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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 16 May 2022

I’m too time-poor to watch much television but one show I admire is Ted Lasso.  The broader storyline makes no sense.  Could you imagine anything remotely plausible in relation to a top club in the English Premier League?  The on-field soccer scenes, such as one where a dog is struck by a football as part of a penalty shot, are about as credible as a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

The reason the series works is because of the interplay between the likeable characters and the way they cathartically open-up about their troubles and concerns.  The writers tackle real, serious issues and delve into important topics like mental health and empathy.  It reminds us that the positivity and confidence people display publicly doesn’t always marry up with what they think internally.

How to Please a Woman is an Australian movie which appears to have been cut from the same cloth.  The storyline makes even less sense, but it’s designed as a warm-hearted crowd pleaser about finding happiness within one’s self.  English actress Sally Phillips (Bridget Jones’s Diary) steps into the shoes of the lead character, Gina, and retains her British accent – explained by the fact she grew up in the UK and moved to Australia with her lawyer husband (Daddo).

It requires a lengthy set-up but to simplify as best I can… the middle-aged, timid Gina loses her office job at an insolvency firm and, without telling her husband, buys a small, financially strapped removalist business with four male employees.  Inspired by a birthday gift from her close friends, she transforms it into a company which is part cleaning, part prostitution.  It turns out there are a lot of single women interesting in paying a guy to sleep with them and also clean the house (not necessarily in that order).  I can’t understand the business model, from the finances to the hopeless website, so best not to think too hard.

It’s odd that a film promoting the positives of (illegal) prostitution is so conservative with its approach.  There’s very little sex/nudity, minimal discussion of kinks, and almost no insight into the two main guys.  If trying to promote the wonders of lovemaking, why not delve into the valid reasons why the young, surfy-looking Tom (England) is willing to have sex everyday with different women?  Instead, we get a weak, poorly developed subplot involving him trying to reconcile with his pregnant ex-girlfriend (a superfluous character if I’ve ever seen one).

There are glimpses of a better movie.  Gina’s husband has lost his sex drive and they haven’t been intimate for close to two years.  She harnesses the courage to address this issue by talking with her helpful friends and exploring other “alternatives”.  The best conversations in the film are those between Gina and Steve (Thomson), a colleague with deep-seeded problems of his own.  Their connection is contrived but at least their conversations feel open and authentic.  We finally get to see behind their exterior!

Writer-director Renée Webster (The Heights) is trying to have it both ways with an edgy, sexy comedy which escapes with a mere M-rating but I’m not convinced it works.  The finale provides further proof.  How to Please a Woman might satisfy some but I was left unfulfilled.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 04 May 2022

I didn’t know what a “multiverse” was six months ago but having seen Spider-Man: No Way Home, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and now Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I realise it’s a fast-growing concept to add freshness to the science fiction genre.  Characters can travel to alternate universes and meet different versions of themselves and loved ones.

With the Marvel Cinematic Universe introducing the idea in the most recent Spider-Man flick, writer Michael Waldron (Loki) ups the stakes here.  Our beloved Doctor Strange (Cumberbatch), described as “a sorcerer with the power of God”, meets a young woman who has the rare ability to open portals and allow travel between other universes (she’s visited almost 100 of them).

As you can imagine, it’s an incredibly powerful gift which villainous folk would like to get their hands on.  It also raises a philosophical, moralistic question for audiences to ponder.  If you knew of another universe where you were much happier, would you want to go and stay there?  Doctor Strange must give it thought himself.  Given he “lost” the love of his life (McAdams) in his regular verse, is there an alternate reality where they ended up together and lived happily ever after?

There are glimpses of promise here but on the whole, it’s an underwhelming effort from Marvel Studios.  Not helping matters is that Everything Everywhere All at Once, still in cinemas and doing nicely at the box-office, offers so much more in blending outlandish science fiction with genuine human emotion.  Thanks to its important opening act, before the chaos begins, you grow an attachment to its characters and understand their internal struggles.

