 2019 | DIR: JONATHAN LEVINE | STARRING: SETH ROGEN, CHARLIZE THERON, ANDY SERKIS, BOB ODENKIRK | REVIEW BY GLENN COCHRANE.
Rogen plays Fred Flarsky, a left-winged journalist who writes aggressive political pieces for a popular alternative publication. When his newspaper is sold to a multinational media conglomerate, he quits and spends his first night of unemployment with his best friend, Lance (O’Shea Jackson Jr. – aka the son of Ice Cube). Lance is a successful businessman and takes Fred to a swanky party with the promise of meeting ‘90s pop group Boys II Men. The Government’s Secretary of State, Charlotte Field (Theron), is also at the function and recognises Fred, who was once the kid she babysat as a teenager. They instantly bond and Charlotte hires Fred to be her speechwriter for her upcoming presidential campaign, much to the chagrin of her primary two staff members. CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REVIEW AT SCREEN REALM. 
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 2019 | DIR: TERRY GILLIAM | STARRING: ADAM DRIVER, JONATHAN PRYCE, OLGA KURYLENKO, JOANA RIBERIO, ÓSCAR JAENADA , STELLAN SKARSGÅRD | REVIEW BY CHRIS THOMPSON
So, the big question is… was it worth the wait? Well, the answer is probably yes… and no. Gilliam’s vision for Quixote is a prismatic film-within-a-film-(within a kind of filmic dreamlike reality). If that seems like it would be hard to follow, it’s not really. Adam Driver is Toby, a hack commercial filmmaker working in Spain on a big-budget version of Miguel de Cervantes epic novel, Don Quixote… and things aren’t going well. His belligerent, racist producer, referred to only as The Boss (Stellan Skarsgård) is on his back with demands from the Russian backers and The Boss’s girlfriend Jacqui (Olga Kurylenko) seems to have eyes for him. Then, one night at dinner, a Gypsy (Óscar Jaenada) approaches Toby with a bootleg DVD. It turns out to be Toby’s own student film, made in a nearby village when he was still young and idealistic. Exasperated by where his career has gone, Toby jumps on a motorcycle and sets out for the village to try and rediscover what he believed about art back then. But what he finds is a strange kind of tourist trap memorialising his student film and, most surprisingly, he discovers that the cobbler he cast as Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) has come to believe that he truly is the fictional character. What’s more, this version of Quixote decides that Toby is his Sancho Panza and drags him off on a quest that shifts deliriously between the student film, the world of Cervantes novel and the real world.  This hyper-stew of mixed up storytelling is what Gilliam excels at and, for much of the movie, he manages to navigate the circuitous route from one world to the other. And, as you might expect, the visuals and production design along the way are wonderful especially in the long, climactic scenes of the film (Gillam’s film, not Toby’s). Kudos to Production Designer Benjamín Fernández and Art Directors Alejandro Fernández and Gabriel Liste. But, sadly, the story (co-written by Gilliam and Tony Grisoni) is often not as compelling as the mise-en-scene and we sometimes end up twiddling our thumbs through the becalmed bits of narrative, waiting for the creative winds to fill the sails again so that the tale may move on. What saves it (mostly) are the outstanding performances, especially from Pryce. It’s almost thirty-five years since Gilliam and Pryce first caught our eye in Gilliam’s exceptional Brazil. Whilst this movie might not achieve the glorious madness of that film, it certainly aspires to it and if it fails, it’s a noble failure. Pryce, on the other hand, excels in the role of Quixote (a far superior effort than his pedestrian role in last year’s The Wife) and Driver’s performance, like Sancho Panza, is all the better for what the Knight of the Woeful Countenance gives him to work with. I can’t help feeling that the extraordinary baggage that this film carries has an impact on our expectations of it and that that might not be entirely fair. As the unlikely culmination of a thirty year folly, it might not be what we hoped for, but as a film in its own right, it’s bold and ambitious and a feast for the eyes, populated with characters worthy of Fellini, told through marvellous performances by a talented cast and as ambitious in the scale of its storytelling as anything Gilliam has done before. That it falters along the way is disappointing, but it doesn’t stop it from being an enjoyable and entertaining couple of hours. And as far as Gilliam’s career as a filmmaker goes? There’s still a promise here, especially with this particular monkey off his back, that he might yet pull off one last masterpiece.   2019 | DIR: MICHAEL ENGLER | STARRING: ELIZABETH MCGOVERN, HAYLEY LU RICHARDSON, BLYTHE DANNER, CAMPBELL SCOTT, VICTORIA HILL | REVIEW BY ALEX MAYNARD.
