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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 05 October 2009

Bliss is looking to break out from her dull, ordinary life.  She is looking for a way to express herself.  The answer… is roller derby.  She goes along to an exhibition match and instantly falls in love with the fun and excitement.  Bliss hasn’t skated since she was young girl but she dusts off her old Barbie skates and hits the streets.  She quickly realises her potential.  Bliss makes it through the team try-outs and gets a spot in the Hurl Scouts line up.

Her fresh life is veiled in secrecy however.  You have to be 21 years of age to be eligible to play and so a few white lies are necessary to her teammates.  Her parents know nothing about this either.  Bliss tells them that she’s taking extra classes at school to cover up her attendance at matches and training sessions.  Her new boyfriend is also kept the dark.  He doesn’t know her age either, or the fact that she still lives at home.

Trouble lies ahead but all Bliss cares about is the roller derby track.  Her team name is Babe Ruthless and every week, she smashes the opposition with fellow teammates such as Maggie Mayhem (Riig) and Smashley Simpson (Barrymore).  They’re all trying to beat the Holy Rollers, led by the self-absorbed Iron Maven (Lewis).

Central to this film is a delightful performance from Ellen Page.  You will remember her from Juno, my favourite film of 2008, but this a different character for her.  She’s a little shy, a little more reserved.  I think it’s an important role for Page and proves that she can play someone other than the sarcastic Juno MacGuff.

Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock) is also terrific as Bliss’s mum.  It’s easy to over-play the role as the bossy mother but Harden is spot on.  She shows that such a character can have two sides.  Look, let’s face it - I liked all the actors in this film.  There’s plenty of nice one-on-ones and it avoids the “stiffness” that seems to burden so many American comedies.  The cast look like they were having fun on the set (judging from the closing credits) and that comes through on screen.

So how did they all become roller derby experts?  The answer is with a lot of training.  Ellen Page had to work the hardest but all the skating cast members went through a solid month of boot camp.  They’re pretty good too.  It’s cool to see them slipping past teammates at high speed, or jumping over an opponent who has crashed to the ground.

The special preview screening I attended was filled with members of Brisbane’s roller derby community.  They’d turned up wearing their own skates and colourful outfits.  I didn’t even realise we had teams in this city.  They seemed to enjoy the movie and maybe the craze will take off once again.

Whip It does follows a familiar Hollywood formula but I liked it anyway.  It’s often the little things that can differentiate a great movie from a so-so movie.  This won’t be winning any Oscars but it provided me with two hours of solid entertainment.  Let’s call it a guilty pleasure.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 16 September 2009

Unfortunately, his movies just aren’t for me.  I don’t want to sound demeaning (although I probably will) but his films appeal to people very different from me.  I like original scripts, creative direction and realistic performances.  If you saw more than 200 films a year, I’d like to think that you’d develop similar tastes.

In this new film, Murphy plays Evan Danielson – a financial adviser who has risen through the ranks at a prestigious company.  His rival within the firm is Johnny Whitefeather (Church), an unorthodox analyst who focuses more on appearances than his client’s portfolios.  It still has Evan feeling a little uneasy – particularly when Johnny starts poaching his own clients.

Evan has spends so much time working that he has little room in his life for anything else.  His wife recently left him and he rarely gets to spend any quality time with his young daughter, Tricia.  That all changes when Tricia’s behaviour becomes concerning.  She spends much of her day with her head under a blanket and talks to invisible friends.  Her teachers at school are worried.

You don’t need to be worried though.  This isn’t a film about a dark, troubled kid.  It becomes rather light-hearted in fact when these invisible friends start providing share market tips which she passes on to her father.  Evan doesn’t believe his daughter at first but he’s quickly convinced when they all come true.  Lo and behold, he starts spending a lot more time with Tricia – but is it because he loves her… or because he is using her?

Imagine That promotes family values and other feel-good stuff but the story is too far-fetched to be taken seriously.  I can’t see many adults finding this entertaining and I worry that kids will find it confusing with all its references to mergers, acquisitions and stock prices.  The film was a huge flop when released in the United States back in June so I know I’m not alone with my opinion.  It made just $16m which wouldn’t even have covered Murphy’s salary.

I haven’t seen some of the other kids flicks on offer but I can confidently proclaim that this should not be your first choice if you’re taking your young ones to the cinema in these school holidays.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 04 October 2009

Several years later, Julia collaborated with two friends to write what would become one of the world’s most famous cookbooks – Mastering The Art Of French Cooking.  It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Julia however.  It took years to perfect the recipes and put them in writing.  It took just as long to find a publisher willing to take a chance on this 700 plus page “encyclopaedia”.

In 2002, Julie Powell was a wanna-be writer working in an unfulfilling call centre in New York City.  On the verge of turning 30, Julie was looking for a way to be creative, a way to express herself.  She decided to start a blog on the internet.  She set herself the goal of making every single recipe in Julia Child’s book within the space of a year.  That’s 524 recipes in 365 days.  All her thoughts would be published on the web for the world to see.

These two stories are told concurrently in writer-director Nora Ephron’s new film, Julie & Julia.  I think it’s a very interesting way to make a movie.  The two central characters will never speak face-to-face.  They are separated by time.  However, the film does highlight the way that we can change the lives of other people… without having to meet them.  It’s all about the legacy that we leave.

