Tag: 2019

Review: Dance With Me

Even for those of us who love musicals, there’s always a chance that foreign language lyrics will find a way of getting lost in translation. So, there was every possibility that director Shinobu Yaguchi’s DANCE WITH ME (ダンスウィズミー), a sharp left turn from Survival Family, could have been a baffling ordeal. Instead, there’s a ball to be had with this delightful comedy.

Shizuka Suzuki (Ayaka Miyoshi) works for a large company in which Murakami-san (Takahiro Miura) is adored by all the administrative staff. After a chance encounter with a hypnotist (the legendary Akira Takarada), she becomes compelled to dance whenever she hears music. Set off by even the slightest of tunes, including ringtones and jingles, she teams up with the hypnotist’s jilted sidekick Chie Saito (Yu Yashiro) to track him down and lift the curse.

There’s a familiar vibe to the set-up, following the likes of Pleasantville or “Once More with Feeling” (from TV’s Buffy the Vampire). Filled with elaborately choreographed dance sequences, the twist is that while we see the fanfare, all the in-world characters see a crazy lady creating chaos. This results in some fun sight gags of trashed restaurants and baffled members of the public.

So, what we really end up with is a more light-hearted (and way cleaner) version of a Todd Phillips road movie. At its silliest, there’s a dance-off between some rival street gangs. At its most charming, Shizuka, Chie, and a slightly unhinged busker (the singularly named Chay) travel across the country busking in a delightful musical montage.

Selling this episodic high concept is a ridiculously good cast. Inuyashiki‘s Ayaka Miyoshi is wonderful, enthusiastically serving rubber-banded comedy expressions alongside some solid dance moves. Yuu Yashiro is like Japanese version of peak Melissa McCarthy, exuding a low-brow physicality to her performances with a knowing sense of the absurd.

Supporting players are also excellent. Takarada, of course, is best known for his appearances in the Godzilla franchise – from the 1954 original to a deleted scene in the 2014 remake – but here plays a cheeky former celebrity who seems to have a perpetual twinkle in his eye. Model-singer Chay is a scene-stealer in her debut performance, combining her musical talent with Ken Jeong’s ability to leap from a car trunk.

It probably comes as no surprise that DANCE WITH ME builds to a musical finale involving the entire cast, and by this stage it’s a joy to watch them clearly having a great time. While you may feel as though you know exactly where this is going, it doesn’t stop the journey from being something you can tap your toes to. It seems that dance truly is an international language.

2019 | Japan | DIR: Shinobu Yaguchi| WRITERS: Shinobu Yaguchi | CAST: Ayaka Miyoshi, Yu Yashiro, Chay, Takahiro Miura, Murotsuyoshi and Akira Takarada | DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. (JPN), Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)

November 26, 2019
Review: Ride Your Wave

Anime filmmaker Masaaki Yuasa first made a name for himself with 2004’s Mind Games, and the likes of Space Dandy, Lu Over the Wall, Devilman Crybaby, and the sublime Night is Short, Walk on Girl have rightly earned the prolific director a rabid fanbase.

RIDE YOUR WAVE (きみと、波にのれたら) is markedly different from Yuasa’s prior works, all of which could politely be described as ‘a bit weird.’ It follows Hinako Mukaimizu (voiced by former AKB48 performer and actor Rina Kawaei), who moves to a seaside apartment to pursue her love of surfing. When the building catches fire, she is rescued by firefighter Minato Hinageshi (singer and actor Ryôta Katayose).

Their montaged courtship sees the duo rapidly falling in love, and they look set to spend their lives together. When tragedy strikes and Minato drowns while saving someone, Hinako falls into a deep depression. Yet the gods of magical realism are on her side, as Minato appears to her in various bodies of water when she sings ‘Brand New Story’ from Generations from Exile Tribe (which happens to be Katayose’s band in real life),

In the immediate wake of the magical twist, much of the charming film’s narrative concentrates on the comedic aspects of Hinako carrying around an aquatic Minato in a bottle or a giant inflatable dolphin. The height of this thread, or perhaps its depths, is Hinako singing into a toilet bowl where her waterlogged love promptly appears. (Ok, maybe this is still ‘a bit weird’).

