CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Stars: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Samuel L Jackson, Robert Redford, Frank Grillo, Cobie Smulders, Sebastian Stan, Emily Van Camp, Georges St-Pierre, Hayley Atwell, Jenny Agutter, Alan Dale and Toby Jones.
Writers: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely; based upon a concept and story by Ed Brubaker.
Directors: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo.

Rating: 3/5

The retro-themed warmth of the first instalment is nowhere to be found in the steely follow-up, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a carefully constructed slice of conspiratorial intrigue pumped up by the now familiar photo-realistic effects team. A template-specific movie experience that impresses without engaging, The Russo Brother’s tentpole debut serves its master – the ‘Marvel Movie Empire’ – as diligently as the titular hero serves his homeland.

Hitting its stride with earthbound first- and second-act shoot ‘em up action before devolving into an over-extended airborne finale that confuses grand scale destruction for involving spectacle, Russo’s Joe and Anthony (hot off…um…2006’s You Me and Dupree) offers some smart plotting and a finely etched heroic central figure.

But it also is the first of the Marvel films that suffers from feeling cobbled together from the canon’s visual elements; for all their faults, Shane Black's Iron Man 3 and Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World, cast aside the appealing aesthetic of Joss Whedon’s blockbuster and found their own palettes. Unlike the beautifully distinctive period elements of director Joe Johnston’s The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier too often resembles a generic modern studio pic (notably The Avengers, of course, but also Star Trek Into Darkness and Man of Steel).

The Russo’s do imprint some individuality with a narrative that evokes 1970’s-style paranoid cinema. The ultra-patriotism of Capt Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is tested when he discovers a rescue mission he heads up also carries with it a covert information retrieval element. When he challenges his boss, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), the need-to-know nature of his role in the modern military apparatus leaves him seriously doubting his government motivations.

Evans continues to impress in a role that provides him with the most complex and challenging of all the Marvel players. The Winter Soldier allows the actor to explore the dichotomy of his character’s existence; a sequence set against the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian institute allows Rogers to literally revisit his past and the heroic leading man figure is fleetingly replaced by a confused, displaced refugee from another time.

Alternately, the chilly face of new millennium bureaucratic coldness is Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford), a powerbroker in S.H.I.E.L.D. and head of the World Security Council. The casting of American cinema’s ‘Golden Boy’ is an unmistakable callback to the post-Watergate conspiracy thriller era; the most relevant examples are Redford’s own Three Days of the Condor and All the President’s Men. In Hollywood speak, The Sundance Kid has ‘still got it’; with his masterful turn in JC Chandor’s All is Lost acting as the serious counterpoint to his screen-consuming ‘movie-star’ charisma here, 2013/14 reaffirms Redford as one of the industry’s all-time greats.

With S.H.I.E.L.D. imploding, the Captain and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansen, playing up her sexiness opposite Evan’s buffed but straitlaced he-man) find themselves on the run from both the organisation’s foot soldiers and an assassin known as The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), a Keyser Soze-like killer who provides a link (albeit a tenuous one) to Rogers’ past. Anthony Mackie adds weight as newbie Sam Wilson, aka Falcon, and fans will appreciate small roles for series support players Cobie Smulders, Toby Jones and Hayley Atwell.

The time is right for a resurgence in smart mainstream films that question the actions of our leaders; post 9/11, the primary movie-going demographic is also the most distrustful of government overreach. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have delivered a script that melds action movie tropes with serious-minded themes, though not always with the precision required to allow Captain America: The Winter Soldier to fully transcend its genre origins. Ultimately, it is just another comic book movie, and a fine one at that, but it came frustratingly close to being so much more.

VERONICA MARS

Stars: Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Chris Lowell, Percy Daggs III, Tina Majorino, Krysten Ritter, Martin Starr, Enrico Colantoni, Francis Capra, Ryan Hansen, Gaby Hoffman, Ken Marino and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Writer: Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero.
Director: Rob Thomas.

Rating: 3.5/5

Having crowdfunded the project to the tune of US$5million, series creator Rob Thomas honours the ‘money where their hearts are’ wishes of the hardcore fans, delivering what amounts to a really, really good bigscreen TV episode of his cult show, Veronica Mars.

