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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 21 September 2022

I am terrified of heights and so any movie which can capture the distressing “thrill” of being inches from falling to one’s death… yeah, that’ll get my heart pumping.  A case in point is the head-shaking true story of high-wire artist Philippe Petit who walked along a tiny steel cable between the two World Trade Centre towers in 1974.  It was chronicled in the Oscar winning 2008 documentary Man on Wire, and in the impressive 2015 biographical drama The Walk (starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  Both films turned me into a sweaty mess!

Fall is a purely fictional thriller that creates a riveting scenario but does so in a heavy-handed manner.  Two experienced rock climbers scale a narrow, no-longer-used television tower in a remote part of the United States.  At roughly 600 metres in height, they note it’s twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower.  Audiences will cheer for their survival but there’s no arguing that their actions are grossly irresponsible.  The ladder is rusty, many bolts are loose, and the structure looks like it could fall over at any moment.

The over-written backstory to these two characters is unnecessarily contrived.  Shiloh (Gardner) is a vlogger who constantly puts herself in dangerous situations and then uploads to YouTube and other social media sites in search of likes, publicity, and attention.  She’s full of “I’ll rest when I’m dead” energy and, despite her negligence, loves a motivational speech – “if you don’t confront your fears, you’ll aways be afraid.”

Becky (Currey) is at a different phase of her life.  She lost her young husband a year ago in a rock-climbing accident and she’s since been stuck in a depressive phase involving alcohol and drugs.  Having not climbed at all since her husband’s death, she’s been convinced by Shiloh to put aside her grief and return to a rich, exciting life.  As an added touch, they come up with the idea to spread the husband’s ashes from the top of the television tower as a tribute to his own adventurous spirit.

It’s a goofy opening (did we really need to see Becky with the pills?) but thankfully, the film doesn’t spend too much time on foreplay.  It only takes about 30 minutes for the pair to ascend to the top of the tower where the rusty ladder breaks and they’re stuck on a tiny platform.  With no mobile phone reception (conveniently unlucky), they must work together to signal for help and/or find a way down.

Directed by British filmmaker Scott Mann (Heist), Fall milks this scenario for all its worth and creates some wonderfully tense scenes.  The work of Spanish cinematographer MacGregor (he just goes by the one name) is superb and he exploits an array of creative camera angles (sometimes looking up, sometimes looking down) to highlight the sheer insanity of their predicament.  Just like a great horror flick, sound technicians add to the suspense through perfectly timed noises – whether it be a strong gust of wind, a creaky ladder, or a shrieking vulture.

The finale should have been better (it’s rushed and features a dumb twist) but the excellent middle act in Fall leaves a strong enough impression to justify a thumbs up recommendation.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 05 September 2022

A cinema manager told me 20 years ago – “no matter how much you hate a movie, there’s always someone out there who will like it.”  When it comes to my thoughts on the fast-moving After franchise, that statement has never felt more appropriate.  I loathed the 2019 original, I had similar thoughts about the 2020 follow-up, and I didn’t even watch the 2021 instalment (it went straight to streaming).

And yet, here we are with a fourth movie in as many years.  What began in 2014 as a trashy book inspired by One Direction fan fiction, has now become a moderately successful movie series.  It hasn’t set the box-office alight but its devoted supporters, largely female teenagers as evidenced by its Teen Choice Award win in 2019, have done enough to keep it going.

You may think I was biased going into After Ever Happy but I kept an open mind and hoped, with more experience under their belts, the cast and crew would have improved.  That wasn’t the case.  They’re sticking to what they do best – storylines that look stolen from a trashy daytime soapie and dialogue so cringeworthy that your eyeballs will be sore from rolling.  There’s a proven, established audience for this… but I’m not part of it.

If you’re new to the material, it’s about the on-again, off-again romance between the well-meaning Tessa (Langford) and the “guy from the wrong side of the tracks” Hardin (Tiffin).  Time keeps passing and yet these two cannot decide if they want to be together.  They’ll split up over something trivial (such as a misconstrued jealousy) and then get back together because of a dramatic event (such as a family member passing away).

