AS WE KNOW IT

Stars: Taylor Blackwell, Mike Castle, Oliver Cooper, Danny Mondello, Chris Parnell and Pam Grier.
Writers: Brandon DePaolo, Christopher Francis, Josh Monkarsh.
Director: Josh Monkarsh

Rating: ★ ★ ★

The well-manicured rock gardens of L.A.’s suburban hills are flowing red thanks to Agnes oat milk, a dairy substitute that’s turning Los Angelinos into ravenous zombies in Josh Monkarsh’s As We Know It. This giggly throwback to the teen buddy comedies of the late 90s subs in Mike Castle, as struggling novelist James, and Oliver Cooper, the film’s MVP as oafish stoner Bruce, for ‘Jason Biggs and Seann William Scott’ types; mismatched mates facing off against the undead uprising in a low-key but winningly likable rom-zom-com.

Monkarsh and his co-writing posse of Brandon DePaolo and Christopher Francis don’t leave the connection to chance, setting their story in the late 1990s and riffing on such decade-specific artefacts as Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, brick-like portable home phones, pre-smart TV TVs and those bastions of smallscreen journalism, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Donahue. Also of the period is the Pixie Dream Girl archetype, embodied here by Taylor Blackwell’s doe-eyed and endearingly sassy Emily.

James is in a deep funk, having recently split with Emily; so distracted is he from real life, not only has his writing stalled but he has also failed to cotton-on that his hometown is in the grip of an extinction event. It takes Bruce banging on his front door to bring him into the present; they make to hightail it out of town, but a syphoned gas tank means they have to bunker down in James’ pad (beautifully set decorated by Asiah Thomas-Mandlman and production designed by Lorus Allen).

The ‘rom’ revs up when Emily drops by to say a final goodbye before driving to Seattle with her girlfriends. When the girls meet an ugly demise, Emily is left to survive alongside her ex and his bestie, with whom she also shares an awkward past. In the mix are a food delivery guy on the turn (Danny Mondello), a sexy neighbour (the iconic Pam Grier, clearly having some fun) and SNL alumni Chris Parnell cameoing as an LA affiliate newshound.  

The bittersweet conclusion gels ideally with that particularly late-90s sense of foreboding that the impending new millennium held. Between the lad’s comic chemistry and the occasional teeth-on-flesh ickiness, Monkarsh focuses on the missed opportunity for a soulmate pairing that James and Emily let slip. True love doesn’t quite conquer all in As We Know It, but it is at the centre of this warmly funny spin on the old “better to have loved and lost, than never…” refrain. 

CHRISTMESS

Stars: Steve Le Marquand, Darren Gilshenan, Hannah Joy, Nicole pastor, Aaron Glenane, Damien Nixey and Kya Stewart.
Writer/Director: Heath Davis.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

For an auteur whose trajectory as a character-driven storyteller continues to rise, Heath Davis understands the voice of the fallen everyman with remarkable insight. Across three self-penned features, his lead characters have been men whose lives have peaked without their knowledge and who lean into their inner demons for support on the downward slide. From the football star recovering from a gambling addiction in Broke (2016) to the sarcastic novelist self-medicating his way through a sophomore slump in Book Week (2018), Davis writes about people who are at a moment when personal redemption is within reach, but so is a further fall.

In the bittersweet world of Davis’ latest, Christmess, that tarnished idol is Chris Flint (a terrific Steve Le Marquand, pictured above, reteaming with his Broke director). Chris is a Silver Logie-winning celebrity once so in demand that, in one of the film’s more eccentric revelations, he once acted in a gay love scene with Chris O’Donnell. But Flint’s fame is long gone; substance abuse has led to an extended period in rehab. Upon release, his agent fails to materialise for the promised car ride, meaning Chris has to schlep across Sydney’s western suburban sprawl in the blistering summer heat. A new life beckons, but the first stop is a halfway house…just in time for Christmas.

