Stars: William Lodder, Richard Roxburgh, Frances O’Connor, Anastasia Bampos, Darius Amarfio Jefferson, Cooper van Grootel and Dan Wyllie.
Writer: Steve Worland.
Director: Owen Trevor

Rating: ★ ★ ★

…or, “The Kart-y Kid.”

A young, widowed mum cuts ties with the sadness of her past life and travels cross country to give her teenage son a fresh go at young manhood. There, he finds a new father figure of sorts in an old sports recluse, who bestows wisdom upon his new charge while finding his own new lease on life.

So went John G. Avildsen’s 1984 teen classic The Karate Kid and so goes Owen Trevor’s Go!, which swaps out Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita and ‘The Crane’ for William Lodder, Richard Roxburgh and the inside lane in its shamelessly derivative but generally likable retelling of the familiar narrative. Also gone are the martial arts (except for one quick nod to the source material’s ‘junkyard brawl’ scene), with the dusty, screeching world of go-kart racing providing the new road to realising one’s potential.

Handsome newcomer Lodder impresses as Jack Hopper, a generally upbeat young man despite the loss of his dad (Adam T. Perkins, in flashback) several years prior. Why mum Christie (Frances O’Connor) decides to relocate from Sydney to Busselton, Western Australia when both seem to have overcome the worst of their grief (he died when Jack was 11, a good eight years ago) is never fully reconciled by writer Steve Worland’s sometimes patchy narrative, though dialogue and character represent a marked improvement over his previous work, Paper Planes (2014).

Christie scores Jack an invitation to the birthday party of Mandy (Anastasia Bampos), the best darn mechanic in all Busselton and daughter of local go-kart magnate Mike Zeta (Damian de Montemas, the film’s ‘Cobra Kai’-like villain). The meet will be held at the local go-kart dustbowl, overseen by world-weary crank-pot recluse, Patrick (Richard Roxburgh), whose gruff exterior hides a pain that…anyway, you get the drift. When Jack channels his inner hoon and proves to be a go-kart natural, Patrick and Mandy join his crusade to dethrone Mike’s son Dean (Cooper van Grootel, going full-Zabka) by taking it ‘all the way to the Nationals’.

As in all manifestations of The Karate Kid, the best moment in Go! is the training montage, during which the brash cockiness of the young un’ is worn down by the wise old master with the kid having no idea he is being readied for his new life goals. The ‘wax on, wax off’ scenes are played well (Karate Kid tropes are even referenced in one off-camera comment), as are those final crucial moments which indicate Daniel…I mean, Jack has learnt an important lesson about respecting your elders and growing out of the past. Mid-section has very little to do or say and conjures some minor conflicts without much conviction before getting back to the action.

In his feature directorial debut, Trevor captures the close-quarters go-kart action with an immersive energy (a professional history filming the Top Gear series proves a bonus), though he can’t breath too much life into perfunctory subplots involving Jack’s new best bud, Colin (Darius Amarfio Jefferson, in the comic sidekick role that was played by Julian Dennison in Paper Planes) and attempts by local cop Barry (Dan Wyllie) to woo Christie. A terrific collection of tunes, old and new, help bolster audience engagement, while the crowd-pleasing ending that you know is coming before you even take your seat hits all the right notes.

Stars: Mason McNulty, Rahm Braslaw, Kerri Kenney, Charlyne Yi, Courtney Pauroso, Thomas Lennon, Mark Proksch, John Gemberling, Cameron Simmons, Tim Robbins, Natalie Mering, Nunzio Randazzo, Jake Head and Christian Drerup.
Writers: Nunzio Randazzo, Jack Henry Robbins.
Director: Jack Henry Robbins.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A skit-filled ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’-like takedown of kitsch 1980s media culture develops into a far more prescient and surprisingly moving satire in Jack Henry Robbin’s VHYes. Capturing that moment mid-decade when VCR/camcorder technology fused, allowing American society to change the course of how visual media was created, captured and consumed, this wacky but wise boys-own adventure as seen through the lens of late-night television and self-made home movies won’t connect with everyone (it is shot entirely on VHS and Betacam, for goodness sake!). But for those who lived that cultural shift, it’s a smart, subversive blast.

Framed as a best-friends/suburban-family adventure story (think ‘80s staples like E.T. or Explorers or The Goonies), feature debutant Robbins’ protagonist Ralphie (Mason McNulty) is introduced on Christmas morning 1987, being gifted the latest in home video technology - the camcorder. The character’s name and this setting will invoke to many U.S. viewers Bob Clark’s yuletide classic A Christmas Story, in which a young boy’s dreams were also enabled by a gift that allowed him to shoot randomly with little regard for the consequences.

Ralphie grabs the first apparently blank VHS cassette he can find and starts filming, unaware he is erasing his parents’ wedding day memories. This is a familiar comedic set-up, however it takes on a darker relevance as Robbin’s themes unfold. Soon, the unlimited potential the camcorder affords Ralphie - to both express himself and discover the bold new world that is midnight-to-dawn TV - is capturing hard truths about his household. The innocence of his young mind is being usurped, while the undercurrent of detachment his mom (Christian Drerup) and dad (Jake Head) are experiencing is being unwittingly chronicled. Appearing fleetingly between the insurgent new late-night content, we glimpse their happier times.

Ralphie’s adventures in after-dark television offer up some hilarious parodies of recognisable cable-net ‘80s programming, recalling segments from Peter Hyam’s Stay Tuned (1992), Ken Shapiro’s The Groove Tube (1974) and the anthology Amazon Women on The Moon (1987). Best amongst them include bickering telemarketers Tony V and Cindy, featuring Thomas Lennon’s ‘heirloom-pen’ salesman (“…it literally does everything that a pen can do.”); the basement-shot talk show, Interludes with Lou, hosted by Lou (Charlyne Li); and, the heavily-edited adult entertainment offerings from Cinemax-like porn peddlers, (tonight’s feature, Sexy Swedish Illegal Aliens From Space XXX). Robbins also expands upon comedy shorts he’s previously filmed, including fresh episodes of Painting (and Cooking, Plumbing and Sleeping) with Joan, featuring a side-splitting Kerri Kennedy, and the global warming-themed sex romp, Hot Winter.

The parody channels fly by, reflecting precisely the impact on a remote control of a teenage boy’s attention span, until Ralphie settles upon a true-crime special that profiles a girl’s murder at the hands of her own sorority sisters in his very neighbourhood. With best friend Josh (Rahm Braslaw) reluctantly by his side, Ralphie takes his camcorder into the burnt-out shell of a home that was the scene of the crime hoping to record a ghostly presence.

The sequence allows Robbins to come full circle in his skewering of western culture’s obsession with self-image; Ralphie becomes the star of his own handheld-horror film, the kind that came into existence as a by-product of the handy-cam boom (notably The Blair Witch Project, but there were so many). VHYes captures and contemplates the moment thirty-three years ago that has since morphed into the YouTube/selfie/profile-obsessed world that we are slaves to today.

In one final image, Jake Henry Robbins stops just shy of condemning ‘image culture’ entirely – in the credit-roll outtakes, he captures the film’s co-producers, his separated parents Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, having a happy moment on his set. The footage, which lasts mere seconds, impacts like a polaroid, providing a vivid recollection of memories captured in an instant. They are frames filled with warmth for both the viewer and, one assumes, the director and underline his point that not everything needs to be filmed and filtered and posted. Finding the essential truth in singular moments is the true skill to recording personal history.

Stars: James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Adam Pally, Tika Sumpter, Neal McDonough, Lee Majdoub and the voice of Ben Schwartz.
Writers: Patrick Casey and Josh Miller.
Director: Jeff Fowler.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

SEGA are very late to the party, but the videogame behemoth’s first deep dive into the Hollywood blockbuster pool* has been worth the wait. After a bumpy detour down the rocky road of social media, Sonic the Hedgehog hits the ground running in Paramount’s crowdpleasing, funny, spirited comedy/adventure romp.

