Director: Serhat Caradee
Cast: Les Chantery, Buddy Dannoun, Waddah Sari
Country: Australia
Year: 2009
A big hit at the Sydney Film Festival this year, Cedar Boys sees first-time feature writer-helmer Serhat Caradee join the ranks of filmmakers attempting to take the path less explored of Australia’s non-white (sub)urban experience. As the film’s title suggests, Caradee story focuses on young Lebanese men, though to call them such would be misleading as these are just boys waking the fine line of responsible adulthood and the recklessness naivety of youth. So of course, because no one seems to have an original idea for how to tell these stories, we find ourselves in the territory of crime, drugs and gangs again in what is a very competent, if obvious, drama.
Les Chantery plays Tarek, a young Lebanese-Australian lad who makes what little cash he can as a panel beater whilst living at home with his parents and little sister. At night Tarek can be found cruising around in his mate Nabil’s (Buddy Dannoun) car or getting turned away from upscale clubs because their money’s not green enough and their skin’s not white enough. Tarek’s a good kid who finds himself tempted by another life in Sydney, one of big houses in the Eastern suburbs and flashy white girls who drink champagne. Furthermore, Tarek’s has a brother in the clink with no money left for his appeal. It’s enough for the young lad to compromise his character and get involved with Nabil’s plan to rip off a dealer’s stash and use their hustler mate Sam (Waddah Sari) to shift the pills.
Thus Caradee embarks on a moral tale about kids who think getting rich quick the illegal way will come without consequences. The director tells his story well and there is just enough room for one more western suburbs story after David Field’s The Combination earlier this year. But with those films and Shawn Seet’s boxing drama Two Fists, One Heart it’s starting to feel like the only immigrant stories involve criminals, boys from the wrong side of the tracks and love stories with white Aussie girls. Are there no young Lebanese women in this world we're being served?
Unfortunately not, and until Australian filmmakers start trying to tell their stories without the baggage of imitating American urban filmmakers’ gangland-immigrant tales it’s going to continue to feel like old ground revisited. That there are gifted writers, directors and actors out there to explore the cultural concerns of these groups and that they are being giving the opportunities to do so is undeniably a good thing; Cedar Boys is a decent enough showcase for this talent, but let’s see something fresh, imaginative, original.
What Cedar Boys demonstrates is that on a small budget with the Red hi-def cam you can make a film that looks great and captures an Australia city and outer suburbs in a way that is at times menacing and others magical. Go see Cedar Boys, it is accomplished work featuring an incredible cast (Rachael Taylor, Martin Henderson, Daniel Amalm) by a filmmaker with a bright future.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Film review: Cedar Boys
Film review: Balibo
Director: Robert Connolly
Cast: Anthony LaPaglia, Oscar Isaac, Damon Gameau
Country: Australia
Year 2009
Robert Connolly’s third feature is a historical political thriller of rare quality, not just in terms of Australian filmmaking but on any. Taking us back to the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor Connolly and his co-writer David Williamson (Gallipoli) refuse to pull their punches yet intelligently avoid sermonising the Australian government’s culpability in turning a blind eye, effectively condemning six Australian journalists to death. Based on Jill Jolliffe’s 2001 book Cover Up, Balibo is powerfully affecting cinema and a compelling piece of storytelling.
The film opens with a Timorese woman giving her oral history at the recent Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in which she recalls witnessing the execution of Australian journalist Roger East. Played by the rock solid Anthony LaPaglia, we first meet East as he is eagerly encouraged by a young Timorese patriot José Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac) to head the government’s news agency. Jaded and cynical, East is not to be convinced easily and only comes round when his own buried idealism gets the better of his world weary instinct.
Arriving to find Dili a capital city under siege with Indonesia intelligence wondering the streets in civilian clothes, East is more interested in picking up the trail of the five missing young Australian journos in order to discover their fate. Balibo expertly weaves together two storylines, that of Greg Shacklton, Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie, Brian Peters and Tony Stewart reporting from the frontline whilst East investigates their fate. Despite knowing the men’s ultimate fate, Balibo never misses a beat of tension, the impending spectre of death always looming claustrophobically overhead.
The film’s narrative echoes the sentiment offered by East, that the only way he can get the Australian public interested in the plight of the East Timorese is by exposing the fate of the Balibo Five, much to Ramos-Horta’s distaste. Along the road to the titular village where the Five met their ultimate end we see the results of Indonesian death squads, whose activities resulted in the murder of thousands of civilians. Balibo is anything but a film without conviction, its anger palpable and uncompromising, leaving the audience unable to ignore the spectre of crimes committed and the implications of the Australian government’s inaction.
