New Reviews

Hey Everyone,

I am currently writing a weekly film review column for www.cactusiv.com New reviews for Darfur Now, After The Wedding and No Country For Old Men are currently posted under the movie category on that site.

I am also planning to post new reviews on Frame By Frame in the next week so don't abandon me yet and keep reading.

Thanks

Caitlin

Across The Universe

When I heard that Julie Taymor (Frida, Titus) had directed a film taking place in the 1960’s set to the music of the Beatles I was anticipating great things. The opportunity for Taymor to bring her unique visual style to such a vibrant historical period as well as the freedom provided via access to the Beatles back catalogue could have led to an amazing film experience. Unfortunately, the directionless and confused, Across The Universe is unsatisfying fluff.

The film centres around a Liverpool shipyard worker, named Jude (Jim Sturgess) who goes to America to find his father. He becomes entwined in the lives of Princeton drop-out Max (Joe Anderson) and his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). The film follows their adventures as they deal with life in 1960’s New York and encounter an array of counter-culture figures.

The problem that emerges in Across The Universe is that rather than focusing on any kind of storyline, the only thing really keeping you watching the film is the music. That said, the musical numbers, while often lots of fun, do tend to turn the film into a mish mash of visual bombardment and distract from what thin thread of storyline there is. The over-ambition portrayed by these lavish numbers is echoed in the decision to typecast each character into a recognizable mould in an attempt to span the variety of 1960’s landmark events. We have the idealistic war activist, the artistic dropout, the youth sent unwillingly to Vietnam, the Janis Joplin-esque musician and the list goes on. Additionally, for a movie which attempts to encompass so much of this era what is noticeable are those things which are excluded. The references to the civil war movement are fleeting and seem thrown in at the last minute, especially a scene set during the Detroit riots which appears to come from nowhere and has little or no impact on the film as a whole. This is something which occurs throughout the movie. Characters and situations are revealed and then left for dead or given a brief and unsatisfying wrap up before we move on to the next cliché. What we are left with are visual cliff notes that exist purely on the surface.

It is however a largely attractive surface. While some of the scenes suffer from visuals that do not seem to have any real context or purpose, there are moments of extreme beauty and coupled with the soundtrack these elements make the film an enjoyable if forgettable experience.

Those scenes that do resonate do so purely because of the excitement and talent of two of the lead characters. Jim Sturgess as Jude and Joe Anderson as Max steal every scene they are in and manage to give renewed energy to classic Beatles tunes. Sturgess in particular lends an authenticity to his role while Anderson provides a playful yet grounded portrayal of a directionless young man. It is a shame that these obviously talented newcomers are not given much to work with in the way of character and storyline. Evan Rachel Wood as the love interest is given the worst role of all but does her best with it. However, there is not much she can do to give life to this character - an anti-war idealist who you may recognise from any number of films or telemovies made about this era.

Across The Universe is a film musical that is made for the stage. The musical numbers, which on screen are used in lieu of a strong storyline and in many cases, interrupt the narrative flow, would work much better in a theatre setting as would many of the visual concepts. Everything about this movie is over the top - too much singing, too many characters, too many disparate visual effect and too many distracting cameos (from Eddie Izzard, Bono and Joe Cocker among others). It appears to be a case of extreme overcompensation to make up for the lack of cohesive narrative. Across The Universe is at heart an extended video clip, it amounts in the end to lighthearted and mindless entertainment which provides a few spectacular moments amidst the chaos.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

After a brief hiatus in which the author of this blog relocated from Sydney to New York City, FRAME BY FRAME is back in action. Keep watching!

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, directed by Andrew Dominik (Chopper) and championed by Brad Pitt (who plays James) is a film that could have been so much more. A western that tries to tap into the psychological spaces that can be found in such classics of the genre as High Noon and the work of Sergio Leone, Jesse James fails to engage with its audience. Vast shots and long close ups do not necessarily equal artistic integrity, despite the filmmaker’s obvious assumptions otherwise. While the film looks beautiful, it ultimately occupies very little emotional space and is, like the title, much too long. At 2hrs and 40 minutes the film attempts a poetry-like expression and yet what it comes up with is repetitiveness and constant half-baked explanations for the actions of its protagonists.

