Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #227: Strings (2004)

 

In a mythical fantasy realm of marionettes, young Hal (the voice of a then-unknown James McAvoy in the English-language version) is the son of a recently murdered ruler who leaves his comfortable home to set out on a journey to find his father's killer and avenge his death, but inevitably in the process he comes to discover the secret truth behind the longstanding feud between the two clans. Then, of course, war breaks out between them and Hal must step up and lead his people in Arthurian fashion.

Yes, that is all the narrative of Strings. It's deliberately derivative (the characters' awareness of their being marionettes notwithstanding), but that's not the point. The characters all being puppets is, and co-writer/director Anders Ronnow Klarlund deserves praise for hatching and applying that concept to it. But I'm afraid for me, like a piece of chewing gum, that concept's novelty lost its flavour quite soon, and the super-conventional plot, insipid dialogue and lack of humour only compounded my indifference once that happened. Maybe I'm simply too old for it, but I was bored for the bulk of this Danish saga. It's nowhere near as entertaining or thrilling as Norway's The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King, which was stuffed with charm, wit, energy and an awareness of its archaicness. 

Strings does have good visual design and musical style, but for me that could not mask the storytelling shortcomings and misguided self-perception underneath. Its characters are somehow less wooden than the film containing them.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #226: Climax (2018).

 

It's winter 1996. An abandoned building in Paris. A group of young dance students have just finished a rehearsal and choose to throw an after-party to celebrate. The party begins harmlessly and predictably enough, until it's learned the sangria they're all drinking has been spiked with a particularly strong kind of LSD. Then, once the drug takes over, the night takes a turn for the horrifying. For everybody.

And that's literally all the plot there is in writer-director (and co-editor) Gaspar Noe's Climax. Noe conceived the premise but then simply told his entire cast and crew to do and say whatever the fuck they wanted to. The result is a film that even Baz Luhrmann would call trippy and stylised, with non-stop choreography and numerous extended takes including one that lasts 45 minutes. Plus, as you'd expect, it becomes relentlessly sexual and violent. Filmed in just 15 days and based loosely on a real-life drink-spiking incident involving a French dance troupe in 1996, I didn't know whether to reward myself or call myself a sicko once I managed to finish this movie. It is beyond any doubt one of the most relentless works, of any kind, I have ever seen. Either way, I doubt anybody could shake it once they saw it. 7/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #225: Incendies (2010).

 

Before he took Hollywood by storm, Canada's Denis Villeneuve made his international breakthrough with this war thriller nominated for the 2010 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Incendies follows Canadian twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) Marwan, who have just lost their Arab mother Nawal (Lubna Azabal). An emigrant, Nawal fled her (unspecified) native Middle Eastern country in the 1970s because of a civil war. Her will refers to not keeping a promise and her being denied a proper grave unless the twins locate their mysterious brother, whom they've never met, and their father, who they thought was deceased. After then travelling to Nawal's home country, Jeanne discovers almost everything about her mother's past except the identities of her and Simon's brother and father; for this she eventually convinces the caring but more pessimistic Simon to help her.

This is a slow-burning but ultimately resonant, thought-provoking and educational film about cultural conflict, violence and above all, family. Villeneuve and his co-writer Valerie Beaugrand-Champagne, adapting Wajdi Mouawad's play which itself drew inspiration from the story of Lebanese revolutionary Souha Bechara and ones from the 1975 Lebanese Civil War, plot and visualise this unfortunately still all-too timely and topical narrative in a wisely, effectively methodical and patient manner, interspersing the twins' combined story very seamlessly with their mother's (in flashback) so the increasing parallels between them are as clear and powerful as necessary. Gaudette and especially Désormeaux-Poulin give strong central performances as the equal guides through this quest for parental truth.

Also, Gregoire Hetzel delivers a pounding musical score, and Andre Turpin and Monique Dardonne's cinematography and editing respectively are fully appropriate and effective, particularly in the battle scenes. Incendies is a challenging watch because of its (initially) slow pacing as I said, but it once it gains in momentum, that momentum never fades. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #224: The Kindergarten Teacher (2018).

 

Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a Staten Island kindergarten teacher, is dedicated in her job but unhappy in the rest of her life. At home she's in a loving but uneventful marriage to Grant (Michael Chernus), and their two teenage children, Josh and Lainie (Sam Jules and Daisy Tahan) are increasingly tired of her. But then while attending a weekly poetry class, Lisa hears one of her students, six-year-old Jimmy, reciting a poem which surprises and impresses her. Then she chooses to read it to her poetry classmates and teacher Simon (Gael Garcia Bernal), who mistakenly praise her for her "talent." Now inspired, after learning more about Jimmy's own unstable home life, Lisa sets out to nurture and promote his gift, taking increasingly unreasonable and unethical steps to do so.

This is a film I'm finding myself appreciating more, the more I contemplate it. Remaking a 2014 Israeli film, writer-director Sara Colangelo turns what could've otherwise been just another schoolteacher movie into a haunting and daring but restrained experience. It also works so well because it offers a brutally honest look at modern education, particularly regarding the gender-based double standards and preconceived notions therein, and Colangelo employs a rather cold but refined visual language to do so with. And what may be her strongest turn yet, Maggie Gyllenhaal is brilliantly understated.

