Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #137: Jennifer's Body (2009).

Anita "Needy" Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried) has gone from a studious yet insecure high schooler in Minnesota to a violent mental hospital inmate... and that's largely thanks to her former friend, Jennifer (Megan Fox). After a particularly seedy night out which ended quite brutally for her, Jennifer changed - into a vampire. When she turns up to school the next Monday, Jennifer seems her usual selfish cheerleader self, but then she secretly takes the school's football star into the woods and disembowels him. Before long, Jennifer becomes increasingly pale, the fatalities at school continue and Jennifer finally tells Needy the truth (which I won't disclose here for spoiler reasons). Now while Jennifer becomes increasingly supernatural, Needy must find a way of restoring her friend's true nature and stopping the deaths, particularly once Jennifer takes a liking to Needy's docile boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons).

This 2009 horror comedy bombed commercially but deservedly has since found its niche, especially with the advent of the #MeToo movement, and alongside the relentless violence and staunchly feminist message it is just irresistibly sexy and slick. Diablo Cody may have won the Oscar for writing the overrated Juno but here she has hit upon a deliciously Gothic and offbeat premise with legitimately well-observed and relatable adolescent characters as its anchor, and she gives them dialogue that somehow manages to sound intelligent but not incongruously erudite. Director Karyn Kusama visualises Cody's screenplay with gleeful assertiveness and consistently suitable colour schemes, and they both mostly have sought to avoid jump scares. Kusama also gets effective performances from most of her cast, even Fox (I'm sorry but she's more a sex symbol than an actor); the one exception is Adam Brody as a brooding local rock musician. His turn feels more like an impression of somebody like Billie Joe Armstrong than of his fictional character.

Throw a pulsating hard rock soundtrack and some hasty editing in, and Jennifer's Body adds up to a wickedly fun, amusing and seductive horror comedy that doubles as a strong statement on gender equality and roles. Just don't get into her that way.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #136: Heathers (1988).

If you've ever dreamed of doing away with the glamorous but bitchy airheads you went to high school with, you might want to meet Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder). She's part of the "in" crowd at Westerburg High School in Sherwood, Ohio, alongside three girls named Heather, but she's practically sick to death of her scene, and with much justification. When she meets new boy J. D. (Christian Slater), who has an anarchic streak and a tone like Jack Nicholson, Veronica is taken with his dark and proudly outcast nature. After one of the Heathers shames her at a party, Veronica vows revenge and ropes J. D. in. But what was meant to be a simple break-in at Heather's house to make her vomit turns into death by drain cleaner which J. D. passes off as a hangover cure, and this is the first of several very suspicious suicides which turn the whole school, and particularly our main duo's lives, upside down.

When it was released in 1988, Heathers unsurprisingly proved quite controversial with its depictions of youth suicide, school violence and faux-homosexuality and was a box office flop. But the critics loved it, and time has vindicated them because today Heathers has deservedly attracted a huge cult following; so much so that's its now been adapted into a TV series and a hit musical. While some of its aesthetic elements may seem dated now, this is a mercilessly satirical and realistic study of adolescence and modern schooling. Director Michael Lehmann and writer Daniel Waters pull absolutely no punches in mockingly holding a mirror up to the world of high school - its power structures, discourses and psychology - in order to expose why so many of its pupils academically or socially fall through the cracks. It can be seen as rather like a more political antidote to the contemporaneous works of John Hughes, because where his movies (several of which I still love, though) focus on these failures through the student protagonists' eyes and with a more slapstick comedy style, Heathers quite openly and broadly indicts the school's administration and popular kids for making high school so cruel for everybody else.

But at the centre of this viciously funny farce is Winona Ryder in her first major role. Suffice it to say, she proved her genuine talent this early on by managing to make a line as simple as "Because you're an idiot" amusing, and with a faked sweet manner. Slater also gets numerous laughs as J.D., simultaneously filling him with a very convincing swagger and world-wearing. Over 30 years later, Heathers remains a highly relevant satirical riposte to contemporary school systems, and a deliciously entertaining foray into subversive mischief.