Some snazzy pre-credit imagery recaps the key details of the series for non-fans before we meet the adult incarnation of our heroine. Mars has left her So-Cal enclave of Neptune and is on the verge of making it big as a Manhattan lawyer, having secured a job with Jamie Lee Curtis’ firm.

But the murder of her highschool friend implicates her bad boy teen sweetheart Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) and, despite her better judgement, Mars returns to her hometown to solve the mystery. She puts at risk her blossoming career and sweet home life she shares with nice guy bf, Piz (Chris Lowell) to revisit the place and people she left behind

If the plotting sounds a little too ‘reunion episode’ familiar (which it is), Thomas makes the most of every character interaction and emotional beat. Most of the returning cast are given ample room to deliver a crowdpleasing moment or two; best amongst them Ryan Hansen lovable doofus Dick, Waterworld moppet Tina Majorino now all grown up as Mac and Enrico Colantoni as Mr Mars. Less convincing is Dohring, who fails to translate whatever small-screen appeal he had to the broader canvas.

Of course, it is Kristen Bell who has exhibited the strongest career trajectory since the series folded and she brings all her leading lady experience; her skill as an actress allows her to fill the screen while never foregoing the sweet but tough essence of the teen Veronica which made her semi-famous.

Unlike the usual TV-to-film adaptions that have been de rigeur in Hollywood for the last couple of decades, Veronica Mars is not a flagrant exercise in ‘bigger is better’ expansion, the likes of which traditionally provide very mixed results (recent notables include The X-Files, The Last Airbender, Get Smart and Miami Vice). Thomas’ effort remains determinedly loyal to its source with only the occasional and therefore highly effective indulgence in cinematic licence. Perhaps most remarkable for being diligently unremarkable, Veronica Mars is exactly the film that fans were pining for and offers the kind of confident, small-scale storytelling that is eminently watchable to those new to the ‘marshmallow’* army.

* A term used to describe fans of the show, it is derived from the first episode, in which friend Wallace (Percy Daggs III) says to the tough but soft-hearted heroine, "You're a marshmallow, Veronica Mars."  

NYMPHOMANIAC VOLUME 1 and VOLUME 2

Stars: Stacy Martin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Connie Nielsen and Udo Kier.
Writer/Director: Lars von Trier.

Rating: 3.5/5

The most shocking revelation that Danish cinematic agitator Lars von Trier offers up in his provocatively titled Nymphomaniac is that, for much of its exorbitant running time, it is a lot of fun.

Not the fun that mainstream audiences know as ‘fun’; from the extreme close-ups of genitalia to its sado-masochistic beatings, it is unlikely that the recollections of von Trier’s sex addict heroine will be confused with Hollywood’s latest rom-com romp. But there is a playfulness that will surprise the art house crowds that are used to Trier’s darker indulgences of the flesh; those still recovering from ‘the scissor scene’ in Antichrist can rest assured no such horrors manifest here.

Von Trier’s use of a flashback structure results in his most linear narrative in recent memory. After a long opening shot of a dark screen accompanied by the faint trickling of water (evocative enough to audience members primed for hardcore fetishism), the prone body of a bloody woman in a dark alleyway is revealed. Passerby Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) takes her to his small apartment where he tends her wounds and settles in for the long, Scheherazade-like story of how far the wounded Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has fallen.

The two actors make for compelling intellectual counterparts and allow von Trier to indulge in some of his most buoyant dialogue. Gainsbourg creates a sympathetic if occasionally chilly and detached protagonist. Her Joe archetypically resembles the sexually liberated lead characters in Catherine Breillat’s film Romance (1999) and Charlotte Roche’s book Wetlands (recently adapted into a film by David Wnendt), for whom existence is defined by a compulsive and profound relationship with their own sexual essence (“I discovered my c**t at age 2,” is how Joe begins the story of her life’s trajectory).

