Holiday

Denmark/Netherlands/Sweden | 2018 | Directed by Isabella Eklöf

Logline: Whilst vacationing with a group of drug dealing criminals a young woman finds herself attracted to a holidaying stranger and creates dangerous turmoil.  

Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne) is the girlfriend of Michael (Lai Yde), a handsome and extremely arrogant wannabe drug lord. With his criminal cohorts they are Danes on holiday in Turkey, on the Riveria coastline, soaking up the rays by the villa pool and on the beach, patronising the bars and restaurants, and acting like they own the place. There is still business to be attended to, jewellery to be bought, and samples of high grade MDMA to be tried and tested. 

Sascha has already been reprimanded by one of Michael’s associates. Violence, both the threat of it, and the enforcing of underworld etiquette, is part and parcel with this lifestyle. It becomes quickly apparent that Sascha is numb to the abuse. Her place in the hierarchy is set in stone, and she must simply endure, if she wishes to continue to enjoy the lifestyle luxuries the criminal realm includes. But behind her eyes lies a yearning for more power.

Dutch Thomas (Thijs Römer) and his buddy are also on vacation on the Riveria, their yacht moored at the marina. The two men cross paths with Sascha at an ice cream parlour, and she and Thomas immediately strike up a flirtatious rapport. Later, Sascha spots the men dining at the same restaurant and chats with them, away from Michael and his clan. Michael has taken note of his trophy girlfriend’s discretions.

In a highly controversial scene halfway through the movie, and seemingly out of nowhere, Michael turns a relaxed affectionate moment with Sascha into a brutal display of power, violating and humiliating her. It is very explicit and graphic, as disturbing in its realism as it is shocking in its candidness. Even more confronting is how Sascha internalises the incident. A quiet rage coils inside her. It is an incredibly brave and delicate performance from Sonne, as well as a superbly menacing one from Yde.

But Holiday doesn’t become a revenge movie, though is it a study of violence. It is ultimately an observation, and a harrowing one at that, of the ghastly glamour bruising of the gangster underworld. How naïveté can lead to co-dependence, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome at play, how corruption can operate on an insular level.

Sascha’s passivity eventually gives way in the most horrendous, appalling way. It frustrates, and yet, provides the narrative with a darkly satisfying resolve. It’s not what you want, it’s not what you expect, but it makes terrible sense. Sascha’s moral arc has an inexorable beauty as desolate as the ocean view, as wretched as her submission to Michael.

Holiday is not for everyone, it has the uncompromising, savage, and realistic edge of Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, with the cold precise vibe of Ulrich Seidl and Michael Haneke, and the beautifully sustained tension and release of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy. Eklöf, with her debut feature, has delivered one of the year’s most resonant and remarkable films indeed, and one guaranteed to polarise.  

Holiday is screening as part of the 65th Sydney Film Festival, Friday 8th June, 8:30pm at Dendy Newtown, and Sunday 10th June, 6:45pm at Event Cinema 9 George St.

Holiday is screening as part of 21st Revelation Perth International Film Festival, Sunday 8th July, 8:45pm, Saturday 14th July, 2:30pm, and Sunday 15th July, 7:15pm, all at Luna Leederville.

 

 

 

 

Hereditary

US | 2018 | Directed by Ari Aster

Logline: When the grandmother dies, the daughter’s family begins to experience increasingly bizarre and alarming secrets about their ancestry.

Employing a narrative slow burn, drenched in foreboding, dripping with dread, this supernatural tale of the disintegration of a scarred and vulnerable family is the most genuinely nightmarish horror movie in ages. Conjuring the atmospheric intensity from the best of the 70s, and, more importantly, armed with the tenebrous resolve that makes other acclaimed contemporary films, such as The Conjuring and The Babadook, far less the kind of horror movies that True Believers herald, this horror movie projects a darkness that sears holes. 

The Graham family is gripped with solemnity. The matriarchal grandmother has passed away and left all kinds of trouble brewing. Her daughter Annie (Toni Colette) is struggling with her career art in miniatures, whilst keeping her demons locked away. Her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne) does his best to keep the family harmonious, but the cracks are showing. Peter (Alex Wolff), the elder offspring, wants only to live like a normal teenager, while his oddball younger sister Charlie (Milly Shapiro) is harbouring an even deeper resentment.

What begins as a domestic drama riddled with dysfunctional behaviour soon unravels into a full-blown phantasm of hellish ancestral vice. Burnt offerings aren’t the half of it, this has third degree witchery blistering in its intent. Hereditary lays out a two-hour master class (or close to it) in horror suspense and execution. Colette delivers a central career best performance, while Wolff, newcomer Shapiro, and Ann Dowd as a spiritualist, offer excellent support. Byrne is solid also. Both Colette and Byrne serve as executive producers.

I take my hat off to composer Colin Stetson (who co-scored the excellent Blue Caprice from a few years back) who delivers an absolutely terrific soundtrack utilising classic style cues and contemporary minimalist sound design technique. Writer/director Aster also knows when to keep the scene quiet, and it works a darkly oneiric treat.

This is Aster’s debut feature after a run of short films, and he showcases a superb understanding of how the best horror movies unfold, operate, and manipulate. Without once pandering to the conventional jump scare tactics or red herrings so frequently used in popular cinema, Aster opts for the creeping unknown, laying down subtleties, slyly twisting the narrative screws, providing the audience with characters who are very convincing and empathetic. There’s a particularly shocking and disturbing death in the movie’s first act, the harrowing circumstances of which continues to linger long after the end credits have left the screen.

By cleverly molding a mainstream approach to esoteric material Aster takes the key element that made Paranormal Activity 3 the best of that series and presents a disturbing instant classic. Horror movies of this calibre don’t come around very often. One must savour the strange and macabre ingredients  and relish them as a witch would stirring and tasting her own spooky brew. If you loved Oz Perkins' February, you'll definitely get a black magic kick from Hereditary. 

It’s hard in this day and age for movies to survive the hype machine. Hereditary has been riding on a massive crest of acclaim, being compared to such seminal fare as The Exorcist. I went into the screening with expectations in check, having not even seen the teaser trailer. The movie deserves all the praise it gets. For me Hereditary ticks almost all the boxes, much more so than other recent horror darlings A Quiet Place and The Witch, and as a horrorphile I have a lot of boxes. Apparently Aster doesn't consider himself a horror director, is even turning down the big bucks from Hollywood, but I surely hope he makes another. And another.

A Quiet Place

US | 2018 | Directed by John Krasinski

Logline: In a decimated near-future a lone family must try to survive ferocious alien creatures who hunt using acute hearing. 

Another in the recent trend of what are referred to as “elevated horror” movies, where social metaphor or a social-political context is used as a subtextual commentary to lift what is considered to be a base genre. Generally I don’t have time for this kind of pseudo-soapbox rationale, just deliver us a great horror movie that either terrifies its audience, or horrifies its audience, or, even better, does both. In the case of this spare and concise tale of extraordinary parenthood, the bar has been raised to a decent height, even if I do have a few issues with the writing.

The Abbott family; Lee (John Krasinski), wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), deaf teenager Regan (Millicent Simmonds), sickly son Marcus (Noah Jupe), and youngest, Beau (Cade Woodward) travel, barefoot, and in silent conversation, from township to township, each one derelict. They pick up supplies, and make their way to an abandoned farmhouse where they plan to set up camp for awhile. The world has been invaded by huge, crustacean-like extra-terrestrial beasts that are blind, but hunt relentlessly by using massive, acute earholes, and sport mouths full of razor-sharp teeth. To describe these creatures as frightening is an understatement. 

Tragedy strikes, and the family are burdened with grief. But Evelyn is pregnant, and Lee is determined to develop a hearing device for his daughter that works. They are survivalists, pragmatic and smart. But the alien menace are a formidable and constant threat. Lee has determined that there are three of the creatures roaming in their immediate vicinity, and in order for the family to stay alive, they must follow strict rules, and adhere to the survival tactic of making no noise louder than that which nature makes. 

But there’s always room for human error. 

The rather gimmicky premise is by screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, with additional scripting by Krasinski, directing his third feature, with his wife of eight years, Blunt, playing opposite him for the first time. The screenplay is taut, with almost no spoken dialogue - the narrative is facilitated by the use of American Sign Language, but there are a few glaring inconsistencies that threatened to derail the movie; such as the alien beasts’ ability to move at lightning speed out of seemingly nowhere following a loud sound, yet with their highly developed ears, they can’t detect smaller, quieter sounds? I didn’t buy into that. 

