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Also review Australian films at www.infilm.com.au
Here's further proof that minimal budgets are no hindrance to producing an effective, old-fashioned spookfest when in the right hands. Joel Anderson’s exceptional debut, Lake Mungo, manages to stretch the faux-documentary form out to some very interesting places, and though bearing similarities to both The Blair Witch Project and the upcoming Paranormal Activity, it's actually superior to both. There's a far more expansive foundation here on which the film's crafty little turns-of-the-screw are constructed!
The story begins in the Victorian town of Ararat in December 2005 when 16 year-old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker) mysteriously disappears, feared drowned, during a family picnic at the local dam. A few days later, divers discover her body, and through interview testimony we learn of the impact of her passing on family and friends in the community at large.
It’s through these well-staged accounts that Anderson begins raising his niftily-constructed tale to life; the second half is especially impressive, littering the story with some legitimately surprising twists that shed new light on the increasingly involved mystery of Alice’s troubled last months.
Much of the film’s effectiveness is derived from the dabbling of son Matthew (Martin Sharpe) in amateur photography, his snaps and video footage seemingly providing proof of supernatural tampering; this follows in the wake of other strange occurrences, beginning just ten days after Alice’s death.
A radio psychic, Ray (Steve Jodrell), plays a vital part in proceedings too; contacted by Alice’s mother, June (Rosie Traynor), he becomes magnetised to the family's quest for authentication of this possible haunting which, in grief, they're all struggling to make sense of.
This isn’t an easy format to master, but for a debut feature, Anderson does a remarkable job of assembling the pieces of his puzzle into a cohesive whole. David Pledger as family figurehead Russell Palmer giving the strongest performance; there are nuances in his reactions that establish a convincing reality early on. Only a couple of peripheral characters could be accused of being weak links; there’s a strong uniformity across the board, and without it the film would have split apart at the seams.
David Pledger as Russell Palmer
On an aesthetic level, Anderson proves to be a master manipulator; with the aid of cinematographer John Brawley, he uses the eerie stillness of the environment for maximum effect, filling every conceivable space in his tightly-knit narrative with compelling minor details; with these he's able to invest mundane rooms and outdoor locations with a simmering, portentous energy that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. Also effective are the eerie soundscapes of composer David Paterson which burrow beneath the surface to heighten the dread.
Some of the revelations of the second half are ingenious, offering scope to take the story in fresh, unpredictable directions. More than once, Anderson pulls the carpet out from under his audience's feet, leaving us guessing as to where he's going.
Lake Mungo is an impressive achievement by any standard: resourceful, creepy and genuinely unnerving, with at least one moment bound to have your heart skipping a beat. But beyond its veneer of supernatural phenomena lay darker, more substantial themes which give the film real backbone as something more than simply the tale of a haunting; this is also a tragic story about grief, the complicated dynamics of families and the secrets that can destroy them from within.
The Palmers: Mathew (Martin Sharpe), father Russell, and mother June (Rosie Traynor)
LAKE MUNGO will be released on DVD by Madman on December 2nd.
John Boorman’s most recent film, The Tiger’s Tail, is an uneven study of the eternally fascinating quest for identity. The title itself is a metaphor for the precarious state of Ireland as an economic entity, one false move away from losing its grip on the Celtic Tiger and spiralling out of control.
When a successful Dublin businessman, Liam O’Leary (Brendan Gleeson) starts seeing a doppelganger, he’s convinced it’s an omen of his imminent death. Is this mysterious double a supernatural apparition, the onset of madness, or an evil twin?
His marriage has become loveless and stale, wife Jane (Kim Cattrell) convinced he’s losing the plot. He’s receiving no sympathy from son Connor (real life son Briain Gleeson) either who ridicules his father for his thriving capitalistic ways at the expense of the poor and sits around the house with his nose in a book on Lenin.
Only Liam’s sister Oona (Sinead Cusack) is sympathetic to Liam’s feeling of losing control. His company isn’t quite the money-making machine it was despite surface appearances; his acquisition of land to build a football stadium has been thwarted by a competitor and the appearance of his gloating, menacing double only exacerbates his secretly declining fortunes.