As Joe recounts a life ruled by desire, Seligman draws comparisons to his own compulsions, such as fly-fishing, Bach’s grand works and his study of literary and artistic influences. The director takes full advantage of Seligman’s digressions, unloading an arsenal of visual tricks (chapter headings, split-screens, super-imposed graphics; monochrome) that mostly enhance the storytelling.

In Volume 1, it is newcomer Stacy Martin as Joe aged 15-30ish who is most often called upon to get down and dirty. Martin is suitably nymph-like, a compelling if occasionally blank-faced presence that personifies the ‘girlish seductress’ who can convince a committed husband dashing home because his wife is ovulating to submit to a public fellating. The plotting that binds the two 2 hour episodes involves the fate-filled coupling of Joe and Jerome (Shia Labeouf); for a film whose central character refuses to believe in the false reality of romance, their journey is one filled with cute coincidences and chance meetings.

By Volume 2, Joe and Jerome have sucked and f***ed themselves into a sex addict’s version of domestic bliss; they have had a child whose needs come second to Joe’s. Her life devolves into niche sexual experimentation rather than any derivation of pleasure; brutal bondage sessions (at the hands of Jamie Bell’s S&M master in the film’s most confronting scenes), an ill-judged threesome with two BBDs and a life of crime where her sexual knowledge proves a valuable weapon are all stages of her personal descent.

Christian Slater as Joe’s father and a fierce cameo from Uma Thurman as the spurned wife of one of Joe’s conquests highlight the director’s skill with actors. One senses more may be made of Connie Nielsen as Joe’s ice-cold mother and Willem Dafoe’s baddie in the 5½ hour directors cut (due for release in some territories, including Australia, in late 2014), as their roles here amount to very little.

Despite tackling some of cinema’s most taboo topics, Lars von Trier is working well within traditional film comfort zones. His script reveals Seligman to be an asexual virgin, a reality destined to be confronted within the context of a film called ‘Nymphomaniac’; a gun is randomly introduced, so savvy audiences will know that Chekhov’s narrative observation will be invoked. His script is smart and the images confronting, but it is a far less ambitious or important work than Antichrist or his last love/hate vision, Melancholia.

It is, however, impossible to look away. The great Dane’s study of corrosive sexuality (most importantly, from a female perspective) is bold, engaging and thought provoking. Nymphomaniac is too sex as Leaving Las Vegas was to booze or Requiem For a Dream was to drugs; an insight into addiction that paints a life of false highs and dire lows for sufferers caught in the torment of their disease.

WHEN MY SORROW DIED: THE LEGEND OF ARMEN RA & THE THEREMIN

Stars: Armen Ra, Pat Field, Amanda Lepore and Justin Tranter.
Director: Robert Nazar Arjoyan

Reviewed at the Opening Night of the 2014 Byron Bay International Film Festival.

Screening at the 2015 Revelation Perth International Film Festival. Visit the official website for venue and ticket information.

Rating: 4/5

Creativity as a life-defining, soul-saving virtue is central to the story of Theremin maestro Armen Ra, as captured in Robert Nazar Arjoyan’s elegant, moving concert/biopic When My Sorrow Died. 

Candidly recounting key moments in his personal growth, Ra oozes an enigmatic appeal in conversation with an off-camera interviewer (with some nicely timed glances towards his audience). What emerges are recollections of life lived as an outsider, initially by society’s design then ultimately on his own terms.

Born into a minority in Iran, the threat of persecution was ever present; violent bullying at his new American high school was painful but helped define his self-worth. His acceptance amongst the LGBT community of NYC was reaffirming but substance abuse stifled growth; having achieved a degree of sobriety, he became one of the greatest living proponents of the ethereal electronic instrument.

Ra’s fine features and feminine curves made him a drag superstar and Arjoyan’s camera captures all his charms, both physical and intellectual. Often appearing to be at one with the lushly glamourous set design against which he is framed (and which he personally compiled for the film), the enigmatic musician lays bare periods of drug and alcohol consumption. His fateful take on how the theremin came into his life and set about redefining his very existence is deeply affecting.

Interspersed with Ra’s recollections is intimately staged concert footage that captures the prowess and precision required to be a master of the seven octave theremin, the only instrument played by not touching it and the first electronic musical device invented.