The line between fact and fiction is mainly blurred with the introduction of McGovern’s title character, Norma, a small-town wife and mother who offers to accompany the teenage Louise (Haley Lu Richardson) to a dance school in New York. While it’s doubtful much of this actually happened, intertwining Norma’s story with Brooks’ is clever in that it provides plenty of the cross-generational clashes of opinion you’d expect from a young woman travelling with a stranger older than her parents. Speaking of Louise’s parents, it seems bizarre that they would allow Norma to chaperone their daughter without providing a clear reason for wanting to do so, but the film needs to delay explaining this to heighten the intrigue (more on that later).  Once the pair arrive, a serendipitous turn of events leads to Norma reuniting with a figure from her past, played sensationally by Blythe Danner. Throughout Danner’s short time on screen Fellowes’ script abandons the forced wit and flourishes previously stopping me from immersing myself. By contrast, this single conversation starts out believably awkward and ends up devastating without losing its subtlety, an honest moment that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Many other films where emotional secrets are uncovered have their plots consumed by the fallout (looking at you, Second Act), yet here the revelation is impressively restrained, serving instead as a motivation for Norma’s subsequent actions. In the process of setting up this reunion, Norma also meets Joseph (Géza Röhrig), who inspires some predictable epiphanies about how she needs to make more room for her own happiness. Leaving aside the cliched message, my bigger objection to this arc is Joseph not having a reason to help Norma as much as he does from moment they meet beyond, even if we accept he’s purely a nice guy. Some might call it emblematic of a simpler time, but it feels more like the script was written in reverse chronological order, with plot threads forced to fit a predetermined conclusion. Meanwhile, Louise and Norma have their own painful conversation later in the film, this time about the former’s upbringing and ostensible naivete. I was similarly floored here from Richardson’s commanding performance alone, and furthermore impressed that the moment again didn’t end up taking over the story while fundamentally reframing the character. Apart from this scene however, Richardson is largely underutilised and becomes yet another catalyst for Norma’s development. Nevertheless, the scenes set during Louise’s dance classes are admittedly beautifully choreographed, though I’m not pleased Miranda Otto was cast as the school’s cofounder only to be given nothing to do, despite playing a key figure who shaped the real-life Brooks’ career path. The historical elements are ultimately an afterthought in THE CHAPERONE, but at least they’re pretty. In fact, much like Downton Abbey the craftwork is consistently gorgeous throughout, from set design to the plethora of Roaring Twenties costumes. If you’re a Downton Abbey fan, then THE CHAPERONE’s flaws will be easily overlooked. As someone who never felt the show was for me, it’s hard to ignore events being clearly being shown out of order, or information withheld because the plot isn’t very interesting, or how none of the dialogue outside of the scenes I singled out sounds like a real person and not a film character. Regardless, Engler and Fellowes do drop the pretence at times and deliver genuinely affecting drama; while this ultimately won’t be remembered as the best effort of anyone involved, it’s better than I expected.   2018 | DIR: KARYN KUSAMA | STARRING: NICOLE KIDMAN, TOBY KEBBELL, TATIANA MASLANY, SCOOT McNAIRY, BRADLEY WHITFORD, SEBASTIAN STAN, JAMES JORDAN | REVIEW BY CHRIS THOMPSON
So, it was with some apprehension that I sat down with my popcorn to see Destroyer. It didn’t take long - not much more than the opening credits - to allay my concerns. Kidman is, indeed, astonishing in this film. But the film itself can take a lot of credit for how well she comes across as the wreckage of Erin Bell, an La Cop who’s lost to booze and guilt and self- recrimination over events from her past that, very soon, we will come to understand. Director, Karyn Kusama (Aeon Flux, Girlfight) working from a screenplay by regular collaborators Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, delivers this complex story with a sure hand, moving easily and effectively between the present day and the events of seventeen years ago when then, State cop, Bell, is teamed up to work undercover with an FBI