ANY QUESTIONS FOR BEN?

Director: Rob Sitch. Australia. 2012. 114mins

This is only Sitch’s third feature as director in 15 years and given his previous two — The Castle (1997) and The Dish (2000) — are among the most loved and successful Australian comedies of all time, much has been expected for its release. But where the earlier movies were cheerily Aussie in relaxed style and out-of-town humour, Any Questions for Ben? is aggressively fast and inner-city sexy.

Any Questions For Ben? could well raise considerable international laughter.

Opening wide on February 9 in Australia on 235 screens, much will depend on Roadshow’s marketing precision: this is not another dish of Sitch cosiness. International prospects are improved by the increasing recognition of its two US-based Australian leads, Josh Lawson (Freeloaders, etc) and Rachael Taylor (Transformers, etc).

Here Sitch has been influenced by the Richard Curtis/ Working Title rom-com school where a quirky ‘family’ of buddies assist the hero to find true love. But Curtis’s lovably bumbling Hugh Grant figure is here replaced by cool 27 year old metrosexual Ben (Lawson), who beds gorgeous girls without really trying, changes trendy apartments once or twice a year and pulls big fees as a hardly-trying ‘Strategic Brand Manager’. Though tall, handsome, street-smart and fully fit, Ben is not an easy hero to root for.

He doesn’t like himself much either. When invited to speak at his old school about his brilliant, if difficult to describe, career, he gets strangely tongue-tied and fellow former student, Human Rights Lawyer Alex (Taylor), commands the young audience’s attention. When the headmaster (Sitch himself in a confident cameo) asks the leading question of the title not a single hand shoots up. This leads to Ben’s “quarter-life crisis”, gradual self-appraisal and entirely predictable change of direction — though the lawyer is just as gorgeous and keen as the models and tennis stars he’s so used to.

To match Ben’s lifestyle there’s much hyperactive editing, flashing montages and a soundtrack packed with tracks. The action dashes through an impressive course of Melbourne locations — clubs, alleyway cafes, rooftop bars, parks, galleries, tennis and racing venues — all intercut with plenty of dusk to dawn helicopter footage.

There are two welcome trips far away from Melbourne. Ben and Andy, his dimmest mate, escape for a skiing trip to the picturesque south of New Zealand and, in a necessarily jolting change of perspective, Ben visits the Middle East on a make-or-break mission.

Notable in the group of his surrounding chums are Felicity Ward as sassy, straight-talking Emily; Christian Clark as dependably loyal Andy and Lachy Hulme as mega-rich capitalistic Sam. Unnervingly, Daniel Henshall’s nice, sensible, bearded Nick looks exactly as he did in his award-winning performance as the amoral mass-murderer in Snowtown: perhaps he should have shaved.

The climactic Emily-Nick wedding sequence, with a classy turn by John Howard as the presiding priest, demands memories of Working Title’s Four Weddings. Australia makes very few rom-coms and though in need of a trim, Any Questions For Ben? could well raise considerable international laughter.



THE CUP

Director: Simon Wincer. Australia 2010. 105mins

With a local release timed to coincide with the build-up to November’s Melbourne Cup, this $15m horse race movie is based on real events that gripped Australia – or at least the Australian media — during the 2002 running of “the race that stops the nation”. Equine enthusiasts will be happy with the thundering steeds in racetrack action and with the many authentic scenes of training and preparation, but moviegoers will expect more than this prosaic presentation of a sad and inspiring true story that might better have been told as a documentary. The Cup has opened wide at the multiplexes: its chances outside Australia seem severely limited.

Veteran director Wincer has several animal movie credits, including Phar Lap (1983), Free Willy (1993) and The Young Black Stallion (2003). But his screenplay here, co-written with Texas journalist Eric O’Keefe, is full of stodgy exposition for those who don’t remember or never knew the original events. After a slow start, it’s 40 minutes before any real drama intrudes.

Damien and Jason Oliver are the jockey sons of a famous jockey father who died in a racing accident when they were small. Jockey of the Year Damien (Stephen Curry) has controversially accepted to ride in the Cup for Irish trainer Dermot Weld (Brendon Gleeson). With only days to go, Jason (Daniel MacPherson) has a fatal fall while training: Damien is distraught and all his team’s plans for the big race are sidelined. Will he recover focus in time? Need you ask?