Since its debut for the SEGA Genesis system in 1991, the little blue hedgehog with a cracking turn of speed has been a console megastar and inevitable talk of a film adaptation has been around almost as long. In 1994, it was set to film at MGM, then Dreamworks circled a treatment before Hollywood put it in the ‘too hard’ basket (the shadow of rival Nintendo’s mega-bomb Super Mario Bros darkened the prospects of many vidgame adaptations at the time). Sony Pictures Animation acquired the moribund rights in 2014 but stuttered, allowing Paramount to snap it up (the ‘mountain studio’ come to party, substituting the game’s gold rings for their own ‘flying stars’ in the opening logo).

SEGA execs have treated the brand extension of their flagship property with kid gloves, and some may say that the eventual emergence of Sonic as a ‘Roger Rabbit’-type funny-guy in a safe, middle America-set live-action/animated hybrid lacks daring ambition. But with the motor-mouth funny-guy Ben Schwartz voicing the confident critter and a bare-bones but effective narrative that allows for comedy and action beats to breath, debutant feature director Jeff Fowler (working under the wing of his hitmaking production partner, Deadpool director Tim Miller) exhibits storytelling skill and commercial instincts.

The fantasy landscape of the videogame is the setting for the film’s prologue, and it looks beautiful. Under threat because of his special power, toddler Sonic is plunged through time and space to Green Hills, Montana, where he grows into a remarkably well-adjusted albeit very lonely teenage blue hedgehog. In a momentary fit of pique, his energy surge blacks out the town and is noticed by military types, who descend upon the burg. Escaping their prying technology, Sonic is thrust into the life of Sheriff Tom Wachowski (a typically game James Marsden, who worked a similar schtick in the 2011 Easter Bunny dud, Hop) and they hit the road to San Francisco to recover Sonic’s missing pouch of gold rings.

Hot on their heels is the villainous Dr Robotnik, played with the unique comic energy of another megastar from the 1990s, one Jim Carrey. In his first fully frantic comedic turn since the underwhelming Dumb and Dumber To in 2014, Carrey certainly looks more mature but proves no less hilariously elastic in the bad guy role. He is clearly having a lot of fun (often at the expense of his unlucky offsider Agent Stone, played with good grace by Lee Majdoub) and his masterful ability to deliver all-or-nothing physical hilarity and throwaway lines is the pic’s biggest asset.

The main question hanging over the delayed release of Sonic the Hedgehog is, was the delay worth it? That is, was it worth sending the film back to the effects team to counter the bleating of the fanboys who lost their collective cool when the Sonic trailer first appeared in April 2019? Well, it was worth it, as the character looks great, although had the film just pushed through the web white noise it probably would have stood on its own merits.

*To date, the only US feature-length live action adaptations of SEGA properties have been Uwe Boll’s House of The Dead (2003) and its sequel (2005), directed by Michael Hurst. In 2007, Takashi Miike directed the Japanese feature Like a Dragon/Ryū ga Gotoku Gekijōban, based upon the Playstation 2 game, Yakuza.

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Ned Dennehy, Grant Bowler, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Milo Cawthorne and Rhys Darby.
Writer/Director: Jason Lei Howden

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Two of young Hollywood’s most compelling career trajectories smash into each other with bloody, gleeful giddiness in Jason Lei Howden’s sophomore feature, Guns Akimbo. A splattery, smartly satirical Truman Show/Running Man mash-up for the content-obsessed millennial masses, this head-spinning horror show pits Daniel Radcliffe against Samara Weaving, with the worldwide web watching their increasingly OTT bloodbath unfold.

In the wake of such all-or-nothing lead roles in Horns, Swiss Army Man, Imperium and Jungle, Howden’s follow-up to his 2015 cult hit Deathgasm represents another fearlessly idiosyncratic choice for Daniel Radcliffe (pictured, top). As video-game coder and anti-troll troll Miles, the ‘forever Harry Potter’ excels as the couch-bound nobody whose anonymous postings unwittingly hurtle him into an ultra-violent online gaming landscape known as ‘SKIZM’. Abducted by channel head/tattooed-skull heavy Riktor (a brilliant Ned Dennehy), Miles awakens to an unforeseen development – his hands have been surgically attached, with little finesse, to two high-powered handguns.

His mission is simple – for the entertainment of the millions who watch SKIZM, Miles has 24 hours to kill holdover champion Nix (Weaving) or die trying. Subplots develop (to varying degrees of worthiness), but the real thrill in Guns Akimbo mirrors the experience of the film’s online spectators – watching the carnage mount as Miles, Nix and Riktor propel themselves towards an inevitable confrontation.

Matching Radcliffe’s physical action/comedy prowess beat-for-beat, Samara Weaving (pictured, above) further solidifies her burgeoning reputation as Hollywood’s most exciting Australian actress (sorry Margot, but it’s true). Coming off Mayhem, The Babysitter and Ready or Not (and with a starring role in the upcoming summer comedy, Bill & Ted Face the Music), Weaving is carving a unique niche for herself with bold, bloody, funny character choices in offbeat vehicles as original as Radcliffe’s oeuvre. In hindsight, their paring seemed inevitable and their chemistry proves a treat.

With exteriors shot in Auckland and studio work lensed in Berlin, Jason Lei Howden has overseen a truly international production yet maintains a hyper-kinetic indie sensibility that suits the madness perfectly. He leaves no directorial technique on the table, revving up his action and actors to new heights, just when it seems unlikely anything is left to mine. The gunplay is constant and unashamedly gratuitous; a workplace firefight is played for laughs, although in this time of mass shooting hysteria it may draw ire from some sectors.

The entire feature is boisterous, surface-level fun, but there is some precise skewering of the web-society culture that breeds a vulgar aberration like SKIZM and the many different types that populate it (most of which, ironically, would be the key demographic for this film). Smartly cast well into the support parts (amongst them, the director’s Deathgasm star Milo Cawthorne and the increasingly common bit part from Rhys Darby) and highlighting cinematic stunt work and effects imagery at its premium, Guns Akimbo ought to turn its limited theatrical exposure into long-term cult status.

FANGORIA x MONSTER FEST and MADMAN FILMS will present Guns Akimbo at nationwide Special Event Screenings on Friday February 28^th. The film will go into national release on March 5^th. For venue and ticket information, click here.

Stars: Nina Endô and Sumire
Writer/Director: Daisuke Miyazaki

Reviewed at HYPERLINKS: A Static Vision Film Festival, in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, February 23^rd, 2020.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Two adorably clueless Japanese millennials stumble across adventure, anxiety and a (slightly) more expanded world vision in Daisuke Miyazaki’s Tourism. Starring the giggly girly duo of Sumire and Nina Endô as the bffs who live in the moment so as to record the moment, this dreamlike, free-form odyssey speaks to the teen and twenty-something audience in a film language that may prove too distractingly self-obsessed and directionless for some.  Which would be a shame, because it’s a sweet, likable, spirited insight into embracing friendship and defying alienation in the mobile-device age.

When a contest win provides Nina with two airline tickets to anywhere in the world, she is so ignorant of the world beyond her style-centric young life that she has no notion of where to go. Her friend Su (the actresses use their real names) spins her iPad to re-centre Google Earth and, after a few false starts (Yemen, Honduras), they settle on Singapore as their destination. The journey is all selfies, shopping malls and food courts (including a cool impromptu public dance sequence); Nina and Su are disappointed at the usual tourist sites (at the iconic Merlion Park water statue, they observe, “I thought it would be bigger”) and soon gravitate to the familiar sounds of commerce and capitalism.

In a moment of cataclysmic tumult for any young person, Nina looses her phone and becomes separated from Su. Lost, alone and unable to convey her desperation, Nina unwittingly undertakes her first true immersion in a lifestyle and culture not entirely her own. Led further astray by a well-intentioned good Samaritan, she wanders through diaspora communities; Indian and Muslim enclaves become her Singaporean experience. Found alone and sad, she is befriended by a young man who welcomes her into his home, where his extended family feed and dote on her.

Writer/director Miyazaki paints a generously upbeat picture of Singapore, having one character comparing it to Disneyland. One doubts a pretty, young, lost woman stumbling through the backstreets of any big city would have had quite the relentlessly positive experience that Nina enjoys, but Tourism (there’s irony in that title, to be sure) is a film that is imbued with a goodwill and blind sense of unironic hopefulness that is infectious.

