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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 October 2013

When it comes to action films, the recent trend has been towards “more”. There are more booms, more fights, more visual effects, more big name actors, more subplots and yes, more money. It’s like a pissing contest with each director trying to distinguish themselves and give us something that we’ve never seen before.

Mexican Alfonso Cuarón is one of the finest filmmakers working today. Along with such great films as Children Of Men and Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, he’s the man responsible for one of my all-time favourite foreign language films – Y Tu Mamá También – released back in 2001 and featuring an ending that I still can’t shake.

It comes as no surprise to see Cuarón straying away from convention and steering the action genre in a very different direction. Gravity shows how to extract maximum tension from a minimalist story. It runs for just 90 minutes and follows two astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, who become trapped in space after their shuttle is struck by debris. Stuck 600km above the Earth’s surface with no radio contact, they need to somehow find a way home.

You don’t need to worry about aliens. This isn’t science fiction. These two have to battle something just as difficult – space itself. What do you do when you’ve become detached from the shuttle during a spacewalk and are spinning end over end? How do you stop? There’s no gravity, there’s nothing to cling onto. What do you do when your space craft catches fire and all you have is a single extinguisher? There’s no one else to help you.

Let’s cut to the chase – this is a very good film. It will tap into your fears and leave you rather anxious. There’s a terrific scene where a panicking Sandra Bullock is floating past the spacecraft with her arms outstretched. The stakes couldn’t be any higher. If she can’t grab a hold of something, it’s game over. She’ll drift into space and will never be seen again.

A few moments feel a little too constructed (perhaps trying too hard to create tension) but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who can fault this film’s incredible visuals. There were several moments where I was asking myself the question – how did Cuarón pull this off? It’s a film that relies heavily on special effects but you can’t tell while watching it. With the help of 3D (handled effectively), you’d think you were hovering alongside these characters with Earth serving as a beautiful backdrop. Should I be praising the cinematographer? Or the visual effects crew?

Given the lack of sound (you won’t be hearing any explosions in space), Gravity uses a strong music score from Steven Price (The World’s End) to compensate and help add to the drama. It’s yet another way that the movie distinguishes itself – it’s an action film that’s almost a silent film!

Do see Gravity. Your friends will be talking about it, trust me.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 22 September 2013

It remains one of my favourite lines from a movie. In the opening scene of Alfonso Cuarón’s 1998 adaptation of Great Expectations, Ethan Hawke sets the stage by saying – “I'm not going to tell the story the way it happened. I'm going to tell it the way I remember it.” It’s a perfectly articulated reference to the fact that our memory of events changes over time, whether we realise it or not.

This is concept is explored further in Stories We Tell – a wonderful documentary from 34-year-old Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley. For those unfamiliar with Polley, she started her career as an actor – appearing in movies such as Dawn Of The Dead, Go and The Sweet Hereafter. In 2006, she moved behind the camera and picked up an Academy Award nomination (adapted screenplay) for her feature debut, Away From Her. This was followed by the amazing comedy-drama Take This Waltz which made my top 10 list last year.

We often see filmmakers drawing on their own experiences but a film doesn’t get much more personal than this. Stories We Tell recounts Polley’s attempts to unravel a mystery within her own family. For many years, her brother and sisters joked that she looked nothing like her father. As she grew older, that joke transformed itself into a question. Could this be true? What if her dad was not her biological father? Did her mother have an affair with another man?

It wouldn’t be fair of me to reveal any more details about the plot. This is a film that builds intrigue and offers a few surprises. Just when you think you know where it’s heading and what it’s emphasising… the film unexpectedly changes direction. It’s so beautifully done. It’s like a subtler version of the infamous 2010 documentary Catfish which followed a guy trying to track down as a girl with whom he’d shared an online relationship through Facebook.

The story is told through a range of interviews intermingled with archival footage. Given that her mother died of cancer when she was just 11-years-old, Polley had to go in search of her mother’s old friends and work colleagues to find answers. She also speaks with her older siblings who turn their interrogation back on her. Why is she making the movie? Who is interested in hearing the secrets of a small, unknown family from Toronto?

The reason is that while the focus may seem narrow, Stories We Tell has a much broader message. To loop back to my earlier point, there’s a moment in the film when Polley notes that “the truth about the past is often ephemeral and difficult to pin down”. Through her interviews, Polley hears varying perspectives on her late mother and different versions of events. How does she know which to believe? Were the interviewees hiding something? Or had their recollection changed over time? I’m guessing these are questions that a police detective must ask themselves every day.

