Tag: 2021 Reviews

Review: Dune

Frank Herbert’s stories have been on the sci-fi fantasy landscape long enough that everyone at has at least an idea of Dune. Whether it’s the endless swathes of sand or just really big worms, it has influenced countless productions and stories. After Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt, David Lynch’s problematic feature, and an under-budgeted mini-series, the book was largely thought to be unfilmable. At least until now.

Herbert’s work is sometimes difficult to follow let alone summarise, but here goes nothing. Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) moves to the desert planet of Arrakis when his family accepts control of it. The only source of the highly valuable resource known as spice, their arrival results in betrayal, assassination attempts, the prophecy of a religion known as the Bene Gesserit and an almost mystical force that drives Paul towards the native peoples known as the Fremen.

If Herbert’s novel was a kind of colonialist fantasy, crafting Paul as a white god-king to tribal peoples, then the opening to director Denis Villeneuve’s version aims to establish two things. Firstly, through the narrative voice of Chani (Zendaya) — who Paul sees in prophetic visions — this is a reclamation of the story from the perspective of its fictional native peoples. The other thing that’s apparent is that Villeneuve’s aesthetic vision is a staggeringly beautiful one.

Villenievue is no stranger to iconic sci-fi, having wowed audiences with Arrival and disappointed others with Blade Runner 2049. Yet from the moment DUNE opens, it’s clear there is something a bit different about this outing, carrying with it an almost mythical weight that filled this viewer with unexpected awe. It’s transportive, from the costume designs (that look more than a little Moebius inspired at times, keeping Jodorowsky’s dream alive) to the stunning vistas. Production designer Patrice Vermette achieved this through a combination of large scale sets and effects, crafting something truly immersive.

DUNE is still a deeply complicated outing, and it’s possible that if you haven’t got some familiarity with the source material you’ll find yourself a wee bit lost at times. The intricate balance between the machinations of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (an almost unrecognisable Stellan Skarsgård) and the will of the Bene Gesserit are hard enough to follow on page let alone in a 156 minute film. It’s still quite the chore here, especially given it only covers part of the book, but when it’s this pretty you’re paying attention the whole time.

Film Twitter favourite Chalamet brings an excellent balance of boyishness and almost otherworldly grace to his Paul Atreides. Similarly, Rebecca Ferguson is a standout as the Lady Jessica, Paul’s Bene Gesserit mother and consort to Duke Leto (a bearded Oscar Isaac). It’s hard to get a bead on Zendaya’s take on Chani, as the film wraps up before he more significant scenes take place. (One review refers to being ‘Zendaya baited’ given her more visible presence in the publicity). One suspects she’ll be a major player in the next chapter.

Being in Australia, where the non-festival release date isn’t until December, we already knew that a Part 2 had been greenlit. While one could argue that this is only ‘half a film,’ being armed with the knowledge that this isn’t trying to cram all of Herbert’s tome into a single picture allows us some breathing room. Indeed, it allows us to simply sit back and absorb this as the spectacle that it is.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Denis Villeneuve | WRITER: Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth | CAST: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (AUS), Warner Bros. Pictures (US) | RUNNING TIME: 156 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 8 November 2021 (SFF), 2 December 2021 (AUS), 21 October 2021 (US)

November 16, 2021
Review: Memoria

It’s been over a decade since Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. His often meditative output is a dreamlike reflection on the interplay between nature and cities, not to mention Western perceptions of his native Thailand.

MEMORIA, his highly anticipated collaboration with Tilda Swinton, begins with a bang. A very specific bang, that is. In the film, Jessica (played by Swinton) is an English ex-pat living in Medellín, Colombia. She is awakened one night by a loud sound that she can’t quite identify. The film concerns her attempts to not only pinpoint the sound, but trace the invisible lines that lead her back to its origin.

Weerasethakul’s film is not so much one that you watch as experience, letting it wash over you so that you can soak it up. Early in the film, there’s a discussion of hygroscopic wood, being the kind the absorbs moisture from the air. Through a series of leisurely paced long takes, both Jessica and the cinema audience are a bit like that wood. We study a singular phenomenon together, connecting with Jessica’s sound and developing a shared memory. As Jessica hears the sound more often — making us jump with each sudden gunshot arrival out of the stillness — an inherent tension creeps into the film.

