With apologies to Bonnie Tyler, cinema isn't holding out for a hero — and hasn't been for some time. The singer's 80s-era Footloose-soundtrack hit basically describes the state of mainstream movies today, filled as screens now are with strong, fast, sure and larger-than-life figures racing on thunder and rising on heat. But what does heroism truly mean beyond the spandex of pop-culture's biggest current force? Who do we hold up as role models, and as feel-good champions of kind and selfless deeds? How do those tales of IRL heroism ebb, flow and spread, too? Pondering this far beyond the caped-crusader realm is Asghar Farhadi, a two-time Oscar-winner thanks to A Separation and The Salesman. As is the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker's gambit, his latest movie is intricately complicated, as are its views on human nature and Iranian society. As Farhadi has adored since 2003's Dancing in the Dust — and in everything from 2009's exceptional About Elly to his 2018 Spanish-language feature Everybody Knows as well — A Hero is steeped in the usual and the everyday. The 2021 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix-winner may start with a sight that's the absolute opposite thanks to necropolis Naqsh-e Rostam near the Iranian city of Shiraz, an imposingly grand site that includes the tombs of ancient Persian rulers Xerxes and Darius, but the writer/director's main concerns are as routine, recognisable and relatable as films get. One such obsession: domestic disharmony, aka the cracks that fracture the ties of blood, love and friendship. A Hero sprawls further thematically, wondering if genuine altruism — that is, really and wholeheartedly acting in someone else's interest, even at a cost to oneself — can ever actually exist. But it charts that path because of the frayed and thorny relationships it surveys, and the everyman caught within them. When A Hero begins, calligrapher and sign painter Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi, Cold Sweat) is no one's saviour, victor or ideal. While he definitely isn't a villain, he's just been given a two-day pass from an Iranian debtor's prison, where he's incarcerated over a family financial feud. Owing 150,000,000 tomans to his ex-wife's brother-in-law, he's stuck serving out his sentence unless he can settle it or his creditor, copy shop owner Bahram (Mohsen Tanabandeh, Capital), agrees to forgive him. The latter is unlikely, so with his girlfriend Farkhondeh (debutant Sahar Goldust), Rahim hatches a repayment plan. She has stumbled across a handbag filled with 17 gold coins, and together they hope to sell it, then use the proceeds to secure his freedom — except, when they attempt to cash in, they're told that their haul won't reach anywhere the sum they need. Instead, with a mixture of guilt and resignation — and at Farkhondeh's suggestion — Rahim decides to track down the coins' rightful owner. Cue signs plastered around the streets, then an immensely thankful phone call. Cue also the prison's higher-ups discovering Rahim's efforts, and wanting to cash in themselves by eagerly whipping up publicity around their model inmate's considerate choice. The media lap it up, as do the locals. Rahim's young son Siavash (newcomer Saleh Karimaei), a quiet boy with a stutter that's been cared for by his aunt Malileh (fellow first-timer Maryam Shahdaei), gets drawn into the chaos. A charity that fundraises to resolve prisoners' debts takes up the cause, too. Still, the stern and stubborn Bahram remains skeptical, especially as more fame and attention comes Rahim's way. Also, the kind of heroism that's fuelled via news reports and furthered by social media is fickle above all else, especially when competing information comes to light. It's always been apt that Farhadi loves warm hues — tones that are even golden here, as lensed meticulously by cinematographers Ali Ghazi (Zero Day) and Arash Ramezani (Headless). His pictures are so intimate, and so engrained in homes and daily lives, that the cosy neutral colours that shade these spaces automatically become the director's own. His work is never about black-and-white situations, either, and his exacting search through a plethora of shades of grey is also never cold or calculating. A Hero uses the glow of its imagery to help offer plenty of questions about its underlying scenario, in fact, including who might be right and wrong within it. Of course, solving that binary battle is not the movie's aim; rather, poking, prodding and probing it, examining why we're so obsessed with heroes and villains, and exploring what that means when social media's moods, whims and affinities can turn in a second, flickers scorchingly at the film's core. Also searing is Jadidi's performance, which couldn't be more complex. His smile charms, yet also has a flimsy tenor, the grin of someone who knows how embracing the world can be to him — and how closed. When the movie opens with Rahim making the difficult albeit spectacular climb up the Tomb of Xerxes to speak with his brother-in-law Hossein (Alireza Jahandideh, another debutant), who is working amid the scaffolding, it also immediately casts its protagonist as an ordinary man facing an insurmountable and age-old situation. Jadidi plays the part exactly that way, as someone striving to get by, grasping rare and unlikely chances with visible desperation, yet still bound by so much that's long proven unmovable about his country. His character is caught in a morality play where no good deed goes unpunished, too, and the weight of that truth ripples in his posture. But he's also the centre of a reckoning on what's worthy of praise and scorn — "where in the world are people celebrated for not doing wrong?" asks Bahram — and what that says about those cheering, condemning and flipping between the two. The brilliantly layered premise, the deep and cutting dissection of Iran today, the devastating lead portrayal, the incisive visual gaze, the station-full of trains of thought set in motion: it's all classic Farhadi, and he has the applauded past flicks to prove it. Thankfully, A Hero also sees the writer/director back at his best; despite that wealth of familiar elements, the feature is never as oh-so-expected as Everybody Knows and The Salesman, both of which felt like the filmmaker on autopilot. Tough, tight, tenacious, and terrifically disdainful of opportunism and obstinance alike, and of people and institutions guilty of both, A Hero is an excavation of secrets and lies as well — but its power can't be hidden, and its emotional impact is as true as cinema gets. And, although almost everyone in its frames is indeed holding out for some style of hero, few movies realise how fraught and futile that is, let alone with the same patient but unshakeable feeling and intelligence.
When Jurassic World Dominion was being written, three words must've come up often. No, they're not Neill, Dern, Goldblum. Those beloved actors reunite here, the trio appearing in the same Jurassic Park flick for the first time since the 1993 original, but the crucial terms are actually "but with dinosaurs". Returning Jurassic World writer/director Colin Trevorrow mightn't have uttered that phrase aloud; however, when Dominion stalks into a dingy underground cantina populated by people and prehistoric creatures, Star Wars but with dinosaurs instantly springs to mind. The same proves true when the third entry in this Jurassic Park sequel trilogy also includes high-stakes flights in a rundown aircraft that's piloted by a no-nonsense maverick. These nods aren't only confined to a galaxy far, far away — a realm that Trevorrow was meant to join as a filmmaker after the first Jurassic World, only to be replaced on Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker — and, yes, they just keep on coming. There's the speedy chase that zooms through alleys in Malta, giving the Bond franchise more than a few nods — but with dinosaurs, naturally. There's the plot about a kidnapped daughter, with Taken but with dinosaurs becoming a reality as well. That Trevorrow, co-scribe Emily Carmichael (Pacific Rim Uprising) and his usual writing collaborator Derek Connolly (Safety Not Guaranteed) have seen other big-name flicks is never in doubt. Indeed, too much of Dominion feels like an attempt to actively make viewers wish they were watching those other movies. Bourne but with dinosaurs rears its head via a rooftop chase involving, yes, dinos. Also, two different Stanley Kubrick masterpieces get cribbed so blatantly that royalties must be due, including when an ancient critter busts through a door as Jack Nicholson once did, and the exact same shot — but with dinosaurs — hits the screen. What do Star Wars, Bond, Bourne and The Shining have to do with the broader Jurassic Park film saga, which started when Steven Spielberg adapted Michael Crichton's book into a box-office behemoth? That's a fantastic question. The answer: zip, zero and zilch, other than padding out Dominion as much as possible, as riffs on Indiana Jones, The Birds, Alien, Mad Max: Fury Road, Austin Powers, the Fast and Furious movies, cloning thrillers, disaster epics and more also do. In nearly every scene, and often at the frame-by-frame level, another feature is channelled so overtly that it borders on parody. And, that's on top of the fact that recycling its own history is just Dominion 101. There's no theme park, but when it's mentioned that dinosaurs are being placed in a sanctuary, everyone watching knows that the film's human characters will get stranded in that spot, trying not to be eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex and the like. From all of the above, a loose narrative emerges — an overstuffed and convoluted one, too. A few years on from 2018's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, people are endeavouring to co-exist with dinosaurs. Unsurprisingly, it's going terribly. Run by Mark Zuckerberg-esque entrepreneur Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott, WeCrashed), tech company BioSyn owns that safe dino space in the Italian Dolomites, although palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern, Marriage Story) and palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill, Rams) also tie the firm to giant dino-locusts wreaking existence-threatening havoc. Plus, ex-Jurassic World velociraptor whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt, The Tomorrow War) and his boss-turned-girlfriend Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard, Rocketman) head BioSyn's way when the adopted Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) — who links back to the first Jurassic Park thanks to Forbidden Kingdom's ridiculous storyline — is snatched. Oh, and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum, Search Party) works there, as does cloning whiz Henry Wu (BD Wong, Mr Robot). Just by finally managing to corral Neill, Dern and Goldblum back together, Dominion already had three exceptional elements going for it. None of its powers-that-be give the returning stars much to do, though, other than help the movie up its fan-service nostalgia quota. They're still among the best parts of the film because Neill and Dern's chemistry still sparks, and Goldblum's line delivery is still as winning as ever — because they're actors as talented as Neill, Dern and Goldblum, basically. They certainly make more of an impression than Pratt and Howard, who are saddled with the dullest versions of their characters yet. Also standing out far beyond the movie's top-billed duo: The Harder They Fall's DeWanda Wise as pilot Han Solo Kayla Watts, plus Archive 81's Mamoudou Athie as BioSyn employee Ramsay Cole, who is assigned to show Sattler and Grant around. If this franchise doesn't go extinct after this giant lizard-sized crater, fingers crossed that Wise and Athie are its future. Six movies and three decades into all things Jurassic, this dino series now has itself a dino problem as well. Dominion shoehorns dinosaurs into pale imitations of other pictures, gets Pratt to break out his now-routine raised hand movement at Blue and her baby Beta, and has various characters point out how big different creatures are. It doesn't seem to care about its jurassic-era critters, however, which are treated as an afterthought. Despite boasting bigger and new species, the film's dinos also look less impressive and distinctive than they ever have in this franchise. It doesn't help that Dominion arrives so soon after David Attenborough's Prehistoric Planet, which basked in observational nature-doco intimacy even with all of its animals merely CGI renderings. Here, the pixels and green screen of it all are bland rather than awe-inspiring or frightening. And when Dominion does glimmer visually, it's always aping another movie (but with dinosaurs) or lifting iconic shots straight from other Jurassic films. Being generous, you could say it's fitting that Dominion is the mess it is. Life finds a way and all that, even to give an awful feature some purpose. Mirroring the saga's own repeated narrative, Dominion rampantly splices together disparate parts and gleefully reanimates the past — and it pays a price for doing so, and carelessly. But making a film this trying clearly wasn't the point, even if that end result neatly matches the movie's themes. Also, displaying any depth about anything at all seems to concern Trevorrow as much as serving up a logical plot and directing coherent action setpieces, aka not at all. There's always been a hefty case of Frankenstein-meets-slasher flicks to the Jurassic realm, but smartly, thoughtfully, thrillingly and entertainingly when it's at its best — so, back in 1993. Dominion is a devolution, and primarily shows that bloated blockbuster franchises keep finding a way to chew up screens, time and attention, no matter the consequences.
"We are nothing without stories, so we invite you to believe in this one." So goes The Wonder's opening narration, as voiced by Niamh Algar (Wrath of Man) and aimed by filmmaker Sebastián Lelio in two directions. For the Chilean writer/director's latest rich and resonant feature about his favourite topic, aka formidable women — see also: Gloria, its English-language remake Gloria Bell, Oscar-winner A Fantastic Woman and Disobedience — he asks his audience to buy into a tale that genuinely is a tale. In bringing Emma Donoghue's (Room) book to the screen, he even shows the thoroughly modern-day studio and its sets where the movie was shot. But trusting in a story is also a task that's given The Wonder's protagonist, Florence Pugh's nurse Lib Wright, who is en route via ship to an Irish Midlands village when this magnetic, haunting and captivating 19th century-set picture initially sees her. For the second time in as many movies — and in as many months Down Under as well — Pugh's gotta have faith. Playing George Michael would be anachronistic in The Wonder, just as it would've been in Don't Worry Darling's gleaming 1950s-esque supposed suburban dream, but that sentiment is what keeps being asked of the British actor, including in what's also her second fearless performance in consecutive flicks. Here, it's 1862, and 11-year-old Anna O'Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy, Viewpoint) has seemingly subsisted for four months now without eating. Ireland's 1840s famine still casts shadows across the land and its survivors, but this beatific child says she's simply feeding on manna from heaven. Lib's well-paid job is to watch the healthy-seeming girl in her family home, where her mother (A Discovery of Witches' Elaine Cassidy, Kila's actual mum) and father (Caolan Byrne, Nowhere Special) dote, to confirm that she isn't secretly sneaking bites to eat. Lib is to keep look on in shifts, sharing the gig with a nun (Josie Walker, This Is Going to Hurt). She's also expected to verify a perspective that's already beaming around town, including among the men who hired her, such as the village doctor (Toby Jones, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain) and resident priest (Ciarán Hinds, Belfast). The prevailing notion: that Anna is a miracle, with religious tourism already starting to swell around that idea, and anyone doubting the claim — or pointing out that it could threaten the girl's life and end in tragedy — deemed blasphemous. But arriving with experience with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War behind her, the level-leaded, no-nonsense and also in-mourning Lib isn't one for automatic piety. A local-turned-London journalist (Tom Burke, The Souvenir) keeps asking her for inside information, sharing her determination to eschew unthinking devotion and discover the truth, but the nurse's duty is to Anna's wellbeing no matter the personal cost. Lelio's opening gambit, the filmmaking version of showing how the sausage is made, isn't merely a piece of gimmickry. It stresses the power of storytelling and the bargain anyone strikes, The Wonder's viewers alike, when we agree to let tales sweep us away — and it couldn't better set the mood for a movie that ruminates thoughtfully and with complexity on the subject. Is life cheapened, threatened or diminished by losing yourself to fiction over fact? In an age of fake news, as Lelio's movie screens in, clearly it can be. Is there far too much at stake when faith and opinion is allowed to trump science, as the world has seen in these pandemic-affected, climate change-ravaged times? The answer there is yes again. Can spinning a narrative be a coping mechanism, a mask for dark woes, and a way to make trauma more bearable and existence itself more hopeful, though? That's another query at the heart of Alice Birch's (Mothering Sunday) script. And, is there a place for genuine make-believe to entertain, sooth and make our days brighter, as literature and cinema endeavours? Naturally, there is. Keeping that tale-spinning interrogation going — adding to its layers, too — The Wonder takes cues from the 19th-century 'fasting girls' phenomenon. Some children did indeed claim not to need earthly nourishment as the angel-faced Anna does, and so Donoghue's novel, Birch's screenplay and Lelio's direction now use that chapter of history to muse on far more. All three are well-experienced at using fiction to speak to humanity's needs, wants and deepest yearnings, and their efforts simmer with raw potency when combined. The Wonder is patient and pensive, and also a film of immediate weight and emotion. Birch's winning ways with adaptations, and with dialogue loaded with feelings, continue after the also Pugh-starring Lady Macbeth, plus dual Sally Rooney-based TV series Normal People and Conversations with Friends. When Lady Macbeth cemented Pugh as an on-screen force to be reckoned with only six years ago, it also established the confidence, passion and vigour that's been an essential element of her work since. Those traits shine through again here in a complicated and commanding portrayal, as they have in a stellar list of parts in-between. Once again, Pugh plays challenging with aplomb, as she did so masterfully in The Little Drummer Girl and Little Women. Once more, she wrestles with grief and pain so grippingly that it seems real, as seen in Midsommar. One of the joys of watching Pugh is tracing the lines connecting each entry on her ever-growing resume, and witnessing how an instantly assured and powerful talent keeps building and growing. Another is knowing that nothing — not Marvel movies like Black Widow or wrestling dramedy biopics such as Fighting with My Family, either — ever gets anything but her very best. Even so, seeing her search so unflinchingly for the truth in The Wonder is high among her career standouts. This is an exquisitely led picture, and cast all-round, including the younger Cassidy as the girl finding meaning, having it ascribed to her and navigating life's burdens through her own story. As it follows Lib attempting to unravel Anna's mysteries, The Wonder is also strikingly shot and staged, looking and feeling earthy, aching, haunting and sumptuous. Indeed, Oscar-nominated Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner serves up painterly lensing of both sweeping landscapes and mesmerisingly lit interiors, doing so again after the also-phenomenal The Power of the Dog. As for Lelio, he keeps showing his knack for making every moment land with movie after movie, and his deft touch with his leads. When he ends The Wonder as it begins, back on that film set after a deeply felt emotional crescendo, he also brings another reminder: that being transported by spellbinding tales like this is fleeting but unforgettable. The Wonder screens in Australian cinemas from November 3, and streams via Netflix from November 16.
