Tag: Toni Collette

Review: Mickey 17

So, you’re Bong Joon-ho. Your film Parasite unanimously wins the Palme d’Or, becomes the highest-grossing South Korean film in history, and pulls off the Guinness World Record feat of scoring Academy Awards for Best Picture, International Feature Film, Original Screenplay, and Director. Naturally, your next move is a sci-fi black comedy romance with Robert Pattinson.

For those only half-watching Bong’s career, this might seem like an odd, left-field pivot into Hollywood. But let’s not forget: Snowpiercer already took him there, and Okja brought the titular genetic super pig to Netflix screens. This is hardly new ground for a filmmaker whose tongue has always been planted firmly in cheek.

Based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, writer/director Bong leans into the same over-the-top satire as Okja, landing somewhere near Starship Troopers. The film follows Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his childhood friend Timo (Steven Yeun), who flee Earth for the offworld colony of Niflheim after falling into debt over a Macron business.

Without reading the fine print, Mickey signs on as an ‘Expendable’—a human drone sent in for the dangerous work. When he dies (which he has, sixteen times by the time we meet him), he’s simply printed again with his memories intact. Things get complicated when Mickey 17 is mistakenly presumed dead and Mickey 18 takes his place.

There’s very little subtlety to MICKEY 17, which might be one of the most glorious things about it. The expedition is led by failed political candidate turned cult leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), whose followers wear red caps with slogans on them. Yes, it’s that kind of picture. Yet in a film where Pattinson regularly flops out of a printing tube like meat, and Marshall’s wife Ylfa (a wonderfully unhinged Toni Collette) has an unhealthy obsession with sauces, you can’t afford to take half-bites.

One of the joys of the first half of the film is watching Pattinson’s take on the monotony of functional immortality. Between the daily grind and being dispensed in increasingly absurd fashion, Mickey 17 has resigned himself to eke out existence just as it is. A light romance with security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who has remained his girlfriend since his first iteration, adds a sliver of emotional grounding.

With the arrival of Mickey 18—and a wonderfully chaotic dual turn from Pattinson—the film shifts gears. The discovery of giant bugs on Niflheim sets up broad satire on the nature of colonisation, religious fanaticism, and arguably, immigration as well. Here, Ruffalo and Collette deliver their batty best, skewering everything from conservative televangelists to political leaders like, well, you know.

There’s possibly too much happening in the last act of MICKEY 17, particularly during an extended denouement that tries to pull the rug out from under us more than once. Still, Bong’s film remains a sharp and enjoyable sci-fi flick with a brain—one smart enough to know when to be stupid.

2025 | USA, South Korea | DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho | WRITERS: Bong Joon-ho | CAST: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo | DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. Pictures (USA), Universal Pictures (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 137 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6 March 2025 (Australia), 7 March 2025 (USA)

March 5, 2025
Review: Jasper Jones

The films and television work of Rachel Perkins have ensured a strong representation of Indigenous Australian voices in the media over the last decade or so. Mabo and The First Australians both documented the legacy of European contact and colonisation, while musical comedy Bran Nue Dae was a self-assured celebration filtered through a kitschy retro vibe.

JASPER JONES, an adaptation of Craig Silvey’s novel, sits somewhere between these two as a powerful coming-of-age drama with a lot to say about race in Australia. Set in the mining town of Corrigan in Western Australia in the late 1960s, 13-year-old Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller) has a nocturnal visit by fellow teen Jasper Jones (Aaron McGrath), a social outcast due to his mixed Anglo-Aboriginal heritage. Confronted with a shocking discovery, the pair must navigate a web of secrets and lies as the town turns itself inside-out in the coming days.

On the surface, JASPER JONES can be viewed as a localised spin on the coming-of-age adventures that mirror the American picaresque adventures of Tom Sawyer. Yet at the core of the narrative is deep examination of race in Australia, from the Vietnam War era treatment of the family of Jeffrey Liu (Kevin Long), Charlie’s best friend, to the automatic suspicion and abuse in custody of the titular Jasper Jones. Here it becomes more akin to To Kill a Mockingbird, with Charlie’s dad (Dan Wyllie) an Atticus Finch type without the resolve.

