Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #275: Porto (2016).

 

Mati (Lucie Lucas) is French; Jake (Anton Yelchin, in one of his posthumous appearances) is American. Randomly, they encounter each other in Porto, Portugal, and quickly fall in love. But very soon they must separate and resume their individual lives back home.

This 2016 effort from director Gabe Klinger and his co-writer Larry Gross draws obvious inspiration from Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, but it changes the setting from Austria to Portugal and spices the narrative up sexually quite a bit, as well as employing a more literally classical aesthetic where Before Sunrise was reminiscent of the '90s indie and grunge movements. That was a wise approach, as it helps Klinger and Gross to make their film feel more independent and distinctive. Klinger also paces it insightfully and patiently, with his framing and photography choices very appropriate. Lucas and Yelchin (to whom the movie was dedicated) also show solid chemistry and each give understated, natural turns, and the soundtrack is simple yet haunting. Overall, Porto is an engaging and striking portrait of young, fleeting, international romance.

Fabulous Festive Features.

You might like entertaining the kids with Home Alone,

Which would also work if you're grown-up but sentiment-prone.

Then after the kids' bedtime you could drink a wine or just a Fanta,

And have some subversive laughs with Billy Bob, the Bad Santa.

If you feel like something to leave you nice and tremblin',

There's always that one starring those cute but dangerous Gremlins.

But if that's still too wholesome for you and doesn't go the extra yard,

Then you can't go wrong with John McClane fighting through Die Hard.

Once you've seen him survive through all that hurt and mess,

You could unwind with something lighter, such as The Polar Express.

That one tells a story set in numerous different lands,

But its themes are universal, just like those of Edward Scissorhands*.

If you feel like holiday laughs that could happen in any location,

Then you can join the Griswolds on National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

There's also a comedy substitute for encountering reindeer and a sleigh,

It's a frantic Arnie looking for a Turbo-Man in Jingle All the Way.

Then again if something more oddball is your ideal fare,

I recommend you sample some of Tim Burton's classic Nightmare.

But if you just want something to savour with your husband or wife,

Do I really have to name it? You can't go past It's a Wonderful Life.

Those are just some Christmas movies to watch before turning out the lights,

But for now I say merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

(*You all knew I'd somehow sneak that one into this, huh? I'd never forgive myself otherwise.)

A very scary experience I had this week.

It's Sunday, the 19th. I disembark the bus home from Emu Park to Rockhampton, and I'm walking home from the stop as I go up Farm Street. Midway through that street, a guy sees me from across the road and beckons me over, literally with the hand signal. I'm immediately confused and surprised as almost nobody seems to do that anymore; meanwhile I can't cross yet anyway due to traffic. So he now sings out to me "Hey, mate!" Once the street's clear I hesitantly cross over to him and we start talking. He firstly praises my Millennium Falcon backpack, saying it makes me look like someone from Comic-Con. I thank him for that but secretly think he's just trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Over about the next ten minutes I learn his first name is Carl and we make small talk and I try my best to be polite but I repeatedly tell him I have to be getting home. Every time I say that he offers me a lift home but I decline that, although he just won't leave me alone. He also has the exact appearance of an underworld figure (as stereotypical as I know that is to say, it was utterly true here), has been drinking this afternoon and claims to have some memory problem because of a brain operation for which he even shows me his scar, which is disturbingly macabre. Again now he offers me a lift and, seeing no other way of jettisoning him, I very reluctantly accept this time.

That's only where the terror starts, it turns out. When I get in I'm unsurprised to see empty beer cans all over the floor and he drives like a hoon. Then, as we approach my street, he even asks if he can come into my place! Obviously I say "No" and he then whines, "I can't?" Now, as we enter my unit estate he then actually says he's coming in but I still don't let him. Now we're stopped and I'm afraid, but that fear then spikes when he opens the compartment between the seats - meanwhile, I'm looking around to see if he has a weapon stored anywhere - and I can only think he's about to produce a gun to shoot me with. Instead, however, he just pulls some paperwork out to show me. Nonetheless, I'm too frozen in terror to even register what he's saying much less what the paperwork's for. I can't even talk, in fact. Thankfully and luckily, though, he then seems to notice just how terrified I am and he reluctantly lets me go by myself, and then drives off.

By now it's almost 6pm, and it takes me most of the night to calm back down. But all the while, I still hope he forgets about me and that I never see him again.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #274: 1982 (2019).

 

The 1982 Lebanon War has just broken out. Schoolteacher Yesmenee (Nadine Labaki) is in charge of a class that includes Wissam (Mohamad Dalli), who's fallen in love with his classmate Joanna (Gia Madi) and doesn't know how to tell her. As he sets about trying to do that, Yesmenee and all her colleagues have to do everything to hide the reality and closeness of the war, and their own concerns about it, from their young charges.

1982, from writer-director and co-producer Oualid Mouaness, was Lebanon's submission for the 2019 Best International Feature Film Oscar and although it wasn't nominated for that, it still makes quite an impression; at least; it did with me. Working a story of childhood innocence around warfare is a risky and challenging prospect as it can lead to either emotional overkill or war and its consequences being trivialised, but here I thought Mouaness, who presumably himself grew up during this conflict, got the balance of sweetness and dramatic heft just right. If you're expecting actual war scenes here, don't. Instead, there's a cute and restrained exploration of puppy love and the resultant anxiety and hesitancy with the Lebanon War more as a backdrop to that, the conflict being more directly explored in Yesmenee's arc. It all culminates in what I found to be an initially confounding but ultimately quite wise and strikingly realised animated climax.

Mouaness applies a very suitably patient approach to his directing and pacing, and his screenplay lets both the child and adult characters talk and behave realistically regarding both their ages and their shared situation. Dalli and Madi make engaging young protagonists, but Labaki proves her versatility (she also directed the brilliant 2018 Lebanese film Capernaum) and gives the best performance here, bringing Yesmenee to life with admirable control and grace. There is no score but I suspect that creative choice was made for restraint, and the cinematography and editing also smartly reflect that. I don't think 1982 is quite in the same league as Grave of the Fireflies or Au Revoir, Les Enfants to name but a few, but for movies about childhood and war it's easily a cut above most others. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #273: Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night (2021).

 

In 2022, a massively multiplayer online virtual reality roleplaying game titled Sword Art Online is launched, and on 6 November ten thousand people log into it for the first time but then discover they cannot log out of it. The creator Akihiko Kayaba (the voice of Koichi Yamadera; David W. Collins in the English dubbed version) then reveals himself to tell the players they must defeat all one hundred floors of Aincrad, the steel castle in which the game is set, if they want to be able to log out. If they die inside the game or have the headgear they're wearing removed, they will also die in reality. Asuna (Haruna Tomatsu; Cherami Leigh in the EDV), who has logged into it with her friend (Inori Minase; Anairis Quinonis in the EDV), initially struggles with having living inside and beat the game, until she meets knowledgeable lone wolf Kirito (Yoshitsugo Matsuoka; Bryce Papenbrook in the EDV), who joins forces with her.