The comedy/drama framework is at its firmest within the home’s red brick-veneered walls, where Davis’ three-hander character work comes to life. Providing Chris’ new moral compass is sponsor Nick (Darren Gilshenan), a man committed to righting the tragic wrongs of his own past by keeping his charges on a spiritually-focussed road to recovery. Sharing the space is lively wannabe starlet Joy (Middle Kids’ lead singer Hannah Joy, pictured below, in a star-making support turn), with whom Chris develops a sweet bond. Scenes between the three are often staged around the most mundane co-living moments - cooking and cleaning roster; house rules - but with all three living the recovering addict’s mantra ‘one day at a time’, their small moments together carry dramatic weight.

Chris nails down a gig as a mall Santa, an initially hopeful development until a chance encounter with his estranged daughter, Noelle (Nicole Pastor) leads to a very unSanta-like public moment. Chris’ desire to reconnect with his adult child becomes the emotional core of the film, a reminder that this time of the year for many people is not the happiest on the calendar. One of the filmmaker’s strengths is that he can warmly convey empathy and optimism yet, as captured in the final moments of his latest, not forgo real-world truths in favour of seasonal sentimentality.

There is no doubt that Heath Davis has made a Christmas film (just look at those character names), but it is one from an addict’s perspective; from the point-of-view of a damaged man and his friends, each in need of that ‘miracle’ that the season promises and, in most December films, delivers. But Christmess is less a feel-good film and more a ‘just-feel-something’ film. The 25th is just another day for Chris, perhaps a little bit better than the 24th, and Davis helps us understand that is a good day for his fallen star.

CATS OF MALTA

With: Karmen Colerio, Michelle Degura, Salvu Gilson, Polly March, Nikki Micallef, Isaac Muscat, Matthew Pandolfino and Roza Zammit Salinos.
Director: Sarah Jayne Portelli

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

 

Director Sarah Jayne Portelli pivots a sweet-natured travelogue essay on the rampant strays of a central Mediterranean archipelago into a melancholic longing for traditional community values with her effortlessly lovely film, Cats of Malta. The personalities she profiles - feline or otherwise - combine in this charmingly irresistible testament to show one species can grow attached to another species, despite no reciprocation of affection whatsoever.

Maybe that is a little cynical (full disclosure - I’m a dog guy). There is certainly no denying that the expat Australian director has skilfully corralled an endearing collection of human and cat types, all bonded by their shared life on the island, and captured that coexistence against some truly flavourful location photography. 

The opportunity to explore Malta’s ‘Cat Culture’ comes to Portelli through her own ancestry - the project came to life on an extended trip back to her homeland - but her insight is vast; the documentary ultimately reaches beyond its azure shorelines and defines how animals and humans bring out the best in each other. A key thematic component of the documentary is the mental health boost that the island’s co-living arrangement provides.

The director hints at the profundity of this interrelationship with her first subjects, a father-daughter pair who turned their lives upside-down to save Nanoo, a stray that had become a favourite of their patrons just by hanging around. It is revealed that the elderly gentleman feels a kinship with the cat, and many others like it, because he cared for strays with his late wife. 

From this point, Cats of Malta paints a portrait of a place where kindness to fellow creatures is a cherished human virtue, and those who defy or deny the cats’ existence - the greedy developers, like those who demolished the iconic ‘Cat Village’; the cruel, dark-hearted types who deliberately maim or poison - are the true scourge of a modern society.

Portelli doesn’t address all the issues that might be raised when an island of 316 km2 (122 sq mi) - the tenth-smallest country by area - is populated by 100,000 cats. Not to be indelicate, but…surely there is an ‘odour’ problem? And the species as a whole is not exactly known for their silent ‘nighttime activities.’ More seriously, anti-cat advocates are denied right-of-reply when some of their actions are put under the spotlight.

All of which would unravel the sheer positivity at the heart of Cats of Malta, and that would be a shame. The joy that caring for and sharing life with the island’s four-legged fur-people is more than enough to sustain the upbeat narrative. Sarah Jayne Portelli captures a utopian existence for those who draw soul-enriching pleasure from caring unquestioningly, and of those who are happy to lap it up. 