Drawing from the novel by Anna Todd, After Ever Happy is more of the same.  The way we think about these characters during the closing credits is exactly the same as during the opening credits.  There’s no meaningful arc to the two lead protagonists, the supporting cast offer next-to-nothing, and the storyline is likely to fade from memory within hours of leaving the cinema.  It’s a franchise on life support – completely void of surprises and new ideas.

The cliff-hanger (if you can call it that) ending alludes to a fifth movie which we’re likely to see around this time next year.  I applaud the studio executives for getting fans to come back each year but even the most passionate of After devotees must realise they’re being played with by this point.  It’s tired, lazy filmmaking.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 16 September 2022

David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) have been divorced for 19 years and yet their hatred for each other is as strong as ever.  Caught in the middle is their only child, Lily (Dever), who has delicately navigated the situation for two decades but now, on the eve of her college graduation, has decided to throw a cat among the pigeons.  They asked to sit on different sides of the auditorium for the graduation ceremony but Lily has arranged for her parents to sit by side-by-side on the upper balcony.  As expected, it doesn’t go well.  Insults fly and they bicker about trivial details (like who gets priority in using the seat’s armrest).

With the stage set, writers Ol Parker and Daniel Pipski find a way of bringing these two back together in pursuit of a common goal.  Lily flies off to Bali for a post-college holiday and there, she falls in love with the setting, the lifestyle, and a local man named Gede (Bouttier).  She impulsively decides to give up on a law career, remain in Bali, and get married.  All of this is communicated to her parents via email along with news the wedding ceremony will take in four days’ time.  Both David and Georgia think it’s an insane decision and so they agree to put aside their differences, fly to Bali, and convince their daughter to give the idea more thought.

They agree to stay “lockstep” with a “Trojan Horse” approach.  They’ll pretend to be happy about the upcoming nuptials while secretly sabotaging events in the background.  Their most devious act is to steal the wedding rings, which were blessed with sacred water, and have Gede’s family think the wedding is cursed.  It’s not their only tactic.  David spends time with Gede and, in talking about the “horrors” of his own marriage, hopes his soon to be son-in-law reconsiders his decision.

This is as corny, cheesy and formulaic as a romantic comedy can get.  You can foresee the outcome of every major plot point long before the inevitable finale.  This may have worked with some strong set pieces but unfortunately, the misadventures of these characters have been poorly conceived.  This is best illustrated during a moment where an aggressive dolphin bites David while on a boat cruise.  It’s a poorly directed scene which is light on laughs and even lighter on relevance.

Ticket to Paradise offers positives in terms of both the cast and setting.  George Clooney and Julia Roberts have worked together several times (Ocean’s Eleven, Money Monster) and their experience shows here.  The material isn’t great but they still do an admirable job in schmoozing audiences.  While set in Bali, much of the film was shot here in Australia with idyllic locations on the Gold Coast and Whitsunday Islands serving as the backdrop and helping create a fun, relaxed, wish-I-was-there vibe.

Playing it super safe and taking few chances, it’s a shame the creatives behind Ticket to Paradise didn’t follow in the footsteps of the characters and make a few unexpected, less-predictable decisions themselves. 

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 31 August 2022

It’s been almost ten years since I first saw Ang Lee’s Life of Pi and I still can’t get its brilliant finale out of head.  An interviewee tells two stories – one layered with rich, interesting, far-fetched fantasies, and the other filled with simple, painful realism.  He then poses a question back to the interviewer – “which story do you prefer?”  The answer reminds us that a fictitious tale can often yield more power and more resonance than one told solely using facts.

This same argument is at the heart of Three Thousand Years of Longing, the latest creation of renowned Australian director George Miller (Happy Feet, Mad Max).  The source material is a short story authored by English writer A.S. Byatt which was first published in 1994.  Sensing its potential as a feature film, Miller bought the rights to the novel back in the late 1990s and now, having finished a varied bunch of other projects, he’s finally found time to bring Byatt’s work to the big screen.

Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) continues her trend of playing quirky characters by stepping into the shoes of Alithea Binnie, a renowned academic who has spent much of her life studying stories and the way they change over time.  In a theme-setting opening sequence, she speaks to a packed audience about how, over time, myths have been replaced with facts.  To use a simple example, generations of people thought the world was flat but now, thanks to the wonders of science and other knowledge gained, we know that’s not the case (apologies to conspiracy theorists).

It’s at a small gift store in Istanbul where Alithea purchases a small, odd-shaped bottle as a memento of her time in Turkey.  Back in her hotel room, she opens the bottle in her bathroom and out pops a genie played by Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) who grants her three wishes.  Referred to as a Djinn (an old Arabic word used to describe genies), he quickly covers off the ground rules (you can’t wish for more wishes).  Interestingly, Alithea can’t wish for something simple like a glass of water.  She can only ask for what her heart desires.

It’s a curious conundrum for the astute Alithea who now finds herself stuck within one of the ridiculous, impossible-to-believe fables that she’s been studying for decades.  In true academic fashion, she uses it as an opportunity to inquire and learn.  Rather than think about her three wishes, she shifts the focus onto the Djinn and asks about his 3,000-year background and other wishes he has granted.  What follows is a series of visual, colourful flashbacks which help enlighten an intrigued Alithea.

I can’t help but draw comparisons with Life of Pi and, in doing so, find it to be the weaker and less challenging of the two efforts.  It’s pushing its repetitive messages very early on and I never developed a strong, heartfelt connection with the needing-to-be-saved Alithea we see in the current day.  The limitations of the screenplay are offset by the impressive direction of George Miller who uses an array of cinematic techniques (the cinematography of John Seale deserves a mention) to add flair and polish.

The early box-office figures out of the United States have been underwhelming and it’s likely that Three Thousand Years of Longing will be seen as a weaker entry on Miller’s stellar resume.  There’s an audience for this type of movie but I suspect it’s not a big one.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 14 September 2022

The first thing that strikes you about Moonage Daydream is how different it is from other biopics and docos about famous musicians.  It would fit into the documentary genre but its style is anything but traditional.  There are no current day interviews where friends and colleagues tell us how great David Bowie was.  There is no high-profile narrator telling us what to think and filling in gaps where footage doesn’t exist.  There is no desire to show events in chronological order with the film jumping back and forth between parts of Bowie’s life.

I like this line from director Brett Morgen - “If you can put it in a book, I don’t want it in my films.”  Morgen doesn’t want his film to be a history lesson that people could just as easily read about on Wikipedia.  He wanted to provide audiences with a wild, uplifting “experience” and capture the essence of the late David Bowie through the mediums of sight and sound.  You can appreciate this as a devoted, long-time Bowie fan, or as a relative newcomer to his artistic endeavours and fascinating life.

Having earned the trust of the Bowie estate, Morgen was given access to over 5 million assets including artworks, photos, writings, interview clips, performance footage, and other behind-the-scenes material.  From conception to execution, it was a project that took roughly 7 years.  A decent chunk of that time was spent going through the previously unseen material to see what might be of use.  It’s a staggering achievement to condense it all into a 140-minute movie.

Described as someone who “never seems to stand still”, the David Bowie we discover (or perhaps rediscover) in Morgen’s documentary is full of creativity and philosophical insight.  He speaks of spiritual forces, differing personalities, the balance between love and art, and the meaning of life.  All of it provides an understanding of who Bowie was and what mark he wanted to leave on society.  It’s clear from old interviews that many television hosts couldn’t wrap their heads around his going-against-the-grain nature.

Moonage Daydream is chaotic at times (fitting with Bowie’s persona) and it may take multiple views to fully appreciate and digest all that it offers.  As it nears its climax however, it’s easy to see the themes coming together and you’ll see it as an inspiring movie that makes you feel better about the world.  It’s been over 6 years since Bowie’s passing but Morgen’s film will play a small part in ensuring his worthy legacy endures.