DVD Review: The Road

The Road. 112 mins. Rated MA15+. Directed by John Hillcoat. Written by Joe Penhall. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.

Our current generation of filmmakers’ obsession with how our world will end has resulted in a ever-increasing library of bleak, indulgent, gloomy and depressing films that try, at times impossibly hard, to reach that part of our collective psyches that may want to consider the demise of our planet and all that we know exists on it.

And while possibly no-one is expecting it to be a laugh-a-minute, there is yet to be a film that permeates the significant divide between ‘their’ wanting to tell us the story and ‘us’ wanting to embrace the cinematic result. But if ever a film has managed to challenge this ‘will you just stop telling me all the really bad news’ stand-off, then it is this one: a rare, poetic, soulful tale of how the spiritual essence of our survival is to care deeply about what happens after we are gone – not only about ourselves, but each other.

Our planet has been devastated by an apocalyptic event that has rendered it barren, ash-strewn and almost uninhabitable. A man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are heading south to the coast. Apart from the shopping trolley that holds all that is left of their worldly possessions, there is only a gun with two bullets in it – one for each of them to use to end their life if they find themselves at risk of being captured by the marauding cannibalistic savages that roam the desolate countryside between them and the sea. When the man is forced to use one of the bullets to defend himself and his son from being ‘collected’, it becomes imperative that they survive to reach the coast, where some semblance of hope awaits them.

Based on McCarthy’s extraordinary Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road is an utterly compelling journey featuring an astonishing performance from Viggo Mortensen, arguably one of the most under-rated actors of his generation – and it is Mortensen’s perfectly realised performance of McCarthy’s ‘Man’ that is reason alone to see this film.

Queensland-born Hillcoat’s (The Proposition, Ghosts of the Civil Dead) loving, unsparingly intimate, fearless and uncompromising direction is faultless. Gershon Ginsburg’s Art Direction and Chris Kennedy’s (The Proposition) production design perfectly render a world of iconic architectural and environmental ruin and desolation, and without exception, every one of The Road’s gruelling and inhospitable moments is captured in overwhelmingly artful and considered beauty in detail by Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (The Others, New Moon).

Smit-McPhee is a revelation as the ‘Boy’ – and the scenes he shares with Mortensen in an apparently abandoned underground larder (where the film’s welcome lightness of touch and nostalgia for a world destroyed are most welcome) are extraordinarily touching. An unrecognisable Robert Duvall shines in his cameo as ‘Eli’ and Charlize Theron is perfect in her brutal and confronting cameo as the Man’s fatalistically defeated wife.

The only aspects preventing The Road from being considered a true masterpiece are its capitulation into muddied and bloodied shlock horror territory with an unfortunate and gratuitous abandoned fairground sequence, and its incredibly unsatisfying ending – which to all intents and purposes, appears to be tacked on to the devastating penultimate imagery that underlines the film’s almost entire purpose of being. No, it’s certainly not going to be entertaining, but great work in the post-apocalyptic genre – of which this film is a stunning example – goes some of the way toward defining for us that essence of our survival. And how important it is that we care.

Film Review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. 111 mins. Rated M. Directed by Mike Newell. Written by Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard from a story by Jordan Mechner.

Since the dawn of cinema’s silent era, audiences have delighted in swashbuckling adventures set in exotic, faraway lands. Hollywood’s global influence today was partly forged on the success of films (such as 1924’s The Thief of Bagdad) freely adapted from One Thousand and One Nights – a collection of stories featuring the now instantly recognisable characters of ‘Aladdin’, ‘Sinbad’ and ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’.

When the King of Persia witnesses a young street urchin’s rare act of bravery, he adopts him into the royal household where it is hoped his selfless courage and inventiveness will influence their shared destiny. Years later, the grown-up Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), reluctantly joins his brothers on a quest to invade the Holy City of Alumut where, it is believed, an army of traitors are preparing to wage war against the royal family. Instead, once inside the walls of the great city, Dastan discovers the existence of a magical dagger that has the power to change the course of history – and in the wrong hands, the results could be disastrous.

In spite of the work of three of Hollywood’s top editors – Martin Walsh (Clash of the Titans), Michael Kahn (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Mick Audsley (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) – Prince of Persia, somewhat alarmingly, doesn’t ever entirely hold together. While Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) obviously has an incredibly tight grip on the forced, flabby and clumsy proceedings – it still manages to flounder all over the place in an exemplary display of style over substance.