It has a few pacing issues and Garcia could've played his part in his sleep, but those two shortcomings notwithstanding, The Kindergarten Teacher earns an 8/10 grade from me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #223: A Monster in Paris (2011).

 

It's 1910. Emile (Sebastien Desjours) is a shy film projectionist who loves cinema and especially his stunning colleague Maud (Ludivine Sagnier). He works with Raoul (Gad Elmaleh), a delivery driver and inventor on bad terms with Lucille (Vanessa Paradis), his childhood friend and now a cabaret singer whose aunt Carlotta (Julie Ferrier) wishes to marry off to local police commissioner and mayoral candidate Victor Maynott (Francois Cluzot). One evening Ralph brings Emile to the Paris Botanic Gardens to deliver something but in the process they stumble upon a closed greenhouse where Raoul accidentally awakens a peculiar monster and once it inevitably escapes, they elect to track it down. Now, once Lucille also becomes entangled in this fiasco, they realise the monster might be more harmless than it appears and so now they have to set out to retrieve it before it falls into the corrupt Maynott's hands.

This effort by French animator and director Bibo Bergeron, based loosely on Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, is quite narratively thin, but what it lacks in plot originality it compensates for in energy, fun and visual beauty. It's appropriately loaded with action and visual effects and it's also willing to affectionately poke fun at our rather bumbling, impulsive heroes. The animation itself has an unusual quasi-stop-motion, quasi-CGI vibe which is nonetheless cohesive and it's populated with characters who are all voiced with charisma and collective chemistry. 

Again the narrative is sometimes cliched, and I would've liked a more prominent score, but while A Monster in Paris isn't an animation gem, it's nonetheless an enjoyable way to relax for 90 minutes.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #222: April and the Extraordinary World (2015).

 

The year is 1941, but you'd never suspect that because here, France is trapped in an alternate nineteenth century. In 1870, Emperor Napoleon III oversaw a scientific and military experiment to create an army of super-soldiers to wage war, but he then dies in an explosion staged to destroy the disappointing results. His successor then struck a deal to avert war with Prussia, securing the throne for the House of Bonaparte. Then, over the next six decades, many renowned scientists vanished and France's environment went to hell. During one ill-fated experiment then, young April barely escapes with her talking pet cat Darwin (the voice of Phillipe Katerine) after her parents are seemingly killed. Eleven more years after that, a now-adult April (the voice of Marion Cotillard) herself has become a scientist and with the help of Darwin and sympathetic criminal Julius (the voice of Marc-Andre Grondin), she sets out to finally discover her parents' fate.

April and the Extraordinary World is what a threesome between steampunk, a Marie Curie biopic and The Adventures of Tintin would create. As bizarre as that combination sounds, the result is absolutely beguiling. Directors Christian Desmares and Franck Enkinci, with co-writer Benjamin Legrand, seem to have had a fully in-sync meeting of the minds while concocting this most imaginatively original narrative, and Desmares and Enkinci (with their animators' help) unfold that narrative very enthusiastically while very lucidly working the technical aspects around it for a genuinely absorbing whole. The result is not particularly emotional but nor is it meant to be; this story is really more of a mystery than a drama, which nonetheless increases the film's uniqueness. However, its familial themes are still wisely kept at the forefront even while we're encouraged to follow the breadcrumbs April's fact-finding missing leaves for her and us.

Additionally, the visuals are dazzlingly detailed and rendered, Valentin Hadjadj provides a richly classical French score, it's crisply edited and the voice cast all evidently enjoyed themselves. April and the Extraordinary World took me along with its protagonist into that Extraordinary World.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #221: Look at Me (2018).

 

Lotfi (Nidhal Saadi) is a forty-something Tunisian immigrant in France, carving a living out as a small-time thug. He has a home appliance store and a stunning French girlfriend, but he can't run from his past when he learns his wife (Sawssen Maalej) has had a stroke back home. Now he reluctantly returns to Tunisia where he's forced to look after his severely autistic nine-year-old son Youssef (Idyrss Kharroubi), a non-verbally and occasionally violent child Lotfi abandoned when he was two. As Lotfi's wife slowly recovers and continues juggling his professional matters. Lotfi now has to strike a bond with the son he couldn't handle before.

This family drama, a Tunisian-French-Qatari co-production, truly shook me to the core, yet simultaneously enchanted me aesthetically. So much so, in fact, that it gave me an insight into how challenging I must have been for my parents as an ASD child (although I can objectively say I was much higher functioning than Youssef is) and as an extension of that insight, it even evoked specific memories of them (particularly my dad, obviously) reading to me and whatnot as a boy. I was legitimately that moved and mentally stimulated as I watched this film. Writer-director Nejib Belkadhi fleshes this potentially very manipulative narrative out with admirable patience and restraint, and I commend him for daring to depict autism and its effect on familial relationships in such a brutally frank but empathetic and objective manner.

And what great help he has from his cast in doing that, particularly the two leads. Saadi shrewdly peels the layers gradually off his initially easygoing but selfish character to reveal Lotfi's haunted and guilty interior, helping us to then understand why he abandoned his post seven years earlier; Youssef's meltdowns and eccentricities were simply too much for him and he still struggles to get around them. Saadi expresses all this love buried under deep confusion and frustration with enormous grace and confidence. And Youssef is as demanding a role as they come for child actors, but Kharroubi (who to my knowledge is neurotypical) matches him scene for scene, presenting a misunderstood child who clearly longs to express and defend himself verbally but can only do so physically. Together, they're dynamite.