That’s not the case with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  Significant chunks of time are devoted to action where people are conveniently using magic spells (music notes???) and shooting weird colourful stuff out of their hands.  The problem is that you don’t really care about anyone.  Without giving too much away, they try to offer depth to the remorseless villain by saying they’re driven by “family” but it’s a weak, superficial justification for someone who just a simplistic, one-dimensional baddie.

The most interesting character in the film is America Chavez (Gomez), the woman with multiverse-travelling skills, but only a fleeting amount of time is spent delving into talents and her trauma-laden upbringing.  The movie needed more of America and less of the clumsy romance stuff (the interactions between Cumberbatch and McAdams are so dull).  Even the cameos (adding little) and post-credit sequences feel sub-par by the franchise’s normal standards.

Offering little in the way of laughs or suspense, and serving up tired lines like “get the hell out of my universe”, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is more over-the-top spectacle than it is heart.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 11 May 2022

Operation Mincemeat reminds us once again that truth can be stranger than fiction.  It’s a tale of secretive military operations but it’s one that has been told before.  A book (The Man Who Never Was) was published in 1953 and a movie was made three years later.  Further details were made public in a 2010 non-fiction work from author Ben Macintyre and it’s that book which serves as the source material for this latest feature film.

Operation Mincemeat was the code name for an elaborate, borderline-farcical deception tactic orchestrated by the British military in the middle of World War II.  Allied forces were intending to invade Italy via Sicily in 1943 but the problem was, Germans knew about the strategy and were already guarding the territory.

To throw them off the track, the body of a dead British soldier was placed in the ocean off the coast of Spain with hopes it would wash to the shoreline and be inspected by high-ranking German officials.  In the soldier’s possession were fake documents and letters referring to the Allies’ secret intentions to invade Greece instead of Italy.  It was a long shot that required a lot of pieces to fall into place (luck is sometimes more important than skill) but it was hoped the Germans would believe the ruse and move their troops out of Sicily.

It’s a serious story but writer Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex) and director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) strive for equal amounts of humour and tension.  The plan is led by two unlikely people – a former British judge (Firth) and a Royal Air Force officer (Macfadyen) working for MI5.  Not everyone was a fan of the scheme but it had the blessing of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The better material in the film revolves around the chaos in pulling off such a crazy idea.  There’s a great sequence where they speak with a local coroner and try to find the “perfect” corpse which would be used.  They needed a body which could resemble a high-ranking British soldier but also one which no family member would come looking for.  They eventually settle on a homeless tramp who had died from accidentally eating rat poison!

The weaker scenes involve an unnecessary love triangle with a co-worker (Macdonald) which feel superfluous to the main narrative and have only been included to satisfy those in the audience looking for a splash of romance.  They don’t add much.  Instead, they could have focused more on the involvement of naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming (Flynn) who was using his work as inspiration for a series of spy novels.  We know him today as the creator of James Bond.

Targeted at those who enjoy an entertaining World War II tale, Operation Mincemeat isn’t fully satisfying but it’s still an interesting yarn to add to the memory bank.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 03 May 2022

There’s no questioning the knowledge and passion that writer-director-star Leah Purcell has for this material.  Drawing from the famous 1892 Henry Lawson short story (it’s just over 3,000 words), Purcell added significantly more detail and crafted a highly acclaimed play which premiered at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre in 2016.  Three years later, she expanded on the material and published a 288-page novel.  Now, she’s turned it into a feature film which is being released in cinemas across the country.

Set in the Australian outback in the late 19^th Century, the story is centred on Molly Johnson (Purcell), a pregnant mother who is tending to her husband’s property in the Snowy Mountain while he is away for several months droving sheep.  It’s a tough, harsh world and Molly is a product of that.  She’s grown accustomed to her husband’s absence and, operating with very little money, she grittily raises her four kids in a tiny timber shack.

