MIFF 2010: The Killer Inside Me

Perhaps you have to be in the mood. Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me was disappointing. This portrait of evil will suit fans of gratuitous violence but as a character study it fell way short. It's part crime thriller, part horror, part psychological drama.

It may have been because Casey Affleck plays bad cop Lou Ford with his cowboy drawl that is impossible to understand at times. Is this great acting or poor elocution?

The plot was both unlikely and predictable. We are asked to accept that Ford has suddenly come out in his late twenties as a nasty after years as a nice guy. The trigger of a slap on the face hardly explains the sudden emergence of Mr. Hyde.

The law enforcement people, led by DA Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker), are not the brightest bunch. Even basic forensic science of the early 1950s like fingerprinting seem beyond them. Their extraordinary lack of any sense of smell at the final confrontation is amazing.

This film is pretty pedestrian pulp fiction. Perhaps the storyline of the original crime novel was fresh in 1952. It just seems to have been done to death on film and television.

Of the victims, Jessica Alba performance is much more memorable as Joyce Lakeland than Kate Hudson as girlfriend Amy Stanton. The rest of the male cast had the appeal of a telemovie.

As a longime Tarantino follower, the blood saturation point may have been reached for me.

MIFF 2010: Apart Together

Apart Together (Tuan yuan) has an unusual twist on the love triangle. Newly weds separated by the Chinese Nationalist Army's retreat to Taiwan are reunited in late 1980s Shanghai after forty years apart.

It's a fairly light romantic drama as former soldier KMT soldier Liu Yangsheng (Ling Feng) gets reacquainted with Yu-e (Lisu Lu) and meets his son and her second family. It's a difficult emotional journey for the couple. this is not just because of opposition to her returning with him to Taiwan but also through the magnaminous acceptance of her second husband ex Communist soldier Lu Shanming (Xu Caigen).

As well as the exploration of these tangled relationships, there is also some forboding comment on the emerging modern China, with its threat to the extended family and neighbourhood communities.

The pace of this story was annoying at times. The lead character lacks both energy and depth. In contrast to his rival's overacting, it is a rather flat and uninspiring performance. In contrast Lisu Lu gives a subtle and moving portrayal as the second-time-around lover.

MIFF 2010 - Cane Toads: The Conquest

After more than 20 years, Mark Lewis has returned to his classic topic in Cane Toads: The Conquest. We catch up with the relentless march of this unpopular guest in Australia.

The ingenuity of the local defenders and their futile attempts to stop its spread across Northern Australia are documented in detail. It is an salutary lesson in the dangers of eco experimentation. Yet there seems no sense of irony from those who hope for a biological or genetic solution.

There are some of the old favourites. Golf clubs! A taxi swerves across the road with more deadly accuracy than the original combi van. Monica Krause, the young girl who owned "Dairy Queen", reminisces about her gigantic pet toad.

Surprisingly it's the dogs who steal the show. Their closeups almost make the 3D worthwhile. Lewis manages to find a range of people who are more than willing to share their cane toad stories. There is a character gallery that is well worth visiting.

Mark keeps himself out of the conversation, a style that many other documentary makers could well copy. The politician talking heads became a little monotonous but that is their specialty.

Can't say that no toads were harmed in the making of this film. The gas extermination of thousands may disturb some viewers.

Nevertheless, Cane Toads: The Conquest is very engaging experience.

Cheers for Bran Nue Dae at Sundance

A quick review of Bran Nue Dae by Anne Thompson from the Sundance Film Festival:

Friday morning in the Spotlight section (for films that Sundance programmers love that have screened elsewhere), Aboriginal musical Bran Nu Dae scored lots of laughs at the Racquet Club. Here’s how one attendee described it in a text message: “Grease meets Gods Must Be Crazy meets 10 Canoes! Geoffrey Rush makes surprise leading role. Fun, fun, fun! The audience screamed and cheered at the end! Very audience friendly and appealing with big heart and theme. Very Aussie cheekie."
Sundance Watch: Redford vs. Gilmore, Howl, Restrepo, Bran Nu Dae

If you haven't seen it yet, it's still screening in Oz cinemas.

Bran Nue Dae January Cinema Release

Advance screenings of Rachel Perkins' glorious Bran Nue Dae start next week with the national release to follow during January.