There is a crucial scene, and arguably the movie’s most tense and frightening sequence, when Evelyn, about to give birth, and with a badly injured foot, is desperately trying to hide from one of the creatures, which is steadily closing in. The outcome of this scene illicited a few unintentional guffaws in the audience I was in - including me - as it was fairly absurd. What aggravated it was that Krasinski has directed a high-concept movie with as much plausibility as possible that it becomes gratingly earnest, and the ending of this scene almost scuttles the movie. 

A Quiet Place is, essentially, a take on the plight of parenthood, the underlying intent to teach and protect, and the inherent dilemma of what would it take to ensure your children’s safety. The production values are very high, with excellent special effects, superb performances, especially Blunt and newcomer Simmonds (who is actually deaf). I’m not sure about the score, as good as it is in isolation, the use of it felt heavy-handed, especially in such a movie, where silence is imperative. The now de rigour use of deep, brooding drones has become part-and-parcel for eliciting dread. Yes, it sounds impressive on a sonic level, but its use as narrative ploy has become corny.

Quibbles aside A Quiet Place is a riveting science fiction horror-thriller with several excellent set-pieces, and a pretty cool - Get Out-style - ending. The movie will certainly appeal to audiences who normally wouldn’t watch science fiction horror. But I'm still aching for a new horror movie to really raise the bar. 

Despite The Gods

Australia | 2012 | Directed by Penny Vosniak

Logline: A documentary following the difficult journey of an American filmmaker trying to make an arthouse thriller with Bollywood financing. 

Australian filmmaker Penny Vosniak’s casual observation of Jennifer Lynch directing a creature feature in India is innately fascinating, and quietly entertaining, revealing a very down-to-Earth, emotionally fragile, yet genuinely passionate filmmaker, who just happens to have a world-renowned, cult-classic director for a father.

Jennifer Lynch wrote her first feature, Boxing Helena, at the tender age of 19. She was encouraged to direct it, but the movie was ridiculed by harsh critics, and an even crueller public. The movie, a modern fairy tale that Lynch had intended as a blackly comic, dark romantic fantasy, but which many audiences and critics took seriously, tanked at the box office, and ended up on more Worst Movie lists than you shake a severed arm at. 

After a fifteen year hiatus, her second feature, Surveillance (2008) earned her a Best Movie award at a European film festival, the encouraging news of which she got whilst on the set of her third movie, Nagin: The Snake Goddess (released in 2010 as Hisss), in the sweltering heat and chaos of India, alongside her adolescent daughter, Sydney. 

Lynch has described the experience of directing the movie as like a clusterfuck of cooks in the kitchen, or thereabouts. Funded almost entirely with Bollywood finances (the production had to be filmed using dual English and Hindi language takes), with two many fingers in the pie, her father’s maverick traits came back to bite her on the arse when the frustrated Indian executive producers, unhappy with her artistic deliverance, pushed their weight around and wrenched the movie from her control in the editing suite. It was re-cut to try and make it more of a conventional horror movie, and subsequently Jennifer publicly distanced herself from the movie.

For a movie supposedly costing $6 million, the day-to-day filming on location appeared to be more like a guerrilla set-up. No doubt the buxom Bollywood star, Mallika Sherawat, would have come with a tidy fee, and no doubt special effects whiz Robert Kurtzman wouldn’t have come cheaply either, but the CGI looks dodgy, and no doubt Jennifer’s subtleties of mood and tone all ended up on the cutting room floor. It’s a real shame, as I doubt we’ll ever get the opportunity of seeing a director’s cut. 

Where the documentary becomes especially interesting is the close attention it pays to the relationship between the frustrated 40-year-old single mother, who yearns for a partner, and her precocious 12-year-old daughter, who is endearing, but is driving the line producer barmy. Jennifer leans on her daughter for emotional support, and one of the crew jibes that he can’t tell who is the daughter and who is the mother. Jennifer rolls her eyes. 

Despite the Gods covers the entire eight-month Indian shoot, from the dry season to the wet season, with all the dust, bugs, monsoons, exotic customs and rituals, union strikes, language barriers, and scheduling delays in-between. Jennifer was endeavouring to make a movie that empowered women, that juggled humanity and inhumanity, that championed female sensuality, carnal ferocity, and embraced Far Eastern mythology, and the serpentine grip of the supernatural. What she got for her troubles was a seemingly never-ending headache, and the heart aching toll of having your art stolen from you. But, inadvertently, she got to conquer some inner demons as well.

At doco’s end, four years after production ended, a pink-dreadlocked Jennifer sits with her now 17-year-old daughter (who still looks the same!) and Jim, the man who saved her from going insane during the tail end of her exotic rollercoaster ride. Yet Jennifer has long accepted the emotional and psychological bruising of that experience and she wouldn’t trade it for anything. She’d even go back and do it again, and while she’d change a few of her decisions, she’d also make many of the same mistakes again. 

And therein lies the coil of The Creative Rub.

Possession

France/West Germany | 1981 | Directed by Andrezj Zulawski

Logline: A man returns home to find his wife acting strangely, demanding divorce, and driving the husband to discover what is causing her bizarre behaviour.

“We have nothing to fear, except God, whatever that means to you.”

“For me, God is a disease.”

“That’s why through disease we can reach God.”

Cold Berlin. Mark (Sam Neill) is a spy returning from an assignment. He is debriefed and arrives home to find that all is not well on the domestic front. His wife, Anna (Isabelle Adjani), is no longer the woman he once knew. Infidelity is the culprit, and a distraught Sam searches out his wife’s lover. He finds Heinrich (Heinz Bennett), a sensual neo-hippie spouting intellectual diatribes. But Heinrich insists Anna has moved on from him to someone else.

This is true, she has progressed (regressed?) to another tryst - but no ordinary lover, something otherworldly; a slimy squid-like creature that writhes with silent intent, inexplicably born from her anguish, which she now copulates with at regular intervals in a derelict apartment building. Anna is driven to protect and feed her hideous lover at all costs.

Mark tries in vain to save the marriage, for their young son, Bob (Michael Hogben), if nothing else. But Anna is distant, impulsive, and volatile. In turn Mark becomes desperate, obsessed, reckless. He hires a private investigator, which only complicates matters, and becomes involved with Bob’s schoolteacher, Helen (Adjani also), who looks the spitting image of his wife, except for violet eyes, bangs, and temperament. Soon Mark will be confronted with Anna’s deadly secret, her tenebrous agenda, and it will be his worst nightmare, where sanity, reality, and inhumanity will collide.

Director Andrzej Zulawski pitched Possession to Hollywood as “The story of a woman who fucks an octopus.” After watching the movie, with all its horror symbolism, relationship allegory, sexual ambiguity, identity confusion, and supernatural, science fiction mysticism, you’ll agree with Zulawski’s obtuse and ironic sense of humour as presented to the Tinseltown conservatives.

Zulawski, who is Polish, made the movie as a French/West German co-production. The American financiers would never understand his abstract, artistic intent. In fact the US distributor ended up radically re-editing the original cut, excising between thirty and forty minutes, re-scoring it with another composer, and adding a solarising filter effect over some of the movie’s climactic scenes, in order to try and market it to a broader American horror audience. It was even re-released in the States under the grindhousey title The Night the Screaming Stops.

Primarily, Possession is about the breakdown of a marriage, about manipulation and self-control (or lack, thereof). But embroiled with this deconstruction of a once loving, now destructive relationship, are the insidious tendrils of betrayal and corruption; emotional, physiological, even theological. There’s the psychotherapeutic thread of releasing one’s inner Id, the black dog of male physical inadequacy, the wrath of female emotional instability, and the cruel trial of separation and abandonment.

And then there’s the apocalyptic, ultimate nightmarish fear of children – that your parents are not really your parents.

The pitch and tone of the movie veers from intense anxiety to outright hysteria, with little room to breathe in between. Adjani won the Palm D’Or for Best Actress, and it is an undeniably mercurial and memorable performance (Adjani admitted it took years for her to recover from the role). Sam Neill was not the most convincing actor as a younger man, but he throws himself into the role with wild gusto, and is supported (eclipsed) by Adjani’s dual high-calibre deliverance, and offset by the flamboyant histrionics of German actor Heinz Bennett.