With fiendish intent the double - whose origins may or may not be traced to a dark family secret - begins to play havoc with Liam, sending tremors of fear through his settled life. With a series of calculated ploys he manages to casts aspersions on Liam's integrity, both personally and professionally.
A classic inversion of opposing lives takes place at the midpoint after Liam is lured to a remote location, then left defenseless and vulnerable. From riches to rags, he's supplanted from his life – perhaps one he’s taken a little too much for granted?
Boorman’s efforts at social commentary, to illustrate the divide between rich and poor, are signposted with little subtlety; the headline of a newspaper, flashed in Liam’s face whilst gridlocked in traffic, being a glaring offender. Though there’s a clever conceit at the film’s core, to director allows a couple of lazy loopholes in his screenplay to spoil its overall effectiveness; though necessary to further the narrative, they’re unlikely contrivances to say the least.
The happy family: Jane (Kim Cattrell), Liam (Brendan Gleeson) and Connor (Briain Gleeson)
As usual, Gleeson is a formidable, instantly sympathetic presence, playing the duel roles with some relish and mostly keeping the film afloat on his own shoulders. He offers a few subtle inflections to distinguish the double from the hapless Liam. The casting of Cattrell, though it doesn’t hurt the film too much, feels like a miscalculation; the woman’s a poser and an impression of her shallowness is hard to shake off. The younger Gleeson is a bit out of his depth but shows some promise working alongside his father.
The score by Stephen McKeon is a real highlight, propelling the drama along with insistent string writing, both discordant and lyrical. Moody Herrmann-esque dread surges to the surface too, elevating the film to another level.
Though The Tiger’s Tail (2006) is unrecognizable as that of the director of cinematic landmarks like Point Blank (1967) and Deliverance (1972), it’s still a curious, not uninteresting, addition to Boorman’s body of work. Its themes are a little transparent and though he fails to probe them in any intricate way, it still makes for solid entertainment - a decent riff on the struggle for true identity and the corrosive power of family secrets.
Despite the anti-climatic, unlikely ending, Boorman makes some salient points about the fantasy we harbor for assuming somebody else’s life too; perhaps there’s more than meets the eye, the surface a fragile façade for deeper troubles we’d rather not inherit.
In film, people respond to terror, harm and brutal defilement with revenge; for cinematic purposes - bloating reality to outrageous proportions - it's the nasty, sadistic sort of vengeance that works best. Think of Charles Bronson in the Death Wish films, Sally Field in John Schlesinger’s Eye for an Eye (1996), Tom Wilkinson in Todd Field’s In the Bedroom (2001) and Jodie Foster in Neil Jordan’s The Brave One (2007).
The opening scenes of Dan Reed’s Straightheads, a modern British variation, don’t bode well: a businesswoman, Alice (Gillian Anderson), flirts with the cocky young technician, Adam (Danny Dyer), installing surveillance equipment in her home. She even surprises him with an invitation to a fancy party at a plush mansion in the woods where their animal attraction to one another leads to a frenzied coupling on the expansive grounds.
On the way home, trouble begins when they smash into a stag after failing to keep their eyes on the poorly-lit road ahead. Then a shady group in a van they’d passed earlier on - Adam giving them the finger for obstructing their path - pull up threateningly behind them.
Naturally they turn out to be a despicable trio of rogues out for revenge for this minor infraction and the couple is beset upon, Adam receiving a royal kicking, whilst things get very ugly once attentions are turned upon Alice. She’s savagely raped and left for dead; in a blackly ironic moment, the fallen stag is later seen raising its head first in the morning light before trotting off, seemingly unharmed.
Adam (Danny Dyer) and Alice (Gillian Anderson) getting intimately acquainted at the party.
After weeks have passed neither has been able to readjust to normal life again; they cling to one another, Alice externally showing no signs of the attack, but suspicious of every stranger she encounters. Adam, on the other hand, has a permanent reminder of the event in the loss of sight in one eye.
The real strength of Reed’s film - and where it shrugs off the unconvincing set-up - lies in its underlining ambiguities; both Alice and Adam are prone to believably human failings in addressing the fear of confrontation and its ramifications. Instead of psychological wounds that can be cauterized with proclamations of retribution and steely intent, these people begin to doubt their intended course of action on ethical and moral grounds, something that manifests itself in hesitant actions rather than words.