This is one of the best 2009 Australian productions. This indigenous Shakespearean-style comedy/romance/road movie is all fun. Don't miss it.

Spread the news!

It's also screening at the Sundance Film Festival later this month.

Greenaway Reconstructs Leonardo's Last Supper

Peter Greenaway's Installation Art Captures Melbourne

Leonardo's Last Supper has come to Melbourne for the International Arts Festival this year. It's one of Peter Greenaway's image technology installation art projects. It follows the success of his multimedia event 'Rembrandt's The Nightwatch at the Rijksmuseum' in Amsterdam in 2006.

Greenaway calls these art forms, "speculative painting-cinema dialogues". Greenaway has reinvented himself as a new Da Vinci. Had Leonardo been alive today, "an investigation into the continuity and correspondence between the language of painting and the language of cinema would have been obligatory for him".

Da Vinci Cloned

Unfortunately it could not be the original masterpiece. However the reproduction is cleverly forged, in both senses of the word. It is claimed to be, "a perfect, three-dimensional sculptural clone of Milan's crumbling, 510-year-old chapel wall and painting."

The half hour show alternates between caressing and interrogating the painting. The micro-accuracy of the the video projections is astounding. Today's audio-visual presentations are certainly light-years ahead of the old slide projectors.

Is Cinema dead?

Ground-breaking film director Greenaway declared cinema dead as early as 2003. This seeming about-face may have been a consequence of his 1999 movie, and perhaps last true cinema production, 8 1/2 Women. It received a drubbing from most reviewers at the time.

His cinema triumphs include the beautiful The Draughtsman's Contract where his early training as a painter brought magnificent scene scapes to this period piece. Drowning by Numbers drew on his skills as a film editor in constructing its elaborate storyline. The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover became a cult movie very quickly. The Pillow Book is perhaps his best film, as he mixed media to telling effect. It weaves traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry and calligraphy into an exploration of sensuality by its extensive use of body painting.

Last Supper Highlights

There are many highlights during the half-hour with Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles. The exploration of the hands is particularly striking. The opposite wall hosts a cascade of highly detailed close-ups of the painting's grainy texture. It reveals a fascinating perspective that is
usually hidden from an audience. The painting itself started to disintegrate not long after it was finished in the 1490s. Since the effects of numerous restorations have been removed, The Last Supper is now close to the original except of course for its fragmented state.

The audience crowds around a table of food and drink dividing the installation room. Bread and wine are the essentials.

Nine Classic Paintings Revisited

The other art works in the proposed Nine Classic Paintings Revisited series are: Veronese's The Wedding At Cana, Picasso's Guernica, Velasquez's Las Meninas, Seurat's La Grande Jatte, Monet's The Water Lilies - Nympheas, Jackson Pollock's One: Number 31, and Michelangelo's The Last Judgement.

For the multitudes that can't attend one of the original venues, hopefully there will be traveling versions that match the high quality of this Melbourne event.

Peter Greenaway is performing the last rites for the cinema a little prematurely. But it's a performance that's well worth attending.

(This article first appeared on Associated Content)

The Bastards: all in a day's work

Melbourne International Film Festival



The Bastards (Los bastardos) is an award winning Mexican film. It’s mostly Spanish language though it’s set in the United States. Fausto (Rubén Sosa) and Jesus (Jesus Moises Rodriguez) are illegal day labourers. They have been hired to murder someone. We follow them on their mission.

In only his second feature length movie, writer/director Amat Escalante clearly worked at using his limited budget by the use of unconventional techniques:

Basically I was looking for a feeling of overwhelming fear. Something that is bigger than us but you cannot define.
Los Bastardos blog

Nina Zavarin gives a disturbing performance as Karen, a lost soul in LA suburbia. Trevor Glen Campbell as her son Trevor does a convincing job of alienated teenager.

The strengths of this very experimental piece are also the roots of its weaknesses:

• Long takes with little or no panning or use of zoom. Characters occasionally move in and out of frame and there is the odd dolly shot. The lack of variety is irritating and hard to justify in many of the scenes.
  
• Action taking place off-camera, sometimes “behind” the camera. It's trite and ineffective.
  