This second entry (after 2017's Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale) in the anime movie series based on Reki Kawahara's light novel series Sword Art Online: Progressive is technically amazing, with intoxicating animation and Yuki Kajiura's pulsating music score. But before seeing it I was unfamiliar with both the novel series and the previous film and while I could follow the narrative well enough, I didn't find very much here to appeal to people who weren't already avid fans of the franchise (here I think I should note that Kawahara also wrote the screenplay). I certainly detected no backstory to help non-fans familiarise themselves with the story, anyway. Director Ayako Kono demonstrates an enthusiasm for this narrative and a lucidity with keeping the visuals consistently crisp, but again I think she needed to make that narrative appeal more to people who were going to see it without knowing the franchise's previous entries, as I think it's safe to say that was probably inevitable that some viewers would be in that boat. As it is, Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night therefore underwhelmed me. 6/10.

On the Morrison Government's proposed new religious rights bill.

This week in Australia, one matter has dominated our national political discussion and its news coverage. The Morrison Government has tried to legislate an extension to the Religious Discrimination Bill, which, as its name clearly suggests, protects Australian citizens from discrimination based on their religious or spiritual beliefs. Morrison, an active member of the Hillsong Church, has actively and publicly championed this extension of the Bill, and I sincerely agree all citizens are entitled to think whatever they choose to.

However, the issue I take with this amendment to the Bill, and indeed what has made it so topical and contentious, is the freedom it will grant religious Australians to discriminate against other groups, namely, of course, the LGBTQ community. Australia legalising same-sex marriage in 2017 sparked, perhaps unsurprisingly, a backlash from right-wing politicians and religious groups who, as Morrison then stated, were now finding themselves in the minority.

Well, if that's true, maybe now they have a chance to become able to empathise with groups including the LGBTQ community who have been marginalised, albeit for entirely different reasons, for centuries. Whether they will all be willing to do that is, of course, another question altogether and, I suppose, their own choice. But, at least in theory, now Australians of faith are coming to understand how most religious people have historically made those other groups feel.

The Morrison Government on Wednesday struck a deal with several more moderate members of its Liberal Party, agreeing to make changes to other legislation in order to protect openly gay school students from discrimination in education, in return for said MPs supporting the Bill. This will apparently mean removing Section 38.3 of the separate Sex Discrimination Act, which enables religious schools to discriminate against students and staff on the grounds of sexuality, gender identity, marital status and pregnancy. Meanwhile, however, the Religious Discrimination Bill, if passed, will also extend to discrimination in employment.

Numerous legal experts and rival politicians have publicly criticised the Bill, with University of Sydney law professor Simon Rice claiming it is "bizarrely complicated" as it is "trying to dress up freedom as discrimination." Victorian MP and Reason Party founder and leader Fiona Patten says it will licence bigotry. Monash University law associate lecturer Liam Elphick said, "It's a drastic overreach from the federal government and something we've not seen in the last 40 years of discrimination laws in this country. There have been plenty of examples in recent years of religious schools in Australia excluding gay teachers. This bill only makes it easier for them to do that," while Tasmanian lawyer and former anti-discrimination commissioner Robin Banks argued, "Discrimination law is about enhancing social cohesion by asking us to think about things before we say them or do them. This is the opposite of that."

As our Federal Parliament has now concluded sitting for 2021, the Religious Discrimination Bill is in limbo. Personally, come 2022, I hope it is not passed.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/01/religious-discrimination-bill-moderate-liberal-mps-strike-deal-after-protection-for-gay-students-promised

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/what-s-the-proposed-religious-discrimination-law-about-20211129-p59d6q.html

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #272: Collective (2019).

 

In 2015, a fire killed 27 people in the Collectiv nightclub in Bucharest, Romania, with another 37 people dying of burns over the following months. The national government healthcare scandal that emerged in the tragedy's aftermath is the focus of the Oscar-nominated 2019 documentary Collective from writer, director, co-producer and editor Alexander Nanau. 

Let me warn you upfront: this documentary is glacially slow and very subtle. However, that's partly why it works so well because half of it is told from the perspective of journalists at the Gazeta Sporturilor newspaper as they uncover and then report on the Collectiv fire and then the Romanian government's response to that; the other half is shown from the perspectives of that government. This technique is employed for impartiality and restraint, with it working thoroughly.

Naturally, despite Nanau's detached and neutral directorial tone the journalists' conduct contrasts wildly with that of the featured government officials, but that simply demonstrates who was and was not committed to exposing the truth about this entire scandal and applying responsibility. The result is a riveting, powerful and thought-provoking investigation into corruption and maladministration that I'd recommend to anybody when they feel like complaining about their country's health care system. After watching it, hopefully you'll consider it better than Romania's.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #271: Days of the Bagnold Summer (2019).

 

15-year-old Daniel Bagnold (Earl Cave; Nick's son) is having to spend the summer in the countryside with his estranged mother Sue (Monica Dolan), who he openly hates. He thought he was staying in Florida with his father, a plan he was looking forward to, until this change. Now, amidst their constant arguing, they have to both find common ground again. Meanwhile, Sue finds romance with local history teacher Douglas Porter (Rob Brydon) and support in her masseuse friend Astrid (Tamsin Greig), with Daniel hanging out with his androgynous mate Kye (Elliot Speller-Gillott) and joining young metal band Skullslayer.

Well, so much for this apparently being a comedy. Based on Jeff Winterheart's 2012 graphic novel, Days of the Bagnold Summer marks the directorial debut of Simon Bird, former star of UK sitcoms The Inbetweeners and Friday Night Dinner (the latter of which also starred none other than Greig as his mum), but I didn't laugh once throughout it. Moreover, I found this to be just stuffed to the brim with cliches and really lacking in edginess. But what I found most offputting was Daniel; he is such a misanthropic, sullen teenage protagonist that I think even Holden Caulfield would've told him to lighten up. Cave also feels quite typecast in the role. As the story's most sympathetic character Dolan gives a powerful turn, with Greig making a suitably eccentric second banana to her, but the rest of the cast let these ladies down for me.

Belle and Sebastian's restrained but ultimately repetitive score also increased my boredom, and Bird's wife Lisa Owens' screenplay felt quite incongruously watered down (for a start there's not even any swearing and Daniel's a metalhead), with his direction striking me as very stagnant. I'm afraid these Days of the Bagnold Summer were ones I was impatiently counting down like Daniel does. 5/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #270: '71 (2014).

 

As the title says, it's 1971 and in Northern Ireland the Troubles are quickly escalating. New British Army recruit Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell) is sent to Belfast to serve in the inexperienced Second Lieutenant Armitage's (Sam Reid) platoon stationed in a very precarious area. Once the fighting gets underway, Hook is soon separated from the rest of his platoon and left to fend for himself in an urban warzone.

That's basically all the narrative to be found in this effort from feature debuntante director Yann Demange and writer Gregory Burke. I know for most people the appeal of war films lays in the violence and there's tons of that here, but I find action far more compelling when it's woven into a suspenseful or involving plot and this one's plot ticks neither of those boxes. There's very little spread-out or unique about Gary's adventure, which disengaged me and that in turn meant it had no emotional impact for me either. The photography and editing, respectively by Tat Radcliffe and Chris Wyatt, also take the respective Saving Private Ryan styles and run with them, and David Holmes' score is increasingly excessive.

O'Connell tries his best, and Demange and Burke undoubtedly mean well, but even as somebody with Irish ancestry this film about the Troubles focuses too much (and too unimaginatively) on action at the expense of a fresh and thought-provoking war storyline. '71 gets a 6/10 from me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #269: The Ash Lad: In Search of the Golden Castle (2019).