Nora Ephron has left a nice legacy herself.  Her credits include Sleepless In Seattle and You’ve Got Mail – two films that I hold in high regard.  I went into Julie & Julia with a sense of excitement but I confess that it was a little disappointing.  To use a bad metaphor, there were a few ingredients missing from pot.

This is going to be hard to explain but my major grievance is that much of the film felt like a fact-telling exercise.  There’s a lot of narration and a few scenes involving Julie sitting at her computer, putting her thoughts into words.  The problem with this technique is that I didn’t feel a lot of compassion for any of the characters.  There aren’t enough scenes where their true colours are revealed.  I don’t think I got to know the “real” Julia and the “real” Julie.  The same goes for their respective husbands.

Turning to the positives, I did like the way the film wrapped up.  It draws the connection that I mentioned before about the way in which an author can reach through the pages of a book and touch its readers.  You may think Meryl Streep’s performance is over-the-top but having seen video footage of the real Julia Child, I can proclaim that she has beautifully captured Julia’s endearing nature.

With all that said and done, I’m now off to the kitchen to create my own salacious feast… well I’m going to try.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 09 September 2009

500 Days Of Summer is a creativity told tale about two people who fall in and out of love.  Tom Hansen and Summer Finn are played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin) and Zooey Deschanel (Yes Man), two of the best twenty-something actors working in Hollywood today.  They aren’t afraid to take a chance and I can see why they were attracted to this low-budget independent film.

There are a few reasons why this is above your average romantic comedy/drama.  What I enjoyed most was the way in which director Marc Webb tells the story and illustrates the ups and down of any romance.  It is told over 500 days but not in chronological order.  We start on day 1, finish on day 500, but everything in between is jumbled… for good reason.

This method gives the film a hip, fresh feel.  When I usually watch a romantic flick, I become bored by the fact that it’s so predictable.  I sit in my seat, waiting for the inevitable.  Not so here.  It was nice to watch a movie that leaves you asking questions at the start – like why did they break up? – and then provides the answers in an inventive manner. It’s no surprise that 500 Days Of Summer has developed a cult like following and currently sits in the top 250 films of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Also a little different is the relationship between Tom and Summer.  It’s usually the girl who falls in love and the guy who has the fear of commitment.  It’s the complete opposite this time around.  From the day he first sees her, Tom is head over heels.  Summer isn’t as enthusiastic and states straight up that she doesn’t believe in love and just wants to be friends.  Either way, something’s got to give.

This is a well made film from director Marc Webb.  He has captured some beautiful shots of Los Angeles and used a great soundtrack.  I don’t want to overlook some of the smaller details either.  Tom works as a greeting card writer and you’ll see what effect his relationship has on his work when you hear some of his card ideas.

I thought the ending was slightly anti-climactic but this is still a terrific movie.  Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel make a great pairing and I can’t wait to see it again.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 30 September 2009

Academy Award winning director Stephen Soderbergh (Traffic) has now brought the next part of Che’s life to the screening in truly epic style.  When it premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, it clocked in at a whopping 4 hours and 28 minutes.  It was always going to be a tough sell trying to get the public to watch such a long movie and so it has now been released in two parts – each just over two hours in duration.

Here in Australia, both films are being released simultaneously this week.  They’re simply titled Che: Part One and Che: Part Two.  The advantage is that if you are too tired to sit through them both, you can always watch the first instalment and then come back at a later time to watch the next part.

I think it’s silly to review both films separately so I’m covering them both in this review.  The first movie looks at Che’s role in the successful revolution within Cuba in the late 1950s.  He teamed up with Fidel Castro and their army overthrew the existing government.  The second movie is set in the mid 1960s and looks at Che’s not-so-successful attempts to create a similar revolution in Bolivia.

History buffs will probably know these stories well but much of it was new to me.  Che was a fascinating person and he is played brilliantly in these films by Benecio Del Toro (Traffic).  It has a documentary-like feel and I felt like a fly on the wall – peering into Che’s life and watching his actions without his knowledge.

The screenplays are based on the diaries which Che Guevara kept during the Cuban and Bolivian revolutions.  Soderbegh and his team also interviewed many people who knew Che to help make the films as realistic and authentic as possible.  There are always going to be disagreements about how certain characters/groups are portrayed but I was happy with the balance which I saw on screen.

You might also be interested to know that the two films were shot using different methods.  The first was shot in Puerto Rico and Mexico with steady camerawork and a wide-screen ratio.  The second was shot in Spain using just handheld cameras and tripods.  The colourings are a little different also.

With all those facts out of the way, my reaction to the films themselves is that they are good without being great.  They are definitely too long.  Some scenes tend to drag and there won’t be enough “action” to satisfy some moviegoers.  I had to do more research on the internet to find out more about Che after I saw the films.  Whilst that can sometimes be a good thing, I think it’s a weakness in this case.  The long-winded “talking” scenes could easily have been trimmed.

So to avoid the risk of my own review going over time, I’ll leave it at that and leave the film for you to judge on your own merits.