The shame is that there was so much to work with both in terms of those involved in the films’ creation and in the story itself. The insanity of Jesse James and more importantly the strange hero-worshipping character of Robert Ford are potentially fascinating elements which are paid lip service at best. For all its posturing and attempts at getting to the dark heart of the matter, the film fails to transcend from a pretty façade to the black underbelly of psychotic relations that is supposed to exist between James and Ford. It is disappointing that Dominik’s follow up to the excellent film, Chopper, is such a let down.

While Casey Affleck does in fact do a superb job as Ford, there is not much he can do to transform a dull script and a long running time. Additionally, there is very little chemistry between him and Pitt, with Pitt seeming like he is just going through the motions and appearing particularly wooden throughout.

While The Assassination of Jesse James has a proven director and bankable stars, this is one film that would have benefited from some severe re-writes and more forceful direction. This film could have been a dynamic exploration of the unbalanced and shifting power-relations between two very different men, driven by completely disparate forces. Instead the audience is handed a by the numbers period piece that sticks to the surface while alluding all the time to depths it can’t quite reach.

KINO Sydney

KINO HAS ARRIVED!

KINO is a movement that started in Montreal, Canada. The basic premise of this worldwide community is to encourage people to make films with little or no experience, money or time.

KINO cells operate on a monthly basis with people coming together to watch the films made in the preceding month. This kind of guerilla filmmaking allows participants to gain experience and encourages people to meet other creative individuals whom they can learn from and work with. It’s all about making connections and friendships and sharing a love of film. By providing a platform for all levels of filmmakers – KINO is a means of creating a network of filmmakers with new and exciting visions. Everyone is encouraged to participate in some way –whether it is by holding a boom, directing or acting.

KINO Sydney began last November and is the second KINO cell to exist in Australia, the first being KINO Adelaide. Put together by the non-profit film organisation, The Festivalists, KINO Sydney is set to become a major part of the global network of KINO filmmakers. The next KINO Sydney will be held on Monday August 13th from 6:30pm at the Chalkhorse Gallery in Surry Hills. So come along – bring your friends and be inspired to make some films!

For more information see the KINO Sydney Website. You can view previously screened films on the KINO Sydney YouTube page.

SFF Highlights

Now that I have managed to recover from the visual bombardment provided by this years Sydney Film Festival here are few of my picks of the festival. Top of the list would have to be Shotgun Stories (see review) an intelligent take on revenge, violence and family. Following close behind in no particular order are:

Out of the Blue:

This film from New Zealand director Robert Sarkies left audiences in stunned silence for long minutes after the credits rolled. Out of the Blue recounts a horrific massacre that took place in the small New Zealand town of Aramoana in 1990 when a lone gunman, David Gray, killed 13 people before being shot dead by police. It is a vivid look at a deranged mind and shows the way in which this idyllic beachside community was quickly transformed into a dangerous battleground.

The film is beautifully shot in a landscape recognisable to Australian and New Zealand audiences for its suburban familiarity. That the film so successfully reconstructs the time and place makes the violence that is carried out that much more horrific. As the slaughter begins you feel like you are there with the terrified township. We watch helplessly as one unstable member of this tight-knit community tears apart families; killing men, women and children with cold-blooded calculation. And yet, it is a testament to the remarkable performance of Matthew Sunderland (as David Gray) as well as the excellent scripting, that the gunman is not inhuman. He is very much a victim of his own delusions and rather than hatred, you feel sorry for him even as he terrorizes this previously innocent town.

Bunny Chow:

Bunny Chow is a hilarious snapshot of life in present-day South Africa. It is essentially the story of a group of young male stand-up comedians who embark on a road trip from Johannesburg to perform at a music festival. This simple story is punctuated by memorable characters who get into all kinds of trouble as they attempt to navigate relationships, heartbreak and friendship with humor and honesty.

