Deliverance

US | 1972 | Directed by John Boorman

 Logline: Four adult friends embark on a weekend canoe trip only to be terrorised by angered backcountry woodsmen. 

Based on the brilliant first novel from James Dickey, an acclaimed American poet and university lecturer, who also wrote the excellent screenplay, Deliverance is a deeply impressive, but harrowing portrayal of masculinity, and the ferocious nature of man, that has lost none of its visceral power since it was first unleashed back in 1972. It is a tale of shattered innocence and ruptured, primal machismo, with an undercurrent of social and eco commentary (awe and contempt) that is apparent only through the movie’s superb use of symbolism and metaphor. Freedom is sought with single-mindedness, but the darkness of the soul is eventually laid bare, only after the mind and body is subjected to humiliation and violation. 

Lewis (Burt Reynolds in a breakthrough career performance) is the macho leader, an imposing go-getter, who loves the great outdoors. Accompanying him are his buddy Ed (Jon Voight), a pipe-smokin’ family man who likes a tipple and a challenge, Drew (Ronny Cox), another family man, with strong morals and a dab hand on the guitar, and chubby Bobby (Ned Beatty), who likes to complain, but yearns to cut loose. These four friends drive up into the heavily-wooded Appalachian hills and negotiate for some local moonshiners to drive their two cars down the mountain road trail to the Aintry river-stop where they’ll rendezvous in their canoes a couple of days later. The greasy feral mountain men wonder what the hell they wanna tackle the river for. “Cos it’s there,” replies Lewis smugly.

Not a scene or shot is superfluous in Deliverance. I raise my hat to the consummate skill of Boorman and Dickey, who along with late, great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (one of my favourite DOPs), editor Tom Priestley, and special effects technician Marcel Vercoutere, fashioned a nightmare thriller as sharp and deadly as the powerful bow and arrow brandished by Lewis and Ed (which is almost a character in itself, the other “character” being the Chatooga River – renamed the Cahulawassee in the movie - which divides South Carolina and Georgia).

The performances from the four leads are terrific, especially Jon Voight. It was Ned Beatty’s first movie, but special mention must go to Bill McKinney as Don Job, who forces poor Bobby to squeal like a pig, a nasty piece of work he is, and with few lines to utter, Herbert ‘Cowboy’ Coward, as Job’s toothless grinnin’ bosom buddy. These two backwoods bandits are an understatedly fearsome pair (decades later McKinney named his own website squeallikeapig.com!)

It’s hard to believe but the Deliverance production was uninsured. The actors all performed their own stunts, the rapids tossing resulted in Burt Reynolds breaking his coccyx. Jon Voight actually scaled the sheer vertical cliff face. Ned Beatty was the only one who had any canoeing experience, the others learnt on location. To further minimise costs, locals were hired to play the resident hillbilly folk, with one elderly gentleman improvising a buck jig which was included in the movie.

Sam Peckinpah wanted to direct, and when Boorman was signed on Peckinpah went off to make Straw Dogs. Donald Sutherland turned down one of the roles because he objected to the violence (and later regretted his decision), yet ironically a year later he starred in Don’t Look Now (1973). Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando both declined the role of Lewis, as did Lee Marvin for the role of Ed, telling Boorman he thought he and Brando were too old for the parts. James Dickey appears in a small, but convincing, part as the Aintry Sheriff who suspects the men’s story might be a little taller than they’re admitting to.

There’s an apocalyptic atmosphere that permeates the narrative of Deliverance, the title of which is a clever play on being rescued or set free and a thought or judgment, often from an authoritative voice. In this case, the title suggests the pursuit of unbridled adventure amidst the wilderness that is being threatened by urban development (the damming of the river) and the plunder of human progress. Dickey was passionate about this socio-political stance and he designed his novel as a nightmare metaphor. Boorman had a kinship with Dickey and used his skill as a director to design a mise-en-scene, a vivid, succinct visual narrative that employed both symbolism (Ed’s faltering when he tries to kill a deer and the river reducing Lewis from He-man to whimpering invalid) to the analogy of the violence of man’s inhumanity to man vs. the violence of humankind’s geographical greed.

Whilst nowhere near as graphically violent as most of today’s R-rated horror movies, Deliverance still contains the power to shock and upset, especially in the infamous rape and murder sequence, and later when we witness Lewis’s horrendous leg injury (that’s one gruesome compound fracture!), Ed impaling himself on an arrow, and the discovery of Drew’s twisted corpse (Ronny Cox suggested taking advantage of having a double-jointed shoulder!). There is an implicit violence that courses through the entire movie, despite the natural beauty of the surroundings. The movie even ends in a dream-like paroxysm of guilt and fear … and finally stillness, but with anxiety floating just below the surface.

The only thing that dates Deliverance is the use of day-for-night shooting during Ed’s nocturnal scaling of the cliff. In 1972 anamorphic lenses and film stock were a lot slower and night scenes had to be under-exposed and given a blue tint during post-production. Little else apart from that gives Deliverance away from being nearly forty-five years old (it’s not like mobile phones would’ve helped the men’s predicament!) Even the famous “Duelling Banjos” scene somehow seems ageless.

In Germany the title was changed to (and translated as) In Dying, Everyone is First. 

The Hitcher

US | 1986 | Directed by Robert Harmon

Logline: A young man manages to escape the clutches of a psychopath, but finds himself being pursued relentlessly, and framed for several murders.

The Hitcher is a ferocious beast unto itself. It was Harmon’s feature debut, having worked as a still photographer on Fade to Black (1980) and Hell Night (1981), and it was also screenwriter Eric Red’s first feature (he’d write another top-notch screenplay, made the following year, Near Dark). Red claims inspiration for The Hitcher came from The Doors’ Riders on the Storm. 

Teenager Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is on a car relocation from Chicago to San Diego. He’s tired, it’s dark and raining heavily, yet silhouetted by the roadside is a hitchhiker. Halsey picks up the stranger, immediately announcing that his mother told him never to do this. The dangerous-looking character turns and smiles, “John … Ryder”.  

Ryder (Rutger Hauer) is soft-spoken, brooding, and guarded. His silence is calculated, and the cold, slippery night weighs heavily on Halsey. Soon enough Ryder presents his hand, and Halsey’s fear grips him like a vice. The stakes have been raised, and Halsey has swallowed the bait. This game (of cat and mouse) is on for young and old. 

For an American movie, The Hitcher is in an atmospheric league of its own. It exudes more of a European mood and sensibility; minimalist dialogue, a deadly, drifting menace that verges on the supernatural, an evocative and haunting score from Mark Isham, a central tour-de-force performance that still towers above most other on-screen psychopaths, and a mythological, surreal framework that encompasses the narrative. The Hitcher is like John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978); presenting the audience with a villain that defies logic and reason, has no background, essentially no real motive, and lives primarily to terrorise and murder all those around a central figure whom has provided the killer their obsession, their morbid infatuation.

One can argue there’s a homoerotic undercurrent in The Hitcher, that John Ryder is taunting Jim Halsey in an unconsciously sexual way. There’s the touching and the looks, the teasing and the play on male virility. But more interesting is the concept that maybe John Ryder doesn’t even exist, that he’s actually a split personality of Halsey’s, or, more tenuously, a figment of his twisted imagination, created to rationalise Halsey’s serial murder spree. Sure, the entire movie is far-fetched, but, like Halloween, you embrace this internal nightmare logic in order to allow the dream-fabric to breathe. 

Later, after Halsey is framed for several murders and Ryder is definitely guilty of one, and both he and Ryder have been arrested Ryder is then interrogated by State Troopers. They discover that he has no driver’s licence, no social security number, probably no birth certificate. It’s as if he never existed. So when they ask him where he’s from, Ryder smiles and says, “Disneyland.” This is one of the movie’s many moments of brilliance; the irony of the pure evil nestled within the sanctuary of manufactured entertainment. The law is confounded by Ryder, and decide the only thing to do is have the dangerous lunatic carted off to a holding cell at the local State prison. If only it were that simple. 

I’ve not seen anything else director Robert Harmon has made, but I feel safe in stating he started at the top; The Hitcher is a masterstroke of paranoia and dread, of tension and suspense, excellent action sequences and ultra-violence to boot. C. Thomas Howell is the one weak link, delivering a stilted, wooden performance, but Rutger Hauer (in his second career-defining piece of controlled wrath, after Blade Runner four years earlier), and in the only key support role, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Nash, the waitress whom Halsey befriends in desperation, provide enough high calibre. Also notable is Jeffrey DeMunn as Captain Estridge. 