Helping us navigate this curiously light-hearted journey through the grieving process is a remarkably comforting group of charming characters, crafted by veteran screenwriter Reiko Yoshida (A Silent Voice, Liz and the Blue Bird). While the romance is cloyingly affectionate to start with, this only serves to kick us in the feels when it counts and I will happily admit to a lump in my throat from a certain point onwards. Besides, Minato’s acerbic sister Yôko (voiced by My Father, The Bride’s Honoka Matsumoto) acts as a ready foil.

While not as experimentally abstract as Yuasa’s previous works, the animation is still first rate. Animated by Science Saru, the studio he co-founded, there’s a simple dichotomy in much of the visual imagery that contrasts fire and water. Yet it’s the small details that sell this film, from the egg splattered across Hinako’s phone to the gorgeously rendered omurice that acts as a meme throughout. The vocals have the same attention: just listen to the leads – both professional singers – giggle and waver their way through a carpool karaoke scene.

Rarely has an animated comedy dealt with grief so effectively as RIDE YOUR WAVE, and if Yuasa’s film isn’t an instant classic then it’s got all the makings of a cult favourite. Written with a much broader appeal than his previous films, it’s a deeply cynical viewer indeed who won’t find this one of the more amiable animes of the year. Now try getting that song out of your head.

2019 | Japan | DIR: Masaaki Yuasa| WRITERS: Reiko Yoshida | CAST: Ryota Katayose, Rina Kawaei, Honoka Matsumoto, Kentaro Ito | DISTRIBUTOR: Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)

November 26, 2019
Review: Jojo Rabbit

A film about Nazis in 2019 is not as unexpected as it might have been a few years ago. You know, because of that whole international wave of white supremacy that poses a very real threat to democracies across the globe. Still, there’s nothing about this film that is entirely expected.

Loosely based on Christine Leunens’s book Caging Skies, Waititi’s screenplay introduces us to Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), an enthusiastically nationalistic 10-year-old boy living in Nazi Germany with his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson). Jojo is so jingoistic that he imagines Adolf Hitler (Waititi) as his best friend, yet his indoctrination is put to the test with the discovery that Rosie has been hiding Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), a young Jewish girl, in their home.

Waititi’s idiosyncratic humour shines through the first act – and make no mistake, it is very funny – disarming us with a smile and sideswiping us with a barrage of one-liners. Yet once the initial jokes have run their course, the surprisingly sanitised and politically centrist combination of Wes Anderson by way of Roberto Benigni doesn’t quite glue all its ideas together. Like the latter, Waititi almost runs the risk of diminishing the impact of the Second World War by turning Nazism into a cinematic reference rather than the source of historical horror.

Which is a real problem. In a 2018 US poll, two-thirds of ‘Millennials’ could not correctly identify what Auschwitz was. If Nazis are merely characters in media – whether it is the foe in the Indiana Jones films, something to shoot at in Wolfenstein or lampooned in JOJO RABBIT – there’s a tangible possibility that the real world threat of neo-Nazism is taken less seriously.

The cast is excellent though, especially the two young leads. While their exchanges are frequently didactic, they help us navigate through some incredibly sharp emotional turns that the film takes. Waititi gives himself the plum role of Adolf, goofing on the dictator purely by being a variation on his familiar persona.

Johansson is at her best too, not only demonstrating some wry comic timing but breaking our hearts at key moments as well. Sam Rockwell as the closest gay Captain Klenzendorf is a standout, but all the awards should go to Jojo’s friend Yorki (newcomer Archie Yates). Every time he’s onscreen, it’s pure comedic brilliance.