South Africa has often been portrayed in films as a place of constant social and political turmoil. With Bunny Chow, audiences begin to see another side of post-apartheid South Africa – one of a relaxed urban sphere, multiculturalism and comedy. Director John Barker sees Bunny Chow as the beginning of a new chapter for South African filmmaking. He and producer, Jeremy Nathan hope that Bunny Chow will be the first of many films of a new generation who can make films on a street level. By engaging in independent guerilla filmmaking with little money and not much experience, aspiring South African filmmakers can open up the industry and create a larger pool of talent. Hopefully this movement will see many more films like Bunny Chow being made; films that tell truthful and personal stories while at the same time retaining a specific context within contemporary South Africa.

Hallam Foe:

Hallam Foe, directed by David Mackenzie is a bizarre yet lovely film about a disconnected boy who exists on the outskirts of society. As an accomplished peeping tom, Hallam (Jamie Bell) is constantly hovering on the edges of other people's lives. However, he is not threatening nor particularly perverted in his viewing of others. Instead, due largely to the tender performance by Jamie Bell, he is a sympathetic character who is trying, quite unsuccessfully, to deal with the suicide of his mother.

When we meet Hallam, a year after his mother's death, much of his resentment is directed towards his 'evil stepmother' Verity (played with relish by Claire Forlani). Hallam comes to the conclusion that Verity murdered his mother and it is true that Verity does not do much to endear herself as she maliciously forces Hallam to leave home. Hallam arrives in the city and begins a strange relationship of cat and mouse with Kate (Sophia Myles), a woman who is the spitting image of his dead mother. While Hallam seems to project strange fantasies about his mother onto Kate he is at the same time engaged in a watchful pursuit of her. He observes her as she walks home, in her apartment and with her lover. For a long time their relationship exists through windows and binoculars and in Hallam's mind. This is typical of all Hallam's relationships as he distances himself from the world at large, existing instead in a reality of his own creation.

Eventually, Kate and Hallam embark on a sexual relationship of their own. This contributes to Hallam's spiraling mental state as he confronts the strangely incestuous undertones of their relationship. Eventually things come to a head as Hallam is located by his father and Verity and forced to confront the truth of his mothers’ death. While this film seems like a dense proposition it is in fact a sweet and ultimately heartfelt story of how a young man tries to deal with grief.


These are just three of the many amazing films at this years Sydney Film Festival with kudos also going to Sarah Polley’s directorial debut Away From Her, the Ian Curtis biopic Control and the short Australian film by Paul McDermott, starring Pia Miranda and Hugo Weaving, The Girl Who Swallowed Bees.

Sydney Film Festival Focus: 'Shotgun Stories'

Dir. Jeff Nichols, starring Michael Shannon, Douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs, Glenda Pannell, Lynnsee Provence…

Shotgun Stories is the debut feature from Arkansas native Jeff Nichols. This exceptional film centres around two groups of half brothers and follows them through the violent and traumatic feud that breaks out between them following their father’s funeral. Boy (Douglas Ligon), Son (Michael Shannon) and Kid (Barlow Jacobs) are the unwanted children, abandoned by their father and bought up by a hateful mother. When their father dies, the three brothers show up to the funeral much to the aggravation of their father’s other children. Son speaks ill of his father and spits on his grave. Thus, the tension that exists between the two families of half brothers, who shared a father and nothing else, becomes a violent explosion of hate and blame.

The film is told from the perspectives of Son, Boy and Kid. Son Hayes is the leader of the brothers and takes on a paternal role. All three brothers look out for each other and rely on a strong unspoken love which binds them together. The fact that their relationship is so deep and yet requires no words is indicative of the film itself. By relying strongly on a sense of place, this film is not only a family saga but also a portrayal of men in America’s south. Often in film these kinds of men become caricatures, hard drinking, rough and not too bright. Shotgun Stories seeks to explore more of the reality of a hard blue collar southern existence. It manages to bring into focus the ways in which these men are a product of their environment and are not to be dismissed as a ‘type’ but seen as real people struggling with their place in the world. That the film succeeds in making these men into real and recognizable people is partly due to the great script and direction by Nichols and is in equal measure due to the moving performances given by the remarkably talented cast.

