Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #282: The Thief Lord (2006).

 

Recently orphaned brothers Prosper (a young Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I seriously doubt still has this one on his CV) and Bo (Jasper Harris) are entrusted to the care of their cold-hearted aunt and uncle and soon flee to Venice to avoid their imminent separation. In Venice they then become street urchins under the leadership of the mysterious and masked Thief Lord (Rollo Weeks, the resident Artful Dodger here), who introduces them to his gang. Inhabiting an abandoned cinema, the kids steal from the rich to feed themselves but soon arouse the attention of bumbling detective Victor Getz (Jim Carter), but an even stronger threat to them is the existence of a magical treasure, from a forgotten past, that can alter the age of anybody who uses it. Along for the ride is sympathetic photographer Ida Getz (Caroline Goodall, who somehow went from starring in Schindler's List to this).

Oh, dear God. This is just catastrophic. The Thief Lord, based on a Cornelia Funke novel, is not a family fantasy movie. It is something that I'd bet has been screened to torture the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Around the thirty-minute mark I could feel what I perceived to be vomit slowly travelling up through my throat and while I didn't actually end up puking, I truly don't know how. That really is how cheesy, cliched, skittish and lazily imagined it is. For starters, director Richard Claus was clearly fine with having his entire cast retain their English accents when most of them were playing Italians, for fuck's sake. Then, he paces and frames most scenes and especially the action ones like a Benny Hill sketch, even when they're not meant to be funny. The ones that are meant to be funny, meanwhile, have absolutely no consideration of timing, the visual effects are thin and unconvincingly even by low-budget standards and the production design is about as fresh and detailed as the illustrations in a re-print of a storybook. Nigel Clarke and Michael Csanyi-Willis' score is also inescapably derivative and more heavy-handed than a chef decorating a wedding cake, and the editing looks more rushed than an emergency vehicle responding to a 000 call.

At one point, a character says "I'm gonna be sick!" I thought, 'Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.' It's very fitting that the title of The Thief Lord contains the word "thief," because thievery is a crime. Just like this cinematic variety. 2/10.

The Open is CLOSED to Novak.

We Aussies love our sport like nobody else does, and this week one sport-related story has truly hogged the headlines: Novak Djokovic being barred from playing in the Australian Open. This was because of his refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Now, I don't follow tennis much at the best of times (although I stayed up to the small hours last year to watch Ash Barty win Wimbledon) but I'm a well-known news junkie and I'm very much pro-vaccination so hence my interest in this saga. Djokovic basically arrived in Melbourne for the tournament, then was denied a visa because he was unvaccinated, took this matter to a court where it was decided he deserved a visa, but then that ruling was overturned and he was deported home to Serbia.

Dude, have the shots (no pun intended). That's all you needed to do in order to be able to play and besides, I somehow doubt Australia is the only country denying visas to unvaccinated people during this pandemic, meaning other ones with professional tennis tournaments will likely be among them. Plus, because of how famous both he and the Australian Open are internationally, this has now become a global news story. I think Djokovic has to ask himself: does he want to be remembered as the winner of twenty-plus tennis Grand Slams, or as the guy who was barred from playing in the 2022 Australian Open and then deported from the country for refusing to get vaccinated during a worldwide pandemic. I certainly know which of those I'd rather go down as. 

I also think responsibility here extends past him. Where have his medical and legal teams, coaches and sponsors been throughout this and why haven't any of them forced him to have the vaccinations, even if only so he can play? Why have none of them, at least that we know of, said, "Novak, shut the fuck up and have the jabs. They'll save your life and ensure you a visa so you can play"? I suspect directives like that are part of their job descriptions. Finally, this saga with him threatens to overshadow the tournament itself and accomplishments of the permitted players - all of whom, of course, evidently have been vaccinated. They deserve that (literal and figurative) moment in the sun. He mightn't have made many on-court, but this week he's made a big double fault off it and the media got real mileage out of it.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #281: Alone in Space (2018).

 

In the not-too-distant future, the spaceship Svea XVI traverses across the galaxy with just two passengers: 12-year-old Gladys (Ella Rae Rapaport) and her little brother Keaton (Dante Fleischanderl). The siblings have fled a dying Earth and are heading for the planet Vial in what seems an endless journey, but their isolated, lonely days in space are interrupted when something strange crashes into the Svea XVI.

