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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 13 March 2013

For decades, Burt Wonderstone (Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Buscemi) dazzled audiences with an elaborate magic show in Las Vegas. You’ll note that I’m speaking in past tense. They are dazzling no longer. As they stand on stage and look out into the auditorium, they can see a few people and lot of empty seats.

The hotel’s manager, Doug Munny (Gandolfini), delivers an ultimatum – they either come up with a new act to lure customers or they can start looking for another job. They give it a try with a fresh outdoor stunt… but Burt’s selfish, egotistical behaviour sees it fail in spectacular fashion. It’s the last straw for Anton who tells Burt that they’re finished – both as work colleagues and as friends.

With their show now officially canned, Burt doesn’t know what to do next. He’s used to being the star. He’s used to having his name in neon lights. He’s used to living in a hotel with 24 hour room service. Now, he’s out of a job and thanks to some bad investments, he has only $200 to his name.

It’s a harsh reality check but three people will help get Burt back on his feet. As his long-time assistant, Jane (Wilde) offers support. She wants to see Burt return to the big stage with a view to getting a bigger role herself. As his long-time idol, Rance Holloway (Arkin) offers inspiration. The two meet by chance with Rance providing some wise words that allow Burt to rediscover his passion.

And then there’s Steve Gray (Carrey). He’s offering motivation… but not intentionally. Steve is the new magician in town and has already established a popular cable television program so that he can show off his talent. Burt has no intention of being upstaged. He wants to beat Steve Gray at his own game.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is the kind of film that creates laughs by having characters who look funny and speak funny. I only wish the dialogue itself was funny. The jokes are obvious and drawn out but I’ll confess there were a few moments that left me smiling. The best is saved for last – we get to see what goes on “behind the scenes” of a very cool trick.

Fans of Steve Carell should enjoy his exaggerated performance with Jim Carrey and James Gandolfini also deserving a mention. Don’t get too excited though. It is nice seeing them on screen again (particularly Carrey) but this so-so script, credited to four different writers, doesn’t given them a lot to work with. They’re capable of so much more.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 26 February 2013

We’ve been waiting over a year and Side Effects marks the first on-screen appearance of Rooney Mara since her Oscar nominated performance in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  Her character is Emily Taylor – a young woman who has been battling depression for some time.  The fact that her husband (Tatum) just completed a 4-year prison term for insider trading hasn’t made her life any easier.

After an attempted suicide attempt where she drove her car into a wall at high speed, Emily has been placed in the care of a local psychiatrist named Jonathan Banks (Law).  There are no easy answers when it comes to depression with Emily’s guarded disposition doing little help the situation.  Jonathan’s response is to keep doing things “by the book” – prescribing a few different kinds of medication and hoping they will make a significant difference.

The film’s heartbeat kicks up a few notches as a result of an “incident”.  This particular event isn’t shown during the trailer (a refreshing surprise) and it wouldn’t be right to reveal specifics in this review.  I’ll only go as far as referring to the film’s title.  One of the drugs prescribed by Jonathan comes with some unanticipated side effects.

Director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven) is a creative, versatile filmmaker and I enjoyed the way he slips a few red herrings into this story.  Just when you think you know where it’s heading… it subtly changes direction.  Unfortunately, what starts out as an intriguing drama degenerates into a silly thriller during its later stages.  The rules of logic don’t seem to apply.  It left me with a puzzled look as I reflected back on the way the “incident” itself had been shown.

It’s a shame things falls away because writer Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, Contagion) has crafted some good conversational pieces during the first two-thirds.  These are intelligent characters and the dialogue reflects that.  Jude Law is particularly good as a psychiatrist trying to rationalise the situation and gather support from others.

50-year-old Steven Soderbergh has recently hinted that he’s ready to pack up his director’s chair and retire.  Despite my lukewarm feelings about Side Effects, I hope that’s not the case.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 11 March 2013

Elspeth Dickens (Kelly) is happy. Her husband, James (Keating), works for a Greenpeace-type organisation and has just returned home after a lengthy stint aboard an anti-whaling vessel. It’s great news for their twin boys, who get to spend some quality time with their father, and it’s great news for Elspeth, who is looking for some “romantic” time in the bedroom.