Alice, more than Adam, wants to inflict a suitable punishment; in a neat inversion of stereotypes, it's her aggression that swallows his by degrees, leaving him dubious - not to mention struggling with both emotional and physical impotence - as her determination expands like a poisonous shroud around them. Before long they track down one of the suspected attackers, Heffer (Anthony Calf) and set up camp in the woods nearby, strategizing as they wait for the appropriate opening. But can she act upon her seething, unstable emotions?
The aftermath
Reed’s film plays out in unexpected ways rather than shadowing the familiar structure of revenge films. The human element intrudes upon the detached, mathematical approach of their idealized preparations. Both leads are strong, sympathetic agents of Reed’s strongest ideas, with Anderson in particular shining in a challenging part that makes her iconic role as Dana Scully seem like a distant memory.
Though Reed lets things get out of hand in the final moments, Straightheads proves to be surprisingly engaging with its tight, accommodating narrative and uncomfortably dark subject matter. Though bypassing cinemas, this well and truly rises above the stockpile of B-grade fodder on the rental shelves and is a perfect late-night pleasure for those seeking a dish best served cold.
A spirited, humourous and ultimately moving coming-of-age story from New Zealand, Harold Brodie’s The Map Reader evokes vivid memories of that difficult transition as we slowly evolve from carefree teenagers into adults - often before we're quite ready for the responsibility it entails.
16 year-old Michael (Jordan Selwyn) is considered a geek by his schoolmates, his nose constantly buried in an atlas since he could read, his bedroom wall plastered with maps of every description. It’s his passion as well as his escape, filling a void left by an absentee father he never knew. His mother Amelia (Rebecca Gibney) clings a little too closely to alcohol for comfort, keeping the world at bay perhaps, but driving a wedge between her and Michael
Only the skeletal outline of Audrey Niffenegger’s runaway bestseller The Time Traveler’s Wife remains in Robert Schwentke’s much anticipated adaptation. It’s always a daunting task to transport a popular piece of fiction to the screen but the potential mostly evaporates with the random disappearing acts of its tortured protagonist, Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana).
Destined for a life with one true love Claire Abshire (Rachel McAdams) – though he doesn’t know it when we first meet him – Henry’s troubled existence is defined by his inability to remain in the one place for long stretches. Never seen as anything other than an inexplicable curse, his 'ability' may be good for striking lottery gold with a bit of advance knowledge, but melting away like a popsicle on a summer sidewalk at crucial moments of his life is deflating, to say the least, for those he leaves behind
Life must have been testing for Romanians under the reign of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. In re-envisioning that blighted era of his country’s history, talented young filmmaker Cristian Mungiu decided to tell a simple but striking tale of two female friends. Over the course of a single day in 1987, the pair's wavering notion of morality will come into conflict with their need for subversive action to evade an unwanted responsibility.
Through four feature films, writer/director James Gray comes closest to disappointment in his third, 2007’s We Own the Night. We’re in Brooklyn, New York, 1988, and it feels like we’ve been here before, exploring two sides of the same coin. There’s Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) a reckless nightclub manager with pretensions of shouldering up to serious players in the underworld now that the Russian mafia have muscled in.
In another part of the city, his brother Joe Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg) is receiving a decoration for his work as a police officer from his father, Chief Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall). Bobby is the black sheep of the family, changing his name to dissuade curious strangers of his association with a force of men he’s never felt compelled to align himself with
Michael Winterbottom is constantly in motion; this most prolific of directors - you could see him as the British equivalent of Steven Soderbergh - continues to churn out a fascinating and enviable diversity of films. From the bleak, icy lamentations of The Claim (2000) to the gritty mise-en-scene of Wonderland (1999); from the dour literary stylings of Jude (1996) to the divisive, unedifying pointlessness of 9 Songs (2004), Winterbottom continues to both delight and perplex his audiences, with barely a backward glance before moving on to his next project.
Occasionally a single performance has the power to galvanize an entire production, elevating it beyond its humble origins. Michael Sheen, a chameleonic British actor with a recent history of perfecting portrayals of famous figures, has outdone himself in Tom Hooper’s The Damned United, bringing another fine Peter Morgan screenplay to life; this time, the scribe of The Queen, The Last King of Scotland and others is working from a book by David Peace.