• Long silences, that cause us to lose interest as the story does not progress.
• Sparse dialogue. The characters’ motivation or psychological states remain too clouded.
• The use of actors with no experience. (Nina Zaravin was an exception.) There are few intense verbal clashes between characters.
  

It was shot in “five intensive weeks” of filming. A redeeming feature is the absence of the shaky hand-held photography that has been so trendy but is rarely used effectively. Unfortunately the cinematic style adopted does not lead to increased drama.

It would be wrong to classify this as an action movie. Very little happens. Nor does it quite hit the mark as horror or thriller. There is some suspense but it doesn’t provide the tingling tension or build-up we associate with these genre.

It isn’t very nail-biting. You just wish they would get on with it. It’s certainly edgy at times but the snail pace is frustrating. The only surprise is not what happens but when.

Going by the awards The Bastards has received, there is a keen audience for this film. This gives some hope to independent filmmakers with little money. Unfortunately it is unlikely to reach the cult status of films like Robert Rodriguez's el cheapo El mariachi.

There are many other measures of success. A last word from Amat Escalante:

I think the most interesting and amazing thing that I've done with my second feature, on a personal level, is working with two people who are not actors who at first could not believe that they were going to be in a movie and then get to the Cannes festival ... a movie with them is an experience that changes your life, both they and myself.
Los Bastardos blog

Amreeka: Fresh Off The Boat

Melbourne International Film Festival


Amreeka presents the experiences of Palestinians living in the West Bank and those who migrate to the United States. The word is Arabic for America. It’s about their everyday lives rather than the political situation, though this dictates many aspects of their existence at home and abroad. The impact of 9/11 on work, school, family relationships and normal social interactions underlies this very human story.

Two sisters from Bethlehem of all places are reunited in Illinois: Muna (Nisreen Faour) the optimist who wants a better life for her 16 year old son Fadi (Melkar Muallem) and Raghda (Hiam Abbass) the hardened pessimist who wants her husband Nabeel (Yussuf Abu-Warda) to take them back to Palestine.

Adjusting to American culture is hard enough without the added burdens of prejudice against migrants and the anti-Arab feelings generated by the war on terrorism.

In many ways writer/director Cherien Dabis has created a soft-sell movie. It’s about understanding not retribution and it's executed with lots of humour. We do not see the worst of the occupation. It mostly presents the small humiliations and day-to-day abuse of their rights.

The wall dominates their lives. Its graffiti calls not too subtly to the audience: “ICH BIN EIN BERLINER!” and “BEEN THERE DONE THAT!”

Of course, the anti-Islamic feelings are misdirected as Muna’s family are not Muslims. This is not the first use of this trite device in a film about Middle Eastern migrants. Among others the Lebanese in The Combination are Christians but experience the same kind of racial profiling.

The first two people to befriend Muna are outsiders themselves. Her workmate Matt (Brodie Sanderson) is a high school dropout. Mr. Novatski (Joseph Ziegler), a teacher from Fadi’s school, is a Polish American Jew.

The rest of Muna’s extended family are well portrayed by the strong cast including her three nieces Salma (Alia Shawkat), Rana (Jenna Kawar) and Lamis (Selena Haddad) and her mother.

Amreeka is a gentle persuader that is well worth seeing.

Bran Nue Dae Blazes

Melbourne International Film Festival



The film of Bran Nue Dae premiered to enthusiastic audiences at MIFF 09. Director Rachel Perkins* and a first class Australian cast have brought the musical to life with energy and fun. Rachel has described the process of bringing this much loved stage musical to the screen as frightening and fun. This indigenous Shakespearean-style comedy is all fun.

Young, star-cross'd lovers are separated. Willie is an aborigine at boarding school in Perth in 1969. He dreams of reuniting with his sweetheart Rosie (Jessica Mauboy) who is back in Broome. He is played by Broome schoolboy, the angel-faced Phillip "Rocky" McKenzie. Geoffrey Rush is the wicked Father Benedictus who wants him to follow in his footsteps into the priesthood. He is determined to stop Willie from getting back home. Willie's unlikely saviour is Uncle Tadpole (Ernie Dingo) a drunk, a conman but a charmer.