Here's a job that no one would want: choosing just eight of Martin Scorsese's movies to celebrate. Palace Cinemas have done just that, though. How the chain's team whittled down the iconic auteur's efforts to just that many, we don't know — but Melburnians can now see the results on the big screen at Pentridge Cinema. Film buffs, get ready for Scorsese Season — because who needs spring or summer anyway? This retro showcase will run on Friday nights at 6.30pm from Friday, November 4–Friday, December 23, and it's all must-sees all the way. Given that the selection includes the seminal gangster flick Mean Streets and the Joker-influencing The King of Comedy, viewers are in for some Scorsese gold (and yes, Robert De Niro is as much of a feature as the director, with Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino screening as well). For those after a slice of Scorsese's later-career flicks — and his collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio — then The Departed well and truly ticks that box. Rounding out the lineup: concert film The Last Waltz, aka one of the best examples of the genre you'll ever see
When MPavilion hits Melbourne each year, it gives the city two gifts in one: a stunning new temporary structure built in the Queen Victoria Gardens, and a jam-packed lineup of events in and around the freshly erected space. Perfect for summer hangouts, the specially commissioned spot arrives when the weather is warm to add workshops, talks, performances and more to everyone's diaries. For its 2022–23 run, the time for all of the above is now. This year's winning MPavilion design is a vibrant canopied structure driven by celebrated architect Rachaporn Choochuey. Now open in its short-term inner-city home, the venue designed by Bangkok-based architecture and design practice all(zone) marks the ninth MPavilion in the series. After a couple of years spent indoors due to Melbourne's pandemic lockdowns, it also aims to offer a celebration of outdoor living. MPavilion 2022 will sit at Queen Victoria Gardens to host a season of events, before being relocated to a permanent home elsewhere in Melbourne after this year's lineup wraps up on Thursday, April 6. That gives the space four huge months to host an impressive array of festivities, starting with a dance party featuring John Gomez, Nick the Record and Dita, as well as a Thai Festival that includes a lantern-making workshop and Thai dances — all on this year's opening weekend from Friday, December 9. The venue's events program changes its theme regularly — like its hues — starting with 'Under One Roof' in December, which is all about championing shared experiences. From there, January and February turns the space into a 'Material Lab', focusing on humanity's use of different materials, while March and April have 'Unseen Design' in mind, aka spotlighting how the best design can be invisible. Across a lineup that includes more than 250 free events and spans the involvement of 500-plus creatives, that means specific sessions celebrating Indigenous voices in architecture, getting Cheated Hearts to unleash its party tunes, and screening ten short films about the experiences of individuals of African ancestry living in Melbourne. Also on the bill: DJs aplenty, pilates in the park, a chat-heavy summer salon, talks about concrete's afterlife and recycled plastics, and a Strictly Vinyl party to close things out. Also, in a first, the MPavilion Food Truck will make Queen Victoria Gardens its home all summer. Yes, that's your leafy picnics taken care of, complete with an MPavilion Pale Ale by Preston brewery Tall Boy & Moose. Across two sets of dates — from December 15–18 and March 30–April 2 — the food setup will collaborate with Parcs, too, with chef Dennis Yong creating a 'bootleg fish & chip'-themed menu that's all about sustainability. Images: Casey Horsfield and John Gollings.
"Nic fuckiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing Cage." That's how the man himself utters his name in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and he knows what he's about. Now four decades into his acting career to the year — after making his film debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High under his actual name Nicolas Coppola, playing a bit-part character who didn't even get a moniker — Cage is keenly aware of exactly what he's done on-screen over that time, and in what, and why and how. He also knows how the world has responded, with that recognition baked into every second of his his latest movie. He plays himself, dubbed Nick Cage. He cycles through action-hero Cage, comically OTT Cage, floppy-haired 80s- and 90s-era Cage, besuited Cage, neurotic Cage and more in the process. And, as he winks, nods, and bobs and weaves through a lifetime of all things Cage, he's a Cage-tastic delight to watch. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is Cage uncaged, busting out the jazz that is his acting and adoring it, and it's a self-aware, super-meta love letter to its star and all who stan him. It's also a feature that couldn't exist without the thespian who has everything from Guarding Tess and Captain Corelli's Mandolin to The Croods and Pig on his resume; replacing him simply wouldn't work. Again, it's a Cage gem in letting Cage devotees revel in Cage doing every kind of Cage. That said, this Cage comedy is also so overtly designed to inspire Cage mania that it's easy to feel the buttons being pushed. It's the Cage movie that the internet has willed into existence, or film Twitter at least. Case in point: it has Cage realise that Paddington 2 is one of the best movies ever made. It is, but given how well-accepted that is, and how much online attention has stressed that fact — including its once-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score — weaving it into this Cagefest is one of the film's many exercises in stating the obvious. There is narrative around all that "Nic fuckiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing Cage" and his marmalade bear-loving epiphany. Here, the man who could eat a peach for days in Face/Off would do anything for as long as he needed to if he could lock in a weighty new part. The fictionalised Cage isn't happy with his roles of late, as he complains to his agent (Neil Patrick Harris, The Matrix Resurrections), but directors aren't buying what he's enthusiastically selling. He has debts and other art-parodies-life problems, though, plus an ex-wife (Sharon Horgan, This Way Up) and a teen daughter (Lily Sheen, IRL daughter of Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheen). So, he reluctantly takes a $1-million gig he wishes he didn't have to: flying to southern Spain to hang out with billionaire Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal, The Bubble), who is such a Cage diehard that he even has his own mini museum filled with Cage memorabilia, and has also written a screenplay he wants Cage to star in. Yes, writer/director Tom Gormican (Are We Officially Dating?) and co-scribe Kevin Etten (Kevin Can F**K Himself) task the always-likeable Pascal with playing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent's on-screen audience surrogate. If you're watching a movie with Cage as Cage — one that begins with a clip from Con Air at that — then you'd likely jump at the chance to spend time with the inimitable figure. Who wouldn't? But that's just one element of the story, because two CIA agents (The Afterparty's Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz) inform Cage that his new pal is an arms dealer who's keeping a politician's daughter hostage to sway an election. And, they want him to indulge his host — undercover as himself, naturally — until they find the girl. The next key aspect of the tale: during this ruse, Cage and Javi genuinely become CBFFs (Cage best friends forever), including while working on a screenplay about new buddies who bond in chaotic circumstances. If The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent could only be described by referencing a different Nicolas Cage movie — and just one, despite how many references it throws at the screen like it's a Vampire's Kiss-style Cage cavorting in the street — it'd be Honeymoon in Vegas. The 1992 rom-com boasts an ever-watchable Cage performance as most of his work does, but it formulaically flirts with rather than matches his level. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent wants of be plenty of other Cage flicks, though, giddily and entertainingly so; however, the film itself can't meet his most memorable fare. In a Moonstruck-esque move, it's as enamoured with its leading man as he is with Cher in that 35-year-old gem. It plays its core bromance with Wild at Heart-level passion, and covets The Rock-style action mayhem. Cage is unforgettable as Cage here in a dream part for him and viewers alike, but striving for Raising Arizona's madcap antics, Adaptation's multi-Cage movie-industry metaness, Color Out of Space's full out-there Cage and everything in-between is a big ask. How glorious it is that this is the end result, though: a movie that's so unashamedly Cage, more than anything else has every actively tried to be, and yet also isn't quite Cage enough. It's still engaging and amusing enough, but it's noticeably broad and easy with its jokes, and too content to coast by on the nonstop, blatant-as-can-be Cageness of it all. Again and again, that made-for-the-internet feeling twinges, as if Gormican has fashioned a meme of a movie stitched together with gleefully retweeted and reposted Cage clips in mind. While The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent isn't an ego-stroking vanity project — a hefty achievement — or filled with anything but pure Cage dedication, it's the film equivalent of getting a casual line reading from its main man when you know what wild wonders only he's capable of. Indeed, as enjoyable as all this Cage-as-Cage-satirising-Cage is (Cage cubed, basically), the film is also workmanlike beyond the committed Cage and Pascal — both of whom light up the frame with off-kilter portrayals, make their characters' camaraderie feel authentic, and would shine together in a buddy comedy that isn't 100-percent Cage worship. There's fun and oh-so-much nostalgia for the Leaving Las Vegas Oscar-winner's career highs, lows and everything else, but there's also laid-on-thick cheese and little depth. While riffing on its central figure is the aim of the game, it's light when it comes to incisively skewering Hollywood, how it treats talents as distinctive (and massive) as Cage, and why his fame has taken the rollercoaster ride it has. But this sunnily shot, bouncily paced, well-intentioned affair definitely does the two things it needs to above all else: goes all-in on Cage, albeit not to a Mandy-esque degree, and makes everyone only want to watch Cage's work from now on.
Lurking behind every 18th birthday, beyond the alcohol legally drunk and nightclubs gleefully danced through, is an unspoken truth: life only gets more chaotic from here. That realisation doesn't usually spring during the celebrations, toasts and happy speeches of the big day itself — or necessarily within weeks, months or even a few years afterwards, either — however, it's inescapable nonetheless. In To Chiara, it blazes brightly for the movie's eponymous teenager (Swamy Rotolo). It shatters her sense of normality, too. But she isn't the one hitting the milestone that every adolescent yearns for. Instead, the party that helps start this Italian drama is actually for the 15-year-old's elder sister Giulia (Grecia Rotolo), with the pair's friends and relatives alike marking the occasion as countless other families have: with dinner, festivities and delighted emotions. As captured with a raw, fluid and naturalistic style like everything that both precedes it and follows, Giulia's birthday is a portrait of exuberance — until, for Chiara, it isn't. She plays up a garden-variety case of sibling rivalry, including during a performative dance contest. She revels in still being her doting dad Claudio's (Claudio Rotolo) favourite. And she thinks nothing of sneaking outside to have a smoke, only slightly worrying if her father will find out. But it's there, cigarette in hand, that Chiara watches her uncles get into a verbal scuffle outside. Then, in the aftermath, she spies her doting dad rushing off to deal with the fallout. Also, later that evening, perturbed by the feeling that something isn't quite right, it's Chiara who witnesses the family car explode outside their home, and spots Claudio fleeing under the cloak of darkness. The newest neo-realist film by Italian American writer/director Jonas Carpignano, To Chiara is also his third set in the Calabrian region, in the small coastal town of Gioia Tauro. It's the latest entry in a series that explores the area's mix of residents, segueing from refugees from North Africa in 2015's Mediterranea to the Romani community in 2017's A Ciambra, and now to the 'Ndrangheta. Call the latter the mafia, call them an organised crime syndicate, call them just part of living Southern Italy — whichever you pick, Chiara has always just considered them her loved ones without knowing it. Learning how her dad pays the bills and why he's now a fugitive, gleaning that her mother (Carmela Fumo) must be aware, trying to uncover where Giulia stands, attempting to cope with everything she thought she knew crumbling in an instant: that's what this gripping and moving film has in store for its young, headstrong, understandably destabilised protagonist from here. From the moment that Chiara begins to make her big discovery — piecing together the details stubbornly, despite being warned that her questions won't have welcome answers — it's easy to recognise why such a tale fascinates Carpignano. It's the story that sits in the shadows of other gangster flicks and shows, because so many are also about the bonds of blood; in decades gone by, it could've been Mary Corleone facing the same situation in The Godfather franchise or Meadow Soprano doing the same in The Sopranos. To Chiara also unfurls the ultimate tale of innocence lost, forever fracturing the bubble of an idyll that Chiara has spent her life inhabiting without ever realising, and causing her to now see the parent she has always adored in a completely different light. Nothing signals leaving childhood behind, no matter your age, more than having the entire foundation for your existence shift, after all. As gleams fiercely in its phenomenal lead's eyes, nothing is more devastating, either. Working with cinematographer Tim Curtin, as he did in A Ciambra — actors from which also pop up here, too, when Chiara starts expressing her shock via destructive outlets — Carpignano rarely ventures far from his protagonist. While film doesn't merely play out in close-ups, it'd be something else entirely without the deep and intimate gaze it holds with the teen, and the way it lets audiences stare into her soul as a result. Sometimes gliding, sometimes jittery, the handheld camerawork matches Chiara's inner state. Whether she's demanding answers from Giulia or following secrets into hidden spaces, every visual touch is aligned with her energy and her emotions, in fact. The score by Dan Romer (Dear Evan Hansen) and Benh Zeitlin (Carpignano's Mediterranea, and also his own Beasts of the Southern Wild) vibrates on the same wavelength as well, but To Chiara is always a movie about perception — and how it observes its titular figure, and also mirrors how she discerns the world around her, is oh-so-crucial to the feature's stunning impact. And, from its heady early moments to its poignant ending, this is indeed a stunning film. It's also a picture anchored by a remarkable lead performance — a jewel among a glimmering cast, all nonprofessional actors, as Carpignano has drawn upon for this entire trio of movies. As their names make plain, the talents behind To Chiara's main characters are all related, and all let that inherent comfort with each other calm and complicate their on-screen dynamic. Swamy Rotolo is nothing short of revelatory, though. Playing someone who once felt like she was sliding smoothly through the world, only to find that her fortunate status quo is slick not from luck, love or joy but the spoils of the criminal underworld, she's sincerely dogged and desperately uncertain at once. She sports the invincibility of youth, and also the pain when that facade fractures. That she often looks and feels like she could've stepped out of another female coming-of-age gem, Mustang, is the highest of compliments. Just as convincing: the slow-burning feature's delicate balancing act, with To Chiara careful not to judge or champion anyone's choices, or the path that's led some Gioia Tauro locals to the 'Ndrangheta, or to make its namesake a hero or a victim. Weighing up the two sides of the equation — the privilege and prejudices that Chiara didn't openly know she had and their sources, plus the stakes, costs and future ramifications of living a life tainted by crime — is the movie's central figure's task, which she navigates through emotional outbursts, tense glimpses inside her town's underbelly, on-the-ground forays into her father's reality and legally mandated foster-care arrangements alike. Accordingly and fittingly, when another 18th birthday party rolls around to bookend the deserving Cannes Film Festival 2021 Best European Film-winner, the idea that adulthood is chaos takes on a different tone. To Chiara never shakes that notion or tries to dispel it, but instead grapples and lives with it, and makes for potent and resonant viewing in the process.
