Friday, November 22, 2013

Squabbling Over Mommy

Thor: The Dark Age
Directed by Alan Taylor and James Gunn
Three Stars
By Rollan Schott

Alan Taylor’s and James Gunn’s “Thor: The Dark World”, the latest in the Marvel movie ponzi scheme, is the big, dumb comic book movie we deserve. Make of that what you will. I’ve maintained that the first “Thor” was the most turgid and listless of the Marvel superhero movies, and the most emblematic of the Marvel marketing con, wherein each Marvel movie seems to exist merely to sell the next Marvel movie. Marvel, Marvel, Marvel. The machine has been effective, but most individual installments don’t have the foundation to stand independently of the others. Each film is propping up the next, and the system barrels forward with an ever-more perilous pace of bar-raising spectacle. Given the momentum, “The Dark World”, with its bumbling, Shakespearian, Hammer-wielding barbarian, behaves like the proverbial bull in a china shop, and the effect is weirdly satisfying.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

The Folly of the Foolish Kingpin

The CounselorDirected by Ridley Scott
Four Stars
By Rollan Schott

And so the writer conveys story through the written word, and the filmmaker with the moving image and this is the way it is. Cormac McCarthy must be considered one of the great contemporary American novelists, and it is not insignificant that  he wrote the remarkable “The Counselor”, directed by Ridley Scott, not as a novel but a screenplay, his first in the format to be produced. The writer, confronted directly with the visual medium, has moved his stoic, worldly prose seemlessly from narration to dialog. His characters speak as if outside of themselves, meditating heedlessly about the nature of their own circumstances. They are individualistic, fully-realized and complex characters with unique perspectives, but in each of their monologues can be found a hint of McCarthy’s wry, biblical wit.

Broadcasting His Decline

Alan Partridge: Alpha PapaDirected by Declan Lowney
Three and One Half Stars

By Jonathan Fisher

Alan Partridge, the long-lived character played repeatedly by Steve Coogan in various incarnations over the past 20 or so years, is distinctly unlikable. He’s irresponsible, selfish, at times sleazy. The chronicling of his career since his first appearance in 1991 has essentially been a spectacular fall from grace due to incompetence and a complete lack of self-awareness. Partridge lay dormant for a few years in the middle of last decade, but came back with a vengeance with the publication of the viciously hilarious memoir I, Partridge in 2011 (I strongly recommend the audiobook as read by Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge), and now the feature film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Wild Dogs Everywhere

Mystery RoadDirected by Ivan Sen
Four Stars
By Jonathan Fisher

Mystery Road doesn’t surrender its secrets readily. It is a difficult film to describe and review, because like other great thrillers of its ilk (Wake in Fright, Fargo) it functions on a number of planes. First and foremost, it is a murder mystery – its opening scene makes that clear. A truckie pulls over to the side of a deserted highway, checking his load. Perturbed by the ruffling of wild dogs, the truckie investigates a small underpass, and finds the mutilated body of a teenage Indigenous girl.

Shortly thereafter, we meet the film’s protagonist, Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen), who has recently returned to his home town in isolated western Queensland after some time working in the city. He investigates the murder of the aforementioned Indigenous girl. He finds himself up against an intransigent local police force that would prefer to brush the whole thing under the carpet, as well as resentment in the Indigenous community when he questions the locals.

Complicating all of this is Jay’s ethnicity, you see – he is the sole Indigenous officer on the local force, in a community that clearly has a high Indigenous population. There is rancour, tension and of course racism between the whites and blacks in the town, and Jay is caught right in the middle of this. Mystery Road manages to incorporate the issue of race into its tale quietly, and its tone benefits from the fact that this aspect of the story isn’t shouted from the rooftops. It’s clear that racial tensions are fuelling most of the action in the story, and for the most part the movie lets the issue be, appreciating the toll it has taken on Swan and how it affects the choices he makes.  It isn’t overstated, which is often a risk in a film like this.

As the movie gets into the swing of things, it becomes clear that it has aspirations beyond being a straightforward whodunit. As with most modern cinema, it’s almost impossible to watch new movies without thinking about what they remind you of. Oh, that scene was a bit like a Coen Brothers scene; that shot is a bit like the one from the old Scorsese movie; isn’t this all a bit like LA Confidential? Most of modern cinema harks back to things that have come before – we live in the era of the pastiche. This poses a problem for modern cinema’s aesthetics. How can a movie stand on its own two feet if it is constantly reminding its audience of other, presumably better works?

I tried my hardest to draw comparisons between Mystery Road and other movies, but I gradually realised that most comparisons were superficial in nature. Yes, the black humour (and Mystery Road is very funny on occasion) is a little like a Coen Brothers picture. Yes, the overarching plot of a ‘good cop’ trying to beat the corrupt system to preserve justice is a bit like LA Confidential. And yes, many of the shots and sequences reminded me fleetingly of other directors. (interestingly, I found many shots and sequences of Mystery Road to be quite reminiscent of another Australian crime masterpiece from recent years: Animal Kingdom by David Michôd. Australian cinema, so vastly improved in recent years, now seems to be worth imitating)
Mystery Road is its own movie, and while it doesn’t quite maintain its focus and meanders every so often, for the most part it’s a viciously precise and thoughtful thriller. Aaron Pederson is Oscar-worthy as Jay Swan, and a host of supporting actors also inhabit their characters like a second skin. The film benefits from Ivan Sen’s directorial style, which is straightforward and considered. There are plenty of images that leave an imprint on the memory here – the recurring motif of the ‘bird’s eye view’ that intercuts scenes, even images as simple as Jay sitting solemnly in front of his dinner, considering his next move.

Sen is also adept at using simple, powerful signals to demonstrate Swan’s precarious position as an outsider to both the police force and his own community. One of the biggest ones is his car, a sturdy looking Holden. An Australian make, and a fine one – for the most part shiny and clean, a striking symbol of an upwardly mobile citizen. It drives others in the town, who aren’t so lucky, crazy. Swan’s ambivalence towards alcohol (which makes sense due to numerous hints about his prior proclivity to drink before entering the force) sets him apart from his loutish fellow officers. When his boss suggests they go for a drink to escape the bleating heat, Swan looks at his watch suspiciously, before we see him sipping an ice water. The optics of a 60-plus-year-old constable drinking beer in a country pub full of white people while on duty are far less damaging than a young Indigenous officer doing the same thing.


Lovely little moments like these abound in Mystery Road. It’s a smart movie, realistic about race relations, while also being aware of the need for its central murder mystery to work. The investigation is engrossing, and builds up to a finale that, while retaining the elgant and deliberate pacing of the rest of the film, is more visceral and exciting than most big studio cops and robbers movies we typically see. Mystery Road, by most measures, is a quiet masterpiece.