The long deserted streets of the town in which the story takes place focuses attention on the loneliness inherent in the way people interact within the film. The emptiness of the town prompts one of the brothers to note that they seem like the only people in the town and it feels like they own it. "If I owned this town, I’d sell it" replies another of the brothers. The comment is both funny and heartbreaking because you get the sense that they will never leave. Son, Boy and Kid are tied to this place by more than just circumstance. They are part of the landscape – the wide spaces and male dominated law of the land is the world that they know and understand.

These characters are overcome with the need for revenge in the blood war which breaks out between the two families. However, Nichols succeeds in subverting our expectations in the way in which we connect with these characters who in another film may have been portrayed as one-dimensional killers. Nichols has said he wanted to re-evaluate the nature of revenge in cinema – instead of wanting the protagonists to succeed in their quest for vengeance, you are hoping that they will walk away and end the vicious cycle in which they are caught. You constantly hope that they will rebel against what is expected of them and give themselves a chance at survival.

This is a personal and emotional film which, while it has only been shown at four festivals so far, deserves widespread distribution. Do yourself a favor and track down this movie because it will affect you in a way that only truly great cinema does. When I walked out of the film I was surprised to find myself in the middle of rainy Sydney when I had been so caught up in the lives of the men who inhabit the sun-drenched landscape of the American south.

Shotgun Stories premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and is screening as part of the ‘World Views’ Strand at the Sydney Film Festival. Jeff Nichols was recently been awarded the New American Cinema Award at the Seattle Film Festival.

Sydney Film Festival Focus: 'Views Of A Retired Night Porter'

In the short film Views Of A Retired Night Porter (2006), which is currently screening at the Sydney Film Festival, Austrian director Andreas Horvath follows on from the 1977 short, From A Night Porters Point of View by legendary filmmaker Krzystof Kieslowski. Thirty years on, Horvath catches up with the night porter (or security guard) whose day to day life formed the basis for Kieslowski’s film.

Views of a Retired Night Porter follows much the same vein as Kieslowski’s film. We are reacquainted with this fascinating character by following him throughout his everyday life. While the original film was an understated affair – subdued and very much a product of the grey era of eastern-European Communism, Horvath’s film presents us with a contemporary film both in terms of style and content. We watch the porter in his colour drenched apartment, observing him in his own microcosm as he chain smokes, watches cowboy movies, visits his wife’s grave and talks about what is wrong with the world today. The long stretches of silence and intense observation combine to provide a strange sense of familiarity and distance simultaneously. This is evidenced in a prolonged scene where we watch him eat his lunch alone at his kitchen table; the camera watches the porter in tight close-up, pulling away to reveal an elderly man alone and out of synch with the world around him.

Horvath sits back and allows the former-night porter to reminisce about the glory days of Communist Poland when strict political rule kept everything within a tight structure and left little room for social criticism or change. This is a man who reveled in the minor power he wielded as the night porter of a factory and who as a willing volunteer for the government would, as a hobby, report and fine anglers fishing without a license.

The porter is a mass of contradictions, his love of the Communist past, and vicious views on capital punishment and individual freedom collide head on with his obvious love for his deceased wife and sly sense of humour. This humour emerges particularly in his recounting of stories in which he employs transparent double standards and rationalisations for his behaviour. He tells of his love of catching fishermen without licenses and confiscating their rods while chuckling at the fact that he was caught for the same crime himself.

While it would be easy to paint the porter as a simple man who looked to the authoritative structure of Communism to provide direction and a way of life, this reading would ignore his skewed humanity which is what makes you like him even as you are repelled by his political views. Views of A Retired Night Porter viewed in conjunction with Kieslowski’s A Night Porter’s Point of View operates as a character study of a man who over 30 years has changed little and has resisted social change as much as possible. Though this man comes across as one born of structure, with no regard for individuality - these quiet films seek to show the complexitities of a man of a defined era living both within and outside his own time. These touching portraits provide a lasting glimpse into one man’s life and are well worth seeing if you get the chance.