When My Sorrow Died charts the emergence of a man in the guise of an artist, of a life made richer by reconciliation with one’s demons. Robert Nazar Arjoyan’s detailed, heartfelt ode to a musical genius also soars as study of unique individual searching for and ultimately finding a path to acceptance and understanding. Armen Ra’s journey and talent deserves a film that transcends the concert film genre and Arjoyan delivers on that with graceful style. 

REACHING FOR THE MOON

Stars: Miranda Otto, Gloria Pires, Tracy Middendorf, Marcello Airodi, Treat Williams, Marcio Ehrlich, Lola Kirke, Anna Bella Chapman, Tania Costa and Marianna MacNiven.
Writers: Carolina Kotscho, Julie Sayres and Matthew Chapman; based on the book Rare and Commonplace Flowers by Carmen L Oliviera.
Director: Bruno Barreto.

Reviewed at the Opening Night of the 2014 Mardi Gras Film Festival.

Rating: 3.5/5

The conventional biopic approach that veteran Brazilian director Bruno Barreto applies to Reaching for the Moon proves a double-edged sword in terms of the films overall impact. The passion that poet Elizabeth Bishop and architect Lota de Macedo Soares shared in their hillside Shangri-la in the mid 1950’s is lovingly portrayed but fleetingly conveyed; there is a brittle austerity at work here that honours their legacy but shortchanges their human qualities.

One of the western world’s most celebrated writers, Bishop (Miranda Otto) found herself in a stalled creative mindset in 1951 New York, deciding to join her friend Mary (Tracy Middendorf) on an estate outside of Rio de Janeiro. Here, Mary lives with her lesbian partner Lota (Gloria Pires), one of the nation’s leading architects; despite some early conflict, Lota and Elizabeth fall in love, each providing the inspiration for the other’s endeavours.

The dynamic of life within the beautifully constructed grounds of Lota’s home constitutes most of the film’s first half; developments such as Elizabeth’s poetry output and worsening alcoholism, Mary’s adoption of a local girl and Lota’s role in rebuilding the Flamengo Park region of beachfront Rio play out satisfactorily under the workmanlike direction of Barreto. The director clearly adores his homeland, capturing stunning images of the countryside with the help of his DOP Mauro Pinheiro Jr; the period detail is equally sumptuous in the hands of production designer Jose Joaquim Salles and art director Yvette Granata.

As their love and relationship grows increasingly fractious, so does the impact of Barreto’s drama. Having taken her alcoholism to the brink of death in the isolated mountain enclave while Lota advanced her career, Bishop takes a teaching job back in the US; Lota spirals into a deep depression. With the onscreen chemistry of the lead actresses now absent, the focus of the film is diluted; the personal journeys each experience while apart don’t carry a lot of impact or meaning.

The ‘tortured artist’ role brings the best out of the finest actresses (Nicole Kidman’s Virginia Woolf; Salma Hayek’s Frieda Kahlo; Gwyneth Paltrow’s Sylvia Plath) and Miranda Otto, finally getting the rich lead role she has long deserved, is complex and commanding as Bishop. Matching her in every regard is Gloria Pires as Lota; the pair share a very strong bond and convince in some succinct but intimate love scenes. Gay audiences will appreciate that Barreto places no emphasis whatsoever on the mechanics of a lesbian love affair, treating his characters and their plight with non-gender specific respect.

The film represents a safe but sure bet as the opening night attraction for the 2014 Mardi Gras Film Festival. Engaging, non-threatening and pleasing to the eye and ear, Reaching for the Moon ultimately doesn’t soar as its title suggests it might have. Instead, it settles for moments of romantic insight set against the struggle for creative and emotional clarity. 

WINTER'S TALE

Stars: Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Jessica Brown Findlay, William Hurt, Eva Marie Saint, Mckayla Twiggs, Ripley Sobo and Will Smith.
Writer: Akiva Goldsman; based upon the novel by Mark Helprin.
Director: Akiva Goldsman.

