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.

Red wine - indulgence or instrument of good health

Much conjecture and debate continues on the relative merits of red wine to health, in contrast to all other alcoholic beverages which are perceived to have negative properties. So what are the properties of red wine that provide these supposed advantages ?

Possibly a longer lifespan according to the Harvard Medical School. Resveratol, a compound found in the red grape skin stimulates a protein with anti-ageing properties. The same compound is conjectured to improve short-term memory through interaction with the hippocampus region of the brain. Resveratol is also theorised to reduce the risk of cancer by acting as a protein blocker for tumour cells.

Other properties of red wine include: procyanidins, found in red wine tannins which have a positive effect on cardiovascular health;  Tempranillo and Rioja which possibly lower cholestrol levels; polyphenols which slow bacterial growth in the mouth and thus slows tooth decay.

Other claims which are often made about the miraculous properties of red wine include improving eye health and even helping to stop the common cold. There is little factual evidence to support these assertions but when enjoying a glass its a reassuring thought that a good Pinot Noir or Merlot may be the magic bullet which beats the common cold.

Film Review - Leviathan

Russian film directors often have a style of film-making which captures both forbidding grandeur and small municipal detail simultaneously, effortlessly juxtaposing the two into an immediate relationship. Thus is the case with the Russian film, Leviathan directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev and written by Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin.

The film's story is set in the coastal town of Teriberka is Russia's northern region near the port city of Murmansk. A simple handyman, Kolya is pitted against the corrupt town Mayor, Vadim, who has used town powers to appropriate Kolya's home for redevelopment as a resort. Kolya's life is already  in turmoil as his son, Roma has rejected his new step-mother, Lilia placing a strain on family relationships. An old army buddy, now a prominent Moscow lawyer, Dmitri arrives to support Kolya and face down the mayor and corrupt town officials however his efforts are compromised when he has an extramarital affair with Lilia.  This a film which explores the cracks in social contracts when fate, power and money intervene. Aleksei Serebryakov is well cast as the hot-headed Kolya with Roman Madyanov as his protagonist, Vadim the Mayor. Elena Lyadova as Lilia and Sergey Pokhodaev as Roma make up the rest of the family unit. This story has no happy ending and Kolya's fate seems inevitable in the context of this Russian reality.  

The film's desolate location shoots in the Kola peninsula (Kirovsk, Monchegorsk, Olenegorsk) and on the coast of the Barents Sea (Teriberka) provide an imagery which is both stark and yet majestic in its melancholy expanse. In this setting it's no wonder that the Russian locals turn to the vodka bottle to lubricate and lessen the burden of their existence.

The film has won a string of awards including Best Screenplay at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Best Foreign Language Film at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards, Best Film at the London Film Festival and the 32nd Munich Film Festival, plus a Golden Peacock at the 45th International Film of India.