For A Few Movies More

It’s hard to explain just how much of an experience a screening of The Room is. The mega-event that was directed, written, and financed by its star, Tommy Wiseau (no, you haven’t heard of him before) is something that cannot be told — it must be experienced. And don’t judge this movie by its poster. Don’t let it put you off. If you think that picture is bad, wait till you see him naked. These kinds of un-rewards await you.

When I first heard about The Room, and people started talking about it, I was adamant to not put down hard-earned cash to watch it.  I mean, why waste money on a movie that everyone is telling me is bad? Can’t I just catch it on DVD? The answer is No. A bad movie watched by yourself at home is just a bad movie. But we all know that a bad movie watched together… That just takes it to a whole new level. You know, like the difference of Sam Worthington in Avatar plugging his hair into a horse-thing, as opposed to the whole Na’vi tribe plugging into the grid. Or something.

So I finally got around to going to a screening, and was astounded by the euphoria people had for this piece of crap. The applause that erupted when his name comes on screen, the enthusiasm people have to pass on the knowledge to everyone they know. When Tommy Wiseau goes to screenings, people mob him, clamouring to touch his arm. A picture with Tommy gives you automatic Superstar status. How does this happen for a crap movie? Is he our generation’s Ed Wood? (Who didn’t actually achieve his notoriety during his lifetime)

Adam Green’s debut feature Hatchet was a super gory immature throwback to American slasher films of the ’80s. While it was a fun ride and boasted some impressive effects, in the direction department, it was a little rough around the edges. So I’m happy to report that with Green’s second feature, Frozen, his directional skills have matured to deliver a much more polished final product.

Frozen’s premise is simple; if you were stuck up in chairlift, forgotten by the staff members of a ski resort and faced with severe weather conditions, what would you do? It’s a concept you will be thinking about long after the credits have rolled as you imagine how you would have tackled the situation differently.

A day on the slopes turns into a nightmare for Dan (Kevin Zegers), Joe (Shawn Ashmore) and Parker (Emma Bell) when an unobservant chairlift operator prematurely shuts down the chairlifts after mistaking three other skiers as the last for the day, all the while our leads hang suspended high above the icy slopes. True panic doesn’t set in until the resort’s lights are switched off one by one, leaving them alone in pitch darkness with only the plummeting temperature for company. Realising they’ve been forgotten and that the resort is going to be closed for the next week, they need to come up with a plan of action fast, or else risk freezing to death. It’s an intriguing set-up that lives up to it’s potential by throwing a fair share of thrills and chills our way all the while moving along at a brisk pace. Sure, it’s easy to point out a few silly flaws, you will have to suspend your disbelief slightly at the way they wind up being forgotten, and the characters do make a few questionable decisions themselves, but really, I was having too good a time to really mind all that much.

The Kids Are All Right will probably be known as “That Lesbian Couple Movie”. Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything good or bad — but it probably does suck a bit to have your movie shoved into a high-concept-one-liner like that. Inevitably, people will make a judgement call based on that one aspect of the story. So first up, I want to say; I wasn’t expecting this movie to be bad or anything… I just didn’t expect it to be this good either.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have a happy, white-picket-fence, upper-middle class life with their two kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). That is until the kids track down their biological father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo) — the guy that donated his sperm so that the ladies could have kids — and all sorts of suburbia-type hell breaks loose.

As mentioned at the beginning, I was really surprised by how funny this movie is. I mean, you look at the poster, trailer, synopsis, and kind of think “Oh, it’s gonna be one of those indie dramas.” And it is, to a certain extent. But a lot of the lines and situations were genuinely funny, and not in that making-fun way that you might expect (having two mums means constantly talking about your feelings, that’s hilarious!…). Which isn’t to say these kinds of dramas aren’t funny — I just wasn’t expecting this one to be. A lot of the laughs come from humour done simply, and without being overly theatrical. It’s no suprise that it has great acting, with such a great cast involved; top-notch from the oldies, simple and believable from the young ones.