Along the way we meet two hippies in a combi wagon (Missy Higgins plays Alice with style), Roadhouse Betty (Magda Szubanski) and the raunchy Roxanne (Deborah Mailman, also stylish).

As befits a classic comedy, many complex relationships are revealed at the finale on the famous Cable Beach. In the words of its theme song:

There's nothing I would rather be
Than to be an Aborigine

* Rachel Perkins directed the indigenous musical film One Night The Moon, which has been turned into a stage production opening in Melbourne’s Malthouse soon.

(Official website is under construction)

Zift Happens

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009



Zift is film noir set in post-war Bulgaria. Its black and white format works for this historical piece, creating a very appropriate mood. It is gloomy and seedy. It also moderates the ample blood associated with the inevitable violence. The magnificent settings reflect both the pre-war architectural grandeur of Sofia and the grey totalitarianism of the communist state.

The film has many of the classic noir stock features. Following release from prison in the 1960s, the protagonist Moth (Zahary Baharov) narrates his story taking us back to 1944. The mystery revolves around a diamond missing from the original crime scene. The femme fatale Ada or Mantis (Tanya Ilieva) is his school sweetheart. There is lots of suspense and a protracted chase. We meet a range of oddball characters during his one-night fight for life.

Betrayal is an essential part of this genus. The “villain” is his old partner in crime Slug (Vladimir Penev), now a powerful apparatchik who has thrived under the brutal, repressive Stalinist regime. Moth knows that he should trust no one.

This is an entertaining and at times troubling look at what people will do to survive. In keeping with the genre, it has an underlying layer of misogynism. There is little challenge to the view of women as men destroyers. The praying mantis metaphor is indulged both verbally and visually.

Both Baharov and Ilieva have very strong screen presences. He’s a man’s man, muscular and square-jawed. She’s lean and lithe with enticing eyes. The pair ooze sensuality, especially when working off each other.

According to Moth, “zift” means "bitumen" and was used as chewing gum. It’s also slang for “shit”. Very fitting for this dark movie. However, it’s tempered with some humour. Moth’s scrambles through the women’s section of a large bathhouse. He dives into a pool to retrieve a false eye that belonged to Grater (Tzvetan Alexiev) a prison friend. It’s worth seeing just for the gallery of tattoos. There is a sample in the trailer.

Director Javor Gardev and novelist/screenwriter Vladislav Todorov have crafted a tight script within an ample 92 minutes. Lots of other filmmakers could follow this example of brevity.Zift is definitely worth a look.

(The sub-titles on the copy shown at MIFF were less than satisfactory at times, which is very disappointing given its release was nearly a year ago.)

Silent Wedding: no laughing matter

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009

Silent Wedding (Nunta muta) is three films in one. A search for the para-normal. A romantic comedy. A political drama. It’s one too many.

There are many truly comic moments in its village that at times feels like sixteenth century rural Europe. The peasants are struggling to come to terms with the realities of Stalinist Romania in 1953. They treat their small local party cadre with ridicule. The modern day ruins of the giant factory are the legacy of this clash with brutal authoritarianism.

The characters and settings are pure Bruegel. Mara (Meda Andreea Victor) and Iancu (Alexandru Potocean) are a courting couple full of the joy and pleasures of youth. Their feuding families are finally united when a wedding is planned. Three upcoming events determine the date of the celebration and set their fate.

Firstly, the circus is coming. Coincidentally Iancu’s best friend is a dwarf, a seemingly essential element in stories of the supernatural. Secondly, the communist party has arranged a propaganda film night, a challenge in a place without electricity. Finally, Lent is approaching, with its deep significance for these religious people.

Silent Wedding has lots of entertaining and funny parts. There is a very effective three Stooges slapstick routine, a very difficult task at any time. The silent wedding scene is very amusing for the most part. Unfortunately, like the movie itself, it is too long with just too many visual gags and unnecessary detail.

The modern day TV crew’s search for a para-normal story could easily have been omitted to tighten up this production. The supernatural elements could also have been left out.

The unfolding tragedy is apparently based on a true story. If so it doesn't quite do its subject complete justice.

Walter Murch: cinema diamond cutter

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009

Walter Murch's CV as a filmmaker reads like a Who's Who entry of American cinema: The Conversation, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient and many more.

