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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 25 January 2016

When trying to describe this storyline to a friend, the first adjective that came to mind was “unimaginable”.  That doesn’t really fit though.  The fact that audiences can “imagine” themselves in the same situation is what makes it so terrifying.  It is a work of fiction based on the novel by Emma Donoghue but we know that such events have occurred before.

The first half of the film is set entirely in a soundproof room that is roughly 3 metres by 3 metres.  It’s where Joy Newsome (Larson) has spent the last 7 years of her life.  She was kidnapped as a 17-year-old and has been held captive by a man who has never revealed his name (Nick).  He provides her with meagre amounts of food and rapes her on a daily basis.

It’s obvious from her body language that Joy is a defeated woman.  She’s given up hope of rescue and her feeble escape plans have amounted to nothing.  The only thing that keeps her going is her 5-year-old son, Jack (Tremblay).  He was born in the tiny room and has no idea of the expansive world that exists outside its walls.

It’s hard to envisage any child turning out “normal” from such an ordeal but the catch is that Jack doesn’t know any different.  For years, his mother has told him that “room” is all that exists in the world.  The dogs and squirrels they see in shows on their rundown television are all make believe.  Joy has fed these stories to her curious son to help protect him.  He’s not yet ready to deal with the reality of their situation.

The trailer gives it away and so I’m not revealing too much when I say they eventually make it outside of their room.  The escape offers the film’s most intense sequence.  What follows are their troubled attempts to adjust to a completely new life.  Jack has few social skills and has been taken completely out of his comfort zone.  Joy is still traumatised and is struggling to fit back into a world that believed she was dead.

Winner of the coveted People’s Choice Award at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, Room is both horrifying and inspiring.  It shows us the best and worst of the human condition.  In their respective leading roles, Brie Larson (Short Term 12) and newcomer Jacob Tremblay have created a powerful, credible bond.  Larson is the short priced favourite to win the best actress Oscar next month and you’ll feel a huge amount of empathy for both characters.

My only problem with the film was that it’s told largely from the perspective of Jack.  He provides the narration and it’s through his downward looking eyes that we see events unfold.  This works within the room but in the outside world, it feels limiting.  Joy’s continual disintegration becomes the more interesting subplot but she slips from view in the later stages.  A moment where she is interrogated by a television reporter never rings true.

Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including best picture and best director, Room hits most of its marks.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 06 January 2016

There’s a natural pressure when a screenwriter tries to adapt one of their favourite novels into movie form.  They want to take their love for the story and impart similar feelings on a new, wider audience.  It was a challenge faced by Phyllis Nagy who had an extra burden to carry with The Price of Salt (later renamed Carol).  Not just a fan of the book, Nagy was a close friend of author Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) up until her death in 1995.  She wanted to make something great to honour her memory.

Set in 1952, the early scenes are told from the perspective of twenty-something Therese Belivet (Mara), a shy woman who works in the toy section of a large department store.  It is there where she meets Carol Aird (Blanchett), an impeccably dressed mother looking to buy a Christmas present for her young daughter.  They share a simple conversation and Carol makes a purchase.  Their encounter is over in a matter of minutes.

It’s not until just after that Therese notices the gloves left by Carol on the counter.  She gets her address from the order docket, wraps the gloves, and puts them in the mail.  You should already be thinking by this point.  Is Therese just being a nice person or is she using this as a means to interact again?  What about Carol’s perspective?  Did she leave the gloves deliberately or was it just a forgetful moment?

Carol is quick to make the first few moves.  She invites Therese out for lunch and then asks her to visit her country home.  The naive Therese keeps saying “yes” but she’s not entirely sure where it’s leading.  It takes a little time but she finally harnesses the courage and starts probing for information – “I want to ask you things but I’m not sure if you want me to.”

It’s clear these two want to spend time together but those around them are intent on pulling them apart.  Carol has filed for divorce from her husband, Harge (Chandler), but he’s not so keen to let go.  He’s prepared to smear his wife’s name and rely on a “morality clause” to obtain full custody of their only child.  As this goes on, Therese is being pursued by multiple guys who mistakenly believe she is timid as opposed to uninterested.

Carol is a beautifully shot film that captures the mix of nervousness and excitement that comes with most new relationships.  The fact that it involves a same-sex couple in the 1950s adds to the complexity.  It was time when lesbians felt pressure from friends and family to “conform” and marry a man.  A homosexual herself, Highsmith drew on her own experiences and feelings in writing the novel.

Nagy and director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) deserve praise for the style they’ve brought to the material.  As a homage to David Lean’s 1945 classic Brief Encounter, the film is bookended by a scene in a restaurant where Carol and Therese are interrupted at an inopportune time.  This passage also highlights an important detail.  As the power in the relationship shifts from Carol to Therese, the film’s focus shifts from Therese to Carol.