Rating: 2/5

Although not the first time that fantasy that soared on the page lands with a thud on the screen, Akiva Goldsman’s take on the ‘magical realism’ of Mark Helprin’s vast, dense 1983 novel Winter’s Tale will prove particularly plodding to those unfamiliar with the source material and wanly lacking in wonder to those that are.

Having survived early embarrassment (Batman Forever; Batman & Robin; Lost in Space) to emerge as Hollywood’s go-to-guy for high-end B-movies (A Beautiful Mind; Cinderella Man; The Da Vinci Code), Goldsman’s directorial debut proves an epic folly, exposing the Oscar winner as a filmmaker more enthused by the aesthetics of Helprin’s novel than its heart. One can’t begrudge him the structure of his script, which jettisons long passages and entire characters and mashes familiar elements from the 750-page tome, but fans will deem it unforgivable that the romantic essence and compelling momentum are missing.

Goldsman focuses in on Peter Lake (Colin Farrell), the main character from the first section of Helprin’s book. The petty thief/larrikin is on the run from the seething Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), a brutal overseer of New York’s tougher burroughs at the turn of the century. They were once allies, but Lake is now marked for death by Soames, whom we come to understand is a demonic minion working for ‘Judge’, aka Lucifer, (Will Smith, in a jarringly misjudged piece of stunt casting).

Having escaped on a white steed (Athansor in the novel, with its own lengthy narrative attached, though none of that detail survived the transition), Lake is convinced by the horse (?) to pull of one last act of petty thieving. And so he meets the consumptive beauty Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), with whom he forms a spiritual passion. The third act transplants our hero into modern-day New York, where he stumbles the streets in amnesic stupor, ingratiates himself all too easily into the life of journalist Virginia Gamely (Jennifer Connelly) and her sick daughter Abby (Ripley Sobo) and faces off against Pearly.

In his scripts for Practical Magic, I Robot and I Am Legend, Goldsman hinted at otherworldly aspects of earthbound romanticism; in this regard, his script for Winter’s Tale echoes his new-agey contemporaries Michael Tolkin (The Rapture) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Brainstorm; My Life; Ghost; Jacob’s Ladder; The Time Traveller’s Wife). Oddly, it is these themes of existential spirituality and divine fate that so profoundly burden the film. Goldsman desperately wants to honour these elements in the most grand of cinematic traditions but forgets to craft character arcs and personalities that audience can engage with. His wordy script, in which long passages of cumbersome dialogue supplant excised plotting and hoped-for depth and illogicality undermines credibility, makes for a very long 129 minutes.

Nothing indicates the desired prestige status more clearly than the front-loading of above-the-line Oscar winners. Crowe continues his voyage into ‘late-career Brando’ self-parody, his Pearly a truly nutty characterisation complete with often impenetrable Irish brogue and showy monologuing (which is not to say he doesn’t also offer up some of the film’s livelier moments); Connelly is entirely underserved. Past Academy honourees William Hurt and Eva Marie Saint class up smaller parts, while composer Hans Zimmer’s blustery score works hard if largely in vain to wring emotion from every frame.

One highpoint from this otherwise disappointing effort is the risky roll of the dice it represented for Warners Bros. Some courageous backing of difficult literary projects once thought 'unfilmable' has come from their LA boardrooms of late; the Wachowski’s stunning, unfairly-ignored adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Baz Luhrmann’s love/hate spin on F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and now Goldman’s effort. One hopes the rocky box office path the films have trod doesn’t deter further investment in book-smart Hollywood cinema.   

ROBOCOP

Stars: Joel Kinnaman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Gary Oldman, Samuel L Jackson, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Aimee Garcia, Patrick Garrow and John Paul Ruttan.
Writers: Joshua Zeturner; based on an original screenplay by Michael Miner and Edward Neumaier.
Director: Jose Padilha.

Rating: 2.5/5

Polished with that pewter-like modern blockbuster sheen and lacking in all but the most modest attempts at smart sci-fi satire, Jose Padilha’s 2014 RoboCop reboot emerges as a technically competent but intellectually and emotionally inferior reworking of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 model.

