affectations, slang and Toecutter’s casual brutality all reminded me explicitly of Kubrick’s adaptation), as odd as that may sound.

While never completely serious, aside from the film’s handful of heartstring-pullers, Mad Max never tips all the way over into campy or silly. This isn’t quite the novelty of The Warriors: Toecutter’s gang has an actual air of menace to them, an air that’s not helped by their propensity for rape and assault on innocent civilians. Keays-Byrne is marvelous as the insane gang leader, easily going down as one of the most memorable villains in these type of films: his polite, slightly foppish mannerisms are completely off-set by his hair-trigger barbarity, making for a bracing combination. Nearly as memorable is Geoff Parry’s turn as Bubba Zanetti: his laconic delivery perfectly contrasts with his hot-headed personality making for a character who would’ve been perfect going up against Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western.

In fact, more than anything, Mad Max is like a spaghetti Western, albeit one filtered through all of the influences listed above. The interplay between the gang members, between Max and his superiors, between the law and the lawless…the setpieces that could have easily been chases on horseback or wagon…the lonesome, wide-open devastation of the Australian landscape…Sergio Leone might have been proud to call any of them his own.

As one of his first roles, Mad Max set a course for Mel Gibson’s career that would serve him quite well, right up to the point in time where he self-detonated it. Here, however, we get Mel before the headlines, stupidity and career suicide: he’s rock-solid as Rockatansky, bringing just enough vulnerability and indecision to the role to prevent him from ever seeming as completely callous as someone like Eastwood’s Harry Callahan. He also brings a physicality to the role that helps make the whole enterprise seem that much more authentic: Gibson’s performance is so “all-in” that the scene where he limps and drags himself down the pavement genuinely looks like it hurts like hell. It would be the easiest thing in the world to play Max like a video game character but it’s to Gibson’s immense credit that he makes him both so human and so completely badass: it’s easy to see why this became a franchise so quickly, as the magnetism is undeniable.

In some ways, the differences between Mad Max and its predecessors is the same as the difference between the first two Alien or Terminator films: Mad Max is more of a small-scale revenge drama (very similar to Death Wish, particularly in the final reel) whereas the films that followed it are more wide-screen, adventure epics. Despite this, however, I was genuinely surprised to note how honestly cartoonish the film is. Perhaps I picked up on this when I watched the film in the past but it was more apparent now than ever before that the first film fits in perfectly well with the more OTT vibe of the other films. While it may be smaller scale, it’s definitely of a piece with The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome: Toecutter would have fit in nicely in either of those.

With Fury Road on the horizon, I thought it might be useful to go back and revisit the film that started it all. As always, Mad Max doesn’t disappoint: from the rousing action setpieces, astounding car chases, cool-as-a-cucumber lead character, colorful villains and genuine sense of danger and tension, Mad Max is an absolute blast from start to finish. Here’s to hoping that Miller manages to maintain this classic feel with his newest: the world has been without a Rockatansky for way too long now…we need our Mad Max now more than ever.

1/25/15: The Man With Nothing Has Nothing to Lose

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Animal Kingdom, anti-hero, Antony Partos, Australia, Australian films, brothers, car chases, cat-and-mouse chase, cinema, David Field, David Michôd, dramas, dysfunctional family, film reviews, films, foreign films, Gillian Jones, Guy Pearce, Jamie Fallon, Joel Edgerton, Keri Hilson, Mad Max, Movies, Natasha Braier, post-Apocalyptic, road trip, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, set in Australia, stolen car, Tawanda Manyimo, The Rover, The Way of the Gun, writer-director-producer

Midway through David Michôd’s post-apocalyptic The Rover (2014), Rey (Robert Pattinson), a possibly mentally disabled young man, relates a rambling, seemingly pointless story to Eric (Guy Pearce), his captor: as Rey yammers on and on, we watch as frustration and boredom wage war across Eric’s sun-bleached, weathered face, his quick-set lips constantly suppressing some sort of cranky comeback. After Rey finishes his story, Eric regards him with something approaching contempt and snaps, “Why’d you tell me that?” The young man shrugs and nonchalantly states: “It was interesting and I remembered it…not everything has to be about something.”

In a way, that’s as good a micro-philosophy for Michôd’s film as any: indeed, if one boiled The Rover down to its essential parts, one would get a narrative that consists entirely of a man pursuing another group of men in order to retrieve his stolen car. This is overly reductive, of course, since there’s a bit more going on here than that (The Rover is definitely about “something”) but Australian writer-director Michôd, who first hit the public eye with his brutal Animal Kingdom (2010), is a master of economy and the whole thing buzzes along with the extreme focus of the best single-minded revenge flicks. Think of this as a moodier Mad Max (1979) minus the tricked-out cars, intense action setpieces and over-the-top characters and you’re definitely in the right vicinity.

We begin in Australia, ten years after some sort of ill-defined “collapse” has led to some pretty miserable conditions: everything seems sun-baked and cracked, food and water are now luxury items and every single person packs as much heat as they can possibly carry. Into this heat-mirage of failure steps Eric, as beaten-down and weathered as the landscape around him. While stopping at what appears to be a nearly empty “water saloon,” Eric kicks back for a moment of peace and quiet, during which absolute disaster strikes: his one and only possession, his beat-up car, is stolen by a trio of thieves on the lam, Caleb (Tawanda Manyimo), Archie (David Field) and Henry (Scoot McNairy). The trio have just crashed their truck and jack Eric’s before he can stop them.

Jumping into their abandoned vehicle, Eric gives chase, on the thieves’ tail like flies on cow-shit. After a suitably thrilling cat-and-mouse chase, Eric gets out to confront them, at which point he’s cold-cocked and left to wake up in the dirt. As he continues his pursuit, Eric runs into Rey, Henry’s gut-shot brother. Seems that Rey was injured in whatever heist the group was involved in and the others just left him there, rather than dragging his soon-to-be carcass around. Since Rey claims to know where the group is headed, Eric takes him along, with the stipulation that he’ll slit his throat if Henry and the others aren’t where Rey says they’ll be. From that point on, Eric and Rey travel in uneasy companionship, their relationship never as simple as “captor and captive” or “traveling companions,” but never quite as cold-blooded as Eric’s relentless pursuit of his car. As the duo get closer and closer to their destination, Rey will have to make some awfully difficult decisions about family, loyalty and doing the right thing, even as Eric continues to shave his own humanity down to the bone, turning himself into a killer as remorseless and barren as the landscape around him.

For the most part, The Rover is well-made, heartfelt and consistently interesting, albeit  a tad confusing, from time to time. The script, based on an idea that Michôd developed with actor Joel Edgerton, is lean and mean, wasting as little time as possible on anything that doesn’t propel the story (and the characters) forward. Due to this economy, we don’t get much in the way of character development whatsoever (the only backstory we receive regarding the protagonist is one extremely confusing tidbit related after he’s been captured by the military and the film’s twist ending), which tends to give the various people we meet a rather “half-formed” nature.

In particular, the scenes involving Grandma (Gillian Jones) and the strange, old man at the film’s conclusion are enigmatic precisely because they’re sort of dumped on us with no explanation as to their significance. The bit involving the old man is particularly frustrating, since it seems to involve a fundamental emotional beat with Eric that never makes much sense: he seems to have an emotional reaction to someone he’s never met, for no perceptible reason, when he’s been largely emotionless before that. There’s also zero development with the trio of thieves, although McNairy and Pattinson do get a nicely emotional bit during the climax: Caleb and Archie are never anything more than generic types, however, giving their ultimate fates next to no real importance. While many films are filled with faceless villains, this seems an odd tact to take for a film that only features a small handful of actors: a little more depth would have opened up the film immensely.