Would the latest big-screen adaptation of Stephen King's Firestarter have been better or worse if it had included The Prodigy's hit of the same name, aka the most obvious needle-drop that could've been chosen? Although we'll never know, it's hard to imagine a film with less personality than this page-to-screen remake. Using the 1996 dance-floor filler would've been a choice and a vibe — and a cliched one, whether gleefully or lazily — but it might've been preferable to the dull ashes of by-the-numbers genre filmmaking that's hit screens instead. Zac Efron looking so bored that blood drips from his eyes, dressing up King's 1980 story as a superhero tale (because of course) and having its pyrokinetic protagonist say "liar liar, pants on fire" when she's torching someone aren't a recipe for igniting movie magic, or for even occasionally just lighting a spark. That said, the best thing about Firestarter circa 2022 is actually its 'Firestarter'-free score, and with good reason. It hails from legendary original Halloween director John Carpenter, plus his son Cody Carpenter and regular collaborators Daniel A Davies (all fresh from 2018's Halloween and its follow-up Halloween Kills). It's a savvy touch not merely for the kind of atmospheric, eerie, mood-defining electro-synth sounds that only the elder Carpenter can deliver, but because he was originally slated to direct the first version of Firestarter in 1984, only to be ditched because The Thing — now a stone-cold sci-fi/horror classic — didn't do well enough at the box office. While both features could've desperately used Carpenter behind the lens, at least the initial flick didn't feel like all it was burning was the audience's time and patience. Then, now and in King's book, Firestarter follows the McGee family, whose lives would blaze brighter if they didn't have abilities most folks don't. After volunteering for a clinical trial in college, Andy (Efron, Gold) and his wife Vicky (Sydney Lemmon, Fear the Walking Dead) have telepathic and telekinetic powers; being experimented on with mind-altering chemical compounds will do that. And, from birth, their now 11-year-old daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, It: Chapter Two) has been able to start fires with her mind. How director Keith Thomas (The Vigil) establishes this backstory says more than it should about the movie, how blandly it turns out and what it might've been with more flair. A flashback to Charlie getting fiery as a baby is laughable, and kindles exactly zero thrills, scares or unease. But, flickering over the opening credits as old video footage, Andy and Vicky's time as test subjects ripples with tension and creepiness — that's swiftly extinguished and never felt again. Unsurprisingly, the McGees have spent years attempting to blend in, hiding their powers and fleeing the shady government department, The Shop, that's responsible for their situation — and now sports a keen interest in using Charlie as a weapon. Alas, as the girl grows, holding her abilities back is becoming harder. Andy and Vicky argue about what's better: training her to suppress the flames or teaching her how to harness them. Then she literally explodes at school, The Shop head honcho Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben, City on a Hill) puts bounty hunter John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes, Rutherford Falls) on their trail and the heat is on. (No, that track from Beverly Hills Cop, which reached cinemas the same year that the OG Firestarter did, doesn't feature here either.) When a film gets its viewers thinking about the songs that aren't on its soundtrack, and more than once, it's a flaring warning sign. It's a scorching indictment of how uninvolving the new Firestarter is, too. Its predecessor isn't great, only really proving notable for starring a nine-year-old Drew Barrymore, but at least its chase-driven plot was propulsive. Here, Thomas and screenwriter Scott Teems (another Halloween Kills alum) scale back the story to spend half of the picture dwelling in the McGee's incognito existence, barely a few scenes on the run, and then turning in the least climactic finale in The Shop's secret base they possibly could. It all smacks of trying to cash in on King fandom after It and It: Chapter Two's huge success, and also continuing producer Jason Blum's penchant for remaking, reviving or riffing on movies gone by (see also: the Groundhog Day-but-horror Happy Death Day franchise, the latest The Invisible Man, Freaky Friday-but-horror flick Freaky and the past two Halloween films). At least this Firestarter doesn't have a white actor playing its First Nations hitman, although that doesn't mean that Greyeyes — who is so great in streaming sitcom Rutherford Falls — gets anything resembling a fleshed-out part. At least his character isn't written as inappropriately fascinated with Charlie this time, a wholly unpleasant aspect of the original's narrative that's thankfully cut. Asking much of its cast isn't on the new Firestarter's agenda, though. Reuben is cartoonish and saddled with clunky dialogue ("you are a real-life superhero," she somehow spits with a straight face); Kurtwood Smith (The Dropout) goes unhinged with aplomb as the man originally behind the mind-bending drug, but is underused; Armstrong is mostly tasked with scowling a lot. And while that blood oozing from Efron's peepers isn't genuinely caused by his visible lack of interest in his role, and there's a quiet power to his passive performance, it's the most relatable thing in the movie for audiences feeling just as underwhelmed. At least Firestarter 2022 is short, too, clocking in at 20 minutes less than the initial feature; there's a difference between burning fast and dazzling, however. When the psychokinetic pyrotechnics come — less often than you'd think in a film called Firestarter — the movie just looks cheap, the budget seemingly extending to a wind machine, a smoke machine, some shoddy CGI and piles of ashes. Letting King's underlying themes blaze away instead isn't the flick's aim, either. Firestarter is still about the sins of parents playing out through their children, as well as the ills of government wreaking havoc on ordinary families, but only in the broadest and most simplistic of ways. Even the Carpenter score, as welcome and excellent as it is, unintentionally undercuts the film — reminding the audience that the iconic filmmaker did helm a King adaptation once, aka 1983's haunted car flick Christine. Rewatching that is a far better move than seeing this cold Firestarter rehash fail to catch aflame.
Already this year, Melbourne movie lovers have been able to journey to France from their cinema seats. Hitting up Spain just by heading to your local picture palace has also been on the itinerary. Your next stop: Germany. Kicking off just as the weather gets colder to remind you of frosty European climes, Australia's touring German Film Festival is back for 2022 with a 26-movie program. From Wednesday, May 25–Sunday, June 19, GFF will hit Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Cinema Como, The Kino, Pentridge Cinema and The Astor Theatre — letting you see in winter with quite the lineup of new and classic movies. There's typically a couple of clear recurring themes in this annual cinema showcase, as there tends to be in German films in general. So, the fact that this year's GFF will open with A Stasi Comedy, about life a Stasi agent's double life as both an underground poet and a spy in 80s-era East Berlin, is hardly surprising. Nor are two of the fest's other big-name titles: The Last Execution, starring Babylon Berlin's Lars Eidinger and also set in East Berlin in the 80s; and The Forger, led by Dark's Louis Hofmann, who plays a young Jewish man in Berlin in 1942. They're just some of the 21 movies that'll enjoy their Australian premieres at the event — alongside drama My Son, about a teenager's relationship with his mother; crime comedy The Black Square, starring Toni Erdmann's Sandra Hüller; the post-WWII-set The German Lesson, which leaps from the page to the screen; and political thriller The House, which takes place in the near future. GFF is also showcasing new films from just beyond German's borders in Austria and Switzerland. So, you can check out films such as downhill skiing drama Chasing the Line, an Austrian biopic about Winter Olympian Franz Klammer — and Swiss effort Caged Birds, about a lawyer in the 80s battling the prison system. The festival's final five titles hail from its impressive retrospective for 2022, which takes a look back at German cinema over the past five decades. Cannes Palm d'Or-winner The Tin Drum gets the 70s slot, while the East German-set Sunny Side represents the 80s. Doing the honours for the 90s is the exceptional Run Lola Run, aka one of the best thrillers ever made. The movie that helped push The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's Daniel Brühl to stardom, Good Bye Lenin!, has the 00s covered, and kinetic one-take gem Victoria returns to the big screen to showcase cinema from the past decade.
Melbourne is home to an annual film festival focused on LGBTQIA+ flicks, but there's always room for another one. So, now that Pride Month is here, Cinema Nova has put together Pride On Screen, a program that showcases the great queer movies that have reached cinemas over the years — and a few must-see new queer flicks as well. Whether you need another excuse to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire on a big screen, you fell head over heels for Call Me By Your Name when it first released or you're a fan of Australian drama 52 Tuesdays, you'll find them on the bill. Also showing: everything from A Single Man, Head On and Moonlight to My Own Private Idaho, The Birdcage and Truth or Dare. Fans of Colin Firth, Alex Dimitriades, Mahershala Ali, Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix, Robin Williams and Madonna, rejoice. Pride On Screen runs between Friday, June 10–Wednesday, June 15, with different films showing at various times on different days. From the highlights from the brand-new selection, you can make a date with Fire Island, which is inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; get strange and meta with St Vincent and Carrie Brownstein via The Nowhere Inn; hit the rails through Russia with Compartment No 6.
Hamilton isn't the only hit musical from the past few years that took a few cues from the past, paired a well-known chapter of history with toe-tapping tunes and made on-stage magic. Another theatre show that did just that: Six the Musical. First premiering back at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, then jumping to London's West End, this hit takes inspiration from one of the most famous sextets there's ever been — because even if you don't know much about Britain's past kings and queens, you likely know that Henry VIII had six wives. The Tudor monarch's love life has inspired plenty of pop culture content over the years — including 00s TV series The Tudors and 2008 movie The Other Boleyn Girl — but this one takes the pop part rather seriously. It's presented as a pop concert, in fact, with Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr all taking to the microphone to tell their stories. Each woman's aim: to stake their claim as the wife who suffered the most at the king's hands, and to become the group's lead singer as a result. A five-time nominee at the Olivier Awards, Six the Musical is heading to Melbourne from Friday, June 17–Sunday, August 7, playing the Comedy Theatre. Hitting the stage: Kala Gare (Rent) as Anne Boleyn, Loren Hunter (Strictly Ballroom: The Musical) as Jane Seymour, Kiana Daniele (Dirty Dancing) as Anne of Cleves and Vidya Makan (Green Day's American Idiot) as Catherine Parr — all reprising parts they've been playing since 2020. They'll welcome new co-stars Phoenix Jackson Mendoza (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Chelsea Dawson (Shrek the Musical), as Catherine of Aragon and Catherine Howard, respectively. Images: James D Morgan, Getty Images.
First, it was a popular 80s comedy starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. Then, it became a five-season television sitcom led by Parton's real-life younger sister. In 2009, 9 to 5 made the leap to the stage too, because you just can't stop a good story about female empowerment in the workplace. Revived in the West End back in 2019, it's still a huge hit — and now, the stage production will finally play Melbourne. Just by reading the show's title, we know that you already have Parton's catchy song of the same name stuck in your head. Pour yourself a cup of ambition, because that tune isn't going away anytime soon. Indeed, you'd best get ready to exclaim "what a way to make a living" more than once when 9 to 5 The Musical hits the State Theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne from Sunday, July 10–Sunday, September 11. Ahead of its time when it first reached cinemas, this tale of three women who take on their sexist, egotistical and all-round despicable male boss is obviously still highly relevant today. Before #TimesUp and #MeToo, workmates Doralee, Violet and Judy decided to turn the tables by kidnapping their supervisor and reforming their office. Expect the same story in 9 to 5 The Musical, as penned by the original film's screenwriter Patricia Resnick — just with more songs. The Australian version stars Caroline O'Connor (a veteran of the movie version of Moulin Rouge!), Marina Prior (The Sound of Music, Phantom of the Opera), Casey Donovan (Chicago, We Will Rock You) and Erin Clare (Heathers the Musical, American Idiot), as well as Eddie Perfect as the workplace's controlling boss. With Parton herself writing the score — and earning Tony and Grammy nominations for her efforts — expect plenty of feel-good music as well. Although she doesn't appear on stage, the famous country star is still involved with the show, and with bringing it to Australia. 9 to 5 The Musical was initially meant to premiere in Australia in 2020, hitting up Sydney first and then heading to Melbourne, but was delayed due to the pandemic. Now, it's still debuted in Sydney before playing Brisbane, and then finally making its long-awaited arrival in Melbourne. Images: Pamela Raith.
Bob's Burgers, the loveable TV series about the burger-slinging Belcher family and their humble burg joint, has achieved many things in its 12 seasons so far. It has given the world a charming animated sitcom that's sweet, goofy, cute, funny and filled with top-notch food puns, for starters. It has also sported impressive voice work by everyone from Archer's H Jon Benjamin to Flight of the Conchords' Kristen Schaal, not to mention its hefty list of guest stars. And, it has been a source of fabulous musical numbers. The series' finest honour, though? Making everyone who watches Bob's Burgers feel oh-so-hungry for its animated burgers. Expect stomachs to keep rumbling when The Bob's Burgers Movie reaches the big screen, too — which it is doing Down Under on Thursday, May 26. There's one surefire way to counteract those burger pangs, however: heading along to the Coburger Drive-In on Monday, May 23. For one night only, from 6pm, the beloved Coburg Drive-In is getting a Bob's Burgers-themed makeover. On the menu: a sneak-peek screening of the movie before it officially opens wherever good burger-heavy animated flicks are shown, and food trucks serving up burgs. Beatbox Kitchen and Real OG Burgers will be doing the burger-slinging honours, and yes, some of the burgs will have punny names. Of course they will. Anything else just wouldn't be acceptable. So, get ready to tuck into The Gene-uine OG (featuring beetroot relish, cheese, beef, onion, lettuce and OG mayo), Cheese Louise (beef, onion, OG sauce, tomato sauce and Real OG's cheesy pour) and The Veg of Your Seat (the vegetable-heavy option, clearly), among other burgers.