agent, Chris (Sebastian Stan) infiltrating a gang of bank robbers led by the cold-hearted sociopath, Silas (Toby Kebbell). The present-day story kicks off with the horribly hungover and unwashed Bell staggering into a murder scene where a bank-dyed hundred-dollar bill on the dead body is a clue that links back to Silas. (Kidman’s performance is so genuine and raw, you can almost smell the stink coming off the character when she enters the scene). What follows is an old-school style cop story as Bell tries to track down Silas and face the demons she left behind all those years ago. The structure of the unfolding narrative sees her go from one former gang member to the other, following the breadcrumbs of clues that she believes will eventually lead her to her nemesis.  The cast is uniformly powerful and gripping. Kebbell is frightening in his narcissistic dominance of all around him. The present day scene between Bell and Toby (James Jordan) is heart-wrenching and the past and present scenes with Silas’ girlfriend Petra (Tatiana Maslany who, herself, gave us a tour de force of multiple roles in the excellent Canadian ScfiFi thriller Orphan Black) have as much pathos as they do tension. In each case, the actors navigate the shift in character between their younger selves in 2001 and their present day selves in 2018 in a way that feels as authentic as it does devastating for the way their lives have been poisoned and ruined (one might even say destroyed) by Silas. The real surprise here, though, is the screenplay, written by the duo that gave us The Tuxedo (2002), Clash of the Titans (2010) and Ride Along 1 & 2 (2014-16). It’s hard to reconcile that the writers of those slight movies crafted this complex and compelling story that unfolds in a binary timeframe underpinned by a chain of great scenes, one after the other, where characters are quickly and sharply drawn whilst exposition is deftly insinuated into the narrative. It also has a great little twist that makes the structure of the clever storytelling even cleverer still. What elevates the story, though, from formulaic procedural to intensely human drama is the excruciatingly dysfunctional relationship between Bell and her teenage daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn) who lives with her guardian Ethan (Scoot McNairy). The pain of witnessing her daughter on the verge of destroying her life in similar style to the destruction Bell has brought upon herself is tenderly and sensitively handled and allows Kidman to really demonstrate her acting chops beyond the effect of excellent make-up and a noticeable lack of Botox. I do wonder, though, why such a fuss is being made about Kidman’s acting ability in this role when it comes hot on the heels of her outstanding work in Big Little Lies (HBO 2017). Still, if her recent statement that she intends to give a priority to making work with female creatives gives us more what we see in DESTROYER and Big Little Lies, then the best of her career is yet to come.   2019 | DIR: CODY MEIRICK | STARRING: ALVIN SCHWARZ, R.L. STINE, AMELIA COTTER, BRUCE COVILLE, PETER SCHWARTZ, DANIEL SCHWARTZ | REVIEW BY CHRIS THOMPSON
There’s some scary stuff going on in there and many of the stories would be well known as urban myths even by those who haven’t read them. I certainly recognised a lot of them as stories we told each other as kids, years before Schwartz pulled them together in one place and that’s kind of his point. With the scary stories series, he’s as much anthropologist as he is author offering us a range of terrifying tales complete with references to their sources, backgrounds to other versions of them and, on occasions, instructions to the reader as to how best to tell the story to others for maximum scary effect. The parental backlash that led to them becoming banned by the American Library Association throughout the nineties failed to take this academic aspect into account; that all three volumes allowed young readers not only be scared, but to understand how important a part of world history and culture the sharing of scary stories is. Admittedly, the scare-factor of the stories is dialled up to eleven by the use of some masterfully scary artwork and illustrations by reclusive artist, Stephen Gammell and, for many fans, it’s these illustrations as much as the stories themselves that make the works so indelible in their memories.  