Exonerate Assange.

The trial quite literally continues for Julian Assange (pictured). Following his release from London's Ecuadorian Embassy last month after almost seven years, the Australian WikiLeaks co-founder was arrested on Thursday and sent to HM Prison Belmarsh. Now the US has indicted Assange on 17 counts of espionage in conjuction with former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (below).

Now, nobody has to tell me that blowing the whistle is a very fraught pathway. Documents are classified usually for the sake of national security, which affects literally every citizen. But very often, the people who commit the acts mentioned in them deserve to be publicly brought to justice and held to account for their crimes. It is astonishing yet utterly unsurprising to me how two US governments now, and one of them Democratic, have prosecuted against Assange and WikiLeaks but effectively let these individuals walk free.

Nonetheless, Assange is also a fugitive from Sweden due to several allegations of sexual assault, and if he is guilty in that context I sincerely think he should be convicted. Conduct of that nature should always be punished and never excused.

But regardless, I do not believe he should be imprisoned for his work with WikiLeaks or Manning. Love or hate them, they are unquestionably brave, and since both have now served considerable time either in prison or under house arrest they have already been punished for their actions. Do they need any more? This is about safe-guarding freedom of speech, and those keeping them locked up are committing the same human rights violations they are trying to keep under wraps. It's pretty simple: if governments, military personnel and other national authorities don't want their crimes to be exposed, they should never commit them to start with.

About Alabama's abortion ban.

Thanks to social media and global news, it was heard even here in Australia. This week, Governor of Alabama Kay Ivey signed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that could see doctors who perform abortions imprisoned for 99 years, into law, to protests across the US. My first thought here is of the irony that a woman governor, although unsurprisingly a Republican one, could legislate this. It's also the most prominent abortion-related legal or political decision in the US since the historic Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court one in 1973 (which, in fairness, also happened under a Republican government). I'm pro-choice although I have never personally had any experience with matters like abortion, but I digress. The AHLPA is not law yet.

It will likely face a very delayed implementation given the legal red tape it will probably encounter, based on previous anti-abortion legislation in America and the fact that not one of the six other American states that have enacted similar bills during the Trump administration have seen them implemented. I will lament the day they are.

Turning to one of those states, Ohio's GOP Governor Mike DeWine last month introduced the Human Rights Protection Act, which states women and girls, even ones as young as 11, must bear their rapists' babies. How much more misogynistic and cruel can you get than that? 11-year-olds themselves are still growing, so to have at that age something growing inside you which you'd have to push out would be unimaginably painful to me, I think, even were I female.

Women and girls all deserve to have the final say on what happens with or to their bodies. Now, I don't want to override that sentiment here but I want to end this post on a (perhaps) happy note with a comment on another abortion-related news item. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2017 acquired text messages from Republican pro-life representative Tim Murphy revealing that he asked his mistress to terminate her pregnancy. This week, he resigned his post.

Sources:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/15/politics/alabama-abortion-bill-fact-check/index.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-perspec-zorn-abortion-rape-heartbeat-ohio-child-argentina-20190509-story.html?fbclid=IwAR33niUx4shNxHUyQom5KrZHihyusL0IsZfhiRMuLLBMjeuO8aKHM40JapY
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/anti-abortion-rep-tim-murphy-asked-mistress-terminate/story?id=50274843

Requiem for R.J.L. Hawke.

On Thursday, Australia lost one of its greatest heroes: Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke, 23rd Prime Minister of Australia, our longest-serving Labor Party PM by far, and for me our greatest-ever peacetime leader. Hawke was a politician committed to national unity, equity and diversity, economic risk-taking, consensus as a party leader, and international diplomacy. 