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi and Scott Shepherd.
Writers: Eric Roth, Martin and David Grann. Based on the 2017 book by David Grann.
Director: Martin Scorsese.

Rating:  ★ ★ ★

The latest match-up of Marty, Leo and Bobby is based on journalist David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book, which investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s. Big oil deposits were discovered beneath their native title-held land and the state court awarded rights and all profits to the Osage people.

But cunning capitalists devise a plot to eliminate the Osage. White settlers marry themselves to Osage women, binding themselves by wedlock to the Osage oil receipts, and soon any full blood relatives in line for the money are found dead. Officially, the count of the wealthy Osage victims reaches 20, though likely hundreds more were killed. The book details the newly formed FBI's investigation of the murders, as well as the eventual trial and conviction of cattleman William King Hale as the mastermind behind the plot.

The lead character in the book is investigator Tom White. In the film, he’s played by Jesse Plemons, though doesn’t make an appearance until about the two hour mark. Instead, Scorsese’s protagonist is returned WW1 serviceman Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo di Caprio. He’s not a very interesting or complex character, and Leo gives one of his less convincing performances, but he does provide Scorsese with a device upon which to pivot his plotting with flashbacks that slowly reveal Ernest to be an easily-manipulated and violent tool of cattleman kingpin William ‘King’ Hale (Robert de Niro). 

Scorsese’s key interest in this narrative is the criminal machinations of the plot, which is no surprise given his career has almost exclusively been that type of film. Women in Scorsese films are usually victimised or bullied into sadness, mostly present to show what scumbags his lead characters are, like in Raging Bull or The Wolf of Wall Street or Casino or Goodfellas or Taxi Driver or Gangs of New York (that is, if they are present at all, like in The Irishman or The Departed).

He casts the brilliant Lily Gladstone as Osage woman Molly, the strongest sister in a family of strong women...or so we are left to assume. She is smart and sensitive and proudly Osage, but she’s subservient and naive when it comes to the actions of her brutish husband, Ernest. With her whole tribe dying around her, Ernest (and Scorsese) keeps her quiet by plying her drugs and deceit…until good white man medicine saves her and she gets a brief moment to confront Ernest about his actions.      

Molly is a support character in what should be her story. Instead, Scorsese gives more screen time than he should to toothless hillbilly henchmen or, even more worryingly, one-dimensional depictions of Osage as violent drunks or mentally unwell or noble but nonplussed. Although he exhibits his usual technical flair and filmmaking bravado, Scorsese skirts around the issues that could’ve been addressed to tell a story we’ve already seen him tell.

VIOLETT

Stars: Georgia Eyers, Angela Punch McGregor, Sam Dudley, Valentina Blagojevic, Simon Lockwood, Mani Shanks, Kingsley Judd, Jay Jay Jegathesan and Suzi Aleqaby.
Writer/Director: Steven J. Mihaljevic

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

VIOLETT is the Closing Night feature at The 2023 A Night of Horror International Film Festival. For session details, click here.

Steven J. Mihaljevic displays a true auteur’s vision in his second feature, the dark psychological drama Violett. A grieving mother spirals deeper into her own inner darkness when she employs familiar imagery from her missing daughter’s past to help cope with her misery. But the images she conjures are filtered through her rage and desperation, resulting in a nightmarish modern fairy tale that the Perth filmmaker presents in pitch black shadows, rich primary colours and brilliantly-realised bleakness.

As Sonya, the young mother struggling to define the line between shattered reality and corrosive insanity, Georgia Eyers delivers a star-making performance of achingly tangible anguish. Her face a pall of ashen anxiety, her eyes hollowed by corrosive sadness, Eyers (having worked with her director on his debut feature, The Xrossing) crafts a potent examination of guilt-ridden remorse. The actress has a lock on ‘shattered young woman’ roles at present, with her empathetic performance in Nick Kozakis’ Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism also gaining great notices.

