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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 15 August 2005

Jack Starks (Brody) stands by the side of the road.  He hitches a ride with a young guy (Renfro).  The car is pulled over by a police officer.  The driver pulls out a handgun and shoots the officer dead.  The driver then shoots Jack and leaves him for dead by the side of the road.  Jack survives but has no memory of the event.  On trial for the death of the police officer, Jack is found guilty by way of insanity.  He is now incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital and under the care of Dr Thomas Decker (Kristofferson).

Decker has been experimenting on his patients with a radical procedure.  He injects them with a formula and locks them in a very confined space for a short period of time.  The results have been unusual and the intrigued Decker continues with his research.  Jack is his latest lab-rat and trapped inside the dark cell in a straight-jacket, the hallucinations begin…

It’s Christmas Eve and Jack waits outside a diner.  A girl named Jackie Price (Knightley) offers him a lift somewhere but Jack has no idea where he wants to go.  He goes back to her house and they spend the night talking on the couch.  Looking around while Jackie is asleep, Jack finds a pair of dog tags hanging on the wall.  They are his.  He gave them to a young girl on the day he was shot.  How did Jackie get them?

Confronting her straight away, Jackie tells of how she was given them many years ago by a stranger.  Putting two and two together, Jack realises he is witnessing “a time that is not this time”.  He has been given a glimpse into the future.  When Jack finds out that he is to die in four days time, it becomes a quest for both himself and Jackie to find out how and try to prevent it...

The Jacket is a thriller which fails to thrill.  Time travel movies can be great like Donnie Darko or they can really stink like Timeline.  This falls into the later category and didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.  It was never explained how Jack was seeing into the future.  If Dr Decker realised this was happening (and surely he did), why didn’t he take it further?  Why didn’t he even go in for his own look?  Furthermore, what’s with the big conspiracy as to how Jack died?  Without giving it away, I found it hard to believe that so many people were unwilling to give him the information.

Adrien Brody is an accomplished actor but flounders in this befuddling screenplay.  Keira Knightley isn’t much better either.  Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh (as another doctor) are the pick of the bunch but this isn’t going to help ticket sales.  Unless you’re easy to please, The Jacket will provide more irritation that enjoyment.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 07 August 2005

John (Wilson) and Jeremy (Vaughn) always look forward to the summer – it’s wedding season!  Not that they are ever invited to any of them.  This duo has perfected the art of “wedding crashing”.  They turn up with a bogus story, fictitious names and do their best to seduce the alluring bridesmaids into a one-night stand.  From a musical montage we see at the start (with nudity), you’ll learn they have a very high success rate.

I have to admit that the opening did catch me off guard.  I expecting a more down-the-line comedy but the subject matter has edge and controversy.  I could easily see female audience members being offended by the idea of two guys rocking up at a wedding and using their fake charm to sleep with tipsy/drunk women.  As a drama, this would be a hell of a different film!  Curiously though, writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher have penned a comedy and early audience responses suggest their jokes are hitting the mark.

The crux of the story arrives when they read in the paper about the “Kentucky Derby of weddings”.  One of the daughters of U.S. Treasury Secretary Cleary (Walken) is getting married and the lavish wedding has been earmarked as one of the year’s biggest social events.  If John and Jeremy could bluff the secret service and sneak into this one, they know it would be the crowning achievement of another successful wedding season.

Things go to plan at first but John and Jeremy soon find their standard scripts being thrown out the window.  Jeremy sleeps with one of the Secretary’s daughters, Gloria (Fisher), but then can’t seem to escape from her.  She’s a “clinger” and now that they’ve had sex, thinks that they’ll be together forever.  Jeremy wants nothing to do with this however and is looking for the door as fast as he can.

John on the other hand, thinks he’s found true love in the Secretary’s other daughter, Claire (McAdams).  He makes a humorous first impression on Claire but unfortunately, she already has a boyfriend.  John believes the secret is time.  If he can just spend more time with Claire, he might still be able to win her over.    

With the premise established, Wedding Crashers kicks into its comedic phase.  Impressed by them both, Secretary Cleary invites John and Jeremy to come with them on a boat cruise.  For John, it’s the perfect chance to compete with and “show up” Claire’s boyfriend.  For Jeremy though, it’s a hellish trip stuck with Gloria who cannot keep her thoughts to herself.