The next morning, we realise that Elspeth is not quite so happy. There’s tension in this household, apparently. She’s tired of the fact that her husband is constantly travelling and that she must battle her two troublesome children unaided. Elspeth is also lonely. This is because (1) she lives in a remote Tasmanian farmhouse, (2) she doesn’t have any friends, and (3) other mothers in this small town are pretentious bitches.

When her husband is forced onto the open seas yet again, Elspeth turns to the internet for companionship. Don’t worry. I’m not talking about an online dating site. Through the help of a nerdy, pimple-faced teenager who runs his own IT business, Elspeth sets up a 24-hour webcam in her kitchen. She wants to broadcast her life to the world and hope that people will find her interesting. Everybody wants to be famous, right?

Within a matter of days, Elspeth becomes an internet sensation. We are shown footage of women all over the world, from an absurd variety of backgrounds, who are glued to their computer screens around the clock. They tune in, conveniently at the same time Elspeth is in the kitchen, to see her dress up and sign songs while cleaning dishes in her kitchen sink.

Her online activity has attracted the attention of a Sydney-based marketing company run by the autocratic Cassandra Wolfe (Szubanski), a character reminiscent of Miranda Priestly (aka Meryl Streep) in The Devil Wears Prada. Cassandra’s company has been tasked with finding a spokesperson for a new type of computer and acting on the advice of her loyal assistant (Johnstone-Burt), she believes Elspeth will be the perfect fit.

After organising a last-minute babysitter, Elspeth suddenly finds herself whisked off to Sydney and immersed in a world of advertisements, photo shoots and 5-star hotel rooms. Is this what she wants though? It comes back to a familiar question – does career come before family?

>Goddess is a light, well-intentioned effort that blends the comedy and musical genres. Star Laura Michelle Kelly has been performing on London’s West End for more than a decade but this marks her first leading role in a feature film. Kelly’s beautiful voice and happy-go-lucky nature will charm many (even if it is ridiculously obvious that the singing was recorded in a studio). It’s Magda Szubanski who provides the film’s major highlight though – a humorous musical number that begins in a boardroom.

While there’s fun to be had, it’s a shame the screenplay implies a low level of intelligence on the part of the audience. So much of the story rings false. Would Elspeth really have a webcam that takes off so quickly? Would she really have no friends to confide in?

The scenes involving conflict also feel artificial. Why did she react so negatively to a tasteful nude photo shoot that could launch her career? Why didn’t she try to come to a compromise with her husband when her work and family life started to clash? Here’s a newsflash – it is possible to be a mother and earn a living at the same time.

The end result is a movie where we never get to know our leading lady. Who is Elspeth Dickens? She can sing and dance but what does she want out of life? Is she really happy? I’ve asked a lot of questions in this review. I only wish the filmmakers had done the same of these characters.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 25 February 2013

Cloud Atlas is a monumental piece of cinema that will take time to digest. It doesn’t feel appropriate to be reviewing it after just a single viewing but alas, that’s the position in which I now find myself. There was just the one preview screening in Brisbane and I must put a few thoughts into words before its official release on Thursday.

With a running time of 172 minutes, making it the longest mainstream movie of 2012, Cloud Atlas tells six stories concurrently. The first is set in the year 1849. The last is set at an undefined time well into the future. There are 13 featured actors and combined, they play 61 different characters. Five of the actors appear in all six stories – Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant.

I can understand why some members within the Academy didn’t latch onto the film as a whole but why the specialist branches didn’t honour it for its production design and make-up will forever remain a mystery. It didn’t receive a single Oscar nomination. The filmmakers have done an immaculate job creating these distinctive worlds and have used every tool possible, including visual effects, to make the actors in each story look different.

The three people responsible for Cloud Atlas all get to share a director credit – Tom Tywker, who created the memorable Run Lola Run, and Andy and Lana Wachowski, the duo who crafted the ridiculously successful Matrix trilogy. All of the major studios brushed them off but they were still able to find the $102m budget necessary to bring David Mitchell’s 2004 novel to the big screen. This makes it one of the most expensive independent films of all time.