Alone in Space is an adaptation of Henrik Stahl's play from debut writer-director Ted Kjellson, and it's a pretty good start from him. It's certainly nothing groundbreaking (at least regarding science fiction) but it never needed to be, and not just because it's a family science fiction movie. I don't think you can, or should, expect a first-time director to create the cinematic equivalent of Mount Rushmore. Anyway, I found this Swedish outer space ride to be adequately imaginative, energetic and harmless, with a restrained handling of its themes and two juvenile protagonists who are never annoying or excessively cute. It has aesthetic touches rather reminiscent of Spy Kids, Doctor Who and Galaxy Quest among other texts, but Kjellson doesn't fall back on those nods too much to the point where the film lacks its own flavour. He also coaxed engaging performances from both his young leads and gives them equal screen time and realistic dialogue for their characters' ages and personalities. The production and costume design is also rich and vibrant and the score and editing also go a long way in maintaining the film's pacing and energy.

Alone in Space isn't a masterpiece, but while it may seem on paper like some throwaway piece of innocent science fiction for children, it's actually deceptively not that simple. It's really quite a confident, rollicking and smart interstellar ride.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #280: Before We Vanish (2017).

 

An alien in the disguise of a schoolgirl named Akira (Yuri Tsunematsu) murders Akira's family, then walks into a street where she causes a traffic crash. A second alien has hijacked the body of Shinji (Ryuhei Matsuda), a man whose wife Natsumi (Masami Nagasawa) finds the consequent changes to his personality bewildering. A third alien then invades the body of Amano (Mahiro Takasugi), a teenage boy who connects with freelance reporter Sakurai (Hiroki Hasegawa), who's trying to locate Akira and who, after becoming Amano's guide, Amano tells he is an extraterrestrial. As this group of disguised interstellar visitors travels out of the city and then across rural Japan for home, they slowly rob their hosts (and quickly rob others) of the essence of their beings, with psychological and spiritual devastation being left in their wake.

This is a curious one and a slow-burner. It's definitely not (even intentionally) ridiculous like many other Japanese science fiction films, and nor is it a ray-gun shoot-'em-up adventure (although it has its fair share of action, particularly near the end). Rather, Before We Vanish, based on Tomohiro Maekawa's 2005 stage play Sanpo Suru Shrinyakusha, is part science fiction mystery, part family drama, part psychological thriller, part coming-of-age story. Think Arrival meets The Sixth Sense meets Super 8 and you're on the right track. Yet director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) and his co-writer Sachiko Tanaka still mold these greatly different narrative plotlines and themes into a cohesive and intriguing whole; it's slow but genuinely stimulating. If I am honest I don't actually know quite how I feel about it, but it's definitely thought-provoking because I am still contemplating it a few hours later as I sit here writing this review.

The visual effects are refreshingly understated even in the climactic explosion scenes, with the sound design being consistently crisp and authentic, and the production design stands out because of how effectively it uses and contrasts rural and urban Japanese settings alongside the science fiction elements. Kurosawa also draws fine turns from his cast, with Tsunematsu and Nagasawa being particularly strong. Before We Vanish may have you scratching your head as it did for me, but if you approach it expecting a more cerebral and slow-paced kind of SF movie from the East, it should be worth your while. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #279: Emo the Musical (2016).

 

Emo teen Ethan (Benson Jack Anthony) is expelled from his high school after he tries unsuccessfully to hang himself on campus. He then starts at the dilapidated Seymour High, where he's instantly smitten with naive Catholic girl Trinity (Jordan Hare), even though he claims to despise everything she represents. She's eager to convert him, but Ethan is far more interested in joining the school's alternative rock band, Worst Day Ever, part of the Emo clique, whose violent and rebellious leader Bradley (Rahart Adams) is rivals with the Christian clique's leader Isaac (Jon Prasida). So Ethan successfully auditions for Bradley and then goes full-tilt emo, with black eyeliner and aggressively possessive girlfriend Roz (Lucy Barrett). But nonetheless, Ethan's heart remains set on Trinity, and this puts a strain on his relationship with his bandmates, particularly Bradley, as they try to win the school's annual battle of the bands competition. This is all told, as the title suggests, with an interwoven cocktail of original songs.