Look at Me is occasionally a challenging watch, and obviously not a barrel of laughs. But it's unquestionably one of the best family dramas, and autism movies, I've ever seen. It will drain you, but I promise in a completely eye-opening, cathartic way.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #220: Little Monsters (2019).

Dave (Alexander England) is a washed-up musician who's had to move in with his sister Tess (Kat Stewart) and her son Felix (Diesel La Torraca) after a break-up. While taking Felix to school, Dave meets Felix's teacher Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong'o) and is instantly attracted to her. Then after learning one of the parents has withdrawn from the upcoming class trip to a farm, Dave eagerly agrees to chaperone the kids there (exclusively, of course, to hang out with Caroline). But when that day arrives, Dave is frustrated to find competition for her attention in the form of Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad), a world-famous children's entertainer who's filming an episode of his TV show there.  It then emerges that Caroline is already engaged to somebody else, but never mind this complicated romantic triangle: danger arrives for all three of them, and the kids, when the farm becomes the scene of a massive zombie outbreak. Now these three have to band together and bury their conflicts to save the day. 

After his terrific 2016 effort Down Under, Abe Forsythe (who was originally an actor on the Aussie TV show Always Greener) proves that wasn't a fluke with this thoroughly entertaining and sharply plotted zom-com; yes, not a rom-com but a zom-com. An Australian/US/UK co-production, Little Monsters (whose title itself is deliberately both metaphorical and literal) works so well because it defies expectations the entire way and without quite seeming like it was trying to do that (although it clearly was). There's no shortage of gratuitous violence here and as a horror comedy devotee I always relish that, but what's truly stuck with me most about this entry to the genre is the lucid focus, amidst all that, on the central trio's intertwined arcs because that element especially takes a very unusual turn here from what I've come to expect with horror comedy characters. We come to learn about Caroline's background and Teddy's true colours but I'll hold my tongue on both those plot points for spoiler reasons; however I should say Nyong'o and Gad both clearly had a ball bringing their characters to life here. Not to be outdone either, England brings just the right laidback but gradually alarmed touch to Dave.

Furthermore, Forsythe's pacing is seamless throughout and Jim May's and Drew Thompson's editing compliments that appropriately. Oh, and did I mention there's a repeated and very unexpected but oddly fitting use of Taylor Swift's Shake It Off  (the rights to which I'm surprised the filmmakers managed to acquire on such a small budget) thrown in? Litte Monsters is really a little gem.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #219: The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019).

 

Zak (Zack Gottsagen) is a 22-year-old with Down syndrome who resides in a care facility in Richmond, Virginia. Unhappy there and dreaming of becoming a professional wrestler, Zak escapes one night with the help of his elderly housemate Carl (Bruce Dern) and stows away on a fishing boat, where the next day Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) encounters him. Tyler's a fisherman and criminal on the run who obviously has the same idea of escaping in the boat and now, of course, his and Zak's paths have crossed so they must join forces and connect. Once they do connect, Tyler takes Zak under his wing and agrees to help Zak on his road trip to meet his hero, wrestler the Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), who runs a wrestling school. All the while, Zak's support worker Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) has hit the road to find him.

I was very keen to see The Peanut Butter Falcon, dealing as it does with disability and a coming-of-age narrative, but I must say I was quite disappointed once I finally did. Debutant writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz here tell a story that is thoroughly sympathetic but, to my mind, predictable and deeply sycophantic. Also, while it avoids stereotypes in its portrayal of Down syndrome, I couldn't say as much for its bildungsroman narrative; I was reminded just slightly too much of wild-youth tales like Lord of the Flies and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, classics though both of those indisputably are, instead of a genuinely original narrative. There is also one scene with an African-American woodsman whose depiction felt questionable at best (and at worst, borderline racist) for me.

Gottsagen, LaBeouf and Johnson all give enjoyable, natural turns and have strong chemistry together but unfortunately, for me the peanut butter in this falcon wasn't crunchy enough for me.

My reaction to the US election fallout.

So as of today, Joe Biden's just six electoral votes away from the White House. This poll hanging on a knife-edge was widely predicted. But in his true ungracious, power-crazed style, that hasn't kept Donald Trump from conceding (impending) defeat or even acknowledging the result's authenticity. It seems he will take that to the Supreme Court (and indeed I doubt he knows the Supreme Court from a supreme pizza); the results from each individual state, no less. Then if the SC comply with that action, which I doubt they will as they should already know just how legal the vote already is, that'll be one hell of a marathon process given there's fifty American states. 

On Thursday as I was driving, I heard on the radio news that among the reasons Trump is citing for this proposed action of his is so-called "corruption" on the Biden campaign's part; my immediate thought on that was "Look who's fucking talking there!" I mean, briefly ignoring the crimes he's already committed in office, here he is trying to deny and legally challenge an election result his opponent is clearly winning. And I am certain he's doing so not for America's and the free world's benefit but for simply his own. He's also said on the campaign trail that losing is hard for him; well maybe it is but it was clearly hard in 2016 for Hillary Clinton, as she actually expressed then in her concession speech, but if she could accept that result then (and she is very far from perfect), why can't he accept this one now? Oh, yes: because he's a raging tyrant.