Fortunately, that ‘style’ is wonderfully adequate, and the computer-generated set pieces – particularly the early aerial shots of the great Persian cities and the film’s climactic underground sequence – are great. Art Directors Luca Tranchino (The Aviator), Marco Trentini (Kingdom of Heaven) and Production Designer Wolf Kroeger (The Last of the Mohicans) account superbly for the film’s visual flair, while Australian Cinematographer John Seale (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) keeps us tantilisingly up close and personal to all the frantically whiz-bang, over-produced goings on.

Gyllenhaal, whose career to date has consisted of rivetting performances in films as diverse as Donnie Darko, Jarhead, Brokeback Mountain and Brothers, is unhapppily miscast as the pumped, swashbuckling young Prince, while Gemma Arterton’s faux Princess grandeur exists almost entirely of lots of stomping and striding all over the place – obviously due to an almost palpable fear that she will go entirely unnoticed at the expense of the scenery. The film’s patchiness is not helped, either, by the noticeable absence of any genuine chemistry between its two young romantic leads.

When the real stars of the show are a tax-shy entrepreneur (a fabulous Alfred Molina who appears to be acting in a totally different movie altogether) and his suicidal Ostrich, you know you’re in trouble.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.

DVD Review: StarStruck

StarStruck. 90 mins. Rated G. Directed by Michael Grossman. Written by Barbara Johns and Annie DeYoung.

There’s a worthwhile message hiding in this ‘musical’ fairytale. It’s about how, in our celebrity-obsessed world, meaningful connections between people can happen in the most unlikely of circumstances. The attendant power of celebrity was witnessed recently when YouTube’s teen idol Justin Bieber arrived in Australia. Everywhere he went, he created pandemonium – proving that if adoring teenage girls want to get close to their young heartthrobs, nothing but significant police intervention can stop them.

Christopher Wilde (Sterling Knight) is a young pop star on the brink of mega movie stardom. He has the perfect ‘A-list’ girlfriend and thousands of devoted fans clamouring to know the details of his every move. When he is photographed during an altercation with the notorious Hollywood paparazzi outside a Los Angeles nightclub, his agent warns him that unless he can maintain a squeaky-clean image, his movie career will go nowhere.

In the meantime, one of his most obsessed fans Sara (Maggie Castle) and her younger sister Jessica (Danielle Campbell) travel to LA with their parents to visit relatives. Sara is determined to use the opportunity to meet her idol, whereas the straight-shooting Jessica cannot understand what all the fuss is about. When Jessica and Christopher accidentally meet outside a nightclub, the young heartthrob is forced to confront the concept that genuine feelings are quite different from the manufactured ones forced on him by the circumstances of his career.

You would think it would have been relatively uncomplicated for Disney to produce an engaging and possibly even thoughtful film starring two young leads whose characters have very different views about what’s important in the world. After all, it’s one of the things they do best. Instead, with the help of a collection of banal and over-produced songs, StarStruck struggles to maintain our interest before it collapses under the weight of a script so impossibly trite it becomes difficult to believe you’re actually listening to it. And while Knight and Campbell have a certain surface appeal, they both lack the necessary depth of acting ability that a film focussed almost exclusively on their complicated young love affair demands.

The result, with the exception of a cute mud-bath sequence in the middle of nowhere, is a very ordinary little made-for-television movie that fails to deliver on its promise. The film’s target audience – young girls with enquiring minds, wild imaginations, dreams and aspirations about what it is possible to achieve with their lives – deserve a great deal more than this DVD equivalent of junk food.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.

Film Review: Harry Brown

Harry Brown. 103 mins. Rated MA15+. Directed by Daniel Barber. Written by Gary Young.

‘The Vigilante’ archetype has been an enigmatic and hugely successful character in film – exemplified by no-one more successfully than Clint Eastwood’s career-defining ‘Dirty Harry’. When the defenceless and hard-done-by need rescuing from their perilous situation, there can be something undeniably exhilarating about the man with the serious weaponry arriving on the scene to ensure justice – or at least the cinema’s often altruistic version of it – is done.

Harry Brown (Michael Caine) is an elderly man dealing with overwhelming grief. His beloved wife is lying comatose in hospital and the poverty-stricken housing estate in which they live is ruled by a gang of drug-dealing thugs, who terrorise the community with murders, bashings and random acts of extreme violence and intimidation. When Harry's best friend Leonard (David Bradley) is murdered in the pedestrian underpass that he, himself, is too scared to use, Harry decides to takes matters into his own hands by holding each gang member personally accountable for Leonard’s violent and senseless death.

Not since Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996) has there been such an astonishing emergence of a potent new voice in British cinema. Barber (in his feature film debut) has delivered a supremely confident, angry and impatient vision of a community in extreme danger of self-annihilation. Young’s screenplay is vicious in both its near-flawless structural simplicity and the manner in which it divides the ‘good’ from the ‘evil’ with razor sharp authority.

