Tag: 2021 Reviews

Review: Red Rocket

Following the powerhouse The Florida Project a few years ago, filmmaker Sean Baker had set the bar pretty high for himself. So, in following up on his lyrical and intense portrait of life on the fringes, Baker once again puts his laser focus on a less likeable sets of characters, albeit no less fascinating than his previous protagonists.

In RED ROCKET, adult film star Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) returns home to a small town in Texas to leech off his ex partner Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mother. Literally nobody wants him there, including the local drug dealers he works for to eke out a living.

The one exception is the relationship he begins with the 17-year-old Strawberry (Suzanna Son), the girl who works at the donut shop. As he begins to groom her for his own benefit, ultimately wanting to convince her to do porn, he engages in a not-so-delicate balancing act of lies and manipulation. Naturally, everything goes horribly wrong in a series of crises of Mikey’s own making.

The journey of Mikey mirrors that of actor Rex in some ways. Rex began his career as a nude model and appeared in several solo pornographic films before rising to fame as a VJ. Since then, he has pursued a career as an actor and rapper, and here returns with one of the most unlikely leads of the year. Modelled on the idea of a ‘suitcase pimp,’ being a male talent who lives off female talents in the adult film world, this leech of a character is not an easy one for audiences to take a liking to. Which is perfectly fine.

We have always loved watching bad people doing bad things, so it stands to reason that one so firmly rooted in this reality is never anything less than compelling. The thing is, we all know a Mikey: someone who brags about his sketchy accomplishments (“21 million views on PornHub!”) while holding out the other hand for freebies. When the film literally steers off the road and into a truly horrific act, we briefly think that Mikey has learned something, but he still maintains his pathological need for self-preservation.

Set against the 2016 election, Mikey’s persona could be seen as a subtle bit of commentary on the four years that followed. This film takes place prior to the height #MeToo movement, and although Mikey’s behaviour was never acceptable, his grooming of Strawberry is tacitly permitted by everyone around them. He openly brags to his only other ‘friend,’ another loser Mikey uses as a driver and who in turn scrapes together money from the ‘stolen valour’ of being a military imposter. You might even believe that given enough time, Mikey could con his way into higher office.

While not as long The Florida Project, Baker takes a measured pace, lingering on moments and allowing cinematographer Drew Daniels to capture the Texan fringes in all their sun-baked monotony. Mikey’s primary form of transport is an undersized bicycle, so it quite literally takes him longer to get anywhere. (If you’ve ever been to Texas, you’ll know that things aren’t exactly bundled closely together).

RED ROCKET ends on an ambiguously optimistic note, with a backwards version of NSYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’ playing over a vision of Strawberry. The song, which serves as something of an incongruously hilarious theme, was the opening track to the 2000 album No Strings Attached. Which is how Mikey lives his life, as wandering suitcase pimp who has worked hard at not having to work hard for a long time.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Sean Baker | WRITERS: Chris Bergoch, Sean Baker | CAST: Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Suzanna Son | DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow Films (AUS), A24 (US) | RUNNING TIME: 128 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 10 December 2021 (US), 6 January 2022 (AUS)

December 27, 2021
Review: The Matrix Resurrections

In a year filled with nostalgic reboots, Lana Wachowski has quite literally set out to redefine that term. The latest film in the franchise harks right back to the original film in 1999, a year when Fight Club and The Phantom Menace polarised audiences for very different reasons. Now, eighteen years after The Matrix Revolutions, Wachowski presents something that is both a continuation and a reimagining of the original story.

Indeed, the opening scene of THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS is an almost shot-perfect replica of The Matrix’s cold open. As a representation of Trinity battles Agents, Bugs (Jessica Henwick) notices that old code is being used to send a message. It coincides with the appearance of a figure claiming to be Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Both share stories of having their eyes opened by a glimpse the long lost Neo (Keanu Reeves).

As the story slowly unfolds, it emerges that his alter ego Thomas Anderson is now working for a video game company, where he is the award-winning designer of a trilogy of Matrix games that mirror his past adventures. Retaining only dim memories of his former life, he is a suicide survivor who sees therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) to help him deal with an apparent mental illness. Yet when he meets Tiffany (Carrie Ann Moss), now married with children, an old connection reignites.