It’s tricky to categorise what genre Wasted On The Young would fit, but I guess it would sit somewhere between a high-school drama and a thriller, with a hint of a revenge film thrown into the mix. I guess it’s this mixing of genres which makes this new little Australian flick so compelling. You can never really tell what direction it’s headed and when you think you’ve got it all figured out, it throws a curveball and completely blindsides you. Sure, it’s far from being a perfect film, but it’s a pretty damn impressive debut from writer/director Ben C. Lucas.

The plot follows amazingly gorgeous Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens), a newly enrolled high-school student who develops a crush on geeky loner Darren (Oliver Ackland). Unfortunately, Darren lives with his massive douchebag of a stepbrother Zack (Alex Russel) who generally gets what he wants, and right now, he’s got his sights set on Xandrie. So far so clichéd right? After one of Zack’s trademark out-of-control parties, Xandrie goes missing under suspicious circumstances with all evidence pointing towards Zack and his asshole buddies. Darren decides it’s time to start investigating himself, and this is where Wasted On The Young starts to get interesting. At this stage I felt like the film was on the verge of becoming a Brick clone, which wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing. But then a certain something happens around the halfway point which sends the story down an entirely different track. To say anything more would spoil the many twists and turns it has in store.

Dream Home is an amazingly violent movie! Seriously. I have a pretty high tolerance for cinematic violence, but Dream Home had me feeling squeamish in no time. And judging by the frequent groans form the audience, it sounded like the rest of the cinema felt the same way.

Cheng Lai-sheung (Josie Ho) is a young, independent woman working two jobs so she can afford to invest in a fancy uptown apartment complex — her dream home if you will. But when the deal falls through, she decides to take matters into her own hands and starts to murder her potential neighbours to lower the housing price and to convince the occupants to sell, just like any rational human being would do.

As ridiculous as that plot sounds, I kind of like it. It has potential to be a dark, twisted horror/black comedy while making a point regarding how unaffordable housing prices are to the average worker in Hong Kong. I thought that this social commentary element of the film actually translated pretty well and, shock horror, I actually felt like I learnt something! Unfortunately the sequences in which Chang Lai-sheung commits mass murder throughout the apartment complex just feels like an excuse for the director to film a series of excruciatingly brutal murders. The film tries to add some substance by constantly cutting back to Chang Lai-sheung’s childhood in a hope to explain how she became so screwed up. The problem with these sequences is that they’re generally uninteresting. So in other words, you’re either uninterested by the flashbacks or disgusted by the gruesome sequences. Take you’re pick!

There are movies you love, movies you hate, and sometimes, there are movies you simply couldn’t care less about either way.  Possessed is a movie that falls in the latter category. It’s not that it’s a bad, it’s just so neutral!

When Hee-jin’s (Sang-mi Nam) sister So-jin (Shim Eun-kyung) goes missing, she starts to conduct her own investigation along with detective Tae-hwan (Seung-Ryong Ryu). But when the neighbours start turning up dead, strange evidence emerges which points to the possibility that So-jin could be possessed by a malicious spirit. I would love to tell you more about the story but the truth is, I didn’t know what the hell was going on half the time! But what follows are a series of increasingly weird-ass scenes that raise more and more unanswered questions. If anybody knows what was up with the random teeth found in the park I would love to hear from you!

The biggest problem I have with Possessed is that for a horror movie, it’s simply not scary. We get the stock-standard creepy Asian girls with long dark hair covering their face combined with a bunch of jump scares in an attempt to shock some life out of the audience. The one and only genuinely creepy scene involving Hee-jin trapped in a room with a strange animal man with an urge for scratching, turns out to be a huge disappointment once it’s revealed it’s only a dream sequence. Also for a horror film, nearly every death scene takes place off screen. Although thinking back, I don’t think I would really want to watch a man profusely vomiting to death in gory detail… or do I… no, probably not.

Just be warned that I might be biased about this movie because it has Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it. I have a fixation, I know. But my opinion on this movie is not entirely blind. Were JGL not in this, Hesher would still be an awesomely funny and slightly strange movie that will attract anyone who loves dark humour (and possibly Metal) in their cinema.