As prime minister from 1983 until 1991, Hawke and his government's achievements included:

- establishing the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC);

- introducing Telecom (now Telstra) and Landcare Australia;

- saving the Franklin River and the Wet Tropics in Tasmania and Queensland respectively;

- re-introducing universal health care in Australia;

- floating the Australian dollar and subsequently deregulating the banking sector;

- more than doubling national high school completion rates;

- banning mining in Antarctica;

- granting extended visas to Chinese university students after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre;

- successfully negotiating for Nelson Mandela's release and the end of apartheid in South Africa;

- replacing God Save the Queen with Advance Australia Fair as our national anthem.

To be sure Hawke made mistakes as all politicians do, like with his Australia Card legislation in 1985 and conflicts with his Treasurer and eventual successor Paul Keating, and his tenure had low points like with a surge in national interest rates after the 1987 Black Monday Wall Street crash. He also admitted to failing as a father and husband. But his successes surely outnumber his failures. He was a well-known drinker and womaniser before entering Parliament in 1980 after serving as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and famously even once held a Guinness World Record for ale-drinking, but managed to kick these habits and reform himself into a responsible and conscientious national leader. And in that role, his benevolence, patriotism and energy shone through. Bob Hawke and his government opened Australia up to the rest of the world economically and socially, and left a legacy that remains extensive today. Rest in peace, Prime Minister Hawke. You were one of a kind.

Another new Windsor: why do we care? Why SHOULD we?

As most people know I've never been a royalist in my life; not even when I was 11 and Australia was having its republic referendum in 1999. So you can imagine my apathy when Harry and Meghan's baby arrived this week. But I do have objective reasons for that, and the key one can be encapsulated in this image:

Nail. On. The. Head. I get that the media feels the need to tell us about positive, upbeat news, but I think that can be justified only so much. Truth and reality have never disappeared no matter how much we have ignored them historically, and for news outlets to ignore them is simply dishonest. I think the media, for decades now, has largely needed to re-evaluate their priorities.

I also think they need to stop exaggerating certain people's fame. Now, I know Meghan Markle was a well-established daytime television star in the US (and, unlike her husband, really had to work for her celebrity) but Western media, to my mind, blew that up like she was globally famous before her marriage, comparable to somebody like Angelina Jolie. I'm sorry, but she was not, and to paint her as such also compromises her privacy. Plus, have they forgotten the infamous incident where a drunken Harry wore a Nazi uniform?

So, you get it. (That is, I guess, if you're not new around here.) I don't give a fuck about the royals, but that doesn't mean I don't take issue with how global media treats them. We, the public, must also claim some of the responsibility for the latter, as so many of us are perennially hungry for print or broadcast news about them, delivered in the best invasive media tradition.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #135: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003).

In this third part of his Mexico Trilogy after El Mariachi (1992) and Desperado (1995), Mexican modern-day outlaw El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is recruited by the CIA's Sheldon Sands (Johnny Depp) to kill Mexican drug lord Armando Barillo (Willem Dafoe), who is plotting a coup d'etat against the Mexican President (Pedro Armendariz, Jr.). Simultaneously, El Mariachi takes a quest of revenge against Emiliano Marquez (Gerardo Vigil), a corrupt general who murdered his wife Carolina (Salma Hayek) and their daughter years earlier. Thrown into the mix are several other Rodriqguez regulars like Danny Trejo and Ruben Blades as characters whose connections to El Mariachi, Barillo and Marquez eventually and secretively come to the fore.

Now, I haven't actually seen this movie's two predecessors but despite that I had no trouble following it and even less trouble having fun with it. If you've seen Sin City (2005), The Faculty (1998) or even his Spy Kids trilogy (2001-2003), you'd know Rodriquez is an unashamedly maverick filmmaker with a very slam-bang aesthetic and narrative approach. He has made some missteps, namely the Spy Kids sequels, but here we have him at his ferociously rollicking best. Alongside writing and directing, Rodriguez shot, edited and even scored this one as he often does, and the gleeful energy and consistent attention to detail he subsequently invests into it should wrap a persistent grin on every action or Western fan's face, as it does on mine.