Verhoeven unleashed his rebuilt super-cop Alex Murphy into a bloodthirsty marketplace rife with cinematic carnage and boneheaded action stars. The Dutchman pulled the ultimate swift one on his Hollywood bosses; he gave them the visceral revenge fantasy they wanted, but also tore chunks off the very corporate greed and immoral media pillars that created the bloodlust, nationalistic mindset of Reagan era America he was laying bare.

Brazillian director Padilha, sourced after his street-level Elite Squad films proved he can get audiences up close to urban action, has no such agenda. He lines up O’Reilly/Hannity-type tabloid TV in the form of Samuel L Jackson’s Pat Novak and skewers big business immorality (though that’s the proverbial ‘fish in the barrel’ in a post GFC world), but the resurrection of potential franchise starters like the RoboCop property are carefully orchestrated and….well, no one was going to let smarts get in the way of cashed-up teen moviegoers.

Joel Kinnaman steps into the role of the slain cop; he’s too young, sculptured and brash to compare with the great Peter Weller’s portrayal. Weller was young and sculptured too, but he wasn’t a mouthy upstart; you’d have a beer with Weller after work, but not Kinnaman. Barely surviving a car bomb, there’s not much left of Murphy; his distraught wife Clara (Abbie Cornish) must sign off on her husband before the R&D team from Omnicorp, lead by CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) and head scientist Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) can start rewiring him.

This deviation from the 1987 film proves the most telling in terms of the remake’s emotional impact. Weller’s Murphy died; Kinnaman’s didn’t. Weller spent Verhoeven’s movie reconnecting with his soul through glimpses of past memory; he was a machine seeking the human spirit that he forgot he had. Kinnaman spends Padilha’s film uncovering clues, avenging wrongs and taking down societies worst. Weller did that too, but it was secondary to his Murphy’s existential struggle; ‘the job’ is all Kinnaman’s character has, whether before or after his mechanisation.

In all other regards, RoboCop ’14 follows the template of the modern action film to the letter - good actors adding weight to daft roles; vid-game aesthetics; brawn and beauty over brains. It won’t disappoint the key commercial demographic, who would be largely unfamiliar with what makes the source material so resonant; old fans will dig the occasional reference, including an honourable reworking of Basil Pouledouris’ great score and knowing nods to the original’s one-line gems (“Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.”)

Jose Padilha wields his camera with skill and exhibits some engaging visual flourishes; the unified vision he shares with his Elite Squad DOP Lula Carvalho is clearly evident. One can’t help but sense the creative unit had one eye on the action and one eye on the suits, careful to give them what they want at the price they wanted. Padilha’s Hollywood debut is craftsmanlike and respectable, which is perhaps not what an updated retelling of Verhoeven’s grimy, gritty, gory classic deserved.

BACKYARD ASHES

Stars: Andrew S Gilbert, John Wood, Felix Williamson, Norah George, Damian Callinan, Lex Marinos, Shingo Usami, Jake Speer, Zenia Starr, Arkaan Shah, Michael Mack, Stephen Holt, Maddison Catlin-Smith and Martin Harper.
Writers: Peter Cox and Mark Grentell.
Director: Mark Grentell.

Rating: 3.5/5

As if the 2013/14 Australian summer had not proven humiliating enough for the English cricket establishment, along comes Mark Grentell’s Backyard Ashes.

The feature debut for the multi-hyphenate auteur is cut from the same Ocker-istic cloth as past odes to suburban idiosyncrasy like The Castle and Emoh Ruo, though thankfully minus the smug satirical edge that slyly mocked their blue-collar ethos. 

Everyman Dougie Waters (Andrew S Gilbert) is a ¼ acre block hero; his little slice of suburban heaven and the family he shares it with is Dream Aussie Life 101. He honours his loving wife, Lilly (Rebecca Massey) and adores his lovely daughter, Kerri (Maddison Catlin-Smith); his vid-camera obsessed teen son Pigeon (Jake Speer), not so much. Most important of all are his factory work-floor mates, amongst them Spock (Damian Callinan), Taka (Shingo Usami), Sachin (Waseem Khan) and Merv (John Wood), all of whom share his passion for beer, blokey mateship and, above all else, backyard cricket.