So what is the movie all about? If you want a simple three-word answer, you only need to look at the tagline on the poster – “everything is connected”. Every decision we make today is the result of other decisions that have been made in the past. On the flip side, every decision we make today will affect the decisions of those in the future. This isn’t a ground-breaking revelation but it does provide a timely reminder that the world is smaller than we realise and all of us have an important part to play.

In isolation, you could argue that each of these stories isn’t all that interesting. The comedic, modern-day plot involving Jim Broadbent in an aged care home is silly to the point of being distracting. Yet somehow, editor Alexander Berner has interwoven these narratives and by cutting back-and-forth between them at a rapid pace, created something that will hold your attention for three hours.

Cloud Atlas has battled at the international box-office since it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last September. It’d be nice to see such a bold, risky project succeed but it was always going to divide audiences. Time Magazine named it as the worst film of 2012. Acclaimed critic Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars. I’m just glad it’s getting a release here in Australia (which wasn’t always guaranteed).

Well, that’s all I’ve got… at least until I see it a second time.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 03 March 2013

There’s been no shortage of artists who have tried to recreate Charles Dickens’ famed novel in a visual form. Great Expectations was first adapted in 1917, as a silent film, and has since been seen as a feature film, a television miniseries, a television movie, a stage play and a West End musical. There was even an animated version created in Australia back in 1983.

I’m not quite sure it’s deserved so many adaptations… but it’s clear that many have been drawn to this wonderful story set in the early-to-mid part of the 19^th Century. When we first meet Pip, he is a young orphan who is living with his nasty, vindictive older sister (Hawkins) and her husband (Felmyng), who earns a meagre wage as a blacksmith.

Visiting his parents’ graves at the nearby cemetery, Pip is confronted by a filthy convict (Fiennes) who recently escaped from prison. He has been hiding from the authorities in the marshland and he begs Pip for food and something to help him remove the thick shackles around his ankles. Unsure what to do at first, Pip eventually helps the convict by stealing food and a metal file from his sister.

Not long after this encounter, Pip is invited to spacious home of the wealthy Miss Havisham (Bonham Carter). He believes that Miss Havisham is looking for a nice, smart boy to play with her adopted daughter, Estella. That’s not the case. The mysterious, oddly dressed Miss Havisham has motives that are far more sinister. She loves to toy with people’s emotions. There’s a great scene where she meets Pip for the first time and instils fear by bringing him in close and asking if he’s “afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”

We then slip a decade or so into the future and discover that Pip (Irvine) has grown up and now works as an apprentice blacksmith. It’s not a life he’s happy with though as there are two things he still desires. Firstly, he wants to become a “gentleman”. Secondly, he wants to win the heart of Estella, who he has always loved since they first met as children.

They may sound like foolish dreams but an unexpected visit from a lawyer (Coltrane) will change Pip’s life forever. It turns out that Pip has been granted a huge sum of money by an anonymous benefactor. He can now give up his job as a lowly blacksmith, move to London and start mingling with the upper echelon of society.

Many of today’s movies feel “dumbed down” so as not to overexert filmgoers. Storylines are kept simple. Characters are either good or bad. Every emotion is clearly illustrated. That’s not the case with Great Expectations. My plot overview is only scratching the surface of what is a richly detailed premise. The characters are flawed, misguided but you’ll still feel sympathetic given their dark history.

It’s almost impossible to condense a classic novel into a two-hour film but writer David Nicholls (One Day) and director Mike Newell (Four Weddings & A Funeral, Donnie Brasco) are to be commended for their efforts. I enjoyed the gloomy English setting and was impressed by how many subplots they were able to explore. The only character that feels underdone is the older version of Estella, played by Holliday Grainger. It made it harder to understand why Pip had fallen so madly in love and had such an obsessive desire to be with her.

The “stand out” amongst the cast is Olly Alexander (Bright Star, Gulliver’s Travels) who plays Herbert Pocket, a London-based friend of Pip. The story gets a little heavy at times and Alexander’s excitable, outgoing personality sweeps through like a breath of fresh air. Helena Bonham Carter, looking like she’s come straight from a Tim Burton film, and Ralph Fiennes also have a strong on-screen presence.

Great Expectations should impress those who enjoy an intricate period-piece drama.