By the end of JOJO RABBIT, it’s tough to know exactly what Waititi is trying to say here. Hitler lampooning has been done (and rarely bettered) since Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Waititi wants to remind us about embracing diversity, war being bad and the evil of Nazis, although one also suspects the majority of the audience aren’t the choir that needs converting. Still, if people walk out of the cinema a little more tolerant to others – ideally wearing the fabulosity that is Sam Rockwell’s cape – then Waititi has achieved something.

2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Taika Waititi | WRITERS: Taika Waititi | CAST: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Taika Waititi, Rebel Wilson, Stephen Merchant, Alfie Allen, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson | DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox (AUS), Jewish International Film Festival | RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 December 2019 (AUS)

November 25, 2019
Review: The Truth

What do you do after your film wins the Palme d’Or? If you’re Hirokazu Kore-eda, then you continue doing what you’ve always done and apply the same delicate and intimate touch to European cinemas as some of his best work in Japan.

THE TRUTH (or LA VÉRITÉ if you prefer) orbits, in a very literal and figurative sense, around Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve), a grand dame of French cinema. Her screenwriting daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) returns to Paris with her failing TV actor husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) to celebrate the publication of Fabienne’s memoirs.

The proximity of the mother and daughter exacerbates the tension underlying their prior estrangement, bringing out conversations about the past and some ‘truths’ hidden in plain sight. Both speak of an absent figure named Sarah who loomed large in their lives, and it slowly emerges that Fabienne is held captive by this part of her past.

Given that writer/director has said this was based on a play he wrote 15 years earlier, some of the Kore-eda themes and motifs that have since emerged are evident in THE TRUTH. There are unquestionably pieces of other films in there: Still Walking’s dinner table and general denial of the past; the flexible truths of The Third Murder and the child/family dynamic of…well, all of them up to an including last year’s Shoplifters. Yet to call this a pastiche would be a disservice to the multi-faceted screenplay.

As the film’s title would imply, this is a layered film that explores the notion of objective truth and being held captive by memories of the past. Kore-eda constructs a secondary narrative inside the movie to illustrate this – Fabienne stars in a sci-fi adaptation of a story by Ken Liu. In it, the character of the terminally ill young mother (played by Manon Clavel) lives in space to elongate her life. Visiting her daughter every seven years, she watches her daughter age while she remains the same age. It’s no stretch to see this as a mirror image to Kore-eda’s story, but it would have been interesting to see how his original choice of Raymond Carver’s Cathedral played out.

Kore-eda’s powerhouse cast, who were amazingly his first choices for the roles, all take a very different approach to his Japanese repertory. At a Q&A in Sydney he spoke about an inability to let things be as understated as they were in a Japanese context, with emotions forced to the fore giving him no choice but to to ‘hold the moment’ as it were. At other times, the characters spontaneously start to dance outside a Parisian café, and it’s hard to imagine that happening in one of his Tokyo settings. “The one thing the Japanese won’t do is dance,” he joked at the same Q&A event. Deneuve, of course, is at her magnificently shady best and surely awards aren’t far behind.

During a difficult part of Fabienne’s shoot, Lumir counsels her “For once admit defeat and let the film win.” Perhaps this is where Kore-eda settled, finding the middle ground between his past work and a new playground. There is levity and there is sadness in this film, and he seems to be saying that the very act of recalling subtly changes memories. In that spirit, THE TRUTH is a film that warrants several visits to fully unpick all its intricate strands.

2019 | France/Japan| DIRECTOR: Hirokazu Kore-eda | WRITERS: Hirokazu Kore-eda | CAST: Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Ludivine Sagnier, Manon Clavel | DISTRIBUTOR: Palace Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 December 2019 (AUS), 25 December 2019 (France)

November 22, 2019
Review: The Irishman

Martin Scorsese’s latest film has probably got more attention for his views on the state of mainstream cinema. Which is a shame for two reasons: it’s divided a community who have a shared love of movies, and it might just overshadow the content of his new film. THE IRISHMAN, as it turns out, is a masterpiece.