There aren’t enough female directors working in Hollywood and we’ve seen numerous articles on the subject that try to promote the work of the very best. I’m a big fan of Mira Nair (The Namesake) and Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) but with three outstanding films now under her belt, Sarah Polley is now on top of my list.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 30 September 2013

Asif Kapadia’s amazing 2011 documentary, Senna, took us inside the world of Formula One and showed us the intense rivalry in the late 1980s and early 1990s between Brazilian Ayrton Senna and Frenchman Alain Prost. These two guys hated each other but funnily enough, this hatred made them better drivers! They were more passionate and more determined in their efforts to secure the World Championship title.

That’s the thing about sport. It thrives on close contests and great rivalries. Take for example the fierce games shared between Hawthorn and Geelong over the past 5 years in the AFL. They’re two of the best clubs in the competition but more importantly, in their past 12 matches, the margin of victory has been less than 2 goals. With such tight contests, it’s not hard to explain why they’ve drawn an average crowd of more 72,000 people.

Rush tries to hook onto our love for sporting rivalries and recounts the true story of two guys who battled neck-and-neck for the 1976 Formula One World Championships – Austrian Niki Lauda (Brühl) and Englishman James Hunt (Hemsworth). These two guys were as different as chalk and cheese. Lauda was a perfectionist who went about each race in a methodical, mechanical manner. Hunt was a risk-taker who was renowned for taking chances and pulling off the impossible.

The film goes beyond the race circuit and takes us inside their personal lives. Hunt was loved by the fans for his good looks and playboy antics but behind the scenes, his team struggled to keep a lid on his womanising, his drug use and his self-absorbed personality. Lauda was a more guarded, private individual. He knew he wasn’t the public’s favourite (he’d been dubbed “the Rat” because of his bucked teeth) and so was happy to hide in the shadows while off the track.

A tricky part of any sporting movie is making it appeal to those unfamiliar with the sport. Filmmakers have a tendency to apply Hollywood’s cosmetic brush and over-simplify the material. The story is “dumbed down" using cheesy dialogue and the commentators speak as if no one has ever watched the sport before. This is part of why I loved Senna so much. With the documentary format, you hear people talk naturally and you see events as they happened. There’s nothing fake about it.

There were a few eye-rolling moments during the early stages of Rush but for the most part, the script from Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) is good enough. It allows us to get inside of heads of both Hunt and Lauda. We see what drives them. We see what fears them. Most sporting flicks tend to take a side but in creating empathy towards both characters, Morgan can then ask the question of the audience – who do you want to see win? I like this approach.

The film hits its stride during the final half-hour when all the other subplots are pushed away and these guys are left to fight it out on the race track. Academy Award winning director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13) has recreated some exciting race sequences in an array of weather conditions. These have been further enhanced by Hans Zimmer’s (Inception, Gladiator) adrenalin-pumping film score and some carefully constructed camera angles from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire).

Headlined by two believable performances from Australian Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and German Daniel Brühl (Good Bye Lenin!), Rush provides an exciting sporting spectacle but more importantly, it makes a few thought-provoking observations about the value of a great rivalry.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 18 September 2013

As part of my non-film related life, I sit on the Board of Golf Queensland and am manager of the Queensland men’s amateur team that competes once a year against the other states. Most of them would have dreams of going on and becoming a successful professional golfer. They’d hope to play for millions every week in the United States and follow in the footsteps of other successful Queenslanders such as Greg Norman, Adam Scott and Jason Day.

Will they all make it? Hell no! The world of professional sport can be incredibly difficult to break into. While 10 Australians have made more than $500,000 this year on the U.S. PGA Tour, there are hundreds of other professionals struggling here in Australia. They travel from town-to-town and compete against each other in pro-ams where the prize pool doesn’t often exceed $15,000. A 10^th place finish (still pretty good) might only get you $250. It’s a tough way to make a living.

So what do I say to the members of the Queensland golf team? Should I be a realist? Tell them that the odds of making it are ridiculously slim and that it’s time to start thinking about a back-up plan or another career? Or do I need to play the role of a dreamer? What if they are one of the lucky ones? How will they succeed if I’m not offering encouragement and support?