Curry is convincing as the big-eyed, bone-thin champion jockey and Gleeson makes the very most of his every scene; but there’s a large supporting cast with little to do, plus a posse of local media and sporting personalities looking uncomfortable. With some deft editing of new material into the 2002 event footage, the climactic race brings welcome tension and energy.



SANTA'S APPRENTICE

Director: Luc Vinciguerra. France-Australia 2010. 80mins

This brightly simple Christmas film is aimed at the Under-8s, a small but important audience unimpressed by CGI animation techniques, frightening villains and weird effects. The Gallic version of this comfortably old-fashioned French-Australian co-production had a successful run in France last year, ranking fourth on its opening weekend. Now the English version gets a wide release (180+ screens) in Australia on November 10. World sales are already healthy.

Though the animation never aims much higher than Dora the Explorer or similar daytime TV fare, there’s a strong script with a clever and exciting climax (by Alexandre Révérend), and a particularly attractive, heart-felt score (by Nerida Tyson-Chew). As a Christmas holiday treat, Santa’s Apprentice will answer the needs of many a hard-pressed parent.

Apparently there’s a rule that every 178 years the current Santa has to hand over to a young apprentice. His name must be Nicholas, an orphan and, the trickiest condition, ‘pure at heart’. Fortunately for Santa (fruitily voiced by Shane Jacobsen), the only suitable candidate worldwide lives in a Sydney orphanage set picturesquely on the banks of the harbour with a splendid view of Bridge and Opera House. Nicholas (Jack Versace) is whisked off to the North Pole where he must play with every toy ever invented, and learn how to drive sleighs and drop down chimneys.

The colours are bright and the fun assured — though Santa’s elves are a little frightening and the 76 minute running time (there are four minutes of credits) is demanding on the attention span of the very young. Who knew that Santa & Co all have Aussie accents!



THE HUNTER

Director: Daniel Nettheim. Australia 2011. 101mins

Daniel Nettheim’s compelling debut feature is based on the 1999 debut novel of Julia Leigh, whose own first feature, the confronting Sleeping Beauty, caused a stir at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Mixing international espionage with save-the-wilderness activism, The Hunter is both unpredictable and unsettling. After its Toronto world premiere (September 9), local interest will be strong for the October 6 Australian arthouse release. Willem Dafoe’s intense, craggy presence will certainly boost the international prospects of this apocalyptic tale.

Into the heart of Tasmanian darkness goes Martin David (Dafoe), ultra-professional hunter with a secret mission. Martin’s prey – and we never doubt that this obsessive soldier/hunter will somehow track it down – is a thylacine, the long-thought-extinct ‘Tasmanian tiger’. As part of the movie’s excellently precise introduction, we see some magical 1930s footage of one of the last thylacines in captivity. It’s a sad, living image that haunts the rest of the story.

Reported new sightings have lead American military biotech company Redleaf to hire Martin to trap the beast in order to harvest some of its DNA. Brilliantly equipped with the latest traps and high-powered, telescopic rifles, he arrives to find deeply suspicious tree-lopping backwoodsmen and equally determined crusading ‘Greenies’. He’s booked to stay with local eco-warrior Jarrah, but Jarrah has gone missing and his drugged, hippy wife Lucy (Frances O’Connor) has permanently taken to her bed. Their two brightly feral children, self-named Sassafras (Morgana Davies) and Bike (Jacek Koman), latch on to their ruggedly self-assured American visitor.

Dafoe is memorable as the deeply private freelancer, compulsively scouring a tub in order to take a cold-water bath, laying intricate snares on his week-long treks into the wilderness. His quest is conflicted: if he ever finds a thylacine, will he kill it or preserve it? Is his macho ‘goodness’ as much under threat as these giant old-growth trees? Alice Addison’s taut screenplay from Leigh’s austere novel keeps all options open for an unexpected conclusion.