Lana Wachowski, working solo here due to Lilly Wachowski’s involvement with Showtime’s Work in Progress, appears to be stuck in a Matrix of her own. With co-writers David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) and Aleksandar Hemon, she attempts to examine what The Matrix has become in the last two decades. Multiple in-jokes about “our beloved parent company Warner Bros.” and the corporate nature of reboots at least acknowledges what they’ve got themselves into. It’s kind of like when Chuck Palahniuk revisited Fight Club and found himself incorporating fan and film canon into his metatextual graphic novel. After all, The Matrix been parodied in everything from Shrek to Space Jam 2, and recognising the role of the film in the pop cultural landscape is a clever move on Wachowski’s part.

So, it’s a shame that once this genuinely intriguing setup unfurls, THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS immediately falls back on old constructs. Although it acknowledges the ambiguous ending of The Matrix Revolutions, and resolves the presence of characters who apparently died in that film, many of the set-pieces follow the same path as the original. Neo still knows kung fu, there’s another Smith (this time Jonathan Groff) on his tail, and even a rooftop helicopter escape. Cinematographers Daniele Massaccesi and John Toll frame these shots with deliberate tips of the hat to Bill Pope’s 1999 photography, often replicating them wholesale.

Which isn’t to say that these sequences can’t be cool, as there’s a certain pleasure in returning to this world. The canonical video games notwithstanding, the universe that the Wachowskis created has always been ripe for further exploration – especially in an era where the lines between reality and fiction have become mainstream political discourse. Yet if you now consider the simultaneously shot Reloaded and Revolutions as the middle chapters of the overall narrative – ones that hold up remarkably well in retrospect – then RESURRECTIONS is an ersatz coda to a story that already ended.

There’s a scene where a group of game designers sit around trying to pitch each other ideas for the in-universe sequel, caught as they are in a cynical cycle of commercialism. The moment is meant to be satire, but it’s something of a microcosm of the whole reboot. Here is a film that still feels like it is workshopping ideas as the end credits roll, unsure why it exists but also determined to give the people what they think they want. So, in a way we really do get to experience exactly what it’s like being jacked into the Matrix.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Lana Wachowski | WRITERS: Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, Aleksandar Hemon | CAST: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jada Pinkett Smith | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures/Warner Bros. (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 148 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 December 2021 (AUS)

December 22, 2021
Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Listen up, true believers! We always do our very best to avoid spoilers in these reviews, but if you’re keen to avoid any new information come back here after you’ve seen it for the first time. Otherwise, enjoy this mostly spoiler-free review. ‘Nuff said.

Following a period of estrangement from the Marvel mothership, Spider-Man had the distinction of opening (via a cameo in Captain America: Civil War) and closing out the third Phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After leaving us on a cliffhanger, the anticipation around the release of SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME was intensified not just by several Covid delays, but Phase Four‘s strong hints about what would emerge from the Multiverse.

The third solo Spider-Man film set within the MCU picks up moments after Spider-Man: Far from Home. With Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) identity revealed to the world by Mysterio, he seeks the help of Endgame partner Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in erasing knowledge of his secret identity from the world. Naturally, something goes wrong.

With the walls of the Multiverse cracked open, Peter and MJ (Zendaya) are set upon by villains from more than one universe. Beginning with Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), who we last saw in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, Parker faces villains from across the vast Spider-Man cinematic franchise — or at least the ones since 2002. This means return visits from Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Electro (Jamie Foxx), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and The Lizard (Rhys Ifans). While Strange wants to send them all back to their home universes, Peter believes that he can save them all.

Unless you’ve been avoiding all news about this film, and peacefully residing under that new rock you call home, you’ll know that SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME is something of an ultimate crossover. Taking a leaf out of the sublime Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, director Jon Watts does something we’ve rarely seen in a live-action outing by bringing three generations of films together for the first time.

The approach is not without its inherent issues. Setting up any high concept film is hard enough, so setting up the threads of multiple franchises makes for a strangely heavy first act. While missing the raw and crazy energy of Spider-Verse, NO WAY HOME piles on the exposition, from Wong’s (Benedict Wong) new status in the world of sorcery to abbreviated origin stories of the primary antagonists.

Yet it’s also joyful to watch when the pace picks up. While we won’t spoil anything for you here, Marvel fans of any iteration will get a kick out of the third act of this film. It achieves the rare feat of figuring out how to make multiple villains work in a single film (one of the fatal flaws of both Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2). It also manages to redeem multiple storylines that ill-fated franchises left hanging, and brings about a rousing conclusion that will please all but the most cynical viewers in the audience. Suffice it to say, this is very much a film for the fans.

