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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 30 May 2022

Of the five nominees for best international feature at the most recent Academy Awards, four have already been released in Australian cinemas – Drive My Car from Japan (the winner), Flee from Denmark, The Hand of God from Italy, and The Worst Person in the World from Norway.  The final nominee is about to get its chance and rounds out a brilliant quintet celebrating the best of non-English language cinema.

The oddly titled Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom is the first ever movie from Bhutan to earn an Oscar nomination.  It’s amazing to think that writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji, making his feature film debut and working on a miniscule budget, was able to create something which has captured the world’s attention.  It’s a rare situation where the making of the movie is just as interesting as the movie itself.

It was shot in the village of Lunana, a tiny mountainous spot in northern Bhutan (5,000m above sea level) with a population of roughly 50 people.  It has minimal electricity and so the small crew relied on solar powered batteries to charge equipment.  Still, they only had enough power for one camera and didn’t have enough juice to look back at the footage of an evening.  Dorji has joked that it’s a rare film with a “zero carbon footprint.”

The government of Bhutan has prescribed that every child deserves an education and so the film is centred on a fictitious teacher from Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, who is asked to travel to Lunana’s and teach roughly ten kids for a full year.  It’s described as “the most remote school in the world” and to get there is an eight-day hike (mostly uphill) through wet, muddy terrain.

The teacher’s name is Ugyen (Dorji) and it’s clear from the outset that he doesn’t want to go.  He’s giving up city life, where he has friends and family, and travelling to a freezing cold place with no internet or phone reception.  Did mention the stone houses don’t have windows?  Did I also mention that townsfolk use leaves when going to the bathroom because they don’t have toilet paper?

There’s a clear message here about appreciating the simple things in life.  Ugyen is embraced by the residents of Lunana who are immensely grateful that he’s educating their children.  You’d think he was a member of a royal family given how highly he is revered.  He’s gone from a busy city where you ignore and walk past hundreds of people each day… to a tight-nit community where everyone cares about everyone.

This dramatic change in lifestyle serves as an awakening to Ugyen.  He bonds with the adorable, good-natured children and feeds their hunger for learning.  There’s a great scene where the town comes together and builds a blackboard (which they’ve never had before) for the school’s sole room.  There’s another heartfelt moment where he orders blank exercise books from the city (they take weeks to arrive) and the kids have proper paper to write on for the first time in their lives.            

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom provides much to reflect upon.  It has something to say about educators and their importance in society.  It asks audiences to think about technology and how essential it is to our happiness (if at all).  It opens eyes to a beautiful yet largely unknown country.  It speaks about emigration and the belief, rightly or wrongly, that the grass is greener on the other side.

To successfully pack all of that into a 109 minute is a testament to Dorji’s filmmaking and storytelling strengths.  I can’t wait to see what he does next.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 18 May 2022

There are some terrific coming-of-age films about kids wising up to the world and discovering the importance of great friendships.  They span an array of genres include adventure (The Goonies), horror (It), fantasy (Harry Potter), comedy (Ladybird), drama (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), and animation (Toy Story).  I’m not sure where it fits but I’d throw Bridge to Terabithia in there too as a personal favourite.

The Innocents is an engrossing Norwegian flick that espouses the same messages but does so with a chilling splash of science fiction.  It’s like a superhero movie but without all the formulas and expensive action scenes.  It begins innocuously enough with 9-year-old Ida (Fløttum) befriending two kids of a similar age from her neighbourhood, Ben (Ashraf) and Aisha (Asheim).  Rounding out the friendship group is Ida’s autistic older sister, Anna (Ramstad), who struggles to communicate.

Growing up can be a challenge.  That’s no huge revelation.  The catch here is that these four children have a mix of telekinetic and mind reading skills which their parents know nothing about.  It sounds cool but given they’re immature children still learning the difference between right and wrong, the stakes are high and the consequences are higher.  It’s one thing for a bully to push someone over in the playground… it’s another to have the bully tap thoughts and control the other’s physical actions.

The Innocents will keep audiences on their toes.  You’re never quite sure where it’s heading and it’s not afraid to go down dark, heavy, confronting paths.  Writer-director Eskil Vogt has found four gifted young actors who take on the challenging material and deliver credible performances.  They act like kids and that’s a major reason why, despite the supernatural elements, it feels like a gritty, authentic story.

If this was a commercial, X-Men style movie, you’d have mature adults teaching them how to harness their abilities and a nasty villain for them to team up and defeat.  As alluded to above, this isn’t that kind of movie.  The parents are seldom seen and so it becomes a simpler, more interesting tale about power dynamics, both physical and metaphorical, amongst the children.

Vogt is better known for his writing credits and he was recently nominated at the Academy Awards for co-writing The Worst Person in the World alongside director Joachim Trier.  The Innocents is just his second effort as director (after Blind in 2014) and shows his skills with a camera and just as strong as those with a pen.  It’s the kind of movie you won’t easily forget.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 25 May 2022

I wasn’t sure the fan base was wide enough to justify a big screen movie (ratings have been iffy in recent years) but, as someone who’s watched and enjoyed many episodes of the television show, I’m happy to see The Bob’s Burgers Movie.  For those new to the material, the show debuted in January 2011 and is still on the air today with 238 episodes produced across 12 seasons.

For as long as we’ve known the characters, the pessimistic Bob (Benjamin) and the optimistic Linda (Roberts) have run a small, simple burger store which is continually on the brink of financial collapse.  The film opens with an anxious Bob trying to find the money to meet lease payments on the store’s cooking equipment.  He’s got seven days or else the property will be repossessed by the inflexible bank and his business closed.

