Sydney Film Festival 2014 - Film Review - Begin Again - Keira Knightly

Keira Knightly (guitar) Mark Ruffalo (headphones) Begin Again

As far as a feel good, light, fluffy film, Begin Again falls within that category of story and genre. Is it a music drama film or a music comedy film ? At various times it could be either or neither. Or perhaps it's just meant to showcase Keira Knightly's ability as a singer with an acoustic guitar. Screenwriter and director John Carney has provided the perfect 'lost souls find direction with each other' theme with this story: Gretta (Knightly) has flown to New York with her songwriting partner and boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) when a major label offers him a contract. Soon after he abandons her for the trappings of fame and a friend convinces Gretta to do a live performance in a small down market music bar. Enter disgraced record executive Dan (Ruffalo) who, down on his luck, happens to chance upon her in the bar and is captivated by her musical ability.  With his music industry contacts, Dan manages to record a demo album with Gretta in the open air which embraces New York's sounds and environment. The two of them rediscover their direction through the experience. If nothing else this film demonstrates that Keira Knightly has quite a lovely melodic singing voice.

Sydney Film Festival 2014 - Film Review - Snowpiercer

The front of train and engine compartment in Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer is a Sci Fi film with a strong social critique built into its theme whilst maintaining a high level of violence which often characterises South Korean films. Director Bong Joon-Ho (who also directed the monster movie The Host) has delivered a visually impacting film with an experienced cast including Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris, Octavia Spencer and Song Kang-Ho. The storyline concerns the last refuge of humanity following an experiment to halt global warming which plunges the world  into a new ice age. The sole survivors on Earth are crammed into a giant multi-level train known as Snowpiercer which perpetually circumnavigates the globe with the poor located in the back of the train while the wealthy live in splendour in the front compartments and carriages. After many years the poor stage a rebellion to take control of the train and share the resources.  As they battle their way forward through various compartments, there are a number of quirky images and social observations which come to light (a carriage with a night club with stoned patrons, while another has a sushi bar are some of the sights).

The film is in multi language format, mainly English but with Korean, Japanese and French using English subtitles. The use of high end CGI is impressive and with extensive sets and a large cast, the film has high production values. It is a quirky film with a mix of images that seem reminiscent of Mad Max, The Road, Soylent Green, and various other end-of-world films and books. This is a film which is more of an acquired taste rather than an immediate winner.

Sydney Film Festival 2014 - Film Review - Calvary

Brendan Gleeson as Father James - Calvary

Calvary can best be described as a dark film and represents a departure from many of Brendan Gleeson's most recent roles. Director John Michael McDonagh who also directed the brilliant black humoured film, The Guard, which also had Brendan Gleeson in the lead role, has taken a decidedly different approach with this story. Gleeson's role is as Father James, a Catholic priest, who is threatened with death during confession by one of his parishioners, a victim of sexual abuse as a child. The would-be assassin has decided the only method to address this matter is to kill an innocent priest and he gives Father James one week to get his personal matters in order. The timeline of the week is followed in linear fashion as Father James confronts the motley collection of villagers, each of whom may have a reason to assassinate him. During this time, Father James must also reconcile with his own adult daughter who has suffered from drug addiction but is now seeking to rebalance her life.

Described as a 'twisted humorous journey' or 'blackly comic drama', this film is quite stark and is closer to brazen satire than humour with a devastating conclusion.

Sydney Film Festival 2014 - Film Review - The Lunchbox

Irrfan Khan - The Lunchbox

Director Ritesh Bantra has had a major success with his indie film, The Lunchbox which mixes romance and food together in the context of Mumbai's remarkable lunchbox delivery system. Only one in four million home-cooked meals which are transported via a multi-person courier system are believed to be incorrectly delivered. For this film, the one wayward meal links a housewife, seeking to impress her husband, with a widowed office worker in the insurance industry on the verge of retirement. Ila, the young housewife (Nimrat Kaur), is trying to use her cooking to reach out to her emotionally distant husband and inadvertently her delicious meals are delivered to the solitary, disillusioned office worker Saajan (Irrfan Khan) which triggers correspondence between the two via the lunchbox. This creates a rich fantasy for them both and an appraisal of their respective lives. The film also delivers an array of social observation on class, caste and social standing in Indian society.

For those who often find Indian films either too long or Bollywood soap-operish in style, The Lunchbox is a welcome departure and a delight to watch. Well paced with masterful acting by its lead actors, the story transcends different nationalities and cultures.

Sydney Film Festival 2014 - Film Review - Words and Pictures

Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen - Words And Pictures

Veteran Australian film director, Fred Schepisi has returned to the screen with his latest work being a romantic drama with well established actors Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen in the two lead roles. The story is set in an elite private school and teacher Jack Marcus (Clive Owen) is faced with compound challenges - writer's block, developing alcoholism and poor work relations with his fellow teachers have led to a review of his position at the school. Into this situation comes new art teacher Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche) who suffering from chronic arthritis is unable to paint. The two teachers commence a rivalry and war over which is more powerful, pictures or words and the school and its students are drawn into the contest. As the competition between the two evolves, so does their romantic entanglement with the resulting complexity leaving the two damaged artists with little option but to confront their fears. This is a standard romance/protagonist plot with predictable developments and rather stereotypical characterisations and, surprisingly very average fare for director Schepisi.

