Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - 99 Homes

Andrew Garfield as Dennis Nash in 99 Homes

The personal impact of the 2008 housing crisis in the United States which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis is explored in this feature film by director/screenwriter Ramin Bahrani. In this feature film rendition of the effects of the financial crisis, real estate agent Rick Carver (actor Michael Shannon) has made a fortune repossessing the homes of desperate mortgage holders and bank debtors. When tradesman, Dennis Nash (actor Andrew Garfield) is evicted from his home with his family, he finds himself working for Carver and becoming literally the Devils Apprentice by joining the business forcibly evicting others from their homes. Drawn by the lure of regaining his own family home and seduced by the wealth and increasingly glamorous lifestyle, Nash finds himself questioning his beliefs and values. When he is asked to courier a forged legal document in order to ensure a court win against another householder in debt, Nash reaches his nadir.

Actors Michael Shannon and Andew Garfield are perfectly cast in their respective roles and the film was shot in Florida and Louisiana using a mix of professional actors and amateurs, many of whom had lost their homes due to Hurricane Katrina and brought that experience to their performances. This is a well researched film with a strong underlying ethical dilemma and a message about the social impact of disconnected institutional behaviour.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Australian Premiere - Love & Mercy

John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks - Love & Mercy

Seminal musical and dramatic moments in the life of Brian Wilson, the key composer of the Beach Boys, are represented in this sympathetic feature film by Director Bill Pohland. Running marginally over two hours, the film juxtaposes the early 1960s period of Wilson's life (actor Paul Dano is the young Wilson) with the later 1980s period (covered by actor John Cusack) during which Wilson suffered a break-down. The film makes excellent use of the musical works of Wilson and many of the most successful hits of the Beach Boys are captured throughout demonstrating Wilson's melodic genius. The controversial period during which Wilson was a patient of psychotherapist, Dr Eugene Landy and suffered exploitation and prescribed drug controls becoming a virtual prisoner of Landy is strikingly demonstrated in the film. Paul Giamatti plays Landy with Elizabeth Banks playing Melinda, Wilson's girlfriend (and later wife) who, with the Wilson family, brought Landy's control to an end.

This is a film for fans of Wilson and his extraordinary musical talent.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Mr Holmes

Ian McKellen as the retired Sherlock Holmes

Ian McKellen delivers a masterful performance as the retired Sherlock Holmes in Bill Condon's Mr Holmes.  This film is an exquisite period piece sympathetic to and retaining the authenticity of the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conon Doyle. In this film Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) is long retired, aged 93 with fading memory and living a comfortable existence in the English countryside  tending his bees. His peers including Dr Watson have long passed-on and the only regular company he enjoys is his widowed housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her young son Roger (Milo Parker) who displays a strong interest in his cases and one unresolved case in particular from decades earlier. Holmes is haunted by this case which involved a private investigation into the suspicion of a husband as to a possible murder plot by the man's wife. With the encouragement of Roger (who also assists with tending the bees) Holmes revisits the evidence and material of the case finding the answer which had so eluded him over many years.

This is a film with high production values, photographed in quintessentially identifiable cultural locations in the United Kingdom (the White cliffs of Dover are particularly striking) and worth seeing on the large cinema screen.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Documentary film maker, Alex Gibney delivers a damning insight into the inner workings of the Church of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard and current head David Miscavige in this methodical non-sensationalist two hour film. Using archival footage including much of the Church's own public relations material linked to personal interviews conducted by Gibney with several key former senior leaders of the Church, Gibney portrays an organisation which uses extensive psychological methods and harsh edicts to maintain control over its members. The invention of the pseudo science of 'Dianetics', the origins of the inner trusted body in the Church known as 'Sea Organisation' (or Sea Org), employment contracts set at a billion years and the war waged with the United States Internal Review Service for tax free status are just a few of the aspects which the film covers.

The relationship between the Church and its two star recruits, John Travolta and Tom Cruise is given attention particularly the close involvement between David Miscavige and Tom Cruise. The extent of the connection is now so visible that both men almost resemble each other in style and habits. The Church's involvement in the dissolution of the marriage between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman presents a particularly insidious insight into the tactics which the Church deploys. The use of private investigators, covert video surveillance and considerable harassment are commonly used methods for the persuasion of silence.