In Murch - Walter Murch on Editing he talks about his role as film editor on some of the best known movies of the last forty years. He's a talking head with a difference.

Edie Ichioka and David Ichioka's documentary is not about the technicalities of editing. There is little jargon or complex technique. Its strength is in the exploration of how film is created, in particular the collaboration that brings image, sound and story together.

If you're into filmmaking, put this one high on your list of must sees.

In the Loop: war of 4-letter words

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009

In the Loop is a very enjoyable, well made spin off from the British TV series The Thick of It. Like most top British comedy it relies primarily for its humour on dialogue rather than visual gags.

Leader in this arena is Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker the U.K. government's Head of Communications. He is a foul-mouthed bully whose spew of offensive, sarcastic invective is unparalleled. He's a bully who harasses all around him.

The diminutive British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) is another Pythonesque character whose droll one liners seem lost on his underlings. His new press officer Toby Wright (Chris Addison) has more than a professional interest in his U.S. opposite number Liza Weld (Anna Chlumsky) and slides down a steep learning curve on his first visit to Washington D.C.

It's a simple plot. U.S.President and U.K. PM want to go to war in the Middle East. The man to deliver this is master spinner Assistant Secretary Linton Barwick. David Rasche as Linton gives us some wonderful Donald Rumsfeld moments. In a War Committee meeting he asks the participants to imagine that a glass of water is a shoe. Mimi Kennedy as Karen Clarke does a competent job as his foil.

James Gandolfini, of Sopranos fame, adds his considerable weight to the anti-war forces in the role of General Miller.

When the film was introduced at MIFF 09 it was described as a mixture of Monty Python, The Office and Yes Minister. It certainly lived up to this accolade with lots of laughs throughout.

Blessed : facing our worst nightmares

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009


According to the producers, Blessed “is a film about mothers and children, about love and beauty, about being lost and finding your way home.” Director Ana Kokkinos, of Head On fame, has given us another disturbing exploration of surviving in the twenty-first century.

It is a very grim, gloomy look at ordinary lives in Melbourne’s western suburbs. They are outsiders: single parent families, migrants, indigenous stolen generation, the old to the very young. A lot of it is not a pretty picture: shoplifting, burglary, child abuse, poker machine addiction, clothing outworkers.

It’s the underclass, the working class who are unemployed or underemployed and exploited. Alienation is a sad, everyday fact of life. they are desperate people in a society that is failing them.

The story uses dual timeframes of a single day. Firstly we see the children’s crises unfold from their perspectives. Later the day is repeated using the parents’ experiences as the focus. The threads are tied together by the use of characters that link the narrative both directly and indirectly.

There are haunting scenes:

Two mothers visit the mortuary. One regains some hope, as the other screams unforgettably in despair.

A mother and father sit in a hospital emergency waiting room, separated by an empty seat and a crowded past.

A man cries for his stolen youth and his lost mother.

A woman cradles the unborn child in her womb, both facing a seemingly hopeless future.

The cast is outstanding, showing the depth of both experienced (Miranda Otto, William McInnes, Frances O’Connor, Deborra-Lee Furness, Monica Maughan, Wayne Blair) and new (Eamon Farren, Sophie Lowe, Harrison Gilbertson, Eva Lazzaro, Reef Ireland ) talent in Australian cinema.

McInnes plays the only father in this patchwork of relationships. He convincingly captures the essence of this lost soul, who is petrified, in both senses of the word, by life. Otto and O’Connor each leaves us with a lasting image as she dances, one of hope and the other of desperation.

Blessed is a dark drama that should touch you to the core.

Endgame: finishing off apartheid

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009


Michael Young (Jonny Lee Miller) is the invisible man who brings together white South Africa and the African National Congress in the early ‘90s. Endgame is a film about talk. It’s the dying days of apartheid. The government condones clandestine discussions in England as a stalling tactic to try to divide the ANC leadership.

Academic Professor Will Esterhuyse (William Hurt) and future SA President Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor) lead the two sides. Separate overtures are being made to Nelson Mandela (Clarke Peters) by Dr. Niel Barnard (Mark Strong) head of the SA National Intelligence Service. Esterhuyse becomes an unlikely double agent as his friendship with Mbeki grows.