If the way that cinema depicts cancer was plotted out on a scale, Babyteeth and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl could easily demonstrate its extremes. One sees its protagonist as a person first and a patient last; the other uses terminal illness as a catalyst for other people's sorrows and struggles (the "dying girl" part of its moniker, right there at the end, is oh-so-telling about how it regards someone with cancer as little but an afterthought). Nowhere Special thankfully sits at the Babyteeth end of the spectrum. That said, its premise screams weepie, and being moved by its story happens easily. But there's an enormous difference between earning that response through an intimate and delicate story about a person's plight — and, here, their quest to provide for the person dearest to them after they're gone — and merely treating their life-and-death tussle as easy grist for the tear-jerking mill. Nowhere Special follows a 35-year-old single father in Belfast, John (James Norton, Little Women), who needs to find an adoptive family for his four-year-old boy (first-timer Daniel Lamont). His cancer has progressed, and now the doting dad and window cleaner's days are numbered, so he's determined to save his son Michael from more sorrow than his absence will naturally bring — in a situation that's pure emotion-courting fodder, but never manipulatively treated as such. Indeed, writer/director Uberto Pasolini opts for understatement and realism, including over overtly endeavouring to incite the kind of non-stop waterworks that most movies with this premise would eagerly turn on. The filmmaker's last feature, 2013's Still Life, was also just as beautifully measured and tender without mawkishness. Although the gap between his two latest pictures is sizeable time-wise, Pasolini hasn't lost his touch for making sensitive and affecting cinema. Suffering an illness that's turned fatal, and possessing little energy to get through everything that comes with being a single father, John's own fate isn't his primary concern. Nowhere Special takes time to dwell in the routine that marks its protagonist's remaining days — washing panes of glass, making the most of the time he has left with Michael, trying to secure his son new parents, feeling exhausted by all of it but still soldiering on while he can — which seems both mundane and extraordinary in tandem. The always-unspoken fact that life goes on even when it doesn't lingers throughout the film, as stark as a freshly cleaned, newly gleaming window, and contributes to the prevailing bittersweet mood. That's Nowhere Special's baseline. As it charts John's efforts to get Michael the best future he possibly can without himself in it, it soaks in the ups and downs of the pair's life together, recognising that it's both ordinary and remarkable — because all lives are. The search at hand is a difficult one, even when pursued with the best of intentions — by John and with the help of social worker Shona (Eileen O'Higgins, Misbehaviour). Unsurprisingly, finding the right people, or person, to entrust your child to forever is a heartbreaking job, and the weight of what John grapples with never fades from the film's emotional landscape. Features that treat ailing characters so considerately may be uncommon, and they are; however, pictures that willingly face the complicated questions, worries and fears that come with knowing your existence is about to end are rarer still. It might come as little surprise that Pasolini found his tale in reality, reportedly after reading a newspaper article about a man in the same circumstances as John, but how gracefully, attentively and still unflinchingly Nowhere Special fleshes out its story never fails to astonish. Both visually and in his storytelling, Pasolini's approach is to dwell on small moments, as well as times shared in passing that might be forgotten by many but mean the world to John. See: the type of mirrored behaviour that a young son adopts from his dad, the sight of them walking around in matching baseball caps, and the joy that Michael gets from washing his toy truck — doing what his dad does in a way that he can, and showing how he idolises his father without needing to voice it. There's an unfussy, unsentimental but always empathetic feel to the Northern Ireland-set movie, and every shot, including in John's mission to relish every second that remains, and with his interviews with prospective new parents both doting and disastrous. While a lesser movie would've used the latter for comedic purposes, that's never part of Nowhere Special's remit. With windows such a key focus — being cleaned and peering into homes that might become Michael's — it's also little wonder that viewing Nowhere Special resembles gazing into a slice of life that isn't just poignant but cherished. Perhaps better known for his television work to-date courtesy of Black Mirror, McMafia, Grantchester and Happy Valley, Norton offers a glimpse into John's soul via his exceptional performance, which conveys a world of devotion and sorrow even when he isn't saying anything. In fact, Pasolini uses dialogue sparingly between his two main characters, knowing that this father-son duo don't always require words to express what they mean, and also recognising that finding the right thing to utter is arduous on both sides. With the also-magnificent Lamont, Norton inhabits scenes of comfortable and treasured silence. Also made plain as a result: that Michael's young mind will only keep the haziest of memories from these times, so it's the loving mood that truly matters above all else. Nowhere Special is easy to sum up: in contrast to its name, it's something outstanding. Its potency also springs from the lens it turns on the kind of character that's infrequently given such thoughtful attention, with or without terminal cancer. Every dollar counts for John, but it's clear that he spends what he has on Michael — as seen in the kid's new clothes and bedding — rather than himself. He's had his own experiences in the social-services system, which beats at the heart of his quest to lock in his son's future. He's been robbed of most of life's opportunities, and he's devoted to ensuring the same doesn't happen for his boy. He's also still wounded by Michael's mother leaving without providing any contact details in her absence, and he's as doting a dad that anyone could ask for. Thanks to both Pasolini and Norton, John is a fleshed-out portrait of someone on the margins, even before his illness factors in. Feeling for his plight isn't just a case of heartstring-tugging; here, it comes as naturally as breathing.
Back in 1962, in the first-ever Bond film Dr No, the suave, Scottish-accented, Sean Connery-starring version of 007 admires a painting in the eponymous evil villain's underwater lair. That picture: Francisco Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington. The artwork itself is very much real, too, although the genuine article doesn't appear in the feature. Even if the filmmakers had wanted to use the actual piece, it was missing at the time. In fact, making a joke about that exact situation is why the portrait is even referenced in Dr No. That's quite the situation: the debut big-screen instalment in one of cinema's most famous and longest-running franchises, and a saga about super spies and formidable villains at that, including a gag about a real-life art heist. The truth behind the painting's disappearance is even more fantastical, however, as The Duke captures. The year prior to Bond's first martini, a mere 19 days after the early 19th-century Goya piece was put on display in the National Gallery in London, the portrait was stolen. Unsurprisingly, the pilfering earned plenty of attention — especially given that the government-owned institution had bought the picture for the hefty sum of £140,000, which'd likely be almost £3 million today. International master criminals were suspected. Years passed, two more 007 movies hit cinemas, and there was zero sign of the artwork or the culprit. And, that might've remained the case if eccentric Newcastle sexagenarian Kempton Bunton hadn't turned himself in in 1965, advising that he'd gotten light-fingered in protest at the obscene amount spent on Portrait of the Duke of Wellington using taxpayer funds — money that could've been better deployed to provide pensioners with TV licenses, a cause Bunton had openly campaigned for (and even been imprisoned over after refusing to pay his own television fee). First, the not-at-all-inconsequential detail that's incongruous with glueing your eyes to the small screen Down Under: the charge that many countries collect for watching the box. Australia and New Zealand both abolished it decades ago, but it remains compulsory in the UK to this day. As played by Jim Broadbent (Six Minutes to Midnight), Bunton is fiercely opposed to paying, much to the embarrassment of his wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren, Fast and Furious 9) whenever the license inspectors come calling. He's even in London with his son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead, Voyagers) to attempt to spread the word about his fight against the TV fee for pensioners when Goya's painting is taken — that, and to get the BBC to produce the television scripts he devotedly pens and sends in, but receives no interest back from the broadcaster. Even the Bond franchise couldn't have dreamed up these specifics. The Duke's true tale is far wilder than fiction, and also so strange that it can only spring from reality. Directed by Roger Michell (My Cousin Rachel, Blackbird) — marking the British filmmaker's last fictional feature before his 2021 passing — it delivers its story with some light tinkering here and there, but the whole episode still makes for charming viewing. Much of the minutiae is shared during Bunton's court case, which could've jumped out of a Frank Capra movie; that's the feel-good vibe the movie shoots for and easily hits. Such a move couldn't be more astute for a flick that surveys an incident from more than half a century ago, but reaches screens in a world where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots just keeps widening. Yes, it's basically a pensioner-and-painting version of Robin Hood. Decrying the gap between the wealthy and the not-so, calling out government priorities that only broaden that divide, fighting against injustice, sporting a healthy distrust of the powers that be: these all flicker through Bunton, his TV license crusade and his portrait-stealing trial, and through the movie itself. Michell and playwrights-turned-screenwriters Richard Bean and Clive Coleman (Young Marx) aren't shy about the anti-authoritarian sentiment, but package it up with can-do underdog cheekiness — the brazenness of the little guy sticking it to the man, naturally. That class clash gives The Duke depth as it dances through its caper, and does so with an upbeat, congenial and even farcical tone. Here, a feature can stress a point about the money-coveting state of the world and its impact upon the working class, and it can have an affable time saying it. Most opportunities to surprise disappear along the way, but the result is endearing and likeable rather than routine or pandering. The Duke's story was always going to demand notice, but it mightn't have proven so pleasing — so crowd-pleasing, to be precise — with any other casting. Although he ensures that it appears otherwise, the ever-reliable Broadbent doesn't have a simple role; veer too far in one direction and Bunton could've been seen as foolish, tip over to the other side too forcefully and he might've just been lecturing and scolding. When it comes to balancing the amiable and the passionate (someone winsome but with the strength of his convictions), the veteran on-screen talent hits the jackpot. Mirren and Whitehead's parts have fewer layers, but they each turn in engaging performances. And in Mirren's case, after her aforementioned spot in the Fast and Furious franchise, plus The Good Liar and Woman in Gold on her recent-ish resume, her love of heists and/or subterfuge shines through from beneath Dorothy's sterner surface. There's a cosiness and gentleness to The Duke, and an ease, sentimentality and sweetness. They all couldn't suit the film better, actually. With cinematographer Mike Eley (The Dig, Off the Rails), Michell gives the movie a comforting look and feel, too, but it's also lively, resonant and charismatic as well. It's little wonder, then, that feature slides nicely into the director's body of work alongside the likes of Notting Hill, Venus and Le Week-End. As many of those pictures did — and the tonally heavier The Mother and Enduring Love as well — The Duke has more than just entertaining in mind, though. Charting an escapade that no screenwriter could've convincingly conjured up, it rallies against societal divides and also wades through grief. Little is too shaken or stirred, but it all goes down smoothly and delightfully — and with some bite.
It's that time again: time for the Alliance Française French Film Festival to gift Australian movie-goers with its annual cinema showcase. 2022 marks the event's 33rd round of fests, so get ready to watch your way through more than 40 flicks that'll whisk you off to France while you're munching popcorn in your cinema seat. There's no shortage of highlights from this year's complete lineup — including the festival's opening night pick, the 19th-century Paris-set Lost Illusions — but Claire Denis' Fire is easily one of the most exciting films on the bill. It'll play AFFFF straight from the Berlinale, and marks the acclaimed French filmmaker's first release since 2018's exceptional High Life. It also stars her Let the Sunshine In lead Juliette Binoche, with the romantic drama pairing the latter up with French actor Vincent Lindon (Titane) for the first time. Also a standout: Happening, winner of the 2021 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, which adapts Annie Ernaux's autobiographical novel about the rights of women in France in the 60s. It just nabbed filmmaker Audrey Diwan a BAFTA nomination for Best Director, and follows a bright young student who gets pregnant, then sees her options — for her future, and regarding what to do about her situation — quickly dwindle. When AFFFF heads to Melbourne's Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Como. Palace Westgarth, Pentridge Cinema, The Kino and The Astor Theatre between Thursday, March 3–Sunday, April 10 (including its encore sessions), the exceptional Petite Maman also sits at the very top of the fest's must-see list. The latest film from Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Céline Sciamma, it already made a few Australian festival appearances in 2021, and channels the director's trademark sensitivity and empathy into a sci-fi-skewing tale of mothers and daughters that's instantly among Sciamma's best. Other top picks include the latest film in the OSS 117 spy spoof series, OSS 117: From Africa With Love, once again starring The Artist Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin; François Ozon's Everything Went Fine, which sees the Summer of 85 filmmaker tackle the right to die with dignity; Paris, 13th District, a love story from A Prophet and Rust and Bone's Jacques Audiard; and Murder Party, a murder-mystery with big Cluedo vibes. Or, there's also Anaïs in Love, a rom-com about a woman having an affair with a married man but then falling for his wife; bipoic Authentik, about French hip-hop duo Suprême NTM; World War II drama Farewell, Mr Haffmann, as based on the play; and friendship drama The Braves, about two twentysomething women following their dreams to become theatre actors. Plus, AFFFF's retro program is also a cinephile's delight, showcasing the work of actor and filmmaker Alain Delon — including via Purple Noon, which adapts Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr Ripley.
All of the kitchen staples, none of the excessive packaging: that's what's on offer at Mount Zero Olives' returning Zero Waste Warehouse Market. MZO is teaming up with a range of small businesses for another event that's all about encouraging sustainable consumption. Here, you can shop a range of products without the unnecessary plastic — and products will be available in bulk, too, so you can keep fully stocked as the colder months approach. As the name suggests, you'll need to bring your own reusable containers with you come 9am–2pm on Saturday, April 30. Bags, bottles, jars, buckets with lids — if you can put food in it, seal it and take it all home with you, it counts. Here's what you'll be buying and stuffing into those containers: Mount Zero Olives' olives, of course, plus olive oils, pulses and grains. You can also nab some Koji & Co's miso and shio koji, Market Lane's carbon neutral and small-batch roasted espresso or filter coffee, and free samples of oat milk ice cream from Gundowring. And don't forget to walk away with a two litre tub of your favourite Meredith Dairy goat cheese, which are going at $60 each.
Most folks haven't spent time in a prison for the criminally insane. If you live in Australia, odds are that you haven't navigated the American welfare system, either. And, you likely didn't go to a New York City high school — and you probably haven't walked into a Florida domestic violence shelter as well. But watch the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman and you'll feel otherwise. His observational films peer deeply at the institutions they're surveying, and offer viewers the next best thing to being there. It was true of In Jackson Heights, which is set in the culturally diverse NYC neighbourhood. It's the same of Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, which is clearly about the obvious. And it's accurate of Central Park, gloriously so. For the past 55 years, Wiseman has amassed quite the filmography — and a selection of his movies will be flickering across Melbourne's ACMI thanks to a retrospective program in conjunction with the Sydney Film Festival. At It Takes Time: Ten Films by Frederick Wiseman at ACMI, the documentarian's first-ever directorial effort, Titicut Follies, will get a showing. So too will 2020's City Hall. Pretend to spend a whole lot of time staring at the screen, being transported to the US and savouring every second of it. Also on the lineup: 2009's La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet, spreading the Wiseman love beyond American institutions. This ode to the now 92-year-old filmmaker will kick off on Sunday, May 22 and run through till Sunday, September 25.