But it’s not just the unusual and original subject matter coupled with the ripe, overtly theatrical performances that gives Possession its je ne sais quoi, it’s the clean fluidity of the camerawork, the serene blue – melancholy – and green – jealousy – cinematography (an influence on Dario Argento’s Tenebre), the desolate West Berlin setting, and, of course, Carlo Rambaldi’s repulsive, ingenious animatronic creature effects, which stick in the mind long after the movie has finished. Indeed, utterly distinct, and utterly unique.

Just as David Lynch has made enigmatic movies that seem impenetrable on first watch, but after multiple viewings became endlessly fascinating, serving up ideas and questions in different guises, with no straight, easy answers - or even answers at all, Zulawski’s Possession is a beast unto itself, a mutant depiction of domestic upheaval, creature horror, loss of faith, and frightening doppelgängers, all wrapped up in an escalating/spiraling frenzy of pursuit and cosmic revelation… with pink-socked espionage to boot.

Flawed like a diamond cut from dark space, borne from bitterness, misery, lust and madness, it seethes and lurches, and makes huge demands of the viewer, but Possession rewards in ways only a truly philosophical, yet powerfully visceral, movie can.

“Almost… Almost…”

Trouble Every Day

2001 | France | Directed by Claire Denis

Logline: A newlywed couple honeymooning in Paris becomes embroiled in the dangerous studies of a doctor and his affected wife. 

One of the most original and disturbing takes on cannibalism/vampirism ever made, Trouble Every Day is like a mutant-strain that floats like a butterfly and stings like a scorpion, a dark and confounding tale of sexual dysfunction and obsession from a cinema poet, who delivers cinema as frustrating as it is rewarding. 

Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo) and his wife June (Tricia Vessey) are arriving in the City of Light on their honeymoon. During the plane journey Shane experiences a moment of intense anxiety whilst in bathroom, his mind swimming with thoughts of himself and his wife amidst blood-soaked carnality; it’s a frightening image. Back in his seat he cuddles with June, but it’s obvious Shane is a deeply troubled man.

Several other characters and their perspectives are introduced, a dazed drifter, Coré (Beatrice Dalle), on the outskirts of Paris. A doctor, Léo Semeneau (Alex Descas), with a criminal agenda, a young and curious hotel chambermaid, Christelle (Florence Loiret), and a couple of opportunist cat burglars with their own twisted goal. There are strange attractors at work in this interweaving tale of hunger and desire, with all four narrative arcs eventually colliding, one after another like a chain reaction, the tone becoming more and more tenebrous, until the devastating denouement.

Performances are strong, especially Tricia Vessey and Florence Loiret, with Vincent Gallo delivering yet another lugubrious performance, reciting his lines like he’s a bored student. He has screen charisma, yet his petulance fuels malaise in a difficult movie. This element is present in all Denis’ movies, right from her 1988 debut, Chocolat, a deeply evocative and languidly sensual tale of sexual ennui amidst African 50s colonialism, which remains a personal favourite.

Trouble Every Day (the title is taken from the lilting song which bookends the movie) is beautiful, erotic, morose and horrific in equal measures. Its carnality is first arousing, then grotesque. A graphic scene has Coré devour a lover - literally, while a love scene between Shane and June ends with him storming off and furiously masturbating, and another where the “eating” act of cunnilingus is taken to its most appalling extreme.

Humanity’s unease and the dark corners of the soul have always fascinated Denis, and she embraces subtlety, suggestion and diversion, frequently into indulgence, the elements of which, in the context of conventional horror movies, would frustrate most audiences. But it is these quieter, often lingering, more reflective moments, which give her films such a raw, poetic edge.

But make no mistake, Trouble Every Day, is no wistful play on love’s sweet boundaries, it bites hard and tears chunks, a precarious mélange of sensuality and depravity. Like a dream it undulates, but like a nightmare it whiplashes, an existential, psychosexual thriller in the most base, elusive, but undeniably provocative sense. 

White of the Eye

UK | 1987 | Directed by Donald Cammell

Logline: The wife of a hi-fi expert finds herself, and their young daughter, caught up in the deadly game of a serial killer in an isolated desert community. 

Paul White (David Keith) is an audio expert who installs high-end stereo equipment into the surrounding Arizona desert homes. He has the ability to produce an om-like resonance that echoes through his cranial cavities, thus providing him with the knowledge of exactly where to place the stereo speakers for optimum acoustics. He is married to Joan (Cathy Moriarty) and they have a young girl named Danielle (Danielle Smith).

A serial killer is on the loose, entering wealthy homes and brutally murdering the glamorous women who live there. Detective Mendoza (Art Evans) is on the case. He has his suspicions, but no concrete evidence. He questions Paul, but to no avail. He probes Joan, about Paul, and gets nowhere quickly. Something’s got to give. 

In flashbacks to the late 70s Joan is with another guy, Mike (Alan Rosenberg), on the road. They befriend Paul at a garage, and Paul and Mike go on a deer-hunting trip into the mountains. Paul channels his inner Native American and takes it to extremes, effectively frightening the shit out of Mike. But Paul wants more than just the antlers. He wants all the flesh, deer and woman too. “I am the one,” he tells Mike, as he fucks Joan, declaring himself the alpha male. 

Keith and Moriarty give stellar performances, and these two physical elements, jarring against, folding into each other, and around the very young person trapped in between, provide the movie with its dysfunctional humanity. Also of note is Alberta Watson as toey Ann Mason, one of Paul White’s wealthy, alluring clients. There is a slight mysticism at work. It’s as if the desert has its own laws of nature, and those that dwell there, human and animal, are affected deeply by its wayward character and torrid climate. 

Cammell co-wrote White of the Eye with his young wife China (she has a tiny part in the movie), based on an early novel, Mrs. White, by brothers Laurence and Andrew Glavan, writing under the pseudonym Margaret Tracy. It’s a haphazard, uneven screenplay, but the movie, much like Cammell’s other films, is less about the story, and more about the moments, the cinema narrative - the mise-en-scene. The score, especially the opening piece, by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and Rick Fenn, effortlessly captures a floating, drifting sense of abandon, a cool mountain breeze above the thick desert heat, an eagle soaring, eyeing its prey, scanning the horizon. 

Cammell hired two cinematographers, Larry McConkey and Alan Jones, seemingly to fuel his desire for conflict on set, as he was notorious for his perverse methods creative drive. According to camera operator Larry McConkey, the shoot was chaotic. Special note must be made to legendary editor Terry Rawlings, who makes great effect of the opening sequence, and also the use of the bleached-out flashbacks. 

The title, White of the Eye, is a reference to the Apache belief that if a person looks too closely into the eye of violence it will leave a mark upon the viewer. Cammell once described the movie as an artistic study of man’s need to destroy. He was vigilant over the dialogue he’d written with China, and refused his actors any room for improvisation. In a way, White of the Eye feels like the director’s most personal film.  

NB: Cammell was a tortured artist. He only made four feature films before committing suicide in the mid-90s following years of despair over not being able to complete the movies the way he wanted. After years as a painter he turned to making films and wrote the brilliant identity crisis Performance, which he co-directed with Nicolas Roeg. Seven years after it was finally released in 1970 he made the trashy science fiction horror The Demon Seed (a movie that demands a re-imagining!), then ten years after came White of the Eye, and finally, after almost another decade made the fractured Wild Side, based on a short story his wife wrote, which was snatched from his control in post by concerned executives, but by that stage Cammell was beyond the pale. His editor Frank Mazzola delivered a “director’s cut” based on Cammell’s original notes, but it is the sociopathic intensities of Performance and White of the Eye he will be remembered best for. 

Arrow Video's brilliant cover art to the Blu-ray release. 

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Japan | 2011 | Directed by David Gelb

Logline: A documentary about an octogenarian sushi master, his two sons, and the tiny restaurant in which they tirelessly work. 

Sukiyabashi Jiro, in the basement of a Tokyo office building, is the world’s smallest three-star Michelin restaurant (the intimidating Michelin guide felt three stars was the only adequate rating they could give the intimate establishment that doesn’t even have a toilet on the premises). It is owned and run by 85-year-old Jiro Ono, a sushi master who left home at the tender age of nine, and began making sushi at ten. Seventy-five years later he continues to strive for perfection.