Also fine is Frances O’Connor as the fraught ‘sleeping beauty’ who wakes to new challenges, and Sam Neill as the laconic neighbour whose friendliness might well be compromised.
Director Nettheim has a track record of quality television drama, though nothing to prepare us for the breadth, style and confidence of his cinema debut. As usual for movies shot in inland Tasmania, the scenery is constantly amazing. Wild widescreen vistas are beautifully captured by award-winning cinematographer Robert Humphreys (Somersault, Unfinished Sky): he gives us prehistoric, shattered-mountain moonscapes and mammoth, moss-covered treescapes.

Towards the end there’s a long and breathtaking sequence of outstandingly convincing animation, realised by fast-rising, Sydney-based visual effects studio Fuel VFX, who have recently contributed to Hollywood’s Iron Man 2, Thor and Cowboys & Aliens.

‘Traps and snares are illegal in Tasmania’, says an end title. Lucky nobody told anyone involved with this gripping movie.



FACE TO FACE

Director/Screenplay: Michael Rymer. Australia 2011. 88 mins

Some of Australia’s more prominent local actors are shareholders in this low-budget independent movie. It’s unlikely that they will be seeing any profits, but they clearly enjoyed working on challenging material by David Williamson, their country’s leading dramatist. Though winner of the top prize at the 2011 Santa Barbara IFF and joint winner at the Traverse City (Michigan) FF, the feature will get only limited theatre runs – it opens locally on September 8 in only 8 cinemas — but is certain of decent TV/cable exposure and a long DVD life as a teaching tool. International prospects will be aided by the signing of a sales agent.

The project drew Hollywood director Michael Rymer (Perfume, Queen of the Damned, etc) back to his native Australia where his debut feature Angel Baby won multiple awards in 1995. Shooting over 12 days with a three mini-camera digital setup, he gets maximum drama from what is essentially ten talking heads in a conference room.

The subject of Williamson’s stage play, on which this is firmly based, is conflict resolution via conferencing: instead of expensive legal proceedings, disputed cases are tackled face to face by the people involved, led by a trained mediator. ‘Based on actual case notes’, as an opening caption proclaims, the workplace bullying of big, simple Wayne (Luke Ford) leads to his desperate wrecking of the flash Jaguar owned by smug boss Greg (Vince Colosimo). Ten people at the conference have ten different attitudes to the event’s back-story and mediator Jack (Matthew Newton) patiently leads the squabbling group towards an unlikely (even if ‘actual’) resolution.

Though the film’s low budget is evident in some wobbly handheld camerawork and some oddly mixed music, the dramatic power of the situation is strongly maintained by a committed cast. Standouts are Ford as ‘strange’ Wayne with the ‘quick fuse’, Sigrid Thornton as Greg’s defensive wife, and Robert Rabiah, powerful as Hakim, an underestimated worker.



THE EYE OF THE STORM

Director: Fred Schepisi. Australia 2010. 119mins

Fred Schepisi’s first Australian feature since Evil Angels (1988) is a classy production with a distinctly European feel greatly assisted by the presence of Charlotte Rampling as a wealthy, dying matriarch. This 2-hour adaptation of Patrick White’s very long 1973 novel is inevitably adult, psychologically complex, often sedate. But the production is ravishingly designed and, beside a full-on Rampling, features a collection of Australian actors at the very top of their game. Its 15 September local release will be mainly arthouse, but a lively international performance, especially in Europe, is confidently predicted.

The stern genius of Patrick White, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the year The Eye of the Storm was published, has often been daunting to film producers. Producer Antony Waddington spent a decade planning and raising independent money for this movie, securing Schepisi and a formidable Aussie cast lead by Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis.

Elizabeth Hunter (Rampling) is on her deathbed in a grand Sydney upper-class mansion. From London comes her famous actor son Sir Basil (Rush) and from Paris comes her down-at-heels daughter Dorothy (Davis) who is a genuine Princess, having married and divorced a French nobleman. Both camp knight and dowdy princess are desperate for an inheritance, a fact that amuses their cruelly mischievous mother who is lapsing into ‘morphine moments’ administered by a team of hired nurses and ‘companions’.

The dysfunctional family make doomed attempts at civility, mostly wrecked by the capricious, increasingly confused mother. Basil makes contact with the local 70s theatre set who treat him with both envy and contempt. And he makes a successful pass at Flora, the day nurse (Alexandra Schepisi, the director’s striking daughter). Dorothy, meanwhile, tries to make inroads into the tight Sydney upper crust and finds herself groped in a hire car by a randy aspirant Prime Minister (a brief and energetic cameo by Colin Friels).