I wouldn’t say Molly is comfortable with her life but she enjoys the solitude of her remote home as opposed to interacting with drunken, not-so-welcoming locals in the nearby town of Everton.  Unfortunately, she’s about to be drawn into problems not of her making.  An Indigenous man has been accused of murder and when he arrives on Molly’s doorstep looking for assistance, she must make choices which could impact the future of her family.

There are other storylines at play and the most notable is the connection between an English couple (Reid and De Gouw) who recently emigrated to Australia.  He’s a police officer trying to bring “law and order” to the corruption-laden town while she’s a progressive writer trying to shape community views on issues like women’s rights.  I wasn’t overly convinced by these smaller subplots and I think they lack nuance and conviction.

It’s easy to forget the film’s minor weaknesses when you see the tour de force lead performance from Leah Purcell.  She pours so much into the title character and, as an audience member, you understand every emotion she experiences and the rationale behind every tricky decision she makes.  It’s one of Purcell’s finest roles and hopefully she’ll receive acknowledgement later in the year at the AACTA Awards.

Chosen to open both the Brisbane and Melbourne international film festivals in 2021, it’s taken a long time for The Drover’s Wife to receive a national cinema release but, if you’re one who enjoys interesting Australian cinema, you’ll find the wait is worth it.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 09 May 2022

Kids know parents pay the bills but at what point growing up do they have a fulsome appreciation of their work and financial status?  It’s an answer that will vary significantly between families depending on the openness of the parents and the savviness of the children.  This question is front and centre in To Chiara, an Italian drama from writer-director Jonas Carpignano.

Set in the region on Calabria in southern Italy, events are told from the perspective of 15-year-old Chiara (Swamy Rotolo).  To help introduce us to the characters, the film opens with the 18^th birthday party of Chiara’s older sister – an evening which has brought the wider family together for food, drinks, toasts, dancing and loud music. 

Events following the birthday celebrations open Chiara’s eyes to a side of her father she never knew.  The reason they live in a nice home and have ample money is because dad is a drug runner for the local mafia.  The clues were always there (such as her dad having secretive conversations with shady men outside the front door) but Chiara had never previously connected the dots.  Perhaps she didn’t know.  Perhaps she didn’t want to know.

This newly found awareness is the best part of the film.  Swamy Rotolo, in her first significant film role, turns in a beautiful performance where facial expressions trump dialogue.  In the second act, the cops close in and Chiara’s father is forced to flee.  There’s a simple but powerful scene where she watches a TV news clip showing her father’s criminal dealings and you get a clear sense of her shock and confusion.  How can she go to school and face her friends with this information now public?

The script weakens in the later stages when it comes less of a family drama and more of a contrived Hollywood thriller.  Chiara, seemingly oblivious to the risks, goes down some dangerous paths and in search of her missing dad.  She meets a curious assortment of people and her eyes are opened to more of her father’s dealings.  How does she feel about it though?  If you knew a close family member was drug dealer, would you help support and protect them?

Drawing on learnings from his last two movies, writer-director Jonas Carpignano has developed an interesting approach to create authentic performances.  He generally uses non-professional actors and, if you’re wondering why so many of the actors in the closing credits have the same surname, it’s because the family we see in the movie is also a family in real life!  The story maybe fictional (don’t worry, they’re not really involved with the mafia) but the strong bond between these individuals is not.

Carpignano also kept them on their toes during the shoot by withholding plot details.  The movie was shot chronologically with actors only given information about their own characters (and not others).  There was also no rehearsal and so the reactions you see from the key players (such as when Chiara opens a hidden door) were, to use Carpignano’s own words, “fresh” and “spontaneous”.

Nominated for best feature at the 2022 Independent Spirit Awards (losing to The Lost Daughter), To Chiara can’t maintain its intensity all the way through but it’s still an interesting, provocative watch.