And while Balibo is an intensely political film, it is also a beautiful one. Nick Meyer’s editing between the two timelines is nothing short of masterful and more than appropriately complemented by Tristan Milani’s photography on both 16mm and 35mm. Milani deploys handheld camera work for the most part in all the right places, beautifully colour contrasting the duelling stories and capturing the lush, exotic locales of East Timor. It is always a pleasure to see filmmaking of such calibre in sync with storytelling and performance.
Director Connolly has made a remarkable film, equal to Oliver Stone’s Salvador, arguably that filmmaker’s best work, and is a reminder to Australia that with great power comes great responsibility. The Balibo Five and Roger East died trying to report the truth, the very least we can do is stand up and pay attention.
Film review: Bronson
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Tom Hardy, Matt King, Kelly Adams
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 2009
“My name’s Charles Bronson and all my life I’ve wanted to be famous,” comes the narration from the anti-hero of director Nicholas Winding Refn Sydney Film Festival Official Comp winner. Bronson is a film that offers perilously little else than a character portrait of Britain’s most infamous inmate played by Tom Hardy. And for those who value story over art that probably won't be enough, nevertheless Bronson has ‘cult classic’ written all over it thanks to it’s coiled tension and eventual balls-to-the-wall violence.
Refn, whose Pusher trilogy is another revered collection from the cult section, paints his portrait of a fascinating man with a Kubrickian brush, unapologetically repetitive in its explorations of a life behind bars and man incapable of, or uninterested in, rehabilitation into normal society. A squat fist of muscle with a shaved head and an English moustache, Refn’s Bronson is an intelligent, creative and at times vulnerable man who is nothing if not intensely wild, whimsical and interesting. His world becomes a bizarre vaudevillian affair beset by equally odd characters along the way from a prize-fight promoter, to an art teacher, to a particularly peculiar prison warden.
It all comes as a surprise to anyone from British shores more accustomed to the man born Michael Gordon Peterson whom after being imprisoned for armed robbery became known as the country’s most dangerous criminal, remaining in jail for 40 years (aside a couple of very short stints of freedom) as a result of crimes committed inside. One of the strengths of Bronson is director Refn decision to tell his story through the a tint lens of absurdity and leave the audience to work out how they feel about the ruffian for themselves.
Whilst no doubt capturing his charm, humour and raising questions about the rights and wrongs of institutionalising a man through years of solitary confinement, the filmmaker is never shies away from the brutality of this somewhat deranged and feral character who cannot be defined by normal society. Was he born this way or did prison and society’s limitations of social-acceptability shape him into the man he became?
Bronson is a deeply confronting film in respect of it subject and no matter what your opinion of its value the one feature uniformly agreeable is the stunning central performance by Hardy as the brawler. Previously only seen in bit parts in the likes of Layer Cake, Marie Antoinette and RocknRolla Hardy delivers a text book definition of a tour de force that is both mesmerising and terrifying and a performance that deserves to be talked about in the same vein of Eric Bana’s similar role in Chopper – utterly magnificent.
For 92 minutes Bronson sets out to entertain us with visual flair and a reek of madness. In the process it succeeds in becoming one of the most original and exciting biopics in recent memory and a scary insight into what may lie beneath humanity: little more than survival of the fittest instincts that betray our animalistic tendencies. Or it might just be a wild ride in the mind of a madman.
Film review: Inglourious Basterds
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Christoph Waltz
Country: USA
Year: 2009
What’s that you say: a Quentin Tarantino-directed World War II film about a Dirty Dozen-esque troupe of Jewish American soldiers behind enemy lines with the sole purpose of killing Nazis? As basic movie premises go it’s hard to imagine a bigger fanboy wet dream really, but be careful what you wish for, because you might not get it. Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is the least disciplined and most wildly uneven of his seven features to date.
Hardly one to dwell on his detractors, here the film geek’s filmmaker betrays what should be his own directorial maturing process and indulges his worst excesses. And while the big chin might be likened in many quarters as The Weinstein Company’s Mickey Mouse; the difference remains that Mickey didn’t have an ego and tens of millions of dollars at his direct disposal. Most disappointingly of all, Inglourious Basterds glaringly lacks for consistent inspiration.