 

In this sequel to 2017's fun and charming The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King, titular hero Espen (Vebjorn Enger) and his love Princess Kristin (Eili Harboe) are back and taking another adventure. This time, they have to rescue their sidekick friends Per (Mads Sjogard Pettersen) and Pal Elias Holmen Sorenson) who've been falsely accused of poisoning the king and queen and are now imprisoned in a dungeon awaiting their execution. Espen and Kristin must now find the mythical Soria Moria palace, home to the so-called "water of life" which can save her parents, and from there reveal who was really responsible for the crime.

The Ash Lad: In Search of the Golden Castle is darker than its predecessor, but that's about the only new thing I noticed here. Returning director Mikkaele Braenne Sandemose just doesn't infuse the narrative, based on an eighteenth-century Norwegian fairy tale again, with quite the same rollicking pace and exuberance the second time around and the result, therefore, was something of a buzzkill for me. Also, Enger doesn't give as much of an enthusiastic turn this time in the lead and there are a couple of scenes that feel almost jarringly like references to ones in earlier, Hollywood adventure flicks, namely one that invokes comparisons to the laughing over dinner scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the score is too heavy-handed in places.

The visuals are once again beautiful especially for a very low-budget fantasy flick, and as I said the tone is somewhat darker in this sequel. But that one change could not mask the lack of changes elsewhere or the comparative lack of zest alongside the first film. A third is reportedly planned; let's hope it's a return to form for Sandemose after this misstep. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #268: Oculus (2013).

 

Jumping back and forth between the present day and eleven years prior, this is the story of siblings Kaylee and Tim Russell (Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites). Tim's just been released from a psychiatric facility after his and Kaylee's parents were murdered in 2002. That happened after father Alan (Rory Cochrane) bought an antique mirror to put in his office, not realising it supernaturally inspires hallucinations. After the increasingly violent Alan starts abusing his wife Marie (Katee Sackhoff), that's when the tragedy is set in motion. Now, back after Tim's release, he and Kaylee try to clear his name, but the mirror's game is far from over.

Mike Flanagan's 2013 effort Oculus, based on his 2005 short film Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man with the Plan, is, I think, immensely overrated. Firstly, the narrative is increasingly convoluted which I realise was the point, but I didn't find it convoluted in a lucid or logical manner. There's even an especially dumb scene involving a lightbulb being eaten. Flanagan's pacing and editing are much too relaxed for a horror movie (even one that relies on on strong character development as this one does, to its credit), Michael Fimognari's cinematography is unimaginative and Flanagan's regular composers the Newton Brothers' score is too subtle even when most horror scores are too excessive. Gillan tries to bring authority and sympathy to Kaylee, but Thwaites gives a lazy performance and goes through numerous scenes with his mouth gaping open like one of those metal clowns at the show (funfair, for you American readers if I have any). Seriously, I felt like feeding him a ping-pong ball.

For a great - and more importantly, scary - recent horror flick about a dysfunctional family, I say skip this one and watch Hereditary or Lights Out instead. To me, Oculus is no match for them. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #267: Sun Children (2020).

 

12-year-old Ali (Ruhoullah Zamani) and his three friends in rural Iran undertake small jobs and petty crimes in order to help their families get by amidst widespread poverty. Their current work is in a mine, where Ali is soon enlisted to locate a secret underground treasure. He agrees, but before he can access the tunnel where the treasure's buried, he and his crew have first to enrol at the nearby Sun School, a charitable institution that seeks to be a school for street kids and child labourers.

Iranian writer-director Majid Majidi's 2020 effort Sun Children is the latest of his films about underprivileged young people and after screening successfully at the Venice International Film Festival (where Zamani won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for an emerging actor or actress), it was the Iranian submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar and made the shortlist of fifteen films. I think it's easy to understand why; this movie achieves the tricky balancing act of exploring the themes of child labour and poverty in a family-friendly manner without actually trivialising or sanitising them, and it also offers quite a bravely critical reminder of how patriarchal Middle Eastern culture is. There's also a moving climactic twist, when we discover what the treasure really is.

Ramin Kousha's score feels somewhat too Westernised, but that was the only flaw I found here, and Majidi's concern for these impoverished young protagonists is thoroughly evident as is his commitment to working a cohesive narrative around their lives, and Zamani is totally charming and convincing as their leader. Wisely, there's nothing flashy about the aesthetics either. Sun Children indeed shines bright. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #266: Eighth Grade (2018).

 

Kayla (Elsie Fisher) is 13. She lives with her single father Mark (Josh Hamilton) and, like most of her teenage peers, spends most of her time behind a screen; she even actually makes YouTube vlogs in which she portrays herself as a motivational influencer. At school she's a pariah and she knows it, with this being the primary source of her insecurity and angst. But when the last week of eighth grade rolls around, Kayla sets out to finally acquire acceptance from her classmates. Meanwhile, domestically she and her father, who resents her efforts to exclude him from her activities, try to find common ground.

This filmmaking debut from comedian Bo Burnham, himself a former YouTuber (and I loved watching his videos), is nothing ambitious or (entirely) original, but it's not really meant to be either of those qualities anyhow. What it is meant to be (and manages to be) is a frank but tender exploration of growing up in the social media age, with the pitfalls that has imposed particularly on children and teens. Kayla and most of her peers share virtually all their thoughts online and one scene even hints at the posting and sharing of their sexually explicit images. I suspect Burnham added this criticism of social media because he's admitted to abandoning his YouTube career after becoming disillusioned with the website, but he makes this condemnation in a smart and and sincere manner of emphasising how social media platforms tend to deliberately prey on the young and vulnerable. By contrast, he treats them here with obvious concern and his screenplay also doesn't have them talking unrealistically eloquently like too many teen movies do.

Fisher, leading a mostly non-professional teenage cast, is effective and beautifully understated as Kayla, and Anna Meredith's largely electronic score is fitting because it sounds at least to me very much like the kind of music currently in vogue. I found some of the supporting characters, namely the handful of kids who ultimately befriend Kayla, to be slightly underdeveloped, and the climax to be rather formulaic, but nonetheless I overall consider Eighth Grade a wise, astute and empathetic directorial debut, and despite being a male millennial I noticed a lot of similarities between Kayla and my 13-year-old self. 8/10.

My reaction to the death of Halyna Hutchins.

 

I think everybody knows the story now. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, above, died last Friday after actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot her with a prop gun he was told was not loaded. When the story broke, I was online and it immediately shocked me and I knew it would make the primetime news even here in Australia (which it did).

As the hours passed I couldn't help but question whether this tragedy would've been considered as newsworthy had a less well-known actor than Baldwin been the one who pulled the trigger. He is also serving as a producer on the film, entitled Rust, and therefore has more responsibilities on-set than were he just one of the stars, but although he still has indeed technically killed Hutchins, and injured the director Joel Souza, I think the primary culprit here is Dave Halls, the assistant director who gave him the gun and assured him it was empty without checking it (yet Baldwin maybe should've checked it himself before firing it).

Amidst all these initial thoughts, however, and still now, I feel horrible for Hutchins and her young family and her friends; my heart goes out to them all. But I'm frustrated with how the media is treating this incident. They are, from what I have noticed, focusing almost exclusively on her death and how that was caused rather than on her work. I think it's despicable that most media outlets are doing that, particularly when women cinematographers (and women filmmakers in general) have to fight their way to success and job stability in what is an overwhelmingly male profession. Hutchins achieved that, but the media seems intent on ensuring she will be remembered exclusively as the woman who Alec Baldwin accidentally shot on a movie set. They've also used this tragedy to renew interest in the accidental shooting that killed Brandon Lee while filming The Crow in 1993, which I suspect has only fueled conspiracy theories and affected his family.