The Hitcher is a lean, mean, killing machine, cut from the uncompromising cloth of cult material. There may be a moral denouement, but the journey has been decidedly amoral, transgressive even. Pay no heed to the straight-to-video 2003 sequel or 2007 remake, they’re not worth your time. Embrace the lunacy of the unique original, let the madness take hold, and do what your mother told you never to do: go for a ride with John Ryder. He’ll kick your ass into the middle of next week, and give you nightmares for a few more.

Angel Heart

US | 1987 | Directed by Alan Parker

Logline: A dishevelled private eye takes on a mysterious client and becomes caught up in a missing persons search that threatens his sanity and endangers his life. 

A supernatural thriller that looks and feels like a 50s noir, but is wrapped in the macabre, Southern fried funk of the occult. It’s New York City, 1955. Private Investigator Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) prefers to take the easy jobs, where his cream-coloured, crumpled linen suit won’t get torn. He gets hired for a what seems like a fairly straightforward seek-and-ye-shall-find job by a man who calls himself Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro): track down a popular young crooner called Johnny Favorite, who vanished around the time the boys came home from the war. 

Angel’s investigation takes an unexpected and sombre turn after he discovers the doctor who discharged Favorite from a hospital ended up with a bullet through the eye and his brains splattered over his morphine-stained pillow. Angel digs deeper, about six feet down, and finds himself becoming shrouded in the voodoo cloak of New Orleans, especially after he becomes entangled with the sultry, teenaged priestess Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), who just happens to be Favourite’s daughter.

Based on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg (who also penned the phantasmogorical fantasy Legend, filmed by Ridley Scott), Parker’s screenplay spins a dark whirlpool, with the narrative following Angel closely, so as to keep the audience at his level of bewilderment. I haven’t read the novel, but the movie makes for a powerful, seductive piece of nightmare cinema, as the diabolical revelations unfold, and the tendrils of temptation unfurl.

Parker has made numerous excellent movies. Like another talented Englishman, Michael Winterbottom, who approaches each movie with a different style and technique, and who moves effortlessly between genres. Angel Heart is among my favourite Parker movies, along with Midnight Express, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and Birdy. Mickey Rourke delivers a career performance, an actor at the top of his game, before the boxing robbed him of his looks, and his career fell on the ropes. 

Angel Heart has aged very well, considering it’s nearly thirty years old. The vintage-style cinematography by Parker’s long-serving cameraman Michael Serresin is superb; a colour palette that verges on monochrome, and combined with Parker’s brilliant compositions, the loaded imagery, the clever mise-en-scene, the movie is a darkly beautiful joy to behold. It helps when you’ve got a key cast as charismatic as Rourke and De Niro, and as sensual as Bonet and Charlotte Rampling, as tarot reader Margaret Krusemark.

With long hair, a full beard, and talons De Niro was apparently impersonating Martin Scorsese in his performance as “Lucifer”. He certainly commands every scene he is in, but Rourke matches him, beat for beat, and although Parker originally offered the role of Angel to Al Pacino, Jack Nicolson, and even De Niro, Rourke fits the character like a suede glove. It’s curious to note that Parker found De Niro so uncomfortably eerie in the role of Cyphre he allowed the actor to direct himself! 

Parker’s attention to detail (once described by a critic as an aesthetic fascist), especially with the rustic locations, art direction, use of music, and the editing, provides much authenticity within the scenes; the atmosphere is pervasive, especially in some of the movie’s more intense scenes, such as the provocative, now legendary “Soul on Fire” rain/sex/blood scene, the village voodoo ritual, the murder aftermaths, and the chase scenes (oh, to see the version before it was heavily trimmed for the MPAA). One of many images burned onto my retina is a frightened Harry Angel bolting out into a New Orleans’ street, into the torrential rain, his flailing trench coat making him seem like a ghostly apparition.

“I’m an athesist,” states Angel to Cyphre, while they sit together in a French Quarter church, the humidity thick, the tension palpable. “Are you?” Cyphre replies a little surprised. “Yes I am. I’m from Brooklyn,” Angel says emphatically. The humour drips like black molasses. Cyphre twirls his ebony cane, “The future isn’t always what is used to be Mr. Angel,” he muses, and soon Harry Angel will know the truth, and it will scare him to the very bottom of his very soul. When one dances with the devil in the pale moonlight, one doesn’t realise how terrible wisdom can be, when it brings no profit to the wise.

Taxi Driver

US | 1976 | directed by Martin Scorsese

Logline: A Vietnam vet, working as a cab driver in NYC, struggles to cope with his surrounds, and deal with his inner demons bearing down.

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” --- Thomas Wolfe, “God’s Lonely Man”

Five features into his distinguished career, but only his third major release, director Martin Scorsese delivered Taxi Driver (1976), the first of three masterpieces; the other two being Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990). At once a searing portrait of emotional alienation and psychological deterioration with a realm of urban decay, and also a blistering study of humankind’s innate loneliness and man’s propensity for extreme violence, Taxi Driver is still as powerful and dangerous now, as it was 40 years ago. 

Screenwriter (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader penned the potent tale of Travis Bickle’s pathological despair in five days following his own nervous breakdown, being rejected by his girlfriend and in the midst of a divorce. He didn’t talk to anyone for weeks, frequented porn cinemas, and an obsession with firearms meant he kept a loaded gun on his desk for inspiration and motivation. Brian De Palma was slated to direct, but was fired. With the gritty realism of Mean Streets (1973) and the emotional depth of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) on his resume, Martin Scorsese entered the picture and brought with him Robert De Niro (who’d just won an Oscar for The Godfather Part II), and the rest is history.

Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a Vietnam veteran who takes a job as a cab driver in New York City, working long hours and driving to all the boroughs. His only acquaintances are a handful of other cabbies working for the same company. Bickle attempts a romance with uptown Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who is working on the political campaign for Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), a Presidential candidate, but he screws that up royally. Twelve-year-old streetwalker Iris (Jodie Foster) crosses his path on several occasions, and as the weight of the city’s filth bears down on him and his psyche begins to crack Bickle decides to save Iris and free her from the pimp shackles (Harvey Keitel as Sport) of her pathetic prostituted existence.

From the opening image of the subway steam filling the screen and Bernard Herrmann’s jazz-wounded score soaked in melancholy, the ominous strings scraping, the sad alto saxophone singing a song of desperation, a yellow checkered cab pushes through the white subterranean mist of the city and begins its long drawl in and out of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx, uptown, downtown, midtown and the lower East side. Taxi Driver is Scorsese’s dark ode to the city that never sleeps, capturing the quintessential grime and low-life glamour of 70s NYC that perpetually feeds its moral and physical corruption.

“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is … a man who stood up.”

Building steadily towards its frightening, shattering denouement Taxi Driver is a tour-de-force of direction and performance. Robert De Niro is mesmerising in his method brilliance, Cybil Shephard exudes a wonderful coquettish charm, while a very young Jodie Foster exhibits amazing subtlety and vulnerability, and Harvey Keitel provides the perfect sleazy foil to De Niro’s deadly coiled spring. A nod also to Steven Prince, in just one scene, as Easy Andy, a cocky gun salesman with style and merchandise to burn (Scorsese would later make a short doco called American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince).

It’s curious to note the extraordinary who’s who of actors who were offered, auditioned for, and in some cases cast - but withdrew, in the role of Betsy; Farrah Fawcett, Jane Seymour, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Ornella Muti, Isabelle Adjani, Liza Minnelli, Barbara Hershey, and Sigourney Weaver, and in the role of Iris; Melanie Griffith, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Geena Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Dabra Winger, Carrie Fisher, Mariel Hemingway, Bo Derek, Kim Cattrall, Rosanna Arquette, Kristy McNichol, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Linda Blair. 

Martin Scorsese himself appears in two scenes; the first as a background extra (seated on a ledge outside Palantine’s campaign office), but the second is as one of Travis’s more unhinged fares, spouting a disturbing, misogynist monologue which undoubtedly contributes to Bickle’s already heavily affected and troubled persona. Scorsese stepped into the role after the intended actor sustained injuries prior to filming.

Whilst Bickle’s psychotic slow burn toward the inevitable brain-snap is the movie’s tightening screw, it is the ultra-violent bloodbath at movie’s end that provides Taxi Driver with its piece-de-résistance (although Robert De Niro’s improvised “You talkin’ to me?” scene commands its own cult adoration). Dick Smith, special effects make-up legend, was hired to provide shocking authenticity to the brothel carnage, but ironically Scorsese was forced to de-saturate the blood’s hue (making it look an odd pinky brown) in order to avoid an X-rating. It still packs a punch, especially the shocking .44 Magnum impact to the hand. Smith also made the famous Mohawk wig for De Niro (which I always thought was real!)