I felt the jokes were a little hit and miss.  There were some hilarious scenes but a few others didn’t work.  That said, the pairing of Vince Vaughn (Dodgeball) and Owen Wilson (Starsky & Hutch) in the leading roles gives the film a huge boost.  They are two of the best on-screens comedians of the current era.  Just wait until you throw Will Ferrell (Bewitched) in the mix!  Vaughn and Wilson work well off each other and somehow maintain a straight face when delivering insane lines.

Australian actress Isla Fisher of Home & Away fame makes her Hollywood debut and her crazy character will win her some supporters.  The true talent in the film though is the gorgeous Rachel McAdams (Mean Girls, The Notebook).  She’s a delight to watch on screen and always looks like she’s enjoying herself.  I can’t wait to see her next film (whatever it may be).

After three weeks of release in the States, Wedding Crashers is still performing brilliantly on top of the charts.  The small drop off (fall in business from the previous week) can only mean there’s good word of mouth and repeat business.  In other words, people like it.  I think you will too.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 14 August 2005

Do you own a house?  If so, it’s time to sell it and place all the proceeds on Look Both Ways to win best film at this year’s Australian Film Institute Awards (to be held in November).  Without any shadow of a doubt, it’s the best Aussie flick of the past two years.  Our film industry may still be in a slump but at this provides assurance that we do have some very talented artists in this country.

The film reminded me of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.  There are many characters and many stories but they are all tied together in some way.  Nick (McInnes) is a middle aged photographer who has just been told by his doctor that he has cancer.  Meryl (Clarke) is a painter who is plagued with premonitions of death.  Phil (Gilbert) is a newspaper editor who feels like he doesn’t belong at home.  Andy (Hayes) is a journalist who just can’t get people to listen to him.  A train accident serves as a turning point for all of them.  Exactly how it all fits together, I will leave for you to discover.

Shot in South Australia, Look Both Ways is a wonderful collaboration which has been crafted by writer-director Sarah Watt.  Like another Australian film of a few years back, The Tracker, some animation is mixed amongst the live footage to great effect.  It gives the film a real buzz and its particularly graphic nature is both hilarious and disturbing.  The well-selected soundtrack helps bring it all together and is ideally placed in the film’s reflective moments.

When watching Look Both Ways you’re sure to go through a range of emotions and relate with many of the characters.  It feels real and honest – a story about ordinary people who act like ordinary people, speak like ordinary people and have problems like ordinary people.

It’s unrelated to my review but I also want to praise the marketing of the film.  The posters are distinctive and looks great with the road sign design.  The trailer is also memorable – it’s split into 3 parts and on the times that I’ve seen it, two trailers for other films have been shown in between.  The film is only screening at a couple of cinemas in Brisbane but I pray that it finds a strong audience and receives positive word of mouth.  At the Brisbane International Film Festival earlier this month, the film played to a sell-out crowd and was voted the best film of the festival by the audience.  When you consider it was up against roughly 200 other films, that’s a pretty impressive honour!

Last year, Look Both Ways won a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award.  Now that the screenplay has been developed into the final product, more awards should follow.  The film has already been invited to screen at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, my personal favourite and considered by some to be the best in the world.  I look forward to hearing the plaudits from critics across the globe.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 07 August 2005

This is the worst film Will Ferrell has made.  As I can’t find a single redeeming feature, it’s well and truly earned by worst grading.

Phil Weston (Ferrell) is coaching an under 12s soccer team which includes his son, Sam (McLaughlin).  They’re known as the Tigers but you wouldn’t know it from their reputation.  Don’t ask me how but they’ve been deemed the worst team after only one just game of the season.  Phil is the new coach after his predecessor walked out and hasn’t been seen since.

Phil’s got not idea how to coach a soccer team but has a point to prove to his father, Buck (Duvall).  You see, Buck coaches the number 1 team in the competition and has always looked down upon his son.  He’s never had any belief in his son’s sporting ability nor his job as a vitamin salesman.  If you ask me, Buck’s made the right assessment in thinking his son’s a moron.