This proposal Trump's made has inevitably drawn comparisons in the media to the SC's forced involvement in the Bush v. Gore decision from 2000 with the Florida ballot recount. That was the first US election I recall hearing about hitherto, probably thanks to that deadlock. But what's the difference? That came down to late-arriving postal votes rather than one of the candidates denying the outcome (neither of them even claimed victory then, for that matter, until it was conclusively decided).

Come to think of it, this time Trump was prepared to claim victory while surely knowing the vote-counting, in both the popular and electoral categories, yet had quite some way to go; Biden, who for the record wouldn't have been my first choice for the Democratic nomination (Elizabeth Warren would've been), on Tuesday made neither a victory nor a concession speech. That was the honest and realistic thing then to do.

Anyway, in conclusion, if this vote does go to the Supreme Court, I very much hope they will not bow to Trump's threats and manipulation, and instead very swiftly repudiate him and his administration. Just like the American people evidently have. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #218: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010).

A British archaeological team arrive in Finland to take drill core samples from the Korvantunturi mountains, a local fell believed to be the home of Joulupukki, a Finnish folklore figure who inspired contemporary versions of Santa Claus. Eavesdropping on them are two local boys, Juuso (Onni Tommila) and Pietari (Ilmari Jarvenpaa), who naturally are immediately fascinated. Then they go home and Juuso reads up on Santa, learning that he, at least here, was once quite naughty and not so nice himself. When local children start disappearing Juuso and Pietari start thinking that may be still true, and they try to spread word about it to their families. Now Juuso and his father Piiparinen (Rauno Juvonen) implement a plan to recover this Santa and give him to the company behind the archaelogical expedition to save the disappearing children. But this backfires when Juuso becomes one of them, and Santa's angry elves launch a recovery mission of their own.

I'd call this 2010 Finnish gem a family-friendly Christmas horror/fantasy fable. Writer-director Jalmari Helander seemingly draws upon holiday films as disparate as The Polar Express, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Gremlins and then mixes them together through his own country's folklore to concoct a Christmas movie unlike any other I've ever seen before, and it's evident he thoroughly enjoyed doing so. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale also gave me a very vivid insight into a culture and lifestyle entirely bereft of mine (I'm not even from the northern hemisphere, after all), and there's nothing more refreshing to me than the otherworldly feeling such a feeling can bring via art. I mean, just for starters in several scenes the characters wear shorts while walking in thick snow! (This also reminded me of a former neighbour of mine (RIP) from Norway, who never had to rug up for the Australian winter.) But I digress; the point of this movie, as with most, is the narrative, and that narrative enchanted me the entire way. It manages to be dark, whimsical, entertaining, intelligent and even somewhat touching near the end. Plus, the technical elements are strong even for a $2 million budget, and Juri and Miska Seppa's music is consistently fitting.

This one may be called Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, but more than rare exports it delivers a rare treat.  

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #217: Bedevil (1993).

Bedevil is an anthology film with three stories of indigenous Australian life in the Outback. First, Mr. Chuck tells the tale of a young Aboriginal boy haunted by the spirit of an American soldier who drowned in the nearby swamp. Several incidents from the boy's childhood are recounted through the soldier's perspective and that of a white woman descended from settlers of the local area. Second, in Choo Choo Choo Choo, Ruby (writer-director Tracey Moffatt) and her family endure terror from ghost trains running on a track beside their house; after witnessing a fatal tragedy involving them as a child; she returns many years later to face them again. Finally in Lovin' the Spin I'm In, Torres Strait Islander matriarch Imelda heads to north Queensland to stop her fleeing son Bebe and his love Minnie from marrying after their intention to marry meets with her opposition, tragedy strikes, but the couple's rebelliousness lingers.

This was the first Australian feature film by an indigenous female director and it was screened in the Un Certain Regard category at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. Those are both commendable and significant achievements, and Moffatt's intentions here to challenge indigenous stereotypes in recent Australian society are very important, but honestly I considered large chunks of this movie, especially visually, to be laughably dated. Lovin' the Spin I'm In was fully enjoyable but Mr. Chuck and Choo Choo Choo Choo have visual effects that look like they were literally painted on in post-production, so much so that I found them jarring to the point where I completely forgot about everything else including the narratives.  The relentlessly pounding score also enhanced this, but in fairness to that there are no didgeroos in it (I'm assuming that choice was made in keeping with Moffatt's afore-mentioned intentions to counter stereotypes).

The cast, which also includes Aussie cinema stalwarts Jack Charles and Lex Marinos, all try their best, and again its cultural achievements shouldn't be ignored or devalued, but its technical aspects have not aged well one bit. Therefore, Bedevil did not bedevil me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #216: The Last Wave (1977).

 

We're in Sydney, some time in the 1970s. It's beset with bizarre rainstorms, and during one of them a group of Aboriginal men are socialising at a pub when things turn violent and one of them is killed. After the other four are then accused of murder, local white solicitor David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) is recruited to defend them. Despite specialising in corporate taxation and not criminal defense he accepts the case, only to then find his personal and professional lives spiralling out of control, especially when he begins experiencing strange and recurring premonitions about one of the suspects (a young David Gulpilil) and the weather.