Taxi Driver continues to impress and fascinate; superficially as a date stamp of mid-70s New York City (Scorsese shot entirely on location), but more importantly Scorsese’s effortlessly fluid, but controlled and deliberate visual narrative that never once feels contrived, yet sustains the tension of a crouching tiger, a sleeping cobra, a lost soul at the end of his tether. Schrader’s story wraps up with a curious epilogue that has Iris’s father’s voice-over praise on Travis Bickle’s rescue efforts while the camera drifts over newspaper clippings describing the gun-battle with the gangsters and his subsequent pedestal as urban hero.

But has this twist of fate actually happened, or is it just a figment of Bickle’s distorted imagination, a wish-fulfillment fantasy he’s projecting in the moments before his death as he sits on the sofa mortally wounded …?

Scorsese adds a coda to suggest otherwise: Travis Bickle back behind the wheel of his safety net, his trusty checkered cab, on the dark crowded streets of the big rotten apple, and low and behold, into the back seat climbs Betsy. The vibe is awkward; she acts aloof, “Travis I’m … How much was it?” Travis replies, “So long”, as he clears the meter. She gets out, he drives off, but something catches his eye in the rear-view mirror and Travis does a double-take …

We’ll always wonder just what was it that caught the eye of God’s lonely man, but, perhaps it’s best we never found out. 

Bone Tomahawk

US | 2015 | Directed by S. Craig Zahler

Logline: In the Wild West four men set out to rescue a group that has been abducted by a tribe of primitive cave dwellers.

Novelist and aspiring screenwriter Zahler’s dream comes true, Hollywood comes a-knocking, with Kurt Russell attached. His dark Western journey into the heart of darkness is brought to life with bone-dry black comedy and gut-wrenching ultraviolence. Bone Tomahawk is one of the best revisionist Westerns of the past twenty years, and, along with Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, gives Russell the second best role – and performance - he’s had/given in years. 

Set in 1890s, at the tail end of the Wild West, in Southern California, the story opens with a prologue that depicts the plight of two drifting vultures, Buddy (Sid Haig) and Purvis (David Arquette) on the outskirts of the township Bright Hope. Eleven days later Purvis shows up at the local bar, somewhat worse for wear. Back-up deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins) has observed suspicious behaviour, and he notifies the Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell).

The lovely Samantha Dwyer (Lili Simmons) is called away from attending to her husband Arthur’s (Patrick Wilson) injured leg, to extract a bullet from a culprit’s leg. Meanwhile, young Gizzard (Maestro Harrell) hears a strange call on the night breeze. He inspects the stables.

Subsequently an arduous journey is embarked upon by Hunt, Chicory, a loyal sharp-shooter known as Brooder (Matthew Fox), and Arthur, as they set off on a five day jaunt across the Mojave desert to find the Valley of the Starving Man, where a tribe of brutal, in-bred cannibals dwell. The four townsmen must execute a daring rescue. The odds are against them.

Clocking in at two hours-ten minutes, the bulk of the movie is the incidents at Bright Hope and the trek itself. In the movie’s third act horror rears its monstrous head and cuts a bloody path of destruction, a standout set-piece being a savage vivisection of a man. In fact there are numerous special effects makeup moments, I was surprised the artists involved weren’t given proper credit, instead just being mentioned amidst the usual crawl at film’s end.

All performances are top notch; Russell, of course, delivers a wonderfully measured, restrained presence, a noble lawman indeed. Wilson is always good, but special mention to Jenkins, in the role of the old timer, and Fox (almost unrecognisable) as the suave, well-heeled Injun killer.

The cannibals are, apparently, troglodytes. Lathered in white okra, adorned with tusks, and brandishing bone tomahawks, and bow and arrow. The also have human teeth embedded in their throats, enabling them to make a harrowing scream/call-to-arms. The women of their clan have been blinded and left as baby machines.

There is a brooding minimalism and historical authenticity that exudes from Bone Tomahawk’s sweaty skin; the mannerisms, the dialogue (which reminds one of Tarantino-esque exchanges, but not as self-conscious or as clashingly modern), and a shroud of nihilism that hangs over like a dark desert cloud.

I’ll be bold enough to say, this is the Western Tarantino would love to make, but would never pull off. So put your timepiece away, it’s time to ride, it’s time to kill, it’s time to bleed. 

Straw Dogs

US/UK | 1971 | Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Logline: An earnest American and his young English wife settle in rural England and face increasingly vicious local harrassment. 

At surface level a powerful study of violence both implicit and explicit, but under the skin, Straw Dogs is a complex and disturbing morality play that poses far more questions than answers. It provokes and outrages, yet by the end offers only slight reward, leaving a bitter taste of copper, and the acid after burn of contempt. After the assault on the senses that is the siege at Trencher’s farm, empathy is left in ruin, humanity torn a sunder. 

Two years prior Sam Peckinpah had delivered one of the great, uncompromising Westerns, The Wild Bunch (1969); a ruthless, indulgent portrait on male self-righteousness, bravado and violent machismo. It was a farrago of raw energy and moral corruption. Peckinpah then polarised audiences even further, pushing his dark fascination with the human spirit and society’s innate misanthropy to a deeper, more insular level. Straw Dogs would tear apart all notions of love and trust, of jealousy and desire, and of man’s acumen for violence.

Based on the novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams and adapted for the screen by David Zulag Goodman and Peckinpah, Straw Dogs tells the story of meek and mild David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), an American mathematician who, with his pretty young wife Amy (Susan George), has moved from the States back to Amy’s home of Wakely, a small village on the coast of England, where she grew up. They’ve bought an old farmhouse up on the hillside that needs repairing, so David has hired a few of the local handymen, so that he can concentrate on his treatise on celestial navigation (the “astro-mathematic structures of stellar interiors”).

One of the builders is Charlie (Del Henney); an ex-lover of Amy’s who makes it very obvious he still carries a torch for her. Amy is flattered by his attention, but won’t stand for his sleazy behaviour. Charlie and his cohorts, Norman (Ken Hutchison) and Chris (Jim Norton) despise David, and challenge him by inferring he’s a milquetoast for abandoning his country in time of need (the Vietnam war). There’s tension between David and Amy as well, since David is so wrapped up in his equations and seems only to patronise Amy, leaving little time for genuine loving. Amy is restless, David is preoccupied. Frustration and neglect will soon collide, and tragedy will ensue.

Straw Dogs is such a thematically rich and intelligent work, darkly provocative, nightmarish, subversive. The characters don’t fit any easy mold, all drifting within a morally grey area. Obviously there are some that can be easily pigeon-holed as villainous, but there are agendas exposed that suggest not all intentions were evil at heart. If only ...

The most controversial part of the movie is the rape scene (which got the movie into a lot of trouble when it was first released and in the years following), or more precisely Amy’s response to Charlie’s rough attempt at seduction. It is apparent Amy still harbours an attraction toward him, but he’s by no means the man who makes her laugh, as her husband does. Amy’s flaunting of her naked body, and not wearing a bra beneath her sweaters, has been driving Charlie wild with lust.

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

After orchestrating a snipe hunt for David, where the men stick it to him in the bush, leaving him floundering on the hilltop waiting for pheasants and ducks to fly by, Charlie arrives back at the farmhouse and surprises Amy who invites him in for a drink. But it’s more than booze Charlie’s after. He forces himself on Amy, she slaps him, he pulls her by the hair over the sofa where he pins her down and tears her robe and panties off.

At this point the assault changes gear. It appears no longer to be rape, but consensual sex as they have intercourse and she caresses his face and they kiss. It began as forced entry, but has become something far more complex. The image of Charlie is intercut with David, both men making love to her. But is Charlie providing a more passionate experience for Amy? “Hold me,” Amy whispers. Suddenly Norman is there in the room also, brandishing a shotgun. Amy isn’t aware as she lies on her stomach, her eyes closed in a state of post-coital satiation. Whilst Charlie holds Amy down, Norman sheds his pants and sodomises her. Amy screams in shock and pain. The first intercourse had been questionable in its reception; the second is violation, impure and simple.