Mark Wareham’s stellar photography often lurks in dimly lit locales, providing genuine shocks and warm summer moments in equal measure. Selling this conceit are the wonderful characters that populate Corrigan, each with their own concealed truths. Toni Collete’s mother character is a villain of sorts, at least from the perspective of young Charlie, but her performance (like all things in a young boy’s mind) is magnified. Similarly, Hugo Weaving looms large as Mad Jack Lionel, the ultimate small-town outsider whose legend is bigger than his tragic past.

Yet its Miller and McGrath, the latter in his debut feature, who make the film their own in the midst of massive star talent. The friendship that forms between Jasper and Charlie is in spite of these cultural norms, providing a guiding light in a film that goes to some very dark places. Coupled with a charming turn from The Nice Guys‘ Angourie Rice, it’s a true youth ensemble that recalls the great childhood adventures you never had. Not just a great adaptation, but one of the best and most heartfelt Australian films of the last decade.

[stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]2017 | Australia | DIR: Rachel Perkins | WRITER: Shaun Grant, Craig Silvey | CAST: Levi Miller, Aaron McGrath, Angourie Rice, Dan Wyllie, Toni Collette, Hugo Weaving | DISTRIBUTOR: Madman Entertainment | RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 2 March 2017 (AUS) [/stextbox]

February 21, 2017
Review: xXx – Return of Xander Cage

There was a magical period in the late 1990s and early 2000s where we believed that the solution to the world’s problems was being more extreme. The attitude permeated everything from our beverages to our cheese-based snacks, and cinema was no exception. It was from this environment that extreme sports action hero Xander Cage emerged, only to be consumed by the ravages of time. Now, at the dawn of 2017, he has returned to once again make our lives more radical.

Long thought dead, a series of events causes Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) to come out of his self-imposed exile to chase down Xiang (Donnie Yen) and the “Pandora’s Box” weapon that is capable of downing satellites. He pulls together a misfit squad of trusted comrades, and xXx is soon running and gunning his way across the world facing down untold sexiness on his way to saving the free world.

From the opening shot of a satellite falling to the Earth, xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE is a joyous action film, the likes of which we haven’t seen for a while. Director D.J. Caruso switches gears from the extreme sports vibe of the original, and the CG street fight of its sequel, to something of a hybrid of those two styles. The introduction of Donnie Yen, in a spectacularly fast (and furious) heist sequence, is an electric shock to a dormant franchise. Soon, it’s glory shots of bikinis, skateboarding down a mountain with Diesel, or watching an open water chase on jet-ski motorbikes. Here’s a moment to soak in the glory of that last statement.

A massive tip of the hat must go the casting which, like the Fast and Furious series, is a contemporary action film showing how effortless it can be to build a diverse and inclusive cast. Alongside Yen, Ong-Bak (and Furious 7) star Tony Jaa is a co-villain. It might be another reliable martial arts role for an Asian star, but Kris Wu’s character appears to simply be there to spin some records and win the day with awesome DJ skills. It’s that kind of movie. Meanwhile, there’s two female action heroes at the fore, including Australia’s Ruby Rose and Indian superstar Deepika Padukone. Rounding out the cast, Toni Collette is unable to find a piece of scenery that she doesn’t find delicious as an NSA Agent, and she’s having a ball doing it too.

What F. Scott Frazier’s script maintains throughout xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGEis a healthy dose of self-aware thrills. Barely pausing to ponder its own audacity, it barrels along at an explosive pace, setting up all the pieces to be Diesel’s next reliable box office draw. May they always be this extremely fun.

[stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]2017 | US | DIR: D. J. Caruso | WRITER: F. Scott Frazier | CAST: Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Toni Collette, Samuel L. Jackson | DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount | RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 January 2017 (AUS), 20 January 2017 (US)[/stextbox]

January 16, 2017
Review: Mental

Australian cinema gets sent to Wollongong as P.J. Hogan returns to our shores with a semi-autobiographical tale that’s simply nuts.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Mental (2012)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: P.J. Hogan

Writer: P.J. Hogan

Runtime: 116 minutes

Starring: Toni Collette, Liev Schrieber, Lily Sullivan, Rebecca Gibney, Anthony LaPaglia, Deborah Mailman

Distributor: Universal

Country: Australia

Rating (?): Worth A Look (★★★)

More info

[/stextbox]

P.J. Hogan first gained mainstream attention with his now iconically Australian Muriel’s Wedding (1994), the film that also put actress Toni Collette on the map. Since then, Hogan has spent most of his time in the US market with rom-com My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), a big-budget version Peter Pan (2003) and adaptation Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009). Returning to work in Australia for the first time in almost two decades, Hogan draws heavily on his own family history for another slice of suburban life in Queensland. Like the characters in Mental, Hogan’s own family history of mental illness informs his latest venture, and it lives up to its title.