The arrival of British corporate cost-cutter Edward Lords (a broader-than-broad Felix Williamson) disrupts the dynamic of the group; he sacks Dougie’s neighbour and best mate Norm (Stephen Holt) then thoughtlessly moves into the man’s deserted house (of all Grentell’s strong suits, subtlety is not one of them). A terrible accident involving Lord’s prized pet cat, Dexter and Dougie’s barbeque (which is not as funny as the film needs it to be) sets in motion a winner-take-all cricket match between the boozed-up Aussies and the prickly Poms, the victor taking home the charred remnants of puss.

Grentell’s reliance upon deeply intrinsic cultural references (Richie Benaud impersonations, ‘keys-in-the-pitch’ gags and gently racist humour) should win over a solid slice of the domestic audience, but offshore engagements and in-flight screenings (especially on British Airways) are unlikely. Backyard Ashes is so filled with minutiae humour that targets and skewers Aussie summer-time suburban obsessions, it often resembles a big-screen reworking of the iconic TV series, Kingswood Country.

Shot in the New South Wales’ western megalopolis of Wagga Wagga with the full support of the local city council, Backyard Ashes feels very much like a passion project brought to life by a community who understands the lead character’s essence and the modern working class man’s plight. The Australian film industry has not offered up a more likable spin on the larrikin values that built this nation in a long time.

Backyard Ashes does not pretend to be an intellectual exercise, but it sort of becomes one despite itself. By striving for working-class honesty over hard-sell insight, it achieves both. Grentell’s film defines both our nation’s underdog competitiveness towards the mother country and our ultimate acceptance, through the bonding influence of a shared sporting mythology, that we are not that different from each other after all. 

GIRL, BOY, BAKLA, TOMBOY

Stars: Vice Ganda, Maricel Soriano, Joey Marquez, Ruffa Guiterrez, Cristine Reyes, Kiray Celis, Bobby Andrews, JC de Vera, Ejay Falcon and Xyriel Manabat.
Writer: Alyz Henrich
Director: Wenn V Deramas.

Rating: 3/5

The latest giddy, silly, colourful romp from Pinoy low-brow maestro Wenn V Deramas, Girl Boy Bakla Tomboy will test the tolerance of those uninitiated with his trademark mix of crass sentimentality, shrill hijinx and frantic pacing. For those already in on his jokey style (who clearly number in the 10,000s, if the film’s blockbuster status in its homeland is any measure), Deramas’ wacky vision is good-time cinema of the highest order.

Originally a vehicle for local celebrity John Lapus (dismissed from the project when he refused to lose weight for the lead role), Girl Boy Bakla Tomboy has become a high-profile platform for the versatile Vice Ganda to work his considerable physical comedy schtick in four different roles. The film represents a tour de force of sorts for the TV/film actor; the script and pacing does not allow him explore any particular depth across the four siblings he embodies, but he supplies each with a strongly defined personality and vivid physicality.

Ganda’s four archetypes are a family of quadruplets, who are deviously separated into pairs as babies. Their father, Peter (a rather bewildered Joey Marquez) flees to the US with two infants, who grow into LA princess ‘Girlie’ and cool player, Peter. Meanwhile, the birth mother Pia (Marical Soriano, the pick of the support cast) is left with homosexual son Mark and lesbian daughter Panying.

The family is forced back together when it is discovered Peter requires a liver transplant; when Peter and his LA brats return to Manila, wildly farcical set-ups and grand melodrama become the order of the day until the feel-good ending inevitably plays out (and not soon enough, with the running time stretched to an overly indulgent 104 minutes).

Ganda and Deramas have fun with the various techniques that allow the modern filmmaker to place the same actor in the same frame. It is a credit to the technically proficient crew that these scenes work so well and that the film overall has a superbly polished sheen. The director overplays the tiresome trickery for which he is known, such as sped-up, ‘Benny Hill’-style sight gags and meta references (one character claims her subplot is most important because of her order in the films’ title), but anyone buying a ticket for a Wenn Deramas film knows what they are in for by this stage of the director’s career.