It’s a chess game whose result is famous so the macro-political level is not the focus of this treatment. Mandela is not the central character of this story. Nor do the director Pete Travis and writer Paula Milne spend much time on the brutality perpetrated by both sides. Two short bombing incidents and a fairly tame car chase will not satisfy action movie fans. Silences and stillness are as important as the dialogue, dramatic as it is. It’s a tight script with few wasted shots.

The extraordinary cast includes Derek Jacobi as the boss of Consolidated Goldfields who are the secret sponsors of the talks and Timothy West as President P.W. Botha. The actors manage the Afrikaans accent extremely well. The decision to cast Clarke Peters as Mandela plays out quite well as he captures the spiritual stature of the man without having his physical size.

The filmmakers also resist the temptation to use clichéd fades into the real people at the end. It's a pity that neither the official website nor IMDb give John Kani a credit for his role as ANC President Oliver Tambo. He is among the profiles on Channel4 which showed the film earlier in the year. Its website has lots of additional information about the end of apartheid as well as the film itself.

Engame proves that talking heads can be much more compelling than computer enhanced action flicks.

Pardon My French: going through the motions

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009

Pardon My French is a puzzling title for this colourless film. Un chat un chat is the French name of this disappointing comedy/drama.

To call a cat a cat (or spade), Pardon My French is a dud. Célimène aka Nathalie (Chiara Mastroianni) says that she is “unstitching herself” though she denies having depression. She is a well-known novelist, who sometimes refuses to speak even to her psychiatrist. Apart from writer’s block the causes of her emptiness and identity crisis are unclear. Her lack of passion quickly becomes tiresome.

There are four people in her life who are trying to help her overcome her listlessness. Her seven year old son Adam (Mateo Julio Cedron) is suitably precocious but not enough to redeem the movie’s flaws. They are staying with her mother (Dominique Valadié ) while her apartment is renovated. It’s wrapped in plastic like a Christo Art project. Mum regularly interrupts her sleep baking habit.

Her last partner Viorel (Philippe Rebbot) is even less charismatic than his estranged lover.

A seventeen year old girl Anaïs (Agathe Bonitzer) is stalking her in a “friendly” way. She wants to write about her. Their interactions are sometimes bizarre but ultimately boring.

Célimène’s transition back to some kind of normality is so nuanced, it appears seamless. Apart from a not-so-surprising birthday party, there is no dramatic climax. She just floats back into life.

Pardon My French is not comic enough nor does it explore deeply into Célimène’s inner life. Its competent cast had little to work with.

Breathless: a stunning nether world

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009



Breathless (Ddongpari) is a stunning film, in both senses of the word. It leaves you feeling battered around the head and awed by the boldness of its themes.

An unlikely group share a Korean barbeque: a girl in senior High School; a divorce woman and her young son; her father; and a former gangster. Missing is the man who brought them together, Sang-hoon, a gangster who worked as a loan shark debt collector.

So are the schoolgirl’s brother and Vietnam War veteran father. They are just two of the many dysfunctional characters we meet in this broken society.

Yang Ik-june, who stars as hard-man Sang-hoon, also served as the film’s screenwriter, editor and producer. It’s a low budget movie that has won a number of awards. Like its anti-hero, it pulls no punches with large serving of graphic violence and “offensive” language. It must set a record for the most four letters words in two hours of film.

Perhaps the most confronting issue raised in this film is the prevalence of domestic violence with wife bashing a recurring theme. The relentless brutality leaves us breathless and disgusted. There is none of the glamour of action movies such as Chocolate. Sang-hoon routinely bashes people indiscriminately. He’s from the “what are you looking at” school of thuggery.

However, his relationship with schoolgirl Yeon-Hue (Kot-bi Kim) is warm and tender, more sensual rather than sexual. Their arguments bring humour and humanity to their otherwise joyless lives. Kim has a natural gift for the comic moment but also handles fury and fear like a seasoned professional. She has plenty of opportunity to exercise the latter talent.

This dark and gloomy story ends with some hope. However, it is hope tempered with a very large dose of despair.