After his mainstream breakthrough with 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir directed this assured and most unusual and intriguing mystery drama which obviously also touches very prominently on Australian race relations, as well as dreams, mythology and psychology. It's certainly Weir at his most experimental, but like with his very best films he takes his time to ensure the story is told as coherently, insightfully and objectively as possible. The screenplay he co-wrote with Tony Morphett and Petro Popescu is tightly plotted and balanced, the cast all invest their characters with presence and conviction, and Weir's regular cinematographer Russell Boyd shows signs of the Oscar-winning photography he would achieve with Weir's 2003 movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Its editing and score are maybe too conventional for a narrative as experimental as this film's, but despite those drawbacks The Last Wave is quite worthy of arguably Australia's greatest-ever filmmaker. 8/10. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #215: Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) (2019).

 

It's well-known that women's and girls' rights are horribly suppressed in the Middle East. They can't even publicly show their faces or go outside alone, for the most part. They are also brutally excluded from participating in sport, but that has changed (however incrementally) since 2007, when a nonprofit organisation named Skateistan was founded in Afghanistan as a skateboarding school for women and particularly girls. Carol Dysinger's 2019 documentary Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) explores Skateistan's history and impact.

Now, I do not mean to trivialise or ignore the reality of Middle East gender equality and violence at all but I must say, I don't understand how this won the 2019 Best Documentary, Short Subject Oscar. It's clearly sympathetic and well-intentioned, but I simply didn't feel it provided any new information, you know? Furthermore, Dysinger's aesthetic approach for me felt far too polished and refined for a study of such serious and topical issues. I think Life Overtakes Me deserved the gong. 6/10.

My views on the 2016 US election.

So if you follow this blog you'll know I've posted nothing but reviews since August; well, let me shake that up now and get on my soapbox. I've simply had nothing topical or personal to discuss here since then, but I do now. The US is, as you all know, set for another presidential election next month, with Democrat and Obama's former VP Joe Biden on track to defeat Trump, if the polls can be trusted. Personally, I sure as hell hope so.

Now, I acknowledge I'm not American, and Biden wouldn't have been my first choice for the Democratic nomination; I preferred Elizabeth Warren. But for the entire world's sake, I believe America needs to repudiate Trump regardless. Recently a friend of mine, who's less liberal than me but essentially moderate, said about George W. Bush that he, for all his ineptitude and reactionism, at least listened to people. Not only has Trump not done that, but like Nero in Rome, he has fiddled while America is burning (quite literally, in fact, given the California wildfires).

And now, alongside all the critical issues he has either responded insufficiently to or flat-out ignored, last week he contracted COVID-19 after openly and consistently refusing to wear a mask or self-isolate. This not only jeopardised his health - and by proxy his ability to do his job - but that of everybody with whom he came into contact while he was contagious. Meanwhile Biden, in several widely publicised moments, wore a mask.

I also have a few things to say about the presidential and vice-presidential debates here; I watched both live. The former was so rife with interrupting (mainly from Trump, but I concede Biden returned the favour at times) that I felt the real winner was moderator Chris Wallace for miraculously maintaining order and his temper. That hostility was partially why Kamala Harris and Mike Pence were separated by glass during their debate. By contrast, they were both a model of courtesy with each other, and when the fly landed on Pence's head I knew that moment would go viral.

But I digress; back to the election itself. I do not concur with Biden or Harris on everything, but come January I do hope they are moving into the White House, and that Trump and Pence leave it clean for them.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #214: Swim Team (2016).

 

The Jersey Hammerheads swim team, based in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, consists entirely of teenage swimmers on the autism spectrum; several of them are also non-Caucasian. Founding parent volunteers Maria and Michael McQuay supervise all their efforts and training in the pool. The documentary Swim Team focuses on three of the Hammerheads - the McQuays' son Mikey, Kelvin Truong and Robert Justino - and their parents, focusing on the boys' adolescent and athletic tribulations and aspirations, and their families' challenges with raising an autistic child.

Director Lara Stolman graduated from work as a TV news and documentary producer to documentarian with this solid effort that carefully mixes disability and sport. Firstly, the bad: I wish Stolman had given it a more imaginative title, and I (initially) felt true contempt for one of the boys' parents (no, neither of the McQuays) and I won't say why for spoiler reasons, but they did eventually redeem themselves in my book. But now, the good: Stolman investigates this team's efforts and all of their personal and family affairs very delicately and objectively, and with balance. She also showcases some breathtaking underwater photography from Laela Kilbourne, and smartly resists a music soundtrack with even a hint of heavy-handedness.

Now, I don't watch that many films of any kind about sport, but this is among the best of the ones I have seen about it and autism (or disability in general). It's a beautiful, honest and stereotype-challenging examination of that condition and while I don't quite give it a gold medal, I do give it a medal nonetheless. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #213: The Final Quarter (2019).

 

Champion indigenous Australian rules footballer Adam Goodes' public battle against racism after a 2013 incident in which a 13-year-old girl racially vilified him during a game inspired two high-profile documentaries last year: The Australian Dream and this one, The Final Quarter.

You may recall in February I rated the former as my #2 movie of 2019 and so, when I finally got see the latter this week I couldn't help, as hard as I tried not to, to compare it with that. But while I've no doubt the makers of this one had great intentions, and director Ian Darling has said (to his credit) he strove to not take sides with it, I'm afraid it's very easy to see why The Australian Dream, and not this, became so acclaimed and honoured. Because where that was balanced but assertive and with a strongly emphasised historical coverage woven into it, this one felt quite timid and even shallow to me. Maybe it's because subtlety often connects with me less, but I simply found that approach unsuitable to make for a powerful and motivating treatment of a subject as difficult and important as race relations.

