Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #152: They Shall Not Grow Old (2018).

After bringing countless battles in Middle-earth to life, Peter Jackson's latest effort is this powerhouse documentary made for the centenary of the end of World War I. Drawn from extensively-studied archival footage and audio from the frontlines and from the veterans' reminiscences, They Shall Not Grow Old was promoted as a groundbreaking documentary and my oath, it sure is.

As the son and grandson of veterans, Jackson had wanted to make a war project for years and it thoroughly shows. Most of the footage is colourised with the audio clips laid over the top in an effort to more authentically reflect the soldiers' experiences, and while this initially feels incongruous in some scenes it ultimately conveys a very personal reality: most of the soldiers themselves naturally would've seen this conflict in colour, and heard it in all relentlessly noisy force (no pun intended).

But forget about its technical merits; its real, enormous power comes from Jackson's thematic treatment. His approach in treading this very delicate territory is so distinctive, unbiased, empathetic and shattering that eventually I almost felt I was really there in the trenches myself. It defies and avoids all the war movie or documentary cliches and instead becomes something altogether more universal and affecting: a statement about mortality, misinformation, the fragility and impressionability of youth, and how journeys can irrevocably change us. I knew Jackson could do great work with stories set in our own world, as opposed to just in fantasy worlds, but I didn't know he could do so with something as visceral as this subject. He has done his father, paternal grandfather, and all of their fellow veterans proud. Lest we forget.

Brazil burns.

Bushfires and forest fires are nothing at all new. In fact, they're so commonplace most of them don't even make the news anymore. But this week, they've made worldwide news. That's because this time the area involved is the Amazon Rainforest, the biggest forest on Earth and an entity that has been called vital for combating climate change.

(Scan of the Amazon basin on 20 August.)

Now, there's nothing I can do about these fires for several reasons. Except, maybe, to use this blog to maintain awareness of this unfolding crisis. It has me concerned, as I consider myself something of an environmentalist. 

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, above, has publicly rejected how widespread the situation has become, a rejection which has, I think, deservedly warranted him worldwide condemnation. He's a conservative, but it never ceases to amaze (and anger) me how he and so many of his ideological ilk are unwilling to try to conserve the environment. More specifically, the Amazon Rainforest is what Brazil is best-known for overseas. Thus, for him to be so indifferent towards it going up in flames would be like my prime minister sitting back while Uluru eroded to the ground, or Xi Jinping taking a jackhammer to the Great Wall of China. Or, if the myth is true, like how Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

According to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, at least 75 336 wildfires have occurred in the region just this year. At least. The international community should've have needed anywhere near that many to stop and pay attention to this crisis, and the Brazilian government certainly shouldn't have left it this long. They, and we, can't afford to leave it any longer.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #151: Tschick (2016).

Maik (Tristan Gobel) is a loner at school, and it doesn't help that at home his mother is in rehab and his father is away with his assistant. He has the hots for classmate Isa (Nicole Mercedes Muller) but is too quiet and bookish to talk to her. Then one day early in the term, a new boy named Andrej Tschichatschow (Anand Batbileg), nicknamed "Tschick," arrives at school and immediately earns Maik's contempt. He's Maik's polar opposite: brash, rebellious, assertive and non-conformist. Before long, though, they find common ground and reluctantly bond. Now Tschick steals a very old car and drives it over to Maik's home, where he persuades Maik to join him on an impromptu road trip across Germany. From there, they see the sights and get to know themselves and each other even deeper, with Isa in tow for the last stretch.

This adaptation of Wolfgang Herndorf's 2010 really is as derivative and predictable as I've just made it sound. Director and co-writer Fatih Akin evidently wanted to navigate these three characters' trajectories with sincerity and sympathy and he manages that, but at the great expense of narrative freshness and aesthetic flair and shrewdness. The pacing is too slow and uneven for a story that's meant to take place primarily in a moving car, and in concert with that the cinematography has the feel of a tourism commercial rather than an effort to invoke the landscape as a reflective metaphor for the protagonists coming of age. 

The screenplay also has some downright patronising chunks of dialogue for these youngsters to speak, and the soundtrack is much too formal and instrumental for such a story. The only saving grace is the ensemble, who all give beautifully natural and layered turns (particularly Batbileg), and their chemistry is unmistakable. But besides that, quite frankly I don't give a tschick about Tschick.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #150: One Day in September (1999).

They were promoted as the Olympics of Peace and Joy, but one group had other ideas. In Munich in 1972, eight members of Black September, a far-right Palestinian terrorist group, stormed the Olympic village and took eleven Israeli team members hostage while the outside world watched in horror and outrage. All eleven of the Israelis were murdered. One Day in September, the 1999 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature, chronicles how this dreadfully historic incident unfolded.

The irony, as the movie also covers, is that Germany's hopes for the Munich Olympics were to rehabilitate Germany's international image and erase memories of the 1936 Berlin Games, which were held under the Third Reich. Scottish director Kevin Macdonald, who's since made 2003's Touching the Void and 2006's narrative effort The Last King of Scotland, explores both sides of this fiasco by interviewing relatives of the casualties like Anouk Spitzer and Schlomit Romano, Olympic Village mayor Walter Troger and the last surviving terrorist, Abu Daoud. The interviews are powerfully candid and discreet, and Macdonald shrewdly avoids covering the "mixing sport and politics" territory for sincere impartiality and objectivity. However, he never shies away from confronting us with images of the horrific violence Black September committed, particularly regarding weightlifter Yossef Romano. Macdonald also cleverly uses archival news footage and period music from acts like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple with the kind of raw ferocity and immediacy that Black September showed very differently, and Justine Wright's editing is just seamless.