David never finds out about the rape, which makes his act of defiance in the last third of the movie a curious stand. One would expect the drama to come from David seeking revenge, but Straw Dogs confounds this by having David respond to something more prosaic: one man’s house is his castle and should be protected at all costs. It is here that David’s failings as a husband and his strengths as a coward in turnaround are made explicit. He was witness to Charlie’s blatant interest in his wife, and he was too cowardly to confront the men about the killing of Amy’s pet cat, yet when David has brought the local pederast, Henry Niles (David Warner, in an uncredited role), into his home after accidentally hitting him with his car and the village lynch mob have come to collect him because local girl Janice (Sally Thomsett) is missing, presumed dead at the hands of Niles, David refuses to give him over. It is here where the siege takes place, and where David turns the tables on his attackers.

Whilst Amy is hysterical, David is transforming, becoming less human, more animal; less logical, more instinctual. But the most telling and the most distressing point is not made until the very end. Having dispatched all of the assailants in numerous violent ways, David tells Amy to stay in the house while he drives Henry Niles down to the village, even though he can’t be sure all the attackers are dead. As they drive through the impenetrable darkness Niles says, “I don’t know my way home.” “That’s okay,” David replies with a strange smirk, “I don’t know either …”

Straw Dogs deals with game-playing and the strategy of battle as metaphors and symbolism. We see Amy playing chess in bed, David working on his elaborate mathematical equations on his huge chalkboard, David and Amy fool around as if on a perpetual one-on-one game of their own making, David taunting the cat by throwing fruit at it, there’s the snipe hunt David is coerced into going on, and of course, the final siege, which is a series of confrontations and dispatches. There’s also the strange voyeurism that involves Janice and her brother Bobby (Len Jones), spying on David and Amy. Janice has a crush on David, but she ends up manipulating Henry Niles, as if on some strange death wish.

There’s also a thematic element concerning immaturity and its potent fragility in relationship to experience and innocence. “You act like you’re 14,” teases David to Amy, “I am!” she replies with a cheeky laugh. Charlie, Norman and Chris all act like they’re adolescents, bragging and cajoling each other. Henry Niles is a man-child. And of course David and Amy are cocooned in a bubble of immaturity as well.

Peckinpah’s direction is superb, helped by atmospheric cinematography from British cameraman John Coquillon. The editing is brilliant, especially the inter-cutting during the church social gathering which highlights Amy’s paranoia and trauma, and also during the siege (three editors, plus an editorial consultant were employed on the movie). The score, mostly sombre brass and woodwind, captures a suitably terse mood.

The performances are all first rate. Hoffman is at the top of his game (and only a couple of features into his career) playing the emotionally retarded stranger in a strange land, while Susan George matches him with her delicate balance of vulnerability and assertiveness. The support cast can’t be singled out, they’re all great.

Straw Dogs is a difficult movie; but for all the best reasons. It presents the moral quagmire of human frailty, it slaps you in the face, slashes you, and leaves you scarred, with blood on your hands. 

“Heaven and earth are not humane, and regard the people as straw dogs.”

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne

Romania | 2015 | Directed by Adrian Tofei

Logline: A deeply disturbed young man makes an unusual audition video in an effort to convince Anne Hathaway to act in his film.

With experience only as an actor, but many years of studying film history under his belt, this Eastern European filmmaker has decided to tackle the found footage genre head-on, taking the bull by the horns, and biting the bullet. His experimental feature blurs the lines of documentary and thriller, of reality and fantasy, of pipe dream and palpable nightmare, of social savvy and introverted delusion.

Adrian Tofei plays Adrian, a determined, albeit quietly desperate, man obsessed with the illusion of Anne Hathaway as a kind of altar, pedestal of Tinseltown. Cats are also one of his “things”, and at one point he casually admits to strangling them as an adolescent. But let’s get back to Anne. Anne and Adrian. He badly wants to impress her. Armed with a small consumer level camera Adrian rents a nearby pension (he lives with his mother, and there’s no way he’s going to be able to audition the substitute “Hathaways” with mother poking her nose in).

There are three women Adrian has selected, to be part of the process of luring Ms Hathaway. Local actors, obviously keen for the performance experience, the women have no idea of Adrian’s hidden agenda. Sonya (Sonia Teodoriu) is first up, and almost immediately butts heads with Adrian who tries to push her panic buttons.

Flory (Florentina Hariton) and Alexandra (Alexandrea Stroe) arrive more or less at the same time. Flory, who most closely resembles Hathaway, has her own flirty agenda, simply wanting to bed Adrian, whilst Alexandra is eventually forced into Final Girl mode. Adrian’s demands are simple: he wants the women to act as truthfully as possible, and in order to act truthfully, he must provide the necessary motivation: fear.

While Tofei injects a creepy sense of humour with his role, it is the naturalistic performances of the three women, especially Stroe, that give Be My Cat the dramatic gravitas, and keeps it so darkly fascinating, and genuinely unnerving. 

Trying to get a handle on Be My Cat is difficult; docu-drama as meta-horror, or maybe that’s faux-snuff as mockumentary. It’s a curiously refreshing blur, but definitely a vehicle for Tofei to indulge his passion for method acting. As the deranged director, Tofei immersed himself utterly into the character, only allowing filming decisions to be made as the obsessive director, not as Tofei. The result makes for a compelling, disquieting, resonant, and unique experience. It’s an existential nightmare, pushing the envelope of conventional found footage, but keeping in mind the grounded “authenticity” and creative inspiration and execution of The Blair Witch Project. 

Cat Sick Blues

Australia | 2015 | Directed by Dave Jackson

Logline: A young man becomes a masked serial killer in a deranged attempt to honour and resurrect the life of his beloved feline pet.

It’s always resfreshing to see a horror movie that strays outside the boundaries, jumping fences, spraying on walls, hissing at strangers, clawing at faces. Any narrative that refuses to play by the rules, yet delivers the goods, gets my enthusiastic nod of approval. Dave Jackson’s debut feature, which stemmed from a 2013 short, is probably the most original, unapologetic, and strangely affecting Australian horror movie since Bad Boy Bubby. They both involve dead cats, funny that.

Twenty-something loner Ted (Matthew C. Vaughn) is suffering rather badly. His cat, Patrick, his beloved pet since childhood, has passed away. Now Ted has had a major brain snap. In a desperate attempt to bring back his one and only he believes he must take the nine lives that his feline friend once possessed and harbour the blood for his successful resurrection. 

Ted has a sculptor make him a pair of cat gloves with razorsharp claws. He dons the too small red jumper from his adolescence and the huge full head black cat mask he got one Christmas as a lad. Now he is Catman, and (rather inexplicably) a danger to all women.

In a bizarre parallel narrative (or sub-plot, if you will) Claire (Shian Denovan) has a white cat called Ismelda, an Internet sensation. But in a cruel and tragic turn of events Claire’s beloved is also taken from her. Claire and Ted are on a collision course.

Channeling the surrealist cinema of late 70s/early 80s low-budget Euro, US, and Aussie exploitation fare, with many references, and yet, the movie remains thematically elusive and feels disturbingly original. It’s a troubling and confronting tale of a young man’s mental disintegration and a young woman’s grief and survival. Nothing can quite prepare you for the seemingly indulgent, harrowing weirdness, and nightmarish comedy, that is director/co-screenwriter Dave Jackson and co-screenwriter Andrew Gallacher’s Cat Sick Blues.

Props to Matthew Revert's retro-vibed score, and to Shian Denovan and Matthew C. Vaughn for their dedicated performances, but I must take my hat off to the special effects team for their dynamic and seamless use of excellent practical effects and in the right places CGI.

Cat Sick Blues is one of those instant cult classics. I could feel its dark, stylish energy from the startling credit sequence. The ending doesn’t quite deliver the pay off you are anticipating (although quite what I was expecting or wanting, I wasn’t sure), but in an unctuous and perverse way, it works; one can almost feel the fur ball working its way up the back of your throat, making you gag, spitting it out, and then licking it, because its your own.

Cat Sick Blues screens as part of Sydney’s A Night Of Horror International Film Festival, tonight, 7pm, Dendy Newtown. 

Goddess Of Love

US | 2015 | Directed by Jon Knautz

Logline: A mentally unstable woman begins a volatile descent into madness when she suspects her lover has left her for another woman.

From the working titles of Mania and The Dark Side of Venus, Jon Knautz’s third feature became the elusive and alluring, but more importantly, the double-edged sword, Goddess of Love. The Venus of this tale is no deity for worship; this is a warrior for whom reality and fantasy have collided and there will be intentional and collateral damage.  Goddess of Love is one bitchin’ psychosexual thriller.

