Nick Milligan's Blog, page 3

Hounds of Love: review

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IN BEN YOUNG’S CHILLING, AMBITIOUS AND IMPRESSIVE DEBUT, HOUNDS OF LOVE, VICTIMS COME IN ALL FORMS.
BY NICK MILLIGAN

A methodical and glacial slow tracking shot opens the debut film of Australian writer-director Ben Young. It’s a bright and hot afternoon in 1987. A sweaty netball game is in full flight and it appears at the edge of frame, soon turning into close-ups of teenage girls, shorts skirts and contorting young flesh floating through the air as if the male gaze has become a viscous solution and they are suspended within it. It’s the best opening to a movie so far this year.

But it’s not just the male gaze into which we’ve been plunged. There’s a lady here too. We’re inside the car of Hounds of Love‘s two star-crossed psychopaths, John and Evelyn White (Stephen Curry and Emma Booth). They’re prowling for their next victim. Moments later a teenage girl is walking home from high school in scorching heat and she accepts a ride with the apparently easy-going couple. “You’ll cook out there,” Evelyn casually points out. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

A quick montage of handcuffed wrists, sex toys, bloodied tissues, an unassuming suburban brick home and an apparently relaxed John driving into the forest with a body in his trunk tells us that the Whites are two seasoned – and especially twisted – predators.

We then meet Vicki Maloney (Ashleigh Cummings) – your typical teenager. Her parents Maggie and Trevor (Susie Porter and Damian de Montemas) are getting a divorce, so Vicki is rebelling. She’d rather cheat on her exams and hook up with her boyfriend Jason (Harrison Gilbertson) than ace those tests.

It doesn’t take a thriller aficionado to deduce that Vicki’s path is soon going to cross with the Whites. When Vicki sneaks out after dark to attend a party, John and Evelyn’s bomb car rolls from the night like a beaten-up tiger shark. The couple coax Vicki back to their house with the promise of cheap pot. She’s not about to leave any time soon.

Despite being bound and gagged, Vicki quickly works out that all is not well in the White household. If you ignore the couple’s nightmarish legacy of rape and murder, behind the curtain of mayhem is an abusive relationship. The Whites are far from an even partnership. Despite being a serial killer, Evelyn’s also a victim.

Herein lies the central problem with Ben Young’s visually impressive debut movie – the arm wrestle between reality and literary contrivance. Hounds of Love fits into a new wave of modern “horror” films that exploit the tropes of the genre to deliver a message.  The Babadook, for example, is actually about grief, not an actual monster. Geddit?

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Don’t be surprised if Hounds of Love reminds you of Justin Kurzel’s traumatising masterpiece Snowtown. That film was about John Bunting’s real-life killing spree – affectionately known as the “bodies in barrels” murders. Hounds of Love, in similar fashion, opens the gates of hell in a suburban neighbourhood (this time in Young’s home state of Western Australia, as opposed to the titular South Australian location in Snowtown).

Kurzel kept Snowtown very close to the truth of Bunting and his accomplices, and their bone-chilling acts between 1992 and 1999. It’s a deliberate and no-holds-barred depiction of what actually happened (as far as we know), as seen through the eyes of impressionable Jamie Vlassakis. Kurzel locates his themes within that very real subject matter – social dislocation, poverty, homophobia, broken homes, pedophilia – how a microcosm (nay, a perfect storm) could prove fertile soil for a serial killer like Bunting to flourish.

Hounds of Love is very close to the cruel acts of infamous perverts David and Catherine Birnie, who perpetrated what were known as the Moorhouse murders. In Perth, in the late ’80s, they lured, raped and killed four women between the ages of 15 and 31. Their attempted fifth victim escaped and their fun was swiftly over.

Young has borrowed heavily from the Birnie’s sordid spree, including the White’s methods of capture and their sexual trysts with their captives. But he’s changed the names here because the real-life ending to the Birnie saga doesn’t quite suit the statement about domestic abuse and victimhood that the director wants to make. He needs Evelyn White to be a sympathetic creature, for the audience to look beyond her horrifying deeds and see her life reflected metaphorically in that of her victims.

Young could have dredged empathy from Evelyn’s past, building and layering her as Patty Jenkins did so effectively with real-life killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster. But his screenplay doesn’t have that luxury. It’s scope is a far more claustrophobic, real-time character study. We get tidbits – White has two children that she desperately wants to be allowed to live with her. She loves her dog. But is this enough to humanise her? The film’s effectiveness hinges on whether White is capable of waking to the reality of her situation and terrible actions.

“…in the film’s strongest and most horrifying scene, The Moody Blues’ ‘Nights in White Satin’ plays out like the spectre of the Grim Reaper himself.”

You can see the appeal of the over-arching concept – the idea that it takes a victim of physical and emotional abuse to point out to a serial killer that she is also a victim of physical and emotional abuse. There is grand ambition at work here. But Young is venturing into very dicey territory – and it doesn’t quite work. He could have perhaps named his film after a more appropriate Kate Bush tune – ‘Running Up that Hill’ – because this is a steep climb from the outset.

Young’s method of delivery – a hyper-real depiction of events – doesn’t allow him to overcome the concept’s glaring contrivances. Young wants to craft a dissertation on the nature of abusive relationships… and eat his cake too. An element of humour, however perverse, might have allowed greater suspension of disbelief. What we’re given at the film’s conclusion is a big stretch (would that really happen?). You also feel like Young has pulled his punches, and he steps back from the ledge at the final moment.

Music plays a key role despite (apparently due to licensing costs) ‘Hounds of Love’ not making an appearance. But as the narrative approaches Christmas, a range of carols are used to atmospheric effect, as is Cat Stevens’ ‘Lady D’Arbanville’. However, in the film’s strongest and most horrifying scene, The Moody Blues’ ‘Nights in White Satin’ plays out like the spectre of the Grim Reaper himself.

Given its subject matter, it won’t come as a surprise that Hounds of Love is not an easy film to watch. Though it received rave reviews upon its premiere in Venice, people also walked out of the screenings. Though much of the violence and rape is played off screen, this does little to lessen the impact. You get the sense that Young would like his film to be hard-hitting, and taken as seriously as Kurzel’s Snowtown and David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom (though Hounds of Love is sure to put Young on the same Hollywood trajectory as those two directors – he’s already working on big budget sci-fi Extinction). But if you’re a fan of tense thrillers and crime drama, then you’ll revel in the experience.

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Contrivances aside, Young, a seasoned music video director, is flirting with greatness in his debut feature. So is his cast of actors. As Evelyn, Booth is truly astounding. The movie’s weightiest contradictions rest squarely on her shoulders and she does a mesmerising job of balancing cruelty and simmering humanity. Young’s assertion is that those two traits can co-exist, and Booth goes to great emotional lengths to make you believe. She’s fragile, fraying and, yet, clearly capable of pure sadism.

