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Rod_Heath
Reviews
The Tender Hook (2008)
Who Killed The Australian Film Industry? Case No. 278.
The Tender Hook, or, Who Killed The Australian Film Industry? Case No. 278. This sorry excuse for a period drama takes a cast and idea with potential Rose Byrne, Pia Miranda, Hugo Weaving, in a Jazz-era gangster drama and turns it into a sloppily paced and executed soporific. McHeath (Weaving) is a boxing promoter and gangster and functioning illiterate; for no apparent reason he's given to singing Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs before bouts. How post-modern. How stupid. Anyway. There's a boxer, Art (Matthew Le Nevez), who becomes McHeath's latest protégé, over his unfortunately Aboriginal stablemate Alby (Luke Carroll).
McHeath's flapper moll Iris (Byrne) makes the goo-goo eyes at him. Sexual tension squelches under the surface. Miranda plays Daisy, a friend of Iris's (these flower girls stick together) who keeps turning up in scenes unannounced. They practice dancing together and talk about "hooking up" with guys. In the 1920s. I stopped counting anachronisms after that. There's a subplot involving Japanese beer and a backstory of Broome pearl fishermen. I don't know what it was all about. For some reason that is not exactly (at all) explained, Byrne puts cocaine in Art's lemonade. McHeath thinks he's a drunk and sacks him. Byrne plots and schemes to help him out again. She's a big one for the plotting and scheming. Most of which causes trouble. McHeath's two gunsels, portly Ronnie (John Batchelor) and Russian Donnie (Tyler Coppin), debate bumping off McHeath when he realises their part in one of Iris's schemes, but Ronnie wimps out when he sees McHeath crying. A lot of practically incoherent scenes get in the road of the film finally ending.
Director Jonathan Ogilvie spends a lot of time working with cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson creating some pretty images, but utterly fails to generate a sense of style, which might have compensated for and decorated the wispy, pathetically underpowered script; unfortunately Ogilvie's sense of film grammar, the lack of structuring of the scenes and exposition, is stunningly incompetent. In an early scene, Daisy suddenly appears in the car with the protagonists. How she got there, and indeed who she is, seems to have slipped Ogilvie's mind. There are many more examples of this sloppiness. Where he chases poetic sparseness, he achieves only wan irritation. He gains awkward performances from actors who are normally reliable, badly miscasting Weaving and leaning on Byrne's ability to project a kind of haunted doll-like humanity whilst saddling her with an incomprehensible character.
It might not matter so much if the story had more substantial characters and stronger plotting preferably not stolen from a dozen old noir films and festooned with witlessly sprinkled pop-culture quotes. But it doesn't. It's boring.
Wolf Creek (2005)
And as the sun rises slowly in the West...
I am a horror movie fan. I dig Wes Craven, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", George Romero, etc. I'm also an Aussie, so I have a rooting interest in whether an Aussie horror film succeeds or not. And I've got to say, "Wolf Creek" is...one of the biggest loads of rubbish I've ever sat through. Dull characters (with three good young actors doing their best) find themselves in a situation where nastiness rains, and do really stupid things, the sorts of things that only happen in horror films, so that tension is whipped up only to pay of in the most facile kinds of rug-pulls. We might be warned, for instance, at the beginning where there's a shot of the sun rising in the west. There is, finally, no point to this film other than most cheaply visceral of effects. The violence is queasy-making, presented with no panache or wit. The fate of the charming Cassandra Magrath's character is especially repulsive, in a scene of completely nonsensical action. John Jarrat's performance borders on Robert Newton-Long John Silver broadness and the film skips over what would have been the difficult part of his performance in going from avuncular to deranged. So why is this trash getting such good reviews? I don't know. There's a sadistic spirit in the air in our age. Is it that we in the west feel decadent, and want to see ourselves getting a little Abu Ghraib action back? Granted, the appeal of the horror film is that it is the only genre free not to coddle or reassure us, but it should at least do so entertainingly. "Wolf Creek" pretends to be realistic but shows through with more holes than swiss cheese.
The World's Fastest Indian (2005)
Stalled At The Starting Line
"The World's Fastest Indian" tells a great true story, Burt Munro's epic journey from small-town old kook to record-beating hero. It's just a pity that, unlike its hero, who displays grit, imagination, and originality, this film rides a long highway of often cringe-inducing clichés. Right from the word go, we have such standard feel-good movie touches as the adorable little boy who assists, the nasty neighbors who harass, the wise old Indian man who gives Burt a good-luck charm, chirping American gals cheering him on, and, worst of all, the cute and friendly transvestite who aids our hero. On cue, Burt develops a heart condition for pathos. On cue, Burt drives on the wrong side of the road for big laughs. He even sets fire to his lawn just to prove what a grand old eccentric guy he is.
Scene after scene in Roger Donaldson's script presents a stock character type, an anachronism, a self-contorting attempt to please the audience, or Anthony Hopkins drawling on with some tinned old codger rumination or dirty talk. Hopkins' accent wanders all the way from Wales to Wellington and over to Long John Silver, even as he gives the part his best and carries the film along on his back. It's a pity the film progresses so unimaginitively, because Donaldson is a good image-maker and the climactic scenes are extremely well-done. It's a crowd-pleaser, but it pleases the crowd with a bunch of tricks they've seen too many times before. This racer stalls at the starting line. Send it to the junk yard.
Blade: Trinity (2004)
A Film That Provokes Serious Questions
(some spoilers ahead)
This is a film that provokes and begs the asking of serious questions.
Why do Wesley Snipes' false teeth make him sound like he's speaking with a mouth of marbles?