Fuelling the pic’s positivity is undoubtedly the fact that it is a narrative feature drawn from an art installation project depicting modern life in the city, partly funded by Singaporean officialdom; the other component is a montage feature called Specters, which uses clips from the director’s previous works to portray modern civilised living. What does surprise is that Tourism so expertly melds splashes of social realism with a heartfelt sense of character, regardless of (perhaps even, despite) its origins.

Given that film employs mobile-phone framing (vertical and horizontal), ‘selfie-stick’ sequences and 4^th-wall shattering, direct-to-camera storytelling – all the love-or-loathe signposts of new-age film storytelling – the result is an engagingly old-fashioned story extolling the virtues of social engagement and experiential living.

Reviewed at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, Cremorne, Sydney on March 5, 2020.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Those special humans that feel an attachment to the world’s great bodies of water are unshakeable in their bond. Sportsman, adventurers, explorers, whether upon or below the oceans, lakes and rivers of our planet, are so steadfast in their connection to ‘The Big Blue’, it takes a rare filmmaking talent to convincingly represent their passion on screen.

The Ocean Film Festival understands both its audience and its contributing filmmakers like few events of its kind. Once again guided by Festival Director Jemima Robinson, the 2020 incarnation exudes a more pure sense of celebratory ‘oneness’ than perhaps any other edition in the festival’s history. At the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace on Sydney’s north shore last night, the evening was enhanced by pre- and mid-show live musical accompaniment, an understated sponsor presence and warmly professional hosting skills that further united the sell-out crowd.

The two-tiered program featured seven films, beginning with the playful, funny A CAMEL FINDS WATER (Dir: Ian Durkin; 8 mins; USA), an account of how a discarded, landlocked hull was resurrected to its former glory, now serving as a run-about for two British Columbian surfers, Trevor Gordon and Tosh Clements. Evoking the same sense of joy that one derives from stories of damaged animals finding  new owners, A Camel Finds Water (pictured, above) is a short, sweet story celebrating a destiny fulfilled.

The true tragedy of how global warming has impacted polar bears is starkly conveyed in BARE EXISTENCE (Dir: Max Lowe; 19 mins; USA). Detailing how bears now need to spend long periods on shore instead of hunting seals in the open sea, Max Lowe’s bleak, beautiful film defines the connection between a township, its people and the plight of the increasingly desperate wild animals they live with. In one tragic turn-of-events, his cameras capture an act of infanticide brought on by starvation. Presented in conjunction with the conservation group Polar Bears International, it is a sobering work.

Nature’s wonder at its most beautiful and brutal is also central to the mini-feature DEEP SEA CORALS OF POLYNESIA (Dirs: Ghislain and Emmanuelle Bardout; 36 mins; France). Having achieved fame for their dives under the North Pole ice flows, Ghislain and Emmanuelle Bardout seek warmer climes in French Polynesia, where they join a team of biologists deep-diving to 170 metres to discover previously unknown forms of coral. The azure beauty of the region and emotional sense of discovery is shattered in one extraordinary moment when, in a frenzied defence of its territory, a black-tip reef shark turns on one diver; the footage is terrifying.

The second half of the evening began with SCOTT PORTELLI: SWIMMING WITH GENTLE GIANTS (Dir: Stefan Andrews; 10 mins; Australia), a profile of the acclaimed undersea wildlife photography as he interacts with humpback whales. Not for the first time this evening, like-minded audience members related audibly with the film, emitting sounds of awe at footage of mothers and their calves. Similar warmth was clearly felt for a very brief short that profiled Grace and Phil Hampton, an octogenarian couple who, in July 2017, entered the Guinness Book of Records as ‘The Oldest Married Couple to Scuba Dive.’

The 2020 Ocean Film Festival wraps up on two works of staggering visual beauty. Utilising the structure of a traditional surfing ‘road movie’, A CORNER OF THE EARTH (Dir: Spencer Frost; 26 mins; Australia) accompanies pro-surfer Fraser Dovell and his boisterous bros on a sort of ‘Endless Winter’ odyssey to the black surf of the brutally picturesque Arctic (accompanied by the night’s best soundtrack); then, a forty year-old canoe journey into Alaska’s majestic Inside Passage comes full circle, as a family’s legacy is fulfilled in THE PASSAGE (Dir: Nate Dappen; 25 mins; USA).

The spiritual connection that audiences shares with filmmakers, their protagonists and the environments on-screen make these sessions some of the most deeply rewarding on the festival calendar. That affinity for and understanding of what programming an environmentally-themed film event means to their patrons is one of the great strengths of the Ocean Film Festival.

The 2020 OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL (AUSTRALIA) is currently screening at selected venues across Australia. For all ticket and venue information, visit the event's official website.

Featuring: Attila Kaldy, Yowie Dan, Tony Jinks, Duo Ben, Gary Opit, Neil Frost, Mathew Crowther, Robert Grey and Robert Venables.
Director: Attila Kaldy

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Global sightings of bipedal hominids, aka Bigfoot, and the number of documentaries chronicling those sightings have long since passed tipping point. A search of any of the streaming providers will reveal a thriving genre subset that posits every possible theory on the ‘real story’ behind the elusive, mythical beast; from ‘missing link’ and ‘undiscovered ape’ to ‘alien life form’ and ‘inter-dimensional visitor’, Bigfoot films are a big industry.

Australia has its own legendary ‘forest giant’ and so it has its own documentarians contemplating the nature of the beast. Most notable amongst them is director/producer Attila Kaldy, a veteran of almost two decades of speculative supernatural small screen content. His latest mini-feature is Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot, an engaging, often introspective examination as much of the men who hunt the mythical creature as the creature itself.

Kaldy transports his audience deep into the rugged Blue Mountains hinterland 90 minutes west of Sydney. A majestic section of the Great Dividing Range and some of the most dense eucalypt bushland on the continent, it has long been thought to provide a vast home to Australia’s alpha cryptid, the Yowie. It takes little time for Kaldy to introduce us to his first expert, ‘Yowie Dan’, himself a popular figure amongst believers and sceptics alike.

Dan (pictured, below) has the best footage to date of an alleged Yowie – a few frames captured quite by accident on a solo expedition deep into the lower mountain region. Kaldy utilises parapsychologist and cryptid witness Tony Jinks to verify the authenticity of Dan’s footage in an extended sequence that goes a long way to convince that something unexplainable was filmed. The mid-section of the film affords a lot of time to Rob’s Gray and Venables, of fellow investigation outfit Truth Seekers Oz, who recount their own encounters.

Much of the first half of Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot travels some well-worn paranormal television tropes, albeit delivered in a slick, pro tech package by Kaldy. Green night-vision sequences, monochromatic stagings (including a respectful nod to the iconic 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage), first-person accounts that preach very much to the cryptid choir and a moody soundscape highlighted by an evocative score by Daljit Kundi are effectively employed.

The production explores some new angles in a more compelling final stretch. Cryptozoologists Gary Opit and Neil Frost offer counterpoints to commonly held assumptions (for example, from the bio-geographical perspective, the probability of an Australian ‘ape’ is unlikely) and address such fascinating tangents as the possible existence of a ‘marsupial cryptid’, complete with pouch. The relationship between Australia’s indigenous tribes and the hominid legend is explored, albeit briefly; the ancient people’s perspective on their land’s cryptozoology is worth its own documentary examination, surely? And, to drive home the fear wrought by an encounter with a ‘forest giant,’ Kaldy’s effects team create striking images based upon eyewitness descriptions.

Kaldy leaves a few threads dangling for the doubters. When ‘experts’ stumble upon what they claim to be a cryptid’s nest and shelter, why don’t they collect some hair or scat? Regardless, Track: Search for Australia’s Bigfoot is a top-tier addition to a crowded, often sensationalised, documentary field. Much like it’s subject matter, one hopes it will be discovered and afforded the respect it deserves.

TRACK: Search for Australia's Bigfoot will be released in North America on DVD and Blu-ray on April 21; other territories to follow. More information about the film, visit the official Paranormal Investigators website. 

Features: Justin Langer, Tim Paine, Steve Smith, David Warner, Nathan Lyon, Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja, Aaron Finch, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Shaun Marsh, Mitchell Starc and Marnus Labuschagne.
Narrated by Brendan Cowell.
Director: Adrian Brown.