The fading Elizabeth remembers the past, and Rampling also plays her promiscuous younger self, luring Dorothy’s muscled boyfriend on a tropical island soon to be ravaged by the storm of the title.

The 70s mansion is wonderfully realised by production designer Melinda Doring. Schepisi does all he can to disguise the necessary fact that much of the story occurs in and around Elizabeth’s large, elegant bed. His widescreen camera zooms, tracks and glides, often to excess — anything to avoid the look of a ‘filmed play’.

There are occasional narrative leaps, but Judy Morris’s screenplay is moving and often very funny. The expert cast, especially Davis, extract some painful laughs.

It’s an acting masterclass, and not just from the principals. John Gaden is perfect as the family solicitor, aware of all the nasty secrets but adding morality and decency to the petty corruptions around him. Helen Morse is quite brilliant as Lotte, one of Elizabeth’s paid entertainers, a sad and desperate migrant from WW2 Germany.

There’s haunting jazz-based music by Paul Grabowsky featuring major contributions from US saxophonist Branford Masalas.



SWERVE

Director/Screenplay: Craig Lahiff. Australia 2011. 87mins

A stylish, self-confident genre flick, Swerve hits the ground running with a spectacular car crash, some large explosions, a near-miss by a speeding train and a dead drug-runner’s suitcase full of $100 bills. Whereas other similarly budgeted Aussie movies with loftier concerns get local releases, this nifty, straight-up thriller, premiered at the Melbourne Film Festival, is still looking for a local distributor. European sales by Moviehouse Entertainment have already begun.

Director/writer Craig Lahiff has done constrained, serious-minded work in the past: Black and White (2002) concerned real-life 1950s racism. Here he lets rip with some Hitchcockian style on a smartly told bent-cops-and-sexy-robbers caper set in the remote backblocks.

Our hero Colin (David Lyons) is on his way to a job interview in Broken Hill when an unexpected swerve, a fatal collision and Jina (Emma Booth), a smouldering blonde in distress, lead him —and the McGuffin suitcase — to the small oasis township of Neverest. Here he encounters, among other suspicious locals, strapping cop Frank (Jason Clarke), ex-army, psychotic and sexually deviant; and Charlie (Travis McMahon), a truly vicious villain. The plot’s twists and turns are neatly revealed, only occasionally implausible.

Lahiff’s careful close-ups and camera placements are backed by David Foreman’s elegant widescreen cinematography. Both have fun with a descent into an abandoned mine shaft, and with the concluding sequences aboard a speeding passenger train. There’s a suitably driving soundtrack from composer Paul Grabowsky.

All that’s needed now is a distributor and an audience. And a marketing budget to compete with US thrillers offering no more thrills than here.



RED DOG

Director: Kriv Stenders. Australia 2010. 91mins

This handsomely shot tribute to an actual canine hero of remote top-left Australia is difficult to categorise. Is it for kids, adults or families? Told by several observers, the narrative is confusingly focussed for kids, perhaps its natural audience; the hearty goodness of the story’s mixed-nationality community of miners makes it a soft sell for adults; families might be nervous of some underclad bedroom activity. Dog lovers, of course, will be wrapped in the adventures of Red, the kelpie with heart and a will of its own.

After premiering at Berlin, the film has already played several festivals, winning the Audience Award at the Vail Film Festival, Colorado. The presence of Josh Lucas (Sweet Home Alabama, Hulk, etc.) will certainly boost international interest. It releases locally on August 4.

Red Dog is convincingly set in 1971 as the iron ore town of Dampier is emerging from tin shacks and caravans. When long-distance truckie Tom (Luke Ford) pulls in to the Mermaid Motor Hotel he finds the assembled miners preparing for the passing of their beloved communally owned kelpie, Red Dog.

Tom hears first from publican Jack (Noah Taylor) and then from several others how smelly, red-dust-covered Red had first hitched a ride into town, eventually choosing Yankee bus driver John (Lucas) as his master. The episodic screenplay by Dan Taplitz is derived from British author Louis De Bernières’ small-scale novel, really a series of vignettes inspired by his visit to the area.