A Mother's Nightmare

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009



Madeo (Mother) is a very challenging film from South Korea. Hye-ja Kim as Hye-ja, the over-protective mother of the film’s title, gives an outstanding performance. Director Joon-ho Bong takes us on a tortuous journey that is murder mystery and suspense drama. But most of all it is the tale of a mother-son bond that is stretched beyond the limits.

When her mentally disabled son Do-joon (Won Bin) is jailed, Hye-ja sets out to find the real perpetrator. Her quest brings much more than she could ever have anticipated.

Mom is an unlicenced acupuncturist who believes that she knows a secret point that will help you to forget your worst memories. If only…

There is no classic happy ending. The audience is left to decide if any kind of justice has prevailed.

The touches of humour help to soften an otherwise disturbing look at what happens when a mother goes to extraordinary lengths to protect her vulnerable son.

Flame and Citron: when the Nazis arrived

Melbourne International Film Festival 2009



Ole Christian Madsen’s Flame and Citron presents two riveting characters who are fighting for the motherland in Copenhagen, 1944. Their job is assassination, ruthless and usually cold-blooded. Their usual targets, who are chosen for them, are Danish collaborators with the Nazis.

This is a violent, bloody story based on real people and events. The rules, if there are any, do not preclude collateral damage. Women and children are among the innocent victims of their deadly resistance to the occupation. Not shooting first is a dangerous manoeuvre as Flame discovers.

Thure Lindhardt plays Bent Faurschou-Hviid, the red-haired young assassin of the duo, with style and control. His love interest is the brooding Ketty Selmer (Stine Stengade ), a worthy femme fatale and Mata Hari.

Mads Mikkelsen’s portrayal of the very troubled Jørgen Haagen Schmith, the car mechanic and driver, is superb. The worse his marriage becomes, the more Jørgen becomes involved with the killing, culminating in a colossal Hollywood style confrontation with the German army.

Their network, based on the Holger Danske resistance group, leads a charmed life for the first half of the movie. They meet openly in front of the local Gestapo.

This is a powerful exploration of the lives of these tow national heroes, as personal morality is discarded for patriotism. We are often reminded that this is war. As well as the Nazi war and intelligence machines, they also face divisions, intrigues, political expediency and betrayal in their ranks.

The film’s main weakness is its implausibility. Bent and Jørgen seem invisible to their enemies for most of the story. They are virtually bullet-proof as well. The pair makes several undetected trips to Stockholm for high level resistance meetings. The Nazis can’t have been that stupid or ineffective, though truth is often stranger...

Flame and Citron is part psychological suspense and part action movie. The former works more convincingly than the latter.

No winner in Thrilla in Manila

John Dower's Thrilla in Manila is an anti-climax in many ways.

If it weren’t for rhyme and Muhammad Ali’s love of taunting his opponents, this film might not have been made. Without the racial slur of “gorilla” that is at the centre of their personal feud, it would have lacked punch except in the literal sense.

The documentary has historical significance although little is added to our understanding of Ali’s complex and at times contradictory personality. Smoking Joe believes that his former opponent’s current illness is a punishment from god.

The fight itself is heralded as the greatest of all time. It was close and extremely brutal. It is beyond dispute that both men did themselves irreparable physical harm. Their two previous encounters were one a piece. This treatment of their bitter rivalry, shown from Joe Frazier’s point of view, leaves a bitter taste that the classic When We Were Kings (Rumble in the Jungle) did not. Neither the duelling duo or the world of professional boxing comes out looking pretty. Suffice it to say that Joe had lost the sight in one eye in 1964, eleven years before this match. It had gone undetected by the authorities or perhaps was just overlooked.

It is hard not to compare Thrilla with the Rumble, Leon Gast’s 1996 documentary about Ali regaining the title from George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. Dower had to rely on limited original footage and resorted to a lot of repetition of the clips available. Gast had extensive footage of both the fight and the long weeks beforehand. They seemed to be having a three month long concert with James Brown and company while Foreman’s hand recovered from injury.

Dower used a similar narrative structure. Both films examine the choice of a third world dictatorship as the location and the odd hour chosen to meet television commitments in the U.S.

Much is made of Ali’s political involvement with the Nation Of Islam, most of it covering the same ground as the earlier film.

If Frazier had given up his bitterness, this film would have lost much of its sting. Sadly there was no real winner in the Thrilla in Manila.