Available on Amazon Prime.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Not since the summer of 1981, when Australian captain Greg Chappell ordered his brother Trevor to roll the final delivery along the pitch to deny New Zealand any hope of winning, has the national team been held in such low esteem as it was in the wake of the 2018 sandpaper/ball-tampering incident against South Africa.

The Test: A New Era For Australia’s Team begins at that low point in Australian cricket history. Captain Steve Smith and opening batsmen David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were banned from the sport for a period, after Bancroft was filmed damaging the ball to help it swing against the dominant South African batsmen. Warner was deemed the mastermind, while captain Smith (and, ultimately, coach Darren Lehmann) took responsibility and bore the brunt of the reprisals.

Director Adrian Brown’s polished and insightful Amazon Prime documentary series chronicles the resurrection of the squad and the baptism of fire they had to endure at the hands of the global media, rabid international crowds and, most importantly, the Australian public. The very fact that the series exists at all, with a great deal of its eight episode arc unfolding within the previously untouchable ‘inner sanctum’ of coach’s and player’s personal space, is testament to how desperately damaged the iconic brand was in its homeland.

New coach Justin Langer (pictured, below) is tasked with rebuilding team culture, confidence and public trust, and The Test highlights what a sturdy, passionate traditionalist the former Australian opener proved to be in a role that needed just such an unshakeable integrity. The playing and coaching group visit the Western front in northern France, where young Australians fought and died on foreign soil for their country. Langer’s aim is to re-establish in his young group the responsibility and heritage that comes with representing a nation.

Brown’s camera then follows the team as they undertake a very rocky path to redemption. Series losses in England, the sub-Continent and, over a particularly soul crushing Australian summer, against archenemy Virat Kohli’s Indian super-side, expose tension, disappointment and frustration. Newly appointed captain Tim Paine, as resolute a character as Langer, emerges as a true modern leader, aware of the mindset of his young charges and not above unforgiving self-analysis.

Crucial to the rebuilding of team character are the inevitable positional shifts within the playing group. A run of outs for One-Day captain Aaron Finch expose the mental anguish associated with the risk of being dropped from the squad; Langer’s often merciless, hard-edged demands run afoul of veteran batsman Usman Khawaja, the pair clashing in one memorable encounter.

While Warner’s return to the fold is somewhat underplayed, Steve Smith’s unique personality and influence on the team’s fortune becomes the unavoidable focus. By episodes 7 and 8, which recount the team’s return to Ol’ Blighty to retain one of sport’s most famous trophies, The Ashes, the thrill of the contest and the complexity of the personalities have melded, resulting in utterly captivating drama where the stakes are clear and the emotions are raw.

The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team is also a superb technical triumph, with game footage, editing and the accompanying sound design making the action as involving as any follower of the sport could hope for (and which any non-disciple ought to warm to in no time).

Offshore cricket fans, most of whom found icy joy in watching the Australian team’s fall from grace, may find the reformation and rebranding of our team a slightly less emotionally engaging experience than your average Aussie fan. But The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team, like most great sports documentaries, achieves greatness not for what it reveals about a sport, but what universality it reveals amongst the disparate spirits who have come together to play it.

Stars: Jessica Morris, Augie Duke, Scott Sell, Hans Hernke, Minchi Murakami and Elizabeth Saint.
Writer/director: Lance Polland

Available from April 10 on Amazon Prime and Vimeo on Demand from Bounty Films.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Another Plan from Outer Space is an endearingly schizophrenic oddity, the latest typically atypical subversive genre lark from the increasingly ambitious shock-auteur, Lance Polland. Back in the hard desert setting that he favoured for his previous features Crack Whore (2012) and Werewolves in Heat (2015), Polland this time employs, dare we suggest, nuance and subtlety in a talky but well-told ode to old-school sci-fi B-pics.

Rich in influences that run the gamut from Rod Serling’s classic TV series Twilight Zone to Kurt Neumann’s Rocketship X-M (1950) to Stewart Raffill’s The Philadelphia Experiment (1984), Polland envisions a (very) near-future setting where Mars has been colonised and shuttles regularly ferry the common space traveller back and forth. The Genesis One is returning to Earth when solar flares send the ship hurtling into the desert soil. In true B-movie fashion, the Genesis One explodes in a massive fireball, only to have all but one of the six crew members thrown clear, largely unharmed and fully clothed.

Assuming command, Captain Jackson (Scott Sell, pitching for ‘Charlton Heston’ but landing on ‘Bruce Dern’, which is fine) rallies the survivors – the increasingly erratic Commander Strickland (Jessica Morris, terrific); medico, Dr Yushiro (Minchi Murakami, a regular in Polland’s troupe); chief engineer Hudson (Augie Duke); and, 2IC Lieutenant Brooks (Hans Hernke, the pic’s producer). The team know they have crashed back on Earth, but are bewildered by anomalies that begin to present themselves, such as radioactive shacks, distant music, unexplainable visitations.

Polland signals from the first frames that he has higher artistic goals than any time previously. The opening credit sequence is pure dazzle, melding visions of space travel and life on Mars with archival footage of U.S. Commanders in Chief (Kennedy, Obama, Trump) re-affirming the sense of exploration that demands Americans seek the great unknown that The Universe offers.

For much of the first two acts, he also allows his actors room to breathe life into what, on paper, may have amounted to fairly stock caricatures. The downside to this freedom is that scenes sometimes drag; editor Polland does writer/director Polland a slight disservice, with some of the film’s 98 minutes ripe for a pruning.

The other irreconcilable aspect of Another Plan from Outer Space is that title, which unavoidably conjures images of a certain Ed Wood film better known for its giddy awfulness. Lensed with consummate skill in affecting monochrome by Vita Trabucco and enlivened by Alessio Fidelbo’s appropriately theremin-flavoured score, Polland pays homage to the same films that inspired Mr. Wood, but offers a much more narratively assured and professionally packaged work of the imagination than anything from any ‘Worst Movie Ever’ list.

Polland has ambitions that Another Plan from Outer Space will spawn a sequel (stay through the credits). The film plays its Shyamalan-like ‘twist card’ particularly well, though the open-ended denouement may irk some. As the film morphs from ‘desert planet survival’ story into something else entirely, however, there is a sense that a further 90 minutes with these characters under this director’s guidance would be a very welcome development.

Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Lyriq Bent, Colm Feore, Krista Bridges, Art Hindle, Richie Lawrence, Graham Greene, Mimi Kuzyk and Colin Mochrie.
Writer/director: Shelagh McLeod

Distributed in Australia by FilmInk Presents; available to stream on Apple TV, Fetch TV, Foxtel Store, Google Play and YouTube.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Despite a premise that requires a suspension of cynicism as vast as the Universe itself, Shelagh McLeod’s feature debut soars as a heart warming/breaking study in those dreams that won’t dissolve and the memories that carry us forward. As the widowed engineer whose ageing body is failing just as his mind re-engages with life, the remarkable Richard Dreyfuss delivers one of the most moving performances of his long career. That the manic young man who won an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl should have evolved into this refined yet fiercely determined elder statesman of cinema is testament to one of the great acting talents of all time.

Dreyfuss is Angus Stewart, a 75 year-old retiree who could once oversee the construction of highways but is now home alone, prone to dizzy spells and left in debt by his late wife’s spending (she was conned into a donkey farm in her final years). Angus has lived a long life consumed by a passion for the cosmos, a dedication to staring skywards shared by his grandson Barney (Richie Lawrence), tolerated by his daughter Molly (Krista Bridges) and dismissed by his son-in-law, Jim (Lyriq Bent).

When billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore, oozing Elon Musk-iness) offers one lucky winner a commercial space flight, Angus begins to dream of galactic travel in earnest. But while his imagination is scaling new heights, his body is ailing and his family are trying to get him settled into aged care. McLeod gently spins the narrative focus from what dreams may come to what worth wisdom holds; come the stirring denouement, Angus’ past as a civil engineer is afforded as much honour as any imagined future as a septuagenarian astronaut.