From a production-standpoint, The Rover looks and sounds great: Natasha Braier’s cinematography perfectly captures the sun-bleached desolation of the uncompromising landscape and the occasional nods to an “artier” style (the slo-mo car flying by the window as Eric sits at the bar, drinking water and listening to an Asian pop song on the radio, for example) prevent the film from ever looking too “utilitarian.” The moody score, by Antony Partos, is particularly good: there’s one supremely cool driving sequence where the score approximates the sparse keyboard squelches of No-Wave legends Suicide and I, for one, could not stop grinning. I also got a kick out of the way Keri Hilson’s “Pretty Girl Rock” (you know, the “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful,” song) scores a key setpiece: while the film is never less than dour, it’s pretty obvious that a subtle (very, very subtle) stream of dark humor runs through everything.

Performance-wise, I was quite taken by both Pearce and Pattinson: Pattinson, in particular, turns Rey into the kind of twitchy, fidgety weirdo that seems a million miles from his usual roles and I agreed with almost all of his acting choices, although his odd, slightly slurred accent is often more than a little hard to parse. Pearce, for his part, can pretty much do these kinds of roles in his sleep and his world-weary, defeated but determined take on Eric is sturdy and feels authentic. One of the most interesting aspects regarding the character of Eric is just how poorly he fits the role of “hero”: hell, even “anti-hero” seems a bit of a stretch, at times. For much of the film, Eric is violent, uncompromising and kills at the drop of a hat, often with as little provocation as possible. The final twist makes his character more sympathetic (barely) but the road leading there is paved with plenty of “questionable” activities, as it were. It’s to Pearce’s great credit that we’re always on Eric’s side, even if it’s not always easy (or possible) to agree with his actions.

Ultimately, I enjoyed, but didn’t love, The Rover. On the plus side, the film stakes out a claim as a reasonable neo-Western, ala The Way of the Gun (2000) and that will always receive my stamp of approval. Michôd’s film looks and sounds great, slotting in nicely with similar Australian fare, such as the aforementioned Mad Max, as well as “arty” post-apocalyptic films like Bellflower (2011). There are also plenty of good performances here, including an above-average turn by Robert Pattinson in a rather non-typical role. On the downside, the film feels a little long, especially for such a streamlined narrative, and I never felt emotionally engaged with it until the final revelation, which does end up packing a bit of a punch. That being said, fans of low-key post-apocalyptic tales should find plenty to approve of, even if the final result is decidedly less than a game-changer.

6/25/14: He’ll Talk Your Ear Right Off

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anti-tourism films, Australia, Australian films, Australian horror films, cinema, drinking songs, Film, film reviews, Greg McLean, head-on-a-stick, horror, horror film, horror franchises, horror movies, John Jarratt, Mick Taylor, Movies, pig hunting, Ryan Corr, sequels, serial killer, the Outback, torture porn, Wolf Creek, Wolf Creek 2, writer-director

If you think about it, writer-director Greg McLean is like a one-man “anti-tourism” board for the great nation of Australia. McLean’s first two films, Wolf Creek (2005) and Rogue (2007), seemed bound and determined to make sure that folks stay far away from the Land Down Under: after all, he’s given us an unstoppable serial killer who targets tourists and a massive, man-eating crocodile that targets tourists…by this point, McLean could probably direct a reboot of Short Circuit (1986) and have Number 5 slaughter tourists. In some ways, it’s a decidedly niche acre to plow but it’s all McLean’s and he’s done amazingly well with it. The first Wolf Creek was a nasty modern classic, a frequently revolting, tough as nails horror film that introduced the world to Mick Taylor, the grinning, sadistic purveyor of the “head-on-a-stick.” As portrayed by John Jarratt, Mick was an instantly memorable character: a crude, racist, blood-thirsty pig-hunter who wanted to keep Australia “for the Australians”: if it meant massacring every foreign tourist he came across, well, so be it. There was real power in the character of Mick, a queasy combination of tough-guy “cool” and pure, unadulterated evil: Mick was charismatic and crazy as a shit-house rat…never a good combination.

When it was announced that McLean would be returning to the character of Mick, after almost a decade, I found myself wondering how this might work out. After all, I never thought that Wolf Creek had the potential to be a franchise: it was just too gritty and mean-spirited, for one thing but the character of Mick was also problematic. As we’ve seen with Freddy, sequels can often have a way of leaching the sinister cool from a villain, turning them from pure evil into something resembling a mass-murdering Henny Youngman. As portrayed in the first film, Mick had just the proper balance of dead-eyed evil and smarmy attitude: would McLean be able to keep this balance or would Mick begin a journey that would lead him to the same land of one-liners as Freddy and the Wishmaster? In many ways, Wolf Creek 2 (2013) is a much different beast than its predecessor, more of a bleak action film than a stalk-and-slash torture porn, similar to the difference between Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). But what about Mick? Does the Outback boogeyman still possess the ability to freeze the blood or has he joined the comedy circuit?

Wolf Creek 2 kicks off in high-fashion with a couple of corrupt highway patrolmen pulling over Mick’s truck, by way of a speed trap. The two cops are complete assholes, both belligerent and belittling to our “anti-hero” and the look on Mick’s face pretty much says it all: “Not a lot of pigs down south,” he sniffs, eyeing the high-powered rifle hanging in his truck cab, and the hog-hunter’s emphasis is pretty clear. Sure enough, as the cops take off, celebrating their “fun” with Mick, he calmly blows off the top half of the driver’s head (in a scene so astoundingly gory that it almost becomes parody), causing the car to flip. Mick calmly tracks the wounded survivor as he crawls from the wreckage, incapacitating him with a knife to his spinal cord (the aforementioned “head-on-a-stick”) before carrying him back to the car, strapping him in, soaking the whole thing in petrol and burning him alive. Mick walks off into the Outback, smiling, and we roll credits. It’s an intense, bravura, horrifying way to open the film and a pretty unforgettable way to reintroduce us to the bastard that is Mick Taylor.

The movie, proper, begins with a couple of young, energetic German tourists, Katarina (Shannon Ashlyn) and Rutger (Philippe Klaus), hitchhiking through the Outback. “Born to Be Wild” is on the soundtrack, the kids are having fun, it’s a sunny day and everything’s groovy. The pair is heading for Wolf Creek Crater which, as astute fans will remember, is ol’ Mick’s stomping grounds. As they travel, Rutger experiences some frustration with getting drivers to stop and pick them up: he complains about the loss of “community” and “altruism,” taking to task people who are afraid of foreigners and strangers. Rutger, of course, won’t know how bad the situation is until Mick stops by their campsite that evening. He’s come to tell them that there’s no camping in the national park areas and to offer them a ride back to town: Rutger is right to be suspicious, since the only things on Mick’s mind are carnage and rape, not necessarily in that order. After Rutger prevents Mick from assaulting Katarina, he gets dismembered for his troubles, allowing his companion to sneak away. “Hide and seek, eh,” Mick giggles when he discovers Katarina gone…and we’re off to the races.

From this point on, Wolf Creek 2 becomes a bit of a chase film, as Mick pursues first Katarina and then the poor, unlucky shlub, Paul (Ryan Corr), who makes the drastic (if noble) mistake of trying to help Katarina. The rest of the film entails the cat-and-mouse chase between Mick and Paul, as the terrified British tourist is chased from one end of the Outback to the other. Mick is intent on only one thing: punishing Paul for getting between him and “his meal.” Despite Paul’s best efforts, he’s not much of a match for Mick and the film swings into another mode as Mick finally catches up to Paul, becoming the torture porn film that the original was. Will Paul be able to survive the horrors that Mick intends to inflict on him? How good is Paul at Australian trivia? And what, exactly, does Mick intend to do with the electric belt sander? All these (and more) await within.