Which speaks to the central thesis of the film, one that ponders whether an auditory response can echo down through time like a shared memory. There’s a long scene where Jessica sits with audio tech Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego) as he attempts to recreate the sound. Thumping through the cinema speaks like something rising up from the Earth, we share Jessica’s primal recognition of this otherworldly echo. Are these her memories or do they belong to someone else?

As the film builds to its ultimate reveal, with more overt sci-fi leanings, it leaves the city in favour of jungle climes. Shot on location in Columbia, there’s a singular moment that provides the answer linking past and present. It is not for me to reveal here, only to say that it mesmerised a theatre’s worth of people and ironically left us all silent.

MEMORIA is the kind of film designed for festivals, and specifically face-to-face ones where you can experience something collectively. In fact, on the bus ride from the Sydney Film Festival (and on my way to the next film), spontaneous conversations broke out between like-minded strangers who had all just seen Weerasethakul’s film. Which is probably the best analogy for the film itself, one that concerns groups of people who have experienced something specific together and try to classify it afterwards.

2021 | Thailand, Colombia, France, Germany, Mexico, China | DIRECTOR: Apichatpong Weerasethakul | WRITER: Apichatpong Weerasethakul | CAST: Tilda Swinton, Elkin Díaz, Jeanne Balibar, Juan Pablo Urrego, Daniel Giménez Cacho | DISTRIBUTOR: Madman Entertainment (AUS), NEON (US) | RUNNING TIME: 136 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 5 November 2021 (SFF), 26 December 2021 (USA)

November 12, 2021
Review: No Time to Die

In October 2005, Eon Productions announced the casting of Daniel Craig. As the sixth actor to take on the role of James Bond in their successful film series, the announcement was not immediately embraced. Anti-fan sites launched campaigns that foreshadowed more commonplace social media assaults a decade later. Yet after Casino Royale was released in 2006, the critics were (mostly) silenced. Now, after 15 years and five outings, Craig’s self-contained saga comes full circle in a satisfying conclusion.

Picking up sometime after Spectre, Bond and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) are hanging out in Southern Italy in extramarital bliss — until things go boom. Feeling betrayed, Bond leaves her on a train and disappears. Five years later, when an MI6 scientist is kidnapped, it’s unveiled that M (Ralph Fiennes) has been involved in the development of a programmable bioweapon with deadly accuracy. It gets into the hands of Safin (Rami Malek), a terrorist leader with ties to Madeleine’s past and his own agenda.

NO TIME TO DIE wastes very little of its time setting the scene before plunging us into the action. Opening with a gloriously shot prelude sequence that plays like a wintery horror western, the pre-title sequence involves an explosion, a bike chase and a bullet-riddled Aston Martin. It’s an acknowledgement of the things that make audiences turn up in droves, continually escalating through a kinetic Cuba sequence (with a wonderful cameo from Ana de Armas) to the inevitable secret lair showdown.

Yet more than anything, it’s about character. Not since George Lazenby’s short-lived stint in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — a film that is referenced several times in this outing — has the notion of Bond been so thoroughly interrogated on screen. It’s there overtly, of course, in the presence of Nomi (Lashana Lynch) as the inheritor of the 007 mantle during Bond’s retirement. Yet in the film’s final act, where Safin characterises their dichotomy as “two heroes in a tragedy of their own making,” the film directly address who James Bond is when you strip away the armour.

The rest of the cast is impeccable, with only a handful of new friends joining a cast of familiars. Lynch is unquestionably the standout of the new faces, a capable equal for Bond and an indicator of where the series can go from here. Indeed, good money will be contributed to the Kickstarter that teams up de Armas and Lynch in a buddy spy film.