Peppering the moments we’ve all been waiting for are some truly spectacular visual effects sequences, not least of which is the Mirror Dimension battle between Peter and Dr. Strange. It’s great to see Molina, Foxx and especially Dafoe on screen, and their interplay is unexpectedly delightful. J.K. Simmons barely breaks his stride in returning to his role of J. Jonah Jameson, now a fringe podcaster in the vein of that guy we won’t name here. Speaking of not naming things, there’s so many surprises in store that it would take a whole other article to list them all — and the Internet will be rife with them by this time tomorrow. Let’s just say many of our expectations were met.

One of the primary criticisms of the MCU Spider-Man is that it has been tied to other characters, principally Tony Stark. Yet as the Spider-Man franchise looks to a future that may be with or without the MCU, here’s a third chapter of a franchise that’s telling us its finally ready to cut loose and do its own thing. As a bittersweet ending breaks free into a new era, we can now look forward to that future and whatever corner of the Marvel Multiverse that it may take place in. Excelsior!

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Jon Watts | WRITERS: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers | CAST: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 148 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 16 December 2021 (AUS), 17 December 2021 (USA)

December 15, 2021
Review: Ghostbusters – Afterlife

It’s late 1984 and I’m seeing Ghostbusters for the first time. It was in a twin cinema in the eastern suburbs of Sydney that no longer exists. I remember the experience so vividly: the carpet in the lobby, the location of the concession stand and the seats in the theatre. I wanted to see it again right away (and I did). In many ways, it was one of the formative moments of my moviegoing life.

It’s a nostalgia that director and co-writer Jason Reitman relies on in GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, the first canonical sequel to 1989’s Ghostbusters II. It opens with a ‘dirt farmer’ racing through a field with a ghost trap, dying in the attempt to capture something big. Shortly after, his estranged daughter Callie (Connie Coon) and grandchildren Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) move to the small town to inherit his assortment of ephemera.

Yet this is no normal small town. Wracked by daily earthquakes, something is clearly amiss. Together with summer teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and new friends Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), they discover that there is something brewing at the abandoned Shandor Mining Company. If that name sounds at all familiar, then you can probably guess what’s coming down the dimensional cross rip. When the kids discover that their grandfather was a Ghostbuster, and get hold of his equipment, it’s up to them to serve all of the town’s supernatural elimination needs.

Let’s be clear about the Stay Puft sized elephant in the room. The 2016 Ghostbusters: Answer the Call was fun, funky and funny in its own right. We could spend an article twice this length debating the many reasons it failed to connect with audiences, not least of which was a specific strain of toxic fandom unwilling to accept change. (For the record, we called it a “straight-up joyous…celebration of its own legacy” at the time). So Reitman takes the safer path, the same one chosen by J.J. Abrams in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This is to say that he and co-writer Gil Kenan fill the picture with dozens of Easter eggs and callbacks, from symmetrical book-stacking (just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947) to the big bad.

Which could have veered this dangerously close to a mere nostalgia fest, something avoided by carefully building up the lore and backstories for the new characters in the first half. Off the back of playing younger versions of Tonya Harding, Carole Danvers and Daphne Blake, young actor Grace us the real breakout star as the budding Ghostbuster. Rudd provides a solid amount of trademark levity in a film filled with visual gags and one-liners in equal measure.

More than anything, Reitman and Kenan make this a joyful experience, completely recognising that this is the film that children (of all ages) would want to see. The whole Stranger Things by way of The Goonies vibe this gives off, from exploring forgotten ruins to finding a gunner seat in the ECTO-1, are precisely the kind of kid-friendly fantasies that appealed to us the first time out. There’s a base pleasure in hearing a proton pack fire up for the first time, or wholesale phrases from Elmer Bernstein in Rob Simonsen’s excellent score. I’d lying if I didn’t get choked up by the emotional ending.

Sure, there are some loosely connected plot threads, some shameless pandering and a climax that quite literally steps in out of the blue. Certain elements, including the tiny Stay Puft creatures, are unquestionably designed with commercial interests in mind. Yet it’s also the kind of ride that you want to get on again almost immediately so as not to lose the feelings that it leaves you with. It came, it saw, it kicked some ass.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Jason Reitman | WRITERS: Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan | CAST: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd, Logan Kim, Celeste O’Connor, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Sigourney Weaver | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 125 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 November 2021 (USA), 1 January 2022 (AUS)

December 12, 2021
Review: Resident Evil – Welcome to Raccoon City

The Resident Evil films have been many things, and this reviewer will freely admit to turning off all critical reasoning when writing about them. Yet by the time Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was released in 2017, the often massive scale of the action films had well and truly run out of steam.