Right off the bat, as mentioned above, Wolf Creek 2 is much less a horror film than an adrenalized, gritty cat-and-mouse chase, with enough jawdropping gore and horror elements to keep a foot firmly in each camp. While I wasn’t expecting this, I must admit that it was an effective tact, for a while, at least. For a time, Ryan Coor’s Paul is actually a pretty good match for Mick, out-driving and out-maneuvering him, which lends the film a bit of the feel of a ’70s Ozploitation movie. Unfortunately, at some point, Paul turns into a whiny shit, which drastically reduces the association one can feel with him: it’s much easier to associate with an asskicker who won’t give up than it is with a crying dude blowing snot bubbles. In a way, this is odd criticism, since the first film was filled with whiny victims. Perhaps Paul’s “change of personailty” is so troubling because it takes him from hero territory, which is new to the Wolf Creek films, right back into simpering victim territory. On the whole, I would’ve liked Paul a lot more if he’d been more consistent: hard to tell if this is an issue with McLean or with actor Ryan Coor, although I’m willing to lay the blame at both their feet.

But what about Mick? As we know from the first film, these films (like most films like this) are all about the badguy: how does he stack up this time around? Unfortunately, not so well. As I feared earlier, Mick has begun to drift heavily in the direction of “wise-cracking killer,” ala Freddy, and this significantly reduces a lot of the fear around him. While John Jarratt is still a massively impressive presence as Mick, this is a decided step-down from the original portrayal. Quite frankly, Mick talks way too much: he has a one-liner for the murdered cops, quips for the German tourists, plenty of jokes for Paul…it just goes on and on. In the first film, Mick was a silent, grinning shark, an unstoppable killing machine who was so terrifying precisely because he was such an enigma: he could, literally, have formed fully sprung from the Outback, for all we knew. In Wolf Creek 2, not only is Mick one talkative fucker but he also has a clearly delineated mission: keep Australia safe from non-Australians. While this goal formed the subtext of the first film, it’s the entire context of the sequel. Time after time, Mick takes care to explain how the tourists only come there to “shit in his backyard” and have no respect for the country. He mocks the Germans national heritage and incorporates British/Australian conflicts into his impromptu trivia game, making his point all to clear. This is not to say that horror movie killers don’t need agendas (even Freddy had one) but the “anti-tourism” angle in Wolf Creek 2 just seems like a shorthand way to fill out Mick’s character. The more we know about Mick, however, the less he seems like unholy evil and the more he comes across like a racist redneck. Again, this was subtextual in the first film but McLean goes all-in on the sequel. It reminds me of the current trend (thanks, Rob Zombie) to explain, in detail, the origins of horror killers: the more we know, the less terrifying it becomes.

Despite my disappointment with the “evolution” of Mick and the mess that Paul became, how does the film actually hold up when compared to the first film? Not surprisingly, Wolf Creek 2 manages to amp up the gore and setpieces but loses out on much of the claustrophobic, hopeless atmosphere that made the first film such a horror classic. I won’t lie: there are some pretty spectacular setpieces in the film but most of them end up being more action than horror-oriented. One of the most bravura, if disturbing, scenes in the whole film is the one where Mick steals a semi-truck, turns on “In the Jungle”, and proceeds to plow through an entire herd of kangaroos, all in the pursuit of Paul. The scene is sickening, disturbing and, quite frankly, utterly amazing: it goes miles towards establishing Mick’s character without the need for pithy quips and is one of the best setpieces I’ve seen in years. Equally impressive is the trivia scene, where Mick tests Paul’s knowledge of Australian history. The scene is masterfully set-up, veering from torture porn distress to genuine comedy and back to the torture: it messes with audience expectations in a big way and provides one of the few examples of the sequel trumping the original.

Ultimately, Wolf Creek 2 is an odd film: McLean ends the movie in a way that all but guarantees a sequel, yet there’s the distinct notion that any future films will continue to expand on Mick’s new “stand-up comic” personality, which is pretty much a lose-lose situation. Perhaps, as such a fan of the first film, I went into this with unfair expectations. Truth be told, Wolf Creek 2 is an extremely well-made film, filled with some absolutely gorgeous Australian scenery and some truly gut-wrenching violence. The film is miles above most similar fare, particularly 90% of the odious torture porn subgenre, which makes it much better than many horror films out there. And yet, at the end of the day, I can’t help but feel let-down. I went into the film expecting the same unbelievably tense, gritty, nihilistic atmosphere as the first film but ended up with something distinctly more goofy, action-packed and run-of-the-mill. While I was a huge fan of McLean’s first two films, I can’t help but feel that Wolf Creek 2 is a solid step down into more generic “genre” territory. Here’s to hoping that McLean rights the ship for his next feature: I’d hate to think that the king of feel-bad cinema was about to abdicate his throne but his newest is almost the definition of “reduced expectations.” My advice? Next time, tell Mick more choppin’ and less yappin’.

6/6/14 (Part One): All the Little Devils are Proud of Hell

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1970's cinema, Al Thomas, alcohol abuse, animal cruelty, animal massacre, Australia, Australian films, auteur theory, based on a book, bonded teacher, Bundanyabba, Chips Rafferty, cinema, civilized vs savage, depression, desolation, Doc Tydon, Donald Pleasence, drama, Film auteurs, film review, films, First Blood, gambling, Gary Bond, homoerotic tension, hunting, isolation, Jack Thompson, John Grant, John Meillon, kangaroo hunt, Kenneth Cook, male friendships, mining town, Movies, North Dallas Forty, obnoxious friends, Peter Whittle, Purgatory, repressed sexuality, school teacher, stranded, Sylvia Kay, Ted Kotcheff, the Outback, the Yabba, Tiboonda, Tim Hynes, Uncommon Valor, urban vs rural, Wake in Fright, wasteland

Many times, we discuss vacations in terms of “getting away from it all.” The presumption, obviously, is that we’re getting away from all of the tedious, mundane and unpleasant aspects of our daily lives: all of the annoying things like 9-5 jobs, chores, responsibilities and anonymous authority figures. People will hike deep into the woods, sail away to the middle of the ocean and climb the tallest mountains possible, all in the pursuit of “getting away from it all” and finding some internal serenity. In a day and age where we all seem to be alarmingly “plugged in” almost 24 hours/day, there’s something not only attractive but downright necessary about dialing everything back to a more simple level: just “us” and nature, our phones on silent and our brains turned off. By “getting away from it all,” we’re actually hoping to get back to ourselves, that core version that exists below the commitments of civilized society.

But what if we went so far away from polite society that we ended up in an altogether darker place? What if our quest for internal peace and discovery of the self led us not to personal evolution but to devolution? Is it possible to embrace our primitive, savage ids so much that we become nothing but flesh-sacks for volcanic, primal emotions like lust, hate, fear and the need to inflict pain? Getting away from the everyday bullshit of polite society is a noble goal but it leads to a dangerously slippery slope: once we’ve begun to accept a more primal, savage lifestyle, we automatically become at odds with the rest of the “civilized” world. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it, “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” In Ted Kotcheff’s disturbing Wake in Fright (1971), we get the distinctly perverse pleasure of witnessing someone not only stare into the abyss but get consumed and shat out the other end.