With a story as sprawling as Sergio Leone’s thematically similar Once Upon a Time in America, award-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York, Moneyball, Red Sparrow) uses the titular Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) as both his framing device and primary focal point. Based on Charles Brandt’s 2001 book I Heard You Paint Houses, it’s set against the rise and fall of multiple empires – both the governmental and the more underground kind.

Thanks to the wonders of digital de-ageing (and later more practical effects), we follow the life and career of Sheeran from the 1950s where he works as a trucker turned mafia hitman after impressing mobster Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci).

After rising through the ranks, Sheeran becomes the right-hand man of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the head of the Teamsters. The film plays out against the backdrop of a half-century of political turmoil in the US, as JFK is elected and shot, his brother Robert targets the Teamsters, and various other players come into the orbit of this powerful gang.

Bringing together all of Scorsese’s recurring themes and motifs, ones we’ve seen in Goodfellas in particular, THE IRISHMAN is captivating for the first three hours. While it might also be said that it’s a pastiche of these trademarks, it’s only in as much as Casino is a redux of Goodfellas. Having said that, last act does feel like it drags a little, but on reflection it’s about the anticlimax of a life that has watched empires rise and fall and stays standing.

Of course, the reason to watch this film is the bringing together of “Scorsese’s boys” in one place. Aided by digital de-ageing magic, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were watching one of Scorsese’s earlier films. Or that he’d somehow time-travelled to direct a greatest hits piece with all of his pre-DiCaprio muses. DeNiro is every bit the force to be reckoned with he was in those ‘classic’ days, and Pesci is a fierce animal, but it’s amazing to see Pacino with a fire lit underneath him again. (Perhaps the only real shame is that Anna Paquin was cast and then given nothing to do).

While I was lucky enough to catch this in a (sold out) cinema, I don’t feel like it would lose too much if you choose (or have no choice) to watch it on its native Netflix. Perhaps the only thing to be said for the small(er) screen format is that you can pause it for a pee break. Otherwise this is a timely reminder of why Martin Scorsese will always be the king of the mean streets.

2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese | WRITERS: Steven Zaillian | CAST: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jesse Plemons, Harvey Keitel | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 209 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7 November 2019 (AUS), 27 November 2019

November 18, 2019
Review: JK Rock

Life imitates art which imitates more life. Japanese pop band Drop Doll formed after its three members met while playing a band in Little Performer: The Pulse of Winds and went on to form a real soft rock outfit. JK ROCK (stylised as JK☆ROCK) is a kind of fictionalised origin story for the trio, albeit one that’s more faithful to the conventions of modern teen films.

Before we even get to the young stars, the film is initially about the titular Jyo Kaieda (Shodai Fukuyama) and Jyo Kodukai (Ryosuke Yamamoto) who were former members of the popular band JoKers. It’s a year after their sudden break-up and while Jyo Kodukai is about to release his solo album, Jyo Kaieda has given up on music and is bored silly as a uni student.

When the other former members of the JoKers want to get their band back together, rock café owner corrals high school students Sakura (Chihiro Hayama), Mao (Yuina) and Rina (Yukino Miyake) into forming their own band, hoping that Jyo Kaieda will coach them and restore his love of music.

A teen-focused film with a romantic subplot, it leans heavily into familiar tropes, especially in the lead-up to the musical climax. It’s a simple dichotomy of Jyo Kaieda’s strict style and apparent abandonment of music juxtaposed with the girls’ enthusiasm. It will shock nobody that Jyo Kaieda learns to love his tunes again, complete with the requisite ballad to let us know about his feelings, and that there is a big concert at the end where all the various threads come together.

Much of the charm of the picture comes from the young leads, who have released several hit records together in the real world. Drummer Chihiro Hayama, complete with her trademark dyed red hair, is a kind of leader of the pack. Despite being a schoolgirl, she gets the romance storyline with the college aged Jyo Kaieda that disturbs me just a little bit.

These kinds of films are a little bit like sports dramas, in that you know the journey will either result in a personal or actual victory by the time the story is done. JK☆ROCK maintains a steady and familiar beat than existing Drop Doll fans can sing along to, while casual listeners can appreciate it as the cinematic equivalent of a unoffensive radio hit that’s probably going to get eaten up by the next commercial break.