Venus (Alexis Kendra, who co-wrote and co-produced with Knautz, and was also production designer) lives alone in her apartment decked out like an exotic Arabian love nest, although, sadly, she has no lover to share it with. She spends her days taking ballet lessons, tickling the ivories at home, and drinking lots of red wine and smoking pot, while her nights are spent dolled up and zoning out, taking her clothes off at a strip club.

One of her private lap dances is for Brian (Woody Naismith), a handsome photographer, and recent widower. They strike up an immediate rapport, and the mutual attraction leads them straight to third base, and an enthusiastic home run. Venus is over the moon. Despite Brian’s emotional fragility, she feels she has found the one, and it is time to invest her everything, beginning with serving his favourite pasta dish and finding him that perfect keepsake. 

But the honeymoon period, though sweet, is very short. Before Venus can say “Aphrodite’s got nothin’ on me!” Brian has retreated, and suddenly Venus finds their communication has been reduced to short, sharp text messages. Worse still, she intercepts a voice message to Brian from another woman, Christine (Elizabeth Sandy), who sounds way too friendly.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  

Jealousy rears its ugly head with the savage intent of a green cut snake, and Venus is on the warpath. Infatuated with Brian, but more importantly, obsessed with Christine’s invasion and the injurious repercussions it is having on her own psyche Venus swiftly descends into a delusional rage, hell bent on revenge.

Knautz also acted as cinematographer, and the movie looks sensational. Whilst embedded with a cool, sensual style, awash with colour and dynamic movement, the narrative, both in mise-en-scene and character, is compelling. Kudos to Alexis Kendra for her fantastic central performance - she’s in almost every scene - as she bravely rides the rollercoaster of emotions, laid bare, being thrown around the arena of love’s cruel intent. 

As the tagline warns, “Be careful who you get close to.” This is one bombshell with a very short fuse. Her Tinder account should read, “Danger UXB.”

Goddess Of Love screens as part of Melbourne’s Monster Fest, Sunday, November 29th, 3pm, Lido Cinema.

Tangerine

US | 2015 | Directed by Sean Baker

Logline: On Christmas Eve, two Los Angeles streetwalkers spend most of their time trying to find a rogue pimp to learn the truth of his cheating ways.

As refreshing as sherbet ricocheting off your tongue, dang! Tangerine is fresh and vibrant and funny as forever. I love a movie like this; a small, but beautiful present, that unwraps with perfect folds, the packaging glittering, the merchandise gleaming, happy endings all round!

Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is a transgender motormouth. Her BFF, Alexandra, (Mya Taylor), another transgender, deals with it. But Sin-Dee has serious drama going on. She’s recently emerged from a stint in prison, and now she learns her pimp boyfriend, Chester (James Ransone), has been sleeping with a mangy “fish” (slang for woman). She’s livid, and she’s determined to track the cheating asshole and give him a piece of her mind, and probably a black eye too.  

It’s the desolate urban wilderness of West Hollywood, in the City of Angels, on Christmas Eve. A taxi driver, Razmik, has had his fare share of fallen angels. He needs some sexual relief, and his homosexual predilection is to give head to a good-looking trannie. He picks up a stunner, who calls herself Selena. But much to Razmik’s shock, she’s all woman.

Alexandra is handing out flyers for a small singing gig she’s doing that night, nearby. She needs as much support as she can muster. It’s not helping that Sin-Dee is on a mission. Soon enough Sin-Dee’s unruly antics are too much for Alexandra, her tolerance exhausted. She storms off.

Sin-Dee finds the blonde slut whom Chester has been breaking off, and, after yanking her from a filthy sex party motel dive, she hauls the bewildered girl around the streets, whilst she tracks down the other culprit. Meanwhile Razmik has learned of Sin-Dee’s return, his favourite mister-ress, and he’s prepared to risk his marriage to see her before Xmas! Everything comes to a head downtown at Donut Time.

Tangerine was the darling of the Sundance Film Festival at the beginning of the year, and it’s charming the pants and skirts off every audience it plays to. It’s an instant cult classic before it’s even got off the festival circuit. Shot on three iPhone 5S devices, using the $8 FiLMiC Pro app, with a clip-on anamorphic lens, it’s sensational looking, but it does the movie a disservice if you let that “lo-fi” spec become a gimmick, or cloud your appreciation. Sure, it’s impressive, and I’m sure it will inspire a lot of wannabe filmmakers, but if it wasn’t for director Baker and his co-writer, Chris Bergoch’s witty and mischievous screenplay, and the bang-on performances from the two amateur, but undeniably charismatic leads - not forgetting James Ransone’s hilarious turn at movie’s end - then Tangerine would simply sink in the glut of indie movies that swamp the scene each year, regardless of its cool tech-stylistic.

What I loved especially about Tangerine (the meaning of title is frivolous, but I love it just the same) is all the movie directors and films that are reflected and embraced. Some influences are obvious, others less so, but all in a lovely, unpretentious way. The camp chaos of Pedro Almodovar, the sarcasm and bitchiness of Greg Araki, the anarchic wit of Shane Meadows’ Small Time, the layered naturalism of Robert Altman, the magic hour vibe of Wong Kar-Wai and Christopher Doyle, the swagger and bravado of Doug Liman’s Swingers, and the dreamy summer antics of Evan Glodell’s Bellflower.  Such a melting pot of influences, simmered to perfection.

Tangerine is a sweet delight indeed; my favourite movie of this year’s Sydney Film Festival, and one of my favourites of the year. 

Black Souls

Anime Nere | 2015 | Italy | Directed by Francesco Munzi

Logline: Three brothers from a southern Italian crime family become embroiled in an escalating feud with another family.

Imbued with the same sombre tone and dark design of two American modern classics, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral, comes this authentic tale of morality and despair from the tenebrous heart of rural Calabria where the ‘Ndrangheta have laid down the law beyond the law for decade upon decade. Black Souls is as powerful and disquieting as its title suggests.

Based on a novel by Gioacchino Criaco, it tells the story of three brothers who are trying to keep the wealthy dynasty together, but petty differences, and the unruly younger generation is proving difficult. The eldest, Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), wants to remain out of the business, so he can continue to enjoy his twilight years with his goats and, hopefully, his son, Leo (Guiseppe Fumo), who idolises the two charismatic younger brothers, staunch Luigi (Marco Leonard), and savvy Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta), the business head of the family.

Following an argument, Leo, the hot head, acts impetuously and recklessly, blasting the windows of a rival gang’s bar. The consequences are tragic, and as a result, the family is drawn into the bitter machinations of feudal revenge. But this kind of vengeance is never just black and white, there is always red, and it spills every which way.

Black Souls doesn’t re-invent the wheel, as there is simply no need. There is nothing new on parade, no clever sub-text, or political angle. It is this straightforward, rustic approach, but executed with panache and attention to authenticity, which places Black Souls upon the mantle of the modern classic. A study of violence begetting violence, of morality being crushed under the weight of darkest human nature, Black Souls is the Italian crime family tale we’ve been waiting for.

The movie boasts superb performances from the entire cast (faces with more character than a fine aged vino rosso), with stunning cinematography and production/wardrobe design; all deep shadowy hues, black leather, steel, and wool. The dialogue measured, the behavior slowly unraveling, the slow-burn tension creeping up. You know this is not going to end well, but just how the cards fall is Black Souls’ Ace of Spades. A most darkly rewarding surprise, indeed. 

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

US | 2015 | Directed by Alex Gibney

Logline: An in-depth look at the Church of Scientology, its history, its methods, and its effects on those who have been on the inside.

Basing his documentary on the book by Lawrence Wright, Gibney – an extremely talented filmmaker – was primarily interested in finding out why so many people, especially high profile celebrities, had joined this so-called religion. He ended up with a powerful, and ultimately very disquieting, exposé on the inner workings and devastating consequences of this complicated belief system that has seduced so many.

I went into this packed (some two-and-a-half thousand) Sydney Film Festival afternoon screening knowing a little about Scientology, but not a lot. I was chiefly interested in the Hollywood connection, which includes Tom Cruise and John Travolta as two of its long-term poster boys, and the science fiction background stemming from its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. What I learned was a real eye-opener.

In a nutshell, Hubbard, who had enjoyed success as a prolific author of mostly pulp science fiction beginning during the 1930s, served in the military for numerous years, then became involved in the occult, and, after during his second marriage, made the declaration "Writing for a penny-a-word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” Hubbard published his book on Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which sold by the truckload, and subsequently, founded the Church of Scientology, with his book as its bible, and “auditing” (via his electrometer) as its chief practice.