It must be said that Cummings’ performance as Vicki is especially brave – her terror is palpable. The actress is way off the map here – Hounds is a far cry from her television work in Puberty Blues, Gallipoli and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries – but she’s effortlessly natural in her performance. Keep your eye out for her.

Curry’s turn is likely to draw the most attention. John White is the kind of creepy killer that all serious actors need on their showreel. Much will be made of how the actor’s appearance here will vanquish all memory of the rosy-cheeked sweetness of The Castle‘s Dale Kerrigan (The Castle would certainly make a demented double feature with Hounds of Love, especially if you imagine the latter is the sequel of the former – Dale, is that you?).

But you ultimately feel that Curry’s been restrained, toned down and tempered into Young’s perception of realism. What could have been a perversely charismatic and wickedly terrifying performance lacks the punch that the actor’s comic muscle could have delivered. Instead he’s closed off and detached, cold and conniving, weak, void of charm. It’s incredibly hard to comprehend what Evelyn sees in him – why she’s so blindly besotted – but perhaps that’s the point about abusive relationships that Young intends to make.

Mention must also go to the always sturdy Susie Porter as Vicki’s determined mother who, despite the rather questionable opinion of local police, refuses to accept that her daughter has simply run away.

One prominent character that can’t be left unmentioned is 1980s Australian suburbia which, somewhat unsurprisingly, smacks of 1970s Australian suburbia. Young and his production team’s attention to detail is superb (especially if you’re old enough to remember the Telecom logo). More of those slow motion tracking shots show lawns being mowed and kids dancing through a sprinkler. It’s a series of evocative establishing shots reminiscent of Lynch’s depiction of Lumberton in the opening of Blue Velvet: the shiny, dream-like surface of the suburban sprawl. Like Lynch, Young seems very interested in what lies beneath.

3.5 STARS

HOUNDS OF LOVE opens in Australian cinemas on June 1.

 

Originally published here.

Alien: Covenant: review

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Master director Ridley Scott bounces back from Prometheus mess with cohesive, tense instalment of Alien franchise.
By Nick Milligan

Prometheus, British director Ridley Scott’s grand return to not only the science fiction genre but also the franchise that he masterfully kickstarted with 1979’s Alien, was a hot mess. Expectations were high given that in both Alien and his 1982 Philip K. Dick adaptation Blade Runner, Scott set a benchmark for mainstream cinematic science fiction that would prove unobtainable for the generation of filmmakers that followed. Nerds, such as myself, went from six to midnight at the thought of Scott sinking his teeth into another big budget sci-fi.

What arrived as 2012’s Prometheus was a jumble of dull characterisation, an uneven balance of visceral action and cerebral subject matter, silly and contrived set pieces, and stunning visuals. It lacked cohesion and buckled under the weight of its lofty ambitions. On paper, with such quality ingredients, the final dish should have earned its makers a Michelin Star. What we received was that pile of mashed potato in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Alien: Covenant finds a 15-strong crew in command of the Covenant, a deep space colonisation vessel with 2000 colonists in cryosleep and over 1400 next generation human embryos on board. Key crew members are terraforming expert Daniels (Katherine Waterston), the God-fearing Oram (Billy Crudup), chief pilot Tennessee (Danny McBride) and head of security Sergeant Lope (Demián Bichir).

Covenant is heading for a habitable planet called Origae-6. On its lengthy mission a neutrino shockwave (energy released by a collapsed supernova) badly damages the Covenant and the crew are are awoken from temporary cryosleep by the ship’s “synthetic” night watchman Walter (Michael Fassbender). Walter looks identical to the android David from Prometheus, but is an updated model designed to be less self aware and more pragmatic.

“Watching a new-born Xenomorph burst through an unsuspecting victim’s rib cage is like meeting up with an old friend you haven’t seen in years.

While the crew are repairing the Covenant, they receive a human radio transmission from a nearby planet that they had somehow missed when searching the cosmos for a new human home. Remote testing identifies it as a world even more suitable for colonisation than Origae-6 and a decision is made to head there on a reconnaissance mission. Their search for the source of the radio transmission soon makes them wish they’d stayed on the Covenant – because, unsurprisingly, they encounter some nasty aliens. The loveable and oh-so-phallic Xenomorphs are back, baby.

The intricacies of Covenant‘s plot and connection to Prometheus have been kept largely under wraps, so if you’ve managed to block your ears and avoid spoilers (some reviewers are shamelessly dropping major twists) you’re likely to get a few surprises. They won’t necessarily arrive from the alien encounters, as they don’t break new ground for the franchise. They’re just gruesome, nail-bitingly staged and fun. Watching a new-born Xenomorph burst through an unsuspecting victim’s rib cage is like meeting up with an old friend you haven’t seen in years. There’s comfort in that durable familiarity. It’s just like old times. Same, too, when a face-hugger tenderly wraps itself around a host’s face like a warm towel. For sci-fi horror nerds, Covenant is like a biennial family barbecue at which all your cousins are just totes fun to hang out with.

But what elevates this flick above complete rehash is that Scott and his team are able to explore what was thematically set up in the previous film – the relationship between creator and created. Understanding why we exist, the human desire to conquer the natural world – to play God – and to then craft artificial intelligence in our own image – these ideas are better explored here by Gladiator writer John Logan and co-writer Dante Harper. They’ve gotten the befuddled rant of Prometheus back on message.

So much of Covenant‘s success has to do with characterisation and there’s no doubt that Scott has gotten back to basics here. The camaraderie on the Covenant is strong and loving, light years beyond that of the juvenile vacuous dickheads rounded up for the Prometheus mission. Our hero Daniels is a real person – fallible and grounded like Ripley in the original Alien. Impressive too is McBride, who steps out of Kenny Powers territory to shape a humorous but emotionally grounded character. Fassbender carries the heaviest load, but is quite remarkable here.

Giving us time to get to know the crew drastically improves the pacing of this instalment. Scott puts the film on a slow boil from the outset – there’s action, but it’s of human importance not alien-induced bloodshed. When tension builds and becomes palpable, we actually care. There’s something at stake. It’s welcome that, unlike Prometheus, Covenant contains well-crafted violence and set pieces that have not been shoehorned into the narrative.

It ultimately makes you admire Scott’s mettle. He has not tried to distance the franchise from the events of Prometheus, pandering to the demands of fans and recalibrating the franchise. This is very much a sequel to his 2012 film. You will need to see Prometheus before Covenant for the latter to have complete emotional impact. Scott and his writers have taken this film into dark territory and the script’s biggest reveal is genuinely chilling – you’ll feel a pang in the gut when you realise what evil has gestated after the events of Prometheus. Some moments echo of Joss Whedon’s screenplay for Alien: Resurrection.

Covenant sets up the potential for a whole new story arc and Scott intends to make it. The script for the next film is complete and the director is ready to start shooting next year (if given the green light). “If you really want a franchise, I can keep cranking it for another six,” the 79-year-old director told the Sydney Morning Herald, “I’m not going to close it down again. No way.”