He serves sushi at his restaurant, and sushi only. Nothing more, nothing less, just the tastiest, most succulent sushi the world has to offer. He never takes a day off work, unless to attend a funeral, or perhaps a rare as hen’s teeth visit to see some very old friends. Apart from his two sons he employs only three other men.

Jiro’s eldest son Yoshikazu is in his 50s and plans one day to step into his father’s shoes. Who knows when that day will come? The other son left to open his own place, and in respect he had his interior designed as a mirror reflection of his father’s. In the meantime Jiro dreams of sushi, and the smiles on the thousands of customers who have graced one of the ten stools that sits around his sushi bar over the years.

For Jiro the perfect sushi is an exquisite union between fish and rice. He serves a degustation of sushi. At $300 a head and with the average dining time of around half an hour, it makes his sushi joint one of the most expensive restaurants in the world. But as anyone who has dined on his delicate oceanic flavours and moist warm grain says, the experience is not only worth it, but it is worth a return visit, and another, and probably another. But keep in mind you need to book a month in advance.

Jiro is regarded as a shokunin, a master of his talent. But Jiro still feels there is a higher level of perfection to reach, and so he plods along tirelessly, day after day, night after night, carefully, meticulously producing his world-renowned dishes. He rates French chef Joel Robochun as his primary source of inspiration, as he feels the Gallic cook has the most extraordinary sense of smell and taste.

David Gelb’s simple unfussy documentary celebrates the art of sushi without ostentation or pretension. There is humour, there is poetry, but both are handled with the subtlety of a lean tuna sashimi. There is the lament of the disappearing fish of the ocean. Over-fishing, especially the net fishing and bottom trawling, has meant one that the massive tuna that used to be marketed in the 40s and 50s no longer has the chance to grow to that size. Conveyor belts have created consumer sushi-heads without any elegance.

But Jiro doesn’t let that bother him too much. He continues to dream of making sushi, the simple meditative joy it brings, and the delicious morsels on his degustation menu: halibut, squid, horse mackerel, lean tuna, medium tuna, fatty tuna, gizzard shad, clam, striped mackerel, “car” shrimp, half beak, octopus, mackerel, bay scallop, salmon roe, salt water eel, dried gourd eel, and grilled egg. 

Marley

USA/UK | 2012 | Directed by Kevin Macdonald

Logline: A documentary that traces the life and career of reggae legend Bob Marley.

It’s a long documentary, clocking in at nearly two-and-a-half hours, but then Robert Nestor Marley’s career spanned twenty years and his music, culture, and legacy has affected and influenced millions of people worldwide, and will do so for many decades to come. Bob Marley is without a doubt the most recognised and successful reggae artist that has ever lived. At the height of his career he was playing stadiums in America, and bringing rival politicians in his homeland together on stage to shake hands. 

Marley had a profound effect on people, and it wasn’t just the Rastafarianism speaking, although this ancient culture is a very important element of Marley’s soulful tribe. Kevin Macdonald’s engaging portrait paints a picture of a family man (albeit an adulterer) and a dedicated artist, a political activist, and a man of sport and leisure (soccer and ganja occupied a large part of his recreational activities, although it should be noted that the association of marijuana and Rastafarianism is closely linked to spirituality and not escapism).

Marley grew up in a very poor part of Jamaica, in the hills surrounding Trenchtown. The son of a black mother and a white father (who left the family soon after Bob was born), Bob discovered music at an early age, and despite being a half-caste, with all its social hurdles, he soon formed a trio and had his first 45 record released on a local label in 1962. By the end of the decade the Wailers (now a full band) were making a name for themselves. Their now legendary concert at the Lyceum in London in 1974 (where the seminal live release of No Woman, No Cry was recorded) cemented Bob Marley and the Wailers as a roots, rock, reggae outfit par excellence.

Marley, the documentary, spends much of its time delving into the social politics of Bob Marley’s life and career, and not nearly as much time into the actual music and key albums, but that’s not saying his music doesn’t drive the film; there is music behind almost every scene and sequence. His son Ziggy and Island Records head Chris Blackwell spearheaded the production, and as such it’s a remarkably honest account, warts and all. Originally to be directed by Martin Scorsese back in 2008, then Jonathon Demme took over the reigns, only to leave citing creative differences with executive producer Steve Bing in the editing suite.

Kevin Macdonald is no stranger to documentary filmmaking, having made two of the very best in the field with One Day in September and Touching the Void. With Marley he is using almost entirely stock footage (Marley died of cancer in 1981), intercut with various members of his extended family and original band members, including Bunny Wailer, Rita Marley (his long-standing wife), Cindy Breaksphere (one of his many mistresses - Marley fathered eleven children to seven different relationships), Lee Perry, Jimmy Cliff, Chris Blackwell, and his two eldest children Cedella and Ziggy Marley. They all have colourful stories to tell.

Regardless of whether reggae music is your cup of brew, Marley is a powerful, embracing, and ultimately, uplifting celebration of one of popular music’s most spiritual leaders, may he rest in peace, Jah Rastafari. 

Melancholia

2011 | Denmark /Sweden/France/Germany | Directed by Lars Von Trier

Logline: Two sisters struggle to deal with their immediate relationships as a once-hidden planet bears down on the earth prompting the end of the world. 

Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is getting married to Michael (Alexander Skarsgard).

But Justine is not happy.

Michael is blissful, but naïve.

Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is exasperated.

Claire’s husband Jack (Keifer Sutherland) is angry.

Justine and Claire’s mother Gaby (Charlotte Rampling) is at the end of her tether.

Michael’s father Jack (Stellan Skarsgard) is boastful, but soon becomes bitter.

The big blue planet Melancholia looms from behind the sun.

The wedding collapses.

Justine is in a stupor.

Claire becomes paranoid.

Jack becomes excited.

Melancholia appears inviting, but the threat of annhilation soon overwhelms.

Jack insists science will prevail.

Justine’s dark mood leads her to strip herself of responsibility.

Claire’s desperation clings like a cold sweat.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Destiny is held dear.

Melancholy engulfs happiness.

Resignation seems the softest option.

Justine, Claire, and her son Leo (Cameron Spur) join hands on the grassy knoll.

Melancholia looms so close now. 

The protection of intimacy is such a fragile pursuit.

Surrender. 

Melancholia is Lars Von Trier's other masterpiece, holding hands with Breaking the Waves. 

Teeth

US | 2007 | Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein

Logline: A teenage girl discovers, much to her horror, she is cursed with vagina dentata, and must seek a hero.

Dawn (Jess Weixler) belongs to The Promise, her high school’s chastity group, and she is the most active non-active member. She gives empowerment speeches to the other students about how cool and right it is to remain a virgin until after marriage. The group members wear t-shirts with “I’m waiting”, and though she is teased relentlessly by the non-Christian students, Dawn doesn’t care, she knows she is right. 

That is until she meets tall, charismatic Tobey (Hale Appleton). A mutual attraction is immediate, and a yearning begins to itch. Now Dawn is confused. She lies in bed and fights the primal urge to rub one out, repeating the word “purity” over and over. It doesn’t help having a creepy sleazoid as an older stepbrother; Brad (the suitably hirsute John Hensley), and a very ill mother.

In the movie’s prologue we see a very young Dawn and Brad playing in a paddling pool on the front lawn. Dawn’s mama and Brad’s papa are lounging nearby. Brad shows Dawn his pee-pee and demands to see hers. Brad decides he wants to do more than just have a squizz. Cut to the respective parents and we hear Brad cry out in pain. “What happened?” enquire the parents, “Dawn bit me,” sulks Brad holding up his bloody, gashed fingertip, while young Dawn gives a little baby-toothed grin.

This opening sequence sets the blackly comic tone for the rest of the movie. Yes, the tongue is firmly in cheek with Teeth, when it bites it does so with sharp, yet playful incisors, like a tigress cub. The movie toys with the themes of sexual awakening, feminism, sexism, adolescence, and, of course, the enduring myth of the vagina dentata, (which is Latin for toothed vagina, in case you were in the dark there), in which a hero must conquer the woman with the sex that chomps. In itself this myth says more about masculine fear than female power.