Movies on this subject usually favour the same point of view. In fact, there are two films out this week that have the same theme. In Planes, we follow a small crop duster who wants to compete against the much bigger planes and win a lucrative around the world race. He’s a massive underdog but he goes on to win the race and prove the naysayers wrong.

Turbo centres on a young snail (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) who is fascinated by motor racing and in particular, the Indianapolis 500. But it’s not like a snail can enter the race, right? Wrong. After being exposed to nitrous oxide in an accident, Turbo suddenly develops ridiculous speed. He is found by a simple taco truck driver (Pena) who, with the help of some other snails, finds a way of getting Turbo into the race where he’ll become a media sensation!

Another common attribute of such films is the way that they make you want to cheer for the underdog. To do so, they portray the favourite / current champion as an arrogant schmuck (despite this seldom reflecting reality). Here, Turbo finds himself up against the top driver in the sport – the villainous Guy Gagné (Hader) who will use every dirty tactic in the book to make sure he retains the Indianapolis 500 title.

The film is taking a safe, familiar approach with its “no dream is too big” message. I’d like to see family-oriented flicks take a few more chances but for what it is, Turbo makes for decent viewing. The story is easy to follow, the characters are cute and the voices have been well chosen. There’s also room for a few jokes when exploring the ever-so-slow life of a common garden snail.

Given that it eclipses both Planes and The Smurfs 2, Turbo is my pick of the animated features over the September school holidays.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 25 September 2013

Having made some great dramas in the past including The Bank and Balibo, Australian director Robert Connolly was looking for something very different for his next project. He found it in the pages of Tim Winton’s award winning novel from 2005, The Turning. The end result? You’re unlikely to find a more original film-going experience this year.

For starters, this isn’t one film. It’s a collection of 17 short stories told one after the other. Each has a different director with Connolly getting a mix of friends and colleagues to contribute. They include established directors such as Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah) and Tony Ayres (The Slap) as well as actors-turned-directors such as Mia Wasikowska (Alice In Wonderland) and David Wenham (Gettin’ Square).

The film’s budget was split equally amongst the 17 directors and each was asked to adapt one of the short stories from Winton’s novel. When you put them all together, it’s a lot to get your head around. Each chapter has a different tone, a different style, a different cast. Connolly describes the film as liking setting foot in an art museum – some pieces will jump out and grab you while other pieces won’t interest you at all. If you’re seeing it with friends, there should be plenty to discuss afterwards, whether you like the movie or not.

Another point of differentiation is the film’s length – it clocks in at a whopping 180 minutes. Don’t worry though. You won’t be sitting on your ass the entire time. Connolly has obtained approval from cinemas to have a 20 minute interval at the half way mark. You’ll be able to get up, stretch the legs, go to the bathroom and replenish your drink at the bar. It’s a nice touch. The last time I remember an interval in a movie was Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, released back in 1996.

Those who see the film during its first two weeks will also be provided with a complementary program. It’s another homage to the world of theatre and in addition to being a nice keepsake, it provides some food for thought after you’ve left the cinema. You can read up about each director and pick up on some of the details that you might have missed during the first viewing.

I’ve often believed that the less you know going into a film, the better. You simply jump on the director’s shoulders and see where he or she takes you. That said, I think a little background information is required for The Turning (at least in my opinion). For example, it took me a while to realise that some of the characters in these stories are the same – despite being played by different actors. There are clues to help you along the way but they’re not easy to pick up, especially if you’re not looking for them.

This is a tricky film to review in the sense that I feel like I should be grading each of the 17 short stories. Some come with a strong emotional climax and my favourites included Big World (about two guys travelling in a Kombi across Australia), Aquifer (about a man who hears a news story that brings back memories of his childhood) and Commission (about a son who tracks down his estranged father living a solitary existence in the remote outback).

On the flip side, there were some stories that left me bored, unresponsive. They either didn’t ring true (such as the story of a disillusioned AFL footballer who quits the sport in the middle of a big match) or didn’t seem to have much of a point (such as a story involving Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxborough who turn up at the wrong house for a Christmas party).

Despite my admiration for several of the short stories, I didn’t take away a great deal from the film as a whole. There’s a recurring theme about the past and how it’s difficult to escape but given that the stories are so difficult to link (because of the different cast/style), it doesn’t come through strongly.

I don’t want to sound too negative though. While The Turning didn’t fully satisfy my cinematic appetite, at least it’s bold enough to be different. I’m glad to have seen it.

You can read my interview with creator Robert Connolly by clicking here.