When word arrived in 2021 that Melbourne was getting a new European-focused film festival, it couldn't have been better news for movie lovers. Europa! Europa is all about showcasing flicks from across the whole continent, so you can see the latest and greatest titles from France, Spain, Italy, Romania and more all at the one event — and, when it debuts at the Classic and Lido cinemas from Friday, February 4–Sunday, February 27, it'll kick off with one mighty fine program. Opening the lineup is The Souvenir Part II, sequel to 2019's exceptional The Souvenir — which means that Europa! Europa is launching with the new team-up between rising star Honor Swinton Byrne and her mother Tilda Swinton. The follow-up picks up where the first movie left off, with Swinton Byrne's aspiring filmmaker attempting to cope with the tragic events of the last flick, all while she shoots her next project. Once again directed by British helmer Joanna Hogg, it'll start the festival in sublime form. (And if you're keen to see the original, it's on the bill as well.) Also bookending the fest: closing night's France from inimitable writer/director Bruno Dumont (Joan of Arc, P'tit Quinquin). A satire of the media industry, it stars No Time to Die and The French Dispatch's Léa Seydoux as a journalist forced to navigate the aftermath of injuring a pedestrian in a traffic accident. Other standouts include 13 films that were submitted as their country's entries for this year's Best International Feature Film Oscar, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina's social-realist fairytale The White Fortress and North Macedonia's Sisterhood, which is about toxic friendships — and a number of titles that wowed last year's Cannes Film Festivals, like Norwegian supernatural thriller The Innocents and the Before Sunrise-esque train-set love story Compartment No 6. Or, there's also Andrea Arnold's (American Honey) Cow, aka the most gripping and moving documentary portrait of a dairy cow's life that you're ever likely to see; Earwig, the English-language debut of acclaimed French director Lucile Hadžihalilovic (Innocence, Evolution); Vortex, which sees Climax filmmaker Gaspar Noé swap his usual wild fare for an Amour-style look at ageing; and No Fucks Given, starring Blue Is the Warmest Colour's Adèle Exarchopoulos as a flight attendant for a low-cost airline.
If all you want for Christmas is a big night of chuckles, then Comedy Republic has you covered. This week, the venue kicks off the second edition of its annual Christmas Pageant, serving up a side-splitting program of nightly laughs from December 16–18 and again from December 21–23. Hosted by the talented Tina del Twist, it'll deliver a fresh lineup of comedy, cabaret and other festive fun each night, with the stage set to welcome some of your favourite local names. Among them, you'll catch a special return show from Sammy J and Randy Feltface, who'll be performing together for the first time in more than two years. Inimitable acts including Nath Valvo, Sami Shah, Ruby Slippers, Michelle Brasier and Scarlett Sohungson will also be making appearances, along with the cheer-inducing Granny Bingo crew. Tickets start from $29 — snap yours up here.
There's something oh-so-relaxing about staring at the sea, even if you're feasting your eyes on the water via the big screen. That's the concept behind the Ocean Film Festival Australia. You can't always spend all your time at the beach, by the river or in a pool — but you can spend an evening peering at the next best thing in a cinema. On two nights in March, the festival will unleash a cinematic feast of water-focused wonders onto the silver screen at Melbourne's Astor Theatre. Head along at 7.15pm on Wednesday, March 23 and Thursday, March 24. Film-wise, viewers will spend time both above and below the ocean's surface thanks to a compilation of shorts from around the world. Expect to chase big waves, explore a range of sea life and get a hefty ocean rush, plus a heap of other sea adventures. The program is united by a love of the ocean, an appreciation of the creatures who dwell in its waters and a curiosity to explore the substance that comprises more than two-thirds of the earth. It's the next best thing to diving in, all without getting wet. [caption id="attachment_840734" align="alignnone" width="1920"] John Kowitz[/caption]
Don't mistake the blaze that starts Nightmare Alley for warmth; in his 11th film, Guillermo del Toro gets chillier than he ever has. A lover of gothic tales told with empathy and curiosity, the Mexican filmmaker has always understood that escapism and agony go hand in hand — in life, and in his fantastical movies — and here, in a carnival noir that springs from William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel and previously reached cinemas in 1947, he runs headfirst into cold, unrelenting darkness. As The Shape of Water movingly demonstrated to Best Picture and Best Director Oscar wins, no one seeks emotional and mental refuge purely for the sake it. They flee from something, and del Toro's life's work has spotted that distress clearly from his first dalliance with the undead in his 1993 debut Cronos. The Divinyls were right: there is indeed a fine line between pleasure and pain, which del Toro keeps surveying; however, Nightmare Alley tells of trying to snatch glimpses of empty happiness amid rampant desolation. That burning house, once home to the skulking Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper, Licorice Pizza), is surrounded by America's stark midwestern landscape circa 1939. Still, the terrain of its now-former occupant's insides is even grimmer, as Nightmare Alley's opening image of Stan dropping a body into a hole in the abode's floor, then striking a match, shows. From there, he descends into the carny world after hopping on a bus with only a bag and a radio, alighting at the end of the line and finding a travelling fair at this feet. Given a job by barker Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe, Spider-Man: No Way Home), he gets by doing whatever's asked, including helping clean up after the geek act — although, even with his ambiguities evident from the outset, stomaching a cage-dwelling man biting the heads off live chickens to entertain braying crowds isn't initially easy. While set in an already-despondent US where the Depression is only just waning, the shadows of the First World War linger and more are soon to fall via World War II, Nightmare Alley still gives Stan flickers of hope. Adapted from the novel by del Toro with feature debutant Kim Morgan, the movie doesn't ever promise light or virtue, but kindness repeatedly comes its protagonist's way in its first half. In fortune-teller Zeena the Seer (Toni Collette, Dream Horse) and her oft-sauced husband and assistant Pete (David Strathairn, Nomadland), Stan gains friends and mentors. He takes to mentalism like he was born to it, and his gift for manipulating audiences — and his eagerness to keep pushing the spiritualism further — is firmly a sign. Soon, it's 1941 and he's rebadged himself as 'The Great Stanton' in city clubs, claiming to speak to the dead in the pursuit of bigger paydays, with fellow ex-carny Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara, Mary Magdalene) as his romantic and professional partner beyond the dustbowl. The tone may be blacker than del Toro's usual mode — positively pitch-black in the feature's unforgettable ending, in fact — but Stan is just doing what the director's main characters tend to: trying to find his own place as he runs from all that haunts him. "My whole life, I been lookin', lookin' for somethin' I'm good at — an' I think I found it," he says, his elation palpable. Although his first altercation with Dr Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett, Don't Look Up) starts with a public scene at one of his swanky gigs, he's equally as thrilled that his crowd-pleasing act attracts her attention, and by the psychologist's suggestion that they team up on wealthy mark Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins, Kajillionaire). But here's the thing about being a grifter, even one who was so recently a drifter: if you're fleecing someone, you're likely being fleeced back in turn. Fox Mulder was right, too. In The X-Files, the David Duchovny-played character's main maxims contradicted each other yet also rang true, because people do want to believe even if they know they should trust no one. That iconic sci-fi series had its own ace carnival episode, and TV also went there in HBO's exceptional early-00s series Carnivàle — and while both pop to mind when watching Nightmare Alley, del Toro doesn't follow slavishly in anyone else's footsteps. As he's done with ghosts (The Devil's Backbone), superheroes (his two Hellboy films), fairytale worlds (Pan's Labyrinth), kaiju (Pacific Rim) and haunted houses (Crimson Peak), he's intensely astute at twisting familiar realms to suit his stylistic flourishes and thematic fascinations, and making it all feel brand new. Nightmare Alley doesn't lack influences, the entire history of film noir that the original flick hails from chief among them, but it's always its own towering beast. Like getting lost in its funhouse sideshows, jewel-hued costumes and the velvety art-deco furnishings of life after the road, this endlessly mesmerising movie is always sordid yet immaculate as well, and creepy yet slinky and pulpy yet ravishing. Pondering a road to hell paved with self-serving intentions, it has a heart of darkness that courses with inky, icy blood, and it's also as alluring a film as del Toro has helmed. Yes, it's a feature that lives the idea that something that draws you in vividly and instantly might be prowled by monsters both hidden and not-so, with Nightmare Alley pumping one of its central notions through every technical touch it can. Aided by cinematographer Dan Laustsen's (Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water) gliding imagery and production designer Tamara Deverell's (the del Toro-produced vampire TV series The Strain) vibrant staging, every frame is visual perfection — not just by looking spectacular, but by so heartily embracing its settings, genre and dissection of humanity's bleakest impulses. Cue a commanding performance by Cooper to match every move that Nightmare Alley makes; thanks to Licorice Pizza and now this, he's having a career-best moment. While never convincingly as youthful as dialogue intimates, he captures the same thing that del Toro constantly interrogates, playing a slippery and unsettling man who knows how to lure people in — it takes time for Stan to segue from barely speaking to smooth patter, but the latter more than does its job — and how to twist a knife to devastating effect. He isn't alone in his stellar portrayal, though, with Collette and Strathairn soulful and tender, Mara beaming with heart, Dafoe hardened and nightmarish, and Jenkins cuttingly crafty. An energetic yet sinister presence who couldn't be more at home in her thorny part, Blanchett could've walked right out of the 30s and 40s herself, too, although that's oh-so-much about del Toro's latest masterpiece all over. Top image: Photo by Kerry Hayes. © 2021, 20th Century Studios, all rights reserved.
It's been 12 years since Inception melted our brains with dreams within dreams within dreams — and El Camino Cantina might've just come up with the margarita equivalent. Already known for its wild marg flavours, and for turning other beloved foodstuffs into frosty 'ritas, it's now swirling its latest batch of varieties together. So you might be sipping an ice block within a margarita within a swirled cocktail, for instance. First, the flavours. Calippos and pine lime splices aren't just for eating now, with El Camino's calypso crush and pine lime Splice varieties interpreting the beloved icy treats. Or, there's also mango strawberry, watermelon mint, and both lychee colada and lychee lagoon. Yes, lychees feature in a big way. Available from Tuesday, February 1–Monday, February 28, this whole margarita special is called Summer of Swirls, and costs $20 for a 15-oz glass, $24 for the 20-oz size and $35 for a tasting paddle of four 220-millilitre glasses. In Melbourne, you'll find them quenching your summer thirst at El Camino in Fitzroy.
UPDATE Thursday, January 27: Due to COVID-19, a number of dates for The Wedding Singer: The Musical Comedy's Melbourne run have been rescheduled, including the January 27 opening night performance. Dates will now run from February 5–20. Head to the website to see which shows are affected and when they've been rescheduled for, and to buy tickets. Classic flicks just keep making the leap to the stage, turning their big-screen tales into song-filled musical adaptations in the process. From 9 to 5 and Muriel's Wedding to Moulin Rouge! and Shrek, a hefty number of beloved movies have done just that — and now Adam Sandler's smash-hit film The Wedding Singer has joined them. The Wedding Singer: The Musical Comedy originally hit Melbourne in 2021 — but one season just wasn't enough. So, it's bringing its tunes to town again, playing Arts Centre Melbourne from Thursday, January 27–Sunday, February 13. If you've seen the movie, then you'll know what you're in for — with The Wedding Singer: The Musical Comedy delivering an all-singing, all-dancing stage show based on the hilarious 90s flick. And it's from the same crew that propelled it to sell-out success on Broadway and across the UK, including the writer of the original movie, Tim Herlihy. This one will yank you right into The Wedding Singer's 80s world of big hair and classic wedding bangers, thanks to a toe-tapping score that's sure to prompt a few hearty crowd singalongs. It retells the story of party-loving wedding singer and wannabe rock star Robbie Hart, who's left stranded at the altar at his own nuptials. Heartbroken, he sets out to destroy every other wedding he's a part of, until a chance encounter with a waitress: Drew Barrymore's character Julia. Now, he just has to win over the girl... and somehow put a stop to her own upcoming marriage along the way.
UPDATE, October 28, 2022: All Quiet on the Western Front opened in Australian cinemas on October 13 and streams via Netflix from October 28. War makes meat, disposable labour and easy sacrifices of us all. In battles for power, as they always are, bodies are used to take territory, threaten enemies and shed blood to legitimise a cause. On the ground, whether in muddy trenches or streaming across mine-strewn fields, war sees the masses rather than the individuals, too — but All Quiet on the Western Front has always been a heartbreaking retort to and clear-eyed reality check for that horrific truth. Penned in 1928 by German World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque, initially adapted for the screen by Hollywood in 1930 and then turned into a US TV movie in 1979, the staunchly anti-war story now gets its first adaptation in its native tongue. Combat's agonies echo no matter the language giving them voice, but Edward Berger's new film is a stunning, gripping and moving piece of cinema. Helming and scripting — the latter with feature first-timers Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell — All My Loving director Berger starts All Quiet on the Western Front with a remarkable sequence. The film will come to settle on 17-year-old Paul Bäumer (astonishing debutant Felix Kammerer) and his ordeal after naively enlisting in 1917, thinking with his mates that they'd be marching on Paris within weeks, but it begins with a different young soldier, Heinrich Gerber (Jakob Schmidt, Babylon Berlin), in the eponymous region. He's thrust into the action in no man's land and the inevitable happens. Then, stained with blood and pierced by bullets, his uniform is stripped from his body, sent to a military laundry, mended and passed on. The recipient: the eager Paul, who notices the past wearer's name on the label and buys the excuse that it just didn't fit him. No one dares waste a scrap of clothing — only the flesh that dons it, and the existences its owners don't want to lose. Paul's parents are against him signing up with the Imperial German Army, but his pals Albert Kropp (Aaron Hilmer, The Island), Franz Müller (Moritz Klaus, Die Chefin) and Ludwig Behm (Adrian Grünewald, also The Island) are doing it, so he's soon forging a signature and receiving his pre-used uniform. You could say that the high schooler and his friends get the shock of their lives once they make it to the front, because they do; however, as the Germans and the French keep tussling over a ridiculously small stretch, making zero impact upon the greater war in the process, Paul and company's lives — shocks and all — couldn't be more expendable. In the unit's first big push, the teenagers' numbers already diminish. Building upon the movie's potent opening, Berger ensures that nothing about war remains romanticised in their gaze. Call it hell, call it a nightmare, call it a senseless throwing away of innocent life and a needless robbing of the future: they all fit. Eighteen months later in November 1918, All Quiet on the Western Front moves to Paul and his compatriots behind the trenches. Trying to survive is still their only aim, and any sense of excitement, passion, enthusiasm and patriotism for their service has long dissipated. Sometimes, with the older and brotherly Stanislaus "Kat" Katczinsky (Albrecht Schuch, Berlin Alexanderplatz), making it through the day involves attempting to steal food from French farms. Sometimes, it means looking for new recruits who haven't shown up. When orders come as they unavoidably do, though, the front is inescapable. Alongside 1917, All Quiet on the Western Front proves a masterclass in conveying armed conflict's relentlessness, terror and futility — from a first-person perspective, and also via lengthy, unbroken, like-you're-there shots steeped in gut- and heart-wrenching wartime brutality. Every second of Berger's feature is harrowing, even its quiet moments of tender camaraderie — including one while sharing a bog over a communal log — and its gleaming glimpses of nature's beauty. Lensed by cinematographer James Friend (Your Honor), the latter would do Terrence Malick proud; his A Hidden Life, about an IRL Austrian farmer-turned-conscientious objector in the Second World War, would make a striking companion piece to this. Inevitability lingers over All Quiet on the Western Front as well, whether or not you've read the novel or seen previous screen versions. Either knowing or predicting where Paul's WWI torment goes doesn't make everything that eventuates any less distressing, but puts viewers in the same position as the officials pulling the strings away from the front lines. The leaders sending their men to their deaths mightn't be distraught, but the watching audience is. In a significant departure from the source material, All Quiet on the Western Front spends time with some of those head honchos: politician Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl, The King's Man), who endeavours to convince German High Command that an armistice is the only move available amid such mounting casualties; and General Friedrich (Devid Striesow, The Last Execution), who sees a ceasefire as treason. Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch (Thibault de Montalembert, Heartstopper) isn't willing to allow any saving face either way, giving the Germans a 72-hour deadline to accept a deal as is — and that's more than enough time for more troops to meet thoroughly escapable ends. While Berger's decision to balance the on-the-ground onslaught with behind-the-scenes manoeuvring builds in moments of respite for his viewers, that occurs viscerally rather than emotionally. Anguish still radiates, as it must, as every passing minute means more soldiers slaughtered. Germany's submission for the 2023 Best International Feature Oscar, All Quiet on the Western Front is a film haunted: by the callous disregard for human lives by power-seekers far removed from any fatal consequences, the wide-eyed fervour and blind faith with which boys pledge themselves to war, the desperation and fear that ripples in the thick of the fray, and oh-so-much death. Its ominous and foreboding score by Volker Bertelmann (Ammonite), often repeating a handful of notes, is equally tortured; neither watching nor listening is an easy experience. Viewing a movie pales in comparison to enduring everything this one depicts, of course, but all that bloodshed, and the evocative performances behind the bleeding, is impossible to forget. Almost a century after it first hit the page, this tale has lost none of its power, urgency or relevance — an indictment upon humanity that Berger's iteration silently but clearly stresses.