Again, I am certain Darling and his collaborators meant well with The Final Quarter. But because of how they went about examining this very hot-button topic, it never emotionally (or even artistically) connected with me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #212: Amelie (2001).

 

Our guide through contemporary Paris is young waitress Amelie Poulain (Audrey Tautou). Born in 1974, she grows up with eccentric parents who home-school her and she develops an active and mischievous imagination to combat her loneliness. After losing her mother at age 8, making her already introverted father yet more withdrawn, she stays there until she moves out at 18 and then lets her imagination run wild and elects to stay single. Then in 1997, startled upon learning of Princess Diana's death, she accidentally finds a box of childhood keepsakes which a boy who inhabited her apartment decades earlier hid there in a hole in one of the walls. Mystified, she now resolves to locate its owner to return it to him, convinced that doing so will make them both happy and decides, if she's correct, she will commit her life to doing random good deeds for others.

I declined to see this for 19 years because for all that time I admittedly assumed it was just another conventional, sickly-sweet rom-com (and having been a 13-year-old boy in 2001 obviously didn't help), but on a whim I watched it on TV on Wednesday night and I was sure as shit wrong because it charmed my socks off. It is adorable, affecting, funny and very whimsical. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (with what rightly became his best-known work) and his co-writer Guillaume Laurant take us on a picaresque, existential and spontaneous romantic adventure with a heroine who, while some will understandably find her infuriating in her rather meddlesome ways, I found hugely engaging and refreshing because she defies every genre stereotype, much like the narrative she propels. In her breakthrough role, Tautou is utterly beguiling, deftly showing an unfailing but sincere and adequately controlled sweetness and innocence with flawless comic timing, and her co-stars all support her competently. It's also breathtakingly designed and visualised; unsurprisingly three of its five Oscar nominations were in technical categories (Art Direction, Cinematography and Sound; it was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and Original Screenplay).

So it's safe to say you can colour me judgmental and disproven here. Because Amelie is absolutely enchanting from beginning to end.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #211: The Nightingale (2018).

 

It's 1825; Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania). Irishwoman Clare Carroll (Aisling Franciosi) works as a servant for the local colonial forces whose leader, Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), forces her to sing for him, which she reluctantly does. Then, after Clare rejects his unwanted sexual advances, he forcibly rapes her, after which, having now intercepted her fleeing husband Aiden (Michael Sheasby) and their newborn daughter, Hawkins murders these two and has his forces gang-rape Clare, knocking her unconscious. When she wakes the next morning and can garner no help from the authorities, Clare meets and recruits young Aboriginal tracker Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), who's suffered himself at the barrells of the white forces' guns. Clare and Billy initially dislike and distrust each other, but slowly learn how much they have in common as they travel across some picturesque but dark and threatening countryside to settle the score with Hawkins and his cohorts.

The Nightingale is writer-director Jennifer Kent's stunning follow-up to the sensational 2014 horror The Babadook but if you enjoyed that one, heed my advice: do not go into this one expecting a rehash of that. This marks such a shift from that for Kent that it's hard to believe they're from the same filmmaker. And if you're like me, this one will test your patience. However, stick with it and your patience will be rewarded, I promise you. Somewhat like a more violent version of The Piano set in colonial Australia, The Nightingale is a slow, aloof but increasingly brutal and ultimately very moving study of what life in early Australia may have been like for those at the bottom of its pit. Franciosi is an astonishing discovery, filling Clare with a ferocious authority and magnetism and a heartbreaking desperation and grief. Ganambarr is another strikingly effective new face, and he gives an earthy backbone to what could otherwise have been just an indigenous sidekick role. Claflin makes an adequately menacing villain filled with misogyny and racism, and Damon Herriman once again proves his dramatic mettle as Hawkins' boorish sergeant Ruse.

Not to be outdone, the set and costume design (two critical ingredients for any period piece) are sumptuous, Jed Kurzel's music fits the setting and themes all like a glove, and Radek Ladczuk's cinematography captures the natural Tasmanian landscapes in all their almost Gothic beauty. It's easy for me to see why The Nightingale won six 2018 AACTA Awards, including Best Film.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #210: Duel (1971).

 

In this directorial debut by a 24-year-old Steven Spielberg, David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is a middle-aged delivery driver traversing a highway along the Southern Pacific coast on a business trip. Upon entering the Mojave Desert he encounters a fuel track and, pressed for time, decides to overtake it. Bad idea. A very bad idea, actually. Because whoever's behind the wheel of this truck - and we never see them - instantly takes that as a declaration of war, and they then kick the truck into top gear. Now David must do a high-speed chase battle with one increasingly pissed-off leadfoot trucker.

1971's Duel premiered as part of US television network ABC's Movie of the Week series, which ran from 1969 to 1975, and then had a theatrical run in 1983 with the inclusion of several scenes filmed after its broadcast. With a budget of just $450 000, Steven Spielberg made his feature debut count. Working from Richard Matheson's adaptation of his own story, Duel is unusually grim for Spielberg and the plot is indeed rather thin, but I was nonetheless riveted with Weaver the entire way down every road the story took him down. None of Steven's now-iconic and familiar collaborators (composer John Williams, editor Michael Kahn and cinematographers Allen Daviau and Janusz Kaminski) worked on this but with all due respect to them, that makes no difference.