Going Clear (which refers to the process in which its members rid themselves of the emotionally painful experiences of their past enabling them to live joyful lives) exhibits a very damning picture of Hubbard’s creation, and in particular shows David Miscavige, the Church’s Chairman of the Board of nearly thirty years, as a megalomaniacal sociopath (it doesn’t do any favours for Tom Cruise either). This is an organisation that prides itself on being a non-profit church, and as such, is tax-exempt. It has, however, become one of the wealthiest financial institutions in America, worth well over a billion dollars.

No here comes the big crunch … This is a “religion” that reveals to its members, only after they have already “invested” huge sums of money and ascended up to the higher levels of indoctrination, that seventy-five million years ago an evil galactic ruler, named Xenu, solved overpopulation by bringing trillions of people to Earth in DC-8 space planes, crashing them into volcanoes and nuking them. The souls of these dead space aliens were then captured and shown films of what human life should be like, including false ideas containing God, the devil and Christ. The alien spirits, known as thetans, inhabit our bodies, and Scientologists believe that if they rid themselves of these they will be healthier and will even gain special powers like mind-over-matter.

Apparently some Scientologists have spent more than $300k to gain this knowledge. 

By using a combination of fascinating archival footage, recreations, and candid interviews with key figures, including director Paul Haggis, actor Jason Beghe, and high-ranking Church officials Mike Rinder and Mary Rathbun, who have managed to prize themselves free of the sticky web that is the Church of Scientology, Gibney has constructed an altogether gripping and enlightening portrait and study on the dangers of intense faith. Notably, but not surprisingly, Tom Cruise and John Travolta declined to be interviewed for the documentary.

And herein lies the documentary’s most salient point; one of humankind’s most fallible traits is our inherent “loneliness” and fear of thinking for one’s self. Religion – faith – seems to be the answer, but devoting oneself to the doctrines of a religion and/or cult (and let’s be honest here, Scientology is not a religion) can lead to emotional vulnerability, psychological manipulation, and, ultimately, abuse and exploitation. The Church of Scientology blatantly manipulates and abuses people, emotionally, psychologically, fiscally, and even physically. There is no joy here, only a mask hiding fear. 

I’m inclined to make a disclaimer: I’m not about to compare Scientology to other religions or cults, which is, in itself, a huge can of worms. I know there are religions that condone murder and practice paedophilia, but I’m not inclined to discuss them. My opinion here is simply on Scientology, based on viewing the doco Going Clear.

What is heartening to learn is that the membership for the Church of Scientology is shrinking. Hopefully, as a result of this high profile doco, the IRS will re-consider their decision to allow the Church to remain tax-exempt. I hope the FBI will initiate a criminal investigation into the human trafficking. And, maybe, just maybe, one day the Church will implode under the weight of its audit files. However, it is highly unlikely Cruise or Travolta will ever turn their backs on Hubbard (who passed away in 1987), as their audit files would probably contain enough dark secrets to ruin half of Hollywood. But that’s another kettle of fish!

Going Clear is required viewing for anyone who is fascinated by the question of faith, and/or the insidious influence of cults, or for anyone has been involved either directly, or indirectly, with a cult or sect. It is essential viewing, period.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief screens as part of the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, Wednesday 10 June, 8:35pm – Event Cinema 4.

Slow West

2015 | UK/New Zealand | Directed by John Maclean

Logline: A young Scottish man has traveled to America to search for the older girl he loves, and is reluctantly befriended by an outlaw who serves as the lad’s protector.

Writer/director Maclean is a Scotsman who shot a black and white short, starring Michael Fassbender, on a mobile phone in 2009. He then made another short which won a Bafta. Slow West is his first feature, and it stars Fassbender, alongside a grown-up Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s a very accomplished first feature that captures all the right elements of a Western.

Shot in the Canterbury region of New Zealand, doubling for the Mid-West frontier of America, and it serves the landscape well.  It’s an evocative picture, a sombre and reflective piece, perhaps a lost companion story to Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man. Certainly there are many similarities, and the way Maclean’s narrative flows, the self-contained scenes, the study of violence and yearning.

Jay (McPhee) is sweet sixteen. On a horse he rides, naïve of the trouble he is trotting toward. Silas (Fassbender) intercepts the boy, and together they ride across hill and dale. Silas has a hidden agenda, he knows the girl, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius) and her father John (Rory McCann) are fugitives, and wanted dead or … dead. Silas keeps the wanted flyer to himself.

Bounty hunters are on their trail, lead by Payne (Ben Mendelsohn, sporting a fine fur coat). It won’t be long before they’ve caught up with Jay and Silas, and there’ll be trouble.

There was a period when Westerns were the ciné du jour of Hollywood, but they’re far and few between these days. Slow West is not your average Western, it lingers and meanders, taking inspiration from the masters, such as Leone and Ford, but also carving its own style. Slow West is an Irish and New Zealand co-production, a curious combination for such a genre, I can’t think of any other Westerns that have emerged from those countries.

Slow West reverberates with a curious sense of humour, and a romantic longing. The cast is excellent, and once again Fassbender delivers all the right nuances. How he manages to do period and contemporary films so effortlessly is something rather special. Props to Caren Pistorius, making the smooth transition from television to cinema, who completely fooled me into thinking she was a genuine Scots beauty.  

Slow West will be too languid for some, but it rewards with a suitably violent pay-off, and harnesses an ending that is not quite what you’re expecting, which is always a good thing.

Slow West screens as part of the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, Monday 8 June, 6:15pm – Cremorne

Strangerland

2014 | Australia/Ireland | Directed by Kim Farrant

Logline: A couple that has moved to a remote outback town find themselves at wit’s end when their two teenage children go missing.

The debut feature from a former documenteur, and it’s a mystery-drama smothered in the dust-laden atmosphere of the great Australian red desert. It’s a classic tale of rebellion and betrayal, of innocence and promiscuity, of the wounded and the living, of the present and the missing. Strangerland won’t be every person’s cup of tea, but for those who like those delicate moments in between Strangerland offers a darkened bounty.

The Parkers, Catherine (Nicole Kidman) and Matthew (Joseph Fiennes) are struggling to hold on to their marriage. He is irritable and disinterested, she is frustrated and mournful, together they are depressed, but functioning. Their two children, Lily (Maddison Brown) and Tommy (Nicolas Hamilton), are a handful. Ten-year-old Tommy likes to wander the empty streets at night, and fifteen-year-old Lily yearns for sexual intimacy.

It is Lily’s prior behavior that has prompted the move from the city. She was involved with her schoolteacher. The local boys take advantage of her loose morals. One night Lily follows Tommy on one of his jaunts. Matthew watches them slink off, his contempt for his daughter leaving him devoid of responsible parenting.

The next morning they’ve vanished. The night has swallowed them. This drives a wedge between Catherine and Matthew and their ugly past rears its head, as local detective David Rae (Hugo Weaving) tries to make sense of the disappearance. 

With a brooding soundtrack from Keefus Ciancia and stunning cinematography from P.J. Dillon, Strangerland is infused with a resonant and mesmerising mise-en-scene. The heat-soaked imagery and sweaty indecision permeates the characters as they struggle within their emotional turmoil. Catherine slowly loses the plot, as Matthew begins to unravel, and both resort to bad habits.

The performances are top notch, especially Nicole Kidman, whose bravura display of naked vulnerability and cracked resilience is amongst the best work of her career, up with Dead Calm, To Die For, Dogville, and The Human Stain. Hugo Weaving, although in a fairly thankless role, still owns his scenes, he’s just one of those reliably watchable actors. Also props to the young actors, especially Maddison Brown, she’s definitely one to watch.

Echoing the untouchable Picnic at Hanging Rock, Strangerland is a mystery that becomes less about the actual mystery and more about the people close to it, dealing with the event. This is ultimately a sad story about a crumbling marriage, and how extraordinary pressure can create a dangerous force of human frailty.

Strangerland screens as part of the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, tonight, 6:30pm, Saturday 6 June, 11:30am, 7:30pm, & 8:30pm – State, Casula & Cremorne.

Deathgasm

2015 | New Zealand | Directed by Jason Lei Howden

Logline: Two teenage metalheads form a band, summon an evil entity, and then attempt to reverse the demonic chaos they’ve unleashed. 

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to that quaint hospital soap opera, there’s a howl and a screech … nek minnit, a heavy metal demon snaps your funny bone and tears your soul asunder! All hail Deathgasm! \m/

Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), a slightly geeky heavy metal fan, befriends Zakk (James Blake), a cooler version of himself. With a couple of Dungeons and Dragons nerds, Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Crewsswell) onboard they quickly form a band, Deathgasm, and with the lure of a black hymn promising power and fortune, Brodie leads them into a hell on earth after an ancient evil, The Blind One, is summoned.