For me its grip loosens just slightly near the end, and with what happened just two years after its release, this film's title may initially sound misleading. But make no mistake, One Day in September genuinely holds up overall twenty years on as an emotional and suspenseful exploration of an event that changed sport, politics and culture forever. May the murdered Israelis continue to rest in peace.

Aussie Lucas and Yank Chynna.

One story has dominated the news this week in Australia and, to my knowledge, also Canada: that of the tragic fates of backpacking couple, Australian Lucas Fowler, 23, and American Chynna Deese, 24.

They were shot dead in an attack that also led to the discovery of 64-year-old Leonard Dyck's boyd hundred of kilometres away. This prompted a search for two missing teenage suspects, Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky, (who I won't include photos of because they don't deserve further publicity), who on Wednesday Canadian time, were found dead in the wilderness. There'll be few, if any, tears at their funerals.

But rather than recount the case's details for you here, I want to impartially examine the Australian media's coverage of this dreadful saga. Murder is always murder, but it happens everywhere and every day. Yet when one of the casualties is one of our own, however (in)directly, isn't it interesting how much more newsworthy it becomes as opposed to most other cases?

My heart completely goes out to the Fowler and Deese families, and the media to my mind have done nothing wrong in their coverage of this story. But it simply highlights, for me, a perhaps uncontrollable nationalistic bias (if that's the right word) in mass media that in turn, come to think of it, highlights how subjective newsworthiness can be, and how rarely we may realise that.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #149: Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015).

High schoolers Ben (Tye Sheridan), Carter (Logan Miller) and Augie (Joey Morgan) are trying desperately to recruit newbies for their fledgling Boy Scout troop under the eye of Scout Leader Rodgers (David Koechner). Augie still loves being a Scout, but Ben and particularly Carter have outgrown it but haven't quit for Augie's. They're driving to their very last camp out, when during a rather heated conversation with Carter trying to persuade Ben to quit with him, Ben fatally hits a deer. They try to consult the advice of Kendall (Halston Sage), Carter's sister and Ben's crush, but they then find the deer somehow gone and Kendall then invites them to a seniors party. Their eyes now lit up like Christmas trees, Ben and Carter hatch a plan to buy some booze in town and then return to their campsite later that night to help set it up with Augie before ditching him when he nods off. He catches them leaving, however, to his disappointment and then they have to tell him how they want to move on. But as they head to the party (with Augie reluctantly in tow), they learn before they can move on, they'll have to be prepared - as the motto goes - for a challenge demanding real survival skills: their town has seen an invasion of zombies!

As a long-time fan of horror comedies, and a former Scout myself, this one grabbed my interest almost immediately in 2015 and it proved a bloodsucking good time for me and still does. Director Christopher Landon and his co-writers Carrie Evans and Emi Mizoguchi don't exactly take an inventive narrative approach beyond involving Boy Scout characters but I don't think they needed to because frankly, that shouldn't be the top priority with zombie flicks; relentless blood and gore should be. However, these three do work their story around nuanced and authentic young protagonists who still ultimately find a new affinity for each other and sense of pride in themselves, and Landon infuses their adventures with blistering energy and rhythm. The laughs also abound, and a pumping soundtrack rams the situation's immediacy home even further. The cast all have fun galore here as well, especially Miller and Morgan. I say ignore the consensus towards Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse; for me, it earns a real badge and a real salute.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #148: RoboGeisha (2009).

Yoshie Kosuga (Aya Kiguchi) is the younger sister and servant of geisha-in-training Kikuyakku (Hitomi Hasabe). The girls were orphaned as children, and despite once being close they are now bitter enemies. The clumsy Yoshie ruins Kikuyakku's performance for local steel magnate Hikaru Kageno (Takumi Saito), but after demonstrating her surprising physical strength during an altercation with Kikuyakku, Kageno, already taken with Yoshie's beauty, is greatly impressed and invites them over to his house. There, after a group of goblin women capture them and their sisterly competitiveness increases further, they both agree to partake in an experiment of Kageno's: to become assassins. But not exactly the regular kind, because Kageno's methods incorporate robotics. Now, they're set to become cyborgs in his army of geishas! The army is tasked with overthrowing the corrupt Japanese government, but once Yoshie discovers their true mission she objects to that and must stake her own path of crime-fighting: as RoboGeisha!

Obviously this slice of Japanese cinematic action is not one of prestige like Kurosawa's works, but in no way is it meant to be. Writer-director Noboru Iguchi (Dead Sushi) clearly loves intentionally ridiculous, far-fetched and anachronistic narratives and here, he couldn't possibly have planted his tongue so firmly in one cheek but its shamelessness is just glorious. With ninja girls squirting acid from their breasts, the good old frying-prawn-in-the-eye trick, a geisha robot morphing into a half-human, half-tank and a walking robot Mount Fuji among other things, Iguchi consciously crams it to the gills with hilarious and deliberate nonsense. But underneath all that, he also offers a very sympathetic and metaphorical rendering of the tradition of a geisha and what she represented: despite their physical beauty and wealth they were essentially prostitutes, condemned to a life of passive servitude and eternal politeness.

But ultimately, Iguchi's first priority is to deliver a rollicking, raunchy fusion of martial arts, relentless violence and science fiction, and he absolutely succeeds. I should like to close by saying RoboGeisha will always remind me of one of my fondest shopping memories ever: when I bought it in 2014, aged 25, I was asked (in light of its R18+ rating) if I was over 18, something which hadn't happened for about 5 years. It made me feel young again.