If director Fukunaga’s film stumbles, other than in the field of judicious editing, it is in the development of the villains. A key sequence featuring the return of Christoph Waltz as Blofeld is an excellent coda to Spectre, although it’s at the expense of the ostensible primary villain. Malek has a surprisingly small amount of screen time in the 163 minutes we spend in 007’s orbit, and we learn little beyond his appropriation of Japonisme as an aesthetic. Similarly, most of Seydoux’s progression seems to happen offscreen.

Is it territory we’ve seen partially covered before? A little, especially when you compare it with Skyfall. Is it way too long? As the longest film in the franchise history, undoubtedly. Yet as Daniel Craig’s last outing in the tux, it earns every inch of its blockbuster presence. As an unabashed fan of all things Bond, it satisfied a core part of my being while allowing me to bid farewell to arguably one of the greatest portrayals of the character in his 68 year history. So, yes, it’s a farewell of sorts, but you can always count on one thing: James Bond will return.

2021 | UK, USA | DIRECTOR: Cary Joji Fukunaga | WRITER: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller-Bridge | CAST: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 163 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11 November 2021 (AUS)

November 10, 2021
Review: Eternals

Back in 2014, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was confident enough to try out a bold experiment of going completely cosmic. The gamble paid off and the Guardians of the Galaxy, a hitherto fan-favourite corner of the comic book empire, became household names. As the studio forges ahead with its fourth phase, they once again roll the dice on a new set of intergalactic heroes, albeit with less endearing results.

Based on the characters created by Jack Kirby in the 1970s, director Chloé Zhao — along with screenwriters Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo — has crafted a non-linear narrative across seven millennia. Opening in 5,000 BC, we witness the arrival of the Eternals on Earth, commissioned by the godlike Celestials to protect humans from monsters they call Deviants.

Cut to the modern day, where two of the Eternals, Sersei (Gemma Chan) and Sprite (Lia McHugh), are living in London. Despite having been apparently wiped out, an unusual Deviant attacks the city. After they fight it off with the help of fellow Eternal Ikaris (Richard Madden), they head out to see out the help of leader Ajak (Salma Hayek). The group soon discovers that their destiny is not what they thought.

There’s always a little trepidation when there’s an large amount of explanatory text at the top of the film. One tends to get the sense someone’s lost faith in the film’s ability to tell its story. It’s easy to see why there was some hesitation in this particular format, one that leaps back and forth between time zones like it’s changing rooms. It’s an ambitious approach, one that tries to break free of the formulaic bonds of superhero origin stories. Yet in constantly reiterating the core exposition at any opportunity, it falls back into these tropes more often than not — even if it’s contained in a beautifully shot package.

The Academy Award-winning Zhao, fresh off the back of the sublime Nomadland, still manages to bring much of her charm to the photography, at least by way of regular Marvel cinematographer Ben Davis (Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel). There are shots that look like they’ve stepped straight out of Zhao’s The Rider, especially those set in Ajak’s ranch, but at other times it’s a lifeless series of CG shots featuring digital people fighting monsters.

It’s easy to see why Zhao was chosen though, as her filmography has always lent itself to character-driven vehicles. Despite this well-meaning director, ETERNALS doesn’t allow us any time to soak up the nuance of this intriguing ensemble. The most expensive cast members — namely Hayek and Angelina Jolie’s Thena — are kept off-screen for large chunks of time. To everyone’s credit, there’s some really interesting casting in Ma Dong-Seok (aka Don Lee) as Gilgamesh, Marvel’s first openly gay hero Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) and deaf actor Lauren Ridloff as speedster Makkari. Yet none of them are given more than a handful of scenes apiece, even in a two-and-half-hour film. If I hadn’t been handed ten collectible character cards on the way into the cinema (another ill omen), I may have forgotten half their names by the time I walked out the door.

All of this is emblematic of this film’s core problem of not really being a standalone film. Marvel tries to have its cake and eat it too, crafting a new origin story that introduces a whole new element but never giving it time to breathe. The stakes keep shifting, good guys become bad (and vice versa), and the only real way of knowing the current goal is to see what foe is being punched at that particular moment. Indeed, one can’t help but wonder if the entire film was an extended trailer for future films.