But anyway, I won't go on any more as I feel I've made every point I wanted to here perfectly clearly and if I ramble on more I may just inadvertently use the same reporting tactics I've criticised here. RIP, Ms. Hutchins.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #265: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2020).

 

Cherry (voiced in the Japanese-language version by Ichikawa Somegoro VIII) is a shy teenage boy with social and communication difficulties who expresses his feelings through haikus instead of verbally, and always wears headphones to block loud noise out. Meanwhile, Smile (Hana Sugisaki) is a teenage girl who externally projects confidence and vivaciousness as a social media influencer, but wears a mask because internally she's deeply insecure about her very large and braced front teeth. One day during summer they have a fateful chance meeting and quickly become more than friends, but then Cherry's father Koichi (Hiroshi Yamiya) informs him they will be moving town in a month.

This anime romance from co-writer and director Kyohei Ishiguro is frequently so fluorescently colourful it could give even Baz Luhrmann an epileptic seizure, but that's a very clever artistic choice and indeed it's the point because it helps the viewer see the world as both the protagonists do. Smile is, as I said, an influencer, an occupation and lifestyle which can frankly be very superficial, and Cherry is quite evidently autistic, which often means being hypersensitive to visual brightness or having enhanced visual perception. That is also why they together make a realistic couple because it's a case of opposite attracting, and it makes their separate arcs more relatably modern. They are also affectingly voiced, and the animation shows a perfectionistic approach throughout.

The pacing is occasionally meandering, but overall Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (and how fun and cute is that title?) struck me as a really sweet, intelligent and balanced anime love story from Ishiguro and studio Signal.MD. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #264: Whisper of the Heart (1995).

 

14-year-old Shizuku Tsukishima (voiced by Yoko Honna in the Japanese-language version) attends Mukaihara Junior High School in Tokyo. She lives with her parents and older sister and her best friend at school is Yuko (Maiko Kayama), but her real love is books. She's a bookworm's bookworm, and one day she visits her local library and is stunned to find all the books missing. Upon browsing the checkout cards, she discovers somebody named Seiji Amasawa (Issei Takahashi) has borrowed them all. Shizuku now tries to track Seiji down, and learns he's actually boy in her grade and Mukaihara. Once they then meet, she discovers he's a budding luthier who has a crush on her and therefore has begun borrowing books en masse, obviously knowing how much she loves them, to make her notice him. In return as they get to know each other, Shizuku starts writing more and singing, and then their relationship deepens and their previously unknown connections are revealed.

Whisper of the Heart was former animator Yoshifumi Kondo's sole directorial effort before his sudden death at age 47 in 1998, and Studio Ghibli's first theatrical film directed by neither Hayao Miyazaki (who nonetheless wrote the screenplay) nor Isao Takahata, but I'm afraid for me, it could've been considerably better. Visually it's as gorgeous as anything else Ghibli have made, and the voice cast all give adequate and natural performances, with dialogue that feels realistic for each character. However, the narrative was, for me, increasingly plodding and predictable to the point where I was ultimately almost entirely disengaged. It simply felt to me to be much too formulaic a YA romance, even for 1995 which was long before that genre exploded in popularity at least here in the West.

It's a nice story, sure, but one that I found to be told in a very stale manner despite the aesthetic flair on display, and it also ignored what I considered numerous chances for comic relief. Overall, Whisper of the Heart obviously did not win my heart. 6/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #263: Microbe and Gasoline (2015).

 

Daniel (Ange Darnent) lives with his mother Marie-Therese (Audrey Tautou) his distant father and two brothers in Versailles. He's lonely and bored, but is a budding painter. One day there arrives at his school a new boy, Theo (Theophile Baquet), who is basically his alter ego: loud and grungy. But they click immediately, and are soon hanging out together outside school. Sharing similar home lives and having found common interests like vehicles and design, they decide to build a makeshift car and take it on the road. They now become "Microbe" and "Gasoline" as they traverse their DIY automobile across the French countryside. En route, their relationship also changes and deepens.

This is a family-friendly departure for writer-director Michel Gondry after mostly adult-oriented features and a heap of music videos, and good on him for trying to inject some variety into his filmography, but frankly I expected less convention from the maker of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind. Primarily, I think this one would've been fresher and more profound had the dynamic been a girl and a boy  - with a completely platonic relationship, that is - instead of two boys. I think that would've allowed the film to combat childhood and gender stereotypes and to convey a message to children that boys and girls can find an emotional connection with each other Instead, as it is, for me the main duo felt quite hackneyed, even though Darnent and Bacquet both show promise on screen. Tautou, however, is wasted in a role that offers her no challenges whatsoever.

Gondry wisely depicts the young protagonists as obscene and uncouth (especially Theo), but that touch cannot mask the otherwise deeply cliched narrative and themes, and visually there's nothing distinctive or subversive either. I expected a far stranger family movie from Michel. 6/10.

My response to ableist remarks from somebody who shouldn't even have thought them.

 

This is Nicole Rogerson, the co-founder and director of the not-for-profit organisation Autism Awareness Australia. Outside of that, she and her husband Ian, a broadcaster who's appeared in a YouTube video (on AAA's channel, in fact) with fathers of autistic children, have become spokespeople for autism causes. That's nice. But this week, regarding a new study of early intervention therapy for autistic children, she was quoted as saying: 

"What this research has shown is what a limited amount of work very early that could be done could have a radical change for these children and their ultimate outcome. This research shows us we have to look at early childhood completely differently. We can't wait until children are three or four years old to see where they are developmentally. If we see some warning signs at that 12-month age it is absolutely imperative we get started. And this research shows the great outcomes for these kids. If we've helped their communication, if we helped those social skills, if we've made it more likely that they're going to go on to have an independent life and be successful in school, then it's incumbent on us, we have to do it."

As I read those words, I felt the breath sucked right out of my throat, and I truly saw red. I still cannot believe somebody in her position would advocate intervening in ASD kids' developments in order to make them appear more neurotypical. They certainly need help with social skills, but I believe that in no way means they need to be changed. She should absolutely know better, also, to even think, much less say these kids cannot become successful or independent adults with early intervention therapy growing up. There are literally thousands of adults on the spectrum whose tales disprove those fucking ignorant, patronising and condescending suggestions. And as the mother of an autistic son, how would she feel were he forced to undergo an intervention, at any age, to "fix" him? I hope she loves him unconditionally; after all, any parent should love their children unconditionally.  As for Nicole herself, after those deeply offensive claims, obviously I don't even like, let alone love, her.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-21/wa-study-hows-early-intervention-reduces-autism-diagnosis/100476422?fbclid=IwAR3vsEL-Eh0SBXpC6ppamSNCY14ZvGWa6so3_lEpOcxwpnvOlXK0mnOU6xk

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #262: The Place Beyond the Pines (2012).