Did I enjoy Emo the Musical? Well, I'm a millennial, I needed an intervention in high school, my favourite bands include Good Charlotte, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and I'm an atheist and this movie pretty remorselessly satirises Christianity. So it's pretty safe to assume I absolutely loved it. Based on his 2014 short, writer-director Neil Triffett's feature debut takes no prisoners, mocking even the emo subculture itself in how Ethan is gradually revealed to be something of a poser. But Triffett and Anthony still make the viewer care enough to follow his journey from whiny brat to a more disillusioned but conscientious character. The songs, which Triffett co-wrote with Craig Pilkington and Charlotte Nicdao, are all hilarious and fitting; "Jesus Was an Emo" is my favourite. Triffett infuses the narrative with teenage characters who are all (deliberate) cliches but cliches that nonetheless exist, and his direction is suitably paced. Best of all, he keeps a firm grip on the mixed visual elements which are critical for emphasising the colliding of Ethan and Trinity's vastly different worlds. Plus, the supporting cast fill the scenery engagingly, especially with Hare making a winningly cheery girlfriend and Adams a very authoritative roguish non-conformist.

As an original musical, an Aussie teen romance and perhaps even a statement about both millennials and Gen Z combined, Emo the Musical gets not a note wrong. I give it nine wrist-cuts out of ten.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #278: The Fifth Element (1997).

 

In 1914, aliens known as Mondashawans converge at an ancient Egyptian temple, which is simultaneously the site of an archaeological dig, to retrieve a weapon that can stop a great evil that resurfaces every five millennia. They promise to return the weapon before that evil returns again, with the weapon containing the five classical elements along with a mysterious fifth. Then, in 2263, the Mondashawans are returning to Earth with the weapon when a group of alien mercenaries called Mangalores working for industrialist Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman), himself working for the great evil, are ambushed. A severed human hand from the wreckage is then brought to New York City where it's used to create Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), a female humanoid who jumps off a skyscraper and into the flying taxi of Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a retired soldier. After Dallas now takes Leeloo to priest Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm) and his apprentice David (Charlie Creed-Miles), she is revealed to be the Fifth Element. Now Korben and Leeloo must take a journey, beginning with a luxury flight where they recruit the reluctant help of drag queen talk show host Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker), across the universe to recover the stones of the other four elements, in order to reforge the weapon with which to save the world.

Today marked the first time I'd seen this cult science fiction classic since I was about ten; all I'd remembered of it was Tucker's hilarious character and the flying cars. French director and co-writer Luc Besson first had the inspiration for it at age 16, but spent 20 years refining the story before finally filming it. The result is a delightfully, unashamedly outrageous and garish slice of pop SF that seems to merge influences as sparse as King Solomon's Mines and Andy Warhol. Upon release it was the costliest European movie in history and it's obvious why, but neither the visuals nor the huge stars' presence overshadow the central plot and Besson and his team never let that out of their sights either. Nonetheless, this is definitely a movie where style adds hugely to its appeal, and not to be outdone alongside the impressive visual effects is the design. Besson hired Jean Giraud and Jean-Claude Mezieres, two of the comic artists whose work strongly influenced him, to work on the sets, and only somebody like Jean-Paul Gaultier could've designed such bizarre costumes as the ones here (especially, of course, Ruby's, perhaps unsurprisingly).

The Fifth Element remains Besson's most famous film, and while he's made missteps since then (most notably 2017's truly horrific Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), I found it to be a completely engaging, distinctive and wonderfully (albeit intentionally) ridiculous science fiction ride. 9/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #277: Cooties (2015).

 

Clint Hadson (Elijah Wood) is an aspiring horror novelist who takes a job as a substitute teacher at Fort Chicken Elementary School. There he's reunited with his childhood crush Lucy McCormick (Alison Pill), who's now seeing the PE teacher Wade Johnson (Rainn Wilson). The classes appear to running as well as usual, but the chicken nuggets the kids have been served at the cafeteria have been laced with something dangerous. They contain a mutant virus that gradually turns them into cannibalistic psychos, and quickly of course an epidemic spreads across the school, meaning the staff must now save the day instead of teaching lessons.

In theory this should've really tickled my fancy as a horror comedy and with that cast but astonishingly, it lulled me to sleep. The narrative concept is brilliantly subversive, but to me there's just nothing immediate or assertive in any way about how it was executed. Jonathan Millott and Cary Murnion's direction lacks charisma and personality, and I don't think they cared enough about the comedy element to make that as prominent as screenwriters Ian Brennan and Leigh Whannell (who both also play minor roles) wanted it to be. Horror, and horror comedies, I think need to consciously try to grab you immediately and never let go until the end, and this showed for me too much of a slow-burn approach. Brennan and Whannell, to their credit, also fill this one with child characters who are quite realistic and pleasantly mischievous and obscene, and the cast all seemed to enjoy themselves, but the directors' approach struck me, as I said, as dull and very misjudged. I think it also needed a more rock-influenced soundtrack than the one it was given. Overall, these Cooties may be contagious, but I didn't find them frightening at all. 5/10.