Both Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) and Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) deliver sublime performances with each on track for another Academy Award nomination.  Mara won the best actress prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival where the film had its world premiere.  Costume designer Sandy Powell (Shakespeare in Love) and the talented make-up and hair styling team also deserve praise in helping capture the era.

It took close to twenty years to get Carol made but the wait has been worth it.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 24 January 2016

In January 2002, the Boston Globe published a series of articles exposing a major cover up within the Catholic archdiocese of Boston.  Priests had been abusing children for decades.  Instead of confessing their sins, the Catholic Church had used their wealth and power to keep it hidden from the public.  The newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in recognition of their efforts in bringing the issue to the world’s attention.

Writer-director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) has brought this engrossing tale to the screen in Spotlight.  As we see during the opening scenes, the spark that lit the fire was Marty Baron (Schreiber), a shrewd journalist who took on the chief editor role at the Boston Globe in July 2001.  Intrigued by a small story about a convicted priest, he asked his newspaper’s four-person investigative unit, Spotlight, to dig deeper.  Was this an isolated incident or something much bigger?

The Catholic Church has a lot to answer for.  There’s no doubt about that.  Spotlight goes a step further though and also points the finger at the “enablers” who allowed child abuse to occur for so long.  Lawyers for the Church asked victims to sign confidentiality agreements to keep things quiet.  Journalists failed to grasp the magnitude of the problem when reporting on isolated cases.  Parishioners were unwilling to question the religious institution that was so critical to their lives.  It’s as if everyone knew but no one wanted to say anything.

McCarthy spent months researching the subject to ensure the film was as factually accurate as possible.  He enlisted co-writer Josh Singer (The West Wing, The Fifth Estate) to help out given the breadth of material.  They have included a daringly large number of subplots but each has been given sufficient attention.  McCarthy and Singer used creative licence and have met the challenge of condensing such a wide story into a mere two hours.

Their script highlights the tough challenges that all investigative journalists face.  For example, there’s a moment where a Spotlight journalist (Ruffalo) tries to coax valuable information from a frazzled lawyer representing abuse victims (Tucci).  It’s clear the lawyer has something he wants to get off his chest but his obligations to his clients and his profession put him in a tough moral space.  You can sense the trust that is slowly growing between these two characters as the narrative progresses.

This is clearly one of the year's best films and the performances of the cast cannot be faulted.  Rachel McAdams is superb as a journalist who delicately speaks with several victims of child abuse and encourages them to go public with their stories.  Mark Ruffalo is equally impressive as a reporter struggling to keep his emotions in check while going after key legal documents.  Liev Schreiber is terrific as the boss who, despite his emotionless disposition, says the right things to keep his staff on track.  Michael Keaton is picking up early awards season buzz with his portrayal as a journalist putting pressure on old friends to confirm critical sources.

During the filmmaking process, someone mentioned to McCarthy that “it’s a great time to be part of local corruption.”  He was referring to staff cuts within newspapers and the dwindling of resources put into high-quality investigative journalism.  On top of all the other thought-provoking themes in Spotlight, it makes you wonder what stories are slipping through the cracks today.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 06 January 2016

In March 2011, I held a pessimistic view about the Australian economy.  Teaming up with a few friends, we purchased a derivative that was “shorting” the ASX200 (Australia’s top 200 companies).  To sum it up in a sentence – the more the market went down, the more money we made.  Our hunch turned out to be correct.  The ASX200 dropped roughly 20% and we tripled our cash in the space of 5 months.

I’m not overly proud of my investment.  To make a profit, I was relying on bad economic data such as high unemployment and a sagging gross domestic product.  I made the small $1,000 investment to highlight that the world’s financial markets are flawed.  Analysts kept spruiking an economic recovery (and this was pushing stock prices up) but there was plenty of reliable data to suggest otherwise.  The experts aren’t always right.  A lack of regulation and numerous conflicts of interest can make them very difficult to trust.

Never was that more evident than during the global financial crisis (GFC).  In the preceding years, banks had been negligently/fraudulently (take your pick) lending money to property investors who were always going to struggle to meet the repayments.  Instead of wearing the risk themselves, the banks packaged thousands of mortgages and sold them to investors.  Ratings agencies gave them top marks.  The regulators had no concerns.  It all went pear shaped in mid-2007 when mortgage defaults skyrocketed and the housing market collapsed. 

The GFC has already been covered in two brilliant films.  Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job won the Oscar for best documentary feature and used a plethora of interviews to show the systemic corruption that led to the financial meltdown.  That was followed up a year later with J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call – a fictional drama about a bank trying to offload dodgy investments over a 36-hour period as the crisis began to unfold.  These movies left audiences shaking their heads but the startling fact still remains – only one person was ever jailed for their actions during the GFC.  It’s almost impossible to believe.