Mental follows the lives of five out of control children emotionally rescued by the outrageous Shaz (Toni Collette) when their mother Shirley (Rebecca Gibney) has a mental breakdown. Their unavailable father Barry (Anthony LaPaglia), a local politician running for re-election tells the children and anybody else who asks that she has gone on holiday to Wollongong. He finds Shaz hitch-hiking and brings her home, where she begins to radically change the lives of the kids. While the eldest daughter Coral (Lily Sullivan) desperately wants her own perceived insanity acknowledged, Shaz teaches them that nobody is ‘normal’.

The film, as the title suggests, is suitably mental. Australian cinema typically has an on/off switch that flips between suburban drama and broad comedy, and very rarely does it push the envelope any further. An unconventional take on The Sound of Music, which serves as a motif throughout the film, it is unlikely that Mental could have been made anywhere else other than Australia. It’s unusual for an Australia film to be so celebratory of the local, and darkly comic about the nature of the Australian suburbia, and this is a refreshing take on local films that feel the need to be somebody else’s view of the Antipodes.

It’s this kind of approach that allows the film to cut loose with the Harold Holt gags, even if it does rely on American import Liev Schrieber for one of the most “Aussie” roles in the film. It does go too far sometimes, and a scene in which a group of girls have a simultaneous collective menstrual emission on a neighbour’s clean couch is glaringly out-of-place. Likewise, as the emotional core of Shaz’s journey comes to a head, Hogan doubts the audience buy-in and doubles back with some more gags that culminate in a fiery coda. Perhaps it’s Hogan’s proximity to the material, which he admits to being “a documentary really”, that prohibits this from being something more than an extended in-joke. The stereotypes that surround the family are more ‘mental’ than anyone in it, but they are also so far removed from reality as to diminish the impact of Shaz’s true impact on the family. When the third act turns to a more serious set of revelations, just as it did with Muriel’s Wedding, we are missing the emotional hook that Hogan already has in his own mind by virtue of having lived some of it.

Much of the attention will be on the return of Toni Collette to Australian screens with the director that put her on the map, but it’s an almost unrecognisable Rebecca Gibney that really shines in this film. She is the natural successor to Muriel’s mother Betty (Jeanie Drynan), a character who was taken for granted by her children and abused by her husband and ultimately commits suicide. While her end is not so tragic in Mental, she is part of the same cycle that is still a sad reality almost two decades on. Newcomer Sullivan is also a real find, bringing a fresh-faced enthusiasm to a familiar role, and actually acting like an adolescent rather than a preconceived notion of one.

Vividly shot, chaotic in nature and making full use of its Queensland backdrop, Mental is not always successful as a comedy or a drama, but it is an entertaining and unabashedly Australian take on a family in crisis. Finding the right tone to laugh with, rather than at, mental illness is a difficult task, and Hogan accomplishes this. Just go with it: it’s more fun that way.

Mental is released in Australia on 4 October 2012 from Universal.

October 5, 2012
Australian Filmmakers to Launch Omnibus Film Sydney Unplugged

Icon has announced that Sydney will be getting the Paris J’taime treatment as filmmakers from around Australia will create the anthology film Sydney Unplugged.

Alex Proyas, David Michôd, Ivan Sen, John Curran, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Liev Schreiber, Rachel Ward, Ray Lawrence and Russell Crowe will be joined by actors Anthony LaPaglia and Toni Collette in their directorial debuts to create this one-of-a-kind film.

A self-described Sydney aficionado, Tropfest creator and director John Polson hatched the idea for the Sydney film when he met co-producer Gary Hamilton at the Cannes Film Festival in May. “It’s no secret some hugely talented directors, actors and others either live here or are from here. It’s about time this talent got together to tell stories that showcase one of the world’s most beautiful cities. The people that have stepped up to take part in this project are beyond our wildest dreams” said Polson.