Rather than the action movie about a crack(pot) team of scalping Basterds led by Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, Tarantino has delivered a series of vignettes, padded by lots of talking with quintessential QT-patter and punctuated by increasingly violent exclamation marks. It is a farcical fairy tale set in Nazi-occupied France where the history books have been gleefully thrown on the pyre so as to enact a roaring rampage of revenge. Disturbingly though, Inglourious Basterds plays uncomfortably well as a 160-minute murder fantasy in which human life means very little in this post-Gitmo world.
Because no filmmaker loses their gifts overnight Tarantino still manages to cram some vintage stuff into his bloated runtime (you’d hope so, right?). The opening homage to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West, complete with Ennio Morriocone score to a homestead invasion, fused with classic Tarantino cat and mouse dialogue play is as good as any of the writer-director’s greatest hits. The scene excruciatingly drip-drops the tension before climaxing with exactly the execution we’ve come to expect of his violent poetics.
It is also during this opening sequence that Tarantino unleashes his secret weapon, German actor Christoph Waltz as ‘the Jew Hunter’ SS Colonel Hans Landa. Waltz steals every single scene in which he delivers his cunning dialogue in multiple languages, playing pitch perfectly for the uncertain bedfellows of terror and comedy. Where Waltz excels Pitt fails in a grimacing and gurning in a caricaturing that irritates more than it delights.
Because it’s an ensemble we could go on to mention the other standouts like Michael Fassbender and Mélanie Laurent, but it’s hard to care when the director himself barely treats his protagonists as anything more than a collection of names and faces. All the easier to kill one supposes. Tarantino has not lost any of his visual flare nor his talent with language, but here finds his storytelling lacking in restraint to his film’s detriment. There’s entertainment to be had in this escapist fantasy, but be warned, these are not the Basterds you’re looking for.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Worse Addictions: Episode 5
The podcast is still going strong, check out EPISODE FIVE after reading the synopsis.
"Things got pretty heated as the team took on Michael Bay's latest helping of pyrotechnical cinema Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Adrenaline flowed and spittle flew as Josh Wheatley, Daniel Crichton-Rouse and Damien Radford joined Scott Henderson for a marathon discussion of Michael Bay as auteur before naturally seguewaying into a chat about Can't Say No challenge film Happy Together. There's a chance for you to WIN a copy of Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg just before listening to the team discuss Manhunter in our Michael Mann Body Of Lies series."
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Film review: Bastardy
Director: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Country: Australia
Year: 2008 (documentary)
“When you’re pushed out on stage, that’s when you’re born” Jack Charles
Indigenous actor Jack Charles is a rare sort of fellow and his story quite remarkable. Captured in documentary form by director Amiel Courtin-Wilson (Chasing Buddha) over the course of seven years it’s hard to say how close you come to knowing what really makes Charles tick, he’s a master of charisma yet slave to vice. Unflinchingly and candid from beginning to end with one uncomfortable exception, and yet nothing short of an enigma; Bastardy presents one of the most fascinatingly understated portraits of a man in recent memory.
As a prolific actor who starred on screen and stage and is credited as having set up the first Aboriginal theatre company in the 1960s one expects a certain sense of the theatrical around Charles. Life started out that way too. A member of the The Stolen Generation might have been the first really drama he experienced and an onscreen credit at the end of the film tells us it is dedicated to those who have been “lost and found.” The allusion is clear, this isn’t just about those who fall on hard times and find themselves in the homeless nether-regions of the living; ghosts before death even comes for them.
But that’s the bigger picture and Bastardy is much more concerned with the personal and the intimate. Down the years Charles appeared on the big screen in films like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Bedevil (1993) and Blackfellas (1993), in private he was a thief and a drug addicted – albeit the most charming bloke to invade you home, helping himself to whatever he might be able to maintain the lifestyle he’d grown accustomed – even if that was chasing the next fix.
Charles seemingly has given director Courtin-Wilson full access to his life, we see him shooting up heroin to which he displays no physical reaction – a skill born of years of addiction. Later the pair take a trip to a Melbourne suburb, home to the upper-class and a happy hunting ground for Charles’ exploits in cat-burglary. We see the alleyways and toilets he has slept in and hear about relationships gone wrong. All of it is so honest and without self-pity, yet there’s a sparkle of regret in his eyes that betrays the bravado. He is intelligent, kind, philosophical and a quite beautiful blues singer. There never a dull moment around Charles and the effect he has on the thesps and crew he meets on set at an acting gig or the drunks on a street bench – encounters with this man are always seem enriching experiences.