It’s Christmas vacation for bonded school teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) and he eagerly closes the doors on his one-room schoolhouse in the tiny Outback town of Tiboonda, looking forward to his next six weeks of leisure. He’s heading for the bright lights of Sidney but must take a train to the small mining town of Bundanyabba in order to catch his flight. Ostensibly only in town for the evening, John takes a rather dim view of the hard-drinking, overly “friendly” locals: their earthy behavior is at decided odds with his more “civilized” big-city upbringing. As a local tells him, however, the “Yabba” is actually the best place in Australia: no one cares where you are or where you come from, as long as you’re a “good bloke”. John meets one of these “good blokes” in the person of Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), a local state trooper who proceeds to buy him one beer after the other at a local pub. When John complains that he’s hungry and would rather eat than drink, Jock thinks for a moment and does the most sensible thing: he takes John to a different bar so that he can order a steak along with the booze. “Best dollar you’ll ever spend,” Jock reckons, as he leaves John in the less than capable hands of local sawbones Doc Tydon (Donald Pleaseance).

Tydon is an amazing character, a slovenly, feral, ridiculously self-assured train-wreck who deflates the previously positive affirmations of the Yabba with the ominous declaration that “all the little devils are proud of Hell.” It’s here that John also gets introduced to the backroom gambling game of two-up, which involves betting on the flipping of a pair of coins. In a classic example of the fatal flaw, John initially scoofs at the game, before becoming intrigued, betting and winning. Unable to leave well enough alone, John continues to bet (and win), all with the hope of earning the $1000 bond necessary to buy his way out of Tiboonda and end his perceived servitude. He displays an amazing streak of luck, all the way up to the point where he loses all of his money. And, just like that, John’s one-night stay in the Yabba is about to turn into a whole lot more.

Unable to pay for his flight, John watches helplessly the next morning as it flies away overhead. He visits the local labor exchange but it’s closed: the only place that actually seems open is the bar (of course) and John drags himself there to spend his final coins on some sweet, if temporary, escape. Once there, John meets Tim Hynes (Al Thomas), another “good bloke” who buys him multiple drinks (after shouting down John’s initial protests) and takes him home to drink some more (pretty much the official past-time of the Yabba). Once there, John meets Tim’s strange daughter, Janette (Sylvia Kay), who mopes around silently while John and Tim continue to drink until they pass out, at which point they’re roused by Tim’s obnoxious friends, Dick (Jack Thompson) and Joe (Peter Whittle) for more drunken debauchery. After Doc Tydon shows up, Janette sneaks the blotto John away for a little drunken making out session, although his contribution to things pretty much begins and ends with puking on her. When John passes out, he wakes up in the Doc’s absolutely filthy pigsty of a home, a place that looks just like the dreadful Turkish prison in Midnight Express (1978). This leads to more drinking, of course (as Tydon tells him, Yabba water is only for washing, not drinking), while leads to more debauchery which leads to an absolutely horrifying kangaroo hunt, drunken rampage and possible rape. As John gets further and further away from his former gentle “civilized” nature, he finds himself in a shadowy world where the only diversions from a brutally bleak life are drinking, fucking, killing, fighting and destroying. Will John be able to pull himself out before he’s lost forever? Or will he end up just another permanent resident of the Yabba? And, in the end, can anyone ever really leave the Yabba?

It’s quite possible for a film to be both utterly intriguing and fairly repellent and Wake in Fright is certainly both of those things. On a purely narrative level, the film makes imperfect sense, existing somewhere between a fever dream and the French New Wave. Thanks to the editing style, which helps to heighten the sense of disorientation, it’s often difficult to establish continuity or, in some cases, even establish quite what’s going on. More often than not, the film is aggressively unpleasant: ‘roo hunt notwithstanding (and we’ll address that shortly), there’s a groddy, dirty edge to everything that makes a heady stew when combined with the sense of vast, open isolation and personal fatalism. The Yabba definitely appears to be some sort of a stand-in for Purgatory (or perhaps Hell, depending on how you look at it) and any satisfaction wrung from watching poor John Grant descend into its depths is grim, indeed. It’s not so much that John is a really good guy: he seems like a perfectly average guy, which makes his destruction, somehow, more upsetting. We can cheer if a “bad guy” gets his come-uppance and smirk when an unnaturally pure “white knight” fails. When a “normal” person fails, however, especially if they fail thanks to essentially good reasons (John keeps betting because he wants to get out of Tiboonda so he can be reunited with his girlfriend in Sidney), it hits a bit closer to home. John could be any of us, under the right circumstances: his degradation and destruction could be ours.

Despite how unpleasant the film ends up being, it’s a consistently fascinating film, thanks in no small part to the exceptional cast and stellar filmmaking. Donald Pleaseance, in particular, is absolutely amazing: Doc Tydon is the id in flesh and Pleaseance doesn’t so much chew the scenery as immediately become the center of any scene he’s in. Whether standing on his head while drinking a beer, cutting the balls off a dead kangaroo, graphically describing his sex life with Janette or engaging in a little drunken, homoerotic semi-nude wrestling with John, Doc Tydon is a ferociously alive, unrepentant, hedonist. More animal than man, Tydon may actually be the Yabba, a living personification of this hard-scrabble area that grinds men into pulp in the mines and pours the remains straight into the bars. I could practically smell Tydon’s stench through the screen, thanks to Pleaseance’s firebrand performance, and that’s no small compliment.

Gary Bond is good as John Grant but there’s not a whole lot required of his character: he’s a strictly reactive force and spends more time wobbling about in a state of semi-coherence than actually developing in any given direction. While it’s easy to empathize with John, it’s difficult to truly like the guy: he’s given the opportunity to climb out of the hole on multiple occasions but always seems to choose the path of least resistance (which, of course, is usually the worst path). Unlike Tydon, John takes no pleasure in his debauchery: as such, he tends to vacillate between confusion and moral agony.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Wake in Fright is exquisitely crafted. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and shows off the vast, epic emptiness of the Outback to great effect. The opening shot, a slowly revolving wide-shot that shows us the entire, tiny emptiness of Tiboonda in one, smooth 360-degree motion, is an amazing mood setter. Equally impressive is the score, which manages to swing from lighter to oppressive on the drop of a hat: the weird, eerie “sci-fi” theramins that kick in after John loses all of his money and begins his descent are a really nice touch, as are the droning tones that inform the latter half of the score. The score is a perfect example of subtly building atmosphere and mood without resorting to overly obvious musical stingers.

Despite all of the things to recommend here, I must admit that I didn’t really care for Wake in Fright. The film left me cold, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it also left me queasy on many occasions, which is a more significant issue. One of the main reasons for this, although certainly not the only reason, is the astoundingly awful scene where Tim, Joe, Dick and the Doc take John out kangaroo hunting. I’d heard rumors about this scene, which apparently features actual footage from a real kangaroo hunt, but nothing I imagined could have prepared me for the actual film. The closest thing I can compare the hunt to would be parts of Pier Pasolini’s Salo (1977) or the disgusting animal footage in Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1985). As with those films, I will freely admit to looking away from the screen at times: there’s simply no way that anyone who loves animals (and I’m pretty much a fanatic) could watch the wholesale kangaroo butchery without dying a little inside. This is compounded with a bit (I’m assuming staged but only because I would never want to entertain the alternative) where John Grant graphically stabs a wounded baby kangaroo to death, while the guys cheer him on, hooting and hollering. Wake in Fright is not, technically speaking, a horror film but the kangaroo hunt is easily the most horrific thing that I believe I’ve seen in some 30 years of movie watching…and that says a lot.