Director Adam McKay tackles the same subject matter in The Big Short but from a different perspective.  Based on the much acclaimed non-fiction book by Michael Lewis (Moneyball), it begins in 2005 and follows three groups of people who predicted the crisis and profited substantially from the demise of the U.S. housing market.  Framed as a dark comedy, it marks an exciting shift for McKay who is better known for his popular slapstick – Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers and The Other Guys.  Brad Pitt’s own production company, Plan B Entertainment, put up the funding.

The major players in this broad ensemble are as follows.  Michael Burry (Bale) is an introverted, socially-awkward hedge fund manager who has done his homework and has invested a significant part of his portfolio against mortgage-backed securities.  Mark Haum (Carrell) is a pessimistic money manager who has teamed up with Jared Vennett (Gosling) to bet against the blind optimism of the big banks.  Charlie Geller (Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Wittrock) are two young investors who literally started a hedge fund in their garage and now recognise that Wall Street underestimates the risk of catastrophes.

Knowing how it all pans out doesn’t make The Big Short any less compelling.  These guys are continually questioned and ridiculed but you know they’ll get the last laugh during the film’s final act.  The performances are superb with Steve Carell (Foxcatcher) the standout.  He gets the best of the one-liners including a scene where Gosling proclaims that he's “standing in front of a burning house and offering you fire insurance on it.”  There’s another great moment where he debates an investment bank CEO in front of curious onlookers.

Adding to the film’s entertaining allure is its self-awareness.  Characters break from the main narrative and start talking directly to the audience.  Celebrities pop out of nowhere to explain tricky financial concepts by using metaphors.  It’s a touch repetitive in places but I like the approach of McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph (The Interpreter).  They’re using comedy to get their message across.  The poignant final scenes will hopefully get people thinking about whether the financial services industry has learned from its mistakes.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 17 January 2016

Set in the late 1920s, there’s a moment early in The Danish Girl where Gerda (Vikander) needs help while painting an important portrait.  Her female subject isn’t available to come into the studio and so she asks her husband, Einar (Redmayne), to stand in her place.  She slips stockings on his legs and gets him to wear a beautiful ball gown.  When Gerda’s friend (Heard) unexpectedly drops by and sees Einar in the gown, they all joke and laugh about the unusual situation

It’s an important scene in the film as it’s designed to show that Einar is having doubts about his gender.  He rubs his hands along the dress and you can tell he is enjoying the situation.  Gerda innocently thinks this is part of her husband’s “kinky” side and encourages his behaviour.  He wears a chemise as part of some bedroom roleplay.  He puts on a red wig and accompanies her to a charity ball as her fictitious cousin, Lili.  It’s all intended to be a little bit of fun.

The obvious disconnect in the mindset of Einar and Gerda soon comes to the surface and the film develops into a more serious drama.  Gerda becomes the more interesting character.  She’s a liberal thinker who wants to be supportive of Einar’s choices but knows this could come at a great personal cost.  If he were to become a woman, their reputation within the conservative community would suffer and work would be difficult to find.  More importantly, she would lose the husband she has loved for many years.

That’s not to say that Einar isn’t struggling.  He harnesses the courage to speak to several psychiatrists but they look at him with distain and want to see him institutionalised.  He develops a close friendship with another man (Whishaw) but is unsure about the new feelings that come with it.  Einar seems most comfortable when he’s alone.  Highlighted by a sequence where he tries on dresses at the local playhouse, Einar can be himself without fear of judgement.

This “based on actual events” tale is close to a century old but is still of relevance today.  The media circus that has enveloped Caitlyn Jenner shows that many are still confused and/or unaccepting of transgender people.  It’s a subject that isn’t often explored in mainstream cinema and so hopefully this film makes, at the very least, a small difference.

Some criticism has been levied on director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Misérables) for not casting a transgender actor in the lead role.  He admits that he considered men, women and trans actors before settling on recent Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory Of Everything).  He was drawn to Redmayne because of his talent and his “relationship to his feminine side”.  Redmayne played a woman in his first professional acting role – a stage adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in 2002 (directed by Mark Rylance from Bridge of Spies).

It’s tough to illustrate the “inner anguish” of their respective characters on screen but Redmayne and co-star Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) do their best by using a lot of tears and a lot of blubbering.  It’s hard not to feel empathy for their situation.  Matthias Schoenaerts (Far From The Madding Crowd) makes less of an impact as an influential art dealer offering support.

Featuring exquisite production design and a score from composer Alexandre Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel), The Danish Girl is a story worth telling.

You can read/listen to my chat with director Tom Hooper by clicking here.