2019 | Japan | DIR: Shunji Muguruma| WRITERS: Kaori Tanimoto | CAST: Shodai Fukuyama, Yosuke Yamamoto, Kaito Kumagai, Chihiro Hayama, Yuina and Yukino Miyake | DISTRIBUTOR: Phantom Film (JPN), Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)

November 16, 2019
Review: Fly Me to the Saitama

Any city dweller worth their salt is aware that the next town over is not nearly as good as yours. There’s the infamous New York and New Jersey divide, of course, and if you live in Skokie are you really in Chicago? Here in Sydney, your inner west cred lives and dies on your proximity to your nearest picklery. So is the case with Tokyo and its neighbouring prefecture of Saitama.

Based on the 1980s manga series Tonde Saitama by Mineo Maya, director Hideki Takeuchi (Color Me True) frames FLY ME TO THE SAITAMA (翔んで埼玉) with the Sugawara family consisting of matriarch Maki (Kumiko Aso), proud Saitaman father Yoshiumi (Brother Tom) and their soon-to-be-married daughter Aimi (Haruka Shimazaki). On a drive to her engagement party, Yoshiumi becomes enraged with Aimi’s plans to move to Tokyo. Divine fate intervenes with a radio play that divides the car.

From here Yuichi Tokunaga’s (Sunshine Days) screenplay transitions to the story-within-a-story, a fable about a Tokyo where people from Saitama are treated as second-class immigrants. In a ritzy Tokyo school, Momomi Hakuhodo (Fumi Nikaido) – the Tokyo governor’s son – lords over his mini-fiefdom until the arrival of Rei Asami (Gackt), another fancy man with sympathies towards Saitama.

The ridiculously over-the-top concept takes city pride to its illogical extremes, combining genres on the fly – at one moment its yaoi (boys’ love) and the next it’s modern samurai warfare – for a collage of fanciful scenes. It all culminates in a revolutionary action that hits the heights of silliness, but that’s just the kind of self-referential fun that this aims for.

In a typical manga adaptation such as this, the extreme reactions of the actors threaten to slide into ham territory. Brother Tom, a Japanese celebrity who is famous for his panel show fame (a tarento), is perhaps the most enthusiastic in this space, but it’s a testament to Takeuchi’s approach – having honed his craft over the course of the Thermae Romae adaptations and the sublime period film Color Me True – that it all feels perfectly in keeping with the source’s tone.

Due to the sheer number of in-jokes and cultural references, the people who will get the most out of this will unquestionably be locals or people who spend a lot of time in Tokyo. This is especially true of the coda at the end of the film, a final wink at the audience about the influence of Saitama around the world. Look to your left, look to your right. Someone from Saitama might be right next to you as you read this.

2019 | Japan | DIR: Hideki Takeuchi| WRITERS: Yuichi Tokunaga (based on a manga by Mineo Maya)| CAST: Fumi Nikaido, Gackt, Brother Tom,Kumiko Aso,Haruka Shimazaki | DISTRIBUTOR: Toei (JPN), Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)

November 15, 2019
Review: Ford v Ferrari

From Bullitt tp the Fast and Furious franchise, cinema audiences just can’t get enough of films about cars racing each other for dominance. FORD V FERRARI picks up on the twin threads of historical rivalries and true life legends, kind of mixing the narrative ambition of the 2011 documentary Senna with the conventions of modern race photography.

In director James Mangold’s account, a failed buyout attempt of Ferrari by the Ford Motor Company results in a bitter rivalry between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts). Determined to upset Ferrari’s winning streak at 24 Hours of Le Mans, Ford enlists car designer and former racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to help them win. He rankles against the execs with his choice of driver, the talented but acerbic Ken Miles (Christian Bale).