 

It's 1995. Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a travelling motorcycle stuntman who, after reconnecting with his ex-flame Romina (Eva Mendes), learns she now has a baby son whom he accidentally fathered a year earlier. Romina and the boy, Jason, are now living with her new boyfriend Kofi (Mahershala Ali, before he won Oscars for Moonlight and Green Book), who openly dislikes Luke immediately. Shocked but committed, Luke now impulsively turns to robbing banks to support Romina and Jason. This new crime career naturally makes his path cross with that of upstart cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), himself a new husband and father, leading to a very fateful encounter. Then, in 2010, Jason (Dane DeHaan) is a disaffected teen who hangs out with A. J. (Emory Cohen), a drug-addicted and rebellious teen who, initially unbeknownst to Jason, is Luke's son; Jason, meanwhile, doesn't initially know A.J.'s father is Avery. As these two gradually uncover their fathers' histories and connection, parallels are inevitably drawn and it's up to them to end and escape the violent cycle.

The Place Beyond the Pines, for about the first half of its duration, had me engaged but somewhat puzzled about the point of it. But once it introduced Jason and A.J.'s storyline, its narrative intentions indeed became crystal clear to me. This is not simply a basic crime drama, as the synopsis of it on the streaming service I watched it from suggested (hence, maybe, why I initially felt confused and misled); it is also a meditation on internal and external connections between families as well as history's repetitiveness. Director Derek Cianfrance, with his co-writers Ben Cocco and Darius Marder, explores the layers of these three interconnected narratives with consistent logic and assurance until they unravel together like a roll of wrapping paper. He also gets solid performances from all his male cast, particularly Gosling (who I hadn't initially thought suited to action roles) and Cohen, although Mendes is relegated to a pretty one-dimensional love interest role. Sean Bobbitt's beautifully paced cinematography enhances the atmosphere further, and Jim Helton and Ron Patane's editing and Mike Patton's score are also fitting and evocative. Overall, once I could mentally navigate what it was trying to do narratively, I found The Place Beyond the Pines a stunning and hauntingly unique crime/family drama. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #261: Strange Magic (2015).

 

Two lands, one with fairies and light and the other with bog creatures and darkness, divide a fantastical realm. In the former, fairy Marianne (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) is heir to the Fairy Kingdom and engaged to dashing warrior Roland (Sam Palladio), until she sees him kissing another fairy on their wedding day. Marianne then vows never to fall in love again. Meanwhile in the dark forest, the Bog King (Alan Cumming) makes the same vow, against his doting mother Griselda's (Maya Rudolph) protests. Shortly later, Marianne's sister Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull) is in a panic about who Marianne will be attending the Spring Ball with and who she herself might meet there. Dawn and her elf best friend Sunny (Elijah Kelley), who has the hots for Dawn, then have a very close shave with a giant lizard from which Marianne saves them, and then at the Ball Roland tricks Marianne into returning to the dark forest where she now meets the Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristen Chenoweth), whose trick of her own is to arrange a fateful meeting between Marianne and the Bog King. All of this, by the way, is told as a jukebox musical.

This first non-Star Wars animated feature from Lucasfilm, with seven-time Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom making his directorial debut, is underrated. It's currently at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes but while it's far from perfect, I certainly don't think it warrants that low a rating. George Lucas developed the story for Strange Magic, with inspiration from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to make a more feminine family movie for his three daughters and while some of the dialogue (David Berenbaum, Irene Mecchi and Rydstrom wrote the final screenplay, for the record) is dreadfully bland and Rydstrom's directorial inexperience shows at times, I nonetheless thought this had a genuine charmand self-awareness to it throughout. The animation, which is of course the intended focal point, is utterly ravishing both in design and detail, and some (albeit not all) of the jokes amused me. The soundtrack is also entertaining, with selections as diverse as the Doors' People Are Strange to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. The vocal cast were all wisely chosen and give engaging, enthusiastic performances also. Strange Magic is no Epic, and it mightn't even be FernGully (I don't know; I haven't seen that since I was a child), but I think you should still ignore the critical drubbing it received. 7/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #260: Detroit (2017).

 

In 1967, Detroit, Michigan exploded in race riots along 12th Street. It was the most violent of the "Long hot summer" of race riots across the US. It reached its zenith with the Algiers Motel incident, in which various local police departments murdered three civilians and abused nine others. 2017's Detroit, released to mark the tragedy's 50th anniversary, recreates and explores its events through the eyes of several people who were there: primarily security guard Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), up-and-coming singer Larry Reed (Algee Smith) and his bodyguard Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), racist and corrupt white cop Philip Krauss (Will Poulter) and two young white women, Julie Anne Hysell (Hannah Murray) and Karen Malloy (Kaitlyn Dever), who happen to be staying at the same hotel as Larry and Fred.

Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have done it again. After their brilliant, Oscar-winning one-two punch of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, they've crafted another knockout of suspense and power. Bigelow's direction is effectively immediate and impassioned in the action scenes, delicately restrained in the quieter ones and entirely objective overall, while Boal's screenplay very lucidly and methodically reconstructs and plots the events, as well as developing all these characters very patiently. It's also deliberately, genuinely infuriating, particularly thanks to Poulter's character; he is so hateful and callous I truly wanted to shoot him in the stomach and leave him there alone to die. The cast are all solid, especially Boyega and Latimore, Barry Ackroyd's cinematography (he's another long-time Bigelow collaborator) is strikingly efficient and William Goldenberg's and Harry Yoon's editing matches that. The only flaw I found here was James Newton Howard's quite derivative score. Nonetheless, Detroit is a scorcher of an action thriller whose themes are unfortunately equally relevant today. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #259: The Comet Kids (2017).

It's the 1950s, in small-town America. Astronomer Rodney (Tiriel Mora) and his pre-teen son Lucas (Xavier West) are out stargazing one day when they're shocked to discover a comet passing by in space. Soon after, when Rodney suddenly dies, Lucas decides to find out what happened to that comet and to try to protect his father's discovery and reputation. He recruits his friends Grace (Alicia Roberto), Claudia (Juliette Salom), Archie (Hamish Triggs), Tricks (Harrison Bradley) and Jackson (Liam Pope), to go on an adventure to track the comet down, becoming embroiled in a conspiracy in the process.

Yes. I am serious. That is the desperately hackneyed plot of this colossal cinematic stinker from Australia. But that's just the start of its problems. The Comet Kids is apparently set in the US but none of the child actors sound like they had a dialect coach and the sets and locations are even less convincing still; the two girls (one of whom is also an Asian shaman stereotype) are depicted as always needing the boys to save them, the inane scientific dialogue and over-stylised fight scenes are unintentionally hilarious, and it's bookended with a flashback stereotype that is so wholesome and schmaltzy it could make even Chris Columbus race to the toilet. Oh, and did I mention a suspiciously high number of the writer-director Glenn Triggs' relatives worked on it? (I hope he paid them all well.)

This may be the very worst Australian film I've ever made the error or watching. On behalf of us, I apologise to the rest of the world for Australia inflicting this one on you. Maybe there's a reason "comet" rhymes with "vomit." 2/10. 

One possible reason why I work out.

I exercise daily, including visiting a gym twice weekly for an hour each time. That began in 2015, when my then-employer encouraged me to take it up to make me physically stronger for the gardening work we did. I quickly came to love doing gym work, and I've been hooked ever since. It's a good, healthy addiction to have. In my case it helps with maintaining socialisation and motivation alongside the obvious medical health benefits.