Which is why RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACOON CITY exists. Director Johannes Roberts, known primarily for pitting humans against sharks in the 47 Meters Down series, does something we haven’t seen in a Resident Evil film for quite some time. He rips it back to its horror roots.

From the opening scenes set in Raccoon City Orphanage, we meet a young Claire Redfield and her brother Chris. There Claire meets Lisa Trevor, a child subjected to the experiments of Umbrella Corporation’s Dr. William Birkin (Neal McDonough). Years later, the adult Claire (Kaya Scodelario) returns to town amidst some strange occurrences and an impending evacuation.

Harking back to its survival horror video game origins, primarily 1998’s Resident Evil 2, much of the action takes place in and around the Raccoon City Police Department (or RPD) and the remote Spencer Mansion. As the STARS Alpha team, ostensibly led by Chris (Robbie Amell) – and consisting of Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Richard Aiken (Chad Rook), Brad Vickers (Nathan Dales), and Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper) – look for their fallen comrades, rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy (Avan Jogia) and hair-trigger chief Brian Irons (Donal Logue) hold down the RPD.

On some level, this film is a series of references and callbacks to various games. From zombie dogs to throwaway lines about Jill sandwiches, much of this is designed to elicit squeals of delight and screams of terror in equal measure. Yet it’s never anything less than an intense siege film in the vein of Assault on Precinct 13. So, while much of it ultimately sets up potential future films – and the rapid cutting back and forth between locations may give you whiplash – it cracks along at a pace and serves up some gory throwback action.

Utilising Maxime Alexandre’s skilled photography to create something that’s atmospheric and always visually interesting – not to mention genuinely creepy too. Set in 1998, pagers and a Palm Pilot are part of the plot-driven set-design. The music of Journey and 4 Non Blondes are used for comedic effect. Yet Roberts and Alexandre still take the time to let fog linger on the mansion’s lights, or frame the characters in gorgeous stained glass windows, before seeing them devoured by a hideously mutated monster. It’s all backed by a literal ticking clock, adding an extra level of tension.

Even with all the fanservice, existing devotees of the games and films may still feel like there’s some pieces missing. The visual fidelity aside, some of the casting may not match the well-established in-game characters. Still, the obligatory mid-credits sequences points to the future of the franchise, it’s only a matter of time before someone’s coming at Leon with a chainsaw. No raccoons were harmed in the production.

2021 | USA, Germany, UK | DIRECTOR: Johannes Roberts | WRITER: Johannes Roberts | CAST: Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, Neal McDonough | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 9 December 2021 (AUS)

December 9, 2021
Review: Benedetta

Whatever your thoughts about Paul Verhoeven, they’re probably wrong. They are also absolutely on the money. Verhoeven tends to get a reputation as a purveyor of ultraviolence and winking parody at the Hollywood system. Which is true, and Robocop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers are primary evidence.

Your version of Verhoeven might be that of an arthouse director. Since 2006, he’s returned to Europe, earning critical acclaim on Black Book (2006) and Elle (2017), tracing a lineage back to his early shorts inspired by the French New Wave and his seminal works of Dutch cinema from Business Is Business (1971) to The Fourth Man (1983). Or you might just share my belief that Showgirls is one of the finest films of the 20th century.

BENEDETTA is a film that reminds us that all of those intersecting things exist in this single filmmaker. Set in the 17th century, it’s based on the true story of Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira), raised in a convent to be a nun. Under the eye of The Abbess (Charlotte Rampling), she grows into her devout faith, filled with disturbing and erotic visions of Jesus Christ appearing directly to her.

The arrival of novice nun Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) triggers an awareness of her own sexuality. As her visions intensify, Benedetta exhibits stigmata and is hailed as a saintly figure by the local abbot. As a sexual relationship develops with Bartolomea, a series of events – including plague ravaging the surrounding townships – culminates in suspicion cast upon Benedetta’s saintliness.