On the night of the 12th, the incident that makes that date worthy of a movie's moniker happens quickly, heartbreakingly and horrifyingly so. It's October 2016, in the French Alps-region city of Grenoble, and Clara Royer (Lula Cotton-Frapier, Mixte) is walking home alone after an evening at her best friend Nanie's (Pauline Serieys, Grown Ups). It's 3am, the streets are quiet, and she's giddy with affection, sending a video message telling her pal how much she loves her. All it takes is a hooded figure emerging from the dark, whispering her name, dousing her with liquid and sparking a lighter, and Clara will never arrive home. Before this occurs in The Night of the 12th's opening scenes, director and co-writer Dominik Moll (Only the Animals) shares details just has distressing and dismaying: the French police are tasked with solving 800 murders a year, 20 percent of them never can be and, sadly, the case in this feature is among the latter. It might seem a strange decision, giving away the film's ending before it even begins; however, while The Night of the 12th is about the search for Clara's killer, it's never about the murderer. Instead, as it adapts 30 pages from Pauline Guéna's non-fiction book 18.3 — A Year With the Crime Squad, takes a Zodiac-style procedural approach and opts for a Mindhunter-esque survey of interrogations as well, it makes clear how easy and common it is for situations like this come about, especially in a world where women are slain at men's whims with frequency (then typically blamed if any of their own actions can be wrongly perceived to have put themselves in danger). Alongside David Fincher's serial killer fare, Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder casts a shadow, too, as detective Yohan Vivès (Bastien Bouillon, Jumbo) and his partner Marceau (Bouli Lanners, Nobody Has to Know) scour the area for suspects and answers. "The problem is that any one of them could have done it," Yohan observes after potential culprit after potential culprit fields their queries and flouts their engrained misogyny. Was it the bartender boyfriend (Baptiste Perais, The Companions), who saw Clara as nothing more than a fling on the side? The gym buddy (Jules Porier, Simone Veil, a Woman of the Century) that's guffawing seconds after the cops bring up the killing, all while bragging about a friends-wth-benefits setup? A rapper (Nathanaël Beausivoir, Runaway) knew the police would come calling because he wrote a song about setting Clara alight, while an awkward local squatter (Benjamin Blanchy, Spiral) welcomes the attention. By the time that her dalliance with an older man (Pierre Lottin, Les Harkis) with a violent past and convictions for domestic abuse comes up, one of Yohan and Marceau's colleagues is joking about Clara's taste in men. Judgemental views about women don't just fester among the interviewees; how many cases have been hindered by such prejudiced perspectives, The Night of the 12th silently gives viewers cause to wonder. Played as meticulous and passionate by Bouillon, the newly promoted Yohan isn't one of those chauvinist officers. More prone to splashing his feelings around in Lanners' hands, neither is Marceau. The film's central duo is dutiful and dedicated, and their efforts turn The Night of the 12th into a chronicle of devoted and hard-working people doing what they're supposed to — and well, and with care — even if viewers instantly know they won't achieve their desired outcome. In the script by Moll and his regular co-scribe Gilles Marchand (Eastern Boys), both men find the case impacting them in different ways, though, including the fact that their obsessive endeavours don't and won't wrap up the case. Amid chasing leads, making enquiries and sitting down with the men in Clara's life, Yohan lives a spartan existence in his spick-and-span apartment and in his relationships. Marceau is navigating a marriage breakdown, and his emotions run high personally and professionally. It might seem strange, too, crafting a movie about a murdered young woman that's actually about men. (If that one word hadn't already been used as a film title this year, also for a Cannes-premiering flick about the terrors that haunt a patriarchal society, it would've fit here). But as Moll puts it, and as won't come as a surprise to anyone watching for a second, The Night of the 12th's focus on male cops and assailants is simply and mournfully realistic. Still, his feature is as committed to ensuring that Clara is never a mere statistic as its main duo are to trying to find the person responsible for her death. The reality this story is based on has made her one of many unsolved cases, but that Clara lived, loved and was loved is never in doubt within the movie's frames. (Among the picture's many supporting performances, Cotton-Frapier's leaves an imprint.) Also indisputable: Nanie's contention that her friend only died, and in such an appalling manner, because she was female; plus Yohan's reflection to a magistrate (Anouk Grinberg, Deception) overseeing the proceedings years later that "there is something seriously amiss in the relationship between men and women." The Night of the 12th's details express these sentiments anyway, and Moll prefers to let the story and its minutiae do the talking, but overtly stating such notions never feels forceful. That's the film from start to finish, in fact, because this is a richly elaborate piece of cinema that lets its presence be known in a lived-in way, including via Patrick Ghiringhelli's (Only the Animals) crisp cinematography and Olivier Marguerit's (Méduse) brooding score. The Night of the 12th is a feature to sleuth along with, as Moll's second whodunnit in a row, but it's also a picture to sink into as its stark truths inhabit everything seen and heard. Three choices, all contributing to much of the striking imagery, perhaps encapsulate this patiently powerful affair best — and all that it aims to convey. Yohan and Marceau's interrogations span a varied lineup of spaces, from dank bedrooms and crumbling shacks to bars and airy apartments, inherently stressing how pervasively threats to Clara's existence have lurked. A moodily lit velodrome gives Yohan his sole outlet from the case, offering a much-needed physical coping mechanism, and all that pedalling around and around is innately symbolic. Then there's the mountainous Grenoble and the Maurienne valley setting overall, moved from Versailles where Guéna spent a year in the Criminal Investigation Department, and not just naturally gorgeous but picture perfect and easy fodder for scenic French holiday dreams. Something atrocious, complex and unsolvable happens there, just as it can and does anywhere — and shaking that, and the tightly wound, deeply piercing movie overall, isn't easy.
"If nothing came, we just hadn't looked properly." Partway through The Velvet Queen, writer Sylvain Tesson utters these lyrical words about a specific and patient quest; however, they echo far further than the task at hand. This absorbing documentary tracks his efforts with wildlife photographer Vincent Munier to see a snow leopard — one of the most rare and elusive big cats there is — but much in the entrancing film relates to life in general. Indeed, while the animals that roam the Tibetan plateau earns this flick's focus, as does the sweeping landscape itself, Munier and his fellow co-director and feature first-timer Marie Amiguet have made a movie about existence first and foremost. When you peer at nature, you should see the world, as well as humanity's place in it. You should feel the planet's history, and the impact that's being made on its future, too. Sensing exactly that with this engrossing picture comes easily — and so does playing a ravishing big-screen game of Where's Wally?. No one wears red-and-white striped jumpers within The Velvet Queen's frames, of course. The Consolations of the Forest author Tesson and world-renowned shutterbug Munier dress to blend in, trying to camouflage into their sometimes-dusty, sometimes-snowy, always-rocky surroundings, but they aren't the ones that the film endeavours to spy. The creatures that inhabit Tibet's craggy peaks have evolved to blend in, so attempting to see many of them is an act of persistence and deep observation — and locking eyes on the snow leopard takes that experience to another level. Sometimes, pure movement gives away a critter's presence. On one occasion, looking back through images of a perched falcon offers unexpected rewards. As lensed by Amiguet (La vallée des loups), Munier and assistant director Léo-Pol Jacquot, The Velvet Queen draws upon hidden cameras, too, but so much of Tesson and Munier's mission is about sitting, watching and accepting that everything happens in its own time. Letting what comes come — and acknowledging that some things simply won't ever occur at all — isn't an easy truth to grapple with. Nonetheless, it's also one of this contemplative feature's achievements, even though it's a type of detective story through and through. Tesson and Munier follow clues to search for the snow leopard, moving positions and setting up blinds wherever they think will score them their sought-after footage. In the process, they learn a lesson as all sleuths do. As they face the possibility that they might not be successful, which Tesson's perceptively navel-gazing narration explains, The Velvet Queen becomes a mindfulness course in filmic form. It has something astonishing that all the Calm, Headspace and similar apps in the world don't, though: the film's on-the-ground recordings (well, 5000-metres-up recordings), which show why finding peace with life's ebbs and flows is all that we can really hope for. Accompanied by a stirring score from Australian icons and lifelong bandmates Warren Ellis and Nick Cave — their latest contribution to cinema on a resume that includes The Proposition, The Road, Hell or High Water and Wind River before it — it's no wonder that The Velvet Queen's philosophising voiceover also notes that "waiting was a prayer". It's similarly unsurprising that Tesson penned a book, The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet, based on the trip captured in the documentary. In fact, if you're the kind of person who keeps their peepers peeled for feline life in any new neighbourhood you visit, or even if you're just strolling around your own, this feature firmly understands. More than that, it one-ups you, while also connecting with the act of scouring and seeking as much as the potential joys of getting what you wish for. To stress the point, poetic missives about being content with what you have are peppered through as well. Think: Werner Herzog (The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft) meets Terrence Malick (A Hidden Life), complete with the penchant for whispering that's such an established part of the latter's work. Keeping a hushed vocal tone is wholly justified when you're trying not to disturb nature, however, which is also key among The Velvet Queen's goals. It may not boast the descriptive and scientific run-through of a David Attenborough (Prehistoric Planet)-hosted nature doco, but this film is committed to taking in its worshipped namesake and the plateau's other residents in all their innate and inherent glory. Most of the narration is precisely deployed as a result, letting the movie's visuals do the bulk of the work — but helping, emphasising and augmenting what's already a ruminative mood. What majestic and magnificent imagery it is, too, especially when Amiguet, Munier and Jacquot are standing back, taking in the land as far and wide as the lens can see, and letting the audience do the spotting along with them. A sense of distance radiates throughout the movie, visibly showing the remove that Munier and Tesson remain at for their safety, and to increase their chances of seeing a snow leopard — and also underscoring that chasm between humanity and nature that Tesson talks about. When The Velvet Queen does zoom closer during its 92-minute duration, the end product is similarly breathtaking. Scenes of a Pallas' cat in pounce mode give off a mischievous vibe — again, the connections with everyday life are plain to see; anyone with a cat in their lives will recognise the links — and a sequence of portrait-like telephoto-lens closeups belongs on gallery walls. Add The Velvet Queen to the ranks of meditative and transportive cinema, alongside films such as Jennifer Peedom's River and Mountain, for instance — features that know the power of communing with our environment and its vast array of other inhabitants. Add it to the list of such movies that look on in spellbinding awe but never with simplicity, including when surveying the complexities of making this very documentary. Add it, as well, to the always-needed reminders about interacting with the tangible over the digital, knowing how existence's cycles affect us all, finding serenity where and how you can, and accepting life's unshakeable certainties. The Velvet Queen doesn't always need lines as flowery as "prehistory wept, and each tear was a yak" or "for me, a dream; for him, a rendezvous" to go with it, but it's always a film of beauty, feeling, insight and inspiration.