But since last month, particularly thanks to the revelation I had in July which I posted about then, while working out at my gym I've been asking myself a very specific and deep question: are my past experiences of being body-shamed a subconscious reason why I work out so much? I now think that's increasingly likely. Today I sincerely don't care much about how others perceive my physique, but the harassment about that from when I did clearly never fully left me. Hell, in high school we had a students' gym which I used quite frequently during lunchbreaks in the early grades when I was still being teased about my skinniness (later in high school that finally stopped). A pattern could've begun there.

How much negativity from our formative years do we truly let go of? How much of it do we subconsciously retain? I'm really not depressed about this, although I'm definitely not nostalgic for it. This recent question that's come to me about it has simply come as, I suppose, a revelation from that previous revelation, and the answer to that question is currently one I'm still stewing over. Yet, I feel it's a necessary question for me to answer about myself, and maybe I was meant to get into exercising so I could be presented with it. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #258: How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017).

 

It's some time in 1970s London. Punk is just about to make its mainstream breakthrough when young Enn (Alex Sharp), an aspiring comic book artist who lives with his single mum Marion (Joanna Scanlan), has a night on the town with his friends. It proves to be a very fateful night when the gang encounter a group of extra-terrestrial teenagers visiting Earth to complete a strange rite of passage. One of them is the striking and rebellious Zan (Elle Fanning), who immediately ensnares Enn. As Enn and Zan then quickly fall in love, their fight to be together generates conflict on and between both their worlds.

This adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2006 short story, as directed and co-written by John Cameron Mitchell, is like the bastard offspring of A Clockwork Orange and a Vivienne Westwood fashion parade. It's a nut I couldn't fully crack if I'm entirely honest, but I genuinely enjoyed trying to crack it nonetheless. With its vivid fusion of rock music and science fiction/fantasy elements, How to Talk to Girls at Parties I think shows Gaiman's and Mitchell's tastes and narrative styles in consistent simpatico; to anybody who's unaware, Gaiman is best-known for fantasy novels like Stardust, and Mitchell for the glam rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Fanning, who's very talented, I think was unchallenged in this role but remains watchable nonetheless, while Sharp, with more to do emotionally, projects the right attitude and look throughout; among the supporting cast are Nicole Kidman (reuniting with Mitchell after their 2010 film Rabbit Hole) having great fun as local punk hangout manager Queen Boadicea, and Matt Lucas as one of the alien leaders. Throw some beautifully realised visual effects, lucid editing and a lively soundtrack, and for me this was a weird but engaging and very intriguing romantic ride through our universe. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #257: Goat (2016).

 

In this adaptation of Brad Land's memoir, 19-year-old Brad (Ben Schnetzer) enrols in a college to straighten his life out after a vicious summer assault. His elder brother Brett (Nick Jonas) is already a well-established sophomore and tells Brad about his fraternity, which lures the desperate-to-belong Brad in with promises of acceptance, protection and friendship. But of course, not much sooner than Brad signs his membership form does he see what it actually delivers for its members: a toxic initiation process involving numerous public and increasingly dangerous, compromising hazing rituals and stunts. It's absolutely not like campfires at Scout camps. As the process progresses, Brad becomes ever more reluctant, trepidatious and disillusioned about the fraternity, with his and Brett's relationship deteriorating as a result and the fraternity having to face consequences of its own.

Goat is another movie I don't quite know how I feel about, but I do know it proved quite thought-provoking for me and not only because of its content. To my knowledge fraternities and sororities don't exist in Australian tertiary education institutions (my alma mater certainly lacks them) although the extracurricular cultures of ours have similar drawbacks, and so it offered me quite a more unflinching peek into their damaging activities and policies than I've seen before, as opposed to the ones in US TV teen dramas and certain other films. However, while I was engaged and concerned throughout, it didn't move me as perhaps it was meant to. Andrew Neel's direction feels emotionally detached at times, although he cleverly avoided any unconventional visual touches to reflect how these fraternities and sororities are frequently more conservative and exclusive than they claim to be, and the script he co-wrote with David Gordon Green and Mike Roberts maintains a natural and frank dialogue tone and plots the central character arcs lucidly. Schnetzer fills Brad's shoes convincingly in a smartly understated turn and Jake Picking brings sincerity to the antagonistic fraternity leader Dixon, although Jonas tries just a tad too hard as Brett. Goat has its issues, but it's definitely stimulating and I think the point is this: hazing in fraternities and sororities causes great damage, but you can survive it and Brad Land is among the lucky ones who did.

Behaving violently when you're on the spectrum.

 None of what I say in this post will be popular. But for better or worse, all of it is the truth.

I frequently look back through my old Facebook posts. In one from last year I made defending Greta Thunberg, a friend of mine who dislikes her said something very basic but, in hindsight, accurate: "not all people with ASDs are nice people." Unfortunately, many notable people on the spectrum besides Thunberg have more than vindicated that statement.

Next month in Australia will see the release of Nitram, a film about Martin Bryant's life before he committed the Port Arthur massacre in 1996; Bryant was later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Unsurprisingly the film has already generated much controversy here, including online petitions to have its production stopped. Bryant was not the first autistic person to commit mass murder and he certainly wasn't the last. Among the others in this long "honour" roll; Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer Adam Lanza; white supremacist Samuel Woodward, who killed Jewish and openly gay teenager Blaze Bernstein in 2018; Andrew Lackey, who was executed for murdering WWII veteran Charles Newman in 2005; Nicholas Godejohn, who killed his then-girlfriend Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother Dee Dee in 2015; Peter Mangs, who committed the 2009-10 shootings in Malmo, Sweden; William Freund, who killed three people including himself in Aliso Viejo, California in 2005; 2018 Capitol Gazette massacre perpetrator Jarrod Ramos; 2019 University of North Carolina shooter Trystan Terrell; Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 Latinos in El Paso, Texas in 2019; and Elliott Rodger, who committed the 2014 Isla Vista slayings and almost as infamously made a viral video manifesto. In recent years it has also come to light that Hans Asperger himself worked with Nazi Germany's eugenics program.

They all are/were horrible human beings, but they were all on the spectrum nonetheless. That in no way even excuses their crimes, let alone redeems them of those, but it is a fact I believe must be remembered. Nonetheless. biology plants the seed for violent and hateful behaviour; society waters that seed. And it waters that seed especially in people perceived as abnormal because they are too often excluded, discriminated against, or feared. Autistic people are not all violent or bigoted and some of never even become either of those. But many of us do (as just as many neurotypicals do, let us not forget or deny), and that is our sociology's fault as much as theirs. It will never stop until everybody treats people who are different in whatever form completely as equals.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #256: Mid90s (2018).

 

As the title suggests, the year is 1996. 12-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) lives in Palms, LA with his mother Dabney (Katherine Waterston) and his abusive elder brother Ian (Lucas Hedges). One day when he cycles past a skateboard shop he's never seen before, Stevie's immediately enamoured with skating and so wants to give it a try. After trading with Ian for a board, Stevie returns to the shop where local teen skater Ray (Na-Kel Smith) befriends him and lets him join a group consisting of other tearaway young skaters including one named Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt), which says it all. Naturally it isn't long until Sunny begins having second thoughts about this crowd when their fun times turn increasingly dangerous.