Beautifully shot (by BPM’s Jeanne Lapoirie) and engagingly told, the film mostly avoids being too ‘male gazey’ despite the plethora of nudity and centrepiece sex scene. Verhoeven may have a reputation for exploitation, but if you look at his past works – especially Katie Tippel (1975) and more recently Elle – the intention appears to be one of female empowerment. Whether Verhoeven is the one who should be telling these stories, or if he is successful in doing so, probably requires a level of objectivity few of us are able to bring to a film in 2021.

At times, it is unnecessarily cruel: there’s one torture scene that goes way too far in the wrong direction. At other moments, it briefly achieves its aim of being a biting examination of the conflict between female sexuality, a male dominated religious leadership and personal faith. Cutaways to fantasy sequences in which a dreamy Jesus seduces Bendetta might earn the side-eye of the placard makers, but they add a dimensionality to a film that could have easily been single note exploitation. One suspects it may improve on repeat viewings.

At the time of writing, there are protests at various locations across the US for the ‘blasphemy’ its opponents feel it has caused. BENEDETTA doesn’t do enough to earn this ire, and in fact Verhoeven and David Birke’s screenplay mostly explores a historical version of moral panic. So, in the end the film may not blaspheme or revolutionise, but it may follow the same path as the real Carlini, returning to a quiet and secluded life to become just another piece of a larger body of work.

2021 | France, Netherlands | DIRECTOR: Paul Verhoeven | WRITER: David Birke, Paul Verhoeven | CAST: Virginie Efira, Lambert Wilson, Daphne Patakia, Olivier Rabourdin, Clotilde Courau, Charlotte Rampling, Hervé Pierre | DISTRIBUTOR: Pathé Distribution (US), Hi Gloss Entertainment and Vendetta Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 131 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 9 July 2021 (France), 8 September 2021 (US)

December 8, 2021
Review: Not Quite Dead Yet

Afterlife comedies are a dime a dozen, with popular films like Koki Mitani’s A Ghost of a Chance always being mainstays at the box office. Still, NOT QUITE DEAD YET (一度死んでみた) has unquestionably found a new spin on the genre that refuses to die.

The debut feature film of Shinji Hamasaki, who was primarily known for his commercial television work, it comes with a script from Yoshimitsu Sawamoto, who was behind Shochiku comedies Judge! and 10 Promises to My Dog. It follows Nanase Nobata (Suzu Hirose), a university student and death metal singer who has a difficult relationship with her father Kei (Shinichi Tsutsumi).

Kei is the head of a major pharmaceutical company, and has controlled everything in his life — including Nanase — within an inch of its life. Trying to figure out who is rorting the company, he takes an experimental drug that kills him for two days. As the powers working against him latch onto his scheme, he returns as a ghost that only Nanase can see. She teams up with loyal employee Taku Matsuoka (Ryo Yoshizawa) to expose the crooks and ensure her dad’s resurrection goes to plan.

NOT QUITE DEAD YET is a silly film. The broad comedy stylings certainly won’t appeal to all audiences, as there is nary a trace of sophistication to Sawamoto’s script. Still, there’s a joyful exuberance to it, a film that’s just as comfortable with recurring gags about Kei’s smell as they are with very specific Tokyo references. (There’s also a musical reference to the Swayze starring Ghost that made me smile). After a while, chances are you’ll find yourself just going with it.

It’s also great to see Suzu Hirose in a lead role. Following her early work in Hirokazu Koreeda’s Our Little Sister, and her lead in the fan-favourite Chihayafuru franchise, here she adopts a light metal persona. There’s an emphasis on goofy, right down to the exaggerated responses. The repeated metal song of ‘death death death death’ is surprisingly catchy.

It’s a nice contrast with the restrained Yoshizawa, who is so unassuming that people often just don’t see him. Rounding out the cast is a bit of a who’s who of Japanese character actors, especially as Hamasaki builds to the concert/funeral climax. Rurouni Kenshin’s Takeru Satoh turns up as a hotel employee, Kakegurui’s Elaiza Ikeda has a small role, as do Jun Shishon (The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window), Tae Kimura and Satoshi Tsumabuki. You don’t often get to say this about the ubiquitous Lily Franky, but he’s criminally underused as the Grim Reaper.

In a year of Japanese films that have tackled some weighty subjects while dealing with current events, this simple father-daughter comedy comes as a breath of fresh air. It’s all much ado about nothing, but if you’re looking for some simple escapism this might just be your ticket.