Historical dramas where we know the outcome tend to have a bit of the life sucked out of them from the start, but the addition of fast cars and the even faster passage of years makes this a pretty engaging yarn from the get-go. While we must take some of the “factual” elements with a grain of salt, screenwriters Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller spend most of their time building up a fractious dichotomy between the pure racers and the suits.

In this murky water we get some mixed messages, with the film either being staunchly about the power of individualism over the machine or possibly the triumph of institutionalised American exceptionalism. The character archetypes are reduced to good suit versus bad suit, the good driver, the bad boy driver (and his wife) and a pair of automotive titans representing corporate power at its top end.

Drilling down into the individual performances, audiences are more likely to find something to hook into. Damon dons a Tommy Lee Jones drawl and numerous Texan-sounding aphorisms (my favourite being “He thought you was just finer than frog fur”) to give him a down-home quality, while Bale is the cockney motor-poet with the heart of gold. Both are excellent in their respective roles, pushing through some of the more hockey dialogue to give gravitas to their characters. It’s unfortunate the same can’t be said for the one significant female character: Caitriona Balfe as Miles’ wife Mollie, who alternates between Mary Sue and abruptly irrational.

The final Le Mans sequence keeps the pace and is where the film (and frequent Mangold collaborator, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael) really soars. In between the agitated Italian hand-gestures and the alternately infuriated/bemused looking executives, the closed circuit machinations of a race in perpetual motion makes for a gripping final stretch.

The kicker comes in a brief epilogue that mostly stays true to the post-Le Mans 1966 timelines but may leave some audiences with a bitter taste in their mouths. Yet this is a solid but of heroic sports cinema with all the requisite villains and heroes. Who wears the white helmets will all depend on which side of the corporate fence you’re viewing this.

2019 | US | DIRECTOR: James Mangold | WRITERS: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, Jason Keller | CAST: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Caitriona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas | DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 152 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 14 November 2019 (AUS)

November 14, 2019
Review: Blue Moon by Lee Child

“I’m not as young as I was, but I’m not old yet” laments Jack Reacher in this twenty-fourth Lee Child novel. “Overall, I’m doing ok.” There’s a pervading sense of inevitability to Reacher’s fate that runs throughout BLUE MOON, even though this is one of Child’s most fluid and back-to-basics adventures in years.

The setup, as is often the case, is simplicity itself. Reacher is travelling by bus, spots an elderly man with a large wad of cash and saves him from being mugged. Discovering that the man, Aaron Shevik, and his wife are in deep with loan sharks, Reacher soon finds himself in the middle of a turf war between rival Albanians and Ukrainian gangs.

The body count seems to be even higher than usual, including a scene where Reacher literally piles up corpse after corpse as they come running at him.

The broad plotting resembles the simplicity of Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars and is also reminiscent of Child’s earlier books Nothing to Lose and Worth Dying For. Once the triangular structure of the Sheviks, the mob and Reacher is firmly established – with Reacher’s single-serve female companion thrown into the mix as usual – the action is relentless and straightforward. Existing fans will find that while there is a well worn track being ridden, it rips along at such a pace as to smooth over any narrative familiarities.

Yet hanging over this one-way street is another type of inexorable fate. Despite the book taking its title from Reacher’s contention that “this is a random universe,” Child seems to have injected a vein of mortality into our anti-hero’s noggin. Reacher talks about having won every time, but his first loss can’t be too far away. Although Reacher is confident that it won’t be this time, coupled with the musings on ageing one must wonder whether the 65-year-old Child is considering retiring his character or simply reflecting on the passage of time. (The next book is a monumental 25^th after all).

Nevertheless, Reacher shows no signs of slowing down the physicality just yet. The body count seems to be even higher than usual, including a scene where Reacher literally piles up corpse after corpse as they come running at him. Bordering on self-parody, the vibes nicely alongside Child’s history of anatomical exaggerations of Reacher’s hands and other body parts. (Speaking of which, this also has one of the most unintentionally hilarious sex scenes: “Experimental all around. 20 minutes soup to nuts”).