It is a given that for some western viewers who may stumble into Girl, Boy, Bakla, Tomboy during its international rollout, the broad caricatures painted of homosexuality will be unforgivably crass (not to mention that one child character spends the entire film in blackface), as will Deramas’ tendency to value a cheap giggle over a worthwhile, narrative-driven laugh. But there is no denying that the filmmaker has savvy commercial instincts (the diasporic Filipino audience that attended the session in Sydney’s western suburbs with Screen-Space bellowed laughter thoughout) and that he has found a free-wheeling soulmate in his energetic, uninhibited leading man. 

HARLOCK: SPACE PIRATE

Voiced by: Shun Oguri, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Miyuki Sawashiro, Arata Furuta, Yu Aoi, Ayano Fujuda, Haruma Miura, Chikao Ohtsuka and Maaya Sakamoto.
Writers: Harutoshi Fukui and Kiyoto Takeuchi; based on the manga text by Leiji Masumoto.
Director: Shinji Aramaki.

Rating: 3.5/5

The dazzling visuals and immense scale employed by director/animator Shinji Aramaki adequately compensate (just) for the derivative narrative in his update/reboot of Leiji Matsumoto’s visionary 1970’s space-opera, ‘Harlock’.

Familiar elements, both from the source material and the wider anime universe, are forgivable given that Matsumoto’s character was a progenitor for many of the genre’s stock-in-trade components (strong, silent, romantic hero; tightly-clad, sexualised femme-warriors; fighting a rebellious cause against a corrupt tyranny).

What may prove tougher for western audiences to let slide are instantly recognisable nods to such high profile properties as Wall-E, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Wars Episodes 4-6. These come thick and fast, in both the film’s environmentally-theme plotting (the rebirth of mankind on a decimated planet Earth registers when a seedling is discovered, ala Pixar’s lovable robot story) and deep-space spectacle (key characters escape a giant worm that lives dormant in a distant space rock, just as Han and Leia did in The Empire Strikes Back).

That said, Aramaki (a legend-of-sorts amongst the Japanese anime crowd having helmed 2004’s blockbuster, Appleseed) amps up his extraordinary dexterity as a framer of pulsating outer-space action and designer of futuristic worlds. He also deftly handles the themes of vengeance, family bonds, memory and honour within the context of the sci-fi genre (a further nod to Lucas’ game-changing films), even if some of the developments strain credibility and, at 115 minutes, patience.

A series of interstitial title-cards detail the premise. Earth was abandoned when the population’s impact grew unmanageable but, with nowhere else to go, the billions returned, hoping to resettle. This triggered a period of brutal civil conflict called the ‘Homecoming Wars’; the Gaia Coalition is formed, a group who rule that the planet is off-limits to mankind.

But the mysterious, immortal space-pirate Harlock (Shun Oguri), a merciless but honourable revolutionary who traverses the galaxy aboard his classically-themed vessel, the Arcadia, with warrior-hottie Kei (Miyuki Sawashiro) at his side and ethereal alien-hottie Mimay (Yu Aoi) providing wisdom, wants to reclaim Earth in defiance of the Coalition’s edict. Gaia strong-arm militant Ezra (Toshiyuki Morikawa) sends his brother, Logan (Haruma Miura), to infiltrate the Arcadia and assassinate Harlock, but the greenie crusade that the enigmatic Captain is on inspires Logan; soon, the brothers are at odds and the extent of the Gaia Coalition’s web of lies and the fate of the planet are at stake.

The project’s adherence to the convoluted, geek-friendly detail of the lore may prove both an asset and a liability. Harlock’s adventures hold cultural significance and genre weight and Aramaki knows it; the film could never be accused of not given the fans what they want. But at a cost of US$30million and with James Cameron’s vocal endorsement all over the marketing, this should feel more geared towards the international audience. Ultimately, it sort of is but sort of isn’t; a smart sci-fi effort with cutting-edge tech rendering should play wider than Harlock: Space Pirate ever will. 

Harlock: Space Pirate will be released on DVD/Blu-ray in Australia in March 2014 via Anchor Bay Entertainment.