All of this detail and more is chronicled in first-time documentary filmmaker Cody Meirick’s SCARY STORIES - a scattergun examination of the books, their author, his relationship with his son, the campaign by parents to keep the books away from younger readers, the resistance to the bans by school librarians, the influence of the books on other writers in the horror-for-young-readers genre, the outcry when new editions of the books used a different artist from the original illustrator and the lasting impact of the stories and illustrations on those readers who are now adults and, in some cases, seeing their own kids reading them. It’s a big ask to cover all this territory in 84 minutes and it’s where the film is both successful and unsuccessful in equal parts. The biggest issue for me is that it seems like Meirick is so attached to all the tangents that radiate from the source material that he’s unable to provide us with a focused point of view for what he has to say and this is exacerbated by an editing style that continually cuts back and forth between these different tangents so that we lose track of how each aspect of the material unfolds. Don’t get me wrong, there is some good material here but it’s so interrupted that it never gets the chance to fully develop its narrative arcs. The film is at its strongest in those sequences where Schwartz’s son, Peter, is reflecting on his relationship with his dad. This is moving and painful stuff that, whilst not being about the books themselves, reveals much about a father-son relationship gone wrong and the regret that lingers when the things that should be said are not said before it’s too late. But this isn’t really what the film purports to be about. It’s almost like it could have been the subject of its own documentary. When the subject matter does come back to the books themselves and the controversy surrounding them, Meirick uses the stylistic device of bringing the Gammell illustrations to life through excellent animations (hats off to animator Shane Hunt) but these comprise only a small part of the overall film, and the remainder feels poorer for their absence. And for every fascinating and insightful interview with the likes of the mother who led the campaign against the books, or the librarian that stood up to the School Board that wanted to ban them, or the perspectives of fellow authors like R.L. Stine, there are another one or two that say very little or gush with fanboy adoration and probably should have been left on the cutting room floor. There’s a really terrific forty-minute doco hiding inside this film, but as a whole it’s let down by too much ‘filler’ and repetition and poorly executed ‘dramatisations’ of the stories being read to not-quite-convincingly scared kids. It’s timely, though, with André Øvredal and Guillermo del Toro’s movie adaptation of the first book due out later this year, so maybe a quick squiz with the thumb assiduously hovering over the fast-forward button would not go astray.   2018 | DIR: JIM CUMMINGS | STARRING: JIM CUMMINGS, KENDAL FARR, JOCELYN DeBOER, NICAN ROBINSON, BILL WISE, MACON BLAIR | REVIEW BY CHRIS THOMPSON
The road from short film to feature has become a well-worn path. One of the best Australian films of last year, Cargo started life as a Tropfest short in 2013, the same year that Damian Chazelle screened his short film version of Whiplash before extending it into the Oscar winning feature in 2014. In both those cases, the feature length versions seemed to effortlessly and successfully take on the additional narrative required to plump up the running time. In the case of THUNDER ROAD it’s a bit more of a struggle. Almost the entire twelve minutes of the short film is reshot and transplanted into the opening of the feature (with a clever little addition to the circumstances that increases the agony of Cummings character, police officer Jim Arnaud – you’ll have to watch both if you want to know what I mean). From here, the relationship between Arnaud and his daughter, Crystal (an exceptional performance from Kendal Farr) and his estranged wife Ros (Jocelyn DeBoer) subtly hinted at in the end of the short, is teased out into a domestic divorce drama that highlights the tightly wound and mostly suppressed character of Jim Arnaud that Cummings seems to delight in playing. He admits, himself, that he’s angry although when pressed on the state of his grief and frustration by his long-suffering partner, Officer Nate Lewis (Nican Robinson) he maintains that ‘he’s fine’. Quite clearly, he’s not.  