Ultimately, I’m not sure whether to recommend Wake in Fright or not. The film will certainly not be for everyone and I can see quite a few people turning it off midway through (for better or worse, the ‘roo hunt really does draw a line in the sand). There was also much about the film that still mystifies me, including the question of what, exactly, happened between John and the Doc. As an important piece of Australia’s New Wave, Wake in Fright certainly bears discussion with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1977), although I’m less fond of it than either of those films. In certain ways, parts of Wake in Fright even prefigure modern-day Aussie exports like Wolf Creek 2 (2013), which features its own variation on the kangaroo slaughter. Australia has always had a vibrant and fascinating film industry and astute viewers could do worse than rummage through their 1970’s back catalog. That being said, Wake in Fright is pretty strong stuff and I can’t honestly see myself revisiting it anytime soon. The Yabba might be an interesting place to visit but I sure as hell don’t wanna live there.

5/26/14: If It Ain’t Yours, Don’t Touch It

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Aussie films, Australia, Australian films, bad cops, briefcase full of money, cinema, corrupt law enforcement, Craig Lahiff, David Lyons, double-crosses, Emma Booth, film noir, film reviews, films, Greg Stone, infidelity, Jason Clarke, Movies, stolen money, Swerve, Vince Colosimo, writer-director

By this point in cinematic history, you’d think that nice guys would know better than to pick up suitcases/briefcases/duffle bags that don’t belong to them. You know the scoop: nice, upstanding, morally sound dude (usually a happy married father with a couple of adorable kids) comes upon a crashed car/plane/snow mobile/yak and notices said mysterious package. Said package will usually contain either money or drugs (sometimes both), which the nice, upstanding fella will then take with him. Since packages of drugs and/or money usually aren’t left around for the general populace to find, some bad dude will, inevitably, come looking for the package. The bad dude won’t find it, of course, since the nice guy will be traipsing around with it, trying not to let whatever is in there corrupt his wholesome nature. If these guys are lucky, they’ll end up in Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998), where bad things happen to good people in some very ingenious ways. If our poor schmucks aren’t lucky, however, they’ll end up in Craig Lahiff’s Swerve (2011), an Aussie who-dunnit (kind of) that manages to mash Fargo (1996) and No Country For Old Men (2007) together into a pretty uninspired ball of Wonder Bread. As always, the nice guy really should kept his hands to himself.

Colin Holland (David Lyons) is one of those aforementioned nice guys, although he missed the memo about needing a cute, spunky family. Nonetheless, Colin is traveling through the backroads of Australia when he comes upon two crashed cars: one is upside down and features a dead man in a white suit (always a giveaway, if you think about it) and a suitcase full of money, while the other one features a comely young lady (Emma Booth), shaken but, otherwise, intact. Since Colin is both nice and kind of dumb, he takes the money and gives the young lady, Jina, a ride to her place. Fair enough. Colin then decides to head to the nearest town – to the nearest bar, to be accurate – and see about getting some law enforcement involvement for the dead guy. Colin has the great fortune to find Frank (Jason Clarke), a sheriff so corrupt that you can smell it through his handshake. Colin tells him about the dead guy, gives him the money and gets an invitation to come stay at Frank’s place. On the way, Colin gets to thinking it’s a little familiar…and it is, of course, because this is just where he dropped off Jina. If you guessed that Jina is actually some kind of an android that Frank keeps around to do chores, you’re in the wrong film. If you guessed that the sultry, ultra-flirtatious femme fatale is married to the corrupt sheriff, well…you may just be too quick for this one, folks. Simmer down, over there!

As Colin gets more and more involved with Frank and Jina, he starts to uncover all kinds of unsavory realities: Jina may not be faithful! Frank may not be a true-blue cop! That money may belong to bad people! Actually, we already know that last part, since we saw the elaborate cross/double-cross in the first few minutes of the film that led to the White Suit BBQ. Any time a suitcase of money involves a bomb, a drug deal and a car crash, we can pretty safely assume its “non-taxable” income. In short order, a mild-mannered blonde gentleman shows up and proceeds to Anton Chigurh the living shit out of everybody (particularly impressive is the scene where he drops a car on a mechanic’s head: suck it, cattle gun!), all on his way to retrieve the missing money. When psycho meets psycho, however, it’s gonna be a real bloodbath…and Frank is so south of sane that he’s on the opposite pole. As if all this isn’t enough, Colin discovers that Jina may have killed her former lover, one of Frank’s deputies. Or perhaps Frank did it. Or what about Jina’s skeezy boss, Sam (Vince Colosimo), who seems to have something out for Frank? What’s a nice guy to do when everybody seems to be giving you the business? If you’re Colin, it just might be time to get the hell out of the Outback.

In most cases, Swerve is completely middle-of-the-road, a thoroughly average “mystery” that’s more average than mysterious. Truth be told, the film suffers from the exact same problem that sinks most zombie films: unless you’re doing something radically different (or drastically better than everyone else), there’s just no way to differentiate one of these from the others. Zombie films attempt to vary this up by switching up the locations, making the zombies good guys, adding elements of comedy/romance/musical/etc…whatever it takes to make one stand out from the pack. The films that don’t do this, by default, end up seeming so generic as to be factory-made: perhaps anonymous zombie pictures would have been more of a novelty in the early-mid-’70s but by this point in the 2000s, it’s all pretty much been seen/done before.

This, then, is Swerve’s biggest problem: it takes several genre tropes (the mysterious suitcase of case, the femme fatale, the crooked sheriff, the small-town with a secret, the innocent but unlucky drifter) and serves them up as-is, as fresh as stale bread. There’s no sense of invention, nothing to set this above (or below, in many ways) a hundred other similar films. Unlike other Australian crime films, the actual setting doesn’t really affect the story: it could have been the American South, the British Isles or the African veldt and it would have made the same difference. I certainly don’t expect Australian films to be awash in kangaroos and didgeridoos but there seems to be precious little Australian identity here whatsoever: the setting ends up being as generic as the rest of the film.

As a mystery, Swerve is almost a complete mess, filled with so many crosses and double-crosses that the plot takes on too many holes and sinks like a stone. By the time we get to the rather ridiculous “twist” ending, which really does come out of left field and means absolutely nothing, we’ve already had to sit through so many film noir-lite moments that it all feels arbitrary. At first, I was disappointed that I’d missed the clue’s that pointed to the “real” mastermind. This was, of course, until I realized that there were no clues: how could there be…the character in question is only in the film for about three minutes altogether and never mentioned or alluded to by anyone. It’s a Perry Mason moment (how do you know who’s guilty? Ask ’em in court and they’ll be happy to spill the beans) in that it’s just dropped into our laps, a gift from the movie gods.

Craft-wise, the film is pretty content to stick to the middle-road established by the plot: this is basic, no-frills filmmaking (with a little more editing “flair” than I usually prefer in films) with competent acting and not much else. Jason Clarke is pretty slimy as Frank but David Lyons is pretty ridiculous as Colin. Lyons plays Colin like a cross between a white knight, Colin Ferrell and Forrest Gump, blending in so many disparate elements of sweet/naive/stupid/smoldering that he ends up completely without personality: all colors combine to create the blandest white possible. Poor Emma Booth has the misfortune of channeling Tara Reid throughout the film, which did nothing for her credibility whatsoever. Jina is one of those ridiculous “sexpot” characters that really only work in very old films or very self-aware ones: Swerve is neither and just comes across as frustratingly mercurial and fickle. The blonde hitman (sorry, buddy: you were never named in the film, which may have been some sort of genius plan, on your part) is patently ridiculous, coming across like some sort of twiggy Termnator even before we get the Terminator-esque scenes where Frank takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’…and keeps on…and keeps on…and on…

As I find myself saying quite a bit, Swerve isn’t the worst film you’ll see all year: it probably won’t even be in the bottom 30. That said, there’s absolutely nothing to distinguish this in any way or to make it worth seeking out. Unless you’re on some kind of an insane quest to see every film every made (which, of course, I am), there won’t be much of a reason to slow down and give this the once-over twice. Better to spend your 90 minutes elsewhere, perhaps looking for your own mysterious suitcase out in the desert.