For Alien lovers, it’s enough to make you burst with excitement.

3.5 STARS

Get Out: review

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JORDAN PEELE HOLDS UP A BLACK MIRROR TO WHITE LIBERAL CONDESCENSION IN THE FUNNY AND TERRIFYING HORROR SATIRE GET OUT.

By Nick Milligan

“I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could. Best President in my life time, hands down,” says Bradley Whitford’s Dean Armitage in a nice guy routine to Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris Washington. It’s the same on-the-nose but well-meaning condescension that Ricky Gervais’ David Brent uttered when espousing his love of Sydney Poitier to a black co-worker in the original UK version of The Office.

Though Gervais made that gag 15 years ago, it’s just as stinging when delivered in a modern horror movie, albeit an incredibly biting and hilarious one.

Get Out has received universal acclaim since its release in the States last year, and still holds a 99% approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator website. There’s no doubt many of the critics who have helped boost this consensus to such dizzying heights are white progressives, thus creating a cyclical vortex in which writer-director Jordan Peele’s cutting observations of white liberal culture and racism are cannibalising themselves like a snake eatings its own tail. Because the bad guys in Get Out are not the white-hooded Klan members of Mississippi Burning. They’re middle to upper class white Obama voters, identifiable and relatable to many, and all the more chilling antagonists in a film that wield’s modern racism’s double-edged sword.

Get Out finds Chris and white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) getting ready to travel and meet Rose’s family after five months of dating. Chris is worried about how he’ll be accepted by the Armitages, as they don’t know that he’s black. But the couple receives a warm welcome from Rose’s family. They’re neurosurgeon father Dean (Whitford), hypnotherapist and psychiatrist mother Missy (Catherine Keener) and eccentric brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones). They live in a stately country home in a predominantly white, monied community. A real old-world genteel bunch.

But Chris’ initial fear of not being accepted by Rose’s family quickly seems to be the least of his worries – acceptance into the fold could prove far worse. Chris observes some strange behaviour by the Armitages’ all-black staff. There’s something a little too polite and detached about maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel), groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and even local resident Logan King (LaKeith Stanfield). Chris calls up his friend Rod (Lil Rey Howery) to share his increasing suspicions and, in a wonderful device that vocalises the audience’s point of view, Rod promptly advises Chris to get the hell outta there. His advice proves rather sage.

“Get Out is imbued with Peele’s keen sense of horror classicism and cleverly uses some of its nods to other films – most notably The Stepford Wives – as a diversion.”

One half of sketch comedy duo Key & Peele, alongside Keegan-Michael Key, Peele’s brand of humour is both unsettling and socially and politically incisive, a mash of Dave Chappelle and The League of Gentlemen. It’s clear his sense of dramatic timing and pacing of reveals has served him well in the horror game, because this is a very impressive entry into the genre.

Get Out is imbued with Peele’s keen sense of horror classicism and cleverly uses some of its nods to other films – most notably The Stepford Wives – as a diversion. The conclusion to which you might have arrived from watching the trailer might be way off the scent. It’s got some unexpected plot twists up its sleeve and a great deal to say about how good-intentioned racism still pervades our society. Peele stops short of being preachy, allowing the horror concept to outweigh the social commentary, and teases an ending that might have made a political statement. But he doesn’t need to. The point has been made.

In the movie’s key sequence, Chris is subjected to a formal afternoon get-together in which most of the town seems to be in attendance, and every cliched exchange like the aforementioned Gervais gaff is hurled at our hero. An elderly white golf enthusiast tells Chris how much he loves Tiger Woods. It’s painful. Peele’s clearly leading us through familiar personal territory. The child of a mixed race couple – his mother is country music luminary Lucinda Williams – it’s likely Peele has heard just about every piece of awkward posturing that white people have to offer.

Though operating as a biting satire and very effective comedy, Get Out works as a horror movie – it’s riddled with genuinely unnerving moments and revelations (the film contains the most chilling bingo scene you’re ever likely to see). Peele’s intuition for his audience is apparent. He’s a conductor and as the credits roll you feel as though you’ve been played like an orchestra. You’ve laughed when commanded and you’ve had a sinking feeling applied to your stomach at just the right moments. The hypnosis central to the plot has somehow leaped from the screen.

Get Out contains a relatively simple premise that’s fresh, relevant and handled with expert precision by the director and his committed cast. Whitford and Keener bring the required malevolent ambiguity and Landry Jones is effective in another simmering, unhinged performance. Williams, known to many as Marnie in Girls, plays a crucial role in Get Out‘s success. Howery steals every scene he’s in, very much the comic relief. The always excellent Stephen Root has a small memorable role.

But high praise must be bestowed upon British actor Kaluuya as our American hero, whose naturalism as an actor facilitates Get Out‘s numerous gut punches. He’s a big talent and, having had smaller parts in Kick-Ass 2 and Sicario, seems at home in a leading role. Kaluuya was particularly excellent as the main protagonist in the Black Mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits”. It was a prescient performance because Get Out is a “black mirror” of a different kind, held gleefully by Peele in front of modern white society. Peer in and you just might see your own reflection.

FOUR STARS

Personal Shopper: review

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Kristen Stewart attempts to contact the spirit of her deceased twin brother in French director Olivier Assayas’ haunting rumination on grief, glamour and the male gaze, Personal Shopper.

 

By Nick Milligan

In his 2014 character study Clouds of Sils Maria, veteran French writer-director Olivier Assayas cast Kristen Stewart as Valentine, the loyal personal assistant to Juliette Binoche’s Hollywood actress Maria Enders. The two shared a complex relationship, one tinged with tension both personal and sexual.

In his next film, Personal Shopper, in a role written specifically for Stewart, Assayas again places the actress on the periphery of celebrity, this time as Maureen, a personal shopper for famous model Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten).

But Maureen is not emotionally invested in Kyra’s career in the same way Valentine is for Maria’s. Maureen is preoccupied with making contact with her dead twin brother Lewis. The two shared both a congenital heart defect and a medium’s ability to converse with spirits of the dead. Before Lewis’ passing, the twins made a pact that the first to die would attempt to contact the other from beyond the grave, reassuring them that they’re at peace.

When we meet Maureen, she’s spending a restless night in the big empty rural house where Lewis died, heeding every bump in the night, desperately waiting for the sign that he promised to send. During the ensuing days she drifts between fashion designers, gathering the cream of haute couture for her needy boss, every so often flirting with the idea of trying on the expensive clothing at her disposal.

One day in Kyra’s apartment Maureen meets German man Ingo (Lars Eidinger), who is having a secret affair with Kyra but takes a keen interest in Maureen and her supernatural mission to make contact with Lewis. Later Maureen receives unnervingly cryptic text messages from an unknown phone number, and wonders whether her departed brother might be playing games (a device used to similarly intriguing affect in Paul Verhoeven’s recent masterpiece Elle). Her desire for the stranger to be the ghost of her twin begins to take her town a potentially treacherous path.