THUNDER ROAD is billed as a drama/comedy. For me, whilst there’s a rich seam of very dark wit running throughout the film, it falls flat as a comedy and, to be honest, that’s fine. Once you get your head around the idea that ‘comedy’ is a misnomer for this story, the intensely personal drama of Arnaud’s disintegrating life draws you in. He’s a man lost at the intersection of crisis and denial and Cummings performance of the concealed pain and his desperation to be a good father to his daughter, a good son to his departed mother and a good cop to the community are played out painfully and beautifully. Yes, the story flags at times and many scenes follow the same dynamic of Arnaud’s mania and acting-out to extremes but, for the most part, Cummings is on top of these things as director and performer, if not as screenwriter. What’s most interesting to me, in the light of numerous incendiary situations (in the States) between cops, perpetrators and innocent bystanders, are the scenes of Arnaud and his partner Nate dealing with the day to day of their job – the mentally unwell man ranting on the street, or the burglar in the convenience store. These are circumstances that we see escalate not because of the internal dynamic of the situation, but because of the external influence of Arnaud’s state of mind. Even a seemingly innocuous exchange between Arnaud and Crystal’s teacher threatens to boil over into something violent. This is an ordinary guy who’s ready to explode. THUNDER ROAD may not have the comedy that its marketing campaign and one of its trailers would suggest, and it may show signs of having been expanded from its original twelve minute narrative, but these things aside, it’s a powerhouse of a performance that is frightening in what it portrays of men who know what the world wants of them emotionally, but don’t quite know how to deliver it.   2019 | DIR: JACQUES AUDIARD | STARRING: JOAQUIN PHOENIX, JOHN C REILLY, JAKE GYLLENHAAL, RIZ AHMED, REBECCA ROOT, RUTGER HAUER, CAROL KANE | REVIEW BY CHRIS THOMPSON
The European take on this quintessentially American genre has become part of its history thanks to Italian directors like Sergio Leone, but Audiard’s French perspective brings a completely different tone and sensibility to the form; it is at once comical and wry whilst finding depth and pathos in the characters and their stories. THE SISTERS BROTHERS, adapted by Audiard and long time collaborator Thomas Bidegain from the novel by Patrick DeWitt, tells the story of two hapless assassins, Eli Sisters (John C Reilly) and his younger, but bolder brother Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix). They work for a nefarious baron of commerce known as The Commodore (a barely visible Rutger Hauer) bumping off the poor unfortunates who have crossed or betrayed him in some way. After a bungled mission at the start of the film, The Commodore appoints Charlie the Lead Man in the operation and sends them off to find and kill the improbably named Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), a chemist who has stumbled upon a formula that could be worth a fortune. Helping them out on their mission is a well read and well spoken scout John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) whose job it is to tail the chemist until the brothers can catch up with him and execute (quite laterally) their task. In some ways, this is a bit of a road movie, as the characters make their way along the Oregon Trail heading form small town to bigger town and eventually to the goldfields of California. But really, the good guy-bad guy stuff is just an excuse for Audiard’s meditation on the nature of loyalty and betrayal and the destructive power of greed and envy and the higher question of what it means to be a man.  As they make their way along the trail, Eli and Charlie discuss their outlook on life, their understandings of their difficult childhood with a violent father and their hopes and aspirations for the future. Whilst Eli is the elder, his sensitivity and thoughtfulness makes him the more vulnerable to Charlie’s more ruthless approach to life. Eli wants to leave this life of killing behind for the finer things in life… like love and family (he carries a shawl with him; a gift from a ladyfriend, that he nuzzles up to like a security blanket, sniffing the scent embedded in its fibres for comfort when life on the trail gets too hard). When they eventually catch up with their quarry, their mismatched views get in the way of fulfilling their mission and the story takes an unexpected but welcome turn. This is such a beautifully made film with picturesque cinematography by Benoît Debie and a quirky, moody soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat. The cast is terrific, most notably Reilly (who’s had a few misses in the recent past) and Phoenix (who, after great performances last year in