There’s a strong hint as to the reason for Dawn’s anatomical mutation (or is it simply evolution, with Dawn being the first of her kind, Nature finally answering to man’s multi-millennial dominance over the female kind); the ominous image of two giant nuclear power plant cooling towers belching out thick black smoke in the background to Dawn’s home is repeated several times. Apparently there may be a medical origin to the vagina dentata myth, as the outer layers of embryonic skin cells form dermoid cysts, and in rare instances these cells are able to mature into bone, hair and even teeth, and the cysts are able to form anywhere the skin folds inwards, such as the vagina! But I digress! 

A revenge fantasy flick cloaked as a high school coming-of-age story, but with horror overtones and satirical undertones. Lichtenstein (son of the legendary pop artist Roy Lichtenstein) has penned a deliciously simple, yet astute screenplay, but what actually gives this small, but very memorable movie the real edge is the terrific performance from Jess Weixler in her debut. The nuances in her facial expressions are better than many young actors’ entire resumes! Also very good is John Hensley, as the repressed and anally fixated stepsibling, who embodies an almost diabolical presence, further aggravated by his Rottweiler - named Mother - kept in a cage in his bedroom. The mutt, most satisfyingly, devours a scene of her own at film’s end!

Squeamish men, beware, as director Lichtenstein doesn’t hold back on showing us the aftermath of Dawn’s angry femme-jaws upon her victims, in what must have been a bold move for a semi-mainstream American movie. Ten years on, Teeth still has a firm bite.

Prince - Sign o' the Times

US | 1987 | Directed by Prince

Logline: A concert film based around Prince’s titular album.

Concert films are a dime a dozen, but few capture the pure essence of the artist as richly, atmospherically, or as passionately as the movie that followed the release of Prince's ninth studio album, 1987’s Sign o’ the Times. The movie that focused on the stage show based on his European tour was as singular and powerful as Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same, Talking Heads’ Stop Makin’ Sense, or Neil Young’s Year of the Horse. It has become a cult phenomenon as colourful and dynamic as Woodstock or Monterey Pop, and as memorable and emotionally affecting as The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter or U2's Under a Blood Red Sky. It is Prince captured at the zenith of his creative, flamboyant influence, with an extraordinary band to boot.

Prince’s following in Europe had been building steadily since 1980’s Dirty Mind, the album that heralded the arrival of the Prince most of us recognize, the agent provocateur with more funk in his bounce than the average street cat. Prince toured extensively across Europe with his Sign o’ the Times Tour where sales were very strong, yet on his home turf the sales weren’t as impressive, and a concert film, to be distributed extensively in America, was devised to help bolster sales in the US. Live footage from concerts in the Netherlands and Beligum were intended to be used, but Prince was not happy with the results, and as such, around 80% of the concert film was re-staged and shot at Paisley Park, including an intro and series of vignettes that link the songs with a loose narrative about love, sex, and religion (the usual Prince fuel).

Although the director credit is given to Prince, Albert Magnoli, who directed Purple Rain, did a substantial amount of uncredited work. Considering Prince’s previous directorial effort, Under the Cherry Moon, was so lambasted, it’s surprising that Prince would insist on helming the live project, but as the results show, Prince on stage as a showman outshines his hammy performance as a playboy on the Riveria. Indeed, Prince delivers a career performance in Sign o’ the Times.

The prologue is a street hustle and bustle between Cat, Prince’s dancer and back-up singer, and Wally Safford, one of Prince’s sidekicks. Prince grabs Cat by the hand and steals her away, to a crystal ball, firing purple bolts of electricity, and they gaze into the sphere.

Alone on a stage designed to look like a cross between the dirty neon of old 42nd Street and the streetwise grime of Harlem or The Bronx, the concert opens with the album’s title track in which The Purple One laments the state of the world. Suddenly marching band drumming cuts through the song in syncopation and the rest of the band enter stage right, single file, each one armed with a snare; Cat, Wally, Greg Brooks (backup vocals), Boni Boyer (keys), Miko Weaver (guitar), Levi Seacer Jr. (bass), Dr. Fink (synths), Atlanta Bliss (trumpet), Eric Leeds (sax), and Sheila E. (drums). They end in unison, and the crowd erupts. This is a pure celebration of Prince 's musical genius, unfettered, indulgent, uplifting, mesmerising. 

Indeed, prepare to be wowed, as the band kick proverbial ass through a roughly 80-minute set of searing funk jams and power ballads from the titular album, plus a dash of Charlie Parker ("Now’s the Time") thrown in for good jazzy measure, and not forgetting a blistering, awe-inspiring drum solo courtesy of percussionist extraordinaire Sheila E (even Prince gets behind the kit at one point!) The only other non-album song played is a tease of "Little Red Corvette" early on.

If I had one gripe, it’s that the inclusion of the promotional video for the single "U Got the Look" looks and feels out of place. It was filmed well in advance of the concert footage, and as such features a different stage design, the performers have altered haircuts, and there's the grainy, harsh quality of the video itself. Time has not been kind to that creative decision, whether it was Prince’s or his management, and it would’ve been judicious to have released a 30th anniversary HD edition with that four minute insert removed, and instead, provided as a separate extra.

But irk aside, because it’s a small one really, Sign o’ the Times is a truly magnificent experience. It’s hard to pick favourites. Each time I watch the movie I change my mind. Sometimes it’s the epic "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man", with that soaring, heart-wrenching guitar solo, cleverly segueing into a coda that incorporates the brass section lifted from “Rockhard in a Funky Place”. On other viewings it’s the goosebumpin’ organ intro to “Hot Thing”, or the breezy gouster strut of “If I Was Your Girlfriend”, or maybe the marathon soul chant of “Forever in My Life”.

Or perhaps it’s the stripped back rock pledge of “The Cross” that brings the movie to an end. Any which way, it’s loose and brilliant, and there will never be another maestro like His Royal Badness, so thank the heavens we have Sign o’ the Times to help ease our minds, hearts, and souls. 

Watch it for the first time, watch it for the umpteenth. Just watch it, because it's always gonna be a beautiful night. Always, every time. 

Crash

Canada/UK | 1996 | Directed by David Cronenberg

Logline: The victim of a car crash, and his wife, discover a sub-culture of damaged people who are sexually obsessed with automobile crashes and the libidinous energy surrounding them.

J. G. Ballard’s 1973 novel about a form of symphorophilia – sexual arousal from accidents or catastrophe – was long considered one of the great unfilmmable books. Then Cronenberg came along and, just as he had successfully tackled William Burroughs' seemingly unfilmmable novel The Naked Lunch, grabbed the car by its horns and wrestled it into a compelling tale of dysfunctional desperation and sexual misadventure. 

The novel could be read as a moody case study of sexual perversion and obsession, oozing dangerous fetishistic allure and fueling the most nihilistic of desires. Cronenberg strips the core elements from the book and customises his own vehicle, and it’s aged like a vintage performance automobile, all sleek body and raw engine power, with very little having dated in twenty years.

Screen producer James Ballard (James Spader) and his wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger), have an open relationship, each indulging their sexual whims, but striving for more within their own. They relate their extramarital encounters and find small joy in the discussion. After Ballard is involved in a serious car-crash and in recovery he becomes involved with the car’s crash survivor, now widow, Helen Remington (Holly Hunter). He also meets Vaughn (Elias Koteas), who expresses great interest in Ballard’s injuries, “The car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event.”

Ballard and Remington begin an affair. Vaughn befriends Ballard and introduces him and Catherine to his extracurricular project: recreating celebrity car-crashes for a small audience, such as the one that killed James Dean. Next he plans on staging Jane Mansfield's infamous accident (in the novel Vaughn’s ultimate fantasy is to have a head-on collision with Elizabeth Taylor), but in the meantime Vaughn has his eye on Catherine, whilst Ballard meets one of Vaughn’s entourage, Gabrielle (Rosanna Arguette), whose long legs are clad in fishnets and medical steel braces, providing Ballard with an erotic itch he yearns to scratch. 

The reshaping of the human body by modern technology is a concept that has been part of Cronenberg’s blueprint since the beginning of his career. Crash takes his penchant for body horror and fuses it with a kind of urban apocalyptic urgency. Ballard says to his wife, both at the start and end, “Maybe the next one,” implying that the inevitable purge from his – and the others – sexual aberration will be a release from this mortal coil.

The performances across the entire cast are superb, with many of the actors in roles and scenarios unlike anything else in their career, and pulling it off with somber aplomb, while Howard Shore’s grinding electric guitar-vibed score is perfectly in tune with the movie’s metal edge. We haven't seen this kind of sleekness and aloofness in a Cronenberg movie since Stereo and Crimes of the Future. 