5/18/14: Not Psychos…Small Business Operators

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100 Bloody Acres, Angus Sampson, Anna McGahan, Aussie films, Aussie horror, Australia, Australian films, Australian horror films, Cameron Cairnes, Chrissie Page, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Colin Cairnes, Damon Herriman, film reviews, filmmaking siblings, films, horror, horror films, horror-comedies, human fertilizer, Jamie Kristian, John Jarratt, Movies, Oliver Ackland, Ozploitation, Wolf Creek, writer-director

Australia’s had a rich and vibrant horror/exploitation film industry since the 1970’s (if you’ve never seen a classic Ozploitation flick, you’re missing out on something quite beautifully insane), so it’s not surprising that they’ve continued this into our horror-happy present day. Over the past decade or so, however, Aussie horror films have been getting steadily more brutal, with Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek (2005) serving as somewhat of a standard-bearer. The sparse, unrelentingly grim and shockingly graphic film about an Outback psychopath who values human life as much as animal life (which is to say, not at all) has sparked a mini-wave of similar films in its wake, including Dying Breed (2008), The Horseman (2008), The Loved Ones (2009), Road Kill (2010) and McLean’s own Wolf Creek 2 (2013). This newest entry in an apparent attempt by Australian genre filmmakers to scare away tourists is the horror-comedy 100 Bloody Acres (2012), which often comes across as a kinder and gentler, if no less gore-drenched, take on McLean’s influential shocker.

Reg (Damon Harriman) and Lindsay Morgan (Angus Sampson) are not only brothers but local celebrities, of a sort, in their tiny, backwater Australian town. The two own a local “organic fertilizer” company and are so successful that they even have their own radio ad, a catchy jingle that seems to play about every five minutes (the station was probably happy for the revenue). Lindsay is the older of the two, the defacto leader and, vaguely threatening in a beefy, Amish way. Reg is kind of sweet and slow-witted, an idealistic dreamer who still sings along to their ad whenever it comes on the radio. For all intents and purposes, the Morgans are happy, thriving small business owners. Only, they aren’t.

You see, the Morgan’s fertilizer company is behind on shipping out its famed fertilizer and their customers are starting to grow impatient. Reg won’t let a bad product go out, however (they have a reputation, after all), and he’s been doing everything he can to round up the secret ingredient that makes it so special. Turns out, this secret ingredient is roadkill: more specifically, the human kind. Reg has a pretty good system (get to the accident first, scoop the bodies into his truck) that seems to work fairly well, bar the various questions that must arise when 100% of local accident victims vanish into thin air…but I digress. We’ve just seen Reg scoop up his latest find when he ends up with slightly more lively passengers: Sophie (Anna McGahan), James (Oliver Ackland) and Wes (Jamie Kristian). Their car has broken down en route to a music festival (where James intends to propose to Sophie, during John Butler’s set, not aware that best friend Wes is slipping her the salami with alarming frequency) and Sophie sweet talks a ride from the ever-skittish Reg. She rides up front, the fellas get to ride in back, with the fertilizer and hidden bodies, and they’re off to the races. When the inevitable happens in the back, Reg must take steps to prevent his and Lindsay’s illicit business practices from seeing daylight. Time to visit the factory.

Once Lindsay gets involved, the shit really hits the fan. With zero tolerance for screw-ups and a propensity for coldbloodedness that rivals Anton Chigurh, Lindsay is a true force of nature. Seeing a golden opportunity, Lindsay decides to waste not, want not with their new captives: after all, if dead bodies were well, fresh ones should work even better. The only fly in Lindsay’s ointment is an annoying tendency for the captives to escape (especially the perpetually stoned Wes) and the fact that Reg has started to fall in love with Sophie. Before long, there’s a randy local looking to knock boots with Lindsay, a dog is running around with a disembodied hand in its mouth, James is realizing that Sophie hates John Butler and the grinder is screaming into bloody life. As the Morgans are finding out, owning your own business definitely means sweating blood…and then some.

Despite its often grim subject matter, there’s a certain light-hearted feel to first time writer/directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes’ debut feature that’s quite refreshing. While I’m a huge fan of Australian cinema, in general, I’ve really enjoyed the horror renaissance of the past decade. That being said, I’ve often felt that more recent films, such as Wolf Creek and The Loved Ones, had a tendency to be so unrelentingly bleak and torturous that they functioned more as endurance tests than things to be enjoyed. 100 Bloody Acres is, first and foremost, a horror-comedy, as opposed to a slightly sardonic horror film: it’s a subtle but big difference. Whereas Wolf Creek had a tendency to brandish each bloody incident as a weapon, using the set-piece approach to horror films, 100 Bloody Acres tends to use its goriest bits as jokes, similar to how gross-out comedies like There’s Something About Mary (1998) use material that would be shocking, in a serious context, but becomes comedic when blown into absurdity. While there’s certainly nothing funny about watching a guy get part of his hand chopped off, there is something pretty amusing about watching that guy spend the rest of the film politely inquiring as to the whereabouts of said hand (remember the dog from earlier? Yep.). There’s almost endless potential inherent with Lindsay’s growing frustration with not only his idiot brother but the world in general and the Cairnes’ have managed to wring quite a bit out of the film.

With a sharp script, it falls to the cast to deliver the goods and they acquit themselves pretty nicely. Angus Sampson, who plays Tucker in the Insidious films, is the clear standout in the cast and is actually worth the price of admission all on his own. Lindsay is a fascinatingly complex character: his bursts of anger are matched with depths of serenity and calm that approach zen levels and the scenes where he manages to draw on both reserves, such as the one where he begins by congratulating Reg and ends by choking him in a headlock, are the best in the film. If Damon Harriman isn’t quite as good as Sampson, it might have more to do with a character that often seems a bit conflicted and confused: it’s a great moment when Reg finally composes himself and decides to stand up to his brother but it also doesn’t really feel earned. The three hitchhikers tend to fairly obnoxious, although Jamie Kristian has some fun with his character’s stonier moments, including a great goof where an attempt to kick a knife across the floor ends with the knife embedded in his leg. Oliver Ackland, by contrast, is a constantly whining drip, although the film does get some mileage from a running gag where his mouth is ducktaped shot and we only hear nonsense, whereas Sophie responds as if hearing an actual conversation: it’s a credit bit and Ackland’s unusually expressive face sells it. McGahan, for her part, is a rather odd presence: her character seems to be an attempt to graft a “pixie girl” onto a “final girl” and the end results don’t work. She’s usually stuck playing cloyingly cute but her (too few) moments of resolve work a bit better.