Shot in the second half of 2012, the film will consist of 12 stories that work together in the style of the aforementioned Paris J’taime and New York, I Love You.

The film will be released in Australia in 2013 by Icon Film Distribution and sold internationally by Arclight Films.

February 21, 2012
Review: Fright Night

In the wake of successful slasher series and gore-fests, the 1980s was filled with the kind of disposable horror that the genre has never fully recovered from. Tom Holland’s 1985 film Fright Night was fully cognisant of this, riffing on its contemporaries and harking back to a quainter time, when the creatures of the night wore a lot more pancake makeup. With vampires being so hot right now, and studios keen to take a juicy bite out of everything 1980s, Australian-born Lars and the Real Girl helmer Craig Gillespie sinks his teeth into this fun horror classic.

Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin, The Beaver) is a former geek who has managed to find himself a hot girlfriend in Amy (Imogen Poots, Jane Eyre) and a cool gang of friends at school. When his dweeby friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kick-Ass) tries to convince Charley that his new neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrell, Horrible Bosses) is a vampire, Charley is skeptical at first. Yet as the evidence mounts, Charley must convince his friends and Las Vegas magician/self-declared vampire expert Peter Vincent (David Tennant,TV’s Doctor Who) that there really is a fanged threat.

Fears of another disastrous remix that completely misses the mark are soon abated, not only because of the presence of the respectable Gillespie but of scribe Marti Noxon. Long before Edward was trying not to have sex with Bella, Noxon was responsible for penning some of the best episodes of the golden era of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Rather than taking itself way too seriously, as all marketing would seem to imply, Noxon injects a much-needed dose of comedy back into horror, making the latest Fright Night a hilarious capsule from another era. The references are naturally updated: Brewster now has a perpetually hot girlfriend, rather than one who only gets sexy when fangy, and Peter Vincent has graduated from late-night schlock host to one of the biggest acts on the Vegas Strip. Yet the core spirit of the original film remains, and while it may not have as many of the highly quotable one-liners that Holland’s 1985 script did, this update brings with it a tremendous sense of anarchic fun.

Despite beginning in a typical high-school setting, Fright Night showcases an amazing ability to keep audiences off-guard, in disbelief and quite frequently in stitches. In the first act, the film has all the trappings of a predictable modern horror, but there is an air of the unhinged that belies the quiet suburban setting. This is especially true of Farrell’s Jerry the Vampire, who carries conversations past their point of comfort and is equal parts sleaze and beefcake. Yet from the moment that the truth behind Jerry’s motivations is uncovered, and in particular Tennant’s alcoholic magician is properly introduced, the film abandons any pretense of modern convention and lets loose its carefree attitude on unsuspecting audiences.

Yelchin, already familiar to audiences from another reboot (Star Trek), is destined for big things in the next few years, and the teenage horror film seems to be a rite of passage for a rising young star. Yelchin manages to avoid the major franchises and leap straight into this clever alternative, and the cast of talented people around him is indicative of the strength of the script. Balancing out Farrell’s psycho sleazebag, a mixture of male model and date rapist, is the cocksure and occasionally lucid Tennant, blending his famous portrayal of The Doctor with fellow countryman Russell Brand. The antithesis of Roddy McDowell’s original characterisation, Tennant is a presence even when he is not on screen and is a perfect piece of casting. When he is on screen, he’s scratching his crotch. It’s all gold.

Fright Night doesn’t pull any punches on the gore either, with an effective use of 3D to send blood and ash in the direction of the audience. There are, of course, a few gimmicky moments but Gillespie is careful not to overuse the trick. The special effects have naturally improved over the last quarter of a century, yet the makeup of the KNB EFX Group remains true to the original without losing sight of what made those vampires genuinely frightening. Coupled with Ramin Djawadi’s (TV’s Game of Thrones) eerily effective yet restrained score, Fright Night is a surprisingly classy package that is worth a repeat visit. While we can’t stop the tide of remakes, this film is a perfect example of how to revive a genre.

[stextbox id=”custom” caption=”The Reel Bits”]Fright Night not only respects the original material, but successfully updates it for a modern audience. Smart, sexy and incredibly funny, this finally gives lovers of horror and comedy something to sink your teeth into. [/stextbox]

Fright Night is released in Australia on 15 September 2011 from Walt Disney Studios Australia and New Zealand.

August 18, 2011