There’s a bright soundtrack full of 70s rock, and some snappy graphics include maps of the dog’s fabled wanderings: he even hitches a trip to an icy Japan. Cinematographer Geoffrey Hall records some truly remarkable widescreen vistas — other-worldly red landscapes often crisscrossed by never-ending ore trains.



BLACK & WHITE & SEX

Director/Writer: John Winter. Australia. 2011. 92 mins

This controversy-inviting, micro-budgeted, independent feature unveiled at the Sydney Film Festival will get plenty of international festival invitations for the year ahead, though any arthouse release will be limited by its ‘experimental’ approach and X-rated content. Unrestrained sexual discussion, full frontal nudity and masturbation are the stand-out features of experienced producer John Winter’s debut as writer/director. Beginning as a documentary-style interview with a sex worker, it broadens to include many aspects of contemporary male and female sexuality, and to consider the limits of what’s permissible on modern movie screens. An October release is planned locally: a world sales agent is not yet in place.

The monochrome movie’s reported $A50,000 budget certainly wasn’t stretched by the set. In an otherwise empty sound stage, prostitute Angie (Katharine Hicks) is being interviewed by an unnamed director (Matthew Holmes) about her life as a sex worker. She’s fully lit and facing multiple cameras; he’s a shadowy presence seen only from behind.

As the at-first-awkward interview progresses Angie morphs into another persona, Angie 2 (Anya Beyersdorf), a far hipper hooker. Eventually we meet eight Angies, with a mix of ages and ethnic backgrounds, the transitions elegantly achieved by editor Adrian Rostirolla who also uses split-screens with ‘live’ feeds from the four available cameras.

Drama/conflict only kicks in when Angie challenges her unconvincing interviewer to match her own uninhibited boldness.
There are many uncomfortable truths in Winter’s intelligent examination of essentially happy hookerdom, for these prostitutes enjoy their sex: drug dependency or physical abuse doesn’t get a mention.

There is much to admire in the wholehearted bravery and honesty of the actors so utterly on show. Saskia Burmeister’s dippy, restless sexuality is particularly riveting. And Winter’s massed Angies come to a fittingly tumultuous climax.


33 POSTCARDS

Director: Pauline Chan. Australia/China. 2011. 97 mins

With an excellent cast led by Guy Pearce and assured direction from Pauline Chan, this warm-hearted bilingual Australia-China co-production had its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival days before a June 18 showing in the Panorama section of the Shanghai Festival. A morality fable stressing national similarities rather than differences, the movie steers well clear of human rights politics, perhaps the price paid for its generous budget and some picturesque location work in rural China.

The first such co-production, The Dragon Pearl, premiered earlier this year at the Adelaide Festival, was a children’s adventure movie. With its determined 16 year old heroine, this one steps gingerly into teen/youth territory, though considerable violence in some of the prison sequences will certainly restrict marketing to teens. Adults may find this feel-good tale a touch too ingenuous. A huge September release in China will be followed by Australia/NZ later in the year.

The postcards of the title — though the number 33 is never mentioned — have been sent over ten years to Chinese orphan Mai Mai (Zhu Lin) from her Sydney ‘sponsor’ Dean Randall (Guy Pearce). The girl has accepted Randall’s descriptions of his family and his idyllic life of beach and bushland. Now 16, she gets the chance to visit Sydney as part of the orphanage choir. Mai Mai escapes the watchful eye of her firm-but-sympathetic minder Miss Chen (Elaine Jin) and goes in search of her idealised father-figure, who turns out to be a sadly damaged resident of a bleak ‘correctional facility’.

While Randall manages a fearful existence with some dangerously brutal fellow prisoners, Mai Mai falls in with his untrustworthy brother Gary (Rhys Muldoon) who works with a car-stealing-and-rebirthing crew at a rundown Sydney garage. There she meets Carl (Lincoln Lewis), a Shane Warne lookalike who introduces her to motorbike riding and other Western teen temptations.

The movie’s downmarket Sydney, well caught by cinematographer Toby Oliver, is nicely darker and scarier than the usual sunny location work, though the Opera House of course figures prominently in a too-neat conclusion. Editing by Jane Moran is crisp: the story rattles along. Antony Partos supplies a wide range of cross-cultural music.