Personal Shopper fluidly shifts between supernatural creeper and psychological thriller, all the while remaining a gentle and strangely hypnotic meditation on grief and the allure of the unknown. Assayas deftly achieves what many directors struggle with – the creation of a dream logic where rules can be broken and conventions subverted, all while keeping the viewer onside. You never feel like you have a handle on where the narrative is leading you, a sensation increasingly alien to the cinematic experience.

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A very steady hand is required to deal with such potentially absurd material, and during Personal Shopper you can only sit back and admire Assayas’ measured approach and steely restraint. He stretches scenes until they descend into voyeurism, passively lingering over Stewart as she travels between London and France and then, more intimately, as she lays topless on a doctor’s examination table, undresses to try on Kyra’s slinkier clothing and later masturbates in her boss’ bed.

In Stewart the director has found the perfect muse, an exquisite and ambiguous beauty to immerse in this morphing dreamscape. Assayas is richly rewarded with his casting of the sometimes maligned performer who, along with Clouds of Sils Maria, has given two of her finest performances under his non-intrusive direction. Both parts are written to Stewart’s strengths, playing to her naturalism and ability to reduce fantastical material to an almost serene simplicity. She’s immensely believable, constantly reductive in her portrayal and effortlessly beguiling. As in many of her other roles, Stewart keeps part of Maureen partitioned and elusive – a puzzle never quite solved by the time the credits roll.

The film, too, is a thematic Rubik’s Cube. While relatively straight forward in its narrative, there is a lot to unravel in Personal Shopper and its haunted central character. The deft chills delivered in its final stanza ensure that the film lingers with you after its finale. It could be Assayas’ rumination on the nature of male oppression, emotional blackmail and the male gaze – Maureen certainly experiences these elements from two distinct angles. But aesthetics play an equally large role in this stoic malaise, whether it be Maureen’s role in applying them to Kyra’s glamorous lifestyle or her attraction to these fine garments and the escapism they provide. Indeed, the intricacies of Stewart’s own beauty, which unfurl before the director’s floating, apparitional camera, are equally crucial to this unwaveringly original production.

FOUR STARS

The Void: review

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White robes. Ritualistic daggers. Scattered and mutilated corpses. Ungodly surgical procedures. Creeping dread. A slow descent into hell.

No, I’m not describing Australia’s public healthcare system – but rather the bloody mayhem crammed into fresh Canadian horror flick The Void.

The set-up for The Void is a familiar one: a cast of characters trapped in a building – à la Dawn of the Dead, The Mist, Assault on Precinct 13 etcetera. In this case it’s a quiet hospital in a seemingly desolate small town. The building is surrounded by hooded and robed figures, who are all in white except for a black triangle over their face. Imagine if a bunch of cyclopes joined the KKK.

The small group of captives inside the hospital includes small-town cop Daniel (Aaron Poole), nurse and Daniel’s estranged wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe), heavily pregnant Maggie (Grace Munro), grey-haired physician Dr. Richard Powell, and a nameless and resourceful father and son duo played by Daniel Fathers and Mik Byskov respectively.

When nurse Beverley becomes mysteriously entranced and murders a patient (typical Beverley), it appears something a little whacky is going on. From here the bodies not only pile up, but also reanimate and transform into wickedly grotesque otherworldly monsters. It’s quickly apparent that the captives have more to fear from what’s inside the hospital than the dagger-wielding cult wierdos outside.

Though its influences may be smeared on its blood-soaked sleeve, The Void attempts to bring them together into one original pulsating beast. Writer-directors Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie have been carving a career in the indie horror genre, and have directed alongside cult producer and Troma Entertainment mastermind Lloyd Kaufman.

Despite The Void‘s wild themes – which lean heavily on the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Don Coscarelli and John Carpenter, with a dash of Cronenberg – it’s never played for laughs. Which is admirable, of course, but this decision means the emotional core of the film and its characters must carry a heavier burden. Unfortunately, the writer-director duo doesn’t quite find the balance between gleeful body horror and its more human elements.

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From the outset, the filmmakers are keen to get us inside the hospital and The Void wastes no time in ramping up the nasty violence and palpable tension. So we have to get to know our characters on the run, learning about them as the carnage unfolds. This can sometimes work. But unfortunately Kostanski and Gillespie don’t come up with anything compelling about these people, and force us to languish in cliché. The reason for Daniel and Allison’s separation has been tried and tested by other screenwriters, and a similar tactic was used to stunning effect in Karyn Kusama’s recent mini-masterpiece The Invitation(the best film of 2016). But here the device feels hackneyed and under-cooked – a shortcut to empathy – and we don’t really feel for these characters in the way we should. The same goes for the father and son, whose wiliness grounds most of the action. You sense Kostanski and Gillespie are aiming high, but the characterisation – and performances in general – never soar.

The Void‘s strength is its visuals and it’s littered with practical creature effects that will make horror devotees squeal in delight – Stan Winston, Tom Savini and Rob Bottin would be proud. Tendrils, buckets of pus, nightmarish dripping maws, and maimed corpses that come to life like demonic marionettes – you name it, it’s in there. The production team has had a helluva lot of fun delivering this madness. It’s a shame the straight-faced delivery drains much of the joy from proceedings.

Editor Cam McLauchlin weaves some magic in the editing room, turning Kostanski and Gillespie’s striking visual montages (as our hero Daniel has odd visions) into genuinely gripping and visceral interludes. A black triangle hanging in the clouds over an inter-dimensional landscape – it’s a memorable piece of imagery. Having worked as an assistant editor on blockbusters like Pacific Rim, The Thing remake and Crimson Peak, McLauchlin takes the lead on editing duties for The Void and his kinetic approach wrings some arresting imagery out of the more thrilling moments.

You can’t help but admire Kostanski and Gillespie’s lofty ambitions – The Voidis gushing with retro grindhouse nostalgia and has a purist’s eye. There’s even a sense that the pair might have designs on an entire franchise, despite the glaring parallels and visual nods to Carpenter’s original The Thing, Coscarelli’s Phantasm and, perhaps most notably, Barker’s Hellraiser. But unlike those movies, The Void doesn’t present us with an iconic hero or an especially memorable antagonist – there’s no MacReady, Tall Man or Pinhead. The Void is brazen – it wants to be both high art and full-bodied schlock. The result is somewhere in between and, despite a noble effort, Kostanski and Gillespie don’t quite get to have their cake and eat it too. They come close.

The finale of The Void hints at future movies. Keep your ear to the ground. It could happen, as this is the kind of film that horror lovers of all ages are likely to rally behind. It’s made by horror fans for horror fans and, hell, it might even be the best excuse to spend some time in a hospital since Dr. Doug Ross.