Michael Caine – at the peak of his powers – gives one of the greatest performances of his career. His every move – from the subtly endearing, grieving old man going about the details of his daily ritual to his transformation into the ex-Marine taking revenge with military flair and precision – is unerringly brilliant. Emily Mortimer (Shutter Island) is superb as Detective Inspector Alice Frampton, and the supporting cast attack their roles (and each other) with passion, skill and undeniable ferocity.

The film’s extraordinary visual style, superbly photographed in painstaking detail by cinematographer Martin Ruhe (The Countess), sets the action in the heart of a pre-apocalyptic environment – magnificently realised by art director Chris Lowe (The Golden Compass, The Constant Gardener) and production designer Kave Quinn (Trainspotting).

Harry Brown’s vision is a bleak one – owing more to Shakespeare’s tragedies than it does to The Bill. The violence and mayhem, which many may find extremely confronting, is savagely realistic. But for those who have experienced violence and assault or have feared for their safety and their lives, this is a film that unapologetically demands we consider the very essence of social order and justice.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Midwest Times.

Film Review: Robin Hood

Robin Hood. 148 minutes. Rated M. Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Brian Helgeland.

Make no mistake. We are now entering Big Motion Picture territory. Robin Hood, arguably one of the most eagerly-awaited and heavily-publicised big picture epics of the year has finally hit the big screen. So, is it any good? Yes, of course it is. It's one of the masters of cinematic storytelling Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator), at the helm, after all. Is it Scott's best film to date? No it's not (that's, for my money, still Alien). Is it Russell Crowe's greatest performance? No, it certainly is not (that's A Beautiful Mind closely followed by Romper Stomper). And what's Cate like? She's as marvellous as you'd expect an actress of her calibre to be. And this is the key to Robin Hood's most significant failing: everything is exactly as you expect it to be – that, and nothing more.

It is 1199, and archer Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is a member of King Richard I's (The Lionheart) mighty army. When the King is killed in battle, Robin and his companions are freed to return home to England. Along the way, they discover that the King's Guard (charged with the safe return of the dead King's Crown) have been ambushed by the traitor Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong). After fighting to support their fellow Knights and wounding Godfrey in the process, Robin promises the mortally-wounded Sir Robert Loxley that he will honour his memory by returning his precious and unique sword to the dying knight's father Sir Walter (Max von Sydow) in Nottingham. Back in England, Richard's younger brother John (Oscar Isaac) is named the new King and the country is immediately plunged in chaos. Only the fearless Robin can empower the people to rise up and defeat the invading French forces.

Robin Hood is a serious, lead-footed and humourless film that lacks even one minute in its almost two and a half hour running time of genuine excitement. We anticipate nothing. And while the fine ensemble deliver excellent performances, the encyclopedic nature of Helgeland's (Green Zone, Mystic River) verbose screenplay constantly weighs them down with dialogue so entirely plot-driven and didactic, that not even the promise of light, or romance or personal conquest can shake the immense sense of foreboding that everything is going to play out precisely as we expect it to. And, almost without exception, it does.

Isaac is sensational as the tyrannical, juvenile King John and Strong is great as the evil, duplicitous Sir Godfrey. Von Sydow's spirited performance is all class, and Crowe plays Robin Hood with a great sense of nobility, humility, charity and charm. He belts along on horseback with the very best of them and his moments of wry humour are almost impossibly welcome. Regrettably, they are soon eradicated by yet more thundering hooves, clanging swords and bows and arrows. There's a ridiculous number of bows and arrows actually, which are photographed relentlessly from every possible angle.

With the peculiar exception of the last five minutes, Robin Hood is a film entirely lacking in irony, joy, intimacy or soul. Yes, it starts with a Big Battle (but nowhere near as big or as interesting as Gladiator's sensational opening sequence). It also almost ends with a Bigger Battle – but apart from some impressive aerial establishing shots of the French invasion, we're quickly back on the sand and in the water with yet more thundering hooves, clanging swords and whizzing arrows.

As it, relievedly, begins to wind up, its tone lightens and, for the first time, we sense a pulse – a heartbeat – a pure and restrained optimism and delight that has been chronically lacking from everything that has gone before. While England under the tumultuous reigns of King Richard and King John was quite obviously no fun whatsoever (expect, possibly, for them) – the result is a film that, somewhat perversely, is equally no fun whatsoever. None.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Geraldton Guardian.

DVD Review: Everybody's Fine

Everybody's Fine. 96 minutes. Rated M. Written and directed by Kirk Jones.