Following a couple of books that played it safe, and the phoned-in feeling of Past Tense, this latest comes back with a renewed vigour. Whether that is a prelude to an implied winding down is yet to be seen, but it’s good to have a reliable action-thriller once in a while. That’s for damn sure.

2019 | US | WRITER: Lee Child | PUBLISHER: Bantam Press | LENGTH: 384 pages | RELEASE DATE: 29 October 2019

November 5, 2019
Review: Doctor Sleep

The adaptation of Stephen King’s 2003 novel Doctor Sleep was always going to be a beast with many heads. For every staunch acolyte of King’s original novel The Shining, there’s an equally vocal fanbase for Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, a masterpiece in its own right – even if King has famously rejected it over the years.

Director and screenwriter Mike Flanagan, an accomplished horror filmmaker with one other King film (Gerald’s Game) under his belt, tries to reconcile all three sources in DOCTOR SLEEP. It’s intended to be a sequel to Kubrick’s film, an adaptation of King’s novel which itself is a sequel to the very different source material.

Set in the aftermath of his father’s terror at The Overlook Hotel, young Danny Torrance is still haunted by the ghosts of that encounter. Years later, the adult Dan (Ewan McGregor) has effectively drowned out his ‘shine’ with alcohol. Yet an encounter of a more terrestrial kind convinces him to leave town and start down the road to sobriety. After connecting with a powerful young shiner called Abra (Kyliegh Curran), he soon learns she is being pursued by the True Knot, a cabal of long-lived shine stealers led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson).

To Flanagan’s credit, his attempt to achieve a kind of fidelity or authenticity makes this one of the best adaptations of King’s horror work to date. At least for the first two acts. Buoyed by recent success of It and its sequel, Flanagan faithfully follows King’s roadmap across the first two hours of this epic release. While he recasts and recreates key moments of Kubrick’s film, he has also been careful to retain the thematic threads dealing with addiction, grief, and personal ownership of trauma.

For this is the core of DOCTOR SLEEP: the sins of the father revisiting the son and (at least in print) King’s very personal story of overcoming addiction. Recovery is still an important element in Flanagan’s film, and this gives the narrative its emotional core, especially thanks to an excellent performance from Cliff Curtis as Dan’s friend and sponsor Billy. Similarly, the character of Dick Halloran (who had very different fates in The Shining on page and screen) acts as a kind of conscience, cleverly woven back into the film universe as a spirit guide. You may even forget that the excellent Carl Lumbly (TV’s Supergirl) is not the late Scatman Crothers.

In fact, everyone is excellent – especially Ferguson as she shimmies across the scene like a New Age guru/deadly cult leader, punctuated by some moments of necessarily shocking violence. Her crew, including Zahn McClarnon and Emily Alyn Lind, ensure that their arc is grounded and not the jarring dose of the supernatural that a collection of shine vampires could be. Flanagan expertly cuts between this group, Abra, and Dan to build up a mysterious tension that he maintains for much of the movie.

Where the final act falters is in abandoning the catharsis of King’s emotional denouement and most of the original text in favour of pure fanservice. Recreating iconic moments from Kubick’s The Shining, from elevators of blood to creepy twins, one couldn’t help but wonder if we’d wandered back into Ready Player One. It quite literally feels as though we’ve stepped out of one film and into another, as it recasts an important role and does a disservice to both King and Kubrick in one fell swoop.

Even so, DOCTOR SLEEP is an almost flawless adaptation, right up until the moment where it goes off on its own pony ride. For fans of King, there’s a lot of Easter eggs to find in there as well, from the obvious placement of the number ‘19’ to the concept of ka from The Dark Tower mythology. If you like King as much as Kubrick, chances are you’ll dig this on at least some level. You’re a fan. You’ve always been a fan. I ought to know. I’ve always been here.

2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Mike Flanagan | WRITERS: Mike Flanagan (Based on the novel by Stephen King and the film by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson) | CAST: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Cliff Curtis, Kyliegh Curran, Carl Lumbly | DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 152 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7 November 2019 (AUS)

November 4, 2019