Here you'll also find some genuinely witty, nuanced dialogue like "Are you a Mexi-CAN, or a Mexi-CAN'T?" Rodriguez as well invokes well-chosen locations and imagery to offer, underneath all the blood-soaked action, raunchiness and swearing, an honest but affectionate image of contemporary Mexico. And then there's an unforgettably slick scene involving a guitar case and a staircase. Once Upon a Time in Mexico is convoluted, relentless, dynamic and all around just a literally explosively good time.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #134: Before the Flood (2016).

Leonardo DiCaprio, one-time King of the World and Best Actor Oscar winner, has also been a high-profile environmental activist for over a decade now. He teamed with Fisher Stevens, director of the Oscar-winning 2009 anti-dolphin-hunting documentary The Cove, to make this 2016 doco for National Geographic about climate change and despite my concern about that issue, the results here for me are very mixed.

DiCaprio and Stevens have proven their sincerity in caring for the natural world, but I think they quite gravely miscalculated in how they approached this documentary. The key problem I had was DiCaprio's appearing on screen here. I consider him a tremendous actor and I understand if they felt his appearing on camera would make the film more marketable but I simply found the degree of his presence on screen here, particularly with all his famous movie roles, very distracting from the content. Subsequently it ultimately became for me more of a promotion of his own activism. I think had he just produced it, the film would've had a far stronger emotional and intellectual impact, and it would've still had his name attached for marketing. It doesn't help that Fisher insists on invoking so many too-familiar visual and audio tropes, like TV weather reports and downbeat piano music. That eventually had me yawning.

Overall, its heart is absolutely in the right place but its brains are not. I say stick to An Inconvenient Truth or the works of Michael Moore instead.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #133: Sando (2018-).

Victoria "Sando" Sandringham (Sacha Horler) has had a poor recent history - albeit through entirely her own fault. She was the "Package Deal Queen" of discount furniture retail, until it was revealed on her daughter Susie's (Krew Boylan) wedding day that Sando had fallen pregnant to her would-be son-in-law Kevin (Firass Dirani) and then most of her family disowned her. When the story broke publicly, her company went bankrupt and she never recovered. Now ten years later, Sando has to return to Susie's house (for a very temporary stays, as Susie thinks) and get her career back on the rails with her family's help. The only one of them who still loves her, however, is her illegitimate son Eric (Dylan Hesp), who's a try-hard, aspiring stand-up comic with a Star Wars fetish.

This blisteringly funny Aussie family comedy that debuted last year is also a mercilessly brazen satire of Australian suburbia and business culture. Creators Phil Lloyd (who also plays Sando's cowed ex-husband Don) and Charlie Garber have hit on a very timely concept whose protagonist does feel like a disgraced, female Gerry Harvey (co-founder of real-life Australian furniture retail chain Harvey Norman), and the show could serve as a cautionary tale for such people. Indeed, it could arguably even reflect high-profile Australian business collapses like those of ABC Learning or HIH Insurance. Lloyd, Garber and their fellow writers also maintain the laughs with consistently sharp dialogue and relatable character dynamics and themes.

But undoubtedly, the main source of entertainment here is the dynamite cast. Horler (a last-minute replacement for Genevieve Morris, who had to withdraw due to an injury; she's thanked in every episode's credits) is so ideal because she so sincerely conveys that really perverse charm and persistence you expect in a salesperson or retail CEO, and also does make us believe Sando is a woman who does want the best for her family also; she just never thinks through how she interacts with them. Boylan portrays Susie's perennial anger towards her mother and Kevin (and borderline hatred for most of the others) with relish, Lloyd (who previously played Tim Matheson in the series At Home with Julia about Julia Gillard) is effective as the empty husk Don, and YouTube comedian Hesp, although therefore hardly challenged in his role, makes Eric into a very relatable dweeb. Sando, for me, suffice it to say, was the highlight of 2018 in television.