Unlike the jaunty adventure Space Cowboys (2000) or the sci-fi fantasy Cocoon (1985), Astronaut is more interested in the humanity of its elderly characters than it is in serving the conventions of a genre. Accepting that our elders have legitimate longings and ambitions, even as their physical strength wans, is key to McLeod’s script. It also speaks to the fear we succumb to when we are faced with ageing parents, and how that fear can cut shorter their quality of life as much as ours.

One added bonus for viewers of a certain age is the reminder Astronaut provides that, forty-odd years ago, Dreyfuss played another working class family man for whom space held an unshakeable allure. There is much warmth to be shared in comparing Angus’ yearnings with those of Roy Neary and the close encounters that led him to first Wyoming, then farther afield.

Narrated by Natalie Portman.
Writer/director: Christopher Dillon Quinn; based upon the 2009 book by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Now available to stream on iwonder in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

(Producers Natalie Portman & Jonathan Safran Foer. Photo credit: Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The very title itself barely encapsulates the scale of the issue that director Christopher Dillon Quinn and producer/narrator Natalie Portman examine in their collaborative exposé, Eating Animals. A frankly shattering uncovering of the corrosive impact that 50 years of industrial food production has had upon traditional U.S. values, this sad, often shocking, ultimately hopeful work provides further evidence of corporate America’s heartless profiteering in defiance of basic human decency.

Based the 2009 bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals ostensibly looks at the procedures used to mass produce and subsequently cull pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys and cows. The footage, much of which was obtained through hidden cameras by animal activists infiltrating killing facilities, has already been seen extensively on news broadcasts and YouTube. This doesn’t lessen the horror, but it raises the question as to what else Quinn’s production has to offer the discussion.

The director (whose first feature, God Grew Tired of Us, earned Audience and Grand Jury honours at Sundance in 2006) wisely opens up his investigation to include how the industrialisation of farming practices has gutted the American spirit. His cameras spend personal time with farmers who employ traditional methods to raise stock, a practice that has taken the financial brunt of over-development and exploitation in rural communities by multi-national ‘Big Ag’ companies. The crumbling lives that these ‘family farmers’ endure, as well as the fates of two whistle blowers who reveal the mercenary business models employed by corporations such as Perdue and Tyson, make for truly tragic narratives.

Arguably, the environmental impact of the modern factory farm (or CAFO, as in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) may be the most potent argument against their ongoing implementation. Giant pink ‘waste lagoons’ – man-made bodies of putrid water that hold urine and faecal matter from mass swine enclosures – seep into and make toxic the estuaries of middle America. The accompanying odour causes sickness amongst the surrounding townships. Antibiotics, pumped into livestock to offset the diseases and malformations caused by their genetic tampering, infects the food chain all the way to your local McDonalds.

The immorality of ‘Big Ag’ and its manipulation of the democratic process to ensure it has a stranglehold over legislation and lawmakers that would impact its cost-effective operations are revealed (facts that aren’t necessarily surprising to anyone living under the current regime). Also, Quinn deftly places the curse of food sector capitalism in an historical context, with the early ‘70s and the faster, cheaper consumer-driven ethos that fuelled the boom years of the modern fast-food empires seen as Ground Zero for our current malaise.

Natalie Portman’s lyrical narration differs from the usual strategy by which celebrities lend their names to cause films. While her presence ought to help the film’s profile, it is her reading of passages from the source material in accompaniment with wrenching imagery, both visceral and psychological that is most affecting. Her contribution, the understated yet profoundly disturbing aesthetic that Quinn uses to tell this alternate-American story, and the hope that he provides that generations moving forward will adopt better practices, places Eating Animals in the very top tier of investigative advocacy documentaries.

Stars: Nicole Tompkins, Rowan Smyth, Dan Istrate, Circus-Szalewski, Shu Sakimoto, Kristel Elling and Pierluca Arancio.
Narrated by Lucy Rayner.
Writer: David Amito.
Directors: David Amito, Michael Laicini.

Available in Australia on all digital platforms including Foxtel Store, iTunes, Google Play and FetchTV.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The 1977 horror film Antrum began to travel the festival circuit in the early 80s. Its legend grew after the strange deaths of several festival programmers, each of whom had only just watched the film. In 1988, a screening in Budapest ended in tragedy, when a cinema appeared to spontaneously combust, killing 56 patrons. In 1993, a San Francisco theatre owner dared moviegoers to defy the cursed movie, only to have a panicked audience flee the screening, trampling a pregnant woman to death. The lone print of Antrum, the deadliest movie ever made, was thought to be destroyed…

In Antrum: The Deadliest Movie Ever Made, Canadian filmmakers David Amito and Michael Laicini challenge doubters of the curse to endure the original film. They begin their potentially lethal resurrection of the work with academic, psychoanalytic and festival director types, who put their own spin on the legend of Antrum; then, a ‘Legal Notice’ fills the screen, exempting all who brought the film to you of any claims should you, indeed, die. The film’s header frames blur by, numbers and scratched images merging…

Antrum is the story of a teenage girl, Oralee (Nicole Tompkins), and her younger brother, Nathan (Rowan Smyth), and the gateway to Hell they uncover while trying to recover the soul of their dead dog, Maxine. The pair head to a clearing in the woods, Nathan having been convinced by Oralee that it is the exact point on Earth where Lucifer landed when God cast him out of Heaven. As they begin to dig, chapter headings herald the uncovering of each new underworld layer, until soon the kids’ fading sense of reality and the exponentially increasing grip of insanity are melding.

I hope it is obvious by now that the legend of ‘The Deadliest Movie Ever Made’ is an intricately staged cinematic con-job; there was no Antrum, the doco is a mocko, and any convoluted backstory about dead Hungarian cinemagoers is pure fiction. But Amito and Laicini ensure it all unfolds in an earnestly told and legitimately chilling manner, both their faux-70s filmmaking technique and pretend ‘experts’ convincing. Though shot entirely in 2018, ‘Antrum’ (Latin for ‘cave’) is an authentically arty, folk-horror facsimile that could have emerged from the distant decade.

As the horror becomes tangible for Oralee and Nathan, so must it have for Tompkins and Smyth; the young actors are, quite literally, put through Hell by their directors. In one shocking scene, Smyth is dragged from a cage and placed in the cast-iron belly of a goat-demon oven. Both are called upon to do hard physical work in the course of their performances, while Tompkins especially conveys the emotional and mental cost of her fight with demonic forces.

There is just enough research afforded the meaning of sigils, pentagrams, biblical references and Latin text to make the ‘cursed film’ construct believable. The film’s bookends - the ‘documentary’ parts - examine key frames, where semi-subliminal imagery of the kind that welcomes demons into our world is revealed. The film is rich with subtext exploring how a young child deals with death, grief and spirituality; ambiguous but compelling parallels are drawn, for example, between Nathan’s connection to Maxine after her passing and his fear and fascination with Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards Hell’s gates.

Most fascinating is the challenge that Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made sets for you, the viewer who wants to know how effective a film that causes madness and death in those that watch it can be. You will register the scratched frames; you may glimpse split-second scenes of torture; you’ll likely see shadows that seem alive, or discordant sounds that unbalance you. Rest assured, it’s all a brilliant fiction; if it wasn’t, this review, deliberately and dangerously leading you astray, would be the work of the Devil...    

Featuring: Ellen Page, Ingrid Waldron, Michelle Paul, Jolene Marr, Dorene Bernard, Michelle Francis-Denny, Carol Howe, Rebecca Moore, Paula Isaac, Marian Nichols and Louise Delisle.
Directors: Ellen Page and Ian Daniel.

Available on Netflix.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Ellen Page returns to her Nova Scotian roots to document the ongoing exploitation of traditional indigenous lands in There’s Something in the Water. With her ‘Gaycation’ collaborator Ian Daniel sharing camera duties, the Oscar-nominated actress puts her celebrity to good use highlighting the scourge of environmental racism, as it impacts the First Nations people of Canada.

Taking as her starting point the bestselling book by Dr Ingrid Waldron, Page goes deep into her homeland’s heartland to reveal both the human and ecological scarring caused by close to 60 years of government neglect and callous corporate profiteering. Establishing her familial ties to the eastern Canadian maritime province and recalling an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show where she passionately addressed the ongoing abuse of indigenous entitlement, Page pinpoints three economically-challenged regions that have long been sacred to the traditional owners but have become shameful monuments of capital-C capitalism.