But the movie’s greatest asset is its cast, lead by Pearce in a fine, unglamorous study of inarticulate decency under provocation. Young Zhu Lin keeps cuteness at bay most of the time. Her warmth and simple doggedness is a major plus, and she handles her English dialogue with an aplomb that belies the fact that she began the shoot understanding less than a dozen English words. Claudia Karvan is striking as Randall’s lawyer, and Matt Nable makes a huge impression as the fiercest (and largest) of Randall’s prison ‘mates’.

70s Aussie group The Masters Apprentices sing “Do what you wanna do, be what you wanna be” on the soundtrack as Mai Mai decides where her future truly lies. Given the co-producers, her choice is not unexpected.


A HEARTBEAT AWAY

Director: Gale Edwards. Australia. 2010. 91mins

It’s difficult to forget Mark Herman’s Brassed Off (1996) while watching this Australian ‘threatened brass band wins competition’ movie. William Zappa’s craggy-faced, cranky conductor Edwin is in the same mould as Pete Postlethwaite’s equally raw-boned tyrant in the earlier film; there’s a youthful romance and plenty of stirring brass music well mimed by some dedicated actors.

Local distributor Hoyts is giving A Heartbeat Away a 73 screen multiplex release (from March 17) and clearly sees it as an Easter ‘family film’, with a middle-aged marching band for the oldies and a rock band for the kids. For the story revolves around the father/son conflict between bandmaster Edwin and his wide-eyed guitarist son Kevin (Sebastian Gregory). When dad gets hit by a passing truck, son must take over conducting duties for the Regional Championships.

But while Brassed Off had a desperately real social background ‑ the deliberate winding-down of the area’s mining industry ‑ Heartbeat is set in a mythic Queensland fishing village whose villainous Mayor (boo! hiss!) has an unlikely plan to build skyscrapers on the local brass band’s clubhouse. With no anchor to reality, director Gale Edwards, whose debut feature this is, has gone all out for fantasy and heightened feel-good comedy.

Edwards is one of Australia’s best-known theatre directors. She’s won awards on New York’s Broadway and London’s West End, usually with big musicals. Certainly this doesn’t look like a debut movie. In league with cinematographer Robert Humphries (Somersault, SuburbanMayhem), she fills the screen with colour, movement and detail.

Her setups and lighting ideas are constantly engaging, and she plays happily with digital skyscapes, multiple wipes and whip pans. What she needs now is a script with more substance, reality and purpose than this thin fairytale romance.

Gregory and Nicole-Kidman-lookalike Isabel Lucas make a handsome prince and gorgeous princess; Colin Friels is suitably dastardly as the champagne-sipping Mayor. There’s a comedy drummer and a way-too-cute comedy dog.

Guy Gross has scored some excellent brass music to accompany the full-on set pieces – marching band versions of MacArthur Park and, surprisingly effective, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.


MAD BASTARDS

Director: Brendan Fletcher. Aust. 2010. 96mins

An unexpected standout at Sundance, this wrenching and inspirational movie continues to shine at festivals in the lead-up to its May 5 Australia release and its anticipated US theatrical release later this year. Though the cast, setting, dialogue and music are pointedly Australian — and indigenous, remote-regional Australian at that — the film’s theme of blundering, out-of-control masculinity will resonate wherever it plays.

Brendan Fletcher’s debut feature, developed via the true stories of cast members and local aboriginal communities, has the stamp of authenticity. Its tough-guy language and flaring violence will keep it from wide mainstream acceptance but the movie is set to be this year’s Aussie arthouse must-see, following 2010’s Animal Kingdom and 2009’s Samson & Delilah.

To call someone a ‘mad bastard’ in Australia is not necessarily disapproving: it is often a term of endearment, of head-shaking acceptance. In The Kimberley — the vast north-western region in which the film is confidently set — it refers to men who go too far, drink too much, drive too recklessly, fight too often.