Inevitably, it has some glaringly dated elements (most obviously the vehicles and payphones Mann uses en route), but the action is so confidently and rollickingly handled that you'd think a director twice his age had made it. Duel has been called the best made-for-TV film ever, and it helped to set its young director on his own road - to a legendary filmmaking career.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #209: Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss by Passing Through the Gateway Chosen by the Holy Storsh (2018).

 

Advertising agency worker Claire (Kate Micucci) and her birdhouse-maker boyfriend Paul (Sam Huntington) have moved to Los Angeles and are overjoyed when they find an ideal apartment for a steal. They take it and settle right in, but of course they should've figured the rent was so cheap for a reason. It turns out that not long ago, the previous tenant, a cult leader named Storsh (Taika Waititi), committed a ritualistic suicide in the bathtub, with his spirit still pervading the apartment and his followers out to break in and copy him. Now, unable to afford other lodgings, Claire and Paul must contend with all the chaos and death, as well as the demands of a maligned but invasive cop (Dan Harmon) who's determined to sell his semi-autobiographical screenplay.

If it wasn't already obvious (but I'm sure it was), Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss by Passing Through the Gateway Chosen by the Holy Storsh is a genuinely bizarre and offbeat indie black comedy but make no mistake, it is also hysterically funny and intentionally, unabashedly ridiculous. Writers Christopher and Clayton Hewitson and Justin Jones have concocted a relentlessly warped but very insightful and witty narrative, and Canadian director Vivieno Caldinelli expresses in every scene a shared enthusiasm for it. Wisely, though, he resists invoking unorthodox visual techniques and instead lets the scenario's deliberate outlandishness reveal itself. All the cast raise a laugh, but Huntington is hilarious especially in Paul's more tormented moments, Micucci holds her own as his subtle foil and Waititi here feels like Storsh was just tailor-made for him.

As I said it is very strange (and rather dark), but if that's how you prefer your comedies, these Seven Stages may just bring Eternal Bliss indeed.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #208: Down Under (2016).

 

Sydney, 2005, just after the Cronulla race riots. Jason (Damon Herriman) is recruiting foot soldiers in the Sutherland Shire of New South Wales for a resistance against against Middle Eastern retaliation for the riots. He enlists the help of Shit-Stick (Alexander England), a rental store employee who's been failing to teach Evan (Chris Bunton), his out-of-town cousin with Down syndrome, to drive, and Ditch (Justin Rozniak), a Ned Kelly obsessive whose head is covered in bandages from a new tattoo. Meanwhile, over in the suburb of Lakemba, Nick (Rahel Romahn) pulls Hassim (Lincoln Younes) away from his studies to join him on a road trip with devout Muslim Ibrahim (Michael Denkha) and loose-cannon rapper D-Mac (Fayssal Bazzi) to indeed wage retaliation.

This low-budget effort by writer-director Abe Forsythe, originally an Australian TV actor, is like Romper Stomper meets Two Hands; it has the former's focus on modern Australian race relations, with the latter's crime comedy tone. That's a very risky mix, but in impartially comparing and satirising both groups the result works thoroughly. Forsythe never takes sides, showing both gangs as increasingly bumbling and trigger-happy but never judging either one's motivations for waging war on each other, either. 

Forsythe's direction and plotting are energetic and lucid and his dialogue completely authentic for both groups, and he coaxes natural turns from all his cast, Romahn and Younes being especially effective. Alongside its message about racism it also makes a blunt statement about ableism, too, with how Evan's crew basically use him as a puppet to keep them out of trouble. I was 17 when the Cronulla riots occurred and sent a ripple effect across Australia, and this movie gets its era, which unfortunately may as well still be here, down to a fever pitch. Just as Men at Work sang in their classic song of the same name, in Down Under, you better run, you better take cover. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #207: Crazy Beautiful You (2015).

 

Jackie (Kathryn Bernardo) is a 19-year-old tearaway, much to her separated parents' frustration. Interested only in photography and planning to leave for New York City, she's incarcerated one night for crashing her car during a drag race. That's when her father sends her away to live with her mother Leah (Lorna Tolentino) on a medical mission camp in rural Philippines. Upon arriving there, however, Jackie naturally makes several escape attempts and during one of them, on a car trip through the country, she encounters Kiko (Daniel Padilla), the feisty teenage son of the local mayor, who Leah secretly hired to escort her daughter on the trip and then to a hotel where Leah's waiting for her. Once Jackie learns of this, obviously she's upset enough to make another escape attempt, but fate and romance may just keep her in town. Kiko, meanwhile, has his own familial issues to confront and solve.

Filipino director Mae Cruz-Alviar made this and then the exercise in overkill that was Everyday I Love You both in 2015, yet they're so different in quality and tone that I don't think you'd initially realise it unless you had prior knowledge. Crazy Beautiful You is hardly flawless, or ground-breaking, but it's a tolerably charismatic and vibrant teen romance with beautiful locations and adequately layered characters who are all played naturally. The love story is rather cliched, but countering that effectively is the plotline interspersing it about Kiko's involvement in the camp's activities and his efforts to keep his family together, which does offer an intriguing snapshot into contemporary rural Filipino life and as a Westerner, that's obviously something I'm unfamiliar with. Overall, Crazy Beautiful You is no masterwork or game-changer, but it certainly has its charms. 7/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #206: Eagle vs. Shark (2007).