It’s curious to note the omni-sexual presence that permeates the novel isn’t entirely diluted for the movie, in order to give it more mainstream appeal. A scene where Vaughn picks up and screws a hooker in the backseat of his Lincoln Convertible whilst Ballard drives with a whiplash smile, the woman is notably androgynous. In another scene Remington becomes extremely turned on whilst watching test-crash dummies on the television, and she fondles both Ballard and Gabrielle’s crotches, suggesting a desired threesome.

The production design’s clean lines and the chromeo palette illuminate Crash’s vehicular chill, with emotionally desolate characters stranded on the islands of the highways, yet, peculiarly, the movie still manages to be erotic, especially in the uncut version of the film. Three urgent mechanical sex scenes punctuating the movie’s opening sequence, but it’s the two extravagant crashes, and the semi-deliberate final cut-off that just might repair the Ballard marriage – “Maybe the next time, darling, maybe the next time” – that linger longest and hardest, searing a sensual afterburn on the retina, and reminding us this is one of the most disturbing and powerful in Cronenberg’s oeuvre. 

Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare

Australia | 2017 | Directed by Gary Doust

Logline: A light-hearted documentary that follows the complete production process of a low-budget horror movie with all the obstacles and pitfalls that come with it. 

Some of the most memorable documentaries set out to tell one story, but end up telling another, or court ambitions of capturing all that is crucial, and yet something more intrinsic and fascinating emerges. Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse about Francis Ford Coppola making Apocalypse Now is one such documentary, so is American Movie about Mark Borchardt making his short film Coven. Now we have the making of Craig Anderson’s Red Christmas, and all that is nightmarish is good in the world. 

Anderson was a frustrated bit player, an actor reduced to playing those small thankless roles on Australian TV. He harboured a passionate interest in cult-flavoured horror movies, especially the lesser known curios, those lost gems that never got a proper release on DVD, which he added to his monstrous VHS collection. But Anderson had a very big itch that needed scratching; to make his own weird cult horror movie, something that could fit snugly on his shelves alongside other treasures like Basket Case and It’s Alive!

So he set about making his own movie, at all cost, and the result is one of the funniest, most heart-warming stories of tenacity, fool-hardiness, desperation, and perverse joy within the often cruel, relentless, and unforgiving realm of DIY, independent, low-budget filmmaking. The horror genre is full of these endeavours, but few, if any, have been captured from go to woe to hey-ho with such grotesque charm, cringe-inducing outrageousness, and sheer championship, as Gary Doust’s fly-on-the-wall, take-no-prisoners, warts-and-all account - and case study - of Anderson’s feature debut as writer and director. 

After spending several years on a script - about an aborted foetus, now adult grown, that seeks retribution on its mother and her family - Anderson finds himself sleeping on a mattress on the floor of of his warehouse office with eighty grand of his own savings set aside, and an Ace up his sleeve: Dee Wallace (The Howling, Cujo, E.T.) has agreed to take the lead role as the mother. But Anderson still needs to get her to Australia. Somehow he manages to convince his reticent brother to loan him $60,000. Okay, that’s encouraging. So now he coerces his good friend Bryan Moses to take the role of 1st AD and informs him they have just sixteen days to shoot 330 scenes.

It can only go pear-shaped from there. And, of course, it does, magnificently. Moses has a nosebleed from stress on the first day of shooting. Brilliant. 

Laden with scene after scene of deliciously oh-my-god moments (both in shock and mirth), Horror Movie ticks all the boxes about what NOT to do, and yet, the production continues to stumble along, getting results. From Anderson’s early shock revelation about his upcoming circumcision, to his insistence on using a real placenta in one of the movie’s gore gags, to the brave move of using Down Syndrome actor Gerard Dwyer in a pivotal role, to the utter fearlessness in hoping Dee Wallace won’t just walk off set the moment she arrives on location and sees what a shonky farrago the production actually is. Oh, and the test screenings on the ocean liner, we can’t forget those. It’s a smorgasbord of production hell moments, punctuated by Anderson’s nervous, but infectious giggle. 

Big props to both Anderson and Doust in allowing a potentially humiliating project transform into something genuinely inspiring, surprisingly moving, and unashamedly entertaining. You don’t need to have seen Red Christmas to enjoy Horror Movie. There are two versions, a 99-minute cinema cut, and an extended two-hour two-parter screening in Australia on ABC, the first part on Halloween, 9:30pm. 

Yes, do yourself a favour and watch this superb little documentary. It’s all the silly troubles, simple pleasures, and heartbreaking falls of life rolled into one twisted tale of a crazy "family" of creatives doing what they love, and rolling with the pinches and punches. If there’s one moral to conjure: throw caution to the wind, because life ain’t a breeze, it's a damn gust. 

Blade Runner 2049

US/UK/Canada | 2017 | Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Logline: A specialised policeman’s discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down a former detective who has been missing for thirty years.

Officer K (an abbreviated serial number), played by Ryan Gosling, is working as a Blade Runner Unit for the LAPD, tracking down rogue old Nexus 8 Replicants following The Blackout of 2022 and the bankruptcy of the Tyrell Corporation, nearly thirty years earlier. In its place the Wallace Corporation has a monopoly on Replicant manufacture, including hologram companions, one of which is beautiful Joi (Ana De Armas), K’s live-in companion and virtual lover. 

Whilst investigating a protein farm outside the city K discovers clues that leads his superior Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) to order him to uncover more before it is too late. He must enter dangerous territory, and will soon have deadly foe on his tail. The fate of humanity lies in K’s hands. It’s dangerous days, all over again.

Hampton Fancher wrote the original Blade Runner screenplay. It became his baby. However Ridley Scott and the other producers wrangled the script from him and had David Peoples do further drafts. Thirty odd years later and Fancher concocted a sequel concept and apparently agreed to write the screenplay, but only in novella form. Michael Green was brought on to do further proper drafts.

Blade Runner 2049 is a truly beautiful thing. It is far-fetched and it is immediate, it is intimidating and gorgeous, it is perfect and flawed, it is immense and detailed, epic and intimate. It is a rare creature indeed, a sequel that can exist on its own, but also expands gently on the original, capturing the same sense of melancholy, loneliness, futility… and hope. All the nods to the original movie are rewarding, most of them subtle.

Denis Villeneuve has, arguably, the most consistently impressive track record of any contemporary director, Incendies, Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario, Arrival. His early work, Maelstrom, is a personal favourite. He is a true visionary, a brilliant cinema stylist, capturing much of what makes cinema so delicate and powerful.

Roger Deakins delivers, once again, exemplary work on the cinematography. Perhaps the look is not as dingy as Ridley Scott’s original, but the cityscape, the urban situation is definitely worse for wear. Perpetually raining in the original, now the City of Angels is driven by the snow. Whereas Deckard (Harrison Ford) was gifted with a plush, albeit claustrophobic apartment, K’s pad is much smaller, sparser, even more box-like, and is littered with undesirables right outside his door, “Fuck off skinner!”

Villenueve has always had a terrific eye for casting, and Sylvia Hoeks makes a brilliant combat-trained adversary, while Mackenzie Davis is bang-on in the role of a “Doxie” pro-girl. Carla Juni (who you may recognise from the outrageous German black comedy Wetlands) plays a memory-implanter, and Dave Baustista has a small, but pivotal role as a farmer in the movie’s opening sequence, which has been adapted from one intended for the original movie.

With minor quibbles aside (nothing the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you in Heaven for), Blade Runner 2049 fills me with immense joy. I had originally been excited to hear Johan Johannson’s score, but his music was removed late in post-production and Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer were brought in, apparently to fit more closely to Vangelis’s original electronic score. The result is absolutely stunning, with some of the deeper tones causing the cinema monitors to fart (which isn’t a good thing, I know). Darker, more ominous, but then, the future setting of Blade Runner 2049 is ultimately a more menacing time and place. It may seem more filled with light – both artificial and organic, but it is a more tenebrous existence.

Okay, I have to spit it out, if I had one thing to really bark about, it would be the whisky. With all that amazing whisky at your fingertips, would you really choose Johnny Walker Black Label?? Come on, Rick, surely you could've done better than that.

I thought my year's favourite movie was in the bag (Mother!), but Blade Runner 2049 has clinched the top position. I’m already itching for my next screening. 