Bastardy navigates the ere tricky line of documenting the subject and becomes involved with the story. Incredible in many ways given the intoxicating bitter-sweetness of Charles’ life, his gentle demeanour and wise eloquence. A genuinely rewarding film in which you could talk about the skilled execution of the editing and the beauty of some of the photography at great length, but in the end all you’ll care about is Jack Charles, a charming rogue who’ll stay with you long after he’s left the screen.
Scott Henderson
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Worse Addictions: Episode 4
Hello my friends, obviously I've been somewhat tardy with my posting for the past couple of weeks. The podcast if taking up vast amounts of my time as is various freelance gigs I've been able to pick up. Below is the overview for EPISODE 4 of WORSE ADDICTIONS in which we review Disgrace and begin our exploration of Michael Mann in the new Body Of Lies feature. Please remember to subscribe via iTunes, and do feel free to email your feedback and thoughts to worseaddictions@gmail.com
"Despite the editor's failure to bring the power cord for his laptop the Worse Addictions team were able to record episode 4 of the show with the help of a super speedy second half. Alex Parker and Matt Riviera returned to the studio – much to the relief of Scott Henderson and Josh Wheatley – in time to review the new Australian film DISGRACE, directed by Steve Jacobs and starring John Malkovich. The guys (and gal) open the show by talking about Alex's recommendation for film viewing in hospital and Josh's latest DVD purchases. They also introduce our new trailer competition, the Can't Say No feature where one of the team challenges someone to watch a unseen film before the next episode and finally we kick start our Body Of Lies feature on Michael Mann. Hope you enjoy the show folks and please come back next week when we review Transformers 2."
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Trailer for The Warriors Way
I don't normally post trailers but this one was an absolute must see. It came via 24FPS and looks like an unendorsed promo release of the English language samurai western (most samurai films are actually westerns but this one is actually set in the Wild West). The film is directed by Sngmoo Lee and stars Korean actor Dung-Kun Jang as the retired 'World's Greatest Swordsman Ever'. And Jang is not the only talent we should mention with Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush and Danny Huston (hamming it up in all the right ways) providing some serious star power to the cast. Quite frankly this looks incredible, drawing on several genres and influences like Hard Boiled, The Crow (think the strobing shootout), Yojimbo, A Fistful Of Dollars and anything involving bullet time bad-assery. Watch it below or click here.
Type rest of the post here
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
SFF review: Burma VJ
Director: Anders Østergaard
Country: Denmark
"Those who are not afraid come to the front” – unknown protester
“All social changes come from the passions of individuals.” After nearly a decade of pessimistic ‘we’re all doomed’ documentaries of despair things might be changing for the better. Whilst many of the features at the 56th Sydney Film Festival have shown a distinct pattern of fatalistic discourse, this comment by a subject in Louie Psihoyos’ The Cove reflects the optimistic hope evident in many of the documentary films showing this year.
In Burma VJ: Reporting From A Closed Country it is more than simply the passion of one person, but the bravery of a group of undercover journalists who operate at all times under the threat of permanent incarceration or worse. They are all members of the Democratic Voice of Burma based in Rangoon where they do everything they can to capture footage of the country’s military dictatorship’s activities and smuggling their elicit goods to a headquarters in Norway. These are video journalists as freedom fighters, where high street camcorders replace rocket launchers and “stories are silent.”
Director Anders Østergaard cuts together footage of the 2007 rebellion led by Burma’s 400,000 Buddhist monks along with the dramatic recreations of DVB journalist Joshua’s (alias) experience hold up in Thailand at the time of the almost-revolution and whose role was to managed the flow of information to the outside world. It’s a problematic decision but for the most part you take Joshua at his word as he tells his comrades story.
What plays out in the film’s grainy home video footage is some of the most incredible scenes of revolt and repression ever captured charting it from beginning to end. The last time the people of Burma rose up against the military in 1988 some 3,000 people were killed in the streets and the film is soaked in fear and tension for the intrepid reporters. Aside the bravery of the reporters who must dodge secret police hiding in the crowds, the monks who march on the capital in their thousands and the student activists who march despite fear the military will fire on them, there is something heartbreakingly inspirational about the intangibles caught on camera here.