Ultimately, despite all of the positives, 100 Bloody Acres didn’t make as much of an impact on me as I’d hoped. While there are some delightfully gonzo moments, the film is usually so low-key that it seems to stall out. The script is always sharp but I didn’t always like where it was going and the final resolution seemed more than a little contrived, unlike a similar resolution for something like Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), for example. It also seems a little strange to complain about an overabundance of gore in a horror film (especially a 2000’s-era Aussie horror film) but 100 Bloody Acres really takes the cake. It’s not spoiling anything to say that the grinding machine gets quite a workout in the film and the results are never pretty: if just thinking about the ramifications of this turns your stomach, 100 Bloody Acres is definitely not your film. The biggest issue with the gore tends to be the film’s overly conflicted tone: it begins as a horror-comedy, which balances out the excess violence quite well. When the film becomes unexpectedly serious, however, it tends to get dragged down into some pretty grimy places before being sent back into zany comedy land. Tucker and Dale, by contrast, maintained consistent levels of both grue and laughs: with 100 Bloody Acres, you’re really not sure where the needle will stop spinning.

If you’re a fan of Aussie horror films, feuding brothers and “special fertilizer,” 100 Bloody Acres may just be your ticket. If you’re just jumping on the Australian horror train, however, you might want to get on at another stop: this one might be for the fans only.

4/29/14: Dance Like You Mean It

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A Mighty Wind, Australia, Australian films, auteur theory, ballroom dancing, Barry Fife, Barry Otto, based on a play, Baz Luhrmann, Bill Hunter, Christopher Guest, cinema, Clerks, comedies, dancing competitions, feature-film debut, Film auteurs, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, Fran, Gia Carides, Golden Globe nominee, independent films, John Hannan, magical-realism, mismatched couples, Moulin Rouge, Movies, multiple award nominee, outsiders, Pan Pacific, Pat Thomson, Paul Mercurio, Peter Whitford, quirky, romances, romantic films, Romeo + Juliet, Scott Hastings, silly films, Sonia Kruger, Strictly Ballroom, Tara Morice, The Great Gatsby, ugly ducklings, upbeat films, writer-director

Everyone’s gotta start somewhere and, for writer-director Baz Luhrmann, that somewhere was Strictly Ballroom (1992), the quirky, film festival darling that launched his career. From there, of course, Luhrmann would go on to make ridiculously extravagant, lavish films like Romeo + Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge (2001), Australia (2008) and The Great Gatsby (2013), films which seemed to be defined as much by their excesses and eye-popping production values as for their characterizations and storylines. Strictly Ballroom, however, still stands as Luhrmann’s most human picture: despite it’s silly, slapsticky energy, this is a modest little film about small-town people trying to realize their dreams, a relatable nugget that’s low on flash but high on energy and fun. Although Luhrmann would go on to “bigger and better things,” his follow-up films, to this point, have managed to be neither as human nor as charming as his debut. Sometimes, the simplest things really are the best.

As the title insinuates, Strictly Ballroom is about the world of competitive ballroom dancing or, at the very least, the Australian equivalent of said sport. Our dashing hero, Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio), seems to have it all: ample talent; beautiful partner, Liz (Gia Carides); loving, supportive mother and father (Pat Thomson and Barry Otto) who run a dance studio; and the admiration of people like Barry Fife (Bill Hunter), the President of the Australian Ballroom Confederation. Scott is a champion and seems a lock to win the Pan Pacific Championship, the dance title that he’s had his eyes on for pretty much his entire life. Everything, it would seem, is coming up Milhouse for Scott…until, of course, it doesn’t.

During a dance competition, Scott and Liza get boxed in by Scott’s smarmy dance nemesis, Ken Railings (John Hannan) and his partner. Feeling trapped and in a panic, Scott loses his head and, instinctively, busts out some decidedly non-regulation, “modern dance”-type moves. His parents are stunned, the Ballroom Confederation is disgusted and his partner is in tears: how could Scott possibly do this to all of them? Feeling suddenly free for the first time, however, Scott refuses to back down, determined to win the Pan Pacific competition with his new-found moves, whether or not the judges, his family or his partner think it’s kosher. Scott finds a kindred spirit in Fran (Tara Morice), a beginning dance student who shares Scott’s disdain for the rules and seems more than a little sweet on him. At first, of course, Scott treats her like the vain, egotistical jerk he is: he blows off her initial request to dance with him with the haughty exclamation, “A beginner has no right approaching an open amateur.” Luckily for all involved, Scott eventually gets over himself and begins dancing with Fran, first in secret and then in public, to the massive consternation of his micro-managing mother.

Everything comes to a head at the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix (where else?), as the various dancers splinter and regroup in various iterations. Skullduggery abounds: Fife and Scott’s mom scheme to get him hooked up with Tina Sparkle (Sonia Kruger); Scott’s father and his friend, Wayne (Pip Mushin) scheme to thwart Fife’s plan to kick out Scott; Scott tries to win back Fran, after realizing his colossal idiocy and former partner Liz schemes to get away from Railings, who’s revealed himself to be an obnoxious drunk. As the madcap carnival swirls to a conclusion, all involved will learn the most important of life-lessons: it’s not whether you win or lose that matters but whether you had fun doing it.

As one of the films that helped kick off the independent movie surge in the early ’90s, Strictly Ballroom will always have a little spot carved out in the hearts of film fans. Unlike many films of that era (fuck you very much, Clerks), the film actually holds up fairly well today, coming across as a spiritual predecessor to Christopher Guest films like Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000) and A Mighty Wind (2003). Like Guest’s movies, Strictly Ballroom isn’t a particularly sharp or mean film: for one thing, the sweet romance between Scott and Fran is too front and center, while the dastardly machinations by the villainous Fife are too broad and silly to have much menace. It’s also clear that Luhrmann, for whatever reason, feels some genuine affection for his characters and doesn’t want to poke too many holes in them: even Scott’s mom, who can sometimes seem like a bush-league, dance studio Cruella De Vil, is given enough backstory justification to explain many of her more questionable actions.

I’ve never really warmed to any of Luhrmann’s post-Strictly Ballroom films (I haven’t even bothered to see The Great Gatsby, although I’ll get around to it some day), although I distinctly recall seeing Romeo + Juliet in the theater and thinking it was a good, but not great, retelling of the old chestnut. For the most part, I find Luhrmann’s films to be the very definition of “style over substance,” particularly the ridiculous excesses of Moulin Rouge!, although Australia is just as over-stuffed and silly, in its own way. Strictly Ballroom is a much more down-to-earth, character-based effort, however, possibly because it was an adaptation of one of Luhrmann’s stage plays. Whatever the reason, this is one of the few Luhrmann films where the actors don’t feel like set dressing, living props only around to show off the consistently impressive production design.

Strictly Ballroom is not, of course, a particularly original or unique film: it manages to hit pretty much every single beat that you would expect from this kind of light, romantic comedy, right down to the marginalized parent who swoops in at the eleventh hour to save the day. That being said, the film is still full of lots of fun, energetic moments: one of my favorite bits was the ridiculous smooth-jazz, instrumental version of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time that scores the montage scene where Scott (unsuccessfully) auditions a small army of replacement partners. The film is full of nifty little touches like this, perhaps hinting at the overly busy, baroque productions that Luhrmann would later make his calling card. At the beginning, however, he was a quirky, slightly off-center indie filmmaker with a keen interest in exploring some of the odder inhabitants of his native Australia. He may have become a household name with films like Moulin Rouge but I can’t help wishing he’d give us another one like Strictly Ballroom, instead. There are already plenty of big, gaudy, loud films in the world: a few more with a little heart couldn’t hurt.