Case in point are the trademark post-credits sequences, with the mid-credits scene in particular feeling like Marvel simply lopped off the last three minutes of the film and stuck in the credits. Without it, the film kind of just stops abruptly, leaving the 150-plus minute build-up on an ambiguous and unsatisfactory ending. Yes, there’s even more teasers of things to come, including a couple of well-discussed cameos, but here’s hoping that Marvel hasn’t structured too much of their future around these heroes.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao | WRITER: Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo | CAST: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Ma Dong-seok, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney | RUNNING TIME: 157 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4 November 2021 (AUS), 5 November 2021 (AUS)

November 8, 2021
Review: The Many Saints of Newark

Cast your minds back to the late 1990s when HBO was the only name worth uttering in the premium television game. Along with stablemates Oz and Sex and the City, David Chase’s The Sopranos led the pack in ensuring we’d be paying for good TV forever. Now, fourteen years after its controversial finale, director Alan Taylor and Chase have teamed up for a prequel that surely someone’s been calling for.

Narrated by Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli), we go back to the salad days of 1967 when his father Dickie (Alessandro Nivola) was a mentor to young Tony Soprano (William Ludwig, and later Michael Gandolfini). Dickie’s father “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti (Ray Liotta) has taken a new Italian bride (Michela De Rossi). In the background, tension mounts with the growing Newark race riots.

Which should all make for a fascinating playground for a period gangster film. Yet the ambitious plotting attempts to cram a whole season’s worth of foreshadowing and winking callbacks into a two-hour movie. (If you aren’t intimately familiar with the series, many of the references will fly over your head). Borderline incoherent at times, it swings from one scene to the next as if the tracks to the script were still being laid as the train pulled into the station.

Even the formidable cast — which also includes Vera Farmiga, Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, a second version of Liotta and Corey Stoll (as a young Uncle Junior) — is left to simply go through the motions. In the absence of a singular driving line, the often exaggerated characters arrive in a series of abstract scenes.

At its best, the award-winning cast emotes through the thin material. At worst, such as John Magaro’s portrayal of a young Silvio Dante (played by Steve Van Zandt in the series), they are simply caricatures of more recognisable performances. The stunt casting of the late James Gandolfini’s son might give us a familiar connection, but it’s also emblematic of this problem.

The cynical viewer, or perhaps just the realist ones, will see THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK as a prelude to a new HBO Max series. Indeed, Warner has already indicated that’s exactly what they want. Yet countless prequels before this have shown that simply filling in some gaps are not enough to warrant a new story. So, if an ongoing series follows this outing, it has to exist as something more than just nostalgia.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Alan Taylor | WRITER: David Chase, Lawrence Konner | CAST: Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Michael Gandolfini, Billy Magnussen, Michela De Rossi, John Magaro, Ray Liotta, Vera Farmiga | DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 October 2021 (US), 4 November 2021 (US)

November 7, 2021
Review: The Last Duel

Ridley Scott is one of those filmmakers who have been a part of the cinematic landscape for so long that we occasionally take him for granted. After a duo of films in 2017, the curious Alien: Covenant and the troubled All the Money in the World, all eyes are fixed on the high-profile House of Gucci due out later next month.

Then there’s this, an adaptation of Eric Jager’s non-fiction book, a film that’s almost slipped in under the wire. Set in 14th century France, during the reign of Charles VI, it begins with preparations of a trial by duel. We are then transported back several years, to learn how Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer) became the centre of an honour-based pissing contest between two men.

Divided into chapters, the first of these tells the perspective of Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), a soldier who has fallen out of finance and favour with Count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck), to whom he has sworn fealty. He marries Marguerite in an attempt to restore his finances, while asking friend and confident Le Gris (Adam Driver) to aid him. Yet at every turn, Le Gris appears to betray Jean, culminating in Le Gris being charged with the rape of Marguerite.