The DVB remind us of the role of good journalism in exposing atrocities (and believe me, you will see tragedy) and the truth behind the oppression of a people, with the simultaneous realism how negligent our own media has proved in recent times. Burma VJ is nail-bitingly tense, utterly engrossing and incredible galvanising. More than simply documenting this event the film offers hope in the indomitable nature of the human spirit that refuses to go quietly into the night no matter the consequences.
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56th Sydney Film Festival runs until 14 June
Worse Addictions: Episode 2
So the second episode of WORSE ADDICTIONS has been posted online. It was a pretty crazy production and editing job as we've all been super busy with the Sydney Film Festival, but I think we made some progress from the first episode and we certainly had some good discussions about the three films we reviewed: BRONSON, VAN DIEMEN'S LAND and 500 DAYS OF SUMMER. I'm trying to knock together some written review to post here at the blog. My favourite film so far has been documentary The Cove, which I can't recommend highly even and rambled about a little too much during the episode. Anyways, go check it out, download it, subscribe to iTunes – all the links should be working.
Also, Matt Riviera is running a critic poll of the films showing at the festival on his blog Last Night With Riviera in which I am taking part. Swing by there to see what have been mine and a number of other critics favourite films so far.
The Sydney Film Festival ends 14 June, so hurry over to the website to book your tickets now.
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Film review: Terminator Salvation
Director: McG
Cast: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood
Country: USA
"So that's what death tastes like." – Marcus Wright
It was hard to imagine a more meaningless addition to a cinematic franchise after Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans. Kudos then to McG and the ‘creative’ team behind Terminator Salvation for such a valiant effort: not only have they managed to neuter a once genuinely terrifying vision of the apocalypse, but they have done so in a way that inspires little more than apathy for all involved. In fact, if this John Connor is the man they’ve been crooning about for 25 years then frankly we’ve been conned because apparently he couldn’t inspire so much as a story in a room full of writers.
Traditionally this is the point at the reviewer gets into some synopsis of the film, which is all well and good, but there are some many holes perforating John Brancato and Michael Ferris’ (the geniuses behind Catwoman and The Net) script it would take a thesis to explain it all. Not that they haven’t tried, starting off the film with exposition in title cards, forging on with voice-over narration and rubber stamped with dialogue straight out of daytime soap territory.
For your benefit: a man on death row, Marcus Wright (Aussie Worthington), signs his body over to Cyberdyne to for scientific research in the year 2003. Fast-forward to 2018, a computer defence network Skynet (develop by Cyberdyne) has become self aware and nuked humankind almost to extinction. The resistance leader is a man named John Connor (Bale, scowling/growling/dreadful) and he is trying to find another man called Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) who he will eventually send back in time to protect/shag his mother so that he can be his dad. All the while there are machines that take the form of planes, motorbikes, water snakes and terminators (pretty much anything you can welt a machine gun to) working hard to eliminate humans. Oh yeah, turns out Wright is a machine who thinks he’s a man and may be the resistance’s only hope, or something metaphorical, sorta.
The resulting film takes itself so seriously it is left utterly lifeless and is so devoid of likeable characters that any supposed tension is striped from the relentless action sequences. Not only that but everything is derivative of/ripped off Every Other Post Apocalypse War Movie Ever right down a pointless mute child called Star; it may as well be one of those genre parodies, which works because they aren’t funny either.
Asking lofty questions like “doesn’t everyone deserve a second shot” while single-handedly sending girl power back to the 50s (tough as nails female fighter falls instantly in love with Wright, Connor’s wife is a pregnant doctor) Terminator Salvation fails to accomplish anything other than blowing shit up bigger than ever before and more frequently. If this is the best of humanity has to offer then perhaps it isn’t worth saving after all.
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Terminator Salvation is released nationally in Australia 4 June, but only go if you can't get tickets for the Sydney Film Festival, actually I wouldn't bother going at all...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
New Australia Film Podcast: Worse Addictions
Hello friends, the past week has been a fairly insane time for me as I've been educating myself on audio editing and familiarising myself with a new website backend AND preparing myself for the Sydney Film Festival. Anyway, the result is that I have launched a new film podcast with the help of a few friends, it's called WORSE ADDICTIONS and if you click the name through to the site you'll be able to download our first episode previewing the 56th Sydney Film Festival. The site is still a work in progress as are my hosting skills. We'll be recording new episodes during the festival and on a weekly basis from here on out. Please leave feedback in the Worse Addictions 'episodes' comments section, we'd love to hear what you think.
Scott
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