This debut for Jonah Hill as writer-director, based presumably on his own adolescence, is nothing game-changing at all (although it mightn't have needed to be anyway), but it's an honest, compassionate and natural recreation of its era and of growing up. Hill wisely goes easy on the nostalgic touches (there's not actually that much of a period soundtrack or many overt cultural references for a start) and instead focuses more as the movie progresses on the ramifications these characters' reckless choices have for them. But that element of it isn't treated didactically or judgmentally either, which would've been hypocritical of somebody like Hill given many of the movies he's starred in. Instead he simply tells this tale like an updated and more mature version of Stand by Me: these boys drink and smoke drugs alongside their activities on the roads. Hill also uses Stevie as not just his avatar but also a vessel through which to explain why he and his friends make those choices: they're all trying to flee something. Newcomer Suljic makes for an expressive and relatable hero, carrying his amount of the film confidently, and his co-stars all hold their own alongside him. There's also beautifully focused photography by Christopher Blauvelt and unshowy editing from Nick Houy. There are more great directorial efforts on the way from Hill if Mid90s is any indication.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #255: Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017).

 

In this feature animation debut from Japan's Studio Ponoc, based on Mary Stewart's 1971 novel The Little Broomstick, eleven-year-old Mary Smith (the voice of Ruby Barnhill in the English-language version) moves to the countryside to live with her great-aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron). Local paperboy Peter (Louis Ashbourne Serkis; Andy's son) is also found there and his good-humoured mocking of Mary's red hair and clumsiness masks his obvious crush on her. His pet cats then lead Mary to some strange, glowing flowers which a local gardener then tells her possess magical powers that witches are said to covet. Then after the flower's bulbs come to life, they summon a broomstick for Mary to ride and now she's a witch-in-training.

Yes, I'm serious. This film's narrative truly is that cliched and hackneyed. I hated this movie. It's fantasy at its most unimaginative, and that's not it's only downfall. There's also an anthropomorphised mouse sidekick named Flanagan (Ewen Bremner) who's depicted as an offensive Irish stereotype (I'm of Irish descent), Mary and Peter feel the entire time like retreads of the damsel in distress and farm boy archetype, the animation style is in no way distinctive, it wastes every opportunity it had for some humour, and Jim Broadbent gives an irritating vocal performance as a mad scientist at Mary's witchcraft school. After his 2014 masterpiece When Marnie Was There (which he made for Studio Ghibli), I thought Mary and the Witch's Flower was a complete buzzkill for director Hiromasa Yonebashi. Better luck next time to him and his new studio, Ponoc.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #254: Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love (1979).

 

When Raun Kaufman was born, he appeared to be a perfectly regular, healthy baby until around his first birthday. That was when he began exhibiting symptoms of what we now know as "classic" autism. But through round-the-clock support and therapy from his parents, Samahria and Barry, he seemed to recover from it. The 1979 TV docudrama Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love, adapted from Barry's book of the same title, recounts the Kaufmans' efforts to adjust to their son's diagnosis and then to help him with it.

While I have some reservations about its message encouraging curing autism, I found this to be a remarkably compassionate, accurate and honest examination of autism for its time and in any case, the neurodiversity movements and widespread public awareness of the autism spectrum were both decades away. I do think this film should be viewed, as a depiction of autism, within the context of its era, but regardless, as it stands it's also a valuable document of public and artistic attitudes towards autistics in the late 1970s. I'd also suspect it generated some awareness of the spectrum then, too.

Director Glenn Jordan gets strong performances from James Farentino and particularly Kathryn Harrold as the Kaufmans (who were ne-named Bears and Suzy for the movie), with twins Casey and Michael Adams sharing the part of Raun. The production values here are unremarkable but they were never the point here. That was to recreate a hopeful, inspiring true story of one family proving a diagnosis is not a destiny.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #253: Isle of Dogs (2018).

 

In the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki, a canine influenza outbreak has occurred. Mayor Kenji Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) therefore decrees that all dogs are to be deported to nearby Trash Island, despite the mayor's political rival Professor Watanabe's (Akira Ito) insistence that he is about to find a cure. The first pooch dumped there is Spots (Liev Schreiber), whose owner is none other than Mayor Kobayashi's ten-year-old nephew and ward, Atari (Koyu Rankin). A quiet but adventurous boy, missing his pet, Atari now wastes no time in going away to find and rescue Spots, hijacking an aircraft to Trash Island, now known as "Isle of Dogs," where he meets and acquires the help of stray Chief (Bryan Cranston) and his pack.

This is a genuinely oddball film, but that's precisely what to expect from writer-director Wes Anderson. Nominated for the 2018 Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score Oscars, it's a stop-motion science fiction comedy and I don't quite know how I feel about it, if I'm completely honest, but it's undoubtedly original and unmistakable. I do know I don't think it's nearly as enjoyable as his live-action films Rushmore (1998) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), but it's totally different to both those narratively, aesthetically and technically anyway. There's a real exactness and precision to how Anderson directs this tale and the humour in his screenplay is almost exclusively deadpan and very dry (another trademark of his work), with the visuals flowing very consistently from scene to scene with thorough attention to detail. And the voice cast (which also includes Harvey Keitel, Frances McDormand, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Ken Watanabe, Greta Gerwig, F. Murray Abraham and even Yoko Ono) all provide fun and natural vocal turns. Alexandre Desplat's score also warranted its Oscar nod.

But as I said before, all things considered, I don't quite know what I think of Isle of Dogs, mainly because I'm still trying to identify exactly what its overall objectives are. However, I certainly do not hate it. I don't even dislike it.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #252: Growing Up Smith (2017).

 

In the present day, Indian-American Smith reflects on his adolescent experiences as a young immigrant (Roni Akurati) after his family moved to America in 1979. There, his parents' (Poorna Jagannathan and Shoba Narayan) traditional Indian values conflicted with his growing affection for American trends of the time like KFC (even though his family are all vegetarians), Star Wars, and especially disco and Saturday Night Fever. The girl who catches his eye and heart is Amy (Brighton Sharbino) and even while the times change, she never quite leaves his thoughts. To complete Smith's education in all things American, Amy's outdoorsman father Butch (Jason Lee) introduces him to hunting.

Growing Up Smith begins charmingly with its loving homages to aforementioned '70s pop culture hallmarks and its effort to establish a fish-out-of-water coming-of-age narrative. But then it insists on changing course into such familiar and wholesome territory that it becomes bogged down in tired cliches. It really did feel to me exactly like a feature-length episode of The Wonder Years (a show I adore, by the way) except with an immigrant family. It has the voice-over narration from adult Smith and everything! Working from the screenplay by Anjul Nigam, Paul Quinn and Gregory Scott Houghton, Australian director Frank Lotito's approach here just shows no zest or empathy for me. Aesthetically it also lacks any fitting cultural touches like mystical visuals or sitar music; I realise those are both stereotypically Indian themselves but I think they could've been employed to literally clash with the Western ones that were included, to emphasise Smith's of-two-worlds situation more pointedly. Instead, the approach here taken struck me as uninspired and hackneyed, with bland jokes to boot. Oh, and the soundtrack consists of covers of Bee Gees hits. That was probably because the small budget limited which versions they could afford the rights to, but I suspect the band would be happy the originals couldn't be used.

Overall, this was a harmless and lightweight but fatally cliched and unfunny return to very familiar territory. 5/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #251: Be Kind Rewind (2008).