It takes spunky love interest, Medina (Kimberley Crossman), to give Brodie some balls and take the demonic bull by the horns. But first there’s Aeon (Andrew Laing) and a horde of Satanic worshipers and all-round nasty motherfuckers to deal with first. There’ll be hell to pay, and there will be blood. Lots of it.

If you like your horror-comedy splattered from head to foot, a la Peter Jackson’s Braindead then you’ll love this decidedly Kiwi gore riot. Writer/director Howden, a visual effects whiz, has made his first feature, and it’s a bonza! Hilarious performances, with notable cameos from veterans Andrew Laing and Cameron Rhodes, crackingly funny dialogue, OTT cartoon gore gags, and enough metal references to keep the diehards happy.

It’s been a wicked period for New Zealand horror, with several ripsnorters over the past year. Deathgasm is best enjoyed in the cinema with a full house, all hooting and hollering along with the foul-mouthed, longhaired louts on screen. These are anti-heroes worth rooting for.

Might I add, Deathgasm would play very well after Housebound (another Ant Timpson-produced comic gem) in a comedy-horror double-bill. Keep that in mind a little further down the track when you’re wondering what crowd-pleasers are required for that pizza, beer and bullets night with the mates and sheilas at home.

Like I said, all hail Deathgasm! \m/

Deathgasm screens as part of Freak Me Out in the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, tonight, 8:15pm & Sunday 7 June, 8:30pm – Event Cinema 8 & Dendy Newtown

Goodnight Mommy

Ich Seh, Ich Seh | 2014 | Austria | Directed by Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala

Logline: A mother has returned home from hospital, and her two young sons become determined to uncover the truth of her operation and her real identity.

In the thematic tradition of the great Euro-horrors of the 70s and 80s, but shot with the clean, minimalist compositional style of Urich Seidl (who is producer), this domestic nightmare of identity and (dis)trust is the delightfully dark creation of Seidl’s partner, Franz, and her documentary collaborator Fiala. Delving into a fantasy world that merges and blurs the realities of adult and child, an escalating paranoia and moral slide pushes the narrative toward a deeply disturbing dénouement.

Elias (Elias Schwarz) and his twin brother Lukas (Lukas Schwarz) enjoy the expansive rural property of their parents with a gorgeous lake and surrounding forest. They seemingly inhabit a nine-year-old’s very normal realm of playful exploration and pretend. But the reality is, their world is far from normal. The parents have divorced, and the mother (Susanne Wuest) has recently arrived home from the hospital, her face swathed in bandages. Just what has happened exactly is unsure, and will remain that way.

The boys become increasingly distrustful of their mother’s post-op behavior. She is far stricter, aloof, and very demanding of her own recuperation. The young boys determine that mummy dear will need to prove her identity to them. Reassurance is paramount. Problem is, mummy is very reluctant to delve into the recent past. As such, the boys take the pressing issue into their own mischievous and malevolent hands.

There’ll be tears before bedtime.

What an extraordinarily original screenplay, and directed with a consummate style. Wuest’s central performance of the mother is superb, and the two real-life twins effortlessly capture that innate pre-pubescent awkwardness and curiosity combined. There is only a clutch of other speaking parts; the entire movie is essentially played out between the mother and her boys. It’s a psychologically claustrophobic movie, which tightens its screw until the final scenes, and then releases, the embers of ruin scattering on the night breeze.

The movie has a twist, but what is so clever, is that even if you discover the twist early on, there’s still another that refuses to be exposed. Knowing the first conceit doesn’t upset the narrative or make the story any less powerful or creepy. Goodnight Mommy is a perfectly disquieting nightmare, playing on that age-old childhood terror of your parents being imposters, whilst delivering a steadily horrifying portrayal of a truly damaged psyche, and the gruesome consequences of harbouring secrets from the disturbed.

I See, I See is the English translation of the original German-language title, which suggests a sly play on a children’s lullaby, however the international Americanised title is altogether more chilling and resonant, and fits the movie like a latex glove.

Goodnight Mommy is released on Blu-ray Disc as part of their Accent Collection by Accent Film Entertainment, 20th April, 2016.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon

US | 2015 | Directed by Douglas Tirola

Logline: The history of the controversial and influential American satirical company and its flagship magazine.

Taking its bastard cue from a snobbish academic publication, The Harvard Lampoon, a couple of socio-political cowboys created a rag that wiped the dirty ass of America and smeared it under its nose like a dirty Sanchez. The National Lampoon loved to shock and offend, that was its primary agenda, but its spine was very much its funny bone, and nothing was published unless it made its editors laugh.

Henry Beard and Doug Kenney were the mad men behind the Lampoon grin. Beard was a studious workaholic, Kenney was a creative genius. They were chalk and cheese, but together they were magic. They garnered a sensational team of talent, especially writers and illustrators, including P.J. O’Rourke and Michael O’Donoghue, and young Mike Reiss and Al Jean (who would go on to produce The Simpsons).

Outrageous wit, transgressive satire, filthy, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic jokes filled the pages of the magazine, along with all manner of political degradation. This is what National Lampoon prided itself on, and it existed during a period when there was nothing else quite like it. This was the late 60s and the 70s. In the 80s the magazine began to experience trouble, and more so in the 90s. By the new millennium the Internet had pretty much ruined the party for everyone.

When The Lampoon decided to incorporate a live show it recruited numerous performers from Second Avenue, chiefly John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Gilda Radner. Later, Saturday Night Live pilfered the lot of them, much to the magazine editors chagrin. Later the magazine was seduced by cinema, and the first of several Lampoon movies emerged becoming instant cult favourites: Animal House, Caddyshack, and, of course, National Lampoon’s Vacation.

This is one hell of a fascinating documentary. If only the walls of the chaotic animal house that was the Lampoon’s offices could talk. Never mind, we’ve got this doco and numerous survivors to tell their tales and spill the fruity beans!

Tirola’s snappy pace and the cartoon style elements that punctuate the narrative add much colour and flavour to the documentary. The archival footage is hilarious, and the portfolio of mischievous artwork that graced the Lampoon covers.

Drunk, frequently. Stoned, oh, definitely. Brilliant, that goes without saying. Dead, well, some of the key players are, but the Lampoon legacy lives on. For anyone remotely interested in American satirical comedy, this is essential viewing. Oh, and Rest In Peace Doug Kenney, who “slipped while looking for a place to jump.”

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is screenings as part of the 62nd Sydney Film Festival, Fri 5 June, 8:45pm & Mon 8 June, 2:15pm – Event Cinemas 9

Ex Machina

UK | 2015 | Directed by Alex Garland

Logline: A computer programmer is selected to participate in testing the human qualities of a prototype android with Artificial Intelligence.

Alex Garland is a clever fellow. I don’t like all of what he’s done in the past, but I admire his storytelling skills. I loved his novel The Beach, and I really like the first halves of 28 Days Later and Sunshine (both original screenplays). I’ve not seen his adaptation of Never Let Me Go, but I thoroughly enjoyed his screenplay for Dredd, and, now, I adore Ex Machina. Yup, I’ll even go one step further, I have a crush on a robot in a movie. There, I said it. 

Ex Machina is Garland’s directorial debut and it is a stunning piece of work, all mood and ambience, suggestion and restraint. It drips with a seductive science fiction premise, full of literary references, drenched in atmosphere, the vibe is lush and elegant, hard, smooth, and yet beautifully fragile. Garland will be hard-pressed to come up with a sophomore effort better than this sleek, beautiful machine.

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young computer programmer working at the world’s largest Internet search engine company, Bluebook. He wins an in-house competition and is flown to a secluded property in the (Norwegian) mountains, where his boss, the genius CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isasac), lives as a recluse, apart from his immaculate housemaid Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno). 

Caleb is to take part in a special testing and evaluation process, chiefly the Turing test, in order to ascertain whether Nathan’s prototype A.I., in the form of a fembot called Ava (Alicia Vikander), can pass muster as a human, in terms of its/her emotional and intellectual abilities. Caleb and Ava form and immediate bond, whilst Nathan observes their interaction through surveillance cameras.

The title alone is a brilliant play. The Greek phrase “deus ex machina” (god from the machine) refers to a plot device where a difficult problem is miraculously solved by the contrived intervention of some other event or by a character. By removing the “god”, the title implies that the A.I. progresses toward singularity, or transcends its machine trappings, and in Ex Machina, Nathan is playing God and Ava is his muse.