2020 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Shinji Hamasaki | WRITER: Yoshimitsu Sawamoto | CAST: Suzu Hirose, Shinichi Tsutsumi, Lily Franky, Ryo Yoshizawa | DISTRIBUTOR: Shochiku, Japanese Film Festival | RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 28 October – 5 December 2021 (JFF)

November 26, 2021
Review: Venom – Let There Be Carnage

Cast your minds back to the Before Times of 2018. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got married. The #MeToo movement went global. Venom became a surprise hit, joining Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in an attempt at putting Sony’s mini Marvel universe back on the map.

Cut to 2021. As the MCU rapidly expands, and the multiversal Spider-Man: No Way Home is just on the horizon, the unlikely duo of Tom Hardy and a sentient pile of black alien goo are back to win our hearts and minds. For a major studio comic book film, it’s a surprisingly insular world that takes every opportunity to celebrate the delightful weirdness of a certain era of comics.

When we left journalist Eddie Brock (Hardy), he was interviewing serial killer Cletus Kassidy (natural born killer Woody Harrelson). This film picks up more or less where that left off, via a flashback to St. Estes Home for unwanted children. A young Kassidy meets and falls in love with the super-powered Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris), who is later taken away to Ravencroft Institute. In the present day, an encounter between Brock and Kassidy leads to the latter being infected with his own symbiote known as Carnage. When he busts loose from death row, all hell breaks loose on the path to a final showdown.

In fact, it doesn’t take long for the 1990s pairing of Venom and Carnage to come to loggerheads. As with the first film, it’s chaos on wheels, but this time it’s a little bit self-aware and as a result, a lot more fun. Very consciously acknowledging of its own limitations, this sequel serves the shameless fanservice machine nicely, as it veers from introduction to final fight with scant regard for any development in between. It does give us a terrific set-piece, including Carnage’s prison escape sequence.

Yet more than anything, the true joy to this film is in the weird romantic comedy leanings. Yes, there’s the will they/won’t they subplot with Eddie and Anne (Michelle Williams), although her affable fiancé Dan (Reid Scott) is genuinely likeable (albeit occasionally superfluous) as a comic foil. However, it’s the odd couple of Eddie and Venom that bring the most joy to the film, constantly squabbling and denying their bond. In a truly bizarre sequence, Venom (inhabiting another body) goes to a nightclub and gives a heartfelt speech about pride.

Even so, director Andy Serkis — a name synonymous with bringing humanity to motion capture — can’t entirely avoid some of the pitfalls of this kind of picture. Despite the two big stars in the lead, and the clear visual influence from Todd McFarlane and Carnage co-creator Mark Bagley, the final battle is effectively a black CG blob fighting a red one. The effects are top notch and state of the art and all that, and I’m not going to pretend the comic geek in me wasn’t digging some of it, but an engaging narrative it is not.

Still, as we come to conclusion that wouldn’t seem out of place in a rom-com, it’s hard to not have some affection for this truly and endearingly odd film. As the MCU has done with Ant-Man, Sony have created a lower stakes and mostly self-contained set of pictures that want nothing more than to fill you eye sockets for a few hours. Yet as the mid-credits sequence points to a bigger story in Brock’s future, Venom may just have to learn to share him with the superhero world.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Andy Serkis | WRITER: Kelly Marcel | CAST: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Reid Scott, Stephen Graham, Woody Harrelson | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 24 November 2021 (AUS)

November 21, 2021
Review: Railway Heroes

The guerrilla warfare waged by the Counter-Japanese Underground Armed Force of the Communist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War has provided ample fodder for film and TV shows. From Railway Guerrilla (1956) to Jackie Chan in Railroad Tigers (2016), it’s become synonymous with a critical point in history for China’s national identity.

Which brings us to RAILWAY HEROES (铁道英雄), a lavish production and the debut film of writer-director Yang Feng. Here he casts the group, often known as the Lunan Railway Brigade, as troupe running a grass-roots campaign against the Japanese occupiers. Working their way up and down the critical Tianjin–Pukou (or Jinpu) railway, they hide in plain sight for hit-and-run skirmishes aimed at hurting the Japanese supply line.

As with many recent large-scale Chinese action films, there’s a fiercely nationalistic streak running through it. There are times when you might feel like the film is overly jingoistic. It is, after all, about a moment in Chinese history where clear lines could be drawn between heroes and villains. The Japanese soldiers, led by Captain Iwai, are portrayed as singularly sinister and shifty, right down to the music cues. It would also be easy to label a scene in which the Brigade pledge loyalty to the Communist Party as propaganda, but it’s no more so than a pledge of allegiance to a flag, country or military industrial complex in any Hollywood production.