Is Jessica Biel the worst actress in the known universe, or are there worse ones on Rigel 7? Is her navel molded out of plastic?
Was the script written on the back of a book of matches in the toilet of a Burbank bar whilst the writer was on a drinking binge?
What happened to the vampire Whistler?
Who does Blade go riding off to fight at the end, having theoretically killed all vampires? The United League of Mutated Mayflies?
Who is David S. Goyer, and how soon will it be before the ghost of the "old English guy" Peter Cushing returns to put a stake through his heart?
Why does Dracula look and sound like a bad Croatian wrestler?
Why was Parker Posey in this? To keep paying for her personal assistants to smoke her cigarettes half-way down for her? (Kudos to her, however, for nearly making it a crazy comedy)
What the hell was this about, anyway, and who do I see about the nearly two hours of my life I wasted watching it?
The Alamo (2004)
Stands Tall
(Historical spoilers ahead) The Alamo story stands as proud and singular in U.S. history as the fort itself, yet in cinema has consistently proved a magnet for pomposity and bellicosity, as in John Wayne's loud, cardboard epic that was torn between historical speechifying and horse opera shenanigans, or the under-produced, stodgy Republic production "The Last Command". John Lee Hancock's version of the story is the most historically accurate to date, but historical accuracy is far from being the only value in film-making. We also ask - is it dramatic? Exciting? Do the characters and their plight move us? Can it make us forget the simplistic drum-pound of the usual way the story is told? For the first ten minutes or so of Hancock's "The Alamo", I was unsure - a proliferation of bad wigs, scrappy character introductions, and clunker lines of dialog made me afraid I was in for an exercise along the order of "Revolution". However, Hancock slowly gained a reign on the disparate story elements, and produces a resolutely low-key film, bordering on anti-heroic. It pricks the myth of every figure involved, but it's not the loud icon-breaking satire of, say, "Little Big Man"; instead, by locating and exposing the weaknesses of its titan heroes, they become much more vital and interesting people.
Billy Bob Thornton's Davy Crockett is a wily, intelligent, haunted man who would much rather play fiddle at a dance than risk his life and those of others, yet his life has already been misshapen by his own legend. He maintains a jovial smile even as he realizes he's stumbled into a situation that will certainly mean death and horror. When he engages in up-close killing the expression on his face indicates that his stomach has sunk into his boots in sorrow. Yet, when demanded, he gives stalwart service, and his final scene is suitably heroic yet entirely in character as he meets his death with cool defiance. Jason Patric's Jim Bowie is a tough but rootless, morally and mortally sick man, hanging grimly onto the ghostly memory of brief happiness with his Tejana wife, the only escape he ever found from the pain, both physical and spiritual, from his shady of past. Patrick Wilson's William Travis is no rabble-rousing martinet but a scared, irresponsible, devolved semi-aristocrat trying desperately to prove himself up to the position of command he has been given. These are the chief figures in a minutely described, slowly building nightmare. The idea of these men's growth, touched on in "The Last Command", is here the whole story.
Dennis Quaid does good work - although he occasionally strains at being so intense and serious, when he does best bringing a wry, boyish humor to his parts - as Sam Houston, like the Alamo defenders a damaged man, the bloom having gone off his statesman's figure, reduced to a near-drunkard squabbling with tinny would-be politicians, trying to find the resolve and manpower to take on a professional army, which he painfully receives in the butchery of his friends. The trouble is, Houston disappears from the story for so long we almost forget about him, and this contributes to the film's finale, the battle of San Jocinto, being less effective than the body of the film, which so effectively involves us with the Alamo defenders, and also the action is scrappy and throwaway compared to that grand battle scene. Nonetheless, I liked that Hancock included this, as it makes it clear what the Alamo meant to the run of history, instead of appearing a context-lacking bit of bravado.
It's easy to see why this failed to light up either the box office or the awards season. It's completely against the grain of "Braveheart" and "Gladiator"-style historical romancing. Despite having been bankrolled by Disney as a work designed to inspire patriotism, it completely refuses to turn into "Pearl Harbor" idiocy. Instead, Hancock presents a tense, dark, rousing yet tragic war film, chasing solid realism and a breath of poetry, as in the scenes where Bowie, slowly expiring from consumption, lies in a candle-lit room, tended by his tough and loyal sister-in-law, whose face is a map of character and beauty; these scenes, pitched on an ethereal ground between life and death, appropriate considering these men are dying in a church, counterpoints the grim, no-nonsense necessity of the defense. Then there's the terrific moment when Crockett gives harmony to the Mexican war drums with his fiddle, the film's best expression of a sense of heroism that is resolutely human yet transcendent.
If stories that the film was severely edited are true, I expect there was some more material on Jordi Molla's fine but limited turn as Juan Seguin, one of the chief Tejana rebels, although he does get great moments towards the end, and also on the painfully contradictory position of the slaves in the Alamo, who must decide whether their first loyalty is to the people they know - their owners - or the people they don't, who might just free them. But at least this aspect is considered. This story is not the triumph of righteous Monroe Doctrinism but the history of an uncertain, contradictory idealism that might lead anywhere. Emilio Echevarria's Santa Anna - placing aside all arguments over his historical status - strikes me as a bit too old and seamy to capture a man who really did impress his soldiers and country with his dashing persona, and he never quite escapes the realm of an easy-to-hiss movie villain; it would make his final revelation as a gutless tyrant more effective if he seemed previously a bit less of a toad.
If "The Alamo" ultimately lacks the fire and consistency that make for a great film, nonetheless, like another film with a western setting, a large budget, an artistic eye, and status as a complete box office dud that I love - "Heaven's Gate" - I hope this film might stand tall in ten or twenty years time.