The story centres on TJ (Devin Brochu), a kid who is coping with a borderline-zombie-dad (Rainn Wilson) after the death of his mum. Obsessed with getting back the destined-for-the-scrap-heap car that his mum died in, and being targeted by a school bully, things are kind of sucky for TJ. Enter Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) — metal-loving, strangely violent and impulsive, with a habit of popping up out of nowhere. Hesher suddenly moves in with TJ’s family for no real reason, and soon the two start hanging out in a weird kind of way.

It’s one of my favourite components of movies, but Hesher (the movie) really does have great characters. And Hesher (the character) is a great one indeed. Not really someone you’d want to mess with, even though physically he’s not that imposing. He says what he wants (which can be hilariously dead-pan), but doesn’t really say much at all. And his actions are sometimes sweet, sometimes completely random. Impartiality on my part towards the actor aside, Gordon-Levitt does a great job with this character that may not be liked by everybody, but will be adored by those who do.

I am now in love with Taika Waititi. OK, I said it. The man responsible for this amazingly funny, sweet, odd, and to quote Boy himself, interesting world, must be a great man indeed. But that’s enough gushing for now, let’s move on.

The movie opens and we meet Boy (James Rolleston) — a kid growing up in beachside New Zealand who idolises his dad and Michael Jackson, has a crush on older girl Chardonnay, and takes care of an assortment of siblings and cousins while their grandmother is out of town for a funeral.

Out of the blue after who knows how many years, Boy’s dad Alamein (Taika Waititi) drops into town to stay for a while. And while Boy is starstruck by his cool dad, Boy’s sensitive younger brother Rocky (Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu) isn’t so sure. From the moment you realise Alamein is sticking around for a while, you know that things will happen. And how! Everything from buried treasure, to pot, to dream sequences, even to a little bit of social commentary is snuck in, and there’s never a dull moment.

I’m a huge horror fan, and out of the dozens of horror films I watch a month, first time writer-director Sean Bryne’s The Loved Ones stands head and bloody toes above most that I’ve seen for a long time. And as a horror fan this is exactly the kind of film I’m always looking out for, something completely original, bloody as hell, and constantly throwing surprises your way. Oh yeah, and it’s completely and utterly insane, and I mean that in the best sort of way. This movie cranks the crazy up to 11 and never looks back.

Besides owing a lot to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Carrie, The Loved Ones has to have one of the most ingenious and flat out entertaining screenplays to have come out of Australia for some time. Brent (Xavier Samuel) is a teenager coping with the death of his father after a bizarre road accident which placed him at the wheel. Cut to six months later and he is still overwhelmed by emotional grief. With the school formal looming, he doesn’t feel too much like attending but reluctantly agrees to go along with his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine). Unfortunately for him, Lola (Robin McLeavy), a fellow attendee at his school who has harboured an unhealthy crush on him, has a different idea in store. With the help of her father (John Brumpton), they kidnap and drag him back to their secluded property to celebrate their own twisted formal celebrations. Needless to say, much blood is spilt along the way. To say any more would ruin the surprises and the fun The Loved Ones has in store. It’s the kind of film which you’re better off walking into with as little knowledge about it as possible.

City cop Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) moves to the ultra small town of Red Hill with his pregnant wife. Unfortunately, during the first day in his new position as a rural cop, an escaped convict breaks out of prison and heads for Red Hill to deal out some old-fashioned revenge on the locals and cops who put him away in the first place.

My expectations were high going into Red Hill. With its intriguing premise and early slick-looking trailer, Red Hill was shaping up to be the next big Australian genre film. Unfortunately due to a few missteps along the way, it had me frequently shaking my head and longing for the movie which it could have been and so nearly was.

First off for a low budget movie, Red Hill looks amazing. There are some incredibly impressive shots, some of which look like they could be individual panels pulled straight out of a comic book. These visual stylings really helped elevate the film above its low budget roots and create the illusion of a much larger budget.

The great use of the rural location goes a long way in fleshing out the western vibe the film has running through it as well as convincing the audience of the town’s desolate location and tiny population.