The first stop is the southern township of Shelburne, historically significant for the role it played in the mid-19th century America as a drop-off point for the Underground Railway; at one point in the country’s history, it had the highest population of African-Americans in Canada. However, in the 1940s, a waste dump was established on the town’s outskirts and remained open until 2016, the resulting stench and seepage of toxins into the water supply now thought responsible for generations of cancer fatalities. 

Page and Daniel then travel to the far north, to the Boat Harbour region and traditional lands of the Pictou people. In the film’s most personal account, Michelle Francis-Denny tells the story of her grandfather, an elder Chief in the early 1960s, who was conned into signing over rights to the land by local government officials working in tandem with developers of a proposed paper mill. The waterways, known to generations of Pictou as the spirit-enriching Ossay, were ruined within days. Page gives a face to ‘big business villainy’ in archival footage of one John Bates, the aged white businessman whose indifference to the native population’s suffering is chilling (“So what? They weren’t living in the water.”)

Finally, There’s Something in the Water highlights the ‘Grassroots Grandmothers’, a woman’s collective from Stewiacke who take on the Alton Gas Corporation over the plans to dump mined salts into a sacred river in defiance of M’ikmaq treaty conditions. Their battle with local and federal officials (including a sidewalk face-off with PM Justin Trudeau), stemming from their spiritual bonds with the landscape of their ancestry, closes out the ‘past, present and future’ structure of Page’s matter-of-fact account, an approach that highlights the systemic prejudices and ingrained corruption of Canada’s democracy.

It is not the most elegant film; handheld camera work from a car’s passenger seat takes up an inordinate amount of the 73 minute running time. But perhaps a film that captures waves of sewerage vapour gliding towards a helpless population, or recounts the alcoholism and suicides that are the by-product of a community’s collapse need not purify its approach for aesthetic gain. There’s Something in the Water tells an ugly story about the horrendous exploitation of a proud people and their beautiful land, so urgency and honesty over artistry seems entirely appropriate.

Featuring: Jeff Gibbs, Richard Heinberg, Richard York, Nina Jablonski, Ozzie Zehner, Adriann McCoy, Philip Moeller, Steven Running, Steven Churchill, Sheldon Solomon, Josh Schlossberg, Catherine Andrews, Adam Liter, Pat Egan, Van Jones, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva.
Director/writer: Jeff Gibbs

Available free for 30 days on YouTube.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

“How long do you think we humans have?,” asks frontman Jeff Gibbs in the opening frames of his Green Industry takedown doc, Planet of the Humans. The answer? If Earth’s recovery is left in the hands of those that spruik loudest for industrial reform, it’s a lot less than you think. Steeped in executive producer Michael Moore’s steely brand of deep-dive investigative conjecture and finger-pointing , the pair paint a bleak picture of a near future that mankind’s very existence is irrevocably condemning.

The title has the ring of a 50s B-movie, the kind about a lost spacecraft that finds itself on a distant planet populated with some horrid lifeform. That ‘horrid lifeform’ is us; as Agent Smith said, “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.” Planet of the Humans makes the double-barrelled point that population growth will be the death of us all (“Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide,” Gibbs observes in his narration) and that we may have been fatally misled regarding those in whom we have put the trust to right our highway to Hell.

Strong words decrying the human race’s abuse of its status as the single dominant species on the planet bleed into a series of revelations about the insidious takeover of the green movement by capitalist interests. Gibbs offers up a bullet-point history of our understanding of climate change and impact of pollutants; in 1958, only five years after the postwar wave of industrialization swept across America, director Frank Capra made a short film warning of the long-term cost. From that point on, environmental activism has fought Big Industry, while all the time Big Industry increased its influence over lawmakers and commercial hold on the sector.

Gibbs narrows his focus in the film’s homestretch, ripping into the likes of once-were-eco-warriors Al Gore, Bill McKibben (pictured, above; left, with Gibbs), Richard Branson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for their interests in green-tinged business fronts for billionaire investors and Wall Street snakes. Also exposed as profit-driven hypocrisy is the ‘biomass/biofuel’ sector, a developing faux-green industry that guts forests and burns carcinogenic garbage utilising practices that unbelievably fall within the government guidelines for ‘sustainable energy’.       

In his feature directorial debut, Gibbs (who produced Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Fahrenheit 11/9 for Moore) proves less the personality than his regular collaborator. However, understanding his lifelong commitment to environmental causes gives Gibbs’ occasionally onscreen/mostly offscreen role an intensity that serves his advocacy aims well, even if his delivery is a bit dry. That said, he bites hard when he has a point to make; his final frames, which tragically portray our impact upon those with whom we share this world, are gut-wrenching.

Unavoidably, Planet of the Humans is a downbeat journey, often in spite of factual filmmaking that is energised and driven in its storytelling. Its message is, more or less, “Hey, we trusted the same people you did, and they’ve shafted us.” Gibbs offers no ‘If you want to help...’ call-to-action at the film’s end; instead, he imparts crushed resignation, implying we had our shot and we blew it. We are further down the path towards our own destruction than any of us knew, except for those steering us there.

Happy Earth Day, everyone…

Featuring the voices of: Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews, Martin Short, Jane Ktakowski, Seán Cullen, Alessia Cara and Ricky Gervais.
Writers: Chris Pearn and Mark Stanleigh; based on the book by Lois Lowry.
Director: Chris Pearn.

Available on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★

The plot to The Willoughbys sounds like a Netflix kind of pitch; four children, including two creepy twins, plan patricide and matricide to rid themselves of selfish, abusive parents and willingly render themselves orphans. But instead of the streaming platform’s umpteenth must-watch true-crime mini-series, director Chris Pearn delivers the network’s second animated family adventure, an adaptation of Lois Lowry’s darkly hued but sweet natured children’s book.

Having helmed the flavourful, frantic, if hollow sequel, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, Pearn offers a similarly colourful if slightly too contrived retelling of Lowry’s bestseller. The story’s protagonist is put-upon pre-teen Tim (Will Forte), the eldest of the four Willoughby children and the least likely to show any sign of inheriting the family’s distinctive feature, a deep red moustache. His sister Jane (Moana songstress Alessia Cara) is a dreamer, but one who curtails her longings to help care for the twins, both called Barnaby (Seán Cullen). The parents (Martin Short, Jane Krakowski) are despicable people, self-obsessed and petulant, who cast Tim to the basement coalpit each night and refuse to feed the children for days on end.

Inherently dark material (one winces at what a Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro adaptation might have looked like), but Pearn’s animation style is richly textured and wildly imaginative, the visuals softening the jagged edges. Proceedings are lightened up further thanks to the droll narration of The Cat (Ricky Gervais); the introduction of the boisterous Nanny (a wonderful Maya Rudolph); and, shifting the location at crucial points to a candy factory run by the larger-than-life Commander Melanoff (Terry Crews).

Early on, Jane finds new purpose in her life and Pearn amps up the slapstick when a mischievous baby enters The Willoughby’s home (exhibiting agility not unlike Jack Jack Parr), but the character soon fades away. It is one of several spasms of undeveloped material that feel like the adaptation was unable to overcome leftover chapter-beats from its source material. One sequence, in which the four children ‘Home Alone’ prospective buyers, feels like an altogether different short film entirely. A third act that sends the kids to Sweezerlund spins the film into pure fantasy and appears to be setting up a predictably feel-good conclusion, but credit to the production for staying true to the narrative’s darker themes, up until the final frames.

The Willoughbys is too hit-miss to achieve the instant classic status bestowed upon Netflix’s debut cartoon feature, the Oscar-nominated Klaus (2019). But if the storytelling stumbles, Pearn and his animators certainly deliver colour and movement in a manner that is sure to enthrall the under 10s.

Featuring: Steven M. Greer
Narrated by Jeremy Piven.
Writer/director: Michael Mazzola

AVAILABLE ON:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

So you’re deep into today’s iso-skimming session on your preferred streaming platform and you happen upon Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, the latest speculative-doco from UFO theoretician Steven Greer. You’ll have a look because...y’know, UFO stuff is pretty cool, and much of what makes ‘UFO stuff’ cool is certainly in the mix. Greer’s offsider, filmmaker Micahel Mazzola, has collated all manner of unexplainable points of light glimpsed by shaky-cam; woodlands lit by physics-defying ‘golden orbs’; and, incredulous accounts of bewildered pilots, trying to fathom the black-&-white footage from their cockpit cams.