UPDATE, March 13, 2023: Navalny is available to stream via Docplay, YouTube Movies, iTunes and Prime Video. Man on Wire did it with The Walk, The Times of Harvey Milk sparked Milk and Dogtown and Z-Boys brought about Lords of Dogtown. Werner Herzog went from Little Dieter Needs to Fly to Rescue Dawn, too, and the Paradise Lost films were followed by Devil's Knot. One day, Navalny will join this growing list. Documentaries inspiring dramas isn't new, and Alexei Navalny's life story would scream for a biopic even if director Daniel Roher (Once Were Brothers) hadn't gotten there first — and so compellingly, or in such an acclaimed way, winning the 2022 Sundance Film Festival's Audience Award for its US doco competition in the process. When you're a Russian opposition leader crusading against corruption and Vladimir Putin, there's going to be a tale to tell. Usually only Hollywood screenwriters can conjure up a narrative like the one that Navalny has been living, though, typically in a Bourne-style spy thriller. Actually, John le Carré, Ian Fleming or Tom Clancy might've come up with something similar; still, even the former, the author responsible for such espionage efforts such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, could've struggled to imagine details this staggering. Creating a fictional character as complicated, captivating and candid as Navalny's namesake would've also been a stretch. Indeed, there are two key aspects to this engrossing doco: everything that it explores about its subject's life, especially in recent years, which is a dream for a documentary filmmaker; and the engaging pro-democracy advocate himself. Often Navalny chats to camera about his experiences, demanding and earning the viewer's attention. In a movie that doesn't overlook his flaws, either, he's equally riveting when he's searching for a crucial truth. Another stark fact haunts Navalny from the outset: it was never guaranteed that he'd be alive to see the film come to fruition, let alone reach an audience. The outspoken Putin critic, lawyer and dissident confronts that grim reality early on, giving Roher the holy grail of soundbites. "Let's make a thriller out of this movie,' he says. "And if I'm killed, let's make a boring movie about memory," he continues. In August 2020, Navalny nearly didn't make it, after all. In an incident that understandably attracted international headlines and just as expectedly sits at the core of this documentary, he was poisoned while flying from Tomsk in Siberia to Moscow. The toxin: a Novichok nerve agent. The instantly suspected culprits: the Kremlin, as part of an assassination plot that he survived. No matter whether you're aware of the minutiae from press coverage when it happened — or of his treatment by Russia prior or since, in a country that hasn't taken kindly to his campaign against its president — or you're stepping through his tale for the first time while watching, Navalny couldn't be more gripping as it gets sleuthing as well. Among other things, it's an attempted-murder mystery. That fateful flight was diverted to Omsk because Navalny was so violently and deathly ill due to the Soviet-era toxin. His stint in hospital was tense, and evacuating him to safety in Berlin was never guaranteed. Although the poisoning is just one aspect of his story, and of this astonishing and anger-inciting film, identifying the people responsible is firmly one of Navalny's quests and Navalny's focuses. With extraordinarily intimate access, befitting his central figure's frankness and determination, Roher shot the aftermath of the incident as it unfolded; one moment in particular must be seen to be believed. Navalny takes up help from Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist from Netherlands-based group Bellingcat (or "a nice Bulgarian nerd with a laptop" as he's called here). As the evidence mounts, they start contacting the men they've worked out were involved. Most calls end promptly. Then, when Navalny impersonates a Kremlin higher-up, phoning to get answers as to why the plot went wrong, answers spill (answers that involve Navalny's underwear, in fact). With apologies to the most skilled screenwriters and authors that've plied their trade in spy narratives, this is an exchange so wild that it can only be true, as Navalny's audience witnesses while perched on the edge of their seats. This is a compulsive, revelatory, fast-paced movie, as directed with agility by Roher. There's as much of a pulse to its early summary of Navalny's career, including what led him to become such a target, as there is to his to-camera discussions and the unravelling of the Novichok ordeal. News footage and imagery shot on mobile phones help fill in the gaps with the latter, but the as-it-happens calls — and the digging before it — are so suspenseful and so deftly shot by cinematographer Niki Waltl (In the Bunker) and spliced by editors Maya Hawke (Janis: Little Girl Blue) and Langdon Page (Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures) that it's hard to see how any dramatisation could top it. Composers Marius de Vries (CODA) and Matt Robertson (a music programmer on Cats) add a nerve-shredding score, too, as part of the doco's polish. Navalny doesn't need it, as seeing its subject's flight back to Russia in January 2021 after recuperating to Germany — a flight back to charges and imprisonment — also makes plain, but the whole package is expertly assembled. There's still more in the absorbing documentary's sights, such as Navalny's relationships with his ever-supportive wife Yulia and children Dasha and Zakhar; his social-media following and the well-oiled flair for getting his message out there, including via TikTok; the charisma that's helped him strike such a wide-ranging chord; and his fondness of playing Call of Duty. Navalny is a frightening portrait of Russia, an account of battling its oppressive status quo and a layered character study alike — and, smartly and astutely, that means looking at the man in its moniker's past approach to consolidating opposition to Putin as well. Navalny has previously thrown in with far-right groups to amass a cohort against the Russia leader, a move that warrants and gets a thorough line of questioning, resulting in frustration on his part. As it lays bare what it involves to confront authoritarian power, demand freedom and fight against the state while putting your life on the line — be it in inspiring or dubious-at-best ways — this film has to be unflinching: it couldn't be as complex as it is otherwise.
Here's some news you won't read in Lady Whistledown's latest pamphlet — and a reason to frock up like you're in Regency-era London, too. In February 2023, for one day and night only, the Plaza Ballroom is playing host to party that'll whisk you back in time: the wholly unofficial but still appropriately themed The Ton Ball. If you're keen to be the talk of the ton, mark Saturday, November 5 in your diary — and prepare for the social soiree of the season. If you've binged your way through two seasons of the Netflix hit already and you're excited about more (and a Queen Charlotte prequel), consider this your chance to pretend you've stepped right into the series. On the agenda: dancing to tunes played by a string quartet, tucking into four hours of food and booze, playing games of chance, doing some life drawing and (probably) gossiping in corners while looking fabulous. Melburnians can do just that from 7–11pm, with tickets costing $235 per person. The best way to prepare: watching Bridgerton, of course. Although, surely The Ton Ball won't involve powerful families trying to marry off their children and scandal sheets getting everyone a-tutting. It will let you party like you're a duke or duchess, though. Images: Melissa Hobbs Business Photography.
New year, new in-person film festival from Static Vision. Obviously, 2022 isn't new at all now — it's September — but Metamorphoses follows 2021's Dreamscapes in enticing Melbourne movie lovers with the kind of program that you won't see elsewhere. The theme this time: transformation, as well as evolution, adaptation, shifting and changing. We'd hazard a guess that whittling down the possible movie picks into a four-day program must've been a tricky (but rewarding) process. Once again, the film collective is unfurling its curated pictures at Lido Cinemas in Hawthorn — this time, from Thursday, October 20–Sunday, October 23. Seventeen features and ten shorts will get a-flickering, including ten Australian premieres, kicking off with a 40th-anniversary screening of Paul Schrader's 1982 gem Cat People. From there, standouts include Lux Aeterna, which hails from Climax and Enter the Void's Gaspar Noé, and was funded by Yves Saint Laurent. The provocative filmmaker never holds back — see: the aforementioned titles, and the controversial Irreversible — but this time he's emulating a real-time witch-burning. Or, you can catch a fan-edited and remastered version of Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, which was designed to go along with Daft Punk's 2001 album Discovery; fame-chasing satire Sick of Myself, which played at both Cannes and Fantastic Fest; The Sacred Spirit, about a Valencian ufology cult; and Slamdance fellowship-winner Therapy Dogs, which sees 17-year old filmmaker Ethan Eng make a high-school diary film. The list goes on; however, with Tales from the Gimli Hospital Redux, Static Vision will show Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's (The Green Fog) 1988 feature film debut — while improvised road movie-slash-romance Magnetic Fields was Greece's entry for the 2022 Best International Feature Film Academy Award, and won five Greek Oscars.
El Camino Cantina likes tacos, which isn't new news to anyone in Melbourne that's hit up the chain over the past few years. But on one specific day, it's ramping that taco affection up a notch and giving the people what we want. If you're heading to a Tex-Mex bar and eatery, then you're clearly after a taco feast — and, ideally, you want them cheap. Enter World Taco Day's all-day $1 taco special, which is exactly what it sounds like. Head by on Tuesday, October 4 and you can tuck into a highly affordable feed in Fitzroy. Bookings are essential, and the deal runs from open till close — but there is a caveat. You'll need to buy a drink to get up to five $1 tacos. Fancy more? Then get another beverage. El Camino Cantina is known for its OTT margaritas, after all.
No director can make movies forever, but it always felt like the one and only Jean-Luc Godard just might. He helped shape an entire film movement that completely changed the face of French cinema back in the 60s. His last release, The Image Book, worked its way around the festival circuit as recently as 2018. That's 58 years from his first big-screen outing to his last. To the sorrow of cinephiles everywhere, Godard passed away in September 2022 at the age of 91 — and ACMI is processing that news in the only way possible. How do you say farewell to auteur as iconic, iconoclastic and influential as this? By letting his films wash over you in a cinema, naturally. That's what Goodbye to Godard is all about from Thursday, September 22–Sunday, October 30, with sessions of six masterpieces from the filmmaker's French New Wave period on the bill. It all starts, as Godard's silver-screen career so famously and wonderfully did, with Breathless — the ultimate crime-gone-wrong movie, and an inspiration to countless others over the past 62 years. It screens multiple times across Goodbye to Godard's run, as does the Brigitte Bardot-starring Contempt. Also on the bill, showing just once: sci-fi classic Alphaville, crime caper Pierrot le Fou, satirical romantic drama Masculin Féminin (starring French New Wave acting great Jean-Pierre Léaud) and musical rom-com A Woman is a Woman. Tickets are available per session, or in three-film passes.
If you're a fan of musical theatre, then you know the name Jonathan Larson, the creator and composer behind smash-hit production Rent. And, you likely know his story, too, with the playwright and lyricist passing away at the age of 35 on the day that that now-huge show premiered its first off-Broadway preview performance, and never seeing the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning phenomenon that it would become. Before that, Larson also created another musical called tick, tick…BOOM!; however, it didn't chart the same path. Instead, the semi-autobiographical piece was performed as a solo work before his death, following a character called Jon who worried that he'd made the wrong decision by chasing his dream of becoming a composer. After Larson died, tick, tick…BOOM! was reimagined as a three-actor show, then made its way from off-Broadway to off-West End, as well as West End itself. And, in 2021, it took the leap to the screen, too, courtesy of Netflix — in a film directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and starring Andrew Garfield, the latter turning in an Oscar-nominated performance as Larson. That's a whole lot of history behind the latest big musical announcement Down Under: that tick, tick…BOOM! will make its Australian mainstage debut in 2023. That run will kick off at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre from Wednesday, February 1–Sunday, February 5, 2023. If you're wondering about tick, tick…BOOM!'s narrative, the rock musical is set in 1990, with promising young composer Jon as its focus. He's almost 30, living in New York City, and life as an artist isn't turning out as he planned — so he has to decide what to do next. The production is an ode to theatre and a tribute to New York, too, and has kept proving popular since it premiered in its current format off-Broadway in 2001. Playing Larson in Australia: multiple Logie-winner Hugh Sheridan (Packed to the Rafters, House Husbands, Five Bedrooms), with Elenoa Rokobaro (Rent) as Susan, Finn Alexander (Urinetown) as Michael, and Sheridan Adams (Cruel Intentions: The 90s Musical) and Andrew Coshan (A View From a Bridge) also among the cast. Also, tick, tick…BOOM!'s upcoming Aussie seasons will be produced by Adrian Storey from StoreyBoard Entertainment (Chess the Musical, Barnum, Follies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and directed by Tyran Parke (Chess the Musical, Barnum, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George). Check out the trailer for the Netflix film below: Updated October 31, 2022.
While we'd happily celebrate our furry wet-nosed mates every day of the year, there's one date that's particularly primed for it — and that's International Dog Day, on August 26. And doggos of Melbourne's inner northwest have extra cause for celebration this year, as Moonee Ponds Central hosts a weeklong fiesta dedicated just to them. The inaugural Bark Fest takes over the precinct from Saturday, August 20–Saturday, August 27, with a jam-packed program of happenings to delight both humans and their four-legged pals. Fur-shionistas can enter the Best-Dressed Photo Competition for the chance to score a $1000 Coles voucher, with the shopping centre donating $1 to Second Chance Animal Rescue for every entry. Meanwhile, doggy divas will be lining up to snap a family selfie at the pet photo pop-up, to be in with a shot at winning $250 to spend at My Pet Warehouse. On August 26 and 27, trainee pups from the Australian Border Force will be giving out cuddles while also looking for new foster parents. Right throughout the week, precinct retailers will be slinging pet-focused goodies ranging from pooch outfits to dog snacks. And while you're there, be sure to pick up a free Bark Fest doggy bag filled with treats courtesy of My Pet Warehouse.
Being a State Premier seems like it'd be a pretty tough gig at the best of times, let alone when you're navigating your people through a full-blown global pandemic with no rule book. So it's safe to say Victorian leader Daniel Andrews could probably use a big ol' socially distanced hug right about now. And that's exactly what he's about to get...give or take a few hundred thousand. One Melbourne fan by the name of Christian Bernstein is spreading the love by creating a Facebook event simply titled Give Dan Andrews a Virtual Hug. Dan devotees are invited to RSVP before Sunday, August 16 as a contact-free show of support for our Premier, letting the guy know he's got a whole bunch of people in his corner. And it is quite a crew, with already more than 182,000 people clicking either 'Going' or 'Interested'. In the event details, Bernstein also encourages people to send a virtual cuddle out to Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, though we're sure he's already pretty well stocked on validation given this new line of products emblazoned with his own face. Top image: Asia Society via Flickr.
With its cheesy slices and hearty bowls of pasta, Matteo's Pizza Parlour has become one of Highett's dinnertime go-to's. But now, the restaurant is turning its attentions to the lunchtime crowd, with a new daytime takeaway window popping up at the Railway Parade venue. Open 11am to 2pm, Thursday through Sunday, Matteo's Sandwich Shop is slinging an Italian-leaning menu of hefty sambos, salads and calzone. You might find yourself sinking those teeth into a soft ciabatta filled with crisp porchetta, broccolini, chilli and asiago; the panko-crumbed chicken cotoletta on a soft milk bun; or, perhaps, a salt and pepper calamari panini finished with kewpie mayo and iceberg. Meanwhile, calzone are fried to order, made on Matteo's signature three-day fermented Neapolitan-style dough. There's a vegan-friendly mix of endive, olives, capers, chilli and pinenuts, and another layered with mozzarella, ricotta and casalingo salami. You can grab a lunchtime coffee, to, courtesy of Co-Owner Matt Ward's own roastery, These Days Coffee Roasting. Under stage four restrictions, only one person per household can leave the house, once a day, to get essentials within five kilometres. So, this pop-up is just for those who live nearby. Matteo's Sandwich Shop is open from 11am–2pm Thursday–Sunday.
Hamer Hall's doors might be physically closed to the public, but its music vault is very much open. And it's pumping out a cracking lineup of virtual gigs to see you happily through the next few weeks of lockdown. The Vault Sessions are now streaming every Thursday evening, featuring a curation of much-loved local artists teleported right to your living room. Arts Centre Melbourne has assembled a top-notch collection of home-grown talent for this weekly digital concert series, next featuring the blissful sounds of rising star singer-songwriter Alice Skye, on Thursday, July 23. The Wergaia and Wemba Wemba woman has been throwing down the hits since her 2018 debut album Friends With Feelings and is gearing up for the release of her next Jen Cloher-produced album later this year. There'll be more gold to follow, with Sydney hip hop artist Ziggy Ramo taking the stage on Thursday, July 30 and the legendary Cash Savage and The Last Drinks streaming on Thursday, August 6. The virtual gigs are free to watch and will kick around online for two weeks after the initial stream goes live. And best of all, you won't have to battle anyone for a front-row seat. Images: Teresa Noble
You're watching a movie and, suddenly, you spot a familiar location. It isn't just a place you've spied on-screen countless times before — it's somewhere you've been, because it's local. This mightn't happen as often for audiences in Australia as it must for viewers in Europe and the US (or even for viewers who've visited Europe and the US), but we all know the feeling of seeing one of our favourite haunts on the big screen. And, thanks to a hefty number of movies lately, Victorians should know this sensation well. In recent years, flicks as varied as Crackerjack, Ali's Wedding and Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears have been shot locally. So have Romulus, My Father, The Dressmaker and Ride Like a Girl. And if you'd like to know more about them from the folks that made them happen, then you'll want to tune into the new online Victoria on Film series. You won't be watching the movies, but rather hearing from the likes of Osamah Sami, Don Hany and Helana Sawires from Ali's Wedding; Essie Davis, Nathan Page and Isabella Yena from Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears; and Rachel Griffiths, Michelle Payne, Stevie Payne and Teresa Palmer from Ride Like a Girl. A new interview will hit the Victoria Together website every fortnight from 6.30pm on Saturday, September 26, with Shane Jacobson and Beverley Wang rotating hosting duties. It all kicks off with with Mick Molloy and Judith Lucy Crackerjack, should you be in the mood for something light — which we all are this year. And, as well as all of the above live-action films, delightful animation Mary and Max will also feature, via interviews with interviews Eric Bana and director Adam Elliot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVdivjF-9nw Victoria on Film kicks off at 6.30pm on Saturday, September 26, then runs fortnightly — watch along via the Victoria Together website.