The three central performances, especially those of mischievous Isaac and sensual Vikander, are superb. The production design by Mark Digby, and the striking use of special effects (chiefly the work on Ava and Kyoko) is exceptional. The ambient music, credited to Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, is excellent (reminding of the work of Carbon Based Lifeforms), as is the Rob Hardy’s pristine cinematography.

I found it hard to fault this movie. The ethereal, dreamy atmosphere, combined with its sombre, even ominous tone is similar to Spike Jonze’s wonderful Her, a perfect companion piece. Ex Machina is definitely one of my very favourite movies of the year. 

Mad Max: Fury Road

2015 | US | Directed by George Miller

Logline: After escaping the clutches of a fascist leader, a desert survivalist teams up with a rogue and her cargo, and together they attempt to outrun their brutal pursuers.

After the red dust has settled, the pounding drums and shredding guitar have quieted, the turbine engines have wound down, and the machine gun magazines have been exhausted, we can finally marvel, ponder and chew on George Miller’s post-apocalyptic opera. It’s been a long time coming, a long trek across the desert, and now it’s time to wrestle with Miller’s magnus opus.

We’d been praying that he was out there, somewhere, in the Wasteland, the Road Warrior, “Mad” Max Rockatansky, the ex-highway patrolman, whose life was torn to shreds when a ruthless gang ran down his wife and baby daughter as they tried despretely to escape. Those were in the early days of the collapse. But it’s been many years now. Max’s patrol car bears little resemblance to the Interceptor that he once used as a lawman. Now, in the stark, unforgiving desert beyond the ruined cities, Max’s souped-up vehicle is his only anchor, his battered refuge, his metal shell.

A two-headed lizard for breakfast, scouting the horizon, and boom, the War Boys are upon him, chasing him down a storm, trussing and gagging him as blood fodder for grotesque Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Bearne, Toecutter in the original Mad Max) and his fascist kingdom. But Max squirms free, and in the ensuing chaos winds up in an unlikely tryst with Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a hard-as-nails woman with a chip on her shoulder, and the scars to prove it.

Furiosa has the King’s wives as willing captives, all of them young and flawless creatures, swathed in muslin, savouring the emancipation, all with very silly names; The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Toast the Knowing, (Zoë Kravitz [Lenny and Lisa Bonet's daughter]), Capable (Riley Keogh [Elvis Presley's grandchild), The Dag (Abbey Lee), and Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton). Later another model-turned-actor, Megan Gale, makes an appearance, as Valkryie, in even less threads. 

Mad Max: Fury Road is a chase movie, plain and simple; for two hours Immortan Joe and his circus pirates pursue Max and Furiosa, mayhem and destruction spilling out over the sand and rock in outrageous fashion. It’s an utterly exhilarating experience, for this is a unique piece of cinema, a $100m action extravaganza painted in bold and vivid strokes that looks plucked straight from the lurid pages of that glorious science-fantasy magazine Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal). It appears the work of French comic book artist Moebius and the concepts of maverick Chilean visionary Alejandro Jodorowsky has certainly influenced the production designers. Miller actually worked closely with a UK comic book artist, Brendan McCarthy, on the movie’s storyboards, before the screenplay was even complete, such was the visual importance of the movie in terms of its raw cinematic power.

Indeed Fury Road works best on the most immediate audio-visual level. The sound design and Junkie XL’s percussive, bullhorn score punctuates the mise-en-scene with stylised aggression, while Miller's fellow veteran, and another legend, John Seale’s cinematography is absolutely stunning (If Seale doesn't win the Oscar next year, there'll be blood). 

So is Fury Road a sequel or a re-boot? It's apparently set in 2060. Perhaps it takes place between The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome? Ultimately it's not that important. Miller places Max's tragic family origin as a haunting, reoccurring flashback, and for the trainspotters there's one iconic occular image lifted from the original movie and placed in a nightmare blink-and-you-miss-it moment. Fury Road exists as new blood on old sand. 

The sub-plot involving Furiosa’s agenda to return to her childhood Green Place isn’t that compelling, and the movie gets weighed down in a mud of bonding issues and identity crises about 2/3rds of the way across the barren landscape. Most importantly it's the narrative minimalism of the first Mad Max movie, and the spectrum of choreographed violence saturating The Road Warrior sequel that Fury Road demands most (and mostly delivers on). But if Miller had pulled the reigns in on the running time Fury Road would’ve packed an even greater punch.

The rich atmosphere and  extraordinary stunt work aside, Charlize Theron owns the picture. Just an oil-streaked sidelong glance from the cab of the War Rig into the rear-view mirror is enough of an iconic moment to last a decade. Bring on Mad Max: Furiosa! Hardy’s Max is very much a middle man, and it feels like Hardy is in a kind limbo, as he looks unintentionally bewildered most of the time. Admittedly it’s a real shame Mel Gibson wasn’t able to reprise his most famous role, and despite Hardy’s solid thespian laurels his delivery has none of the subtle angst or menace of Gibson’s, but at least Hardy concedes that Fury Road isn’t his movie.

There’s no doubt Fury Road will roar into the future as an instant cult classic, but I’m not about to slap the “masterpiece” decal on its bonnet. Definitely a thundering, cracking piece of cinema, and it's a very pretty piece to boot, I just wish now that Miller had been even more game, and shot the movie with no dialogue whatsoever (silencing some of those lesser performers). Hell, now THAT would be an expressionist, purist cinema-as-art statement like no other.

NB: The movie wasn’t shot in 3D, but post-converted, however I’m looking forward to a second viewing at IMAX in 3D so I can soak in the movie as pure cinema rollercoaster and not be concerned with following the story. 

Bad Turn Worse

2013 | US | Directed by Simon & Zeke Hawkins

Logline: A teen, his girlfriend, and buddy find themselves in a world of trouble after one of them steals from his boss and the other two become accessories. 

You can say the Hawkins brothers’ debut feature is a poor man’s Blood Simple, but that would be doing it a disservice. Sure, this Texan neo-noir doesn’t play anything down we haven’t seen before, and it doesn’t play with the power of cinema narrative in the same magical way as Joel and Ethan Coen did with their debut feature, but what Simon and Zeke do is cement themselves as efficient and compelling storytellers, and, most importantly, more than capable of producing a film that captures the atmospheric essence of the genre.

B.J. (Logan Huffman), a brazen opportunist with an arrogant head to boot, steals twenty grand from his boss, Giff (Mark Pellegrino), whom he takes for an idiot. Unfortunately, B.J.’s buddy Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) spills the beans when Giff reveals his true colours as a sadistic thug. Next thing you know B.J., Bobby, and B.J.’s gal Sue (Mackenzie Davis), who shared in the reckless spending of Giff’s cash, have fallen foul of Giff’s master plan to get his moolah back.

Before you can say, “Finger lickin’, cotton’ pickin’, beer swillin’” Bobby’s getting his end in, B.J.’s eavesdroppin’, and Giff has the three teens caught up in the spokes of some dirty big time thievin’ from Giff’s boss Big Red (William Devane). But everyone has an ulterior agenda, including Sheriff Shep (Jon Gries), who spells out a sly warning to young Bobby.

Penned by some dude by the name of Dutch Southern, yup, the movie’s original title (during its festival circuit) was We Gotta Get Outta This Place. Not the most inspired title, but essentially that is what B.J., Bobby, and Sue want, and what drives them. Sue and Bobby plan to go to university, whilst B.J. just wants to get the hell out of dodge. He doesn’t appreciate Sue’s literary passion, all those books with their fancy plots. Even Bobby finds Sue academic reach higher than he’s able to climb, but he’ll try and get a leg over if he can.

In one of the opening scenes Sue is in a café with Bobby discussing Jim Thompson, the legendary noir author. It’s a casual reference, which comes full circle at movie’s end. Later, in Sue’s bedroom, B.J. tries to seduce Sue, but ends up antagonising her, even threatening her in a passive aggressive way. If there’s a notable flaw with Bad Turn Worse, other than the second half not quite delivering on the danger and allure of the first half, it’s that the characters are almost too rich for the sauce they’re stewin’ in. And William Devane simply isn’t given enough screen time as the bathrobe-blazin’ big boss!

But hey, the lead performances, especially Huffman, Davis, and Pellegrino, are worth their weight in gold. Bad Turn Worse satisfies like a smoke after sex. Just don’t call it this noir a Cuban.  

Bad Turn Worse is released on Blu-ray & DVD by Accent Film Entertainment on May 20th.