He Won’t Get Far On Foot and You Were Never Really Here seems to be on a roll). It’s no Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) although it shares some of the wit and astute observations of William Goldman’s screenplay. Neither is it a hard revisionist work the likes of Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) although it does continue that tradition of cracking open the ‘cowboy myth’ to show us what’s inside of these tough, ruthless frontier characters. Whilst it doesn’t occupy the same echelon as those two classics, THE SISTERS BROTHERS does stand alone from many other Westerns in its ability to tell a sensitive and moving story about authentically drawn characters who could just as easily be found in other genres or, indeed, amongst ourselves. When the deeds are done (although not in the ways we expected) the film draws to a more whimsical conclusion that unfolds through a highly stylised, self-consciously filmic sequence that pulls us out of the tone of the rest of the film into a place where we (along with the Sisters Brothers) can reflect on the nature of the story that we’ve just been told, and consider how its very human elements might shape the future for these two unique individuals.   2019 | DIR: MATT WALTING | STARRING: KATERINA EICHENBERGER, MAX McKENZIE, WILLIAM GALATIS, JESSE WALTERS, PAMELA JAYNE MORGAN, OLIVIA NOSSIFF | REVIEW BY CHRIS THOMPSON
In JUST SAY GOODBYE we meet Jesse (Max McKenzie) as a six-year-old (played by Joseph Colangelo) who comes home from school to discover that his mother Olivia (Olivia Nossiff) has overdosed on sleeping pills. Jump ten years to the adolescent about to turn sixteen, living in an untenable situation with his alcoholic father who, since the mother’s death, has been paralysed both figuratively (by grief) and literally (by an accident that has left disabled). Jesse’s a smart, sensitive, sassy-mouthed kid who’s an easy target for the school bully, Chase (Jesse Walters). The only bright light in his life is his best friend Sarah (Katerina Eichenberger) who is understandably infuriated and devastated when Jesse announces that he’s had enough and is planning to end his life at midnight on his birthday.  This is a modest, low budget affair for first time director, Matt Walting and first-time screenwriter Layla O’Shea and, for the most part, they navigate the dangerous territory of this story with a refreshing combination of sensitive insight and wit. McKenzie and Eichenberger are terrific together. There’s a palpable authenticity to their friendship that helps to raise the stakes for both of them when the enormity of Jesse’s plan is revealed. Less effective is the overwrought, mostly one-note character of Rick, Jesse’s seriously depressed father. Whilst we get to know Jesse and Sarah really well in the course of the film, Rick’s development as a character is minimal which feels like a missed opportunity to explore the interior world of the father who is just as vulnerable as the son and on just as self-destructive a path. As the story progresses, though, the handling of the suicide issue gets a bit wobbly and strays into some dicey areas where I, for one, wanted to see someone take some real responsibility for this kid in serious pain for whom the future seems to have only one deadly possibility. It’s where these stories often fall down, in their determination to keep the issue within the circle of characters in their well- meaning but uninformed ways of dealing with their friend or sibling or child, rather than allowing the characters to act in the way a responsible person might out here in the real world. It’s different if it’s a spy story or a superhero story or a love story or just about any other genre… but here, the risks of allowing the responsibility to the drama of the narrative to supersede the responsibility to the potentially vulnerable person in the audience feel a bit dodgy. It would be a spoiler to go much further in examining where this film ends up, suffice to say that the subtlety and strength of the character relationships that work so well for the first two thirds of the film seem to fall away in the last act and despite a nice little twist that was unexpected for the impact it has on the story, the final scenes lean more to the cliché than to the profound and as good as the actors are in the bulk of the film, they struggle to maintain the same quality of work through to then end. And the last line in the film really made me wince.   2019 | DIR: MICHAEL CHAVES | STARRING: LINDA CARDELLINI, RAYMOND CRUZ, SEAN PATRICK THOMAS | REVIEW BY GLENN COCHRANE.