So, if one were to concentrate on the spectacle, then it’s easy to get drawn into the depths of this blockbuster. From the opening scene, the slick cinematography, big budget and high production values are on full display. Action sequences are top-notch, and the wintry setting allows for some impressive set-pieces. There’s at least one moment, as the Brigade comes swinging through a train car and greeted by machine gun fire, typifies the scale of the individual sequences.

RAILROAD HEROES is ‘dedicated to the heroes of the Shandong Rail Corps, 115th Battalion of the 8th Route Army.’ It’s a film that’s filled with a rich history and connections to the past. The railway itself, which started construction in 1908, is a source of some national importance and pride for the people of Shandong. So, whether you take this as a product of nationalism or just an handsomely staged action flick, it’s worth spending some time with.

2021 | China | DIRECTOR: Yang Feng | WRITERS: Yang Feng | CAST: Zhang Hanyu, Fan Wei, Vision Wei, Zhou Ye, Yu Haoming | DISTRIBUTOR: China Lion (AUS/US) | RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 November 2021 (AUS/US/China)

November 18, 2021
Review: Drive My Car

It’s been a bumper couple of years for Ryusuke Hamaguchi and, along with Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, this latest sprawling drama solidifies his reputation. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, DRIVE MY CAR (ドライブ・マイ・カー) lingers on every moment we spend with these flawed but fascinating characters.

The focus of Hamaguchi’s tale is Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a stage actor and director who specialises in multilingual productions of classic plays. In a happy marriage with screenwriter Oto (Reika Kirishima), their active sex life coincides with her reciting coitally induced stories, as if in a fugue. Yusuke later relates these back to Oto, who turns them into screenplays.

Two shifts occur almost simultaneously. Yusuke learns of his wife’s infidelity, but chooses not to tell her he knows. Soon after, he discovers that he is losing sight in one eye. Reducing his capacity to drive, he worries it will impact his creative process of running lines while driving. Then tragedy strikes.

In the process of rebuilding his life, Yusuke begins directing a new adaptation of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. He casts Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), an actor of some talent who was also the man he caught cheating with his wife. Meanwhile, the company forbids him to drive, and hires taciturn driver Misaki (Toko Miura) to escort him around the Hiroshima locales.

DRIVE MY CAR is a long film. At just shy of three hours, it’s certainly not Hamaguchi’s longest film, with Happy Hour (317 minutes) and Intimacies (255 minutes) dwarfing this outing. Yet, like Happy Hour, it’s simultaneously — and perhaps contradictorily — much longer than it could have been and exactly the right length. The longer you spend with these characters, the longer you want to. Each passing moment reveals a little bit more of their pain and desires — and it’s kind of addictive.

As we move forward through time, Hamaguchi uses specific spaces to reveal truths. For all the tension that is ready to burst in the theatre scenes, it’s the bright red Saab 900 that becomes the space of revelations. As with filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s wandering cars, it’s within the slender red frame that we learn of the heartbreak behind Yusuke and Oto’s past, the past that Misaki is still running from, and hear the end of one of Oto’s stories that is typically entwined with sex.

Cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinomiya (Sasaki in My Mind, Liverleaf) frames the Setouchi region with a restrained grace. Even when not physically present Reika Kirishima’s voice is a constant narrator, with her taped version of Uncle Vanya acting both in parallel to the main story and a kind of meta Greek chorus of the growing turmoil. Even in this extended length, Hamaguchi can still surprise us with a Chekov’s gun going off in the third act.

“Those who survive keep thinking about the dead,” laments Yusuke, a notion both he and Misaki grapple with throughout the film. Yet what DRIVE MY CAR solidifies is Hamaguchi’s mastery of the living. For the three hours you spend in the orbit of these characters, you don’t simply observe so much as live their lives with them. This is Hamaguchi’s gift and in sharing it, he’s also delivered one of the best of the year.

2021 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Ryusuke Hamaguchi | WRITER: Ryusuke Hamaguchi | CAST: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Masaki Okada, Reika Kirishima | DISTRIBUTOR: Bitters End, The Match Factory | RUNNING TIME: 179 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 12 November 2021 (SFF), 9 December 2021 (wide)

November 18, 2021