Mother!

US | 2017 | Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Logline: The tranquil, isolated existence of a young woman and her older husband is disturbed by the arrival of a curious man, and his insistent wife.

Baby?

Jennifer Lawrence plays the young woman. She has been rebuilding the once damaged huge country home of her husband, played by Javier Bardem, fixing the interior, and painting the walls, putting her love into the project whilst she waits patiently for Him to create. He is a poet, suffering writer’s block, and she is his muse, but not yet providing him with everything he desires.

 Or maybe desire is the problem at heart.

And damage is the key to unlock emancipation. 

An older man, played by Ed Harris, enters their lives. He is seeking something, yet he remains elusive, mysterious. Even more curious is the sudden appearance of the man’s wife, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. The couple seems fit to intrude, deeper.

Unannounced, their two sons also arrive, played by Domhnall Gleeson and Brian Gleeson, and the pretty domestic picture begins to crack.

All that was beautiful and serene now is now threatened and fragile.

From the ashes of a children’s tale comes a fully-fledged adult nightmare, spun in a matter of days, Aronofsky’s passion play of commitment, anxiety, desperation, and deliverance is unlike anything you’ve seen before. A visual tour-de-force of pure cinema narrative, shot entirely from the perspective of the unnamed central character, played by Lawrence.

It is immediate and entrancing, claustrophobic and exhilarating. 

As enigmatic and obscure as David Lynch, as visceral and symbolic as David Cronenberg, as studied and precise as Stanley Kubrick, as chaotic and sensorial as Dario Argento … All of these flow, yet Mother! is ambitiously, utterly unique, a truly mesmerizing experience that demands to be seen on the big screen, more than once.

But, it is a most particular taste, which will not be to everyone’s palette. Some will find it self-indulgent, repetitive, and obtuse, and it is far from the conventional Rosemary’s Baby-esque thriller the trailer conjures. Indeed, Mother! is an altogether darker, insidious creature that lies coiled like a primordial beast in the warm shallow waters, waiting patiently to pounce on you and drag you into the colder, murkier depths.

Javier Bardem and Ed Harris are solid, but the performance from Jennifer Lawrence is stunning. Michelle Pfeiffer is superb in a small, but standout role. Kristen Wiig makes a surprising appearance, and the wonderfully etched face of Stephen McHattie also rises from the maddening, quasi-religious crowd. Longtime collaborator Matthew Libatique’s camerawork (all shot on 16mm!) is amazing, and, of particular note is Johann Johannsson’s credit as sound and music consultant – there is no conventional score.

Mother! is dream-nightmare as cinema art, and I applaud Aronofsky for his boldness. Leave all your sensibilities at the door. Prepare to be upset. He has conjured something beautiful and grotesque, one of the most immersive, at times overwhelming, portraits of dream-logic I’ve ever experienced, exploring the nature of creation, tackling xenophobia, wrestling with faith, fucking with the fabric of time and space.

Who do you trust? Submission may be the only answer. 

The Damsel, the Philanderer, the Fool, the Wanderer, the Zealot, the Herald, the Thief, the Neophyte, the Soldier, the Executioner, the Foremother, on and on and on and on and on …

The artist forever trying to forge, to create. 

Baby?

Fatal Attraction

US | 1987 | Directed by Adrian Lyne

Logline: A married man’s one-night stand threatens to destroy his life when the lover begins to stalk and terrorise him.

Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) is a successful Manhattan lawyer. He’s been happily married to Beth (Anne Archer) for nine years, and they have a six-year-old daughter, Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen). When Beth and Ellen are out of town visiting grandparents Gallagher finds himself involved with Alex (Glenn Close), a publishing editor, who recently caught his attention at a function, and who is now working on the same legal job as him. 

After a full Saturday of legal wrangling, drinks turns to dinner, turns to – “Are you?” “Am I what?” “Discreet?” “Yes, I’m discreet.” “Me, too.” – which results in a night of sex at Alex’s loft apartment, impromptu midnight Latin dancing, and more sex in the warehouse elevator. Dan slips away through the meatpacking district at the crack of dawn. He is wracked with guilt and wants the whole incident forgotten. Alex, has other wants, and she refuses to let Dan ignore her, desperate for a relationship. She becomes increasingly unhinged and dangerous.

A huge box-office success thirty years ago, Fatal Attraction rode on the chance that audiences would be willing to accept Douglas as an Everyman game enough for a little fidelity, throwing caution to the wind. This wasn’t the kind of normal Hollywood fare for the late 80s climate, greed was being sought elsewhere on more ephemeral things like cocaine and money, not the risk of marriage solidity and the corruption of honesty and family values. Fatal Atttraction spoke bluntly, if you want carnal knowledge, it would be wise to just read the menu, and leave the dishes for those that can afford the hard scrubbing.

Based on a 1980 British short film called Diversion, written and directed by James Dearden, Fatal Attraction (which was still known as Diversion, then Affairs of the Heart, during early drafts) was brought to the attention of Adrian Lyne, who was riding high on the huge box success of Hollywood productions 9½ Weeks and Flashdance. The producers knew Lyne was the man for the job, provided he kept the on-screen sexual shenanigans in check. With uncredited script doctoring from Nicolas Meyer (chiefly the ending), the movie went on to become second biggest movie of the year and earned both Close and Archer Oscar acting nominations (which they lost to Moonstruck).

Indeed Glenn Close is the movie’s standout feature. Her performance is a tour-de-force, complex and sustained. She doesn’t exude a conventional beauty, yet her screen presence, unusually intense stare, and terrific dialogue, elevates her role into something truly memorable. Archer is the perfect juxtaposition of composure and emotional vulnerability, and excellent contrast. Douglas is solid.

WARNING! SPOILER ALERT!

An original, less sensational, but more realistic ending fell flat with preview audiences, and the producers panicked and had an alternate ending quickly filmed. Close hated it, and fought against it, but she had no choice. On one hand the plunge into classic horror territory with Alex becoming almost demonic in her behaviour during the house invasion at film’s end is hokey and doesn’t do justice to the film’s Hitchcockian build in suspense. But, on the other, the bathroom fight does treat the audience to a sense of justifiable retribution, a la Brian De Palma style (Hitchcockian-to-the-hilt).

What still sits uncomfortably is how Gallagher is painted in a sympathetic light, his cheating barely chastised, the Happy Family unit ultimately remains intact. When Dan’s infidelity is revealed to Beth, she confronts him with, “What’s the matter with you?!” and that’s as far as the reasoning probes. Alex dominates as the evildoer, especially as she descends into irrational, sociopathic behaviour. Hell hath no fury like a Madam Butterfly scorned, apparently. At the time feminists criticised the portrayal of Alex doubling as career woman and manipulative psycho … Jason Bateman, anyone? Interestingly, for her own character’s research Close had Alex as a victim of adolescent sexual abuse. This background is never revealed in the movie, and perhaps a deeper understanding of her motives would’ve made for an even more psychological thriller.

Thirty years on Fatal Attraction still packs an entertaining punch. Watch out. 

Frontier(s)

Frontière(s) | France | 2007 | Directed by Xavier Gens

Logline: Following violent political riots, a gang of thieves flees Paris, only to be holed up at a remote country inn with a family of neo-Nazis.

“My name is Yasmine. I’m three months pregnant. One day someone said, ‘Men are born free with equal rights.’ The world in which I live is the opposite. Who would want to be born to grow up in the chaos and the hate? I’ve decided to spare him the worst.” Good luck with that Yaz.

It is a few years in the future, and Paris is in the middle of rioting, as the ultra-conservative candidate has become the new President. A small band of Arab-blooded thieves have taken advantage of the chaos, and with a bag of stolen cash plan to escape to Amsterdam. But Murphy’s Law intervenes and will govern the rest of their short lives.

In the chaos Sami (Adel Bencherif) is shot and mortally wounded. His pregnant sister Yasmine (Karina Testa) and Alex (Aurélien Wiik) take him to hospital emergency, but the authorities are alerted and Yasmine and Alex hop it. Meanwhile Tom (David Saracino) and Farid (Chems Darmani), who are several hours ahead and exhausted, decide to spend the night at a rural inn. Farid texts Alex and Yasmine the rendezvous point.