Not unlike how Neil Jordan adapted the ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ story to evoke complex adult themes in his cult classic The Company of Wolves, so too does Mihaljevic borrow from dark fairy tale iconography to portray his take on Sonya’s grief. Most arresting of all his twisted visions is Jay Jay Jegathesan’s street artist monster ‘Victor’, fashioned on Australian kid-TV favourite Mr Squiggle. Also certain to haunt audiences is Simon Lockwood’s hideous The Candy Man, whose finger-food specialty is the stuff of nightmares.  

While not quite a ‘Keyser Soze’-size final reel rug-pull, Mihaljevic certainly shows a brazen confidence in how he plays out his narrative, in a move that adds further depth and dimension to his leading lady’s performance. The other key contributors are DOP Shane Piggott, whose emotive use of bold colour and sodden blackness is exquisite, and Australian acting legend Angela Punch McGregor, a towering presence in an all-too-rare big screen role.

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

Stars: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Wes Tank, Doug Mancheski, Luis Rico and Jay Brown
Writers: Mike Cheslik, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews
Director: Mike Cheslik

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

 Screening: SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL, Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th of September at Dendy Cinemas Newtown.

When his turn-of-the-19th-century applejack distillery is razed from under his ruddy nose by some of the titular critters, our hero Jean refocusses his life goals in the giddily adorable Hundreds of Beavers, director Mike Cheslik’s impossibly winning spin on love in the time of Castor canadensis.

From the ruins of his booze factory, Jean (played by Ryland Brickson Cole Tews with the kind of honed comic timing that Oscar should note, but won’t) is cast into the north-eastern snowscapes of the USA, every effort he undertakes to resurrect his capitalistic dreams thwarted by the buck-toothed rodents (as well as rabbits, raccoons, wolves, fish and a pesky woodpecker). 

It is only when Jean falls for ‘The Furrier’ (an exotic Olivia Graves) and tasked by her father (Wes Bank) to deliver one hundred beaver pelts if he wants her hand in marriage, does the down-on-his-luck but always upbeat woodsman find the drive to succeed. The whole gloriously madcap, ‘Looney Tunes’-y spectacle ends on a scale so grandly inspired, its exalted status in film history is assured.

Pummeling elegantly through slapstick setup, sight gag and lo-fi effects mastery over the course of their delirious romp, Cheslik and writer/leading man Tews craft a monochromatic masterwork ripe with the DNA of the silent film classics of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. 

The pair earned a cult following amongst the indie crowd and cryptid fanatics with 2018’s Lake Michigan Monster, an equally daft no-budgeter that only unravelled when the dialogue delivery couldn’t match the visual magic. Almost entirely spoken-word free, Hundreds of Beavers will up the cult numbers hanging on their every frame considerably, as well as convince critics and audiences that there is strong pulse left in the ambitious filmmaking flourishes of yesteryear. 

ALIENS UNCOVERED: THE GOLDEN RECORD

Writer/Director: Clive Christopher

Rating: ★ ★

The latest polished piece of wildly speculative UFO gibber from showman theorist Clive Christopher is more of the same from the media mini-mogul, who's The All Tales Channel and previous ‘Aliens Uncovered’ pics hue to the style guide he employs here. There is no denying his earnest approach to the eternally-popular E.T. mystery is eminently watchable, but the Arizona-based filmmaker takes some big swings here that don’t often connect. 

A not-entirely cohesive potpourri of pseudo-scientific conjecture, public domain sound-bites, eyewitness accounts and staged dramatics, Christopher takes the 1977 launch of deep-space probe Voyager that contained ‘The Golden Record’, a collection of planet-defining facts that were known as The Sounds of Earth. If you’ve seen John Carpenter’s Starman (if you’ve read this far, I’m assuming you have), you’ll recall Jeff Bridges reciting The Rolling Stones’ lyric, “I can't get no. Satisfaction”, a pop-culture snippet he learned from Voyager’s shiny disc. 

In his opening salvo of fast, fun factoids, the director conjures a conspiratorial web that ties together ex-presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush, iconic astronomer Carl Sagan and the CIA, among other disparate elements, none of which sticks the landing. Dropping in dog-whistle doozies like ‘deep web’ as if the very mention makes them real is counterproductive to inspiring belief amongst all but the most feverish UAP gawkers. 