Based on the Mexican folklore of La Llorona, the film tells the story of the Weeping Woman, a spectre who haunts children. Legend has it that she drowned her own kids and was stricken with guilt and grief, and now looks for others to make her own. The story centres around a widow, Anna (Linda Cardellini) and her two children as they become the latest victims and seek the guidance of a local faith healer who has crossed La Llorona's path before. With the help of unconventional religious practices and mysticism, they pull out every trick in the book to banish her.  This is a very poor excuse for a horror movie and its only saving grace is the fact that it's nowhere near as awful as the previous entry, The Nun. Series creator James Wan is on board as producer and although he had no hand in writing this one, his influence is evident nonetheless. In fact first-time director Michael Chaves is so focused on recreating Wan's Conjuring aesthetic that he disregards the narrative entirely, and what he serves up is a cocktail of random flavours. Astute horror fans will recognise familiar moments from other films creeping into the story, such as Evil Dead, Demon Knight and even Warlock for example, and then the rest of the running time is bogged down with painfully inept attempts at suspense. You know what I'm talking about... floor-level camera angles tracking towards big doors, lengthy moments of silence to signal impending jump-scares, and the overused 'she's behind you' trope. The movie is saturated with this stuff and none of it works. Actress Linda Cardellini - who is best known as Thelma from James Gunn's two Scooby Doo movies, as well as Freaks and Geeks – has had a prolific few years with substantial roles in Green Book, A Simple Favour and Hunter Killer, as well as the upcoming Avengers Endgame, and there is no doubt that her lead role in THE CURSE OF THE WEEPING WOMAN is a significant notch in her professional belt. She is establishing herself as a familiar face and a go-to actress and her on-screen presence is appealing. She delivers a reliable turn as the protective mother to her haunted children, however with an uninspired script and lack of direction she's given very little to do. The kids are decent enough and play the victims well, but the movie's constant attempts to scare the audience dominate the running time, leaving little dialogue to help the players solidify their characters. Raymond Cruz stars as the faith healer who helps the family rid themselves of the curse. Unfortunately his part relies on the audience's knowledge of his Breaking Bad character and is poorly conceived. It's never clear whether his character is supposed to be serious or comical, and – in fact – he comes off like a cross between Max von Sydow's Father Merrin from The Exorcist and William Sadler's Brayker character from Demon Knight. Suffice to say, THE CURSE OF THE WEEPING WOMAN is a shambles and is an ineffective chapter in the Conjuring franchise. It is a horror movie for people who think they like horror, but actually don't. In other words, it's entry-level stuff and not worthy being a 6th instalment in a well-established cinematic universe. With The Nun and this title going back-to-back, all hopes rest on the upcoming Annabelle Comes Home and The Conjuring 3...  2019 | DIR: TINA GORDON | STARRING: MARSAI MARTIN, REGINA HALL, ISSA RAE, JUSTIN HARLEY | REVIEW BY GLENN COCHRANE.
 2019 | DIR: WAYNE BLAIR | STARRING MIRANDA TAPSELL, GWELYM LEE, KERRY FOX, URSULA YOVICH | REVIEW BY GLENN COCHRANE.
The other key ingredient for most Australian films to succeed outside of our shores is international talent. It’s a golden rule that applies to all genres and we’ve seen countless foreign stars light up our screens; Josh Lucas in Red Dog, Terrance Stamp in Priscilla, John Goodman in Dirty Deeds and Patrick Warburton in The Dish, to name but a few. The list is endless and Aussies share a common pride when we see big-wigs from around the world coming all the way Down Under to help tell our stories. The latest local film to grace our screens with a foreign star is Top End Wedding, a romantic comedy directed by Wayne Blair (The Sapphires), starring co-writer Miranda Tapsell (Love Child). The added ingredient in this instance is British actor Gwilym Lee, who recently starred as Brian May in the Oscar-winning film Bohemian Rhapsody. CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REVIEW AT SCREEN REALM.   2018 | DIR: GRACIA QUEREJETA | STARRING: MARIBEL VERDÚ, JUANA ACOSTA, PAULA ECHEVARRÍA, ANTONIA RESINES | REVIEW BY ALEX MAYNARD.