There are three generations of mad bastards on show here. Hard-man ex-con TJ (Dean Daley-Jones) is broke and volcanically unhappy (“I’ve got a little man inside me with an axe”); his disengaged 13-year-old son Bullet (Lucas Yeeda) is tossing Molotov cocktails at a neighbour’s front door; his mountainous father-in-law Texas (Greg Tait) is the local cop, struggling to keep order in the dusty beer-can-strewn township of Five Rivers. When TJ hitches 1600 featureless kilometres from Perth to meet Bullet for the first time and reacquaint himself with the boy’s mother Nella (Ngaire Pigram) the scene is set for bitter confrontations.

As well, Texas is determined to start a men’s discussion group. After barbequed sausages and excessive tomato sauce, an uncomfortable circle of aboriginal men is invited to share their problems. This splendidly comic device is used sparingly and, climactically, to maximum effect.

Both Daley-Jones and Tait get co-writing credits. Daley-Jones was set to be a grip in the crew before director Fletcher invited him to audition. Not only does his life story inform the fictional TJ, he is a brooding and charismatic leading man, quite a find. Tait took time off his real-life job as a regional police officer to play Texas. There is authentic power when the two strip to the waist for a climactic fistfight outside town on the bed of a dried-up flood plain.

Ngaire Pigram is watchfully vulnerable as the only woman in the lives of all three protagonists. Douglas Macale gives Uncle Black the seen-it-all wisdom and quirky humour of an aboriginal Spike Milligan.

There’s excellent widescreen camerawork from indigenous cinematographer Allan Collins (award-winner in 2002 for the handsome Beneath Clouds). He has a special talent for sunsets.

A big plus is the integrated guitar/mandolin/spoons songs from local musicians Alan and Stephen Pigram, who also take producer credits. Playing ‘as live’ their own brand of jangly country/calypso and occasionally popping up in the action, they add warmth and infectious good-humour to this impressively serious movie.


THE DRAGON PEARL

Director: Mario Andreacchio. Australia-China. 2010. 94mins

Billed as the “first Australian-China co-production”, this good-looking family movie opens on an astonishing 3,500+ screens in China on March 11. Shot in China and featuring masses of red lanterns, traditional steep mountain vistas and plenty of dragon-related special effects, it has safe thrills and broad comedy for kids and exotic flavouring for their adult wranglers. The English version was shown at a ‘surprise screening’ at the Adelaide Film Festival. Cannes marketing in May will be followed by a Western release early in 2012.

Though the plot seems familiar — unearthing an ancient tomb whose decoded sliding doors reveal a magical treasure: think ‘Raiders of the Lost Pearl’ — the big plus is the mighty flying dragon. Contemporary Chinese authorities are very protective of their dragon, a still-potent symbol of creation and continuity, utterly unlike St. George’s fire-breathing monster.

Director Andreacchio pays due and necessary respect to his co-produced version. Serpent-like in its constant writhing, gorgeously gold with bright red spinal plates, its sad, wise eyes say ‘please help me get my magic pearl back’.

Cute, blonde Australian Josh (Louis Corbett) comes to China to be with his estranged father Chris (Sam Neill), an archaeologist about to open a 3000-year old underground tomb. Also in the discovery team are dodgy American Phillip (Robert Mammone), and Chinese scientist Dr. Li (Wang Ji) who has brought along her perky daughter Ling (Li Lin Jin), the only one who can hear the mysterious flute music that kick-starts the adventure.

She and Josh discover the picturesque gateway to the dragon, guarded by Wu-Dong (Jordan Chan), who brings some much needed comedy (and Kung Fu excellence) to the movie.

Sam Neill gives gravitas to the grumpy father, though he doesn’t have much to do beyond doubting his son’s increasingly vocal warnings. Ling’s mother is equally dismissive. “I hate it when my mum doesn’t believe me!” says Ling, and the younger members of the Adelaide audience loudly agreed.

The Chinese studio work — sets, costumes, cinematography — in this $20m budgeted movie is big and bold. A 3000-year flashback sequence is particularly impressive. Frank Strangio’s haunting flute line is given the full treatment by (of all things) The Slovak National Symphony Orchestra.