 

In Passaic, New Jersey, Mike (Mos Def) holds the fort at the struggling video rental store "Be Kind Rewind," while his employer Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) is on leave. Fletcher has given Mike a message to not let the clumsy and unhinged Jerry (Jack Black) into the store, but Mike misinterpreted that message. After then trying to deactivate a nearby power substation because he thinks it's melting his brain, Jerry receives an electrical shock which renders him magnetised before he enters the store and inadvertently erases all its tapes. Now, of course, the customers (including Mia Farrow as one) start to complain about the tapes they've hired, so Mike and Jerry hatch a plan: with no budget or additional help, they will reshoot every single movie in the store and hope nobody notices. Well, the customers do notice, but these homemade remakes prove unexpectedly popular, if not exactly legal.

After making the Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and music videos for everybody from Paul McCartney to Kraftwerk, Michel Gondry definitely has a reputation for nonconformity and variety and both those qualities are overflowing in the delightful Be Kind Rewind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the store houses literally hundreds of titles, the films referenced and recreated here go from everything to Driving Miss Daisy to RoboCop to The Lion King and, in my favourite recreation (or "swedes" as they're called in the film), 2001: A Space Odyssey. But there's more to enjoy than just the laughs from those re-shoots. Be Kind Rewind also makes a lucid statement on film industry changes that remain unfolding now, and on where and how creativity and inspiration start.

This was evidently Gondry's attempt to salute cinema and some of its most iconic and influential modern entries while also turning them all on their heads. His enthusiastic, indeed almost anarchic insistence on doing that proved contagious for me, and he realised it with a fabulous dadaist vibe and appropriately easy-going performances. Above all, though, it's a celebration of filmmaking itself. Be Kind Rewind is (almost) too good to return.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #250: Mean Creek (2004).

Teenage Sam (Rory Culkin) tells his older brother Rocky (Trevor Morgan) that he's having trouble at school with the resident bully, the overweight and privately troubled George (Josh Peck). After Rocky then tells his friends Clyde (Ryan Kelley) and Marty (Scott Mechlowicz), they hatch a plan to stage a party for Sam's (fictional) birthday and to invite George, take him on a boating trip and then make him strip in a game of truth or dare, dump him in the river and then leave him to run home naked. George very gullibly accepts the invitation and then once the trip gets underway, some of the guys, as well as Sam's friend Millie (Carly Schroeder), who's reluctantly joined them, develop second thoughts upon realising George is just very lonely and eager for acceptance. However, the others, especially Marty, maintain their original feelings about George and insist on pressing on with the plan.

Writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes' feature debut Mean Creek is a mature, realistic and haunting cautionary tale about adolescent bullying, how it begins and, particularly, how not to combat it. Estes here demonstrates a rich but delicate cinematographic exposition of the natural locations the characters trek through and more importantly a lucid tracking of the group's dynamics and how they all remain distinctive yet intertwined. What's especially interesting is how two of them trade one narrative role, although for spoiler reasons I won't specify who.

Estes also gets very effective and natural turns out of his young cast, particularly Peck and Schroeder, and wisely resists using pop hits on the soundtrack, for a more timeless feel. Musical duo Tomandandy's score, by the way, matches the wilderness setting and mounting suspense in every scene, and the film is also edited very evenly. Mean Creek is rather like the anti-Stand by Me (although that movie has its own dark moments), but in treading its territory very confrontationally, it becomes a coming-of-age film that's admirably honest and not preachy. Exceptional stuff. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #249: 20 Feet from Stardom (2013).

 

They're the artists who've provided the backdrop for some of the most beloved and acclaimed songs in pop music history. But most of them have remained merely names inside album liner notes, not household names. Morgan Neville's 20 Feet from Stardom, which won the 2013 Best Documentary Feature Oscar, finally reveals a few of their stories, to give these gifted but overshadowed performers their due at last.

They include Merry Clayton (the woman who dueted with Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"), Grammy winner Lisa Fischer, Darlene Love (who brought the house down with an a cappella performance during the filmmakers' Oscar acceptance speech), Judith Hill and Sheryl Crow (who sang backing vocals for Michael Jackson); also interviewed are Stevie Wonder, Bette Midler and Bruce Springsteen among others. Every interview is handled and integrated with the right subjective touch, and these ladies' tales will all move you, then make you cheer.

Neville handles all their stories with empathy and a healthy curiosity, but brings very much a director's eye to the visual elements. He intersperses the interviews with original information graphics and archival performance footage, both of which brilliantly infuse it with vibrancy and authenticity. The aesthetics do feel reminiscent of ones from shows like Soul Train or Top of the Pops. The emotional peak arrives with an astonishing choir rendition of "I Say a Little Prayer" at the end. It all adds up to a sizzling, insightful and powerful tribute to some of pop music's unsung (pun intended) heroes.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #248: CJ7 (2008).

 

Chow Ti (writer-director Stephen Chow) is a poor, widowed construction worker who inhabits a partially demolished house with his nine-year-old son, Dicky (Xu Jiao). Ti wishes to earn and save money to continue sending Dicky to private school, but there Dicky experiences daily bullying because of his poverty and weathered clothes. Then while shopping one day, Dicky begs Ti to buy him a whiz-bang new toy robot named CJ1, but Ti cannot afford it and this leads to Ti smacking the stubborn Dicky in front of many other shoppers. But then that night, while searching through a junkyard where he has found numerous appliances and clothes for Dicky, Ti finds a strange green orb which he takes home for his son. When it then transforms into a pint-sized green alien, their lives are turned upside down.

A departure from the martial arts slapstick comedies Chow made his name with, 2001's Shaolin Soccer and 2004's Kung Fu Hustle, this Chinese family science fiction comedy tickled me pink. It's a gloriously weird, unashamedly ridiculous and sometimes even touching romp with a wisely subtle message about socio-economic inequality in China mixed in, and very convincing visual effects for its $20 000 000 budget. Chow plots and paces it all with a firm grip and makes an amiable paternal hero but perhaps unsurprisingly the true star here is Xu Jiao, who I was stunned to discover is actually a girl! She cross-dressed for the role and makes Dicky a young hero who's neither too cute nor too mischievous.

Raymond Wong Ying-Wah's musical stylings complement the narrative and visuals effectively also, and the editing and sound design bring more flavour still. CJ7 is a prime slice of Dadaist, Eastern family filmmaking for all ages.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #247: Ten Canoes (2006).

 

In Arnhem Land, before Western influence, ten Aboriginal men work together as hunters. Young Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil, whose father David narrates the movie) is told a story about another young man from even further back in history who coveted one of his sisters-in-law and eventually killed a member of another tried, for which he faced grave penalties. This tale resonates with Dayindi because it echoes his own situation.

Ten Canoes won the 2006 AFI Award for Best Film, and its intentions as the first movie entirely in indigenous Australian language are admirable. Plus, it did initially captivate me as a study of pre-European settlement life among Australia's First Nations peoples. But then, as it consciously goes out of its way to assert its arthouse intentions, for me it proved Rolf de Heer's status as arguably the most pretentious filmmaker in Australia. He co-directed it, to his credit, with the indigenous Peter Djigirr, but Djigirr's instincts to me didn't seem to have prevailed over de Heer's as perhaps they should have. There's lush natural photography and engaging non-professional performances here, but neither of those can counter de Heer's insistence on telling this narrative as alternatively as possible, and the lack of a score doesn't help.

De Heer obviously cared about this story of the first Australians; otherwise he wouldn't have made it. But I came away from it genuinely thinking Warwick Thornton or Rachel Perkins, two acclaimed Aboriginal filmmakers, would have made it into a far more accessible, insightful and moving film. 6/10.