Leyre’s newfound penchant for criminal activity stems from a desperate desire to look after her family, a motive Verdú conveys adeptly and which almost justifies how rapidly the situation spirals. However, this is held back by her family simultaneously being the catalyst for the entire mess in the first place: her businessman ex-husband is corrupt, her wheelchair-bound mum constantly antagonises her nurse, and her teenage son Asier (Asier Rikarte) simply makes baffling choices. Without spoiling too much, Asier is the first character in CRIME WAVE we witness committing a crime; I was initially tempted to dismiss how jarring this felt due to it being early in the film, yet the script never offers any development or context for this behaviour. It’s outright uncomfortable how little Asier seems to be affected by his actions, especially when Querejeta allows a darker tone to take over anyway during later pivotal scenes. I’m unsure whether he’s even CRIME WAVE’s most problematic character though, since his friend and classmate Julen (Miguel Bernardeau) has an equally disturbing arc. Julen ostensibly befriended Asier in the first place due to the former’s infatuation with Leyre, an arrangement neither of the boys take issue with for some reason. When Leyre discovers the truth, she is thankfully quick to shut Julen down, but that doesn’t stop him from eventually coercing her into sex when she needs to use him as an alibi. Although Asier’s exact age is unclear, it’s explicitly stated that Julen has been held back in school three times. I’m certainly no screenwriter, but this flimsy explanation doesn’t help his dynamic with Leyre feel any less creepy.  In addition to its non-existent character development and inability to make viewers emotionally invest, CRIME WAVE likewise struggles to form its scattered plot threads into a cohesive narrative. The scene order seems arbitrary at best, with Querejeta and editor Leire Alonso often focusing on elements of the story that can be interesting but fail to justify their existence. For instance, the detectives investigating Leyre have complete backstories and arcs with a suitably grim conclusion I alluded to above. This sequence also shows the most directorial flair of CRIME WAVE’s runtime, yet ultimately feels like it belongs in a different film. Due to this misplaced focus, the third act feels rushed and devoid of logic; characters’ actions are once again confusing due to a lack of context, and at times only serve to explain the events of the opening confessional scene. Perhaps most egregiously though, CRIME WAVE is simply boring: its (largely) uninspired jokes fall flat, while the unlikable characters make it hard to even care what happens. Verdú is the only actor who I would say does her best with the material, but it’s not enough to save this disaster of a film.   2019 | DIR: TOMMY STOVALL | STARRING: LIN SHAYE, OLIVER RAYON, VALESKA MILLER | REVIEW BY GLENN COCHRANE.
Shaye is the sister of New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye, and she has chalked up close to 200 films throughout her incredible 40 year career. She has given us hilarious characters in the Farrelly Brothers' comedies There's Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, and Kingpin and had appeared in iconic horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Critters and The Hidden... not to mention her leading role in the Insidious series. Her performance in ROOM FOR RENT (she also serves as producer) is no less committed than her mainstream outings and she chalks up another quirky character, elevating this otherwise lacklustre and uninspired “chiller” above the insipid VOD depths from there is belongs.  I am guessing that the film is set in New Mexico, although I can't be sure. To be honest I never cottoned-on to its location and I base my assumption on its environmental likeness to the TV series Breaking Bad. The production design leaves a lot to be desired as it presents a bland and minimal setting. The locations (both interior and exterior) have been given very little sprucing, and the cinematography is elementary in comparison to other similarly themed films. Suffice to say there is little technical or aesthetic pleasure to be taken from the movie and the burden of it rests squarely on Shaye's shoulders. Joyce loves the young men and she wields a mean frying pan. She digs a deep hole and knows how to dispose of a body. She's the lovely old lady with a deadly mean streak, and you don't want to the victim of her obsession. Shaye relishes the opportunity to have some devilish fun and she's a ball of energy on screen. Unfortunately she's working with an awful script and poor direction, which nudges her performance in to the burlesque. This is rather unfortunate because had she the support of a stronger production (all round) her role would have come across far more effectively. The film might have also earned itself a little more credibility had it punched out a stronger final act. Instead the movie closes on a soft note, which is intended to be whimsical, and it fades to black leaving the viewer underwhelmed and disappointed (or at least this tolerant viewer). ROOM FOR RENT is for Lin Shaye fans alone, and offers nothing to astute genre fans. It's always a pleasure watching her on screen, and this quirky senior psychopath outing is all that leaves the movie tolerable. ROOM FOR RENT IS AVAILABLE ON VOD VIA UNCORK'D ENTERTAINMENT ON MAY 7, '19  |
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