Thankfully for Phil, his father has an enemy and next door neighbour in former gridiron star Mike Ditka (playing himself).  Ditka agrees to help Phil train the team so he too can get revenge on Buck.  When they recruit two gun Italian forwards from a butchery, the team starts to gel and the wins start coming.  Lo and behold, Phil and Buck’s teams are soon facing off in the grand final.

Underdog films are usually inspiring but the development of this story doesn’t seem to make any sense?  Apart from the two Italians, the rest of the team doesn’t seem to get better at all during the matches.  How can you win with just two good players?  Phil and Mike have no idea what they’re doing so how does the team’s performance improve?  Why to the parents keep supporting him when he is so rude and disrespectful to them?  The worst subplot sees Phil become a coffee addict and harass family, friends and coffee shop staff.  What was the point of this?

Kicking & Screaming is an empty void of a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be.  It could possibly be a comedy but Phil’s over-the-top antics create sympathy for him rather than comedy.  It could possibly be a family film but Phil’s son is hardly seen and the other kids have even less screen time.  It could possibly be a sporting drama but the farcical story is more convenient than believable.

After 40 minutes, my attention span was gone.  I resorted to checking my mobile phone for the latest cricket updates in the 2^nd test between Australia and England.  When I left the theatre, the Aussies still needed 30 runs to win and I was racing back to the car to listen to the radio broadcast.  An awesome comeback by the Aussies but I’m shattered to see them fall two runs short.  Now that’s entertainment!

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 11 August 2005

Mysterious Skin was one of the most talked about films of this year’s Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF).  Set to be released nationwide on August 18, Attorney General Philip Ruddock appealed the R-rating given to it by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC).  After receiving complaints from the Australian Family Association (AFA), Ruddock wanted the film banned.

The outcry sounds all too familiar.  Last year, Ken Park was banned in Australia as, in the words of the OFLC, it “offended the standards of morality, decency and proprietary generally accepted by reasonable adults”.  This was despite New Zealand’s classification calling it “an insightful presentation of the societal and family pressures on teenagers”.

Two days after I saw the film at BIFF, the decision came down from the OFLC.  By a margin of 4 votes to 2, the film kept it’s R-rating and thankfully, will now be seen here in Australia.  David Stratton of ABC’s At The Movies was making a presentation at BIFF when fellow critic Margaret Pomeranz called in with news of the decision.  I wasn’t there at the time but I wish I could have been to see an excited David inform the audience.

As much as I will rave about this film, it will shock many people.  Child abuse can be a difficult subject matter and I’ll understand if people don’t want to see it.  It’s kind of surprising though that such a film hasn’t been made before given that the issue has become so prevalent in the media in recent years.

Mysterious Skin is the story of two 18-year-old boys who were sexually abused by their baseball coach when just 8 years of age.  Neil (Gordon-Levitt) has become a gay hustler who has seemingly slept with every guy in town.  He’s proud of the fact that he’s gay and doesn’t care what people think of his lifestyle.  Brian (Corbet), on the other hand, has suppressed all knowledge of his abuse.  He suffers from blackouts and nose-bleeds but doesn’t know why.  An interview with a local girl on a television show has him theorising that he was once abducted by aliens.

What distinguishes the film is writer/director Gregg Araki’s ability to find something uplifting amongst the depressing gloom.  Neil and Brian’s lives have been scarred forever but the film’s focus is not on the abuse itself.  Rather, it’s the way in which each of them tries to come to terms with the experience and move forward.  There’s a lot of heartache but a few laughs to keep a nice balance.

The film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Third Rock From The Sun) and Brady Corbet (Thirteen) in what is a great chance to establish themselves in the film world.  It’s difficult for any young actor to break away from the teen mould but their two performances in Mysterious Skin have demonstrated talent and commitment.  They subtly give their characters intrigue and complexity.  The emotional finale they share left an awed hush at my screening as the credits started to roll.

Validation of my own opinion of the film came at the closing night of BIFF when the audience voting cards were tallied and the film was ranked as the third favourite movie of the festival.  Now that the censorship debate is behind us, the rest of Australia now has the opportunity to confront a film that tells a compelling story and has something meaningful to say.  How many other films this year can you say that about?