 

Before he took us on a Hunt for the Wilderpeople, dabbled in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Thor: Ragnarok and then won an Oscar for last year's instant classic Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi made his feature debut in 2007 with this absolutely delightful and refreshingly strange rom-com about two oddballs. Lily (Loren Horsley, who co-developed the story with Waititi) is a quiet, mousy cashier at local burger joint Meaty Boy where she one day serves Jarrod (Jemaine Clement), for whom she instantly has the hots. She's soon given the axe, but then invited (or rather, given an invitation to pass on, which she doesn't) to his annual "Dress as your favourite animal" party where we learn he's a video game store employee with social skills even more lacking than hers. But Jarrod is impressed with Lily's shark costume (he wears an eagle one) and especially with her savant-level gaming skills. No sooner than that do they get it on that night, and then she meets his equally bizarre relatives, before they take a road trip, with her film fanatic brother Damon (Joel Tobeck), to his hometown to confront his former school bully Eric (Dave Fane) for long-awaited revenge.

As I watched Eagle vs. Shark I felt like it was made solely for me, and not just because Jarrod and I share a first name (for starters). It's never stated, but Lily and Jarrod quite clearly both have Asperger's and they realistically reflect how that can vary between the genders (although it doesn't necessarily reinforce stereotypes there) and in terms of Aspies' subjective attitudes. She secretly writes music and loves being physically wrapped up, he has almost no filter and no regard for others' interests unless they're also his, and both talk in quite flat tones and often struggle with maintaining conversation. But in each other they find kindred spirits, and Waititi, Horsley and Clement all sincerely and successfully try to draw us into their very limited and unusual bubbles, with none of them ever passing judgment. The added touch of animated interludes with a slowly rotting apple (beginning after Jarrod throws a rotten one out of the car on their trip) very profoundly reflects their up-and-down relationship, as does a climactic use of a slow cover of David Bowie's Let's Dance. 

It's not quite as great as Hunt for the Wilderpeople or particularly Jojo Rabbit, but Eagle vs. Shark is nonetheless a thoroughly charming and imaginative debut (and yes, Waititi makes a cameo - two, actually) and it confidently features the subversive, satirical dramedy approach that's become his narrative trademark.  A gem. 

Yet another race and criminal justice statistic.

 The pioneering hip hop group NWA obviously had a point in 1988 when they famously rapped "Fuck the police." That song sadly remains as relevant as ever now, with violent protests erupting this week after the shooting of an unarmed African-American, Jacob Blake, by a white policeman in Wisconsin in the US. Following on from the George Floyd protests that swept across America earlier this year, these new protests are too familiar but also (whatever you think of the tactics being employed in them) all too understandable, if that's acceptable for me to say as a white Australian.

Now, yes, Blake allegedly had a criminal record, and a knife in the car he was entering when he was shot. But even if he was planning to grab and then use it, the officer shot him seven times in the back, when surely shooting him just once in a leg, or (better still) handcuffing him, would have adequately subdued him. Instead, the trigger-happy option was chosen and in front of Blake's three young children who were in the back seat, no less, and had no involvement in whatever misdeeds he's alleged to have committed.

I am not trying to tar all police here as corrupt and racist, or all POCs as criminals for that matter. To make either of those generalisations would be discriminatory and unhelpful. The media's reportage of such occurrences often exacerbates and sensationalises them, too. But as I've said many times before, just because you enforce the law does not mean you are above it, and if law enforcement authorities want these angry demonstrations to stop, they simply need to accept how often they cause them, and then find ways together to collectively overcome the attitudes and views that make them guilty.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #205: Everyday I Love You (2015).

 

Audrey Locsin (Liza Soberano) is an old soul young woman from the town of Silay who's dating the laidback Tristan (Gerald Anderson). It's all going blissfully until he quite suddenly falls into a coma, leaving her to pick the pieces up. Meanwhile in Manila, Ethan Alfaro (Enrique Gil) is a brash young TV producer who's staking on very thin ice with his network. Once Tristan is hospitalised there, Audrey and Ethan meet randomly and become fast friends. But of course, that's just the beginning, for while poor Tristan sleeps, Audrey finds herself conflicted as she's increasingly drawn to Ethan, who meanwhile has his own emotional demons to battle.

Beware: this Filipino romantic drama is so manipulative it could give you motion sickness. Every emotional beat and motif is invoked insistently and shamelessly: teary flashbacks, single piano notes on the score, single tears from the characters, a Mexican standoff-style argument, the lot. Soberano and Gil give it their all, but director Mae Cruz-Alviar and writers Vanessa Valdez, Kookai Labayen, Iris Lacap and Gilliann Ebreo collectively gave me the impression here they were out to conspire against restraint with no remorse and it doesn't help that the narrative, with or without that heavy-handed telling, is thoroughly predictable.  There's not even much, if any showcasing of the Philippines' spectacular wilderness to offer brief respite from all the sappiness.

But hey, if you like non-stop sappiness, obviously Everyday I Love You is the movie for you. I, however, felt like retching by the end. 4/10.