3.5 STARS

Ghost in the Shell: review

With the news this week that a Stockholm firm are implanting their staff with a microchip that will let them through locked office doors and use printers, it seems that human fusion with machines is now a literal reality.

Of course, our figurative fusion has already happened. Such is our incessant and emotional attachment to phones, computers and Apple wristwatches that suturing ourselves irreversibly to electronics is surely a fait accompli.

Which is why director Rupert Sanders’ live action remake of the hugely influential and chillingly prescient 1995 anime classic Ghost in the Shell was going to be dead on arrival unless it found a way to expand upon the ideas and themes of its source material.

In 2017, writers that dare to weave science fiction have a far different vantage point to Asimov, Orwell, Bradbury and Ballard – or Ghost in the Shell creator Masamune Shirow, for that matter. Modern writers should be able to cast their eye further into the future, given the current state of affairs. It’s inexcusable to retread and regurgitate previous work rather than stand on the shoulders of giants. Which is why Sanders’ Hollywood update of Ghost in the Shell is such a gigantic missed opportunity.

It takes place in a near-future Japan. Major Mira Killian (Scarlett Johansson) is a special agent that works for an anti-terrorism task force called Section 9. As is revealed by a stunning CGI montage in the opening credits, Major is entirely robotic except for her human brain. Her mind (or “ghost”) exists inside this deadly and agile “shell”. We learn that she nearly died from a terrorist bombing while arriving in Japan with her parents as a refugee.

Major is the work of Hanka Robotics and designer Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche), who have been innovators in a world where humans are becoming increasingly augmented by technology. Up until now robots have been run by artificial intelligence programs but Major is the first to seamlessly merge the pros of both humanity and technology – a step forward in evolution. The best of both worlds. The CEO of Hanka, a slimy so-and-so named Cutter, sees an opportunity to have Major trained as an operative and thus strengthening his influence on the government.

Along with her Section 9 team, which includes trustworthy compatriot Batou (Pilou Asbæk) and Chief Daisuke Aramaki (filmmaker “Beat” Takeshi Kitano), Major investigates a series of terrorist attacks and murders committed by a mysterious hacker named Kuze (Michael Pitt). This shadowy man is able to hack the brains of humans who have been augmented and can control them to do his bidding. Major’s investigation into Kuze reveals unsettling secrets from her past.

It’s hard to fault Sanders’ approach to the visuals of this largely entertaining yet blatantly derivative remake. He demonstrated his flair for slick CGI with 2012 debut Snow White and the Huntsman and is aided here by strong, immersive production design. There’s floating shots of arresting cityscapes where skyscraper-high advertising holograms populate the otherwise grey, dystopian skyline. The costuming and make-up is similarly on-point, a mash of anachronisms and cyberpunk. Yet the film never has the dark, tangible neo-noir grittiness of Blade Runner or even The Matrix – the world of Ghost in the Shell exists in comic-book heightened reality.

The writing team of Jamie Moss, William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger have made significant alterations to the plot of the conceptually dense 1995 original, dumbing down the narrative, simplifying the dialogue and attempting to make Major a more sympathetic and damaged heroine. In doing so, they’ve dredged up plot points and subsequent imagery from dozens of previous science fiction films, without being anywhere near as playful and subversive as Paul Verhoeven’s thematically comparable RoboCop from 1987.

There’s no doubt that director Mamoru Oshii’s revered anime required some massaging to turn into a conventional live action movie (if it really was entirely necessary to do so). The dialogue of the original was verbose and laden with extensive exposition, a style suited to and accepted within anime. It was cerebral and subtle, fitted into an 82-minute running time, and Kazunori Itō’s screenplay adaptation of the original manga comics was overloaded with lofty concepts.

Sadly, the exploration of the tension between humans and technology in Sanders’ film – the unavoidable collision course in our collective near future – is hackneyed. Even with this simplified plot, the three-pronged writing team has failed to be incisive. There’s no enlightening moment that resonates on a philosophical level. No depth. Just a series of dark basements, nightclubs and grandiose nods to the best set pieces in the original anime.

Moral ambiguity has also been largely removed from this latest effort. Let us not forget that it’s Major that violently assassinates a foreign diplomat in the original’s breathtaking opening sequence. In the live action remake, Major is coming to the rescue. “The Puppet Master” villain of the original had compelling designs on evolution – to transcend its simple AI origins and embrace humanity. It was a human-made creation in a state of existential crisis. Here Kuze, as our villain is now called, has a far less interesting motivation. The “What is human?” question central to this and so many other sci-fi entries is dealt with on a surface level, void of intellectual analysis.

Though it’s flawed and a Frankenstein’s monster of previous sci-fi imagery, Ghost in the Shell works as a piece of big-screen entertainment. This is largely due to Johansson and Binoche’s committed performances. Johansson, who is blessed with otherworldly beauty, seems drawn to science fiction characters in the midst of an identity crisis, and many of her past performances have echoes of Major. Her portrayal of Black Widow in the Marvel franchise is of a woman trying to do good in the world while wrestling with the violence of her past. In Her, Johansson is a sentient operating system that yearns for human connection and transcendence. In The Island the actress is Jordan Two Delta, a woman created by science who discovers a dark truth about her existence. In Under the Skin, Johansson is an alien life-form in the skin of a beautiful woman who is drawn to human connection. In Lucy, she is a woman altered by technology who soon yearns to transcend the limitations of typical human beings. Even her serene performance as Charlotte in Lost in Translation, waking to a vast Japanese backdrop, is a woman dislocated from the world, trying to work out her place within it. There’s a pattern here, ScarJo!

You can’t question Johansson’s commitment to the role of Major, physically or emotionally. It’s just a shame that the actress is working from material that, despite being about the tenuous connection between the mind and soul, never works out how to harness the thematic power of either.

3 STARS

Beauty and the Beast: review

The 1991 Disney animated version of Beauty and the Beast held pride of place amongst my childhood VHS collection, and was on high rotation alongside Aladdin and Fantasia during those halcyon days of the early ’90s. A much simpler time.

Beauty‘s exceptional music – the title track is perhaps the best number written for any Disney film – and the charm of the interspecies romance were equally captivating. It ticked all the right boxes and, subsequently, was a widely celebrated movie.

The classic tale Beauty and the Beast, written by Jeace de Beaumontnne-Marie Leprin in 1740, touches on many themes still relevant to young people of today – the millennial generation. It taps into the desire to escape their home towns and see the world, to fall in love with someone higher up the socio-economic ladder, to fall for “beastly” men that they can try and fix, and also to have much of their daily routine achieved by sentient homewares that, when dutifully called upon, can hold stirring six-part harmonies whilst engaged in the complex minutiae of elegantly staged choreography.