But Greer, the movement’s opinion-dividing frontman (is he this generation’s Carl Sagan or a new-age P.T. Barnum?), claims to be at such an advanced communicative juncture with beings from beyond that his third feature documentary assumes that they not only walk among us but, if we invite them nicely, they’ll join us around a campfire. This head-first plunge into the maybe-world of extraterrestrial co-existence occasionally hurtles mesmerically into next-level conspiracy theorising, but there is undeniably plenty to mutter “Damn, I knew it!” about for those who want to believe.

The ‘Fifth Kind’ of close encounter (or ‘CE5’) involves the most spiritually enlightened amongst us reaching out with pure thoughts and kindly hearts to the occupants of interplanetary/transdimensional craft and beckoning them to our realm. A combination of Greer’s skill with the anecdote, a bevy of highly-credentialed talking heads and footage of CE5 disciples across the world staring longingly skywards build to a crescendo (and website/app plug) that feels legitimate. Single frames of ‘light beings’ walking amongst remote gatherings of believers and conjecture that these entities travel through portals to appear in our skies instantaneously is fascinating, but non-believers are likely to dig in over such claims.

It is on this point that Greer spins some of the uglier theorising inherent to his point of view. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind posits that Joe Public has been sold a deceptive narrative by a covert government/mainstream news media/entertainment industry cooperative for the last 60 years. Mazzola uses clips from Mars Attacks, Predator, Men in Black and the Twilight Zone episode ‘To Serve Man’, to drill home the notion that the images fed to us are meant inspire fear in alien contact. Blame is placed at society’s feet for its blind subjugation to the 'lies' spun to us; an accusatory stance that states, ‘If you believe the establishment, you are part of the problem’. The hard-sell meanness of such an approach will turn the inquisitive away far quicker than harmless pseudo-science and new-agey spiritualism.

Whether he is a channeller of profound consciousness or a pitchman par excellence (most likely, a bit of both), Greer knows how to produce a speculative documentary that takes hold of the viewer and refuses to let go (for a whopping two hours, no less). The craft he and Mazzola employ to keep hearts and minds engaged even while eyeballs are heading backwards is often remarkable. Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind won’t make you believe any more than you do, nor will it spin too many sceptics 180°, but it will help us understand the complexity of a different set of beliefs. 

Featuring: Darrell Hammond.
Director: Michelle Esrick

DARRELL HAMMOND, director MICHELLE ESRICK and BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, author of the book 'The Body Keeps the Score' will be present for a live ZOOM Webinar on Monday May 4th at 4.00pm PST/7.00pm EDT, hosted by ACES CONNECTION founder Jane Stevens.
For further details and free registration, CLICK HERE. 

Available on:

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

For 14 years, Saturday Night Live star Darrell Hammond was the chameleon of late night comedy, the toast of political satire. His array of on-air impersonations, 118 in all by his own reckoning, mimicking the likes of Bill Clinton, Sean Connery and Al Gore, made him Lorne Michael’s go-to guy for big laughs and one of the series’ most celebrated cast members. 

As with many of the great comedic talents, Hammond’s talent was borne of hardship, as the comic himself chronicled in his 2011 memoir, ‘God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked’. Director Michelle Esrick takes Hammond’s heartbreakingly open account of life as a survivor of child abuse and crafts a profile of an artist that goes far beyond what is expected of the ‘What makes comics tick?’ genre. Cracked Up is an artful, insightful, deeply thoughtful documentary that reveals not just how Hammond came to terms with his past but how it has helped him forge a new, meaningful direction that serves to heal fellow mental injury sufferers.

Framed by the ongoing evolution of his own creative process (the comic is rehearsing a one-man show with director Chris Ashley), Esrick’s camera follows Hammond as he returns to his childhood home in Wisteria Lane, Florida. In small increments, we learn of the extent to which the pre-teen Hammond was assaulted by his mother in a home he shared with a PTSD-suffering father. His first-person recollections of the abuse and his piecemeal memories of the attacks prove gruelling for both Hammond (who occasionally breaks down) and the audience, who should take heed that some of the details are particularly horrendous.

Cracked Up is a work that delicately balances the most profound aspects of Hammond’s suffering with the journey he underwent to recover from it. At the height of his fame on SNL, he was in the grip of self-medicating with dangerous levels of alcohol; his pain was so internalised, he would function as a performer even while cutting his own flesh, as many as 49 times. His suffering became so pronounced, friends such as SNL producers Lorne Michaels and Steve Higgins stepped in, leading to Hammond’s year-long stint in a mental health facility.

Esrick’s most compelling directorial ploy, aside from the forthright honesty she elicits from Hammond, is the plotting she employs based on the comic’s own colour-based impersonation methods (Porky Pig is yellow; Popeye is blue). Of the hundreds of voices in his head, none are represented by the colour red; the life-changing meaning behind this development and the healing moment it allows Hammond spins the film from the tragic trajectory of childhood trauma into the first steps of healing and acceptance.

For a man renowned for capturing the essence of other men, Darrell Hammond bares his scarred but healing soul like few ever have for the camera. He rarely falls back on his remarkable talent to paint over his pain and when he does, it is such a sadly bittersweet experience that it gives a fresh depth to the relationship he has with his gift. Cracked Up sheds Hammond of the barrier of celebrity he built up and hid behind for all of his adult life. 

Addressing a roomful of fellow mental health sufferers and trauma survivors, he is adored not for doing his ‘Bill Clinton’ but for revealing his ‘Darrell Hammond’. As the final frames of Michelle Esrick’s superb film reinforce, children are sharing the comic’s suffering in any house on any street right now. With Cracked Up, Hammond is only doing what he hoped someone might have done when he was a child - speaking up. 

Stars: Robert Miano, Bai Ling, Bill Moseley, Lance Henriksen, Kevin J. O’Connor, Robert Rhine, Kyle Jones, Silvia Spross, Kelli Maroney, Matthew Moy and Adrienne Barbeau.
Writers: Robert Rhine and Daniel Benton.
Director: Chad Ferrin.

Rating: ★ ★

The premise of Exorcism at 60,000 Feet reads like the opening to an inappropriate gag your drunk uncle barks out at Thanksgiving dinner. “Did you hear the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the dwarf on a flight to VietNam…,” it begins and, before any of your relatives can wrestle the sad, sick family jester to the ground, he screams and spits his way through a waffling, weird, wildly offensive mess of a joke.

In genre-speak, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet is that most dangerous meld of film types - the horror-comedy, which implies a measured balance of chills and giggles. Director Chad Ferrin, who impressed a few years back with the bloody urban thriller Parasites, doesn’t nail either horror or comedy with any degree of inspiration or skill. With co-writers Robert Rhine and Daniel Benton having to share some of the blame, Ferrin pitches for Airplane-meets-The Exorcist, but crash lands well short of the destination.

Like a lot of good comedies, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet opens on the mass murder of a family. Robert Miano plays hardened padre Father Romero, who arrives too late to save the deceased but just in time to identify the evil entity as ‘Garvin’, the resurrected spirit of his army buddy from ‘Nam. For some reason, he needs to return Garvin to VietNam, booking passage on the ‘hilariously’ titled Viet Kong Airways, the offensive moniker only made worse by its anachronism - will the target audience of first-time pot-smokers even know what is being referenced?

On board, the spirit of Garvin (played in terrible make-up by B-movie icon, Bill Mosely) is possessing the passengers, each one a grossly painted caricature of such wannabe comic stereotypes as the roided-up bodybuilder (Luca Pennazzato); the middle Eastern ‘potential terrorist’ (Gino Salvano); the peace-seeking Buddhist (Craig Ng); the anytime/anywhere sexpot (Stefanie Peti); the other anytime/anywhere sexpot (Jin N. Tonic, who shows some comedy chops); and, the Soprano-esque goombah (Johnny Williams). Most unforgivably tasteless is the ‘Mommy with toddler’ passengers, featuring Kelli Maroney (cult favourite from 1984’s Night of the Comet) as the mature-age woman who breastfeeds her obnoxious son Dukie, played by little person actor, Sammy the Dwarf.