Sheen is Brian Clough, the idiosyncratic manager of lowly Derby County football team, in the early stages of building the foundation of a very successful unit with temperate best friend Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) in his passenger's seat alongside him. With startling ease the team rises through the ranks into the upper echelon of the Premier League by the early '70's
A new contingent of prisoners arrives in Buchenwald from Auschwitz. Amid the throng, an old man is struggling to lug a suitcase as they enter the grounds of the camp. In it, a surprising cargo is concealed, an orphaned four year old boy. Representative of the innocence deprived during wartime, dozens of men will strive to conceal him from the Nazis, risking their sanity and even their lives in this humble but symbolic quest.
Frank Beyer’s superb 1963 film, based on a true story, was the first in Germany to deal directly with the touchy subject of the Holocaust. Though in essence the expected stereotypical figures are present in the form of callous, hardened Nazis without conscience, and oppressed prisoners clamouring for fleeting moments of dignity whilst subjected to all manner of cruelty, Bruno Apitz’s screenplay, an adaptation of his own book, probes much deeper. The distinguishing characteristics of these men are woven into the narrative with real complexity, banishing lazy, simplistic black and white portrayals
I've only seen 10 of these Bryn, but I wouldn't begrudge Irreversible the top spot. The rape scene and the guy getting his head caved in at the club are pretty extreme stuff.
Noe's I Stand Alone isn't far behind - the guy beating his pregnant wife and then the plans he has for his daughter in the end.
The extra yards Cristian Bale covered for The Machinist were pretty disturbing too.
What about Gummo: disturbing or disgusting? Still can't formulate an appropriate response to that one.
Perhaps the best one though: the final moments of The Wicker Man - very disturbing! Such a vivid, horrific scene when you see it for the first time. Resonates like few others.
It's not too bad Bryn, I'd never heard of it either but always having an eye out for Scully-related material I couldn't bypass this when it appeared on Foxtel. Though after reading your review of I'll Never Die Alone, I must say that this is very tame in comparison, but it's only about 75 minutes long, so easily digestible.
Thanks Fog, I think your friend could definitely get something out of this, it really is a fine representation of those all-too rare qualities coming together to make a fantastic little film with a great dramatic arc to it. It's well worth taking a chance on and considering half of NZ actually lives in Australia there should be a decent market for it!!
Absolutely JD, that's the best starting point. Read the whole story fleshed out before seeing how sketchy outlines are crammed into a 100 minute movie.
Definitely agree with regards to Adaptation, Momento, Amelie and Good Night Good Luck. I must rewatch those again soon too.
The 2nd time I saw Mulholland Drive I thought of lot of its impact had been lost; just doesn't stand up, I can only conclude, to the repeat viewings of Lynch's best (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart).
But the two here I will avoid forever: The Pianist. One of the most overrated films of all time, incredibly dull. Brody sleepwalks through it.
And Dear Lord - Gosford Park!!!! NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!
Categorically the most boring film I've ever seen. Pure torture - and what's worse, it seemed to drag on into infinity....................g od, I hated that film. What was its running time? Eight hours or something?
Ah Matt, I keep forgetting your origins, I know you've mentioned it before!
You're in for a treat with this one mate, I was very impressed with it. A small film but a real gem that has the feel of authenticity which isn't always easy to achieve on a modest budget.
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I couldn't bypass this when it appeared on Foxtel. Though after reading your review of I'll Never Die Alone, I must say that this is very tame in comparison, but it's only about 75 minutes long, so easily digestible.
Comment by David O'Connell
on Just what ARE the MOST DISTURBING MOVIES ever made?
Screen Fanatic
Noe's I Stand Alone isn't far behind - the guy beating his pregnant wife and then the plans he has for his daughter in the end.
The extra yards Cristian Bale covered for The Machinist were pretty disturbing too.
What about Gummo: disturbing or disgusting? Still can't formulate an appropriate response to that one.
Perhaps the best one though: the final moments of The Wicker Man - very disturbing! Such a vivid, horrific scene when you see it for the first time. Resonates like few others.