Damon and Affleck, writing together for the first time since Good Will Hunting (1998), collaborate with Nicole Holofcener (Friends with Money, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) on a Rashomon style script. Jean, Le Gris and finally Marguerite offer their perspectives on the rape of Marguerite in turn. Each version has some commonalities, but all diverge when it comes to the true nobility of the individual.

Which, despite the impressive photography (from regular Scott collaborator Dariusz Wolski) and phenomenal sound mix, is essentially a three-way character study. It may be a hammer-subtle transplant of #MeToo discussions into the 14th century, but as the extent of systemic discrimination against women is laid out — and mirrors many of the issues the movement is still trying to deal with today — it’s clear some audiences are well past that subtlety. Indeed, as more stories come out from the casting couches of Hollywood, the way Count Pierre runs his court as a harem sometimes feels all too recent.

“There is no right. There is only the power of men.”

While there’s an argument to be made that the writers casting themselves is a wee bit of hubris, Damon in particular disappears into the role and confirms that the mullet was an accursed entity in all time periods. Yet it’s Killing Eve star Comer, most recently seen in Free Guy, who give the strongest central performance. The narrative might continually rob her of agency, but the actor confidently steps into an award-worthy performance.

If you’ve made it this far into the review, then you know more about the film than I did going into it. In fact, this was the first time in ages that I went into a film knowing very little about it, and was completely enveloped by the experience. Although one has to wonder if the multiple perspectives approach will hold up on a repeat viewing, this is still one of Scott’s most visually arresting narratives in a while.

2021 | USA/UK | DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott | WRITER: Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon | CAST: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck | DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Studios | RUNNING TIME: 153 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 21 October 2021 (AUS), 15 October 2021 (US)

November 6, 2021
Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

After an unplanned pause in 2020, the sun hasn’t set on Marvel in 2021. Between WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Black Widow, and What If…? — and Eternals, Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home still to come — there’s been no room to breathe for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Which makes the elegant wuxia inspired prologue to director Destin Daniel Cretton’s (Just Mercy) Marvel debut a pleasant shock to the system. The millennia old Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) is in possession of the mystical ten rings, which gives him immortality and supernatural powers. In searching for the mythical city of Ta Lo, he is stopped by guardian Ying Li (Fala Chen). The two promptly fall in love, but Wenwu is refused entry to the city.

Cut to the present day and one of their children, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), lives in San Francisco under the name Shaun, estranged from his sister Xu Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) and working a menial job with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina). When members of his father’s Ten Rings army are sent to retrieve a family heirloom, it sets him off on an adventure that will change the course of his destiny.

In anticipation of a Phase Four filled with team-ups, crossovers and multiversal shenanigans, it’s a little bit refreshing to see a solid solo outing from Marvel’s newest hero. Which is to say the MCU’s newest hero, as the character of Shang-Chi having been around since Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin originally pitched a Kung-Fu adaptation to DC Comics in the 70s. An original character inspired by the genre craze found a home at Marvel, and the first half of the film is certainly a throwback tribute to that era.

Marvel is clearly inspired (*cough*) by a plethora of martial arts films. If you also grew up on a steady diet of SBS Friday night fare, this all felt like a perfectly natural fit. The bus sequence alone, in which Shang-Chi fights off a series of attackers while Katy drives a bus through the streets of San Francisco, is worth the price of admission. There’s also a scaffolding fight, backlit by the neon horizons of Macau, that feels like a perfect blend of the Marvel formula and the films it wholesale lifts from.

Yet there’s a dramatic tonal shift in the second half with the introduction of a familiar face and a CG creature. While one is intended to appease outraged fans by ‘redeeming’ a previous film’s choices, and the other is there to sell merchandise, both are added for comedy value. In some ways, it’s all to set the tone for a large scale digital rag doll fight like every other Marvel solo outing. Still, as the 25th feature film in this series, this is hardly a shock, and if you’re in by this stage you’re probably all in.

Following a decade of television roles, include the multiple award-winning Kim’s Convenience, Liu confidently steps up as Marvel’s latest hero. With a charming on-screen presence, he brings humanity to a character going through a classic hero’s journey. Awkwafina might be there as the comedic sidekick, but a well-written character arc gives her far more to do than Darcy in the Thor series, for example. The presence of Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh elevates any film, and this is no exception.