The mid-section mostly resembles one of those paranormal podcasts whose listeners (i.e., me) will gravitate towards films like The Golden Record, but with pictures. Christopher recounts oft-told stories using already-well circulated recordings, like the weather watcher who tracked lights over Lake Michigan in the mid-90s and the connection between UFOs, comets and the horrible history of the Heaven’s Gate cult. It all amounts to old news being repackaged for a new audience, which is fine, but…you know, old. 

The Golden Record then begins to touch on The Phoenix Lights, one of ufology’s most famous sighting incidents, but pulls up short so as not to pop the weather balloon that will be  Clive Christopher’s next film. Maybe that film will bring full-circle the tidal wave of “What-if”-isms that the director originally posed here, because nothing about how The Golden Record ends references how The Golden Record begins.

ALIENS UNCOVERED: THE GOLDEN RECORD is on selected US V.O.D. channels from July 4. 

MOOMINVALLEY: SEASON 3, EPISODES 4, 8, 12

Voice Cast: Taron Edgerton, Rosamund Pike, Warwick Davis, Bel Powley, Matt Berry, Jack Rowan, Chance Perdomo, Edvin Endre and Jennifer Saunders.
Writers: Josie Day, Mark Huckerby, Nick Ostler, Paula Dinan; based on characters created by Tove Jansson.
Director: Darren Robbie.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

 Screening at the 2023 Children’s International Film Festival from May 27 in Sydney and Melbourne.

Finnish author Tove Jansson’s sweet and heartfelt Moomins family adventures have entranced European audiences since they were first published in 1945 in the picture book, ‘The Moomins and the Great Flood’. The fairy-tale existence that Jansson envisioned for her creations - a rustic, rural life in a wooded valley, surrounded by fantasy forest denizens and towering, frosted Alpine peaks - has reached iconic status in the Scandi states, and is increasingly adored abroad.

Having conquered family markets internationally over their eight delightful decades (including a 1974 opera, a 1990 animated series that sold to 60 countries, and theme parks in Finland and Japan), the latest incarnation of the Moomins adventures is Moominvalley, the 2019 animated series now in its third season. Three English-dubbed episodes will have their Australian Premiere at the 2023 Children’s International Film Festival, satiating the small but burgeoning Australian fanbase.     

The first of the three 22-minute original narratives is ‘Inventing Snork’, in which cheeky pre-teen Moomintroll (revoiced by Taron Edgerton) tries to help the socially-awkward Snork better understand the value of friendship through compassion. The thematic throughline is accepting people for who they are, a familiar humanistic beat in Moomins’ storytelling. Rounding out the series is ‘Moominmamma's Flying Dream’, a sweet story in which Moominmamma's love of hot air ballooning is rekindled by her son, only for everyone to reach the conclusion that the joys of family is life’s greatest adventure. 

The best of the trio is the middle episode, ‘Lonely Mountain’. Moomintroll cancels his hibernation to find his best friend Snufkin, who has ventured deep into the mysterious Lonely Mountains for some meditative solitude. Moomintroll misses his friend and acts on that self-focussed longing, not realising that Snufkin’s time away helps make him the special friend he is. The range of complex emotions explored in the scenes between Moomintroll and Snufkin is terrific character-driven animation; the grandeur of the region and the harsh realities of both the wintry outdoors and growing up are beautifully realised.

In the three episodes programmed for the festival, we get a good indication as to why the Moomins have remained one of Finland's most beloved exports and Tove Jansson’s exalted status as a teller of meaningful fantasy tales is etched deeply in European culture. The Moomins speak to the profound truths in family life, steeped in the beautiful colours of their homeland and the vivid world of the imagination.