It’s no surprise that Disney should choose Beauty and the Beast as the next of its live action remakes, following the financial and creative success of last year’s The Jungle Book. The special effects of this futuristic world in which we find ourselves, are truly a thing of wonder. The Beast himself – that cruel and narcissistic Prince that refuses to show compassion toward an old lady seeking shelter from the storm and is promptly punished through magic – can now exist on screen as a life-like creature, rather than a weird and unconvincing array of make-up, false teeth and animatronics.

In director Bill Condon’s new, and extremely faithful, live action remake of the 1991 animated musical, we again meet our feisty and independent heroine Belle. Here the small-town bibliophile is played in a note-perfect performance by Emma Watson (both musically and dramatically). She has a love-hate relationship with the small French town in which she has grown up, has read all the books in the rather stark local library, and is ridiculed and outcast for her intellectualism. Her father Maurice (Kevin Kline), an artist and tinkerer, is supportive of her individuality. If putting up with the town’s whispering was not enough, Belle must contend with handsome and narcissistic bonehead Gaston (Luke Evans), who is intent on obtaining the unobtainable Belle to be his bride. Gaston is aided, with some reluctance, by his loyal, flaming and seemingly closeted sidekick LeFou (Josh Gad).

On their way to a market, Maurice and his horse Philippe become lost in the darkened woods and attacked by wolves. They make it to the grounds of the cursed Prince’s castle and Maurice takes shelter within.

As we have learned from the prologue, the enchanted castle is home to not only the Prince/Beast (Dan Stevens) but also his staff, who have all been transformed into talking objects – a candelabra maître d’ named Lumière (Ewan McGregor), Cogsworth the clock (Sir Ian McKellen), the harpsichord Maestro Cadenza (Stanley Tucci), Mrs Potts the teapot (Emma Thompson), and so on. Just like their royal master, they have also been punished. Upon the casting of her spell, the enchantress gave the Beast a rose. When the final petal wilts and falls, his and the staff’s mutations will be permanent. However, if he can love and find someone to fall in love with him in return, the spell will be broken. In this Twilight world we live in, romance between girl and wolf-bear man seems entirely possible, something for which the kiddies can wholeheartedly and whimsically barrack.

Understandably alarmed at the sight of a talking teacup, Maurice flees the castle’s grounds but not before stopping to pick a white rose for Belle. The Beast captures him and throws him in a cell for his thievery. Fleet-footed Philippe dashes home alone, alerting Belle to her father’s misfortune. She swiftly rides to the Castle, meets the Beast and agrees to take her father’s place as a prisoner.

With a female finally in their midst, Lumière and the rest of the staff see an opportunity to break their curse – and Cogsworth is ticking! So the furniture, cutlery etcetera start working their match-making skills to see if the pretty young Belle could fall for the strangely attractive Beast. As you might assume, even with the most limited knowledge of how Disney films tend to play out, romance blossoms – whether by organic means or textbook Stockholm Syndrome. We may never know.

Buoyed by a committed and largely British cast, Beauty and the Beast weaves enough visual brilliance, comic moments and catchy tunes to justify its existence. It’s every bit the magical ride a film-goer could hope for. If you’re a kid, it’s no doubt a wonderfully spellbinding experience, and if you grew up with the 1991 animation, then it’s overflowing with nostalgia.

As much as we might bemoan Disney’s new endeavour, which is a long-term plan to turn every one of their animated classics into live-action spectacles (there’s about 22 slated remakes in the pipeline, from The Lion King and Mulan, to Emma Stone’s upcoming appearance as the titular villain in Cruella). But there’s something to be said for what modern technology can bring to these fantastical tales. In the case of Beauty and the Beast, it’s a $160m budget (the original cost $25m) that can turn the Beast into a lifelike (and surprisingly sexy) creation with a flowing mane and blues eyes as deep and beguiling as the Pacific Ocean. It can also make talking, loveable and photo-realistic characters out of the contents of a Harrods catalogue.

Condon’s film is almost a scene-by-scene remake of the 1991 version, and includes all the best songs, each realised with flair and an eye for classic cinematic choreography. The new songs, while solid, don’t quite have the timeless melodic thrust of the originals, and stick out like a talking candlestick. But they’re not terrible. Other new elements work surprisingly well. The backstory given to Belle’s mother is especially poignant.

Interesting, also, is the decision to make LeFou a homosexual. Gad plays the part with relish, sinking his teeth into every camp wink, longing stare at Gaston or piece of Disney-approved innuendo. Much has been made of the sexuality of the character, with Malaysia coming very close to banning the film. Talk about an overreaction. LeFou’s character might be gay, yes, but the sexuality on screen is incredibly tame. It’s remarkable that it would occur to anyone to barricade the film’s release. It’s a welcome step from Disney, but still a subtle one. Kids will return to this Beauty and the Beast when they’re in high school and the penny will drop. “Oh, LeFou likes Gaston. Like like likes.” Let’s hope there’s more gay characters in future adaptations. It’s time to confirm those rumours about Timon and Pumbaa.

The casting in Beauty and the Beast is entirely on fleek. Kline, brilliant in everything he touches, is perfect as Maurice, and Evans takes to Gaston’s over-the-top ego-centrism like a fish to water. The supporting “objects”, from McGregor to McKellen and Thompson, are all as fine and effortless as you would expect. Everyone is an assured singer and the set-pieces, especially ‘Be Our Guest’ (famously a cover of The Simpsons number ‘See My Vest’) are realised with scintillating visual splendour.

Stevens, who spends the majority of the film as a CGI bear-pig man, brings an endearing mix of innocence and ferocity to the cursed Prince. The Downton Abbey star is so charming and lovely in Beast mode, that Belle struggles to hide her disappointment at the film’s conclusion. Belle wanted Beast action, and says as much in the film’s final moments. Hey Disney, here’s a sequel idea. Belle pays off Enchantress to reinstate curse. Thank me later.

3.5 STARS
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Teenage Fanclub: live review

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Teenage Fanclub live at Taronga Zoo, Sydney, March 1o, 2017

TEENAGE FANCLUB
Twilight at Taronga
Friday, March 10, 2017
“This one’s for the elephants,” says Norman Blake in his soft Scottish brogue.

The Teenage Fanclub co-frontman is referring to the Asian elephants that reside in a nearby enclosure. The big endangered animals have arguably the best seats for this Twilight at Taronga concert series of any of the other exotic creatures in Sydney’s iconic zoo.

The elephants raise their trunks in appreciation of the shout out. They’re visibly enjoying the stunning three-part harmonies of Teenage Fanclub, nodding along to each of the legendary power pop band’s gorgeous, dreamy and achingly melodic choices. Between songs, the majestic animals snort bags of peanuts, bemoan the existence of mice and reflect on events from the distant past with crystal clear accuracy.

One of the Asian elephants is heard to remark, “they’re alright, but I’d rather be at Adele.” The eager, outspoken bull is swiftly ousted from the herd, humiliated and left to cower in the shadows of the sprawling enclosure.