1/1/14: A New Year Dawns

Tags

Alexis Diaz de Villegas, Australia, bats, Bob Byington, George Romero, horror films, House of the Devil, indie comedies, Michel Gondry, Movies, Nick Offerman, road trips, Roost, Seth Rogan, Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Guilt Trip, The Sapphires, Ti West, Tom Noonan, Vietnam War, zombies

Welcome to the first actual installment of The VHS Graveyard. This post will concern all of the films watched yesterday, beginning with the pair that I started at midnight. Future posts should keep us on a better schedule but the holidays are always a bit tricky. Without further ado, then…

To be honest, I have a rather love/hate relationship with Ti West. On the one hand, I think that House of the Devil is just about one of the best “modern” horror films out there, particularly that incredible jump scare involving the best friend in the car. On the other hand, I’m having a hard time relating the Ti West of that film to anything else in his oeuvre. The follow-up that wasn’t Cabin Fever 2 was the (for me, at least) ultimately disappointing The Innkeepers. This was followed by a decent segment for the V/H/S anthology film, as well as a wretchedly stupid, lazy short for The ABCs of Horror. All signs would seem to indicate that West came out of the gate strong only to suffer a pretty severe slump. After watching his debut, The Roost, however, I’m more inclined to believe that House of the Devil was the rare bright spot in his catalog.

By all intents and purposes, The Roost is a bad film. Bad for many, many reasons but mostly because it’s peculiarly tone-death and unsure of itself. On one hand, it’s about vampire bats attacking a small town. It’s also about zombies, since those attacked return as the living dead. But not as vampires, mind you: as traditional zombies. This, in itself, is such a strange wrinkle that I can only be led to believe West figured vampires were too cliche in this situation yet he still needed another threat: enter the zombies.

Part of this “everything to everyone” approach also involves the film’s framing device. The Roost runs for a total of 80 minutes but that’s a little deceiving. You see, West conceived this film as part of an imaginary Saturday TV fright film showing, complete with stock horror host (played by poor Tom Noonan, so good as the evil patriarch in House of the Devil, so wasted as Zacherle-lite). This horror show footage takes up at least 15 minutes of the film’s running time, cutting the actual feature to about an hour after the credits. Even odder, the actual film peters out with a completely abrupt ending, only to return to the wraparound segment for the true finale. This, in effect, makes it seem as if West couldn’t really be bothered to even finish the actual story. If he couldn’t be bothered, perhaps you shouldn’t be, either.

This, ladies and gentleman, is why I still bother to watch new films. Despite the less than inspired title (cuz it’s a Latin-American take on Shaun of the Dead! Get it?), I’ve been eagerly anticipating this film for some time. It was well reviewed and, from many indications, was something of a revitalization for the stagnant zombie genre. Did it come through? And how.

Juan of the Dead is the absolute best kind of zombie film because it’s only nominally a zombie film. George Romero, the godfather of gut-munchers, knew this better than anyone else. Remove the zombies from Dawn of the Dead and you have a vicious satire about consumerism and good ol’ American greed. Remove the shopping mall and you have a rousing B-movie. Similarly, Juan of the Dead is really about the state of modern Cuba, the fates and fortunes of those living there and the tendencies of the Cuban government to blame any problems on outside forces: these aren’t zombies, according to the state-run TV broadcasts…they are dissidents and they are most certainly sent by Uncle Sam. Removing the zombies from the film would remove some of the fun but none of the core message.

There’s so much to love about this film that I fear to say too much, lest I spoil any of the film’s myriad happy surprises. Tonally, this is a masterpiece of horror-comedy, balancing both with deft skill, although the film definitely comes down more on the side of satire than heart-pounding fear. The acting is superb, especially from Alexis Diaz de Villegas as Juan. He manages to make a character that could seem selfish and slightly misanthropic on paper into a completely lovable, three-dimensional character. I was so invested in Juan’s struggle – and he assumed the mantle of hero so capably – that I can’t help but mentally include him in the role call of great genre heroes like Ash, Tucker and Dale and, yes, the ubiquitous Shaun. The action is well-staged, the locations are gorgeous, the gore is plentiful and (mostly) practical and there are several very astute observations about the cliches of zombie films. Top this off with a truly great ending and you have a minor classic. Essential viewing, especially for anyone with zombies on the brain.

Chalk this up as a case of truth being stranger than fiction. During the Vietnam War, four young Aboriginal women (two sisters and two cousins) from a small Outback town in Australia decide to try their luck as USO entertainers for the troops overseas. They hook up with a scraggly white piano player and, ditching their love for country & western ballads, become the soul powerhouse known as The Sapphires. Danger, unexpected love, racism, classism: it’s all here.

This was definitely one of the most feel-good films I’ve seen in quite some time. Anchored by five very convincing performances, this was a masterclass in how to touch the heartstrings without being too manipulative. In many ways, this is a very well-made version of The Committments, with an Australian focus. The juxtaposition between Australia and Vietnam was quite interesting and the period details seemed pretty authentic.

Ultimately, there’s nothing really surprising or groundbreaking about The Sapphires: if you have seen one rags-to-riches story like this, you’ve probably seen a hundred. The joy, however, comes in the many small details: the constant in-fighting between the ladies; the burgeoning love affair between the gruff piano player and the hard-as-nails eldest sister; the development of the group from George Jones-loving cowboys into sparkle-dress-bedecked soul sisters. The greatest compliment that I can pay the film is that it honestly earns all of its emotional beats, including a truly lovely ending. Uplifting and inspirational, this is one to add to the roll-call of great “band movies.”

Nowadays, you can’t swing an ironic Motley Crue t-shirt without hitting at least a bakers’-dozen indie dramadies. When they’re done right, they can provide some real moments of insight along with the smirking cynicism. Of many recent offerings, I definitely feel that Somebody Up There Likes Me has the best chance of being remembered years down the road.

Featuring 35 years in the life of two “best friends” (the relationship between Nick Offerman’s Sal and Keith Poulson’s Max is too complicated to not require the quotation marks), the film takes a droll, rather unemotional look at love, marriage, friendship, fidelity and mortality. The film jumps forward in five year increments, showing us how Sal and Max move around each others orbits for the better part of a lifetime.

Despite my growing frustration with the kind of indie film that I’ve mentioned above, I find myself constantly chasing them, always hoping to fall into the next Wes Anderson or Michel Gondry. While writer/director Bob Byington isn’t in that lofty company yet, he’s definitely got some tricks up his sleeves. In particular, the dialogue is very sharp and rather quote-worthy. I also like how every character in the film approaches issues like infidelity, death and romance with as little emotion as possible. It’s almost as if Byington decided to make his principals into actual quip-spewing robots, turning generational angst into something almost poetic. Extra points for the fact that the only character who seems to physically age over the course of 35 years is Sal: Nick Offerman is always the realest person in the room, anyway.

Remember the key tenet of the VHS Graveyard: any movie at any time? Well, I live by those words and so, a day that began with Ti West and zombies ended with Babs and that guy from Freaks and Geeks. Just part of my universe, folks.

In reality, this was actually a cute, fun and inoffensive little road picture. Big-screen multiplex fare like this really isn’t my bag and I often find myself getting burnt (I positively hated Due Date and I really like Robert Downey, Jr.) but there was something about this that said “Take a chance on me” (or maybe it sang it…not sure).

I expected Streisand to be completely over-bearing as the stereotypical clingy mom but there were some surprising beats and depth to her character. She made my skin crawl a few times (there were a few moments that reminded me of Liza Minnelli’s Lucille Austero) but I really found myself pulling for her. I expected Seth Rogan to be manic and smarmy but he actually downplayed his role pretty well and was incredibly likable. More importantly, Streisand and Rogan worked well together, coming across as an actual mother and son. The script was fairly nimble and the resolution was well-earned. All in all, not bad, and a pretty good way to end the day.