Alex Gibney has a number of well-regarded documentaries to his name including Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Mea Maxima Culpa and won an Academy Award for his film Taxi to the Dark Side. This latest film adds to an impressive body of work and is a must-see for those with a concern about the operations of cults.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Slow West

Kodi Smit-McPhee and Michael Fassbender - Slow West

Screenwriter and Director, John Mclean's debut feature film set in the desolate regions of Colorado in the United States around the period near the Civil War is described as an 'unconventional' Western. This is an understatement as it's a very curious and inconsistent film in many respects. Filmed in Scotland and New Zealand (which was the substitute location instead of Colorado), the film follows the trek westward by young Scotsman, Jay (actor Kodi Smit-McPhee) who is searching for his lost love, Rose and her father who had fled Scotland after a tragic family dispute. Jay is young and naive, traversing a territory full of harshness and predators including bounty hunters, lawless soldiers, bandits and the ever likely Indian raiders. He runs into Silas (Michael Fassbender) a cunning and worldly bounty hunter who, for a fee, will provide a hired gun escort to enable Jay to find Rose. What Jay does not know is that Rose and her father have a $2,000 price on their heads and bounty hunters including Silas are on the lookout. At the end of the trail lies an all-too-likely classic western shoot-out.

This is a very odd little film with multiple inconsistencies throughout its length. Although in desolate country far from an civilisation, Jay and Silas encounter all manner of strange people and sights. Three Congolese men in suits sitting on benches singing love songs in the middle of nowhere, a well built bridge crossing a river yet there's no trail or road with it; a rough hewn trading store with various limited supplies yet there are fresh apples without any apparent way the fruit could have been transported there (a question posed to the film's producer during Q & A who admitted that was a flaw in the film). And finally Rose and her father's house in a desolate field looking brand new with pristine perfect timbers. The film is so quirky its quite entertaining and is worth a cinema ticket.

   

Sydney Film Festival 2015

335 screenings of 250 films in 9 venues over 12 days. The 2015 Sydney Film Festival has reached its 62nd year and continues strongly with a broad swag of new films to view which will be released in the coming weeks and months to the broader public market. New Australian films have a marked presence in this year's selection demonstrating that the local industry has not become inert, albeit it does remain dependent on substantial public funding from bodies such as Screen Australia. From the first set of screenings, family dysfunctionalism again seems to have centre stage in many of the stories presented. Whether this is simply a trend being set in the Art House film genre or is representative of current social trends generally is a matter of conjecture. It does however demonstrate an unusually limited focus for many of the films which have been produced over the past few years.

Participation in the Christian faith in the United States - trending downward

Pew Institute data 2015

The United States is often perceived to be the major bulwark against the trend of falling participation in the Christian religion in developed Western countries. Images of Southern Baptist choirs, evangelical preachers with syndicated programs and activist social justice ministers populate many contemporary film, television and online media mediums. But how accurate is this image with reality ? According to research from the Pew Institute, the truth is heading in the opposite direction.

The Christian faith in the United States is in decline and by a marked level.The percentage of adults (aged 18 or older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in only seven years from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Commensurately, the number of Americans describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" has increased from 16.1% to 22.8% over the same period. This drop, according to research by the Pew Institute, is mainly driven by declines amongst mainstream Protestants and Catholics.

For the organised mainstream Christian religion, the most concerning element is the decline in support in the Millenial generations and the ageing of the population for adults who are Christians. As a result of increasing non-affiliation with religion, the median age of mainstream Protestants is 52 years of age and the median age of Catholic adults is 49. This gentrification bodes badly for the future.

Fully 36% of young Millenials (those between the ages of 18 and 24) are religiously unaffiliated and 34% of older Millenials (aged 25-33) likewise. There is also time-trend data indicating that people in older generations are increasingly disavowing association with organised Christian religion.

Studies such as these from the Pew Institute are massive in size (sample sizes are over 35,000) and complexity including multi-ethnic and multi-faith research work. The factors for this decline will be multifaceted including changing lifestyles, values and demographics, weak institutional leadership, various moral/ethical scandals in major Churches over the past decade and societal fragmentation in the digital world to cite a few.  At a time of rising militancy in the Islamic faith, the correlating but unrelated decline in Christian support is not a positive development.