There are two Teenage Fanclub fans standing just in front of me, seemingly oblivious to the elephants’ interactions, both a reflection of the general demographic of the audience: greying hair, glasses, a doughy centre and impeccable taste in music. One of them, who I suspect is an accountant who also writes album reviews for the local streetpress, turns to his amigo and asks, “What’s the difference between an African and Asian elephant?” It’s not the start of a joke, he’s generally interested in the distinction. The amigo replies, “From what I understand, Asian elephants eat takoyaki.” It’s one of those Surry Hills quips that tickles my fancy. I’m already smiling as a result of the music, so my amusement at the response is not apparent to those around me.

Fanclub opened the show with a deep cut, namely ‘Start Again’, the first song from their 1997 record Songs From Northern Britain. It’s one of the few classics that we’ve been treated to so far, with the live five-piece clearly intent on showcasing their latest work, the album Here.

Bassist Gerard Love might be the most subdued performer in the world, but he still sings and plays the guitar like someone guilty of a Faustian pact.

The record is, as one would expect, painfully catchy, but it’s also an album that unfolds with repeated listens. It doesn’t have the brazen immediacy of Grand Prix or Bandwagonesque, and meets at the crossroads between their radiant power pop and Byrds-y methodologies. Subsequently, the show has a soft, dreamy, introverted atmosphere. The wall of guitar that fans love from the band’s early work has taken a back seat. A brief exception is the especially “classic” sounding ‘Thin Air’.

Teenage Fanclub may never have been great projectors – their stage presence is understated, to stay the least. You’re required to concentrate and tune in. The pay-off justifies the investment.

Guitarist and co-vocalist Raymond McGinley has parted ways with his long hair, and now has a touch of the Mark Knopflers about him. His feel for the axe is second to none. Bassist Gerard Love might be the most subdued performer in the world, but he still sings and plays the guitar like someone guilty of a Faustian pact. Behind it all, Francis Macdonald is in the engine room, keeping time with powerful finesse.

Although the 90-miunte set has been heavy on new material, some classics emerge in the final stages. We’re treated to ‘Star Sign’ and ‘The Concept’ from Bandwagonesque, and Love bestows his tune ‘Sparky’s Dream’ upon us. A welcome inclusion is ‘It’s All in My Mind’ from their gorgeous Man-Made record, and a nod to the Aussies – a cover of Grant McLennan’s ‘Easy Come Easy Go’.

The night ends with a trip through time, right back to Fanclub’s 1990 debut A Catholic Education and the song ‘Everything Flows’.

As the Scotsman depart, smiles flow out the gates. The elephants make their way to the merch stand, quietly hoping there’s a 9XL.

Kong: Skull Island: review

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When Tom Hiddleston’s charming cardboard hero predicts the ways in which the members of a planned expedition to an unchartered island will die – “rain, heat, disease-carrying flies” – he redefines the concept of an understatement.

That’s because said destination, Skull Island, is full of nasties. Big ones. Snappy ones. Flying ones. Spidery ones. At the top of the food chain on this stunning South Pacific locale is King Kong, a big ape with a big heart. Cinema-going audiences will be familiar with this iconic creature, having first appeared as the titular stop-motion character in the 1933 classic by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and later returning for the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis production (where he evolved into a bloke in an ape suit) and the Peter Jackson epic in 2005 (special effects galore). I’ll mercifully omit Mighty Joe Young.

In Kong: Skull Island the chunky monkey returns, resurrected with the full gamut of modern CGI trickery, for the second instalment in Legendary’s burgeoning MonsterVerse (following Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla). With spectacular set pieces and a strangely uneven tone, young director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (taking a giant leap in budget after his acclaimed 2013 indie The Kings of Summer) borrows heartily from both the 1933 and 1976 versions. The result is both an enjoyable popcorn spectacle and an aimless rumble in the jungle.

Dropping a shit-tonne of explosives is, disappointingly, the only attempt that Kong: Skull Island makes to break new ground.

Skull Island, like the 1976 film that starred Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Lange in her big screen debut, is set in the ’70s. America has just pulled the pin on Vietnam, leaving military personnel relieved, frustrated and bitter. We quickly meet Bill Randa (John Goodman) and geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins – Dr. Dre from Straight Outta Compton), who work for a government organisation called Monarch. They convince a senator to fund a reconnaissance mission to an unchartered island. They recruit former British SAS captain and expert tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and a helicopter squadron known as the Sky Devils. Led by Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), an intense single-minded United States Army Lieutenant Colonel, the rag tag Sky Devils are assigned one last mission – to escort the group of scientists to Skull Island. This wouldn’t be a King Kong flick without a blonde beauty and in this instance it’s photojournalist and peace activist Mason Weaver, played with measured tenderness and tenacity by Academy Award-winner Brie Larson.

In the film’s most spectacular passage of play, the helicopter squadron must carry the crew through a dense and angry storm that perpetually encircles Skull Island (thus, in an idea borrowed from the 1976 film, explaining why its never been explored). On the other side of the storm the scientists quickly go about their work – bombing the surface of the island to create the vibrations necessary to map its surface. In a well-staged sequence that nods heavily to Apocalypse Now – and makes effective use of Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ – the choppers started destroying the country side. It’s like a bucks weekend in Bali. King Kong doesn’t like bombs dropped in his backyard and quickly demonstrates his less than diplomatic approach to tourist relations.

Dropping a shit-tonne of explosives is, disappointingly, the only attempt that Kong: Skull Island makes to break new ground. Its cast of archetypes are thinly drawn, largely indispensable and there’s just too many of them. It’s a character cluster-fuck. We don’t know these people before they arrive on the island. And we sure as hell don’t know them before the local fauna starts going the proverbial chew. Hiddleston, Larson, Goodman – they’re each given a one-sentence character. Their skills in front of the camera carry them through, but they’re not served by the screenplay. Kong is by far the most compelling character, and he never utters a word.

Of all the human cast, Jackson gets something to sink his teeth into and he proves the film’s saving grace. After watching Kong tear through his squadron, he forms a Captain Ahab-like obsession with the Great Ape, setting him on a thrilling collision course with the giant animal. Jackson’s at his best when he’s angry, and he don’t like this motherfuckin’ monkey.

John C. Reilly appears as Hank Marlow, a World War I pilot and token comic relief that crashes on Skull Island and lives out 28 years with the local Kong-worshipping tribe. Though he’s an inherently funny man, here Reilly has been thrown a hospital pass. His jokes fall faster than Kong downs choppers, and the pitch of his comedy is completely at odds with the rest of the film.

The Marlow character exemplifies the film’s major flaw. There’s confusion here as to the tone – which is disappointing, as Edwards’s Godzilla movie was so effective – and ambitious – in taking the sensational material seriously, believing in the characters and the drama of the narrative. Skull Island has no interest in being adult, building tension, emotion, or even terrifying its audience. It’s shiny, soulless spectacle – and not funny enough to be a lively pseudo comedy. It’s in a strange, barren wilderness of tone, perhaps attributable to the fact it had three screenwriters. The horse turned into a camel? Our cast wander, wide-eyed, from one monstrous encounter to the next, each new creature ultimately diminishing the impact of what’s to come. Vogt-Roberts might have been served by watching less Apocalypse Now and more Jurassic Park.