HUNGER

Stars Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Nopachai Jayanama and Gunn Svasti Na Ayudhya
Writer: Kongdej Jaturanrasamee
Director: Sitisiri Mongkolsiri

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

The Hunger of the title is a double-edged kitchen knife in director Sitisiri Mongkolsiri’s cutting, often bittersweet piece of high society takedown. Set in the ostentatious world of ultra artistic fine dining, Hunger speaks of the craving in us all to consume food prepared in a way far more elegantly than being easily digestible requires. This is food as art, and art that carries with it all the emotions, anxieties and eccentricities of the artist.

Hunger is also about craving a status above the social standing into which you are born, an existence that demands thin slivers of your soul be trimmed away to climb above those just like to secure a place amongst the wealthy but grotesquely compromised humans that appear to you to be better…somehow.

Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying plays Aoy, a talented young street chef at her family’s Thai noodle cafe. She discovers what she didn’t know she wanted when a scout for an elite food prep outfit slips her a card emboldened with the word ‘Hunger’. It’s a ticket to the world of Chef Paul’s kitchen; Paul, played with a fierce intensity by Nopachai Chaiyanam, likes her street-food touch, and starts breaking her down so he can build her up in his image (like JK Simmons did to Miles Teller in Whiplash).

Soon, Aoy is letting the family values upon which she was raised slide and the allure of attaining a certain type of ‘special’ social place is taking hold. Paul has long slipped into the amoral world of corruption, wearing the arrogance of existing above the law like a badge. Hunger spirals with an increasing unease towards one of two potential endings - a huge fall from grace, or a moralistic realisation to be careful what you wish for.

Hunger feels a bit overlong, but that only raises the question of what to omit, and that is not easy to answer. It plays equally convincingly as both a large-scale takedown of the vacuous, soulless upper class Bangkok society types, or as a more intimate character duel between Aoy and Paul, with her very humanity at stake. And, of course, it is an absolute feast for food lovers, whether you prefer the noodle cafe nosh or the food-as-art high dining plates.

CHRISSY JUDY

Stars: Todd Flaherty, Wyatt Fenner, Joey Taranto, Kiyon Spencer, James Tison, Nicole Spiezio, João Pedro Santos and Olivia Oguma.
Writer/Director: Todd Flaherty.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A drag performer faces an uncertain future on all existential fronts in Todd Flaherty’s endearing comedy/drama, Chrissy Judy. A major achievement for the multi-hyphenate, who not only gives a charming, star-making lead turn but also wrote, directed and edited this bittersweet slice of gay modern life, this 2022 festival favourite is a big-hearted examination of friendship and community wrapped in a classic show business narrative.

A dashing screen presence, Flaherty plays ‘Judy’, one half of the performance duo ‘Chrissy Judy’, a drag act that once held promise but has been floundering as gigs grow smaller and audiences less appreciative. Wyatt Fenner matches Flaherty’s charisma as ‘Chrissy’, now nearing thirty and increasingly focussed on emotional and financial stability over stardom-chasing pipedreams. 

Once inseparable as friends, Chrissy and Judy are drifting apart; at a Fyre Island beach house with their committed friends, the strain that different life directions is taking on their bond begins to show. Soon, Chrissy departs to start a new life in Philadelphia with his on-off partner Shawn (Kiyon Spencer), leaving Judy on his downward professional spiral and struggling to fill the void left in his emotional fabric by Chrissy’s absence.

Flaherty sets his film up as a classic New York City romance; the stunning black & white lensing by Brendan Flaherty invokes the spirit of Woody Allen’s Manhattan and, for younger auds, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. It is a mood that keeps Judy’s (or James, revealed in a moment of tenderness) journey buoyant, but shaded in dark greys; he reconnects with past acquaintances and instigates doomed flings to try to find new meaning in life, only for the emptiness to become more and more apparent.

The fulfilling tenderness of the gay lifestyle, or the showbiz community, or the family unit are all explored in Flaherty’s effortlessly affecting script, but it is ultimately Judy’s re-evaluating of what defines him as a human that drives Chrissy Judy. LGBTIQA+ audiences will appreciate the knowing nods to the gay-specific life (including some occasionally frank language and sexual content), but Judy/James’ story is a universally recognisable one, and told with a degree of intelligence and empathy that is rare.