This was my first trip to a cinema in over four months thanks to an extended Sydney lockdown – not to mention being able to catch up with a mate – so this review is just as much a reaction to the experience of big screen cinema as it is for the film itself. Yet it’s hard not to get caught up in this fun blend of genre styles, one that’s a clear indication of where Phase Four is going.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Destin Daniel Cretton | WRITER: Dave Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham | CAST: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Meng’er Zhang, Fala Chen, Florian Munteanu, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh, Ben Kingsley, Tony Leung | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney | RUNNING TIME: 132 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 2 September 2021 (AUS), 11 October 2021 (NSW)

October 19, 2021
Review: The Guilty

The last few years have asked us re-examine media depictions of the police. While the forces are designed to ‘protect and serve,’ the reality is that this is not the lived experience for many people. While director Antoine Fuqua has previously examined the corruption of the police in Training Day, this remake of Gustav Möller’s 2018 film attempts to have its cake and eat it too.

Recently embroiled police detective Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is now working at a 911 dispatch call centre. As Los Angeles fires rage around them, the chaotic night becomes even more tense when he receives a call from Emily (Riley Keough), the apparent victim of an abduction. Speaking in code and trying to keep her on the line, Baylor attempts to piece together her location and get her help in time.

Antoine Fuqua’s remake of Gustav Möller’s 2018 drama is a mostly one-room thriller shot within the restrictions of the pandemic. (Ok, there’s two rooms really, but one’s kind of an annex). It uses the material well, and if you’ve not seen the original, not knowing the twists and turns going in is probably a good thing. The slick technological control room points to a well-funded police department, one that seems both eternally vigilant and visually streamlined within an inch of its life.

Wherein lies one of the first difficult issues to wrangle with in THE GUILTY. Ostensibly a hero cop storyline in the best tradition of 80s and 90s action fests, it’s an odd film to release in the current climate. Yet it might also be one of Fuqua’s subversions, as the pall of disgrace constantly threatens to smother him completely. It’s arguably the motivation for one of the film’s more frustrating elements too, as Baylor refuses to let any colleagues in on the situation and completely go it alone. “I want to help her,” he says by way of justification. “That is my job.” So, it’s either cowboy cop storyline or a clunky plot device to pave over narrative inconveniences.

Which makes it more or less an acting exercise for Gyllenhaal, who speaks to several unseen celebrities (Keough. Ethan Hawke, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, Bill Burr) via the phone. So, if you think of it as a celebrity emergency call-in podcast, Fuqua may have just recreated 2020 in under 90 minutes. There’s a handful of other people in the room with him, but most of his acting happens in the aforementioned annex. Here we see the rage sitting beneath the surface, one that results in a confession about the root of his anger.

The film’s rapid denouement, and ultimate fate of Baylor, is covered in a few off-camera lines of dialogue over a burning skyline. While this is more than likely a result of the pandemic restrictions placed on production, it all feels very anti-climactic. It also undercuts any redemption Baylor’s character might get, leaving us with a tacitly centrist conclusion regardless of whether that was Fuqua’s intention. Still, it’s a tense film that mostly uses its restrictions to its advantage.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Antoine Fuqua | WRITER: Nic Pizzolatto | CAST: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ethan Hawke, Riley Keough, Christina Vidal, Mitchell Eli, Goree Da’Vine, Joy Randolph, Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix | RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 October 2021

September 30, 2021
Review: Blush

Apple may not be a name synonymous with animation just yet, but after distributing last year’s award-winning Wolfwalkers they seem determined to change that. BLUSH is the first collaboration between Apple Original Films and Skydance Animation, a short that will undoubtedly be spoken about in the same terms as Pixar’s short films.

In a dazzling opening, in which we follow a water droplet down through a space-born greenhouse, we’re introduced to a human horticulturalist traversing the stars. He crashes into an asteroid and soon his plants start to die out, with the traveller not far behind. All seems lost until the arrival of an alien who not only revives the plants, but provides him with a breathable atmosphere as well.