The inn at Dachville, not far from the border (a la frontière), turns out to be a domestic hellhole, with Geisler (Jean-Pierre Jorris), an elderly Nazi sympathizer, at the helm of the clan. It soon becomes apparent his two sons Karl (Patrick Ligardes) and Hans (Joël Lefrançois), his daughter Gilberte (Estelle Lefébure), and extended family members Goetz (Sameul Le Behan) and Klaudia (Amélie Daure) are involved in attemping to create a pureblooded race. Despite her swarthy features the patriarch Le Von Geisler is certain Yasmine’s unborn baby is perfect family fodder, and her mates will make a great celebratory meal. Mahlzeit!

Writer/director Xavier Gens has made a tour-de-force of unrelenting grimness. It’s an assault on the senses that will appeal darkly fabulous to horrorphiles, and has become renowned over the past decade as one of the key movies in the often argued and sometimes maligned movement referred to as the New French Extremism. Three other notable horror titles are High Tension, Inside, and the French-Canadian Martyrs. I’d opt to include the Spanish [REC] & [REC]2, and the Indonesian Macabre, as they are of the same calibre and intensity.

The production values of all those movies are top notch. Frontier(s) sports terrific camerawork and cinematography, all stylish, grimy glamour, fantastic special effects (mostly lots of bloodletting, but also great prosthetics and sparingly-used CGI), an effective soundtrack (even the pop-Goth song over the end credits fits), and superb production design and art direction; more gorgeous filth and decay, Frontier(s) delivers in spades.

Performances are all excellent, but honours must go to charismatic Karina Testa’s harrowing deliverance, which takes the audience on the full arc of human shock and trauma. The scene where Eva (Maud Forget), the family’s black sheep, “pretties” up Yasmine for the family feast is haunting. The other standout role is that of the SS-adoring papa, played with chilling conviction by Jean-Pierre Jorris, he certainly looks and acts the part with sadistic aplomb.

Drenched in the abject darkness of true nightmarish horror, Frontier(s) is definitely a horror movie for hardened horror fans; us True Believers who love the tone dark as oil and the atmosphere thick as bratwurst. Squeamish, stay clear of this border, it pushes boundaries (Archilles’ tendon alert!) Indeed, in the States the movie was slapped with an NC-17, and subsequently disqualified from inclusion in the US "Horrorfest: 8 Films To Die For", which it had been originally slated for. Sure, there are movies that are more graphic, but few that combine the level of atmospheric intensity at such a sustained pace.  

Yes, Xavier Gens takes you to the edge of comfortable horror, then slaps you hard in the face, and asks, “Care for a little more?” It’s a socio-political snake pit that is as sleazy and sordid as it is gruesome and ghastly, a truly sensational piece of work, a masterful modern horror. 

The Endless

US | 2017 | Directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorehead

Logline: Two adult brothers return to the cult community they escaped from as adolescents and discover much more than they bargained for.

For their third feature, and continuing with creative responsibilities divided into Benson as screenwriter, Moorehead as cinematographer, and the pair sharing producing, editing, and directing, the two indie filmmakers return to the remote desert wilderness where their debut, Resolution, unfolded, as the narrative follows two brothers, played by the directors, using their own first names, who have languished in a menial cleaning job for the past ten years, trying to put behind them their weird experiences within a supposed death cult, from which they escaped and badmouthed. 

Emotional and psychological baggage can really weigh a person down. Aaron and Justin know this well. Now Aaron feels he has unfinished business at Camp Arcadia, the isolated group of believers he and his brother were part of in their impressionable early years. Justin is heavily reticent about re-involving themselves, but, as he feels protective of his brother’s frailty, he indulges (humors?) his brother’s potentially dangerous desire.

Speaking of desire, there’s the lovely Anna (Callie Hernandez), whom Aaron feels drawn back to. But it’s the community/cult’s leader, Hal (Tate Ellington), and resident camp weirdos Lizzy (Kira Powell), Shitty Carl (James Jordan) and Tim (Lew Temple) who are providing Justin with the heebie jeebies. Then there’s the meeting with Jenny (Emily Montague), who is on the camp’s fringes, overwhelmed with grief, still searching for her lost husband Michael (Peter Cilella), of whom viewers of Resolution will recognize and know what she’s referring to.

The connection The Endless has with Resolution and extraterrestrial intelligence/malevolence becomes more and more apparent as the movie burrows on, and it’s a disquietingly enthralling slow-burn of religious deconstruction and deep cosmic dread that plays – and screws – with the time/space continuum, that oh-so-delicate fabric of temporal existence we call “reality”, in even more complex and intriguing ways than Resolution does. The supernatural haze thickens.

I wasn’t completely sold on the performances of Benson and Moorehead in the lead roles, and the unusual comedic tone that rears its head, but, like Shane Carruths’ similarly complex and unique Primer and Upstream Color, The Endless slyly manages to elude conventional criticism, and instead basks in the dark rays of its own elliptical meta-structure and the threads of strained relationships. It lingers long, like a powerful dream filled with mysterious spectres and enigmatic references. The movie is also gifted with a great sound design, and another stunning score from Jimmy Lavalle, who composed for their romance-monster movie Spring.

As the two opening quotes imply; Lovecraft’s insight that humankind’s deepest fear is that of the unknown, and an unknown source stating that truths revealed by siblings are usually reserved for those precious moments just before imminent death.

Now. Here. Nowhere. 

The Endless screens Friday, September 15th, 10.30pm, and Saturday, September 16th, 12pm, at The Factory Theatre, Marrickville, as part of the 11th Sydney Underground Film Festival. 

Prevenge

UK | 2016 | Directed by Alice Lowe

Logline: A heavily pregnant woman, recovering from the death of the father-to-be, is convinced her unborn daughter is communicating with her and making her do terrible things.

Ruth (Alice Lowe) is not having a good time. She’s seven months pregnant and her expectant child is talking to her telepathically, guiding her to kill anyone who is untoward or simply in the way of her pursuit of the truth behind the death of her partner who died tragically in a rock-climbing incident. It doesn’t help that most of the men and women she encounters are pigs and idiots. 

Ruth becomes increasingly desperate for clarity over the death of her partner. She meets Tom (Kayvan Novak) who was one of the other rock-climbers, and she is determined to squeeze the beans from him. But there will be collateral damage along this messy route. Ruth arms herself with a serrated kitchen knife and dispatches the obstacles as she sees fit, seeing herself as a kind of dark avenging angel, like the wide-eyed banshee in the old black and white movie she watched in a daze on tele.

Made on the smell of a monthly rag, written in a three-and-a-half day sulk, shot with intent in just eleven days, mostly in Cardiff, Wales, Revenge is the kind of perverse vanity project that completely blows that hairy pretence to pieces. Alice Lowe has been acting since the mid-noughties, but she came to attention to genre fans with Ben Wheatley’s brilliant Sightseers, a comedy as black as the inside of a sack in a dark room. Lowe co-wrote Sightseers with her co-star Steve Oram (who went on to make his own hilarious and very taste-acquired comedy of manners Aaaaaaaah!), and she wrote and directed Prevenge as a direct result of finding it incredibly difficult to get work as a pregnant actor, and as a sly slice of irony, she actually was heavily pregnant during the shoot.

Prevenge is as much an adult fantasy as it is a comedy-horror, as dark, hilarious, and original as Sightseers. Lowe’s Ruth is a superbly realised character, as frustrated and driven as you can imagine, especially when she’s up against some disgusting male specimen, like the sleazy pet shop owner, or, better (read: worse) still, DJ Dan, played by Tom “Cracking Chang” Davis, who chews the scenery so beautifully and with side-splitting results. Also of note is Jo Hartley as Ruth’s midwife and Kate Dickie as an arrogant potential job employer.

Featuring a great score from Pablo Clements and James Griffith, under the moniker Toydrum, and with Alice Lowe delivering one of the most entertaining, perfectly pitched performances I’ve seen in a while, Prevenge crackles with savage wit and warbles with absurd clarity; one woman’s descent into pre-natal and post-natal madness, and when I say “madness” I mean both fury and delusion, because who’s to know just what is really taking place in the real world, and what is occurring as a vision of Ruth’s twisted mind. The ending caps it all off beautifully. 

One of my favourite movies of the year. 

Prevenge screens Friday, September 15th, 8.30pm & Saturday, September 16th, 8pm, at Factory Theatre, as part of the 11th Sydney Underground Film Festival.