Films about the paradoxical relationships fathers share with their children are rare beasts in Hollywood's 'big picture' output. The grand-parents of them all – films like The Godfather, Father of The Bride and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? – successfully reached into the dim, dark vault of family drama. And while the circumstances that give meaning and purpose to these values differ dramatically, audiences can't help but bring their own unique and very personal experiences of family to films that dare to take the subject on.

With Everybody's Fine, Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine, Nanny McPhee), with the help of an arresting performance from a perfect Robert De Niro, has risen to meet this challenge and has delivered a heartfelt, unforgettable film of genuine emotional authority.

Frank Goode (De Niro) has been left alone after the death of his beloved wife, who (as wives and mums so often do), has nurtured and attended to every finite detail of family life. When, at the last minute, each of his four adult children suddenly become unavailable to attend a reunion at the family home (the first since their mother's passing), a wary and suspicious Frank sets out on a journey across America to surprise each of them with a visit instead. What he learns in the process will challenge his life's experience of being a hard-working father and husband.

Based on the 1990 Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene (Everybody's Fine) starring the incomparable Marcello Mastroianni, Kirk Jones's English-language adaptation bucks the trend of Hollywood feeding like piranha on the jewels of European cinema with a distinct lack of respect. The result is a perfectly-structured story that gently unravels, before all the various strands unite in a marvellously inventive sequence – played to the hilt by De Niro – around an outdoor dining table.

Beautifully and insightfully directed, Everybody's Fine is helped considerably by the work of Cinematographer Henry Braham (who was cinematographer on Jones's earlier films as well as the ravishing The Golden Compass). Braham ensures that the photographic essence of the film perfectly matches the incandescent, searching qualities of De Niro's central performance. Drew Broughton's (House of Sand and Fog) art direction and Andrew Jackness's production design combined to create the film's stunning visual aura which enhances the story, and the compelling performances, at every turn.

And if there is such a thing as the perfect cast, then this film has it in spades. The performances from the first-class ensemble of Hollywood stars (Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Austin Lysy play the siblings) are flawless. But ultimately, it is De Niro that anchors this film in the purest of reality – resulting in a film of intricately layered, intimate detail. Just be ready to tell your dad how much you love him … and have the box of tissues handy.

Everybody's Fine will be available on DVD from 2 June, 2010.

DVD Review: Mao's Last Dancer

Mao's Last Dancer. 117 minutes. Rated PG. Directed by Bruce Beresford. Written by Jan Sardi. Based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin.

Mao Zedong, the leader of the People's Republic of China from its inception in 1949 until his death in 1976, is, today, remembered as one of the most influential and controversial leaders in modern history. While his brand of Communist theory and policies is credited with having laid the foundation stones of contemporary China's position of power and influence in our world, the extremes with which his policies were enacted throughout the new republic have fuelled the controversy associated with the legacy of his rule to this very day.

Li Cunxin is a young peasant boy growing up in a small village in rural China who, at the height of Mao's Cultural Revolution, is inadvertently chosen by visiting delegates to study ballet in the capital, Beijing. The ruling Communist Party's desire for cultural supremacy soon sees him sent to the United States of America as a guest artist with the Houston Ballet, but as his success elevates him to international stardom, the ensuing culture clash finds Li having to choose between his newfound desire for personal and artistic freedom and the profound bond with his beloved family in China.

Sardi's (Shine, The Notebook) meticulous screenplay is absolutely up to the challenge of representing not only the complex political landscape of Communist China in the early 1970s, but also the heady, disciplined world behind the scenes of a major, internationally-renowned ballet company. Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Black Robe, Paradise Road) is one of Australia's most highly-respected directors – and his work here is finely nuanced, sensitive and brimming with cinematic confidence when dealing with the epic qualities a biopic with this kind of global resonance and significance demands.

Overall, however, the ensemble of performances are its weakest link, with only the superb Joan Chen (as Li's mother 'Niang'), Penne Hackforth-Jones (as the Houston Ballet's fearsome 'Cynthia Dodds') and Amanda Schull (as Li's first love-interest 'Elizabeth') really managing to bring the necessary flair to their performances that – whenever they are onscreen – lifts the film from a fairly standard level of engagement to an appreciably higher one. While Birmingham Royal Ballet Principal Dancer Chi Cao is certainly up to the choreographic demands of his role as 'Li', his acting is no match for his dancing, and regrettably, particularly in his many scenes with Bruce Greenwood's Houston Ballet hero 'Ben Stevenson', it all ends up looking and feeling a little too earnest and, ultimately, disingenuous.

At a critical point in the story, Li says "I don't want to walk – I want to fly." The chief disappointment with this film is that it never actually manages to match this simple, yet fearless grand ambition.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and was published in the print edition of the Midwest Times.