Critics were quick to lampoon Peter Jackson’s indulgent 2005 tribute to the 1933 original, but the Kiwi’s effort is far more consistent than what’s on offer here. Jackson’s reverence for the material was writ large in every frame, melding his love of classic Hollywood romanticism and his penchant for occasional horror. The staging of the Empire State Building finale was thrilling and consequential, as was the faithful recreation of the “spider pit scene”, a sequence famously cut from the 1933 original for being too violent.

As a pre-mediated reboot, Skull Island was an opportunity to breathe life into the concept and reinvigorate the monster genre – but the film gleefully thumbs its nose at this notion. Like most exercises in style over substance, its enjoyable on the big screen and, in its own heavy handed way, an effective piece of escapism. The dazzling complexity of the special effects engender amazement. The deaths are almost exciting. But just like the “Hollow Earth” theory that pervades this new franchise, there’s some cavernous holes beneath the surface.

Let’s see if Godzilla: King of the Monsters can bring some bite when it roars into 2019.

Manchester by the Sea: review

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The critical and financial divide between Hollywood blockbusters and small budget dramas widened further in 2016, with Manchester by the Sea (made for $8.5m) and Moonlight (only $5m) the two front runners to beat crowd-pleaser La La Land to cinema’s most coveted treasure – the Academy Award for Best Film.

Critics and industry peers have seized on both Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight, with respective directors Kenneth Lonergan and Barry Jenkins a big chance of earning an Oscar for their efforts. Both are small films, exercises in attention to detail and nuance of character. Micro over macro. Neither are plot-driven, but rather a thread of vignettes. Precise fictional moments purpose-built to be revelatory. But is each film objectively brilliant? Or does their relative depth of character and interesting camera-work simply make them stand-out from the hackneyed crowd?

This is a review of Manchester by the Sea, a gentle, moving and masculine drama about dealing with grief. At the film’s centre is Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), a quiet and emotionally closed man who works in a number of apartments in Quincy, Massachusetts, as a janitor and all-round handyman. He has to negotiate a range of tenant personalities, each testing the self-control that keeps his internalised anger at bay. But this rage does occasionally boil over, especially when he drinks.

Lee is called back to his hometown of Manchester-by-the-Sea, also in Massachusetts, when his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, seen only in flashbacks) suffers a fatal heart attack. A lawyer then informs Lee, much to his alarm, that he is now the legal guardian of Joe’s 16-year-old son Patrick. Guardianship has fallen to Lee due to Patrick’s alcoholic mother Elise (Gretchen Mol) being estranged from her son.

The film then depicts the trials and tribulations of the ensuing week, as Lee and Patrick are thrown together under the same roof, each dealing with the pain of Joe’s loss, planning the funeral, and trying to work out the best next step for both of them. These interactions are inter-cut by flashbacks, and at the mid-point of the film we learn the traumatic reason for Lee’s depressive state. It’s very evident that being back in his hometown, where he crosses paths with old acquaintances, including his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams), is a difficult environment to endure.

But Manchester by the Sea is not a masterpiece. It has been heralded as one, perhaps by major critics whose opportunities to gush have been few and far between. But, despite its searching, the film never quite reaches a pinnacle moment.

The praise that has been heaped upon Manchester by the Sea – and the fact that it might win the Academy Award for Best Picture and Original Screenplay – ultimately says more about the state of mainstream English-language movies in 2016/17 than it does about the movie itself.

This is a fine film. No question. The potentially dull subject matter is buoyed by some genuinely funny humour, and small insightful moments that demonstrate Lonergan’s ability to weave a complex work. His direction is sensitive, the performances have perfect pitch and his placement of the camera is always thoughtful and effective. Lonergan can frame a scene and the titular town, with its cold austerity, is an effective backdrop. Lesley Barber’s orchestral score is deliberately prominent (almost overblown), but proves an arresting dramatic device. The music is its own character. There’s strong elements here.

But Manchester by the Sea is not a masterpiece. It has been heralded as one, perhaps by major critics whose opportunities to gush have been few and far between. But, despite its searching, the film never quite reaches a pinnacle moment. A paragraph of ultimate profoundness. There’s no revelatory scene or breakthrough that quite justifies the movie’s existence. If it’s an exercise in pain and grief, an essay on life after excruciating loss, or the weight of survivor’s guilt, then Manchester by the Sea brings nothing that Don’t Look Now didn’t deliver 44 years ago. The spectre of grief has loomed in many films since, and explored far more effectively, with Monster’s Ball and 21 Grams amongst the modern stand-outs.

Here’s the rub. As a fictional construct, Manchester by the Sea is not based on a true story. Therefore, the pain heaped on Lee, its central protagonist, is a conscious decision by its author. This creative choice makes Lee a victim. The victim of a simple, yet terrible, mistake. As an exercise, then, in which Lonergan must find interest – locate the reason why we, as an audience, might want to spend 137 minutes with this character. Why do we want to hear his story? Why do we care? But, Lonergan never presents more of a reason than, “He’s a victim. Wait around and see if he deals with his shit.”

And Lee seems decidedly happy to play the victim. He’s not attempted to confront his anguish. He’s a broken man. He drinks. He’s locked away in a shitty apartment with a shitty job. He’s almost mono-syllabic. Violence bubbles beneath the surface. He’s given up on life. The opportunity to look after his nephew, to assist him across the threshold of adulthood, seems like a change for Lee to find purpose again. To recalibrate. To endure.

But no.

There’s no revelation, internally or externally. Is Lonergan telling us that there is no way to overcome such grief? That might be true. But does that assertion make an interesting movie? Why are we spending time with this victim? To feel better about ourselves? To revel in the fragility of the human spirit? Or its strength and resilience? Even jokes have a punchline – a reason to grant them our attention – but the point of Manchester by the Sea is frustratingly elusive. The screenplay feels like an interesting run-on sentence without a full-stop.

Curiously, Casey Affleck’s portrayal of Lee has been widely lauded for its power and restraint. But let’s get real. He is very good in Manchester by the Sea. No doubt. But this is not a career-defining performance. Affleck has been far better (see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Gone Baby Gone, The Killer Inside Me). In the film’s most pivotal scene, a chance meeting in the street with Randi, his ex-wife, Affleck is feeding off the emotion in Michelle Williams’ performance. All of the actors, particularly Oscar-nominated Lucas Hedges as Patrick, bring their A-game

There’s no question that Manchester by the Sea is a strong movie and, despite its faults, is head and shoulders above the vast majority of American dramas that appeared in 2016. But will we talk about it decades from now?

3 1/2 stars.