Views Of A Retired Night Porter is screening with A Night Porters Point Of View as part of the Red Hot Doc strand at the 2007 Sydney Film Festival.

Shipwrecked: Pirates of the Carribbean - At Worlds End

Dir. Gore Verbinski, starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Keira Knightly, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgard, Naomie Harris…

Having missed the middle episode of this frothy saga I was looking forward to being thrust back into the dominion of the Pirate Code and more precisely, the chance to revel in the camp swaggering of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow. Unfortunately, the third and supposedly last installment of this trilogy is disappointing, failing as it does to please even die hard fans due to its overwrought scripting and epic running time.

The first film set a high standard, hitting on a satisfying formula of drama, comedy and swashbuckling, becoming a deserving hit in the process. While The Curse of the Black Pearl played up the theatre of piracy – due mostly to the skills of Depp – it never lost out to fantasy, keeping the action within a recognisable world despite various members of the undead floating around. It is this that is one of the major problems with At Worlds End. The plethora of monsters, squid-headed evil-doers, sea goddesses and the like all serve as a distraction from the familiar faces from the previous installments. If anything, the film suffers from too many characters and not enough character development.

Captain Sparrow is marginalised and repetitive, and at times Depp seems to be just going through the motions, relying on the surface charm of his creation. In fact for the first 35 minutes of the film Sparrow is nowhere to be found as Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), Elizabeth (Keira Knightly) and Will (Orlando Bloom) journey to retrieve him from Davy Jones Locker – apparently a form of pirate purgatory. Since Depp is the main drawcard of the franchise it seems foolish to keep him absent for such a large chunk of the movie. His absence is particularly notable since those characters that we are forced to accompany during this time (with the exception of Rush’s Barbossa) are so dull and wooden as to make you wish they had been drowned at sea or died of rabies from a monkey bite somewhere earlier in the adventure.

This is a film with no clear idea of what it wants to be – at times reaching for a mix of high melodrama, comedy and action only to be unceremoniously dumped back into a mish mash of unintelligible narrative twists and pratfalls. It is an exhausting feat trying to keep track of the many characters, constant back stabbings and changes of allegiance that form the majority of the story in expectation of the final payoff, which incidentally isn’t worth the effort. There are so many threads to follow it is nearly impossible to sit back and let the film make you forget about the running time of nearly 3 hours.

At World’s End is overproduced and unnecessarily packs the film to breaking point with famous faces, in-jokes and various unrelated flights of fancy in an attempt to outdo the last installment in every way. Perhaps too much money and too many recognisable actors all vying for screen time goes some way to explaining the lack of focus and corny out of place scenes, such as those showing Sparrow hallucinating multiples of himself while captive in Davy Jones’ Locker.

While the film looks the part, its glossy blockbuster sheen is tarnished by the excessive use of special effects which end up looking somewhat cartoonish and go on for far too long – contributing to the prolonged running time.

The final battle is relentlessly stupid and uninspiring, particularly for a film which has spent two hours leading up to this final stand, as pirates of the world unite to save themselves from extinction. Not only are we expected to believe that one pirate ship can defeat the entire British navy (while all the other pirate ships stand by to cheer) we are also treated – mid-fight - to the release of a sea goddess (Naomie Harris) from her human bonds. This appears to have no lasting impact except for the welcome separation of two of the most vapid and serially dull lovers ever to cross the screen – Will and Elizabeth.

By the end of this film you will be hoping that Keith Richards (in a highly publicised but ultimately dull cameo) as the Keeper of the Pirate Code will uncover a rule banning the further production of Pirates of the Caribbean movies. After listening to an audience laugh in all the wrong places and noting more than a few people squeezing out for toilet breaks, my recommendation is to wait for DVD or simply sail past this forgettable blockbuster.