We’ve got such a strong, stereotypical sense of what 'circus' is: lion-tamers, ringmasters, and glitter galore. So coming to S with no previous experience of seeing Circa’s work, I’m blown away by the company’s approach — one that puts the spotlight on the sheer, immediate physicality of acrobatics by stripping away the trappings of the big top. What’s remarkable is that it manages to do all this without losing circus’ fundamental appeal. Far from closed off, emotionally short-circuited contemporary dance, the movement on show is joyous and often playful. Loosely themed around the sinuous curves of the letter S, the work is scored by a combination of recorded music from Kimmo Pohjonen, Samuli Kosminen, and the Kronos Quartet, together with occasionally incorporating live amplification. As well as book-ending the show, the mics are used to foreground the effort and strain that the acrobatics place upon the performers’ bodies. In one sequence, Casey Douglas has microphones strapped to his chest and the inside of his mouth before being pummelled by Kimberley Rossi. Although most of S is made up of scenes in which the entire ensemble perform together, director Yaron Lifschitz breaks up the action with these more intimate moments, either complete scenes as above or having some performers (especially Brittannie Portelli) find moments within the action to inject moments of play. The brave display of acrobatics on show wows the opening night audience, made up largely of Melbourne’s close-knit circus community. Based in Brisbane, Circa were founded in 2006; since then they’ve toured in 29 countries, and at the beginning of this year they picked up the prestigious Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award. With a show like this, it's easy to see why.
As we walked through the streets of North Melbourne, my date turned to me and asked, “Is this actually a fight club you’re taking me to? How is this even a thing?” I had no real answer for him. Although I had done some research, I hadn't been able to find much information disclosing the nature of the event itself (first rule of fight club etc) and now, even after attending, I still don’t know if I could answer his question. Once arriving at the venue, we sat on a large platform stage and waited. Two charming men from Amsterdam (New Heroes company director Lucas de Man and performer Michael Bloos) leapt up on stage, and with the help of a good ol’ PowerPoint display, began by listing social and entrepreneurial movements made in recent years by young people. It was more entertaining than you think, but how it tied into the rest of the show still slightly baffles me. The evening progressed with re-enactments of scenes from Fight Club and before long they had half the audience signing waivers. So began the fighting part of the night — seriously, it was like “Brad Pitt this, Edward Norton that, LET’S KICK EACH OTHER". Admittedly it was exciting, and despite being a generally unfit and passive person, I did feel the urge to join the action. One after another, Melbourne hipsters took to the mats and wrestled each other. As entertaining as it was, it was difficult to understand how they were going to give the evening any more meaning than 'sometimes beating someone up feels good' and to be honest, I have a real issue with that mentality. Following the fighting, Bloos and de Man attempted to workshop what felt like a sort of self help-anarchistic-literary appreciation-arts student-cult meeting. Every three minutes we were being told that the world is crumbling around us and the only way to truly be ourselves was to beat each other up. Herein lies the major fault with the show. It seeks to address serious social and political issues in an inspiring and assertive manner, but somewhere between being told the '90s were better because you could blow shit up and Darwinism limits self expression (okay, that was an audience member, but still) it felt like a poorly orchestrated student protest. The show ended with a strange and unexpected 'wherever you go, there you are' style activity, which added to the confusion of the whole evening. On the walk home, my date and I spoke about the events of the night, and while the point of the performance had been lost on us, we still appreciated whatever it was we had just been a part of. If nothing else, I can guarantee this is the best people-watching event going 'round. This event appeared as one of our top picks for the 2014 Next Wave Festival. See the full list here.
The best thing about festivals like Next Wave is that art pops up all over the place. A drink with friends at the festival club can easily turn into a makeshift audience for a roaming performer; at the Fringe club I was even pulled into a closet for an intimate one-on-one performance. But Next Wave is going one step further and taking art to the corridors, stairwells and lobbies of venues all over the city — furthermore, it's art you can't even see. From May 1 - 11, artists will be hiding distinctive aroma diffusers around their shows, capitalising on the strong link between scent and memory. Two weeks after your festival experience you'll smell an apple and cinnamon pie and suddenly feel compelled to talk about a particular artwork. Magic! This event originally appeared as one of our top picks for the 2014 Next Wave Festival. See the full list here.
New media artworks about "the internet" and "the Facebook" and the "total lack of privacy in our networked society leading to a enormous cultural and artistic shift in our generation" can often be a bit naff. Everything always leads to Skynet references and inevitable doomsday predictions. What's refreshing about this show is its light tone. Can We Play the Internet is a joint exhibition at West Space featuring the work of Janine DeFeo & Paul Zaba (pictured), Andrea Buren & Eleonora Sovrani, Angus Tarnawsky & Nathan Liow and Ilya Milstein. If you've ever wanted to see Google Image search results printed and mounted on all four walls of a white room, this is the show for you. This event originally appeared as one of our top picks for the 2014 Next Wave Festival. See the full list here
Somewhere, between the heady romantic drama of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise trilogy and the good-natured bawdiness of the American Pie franchise, sit the films of Cédric Klapisch. Released in 2002, Spanish Apartment first introduced us to Xavier Rousseau (Romain Duris), a French university student on exchange in Barcelona. Four years later, Russian Dolls picked up with Xavier again, as he continued to search for love and direction in an increasingly complicated world. Chinese Puzzle turns the series into a trilogy, although Klapisch ensures the story is more or less accessible to newcomers. Now an author at the tail-end of his 30s, Xavier is marginally more mature than the last time we saw him, although no more lucky in the romance department. As a matter of fact, the film begins just in time for us to witness his marriage, to Englishwoman Wendy (Kelly Reilly), fall apart. When she takes their kids to live in Manhattan, Xavier decides to cross the Atlantic as well, crashing with his old friend Isabelle (Cécile de France) and her new girlfriend, Ju (Sandrine Holt), until he can find accommodation of his own. As with the previous films, Klapisch keeps the tone buoyant, livening Xavier's voiceover musings — on life, love, family, ageing and the cultural stewpot in which all of us are ingredients — with plenty of visual whimsy. Xavier's hunt for an apartment unfolds through a montage of Google Map graphics, even as the ghosts of German philosophers pop by to offer him relationship advice. French DJs Loik Dury and Christopher Mink aka Kraked Unit provide the score, a joyously infectious mix of jazz, hip hop and soul. For all its entertaining energy, Chinese Puzzle can feel rather messy. The film's multitudinous story threads — including a green-card marriage scheme, sperm donation and Xavier's lingering affection for his old girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tautou) — frequently get tangled up, or are left idle for long stretches of time. Meanwhile, at least one major subplot, involving Isabelle's attractive babysitter (Flore Bonaventura), gets no resolution at all. Then again, perhaps the film's lack of direct drive is a reflection of its protagonist's headspace. Xavier is by no means perfect, but he has only the best intentions and is difficult not to root for. Likewise, Chinese Puzzle is so breezy and charming that it's easy to overlook its faults. https://youtube.com/watch?v=M2a8vuQABd8
Zoe Coombs Marr is quite the multi-tasker. You may know her as part of performance trio POST, who recently drenched Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre in fake blood with their gory death scene-extravaganza Oedipus Schmoedipus. This time around, the award-winning comedian will be flying solo in Melbourne to star in DAVE, a standup drag parody she wrote with Charlie Garber. Given Coombs Marr's long-standing passion for the genre (she eschewed schoolies in favour of staging a drag musical), it sounds like material she'll handle with aplomb. In a self-professed wacky show that describes itself as "a hysterical endurance drag adventure into the dark pits of Dave," Coombs Marr transforms herself — with deliberate transparency — into a bearded stand-up comic dude. A dystopian version of the Aussie everyman, the character is inspired by Coombs Marr's experiences as a female comedian in the male-dominated realm of standup. There's talk of pizza, lesbians and cats. And there may, or may not, be another sterling example of onstage death technique. Last year's preview run of DAVE sold out and scored some five star write up's from those in the know, with The Age celebrating it as "A comedy turducken of gross-out gags, absurdist humour and sharply observed parody." No, we're not explaining what a "turducken" is; just see the show. For more coverage of this year's MICF, see our rolling festival diary.
A neighbourhood dispute turns into all-out suburban warfare in Bad Neighbours, the raunchy, raucous, rapid-fire new comedy from director Nicholas Stoller (The Five-Year Engagement, Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Adding the word 'bad' to its title in Australia in order to avoid confusion with a certain iconic soap opera, the film marks another sure hit for one-man comic industry Seth Rogen, who slots comfortably into another role that basically amounts to playing himself. Yet it's Rogen's co-stars Rose Byrne and Zac Efron who are the movie's biggest standouts. Indeed, while the advertising material sells Bad Neighbours as a strictly Rogen versus Efron affair, the film is very much a triple act, with the more dramatically inclined Byrne clearly relishing the chance to cut loose. With a cast game for just about anything, Bad Neighbours accelerates from one over-the-top set-piece to the next. It's ridiculous, juvenile and very, very funny. Rogen and Byrne play Mac and Kelly Radner, a newlywed couple with a bouncing baby daughter, whose suburban peace is threatened when a college fraternity moves in next door. Chief dude-bro Teddy Sanders (Efron) seems agreeable enough at first, promising to keep the noise to a minimum and even inviting the couple to the frat's inaugural blowout, where a great time is had by all. But when the partying starts up again the following night and continues into the morning, the Radners decide to call the cops. From there, things escalate quickly. Teddy swears vengeance, and soon the two households are exacting increasingly crass and elaborate acts of sabotage in an attempt to bring the other side down. Screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien pack a staggering number of gags into the film's tight 90-minute runtime, although arguably the more impressive feat is that the vast majority of them land. Stoller allows his cast ample room to improvise, but never to the extent that the movie loses momentum. Frankly, the performances are all the better for it. Byrne, in particular, seems to feed off the film's breakneck energy, the Australian actress frequently stealing the show from her more seasoned on-screen husband. Likewise, Efron exhibits great comedic instincts as the antagonistic Teddy, a villain who you simultaneously love to hate and actually genuinely kind of like. That's the other thing about Bad Neighbours: although the script is incredibly vulgar, it's very rarely mean spirited. As insane as their antics are, these characters feel like real people, and as the story careens towards its climax, a big part of you just wants to see Teddy and the Radners hug it out. The biggest part, however, knows that watching them fight is just too damn funny. https://youtube.com/watch?v=4zEUuzj3a2g
Triple j’s One Night Stand is ready to crank it for one night only for another year, this time heading to Mildura. It's an all ages show, so it promises to be some good, clean fun. Constantly high-fiving local talent, the gig's six artists featuring this year include Illy, Rüfüs, Violent Soho, Dan Sultan, The Jungle Giants, and WZRDKID. Known for bringing One Night Stand to a different regional town every year, triple j have chosen the Victoria/New South Wales bordering town of Mildura to play host this time. Take advantage of the downtime before the gig and enjoy some waterside vino at the meeting of the Murray and Darling Rivers, or head to the racetrack if you're feeling a tad more adventurous. If you can't make it to Mildura, the concert will be broadcast live on ABC TV and triple j. If you want to relive the whole shebang in your own time, the entire event will be up on iView afterwards.
Wael Zuaiter: Unknown explores the untold story of Wael Zuaiter, a Palestinian who was killed in 1972 for allegedly leading a terrorist group to kidnap and murder Israeli Olympians at the Munich games. Many theories surround this particular killing, but as Wael was never found guilty for his apparent crime, his relatives are left to wonder what happened. Wael Zuaiter: Unknown is the brainchild of production company Creative Nonfiction’s Jesse Cox. So it should be, as the story itself stems from his own personal quest to understand the murder of his great uncle and the title character of the show. With a background in radio, story telling and producing, it is no wonder Cox’s production values go above and beyond your standard evening at the theatre. Expect audio interviews layered with sound design, music, projections and animation. Describing themselves as a “dramatic collision of documentary, graphic novel and theatre”, Wael Zuaiter: Unknown promises to be ambitious, confronting and exciting. This show is run in collaboration with Next Wave's Kickstart program. For more about the 2014 festival, check out our top ten picks.
Games of Thrones is the world’s most pirated TV show, The Avengers made more than $1.5 billion at the box office and even the President of the United States once collected Spider Man comics. In other words, it’s pretty cool to be a nerd these days. Just ask avid Dungeons and Dragons player Vin Diesel. The ultimate celebration of everything geeky, the Supanova Pop Culture Expo hits the Melbourne Showgrounds on April 11 - 13. From cosplay comps to comic book signings and photo opportunities with sci-fi and fantasy icons, it’s a three day mecca of uninhibited, unironic nerdiness that attracts thousands of eager pilgrims every year. Of course such an event can seem overwhelming, especially to the uninitiated. So, whether you’ll be attending in your fully functioning Iron Man costume, or experiencing the convention for the very first time, check out our recommendations before you go.
The genre-bending Devendra Banhart is coming Australia for this year’s Bluesfest, and is stopping into Melbourne for a sideshow. It’s been a couple of years since the bearded troubadour graced our shores, and it seems we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Mala, Banhart’s eighth studio album, was released last year and has been largely regarded as his finest work in a while. All the more reason for us to get him down here stat. While Banhart certainly marches to the beat of his own drum, taking us on whacky lyrical adventures, he encourages listeners to get on his level. However you decide to define this Venezuelan American singer songwriter, (we’re going to go with alternative folk) his playful nature makes him accessible despite his eccentricities.
Marco Delgado and Nadine Fuchs are two extremely svelte performers whose brand of erotic dance-comedy is moist with ambiguity. Watching footage of their past work it’s clear they're out to mock the seriousness of their own artform, recognising that humour’s often the first emotion sacrificed on the altar of contemporary dance. At the same time their shows never appear like simple pisstakes of high art — it’s the tension between their obvious talent and their playful approach that’s characterised Delgado Fuchs’ work in the past. Arriving from their native Europe (where Delgado worked as a stripper in Brussels while training as a dancer), they’re hosted in Melbourne by Australia’s leading experimental dance venue, Dancehouse.