Romero teams with orthodox rabbi Larry Feldman (co-scripter Rhine) and the flight crew, Amanda (Bai Ling, playing to the back row) and Thang (an occasionally funny Matthew Moy), to battle the demon, which manifests as a cheap-as-chips ‘green mist’. Garvin’s victims suffer ugly fates to remind the audience this is a ‘horror film’ - clean-cut Brad (Kyle Jones) meets a grisly end while ‘mile high’ clubbing; phone-obsessed millennial Ms Tang (Jolie Chi) must deal with an unwanted demon-pregnancy; and so on. Ferrin earns points for securing the likes of Lance Henriksen (as Captain Houdee...geddit?) and Adrienne Barbeau (pictured, above) for day-shoots, but their involvement is wasted on parts that prove just what good sports they are willing to be to pay some bills. 

The influence of the Zucker-Abrahams 1980 classic is everywhere, most notably in composer Richard Band’s shameless rip-off of Elmer Bernstein’s classic score, but there’s none of the comic pacing or inspired performances that made Airplane so memorable (or The Naked Gun series, which Ferrin also apes). Instead, the humour is of the ‘punch down’ variety - easy, ugly potshots based on race, gender or religion - placing Exorcism at 60,000 Feet dangerously close to the shock comedy stylings of a film like Uwe Boll’s Postal (2007).

That said, praise is certainly due cinematographer Christian Janss, who skilfully mimics the frantic camera moves George Miller employed in his Twilight Zone The Movie episode, ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’, and the effects team working under Joe Castro and Maricela Lazcano, who give exteriors shots of the plane careening through an otherworldly night sky legitimate authenticity. 

Voice cast: Ilai Swindells, Jai Courtenay, Samara Weaving, Magda Szubanski, Rhys Darby, Akmal Saleh and Jane Lynch.
Writer: Fin Edquist; based upon the novel by Jayne Lyons.
Director: Alexs Stadermann

Available to rent in Australia from 29 May on Foxtel, Fetch, Apple, Google Play, Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The frantic, funny, family-friendly animated energy that powered the likes of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania to global box office heights ought to earn 100% Wolf a similar number of eyeballs when word spreads what a cracking piece of all-age entertainment it is.

Adapted from the bestselling 2009 YA-fantasy novel by expat British author Jayne Lyons, director Alexs Stadermann and scripter Fin Edquist (reteaming after the success of 2014’s Maya the Bee Movie) pitch the excitement level high from the first frames. A pack of werewolves bound over moonlit rooftops (recalling the artful imagery of Bibo Bergeron’s A Monster in Paris), before rescuing humans from a burning house. Along for the adventure in preparation for his transformation from human boy to teen wolf is Freddy Lupin (Ilai Swindells), son of the clan’s ruling high-howler Flasheart (Jai Courtney), a position that Freddy is predestined to fulfil.

Six years later, the night of his first ‘transwolftation’ is an embarrassing disaster; in a whirl of supernatural mist, Freddy transforms not into a snarling lycanthrope but instead a fluffy white poodle. Banished from werewolf society, he befriends street-tough mutt Batty (Samara Weaving) and becomes entwined in a good-vs-evil battle, pitting him and his unlikely dog-friends against villainess The Commander (US import Jane Lynch) and his own family black sheep, Uncle Hotspur (Rupert Degas, putting his spin on Jeremy Iron's intonations in The Lion King, which this film occasionally recalls). Also in the narrative mix are book favourites Harriet and Chariot, aka Freddy’s terrible cousins (Adriane Daff and Liam Graham, respectively) and wolf hunter Foxwell Cripp (Rhys Darby, lightening up the central bad guy of Lyon’s book).

The clear subtext in both the book and film is one of accepting that which makes us unique, of celebrating the individual. Metaphorically, Freddy is faced with a struggle against both his family’s expectations and his changing body, a universal conundrum for pre-teens. Double-down on the symbolism of his appearance (that shock of very pink hair) and overt non-alignment with gender stereotypes and our hero, and his movie, prove far more fearless than they might first appear. Parents, older siblings and enlightened tots will appreciate the character depth in the midst of all the frenetic slapstick, staged with giddy efficiency by Stadermann and his top-tier contributors.

Backed by the Oz sector’s governing body Screen Australia, with state-based financiers Screenwest and Create NSW on board, and produced by leading animation outfit Flying Bark Productions with the help of post-production house Siamese, 100% Wolf has a pedigree that demands international exposure. Already a hot literary property, the feature will go into German-speaking territories via distribution giant Constantin Film, while 26 short-form Freddy Lupin adventures are being co-produced by Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Germany’s Super RTL; in January, a vast merchandising line was introduced at the International Toy Fair.

That is a lot of responsibility being placed upon the fluffy poodle-shoulders of our protagonist. But, as 100% Wolf teaches us in the midst of a lot of giggly fun and colourful adventure, when given the opportunity to defy expectations and choose your own path in life, anything is possible.

Featuring: Shannon Harvey, Neil Bailey, Amit Bernstein, Judson Brewer, Willoughby Britton, Vidyamala Burch, Nicholas Cherbuin, Richard Davidson, Gaelle Desbordes, Elissa Epel, Anna Finniss, Timothea Goddard, Daniel Goleman, Dan Harris, Craig Hassed, Amishi Jha, Willem Kuyken, Marc Longster, Kimina Lyall, Kristen Neff, Hilda Pickett, Matthieu Ricard, Mogoas Kidane Tewelde, Nicholas Van Dam, Marc Wilkins and Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Writers/Directors: Shannon Harvey and Julian Harvey.

Available to watch FREE at the My Year of Living Mindfully website until June 3. Also available for pre-order on digital and DVD.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

“[Mindfulness is] the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD; Professor Emeritus at University of Massachusetts. 

Undertaking a kind of Super Size Me for the psyche, journalist/filmmaker Shannon Harvey puts her body and mind on the line in the name of mental health science in My Year of Living Mindfully. Diving deep into the layered application of meditative practices as a healing tool, the award-winning health sector scribe chronicles just how effective centering her consciousness to combat physiological and psychological ailments can be.

A sequel-of-sorts to her 2014 mind-and-body doc The Connection, Harvey opens up about the growing toll that a combination of modern living (stress, insomnia) and ages-old afflictions (lupus) is having on her dangerously imbalanced inner-self. From that starting point, she begins her investigation of and complete immersion within the use of meditative mindfulness, seeking out the professors, practitioners and proven beneficiaries for whom the determined restructuring of one’s focus through concentration has been life-changing.

As a front-person for this journey of self-discovery, Harvey is an engaging protagonist, owning personal doubt in her ability to apply herself to the yearlong commitment and not hiding her own insecurities as her treatment demands introspection (husband and co-director Julian Harvey remains mostly off-screen, but admirably supportive). She also exhibits her award-winning skills as a journalist, with increasingly complex academic theorising from the many leaders in the field at her disposal presented with clarity.

The most profoundly human of the on-screen stories are those Harvey uncovers within her ‘case study’ subplots (of which she is the final subject). After many years as a warzone reporter and dealing with subsequent mental scars by self-medication, TV news presenter Dan Harris had an on-air breakdown in 2004; with her whole life ahead of her, Vidyamala Burch became a paraplegic after a car accident, aged just 24. Both relate the stark horrors their lives presented to them and the recovery process that eastern philosophies and meditative mindfulness inspired.

After 70-odd minutes of pristine hospital rooms, university halls and leafy Sydney surrounds (at one point, we accompany Harvey on a 10-day bush retreat), my nagging skepticism that ‘mindfulness’ was another wealthy white-person privilege grew louder. Almost on cue, Harvey addresses just such concerns with the production wisely shifting the third act to a Middle East refugee camp to gauge the impact of meditation on some of the most emotionally damaged humans on the planet. 

It is a decision that speaks to the deeply existential endeavour at the core of the mindfulness movement. While the science-based medical/sociological studies presented are fascinating and crucial to understanding meditative consciousness, My Year of Living Mindfully is ultimately about how effectively it has and can, with increasing knowledge of its benefits, serve all mankind in the face of the mental illness epidemic gripping the planet.