HERE I AM

Director/screenplay: Beck Cole. Australia. 2011. 86mins

The only world premiere in competition at the Adelaide Film festival, Here I Am is the debut feature of indigenous filmmaker Beck Cole. She describes it as her “tribute to women”, and men are certainly on the periphery of a story packed with loud and memorable women, mostly aboriginal, mostly smoking like chimneys. The movie, which doesn’t always steer clear of sentimentality, will be welcomed by a female audience on its local arthouse cinema release later this year. A speedy local TV broadcast outing by co-producer ABC is part of the deal.

Producer Kath Shelper and cinematographer Warwick Thornton were the key creative personnel behind the 2009 Adelaide Festival’s big hit Samson & Delilah, that went on to win the Cannes Camera d’Or. Cole (Thornton’s wife) had also directed that movie’s lively ‘Making Of’ documentary. Now the team continue a line of indigenous stories told with insight and conviction, though this small-scale urban tale doesn’t have anything like Samson’s lure of other-world strangeness.

Karen (the striking Shai Pittman) emerges from prison and attempts to shake off years of being “a druggo slutting around the streets”, as her mother puts it. Utterly without recognised skills, apart from shoplifting, she needs “a white man’s certificate” before she can land any sort of lowly job. Unwelcome at the shuttered Adelaide home of her estranged mother Lois (Marcia Langton, excellent), Karen is forced to take a tiny room in a women’s refuge fifteen kilometres away in a rundown docklands area.

Here we meet the group of black women, all escaping major problems, all able to lend support when Karen most needs it. And we slowly learn some of her back-story – the abandonment of her own daughter, the blighting loss of a loved brother. What she wants most of all is to see her daughter for the first time in nearly three years, but little Rosie is legally in the custody of her super-wary Grandma.

Thornton’s camerawork is intimate and assured. Some fine background music from Cliff Bradley is mixed with an excellent choice of songs from, among others, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and PJ Harvey.

Cole’s mainly non-professional supporting cast are delightfully quirky and brash. Pittman, as the smouldering Karen, forces you to participate in her swirling thoughts. It’s a deeply felt first feature from both actor and director.


SNOWTOWN

Director: Justin Kurzel. Australia. 2010. 115 mins

Buyer beware: Snowtown is no ordinary ‘serial killer’ movie. There is no charismatic Hannibal Lector cooking up thrills, no Wolf Creek super-hermit delivering hold-my-hand multiplex horrors. In a triumph of naturalism, debut director Justin Kurzel has brilliantly recreated scenes from Australia’s most notorious killing/torture spree.

Sadistic, stomach churning, at times unwatchable, the lengthy, humourless movie received its world premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival and is as confronting as anything in this genre. Though Kurzel’s stated aim is to ‘engage with an audience’ about the notorious crimes, maximum censorship restrictions may keep his film in a ghoulish ghetto and its box office potential could be limited.

The title, powerful in Australia, will have no meaning elsewhere. Though psychopath John Bunting’s multiple victims were discovered stuffed into barrels in an abandoned bank in the small rural community of Snowtown, the movie is set where most of the killings occurred, in a bleak, unlovely outer suburb of Adelaide, 145 kilometres away.

There, in an atmosphere of desperate 1990s poverty, ignorance and hopelessness, tight-lipped Elizabeth (Louise Harris) is raising her three boys. The eldest is lanky, longhaired Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), already in sexual danger from a neighbour, soon a different sort of prey to ‘new dad’ John (Daniel Henshall).

Henshall recreates this amoral predator in frightening detail. At first smiling and friendly, his sordid disregard for life soon infects the pathetic household and the bunch of hopeless drifters he attracts. The slaughter of kangaroos and dogs gives way to the wholesale destruction of human enemies: perceived ‘faggots’ are high on his hit list. “No one gives a shit,” is his watch cry and, indeed, nobody does care for the missing persons regularly dumped in his wake.

Pittaway’s development from wary teen to bloated killer is also convincing. In fact, the entire large cast – many of them local first-timers — are superbly believable. Handheld camerawork by Adam Arkapaw (Animal Kingdom) adds absolute verisimilitude to the grizzly recreation of blood, turmoil and agony.

If it’s sodomy, deep-dyed misogyny, full frontals, toenail extraction and ever-so-slow garrotting you’re after, Snowtown might be for you. Others might best regard it as a public service warning: should you happen to come across such people as John Bunting, do please set off very quickly in the opposite direction.