The pair build a lush green planet on the otherwise barren rock together, raising children and trees with equal pleasure. It’s a clean 11 minute short that uses no dialogue, but visually continues to advance the story with every frame. Indeed, some features struggle to fit this much storytelling into things more than ten times the length.

Despite the powerhouse production companies holding the pursestrings, the origins of BLUSH are far more personal. The directorial debut of the Emmy Award winning Joe Mateo — whose work has been seen in multiple Disney productions from Pocahontas through to Ralph Breaks the Internet — is inspired by the loss of his own wife to breast cancer in 2017.

As a result, there are times when this feels like the prologue to Pixar’s Up by way of a sci-fi façade — and that’s exactly the compliment that it’s intended to be. The film wordlessly pack a life well-lived into a compact framework, conveying the pain of loss and the hard work of moving on without a single spoken line. You would have to be made of pretty stern stuff to not get a little choked up by the end of the short.

If the narrative doesn’t get to you, then the jaw-dropping animation will. Mateo and his experienced crew have developed a beautiful use of light and colour contrasts as the planetoid slowly comes to life. It’s a vividly coloured piece, often framed by the light of a moon. Clever cutaways show the rock in its entirety: it’s a neat trick that shows the passing of time, but we also get to see the level of planning and detail that went into every inch of this production.

An artist once said that good art doesn’t make you feel something, but it gives you permission to recognise those feelings in yourself. Which is where BLUSH will connect with most audiences, whether they have suffered grief in this way or not. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go and hug my partner.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Joe Mateo | WRITER: Joe Mateo | DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV+ | RUNNING TIME: 11 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 October 2021

September 27, 2021
Review: Man in Love

Han Dong-wook’s Man in Love (2014) has the kind of premise that was destined for a remake. A gangster asks the daughter of a debtor to go on dates with him until the money is paid off. Questionable power dynamics aside, in this case debut Taiwanese filmmaker Yin Chen-hao has beaten Hollywood to the punch by reworking this romantic drama in a new market.

In Yin’s MAN IN LOVE (當男人戀愛時), the gangster is A-Cheng (Roy Chiu), a local debt collector with a soft touch. His predeliction for violent solutions stops short of some of the struggling businesses that he can’t quite bring himself to shake down — much to the chagrin of his boss. Yet his only outlet for affection is a sex worker, and he leads a fairly lonely life.

When he’s sent to the hospital to collect from a terminally ill man, he meets the daughter Hao Ting (Ann Hsu). Their relationship is frosty at first, so when A-Cheng suggest that they date to pay off the debt her reaction is as acidic as you would imagine. Of course, if you’ve seen the original — or any romantic drama made since the dawn of cinema — then you’ll know that true love is only a few micro crises away.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. The entire premise of the film is based on an abuse of power, placing any romantic developments in the shadow of Stockholm Syndrome. Time and inevitability are the only real ingredients in this love story, which necessitates the development of a terminal illness to give this narrative any sense of urgency or dramatic tension.

Thankfully, there’s a couple of characters that you really don’t mind spending some time with. Roy Chiu, seen recently in a supporting role for Detective Chinatown 3, is a slightly more complex performance than one would expect for this role. Carrying the lion’s share of the dramatic moments, he swings from violent enforcer to tender romantic and fragile in the final moments. Similarly, Hsu comes off the back of The Tag Along series for a romantic outing.

If you can make it through the super dramatic third act, which includes a montage of self-loathing and a fatal diagnosis, then you can weather the emotion without too many sniffles. You know exactly where it’s going but find yourselves sucked in regardless. MAN IN LOVE is a solid remake, and you can rest assured it won’t be the last time we see this story.

2021 | Taiwan | DIRECTORS: Yin Chen-hao | WRITER: Fu Kai-ling, Chien Chieh-chung | CAST: Roy Chiu, Ann Hsu, Tsai Chen-nan | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix, Taiwan Film Festival in Australia 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 16 September – 30 September 2021 (TWFF 2021)

September 26, 2021