In terms of characterisation, Owen's character, Jack Marcus is irritating and to a large degree creates a distraction in the plotline of the story. Binoche's Dina is brittle but more measured and is closer to the mark. Words and Pictures will ultimately fall into the recesses of Fred Schepisi's back catalogue of work.

Sydney Film Festival 2014 - Film Review - 20,000 Days on Earth - Nick Cave

Nick Cave - 20,000 Days on Earth

Fans of Nick Cave's music and performances will enjoy this partial staged, highly stylised and scripted documentary from film-makers and artists, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. The film is set to the narration of Cave himself and includes visits to his archive, a revealing session with his therapist and a variety of conversations with his friends and collaborators including Ray Winstone, Blixa Bargeld, Warren Ellis and Kylie Minogue.  The film also includes footage taken when Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performed live at the Sydney Opera House demonstrating the high level of audience devotion which Cave and his creativity have inspired. This is a film for Nick Cave devotees and serious documentary viewers will find Forsyth and Pollard's use of reenactment, Cave's over introspective manner and the odd use of Cave being a driver when talking to any of his friends and collaborators (while they are sitting in the back seat of his car as passengers) as artificially staged. It is nonetheless an entertaining art film rather than documentary and provides an insight into Cave and his work both as a musician and wider ranging sound artist.

Sydney Film Festival 2014 - Film Review - The Rover

Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson in a still from The Rover

Screenwriter and director David Michod in collaboration with Guy Pearce has brought to the screen a new dark and violent film, The Rover which depicts Australia 10 years after economic collapse and in a state of lawlessness and disorder. Michod, best known for winning the 2010 World Cinema Jury Prize at Sundance for Animal Kingdom, has created a particularly bleak image of a country being exploited for its' natural resources (the mines are still operating and large ore trains with Chinese characters stencilled on the rolling stock can been seen moving across the desolate landscape) and life is cheap. 

The film plot is centred on a man named Eric (Guy Pearce) whose car has been stolen by a gang and the film is essentially a road movie as Eric blasts his way across towns in search of the gang and his car. Along the way he forms an unlikely alliance with Rey (Robert Pattinson) the younger brother of the gang leader who was left behind after being wounded. They finally ambush the gang with deadly consequences.

Shot in South Australia with unusual lighting effects, this film is simple and quite thin in structure relying on high level violence and shootings with close-ups of Guy Pearce looking rugged. Robert Pattinson is exceptionally good as the unbalanced Rey (and far removed from his Twilight days) however a Dirty Harry meets Mad Max nexus, this film is not despite the Director's vision. During Q & A at the SFF, David Michod admitted that he wrote the screenplay for this film during the period following the GFC and the abandonment of a carbon tax by then Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. His perspective was formed by these negative events. Clearly the film reflects this fact and is a one dimensional effort at best.

Sydney Film Festival 4-15 June 2014

The Sydney Film Festival (SFF) for 2014 is well underway across multiple screens in five venues (State, Dendy Opera Quays, Event Cinemas and the Cremorne Orpheum) with the talks and industry forums held at the Hub at Sydney Town Hall (which also features a well-patronised bar). Dovetailing on the Vivid Festival, the SFF presents a wide diversity of genre of film from across the world. Often film-makers pick up a certain theme in their work from the previous few years of work before bringing the finished product to the screen however at this year's SFF, a common perspective or sentiment is hard to detect perhaps reflecting the uncertainty across the globe at present.

Film Review - Hannah Arendt

Barbara Sukowa (wearing pearls) in Hannah Arendt

German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist, Hannah Arendt's coverage of the 1961 trial of former SS Lieutenant-Colonel Adolph Eichmann in Israel for The New Yorker is the subject of this insightful film by Margarethe von Trotta. Eichmann, one of the key Nazi war criminals still at large after the end of WWII had been responsible for the transportation of people, mainly Jews, to the concentration camps. Captured by Mossad in Argentina he had been spirited away to stand trial in Israel to which Arendt travelled from the United States in order to see first hand the face of the man who played a pivotal role in the camp system. It was from this trial and her writings concerning Eichmann that she introduced the famous concept of 'the banality of evil'. Arendt's work become controversial due to her analysis of Eichmann's detachment during his wartime role and her direct reference to the role of Jewish councils (Judenrat) during the War.

Extensive usage of original black and white footage from the actual trial of Adolph Eichmann is used in the film which adds historical validity and context. Barbara Sukowa expertly portrays Arendt's uncompromising commitment to shed insight into the nature of Eichmann and those like him who carried out crimes against humanity in one of the darkest chapters of the 20th Century. Hannah Arendt has mixed dialogue of both German and English with the German scenes subtitled.  

Film Review - The Monuments Men - George Clooney

John Goodman, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Bob Balaban and Bill Murray

Directed, written and produced by George Clooney, Monuments Men is loosely based a book by Robert M Edsel which tells the story of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program, a small allied group tasked to recover artworks and other cultural items stolen by the Nazis during WWII.

The group faces an almost impossible task of locating the millions of looted items secreted in various locations in Germany and returning them to their rightful owners. With a team comprising only seven art historians, curators and museum directors, combat action still in progress, a similar unit from the Soviet Union also seeking to seize artworks as war reparations and orders from Hitler to destroy the seized objects if Germany falls, it is a race against time.

The film has an exceptionally strong cast with George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bob Balaban, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin and Hugh Bonneville as the antiquities recovery team with Cate Blanchett as a French art curator, who for the most part is sceptical as to their true motives. With high production values and a feel good theme, this is a well executed, Saturday afternoon matinee type of film.