Bob and Linda have three chatty, problematic children who usually go an assortment of adventures away from the burger restaurant.  This time around, they’re trying to trump the incompetent police and solve a heinous crime.  The family’s wealthy landlord, Calvin Fischoeder (Kline), has been accused of murdering a beloved carny and so the trio, led by 9-year-old Louise (Schaal), try to put the pieces together to see who’s responsible.

The film moves at a frenetic pace and it’s hard at times to keep up with all the jokes.  The best material goes to the middle child, Gene (Mirman), who slips in plenty of adult humour to spice things up.  He’s funny even when he’s not on screen!  Many of his great one-liners can be heard in the background while other family members are front and centre.

Aside from a few musical numbers, there’s nothing overly adventurous about the film’s script.  It’s just a longer version of the television show.  Lead characters do what we expect of them (e.g. Bob is always stressed) and regular supporting players pop in and out.  The broader storyline isn’t complex and in trying to be a fun, interesting murder-mystery, it falls short.  I’d argue The Simpsons (Who Shot Mr. Burns? in 1995) and Family Guy (And Then There Were Fewer in 2010) did it much better.

Aimed squarely at existing fans, The Bob’s Burgers Movie is a serviceable animated feature that would be considered “middle of the pack” if ranked on a list of the television episodes.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 16 May 2022

I’m too time-poor to watch much television but one show I admire is Ted Lasso.  The broader storyline makes no sense.  Could you imagine anything remotely plausible in relation to a top club in the English Premier League?  The on-field soccer scenes, such as one where a dog is struck by a football as part of a penalty shot, are about as credible as a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

The reason the series works is because of the interplay between the likeable characters and the way they cathartically open-up about their troubles and concerns.  The writers tackle real, serious issues and delve into important topics like mental health and empathy.  It reminds us that the positivity and confidence people display publicly doesn’t always marry up with what they think internally.

How to Please a Woman is an Australian movie which appears to have been cut from the same cloth.  The storyline makes even less sense, but it’s designed as a warm-hearted crowd pleaser about finding happiness within one’s self.  English actress Sally Phillips (Bridget Jones’s Diary) steps into the shoes of the lead character, Gina, and retains her British accent – explained by the fact she grew up in the UK and moved to Australia with her lawyer husband (Daddo).

It requires a lengthy set-up but to simplify as best I can… the middle-aged, timid Gina loses her office job at an insolvency firm and, without telling her husband, buys a small, financially strapped removalist business with four male employees.  Inspired by a birthday gift from her close friends, she transforms it into a company which is part cleaning, part prostitution.  It turns out there are a lot of single women interesting in paying a guy to sleep with them and also clean the house (not necessarily in that order).  I can’t understand the business model, from the finances to the hopeless website, so best not to think too hard.

It’s odd that a film promoting the positives of (illegal) prostitution is so conservative with its approach.  There’s very little sex/nudity, minimal discussion of kinks, and almost no insight into the two main guys.  If trying to promote the wonders of lovemaking, why not delve into the valid reasons why the young, surfy-looking Tom (England) is willing to have sex everyday with different women?  Instead, we get a weak, poorly developed subplot involving him trying to reconcile with his pregnant ex-girlfriend (a superfluous character if I’ve ever seen one).

There are glimpses of a better movie.  Gina’s husband has lost his sex drive and they haven’t been intimate for close to two years.  She harnesses the courage to address this issue by talking with her helpful friends and exploring other “alternatives”.  The best conversations in the film are those between Gina and Steve (Thomson), a colleague with deep-seeded problems of his own.  Their connection is contrived but at least their conversations feel open and authentic.  We finally get to see behind their exterior!

Writer-director Renée Webster (The Heights) is trying to have it both ways with an edgy, sexy comedy which escapes with a mere M-rating but I’m not convinced it works.  The finale provides further proof.  How to Please a Woman might satisfy some but I was left unfulfilled.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 23 May 2022

A teaser trailer was revealed in July 2019 but since that time, the release date for Top Gun Maverick has been moved a gazillion times due to extra post-production work and the impact of COVID-19 on movie theatres.  I’ve joked with friends that perhaps the film didn’t exist at all and this was a giant ruse on the part of Paramount Pictures!  Thankfully, the wait is now over.  36 years after the release of the original movie and more than 3 years after shooting wrapped, the much-anticipated Top Gun Maverick has arrived in cinemas across the globe.

A close friend described it as “the best sequel since The Empire Strike Back” and while that may not be wholly true (Mad Max: Fury Road springs to mind), the intent of his statement has merit.  This is a sensational film that surpasses its predecessor in almost every way.  The flight scenes will have you twitching in your seat, the splashes of comedy are perfectly timed, and the story is kept short and straightforward.  I can’t imagine too many people being disappointed.

To quickly cover the narrative, pilotless planes are the way of the future with experienced military pilots told they are “heading for extinction”.  That won’t stop Maverick (Cruise) from proving himself one final time.  At the request of an old friend (Kilmer), he is brought back into the Top Gun training program to enhance the F-18 flying skills of 12 young pilots described as “the best of the best”.  The reason?  They’ll be needed on an incredibly dangerous mission to destroy a heavily guarded uranium enrichment plant which threatens the world order.

It’s as simple as that.  To the film’s betterment, time isn’t wasted developing (or even identifying) the villains.  You’ll just have to picture some Christoph Waltz-style baddie with an Eastern European accent with any army of incompetent henchmen who want to obliterate mankind.  This frees up the writers to focus solely on the rebellious Maverick, his interaction with the Top Gun graduates, and a quick-fire romance with an old flame (Connelly).  The closest we get to a “bad guy” is a humorous yet straight faced performance from Jon Hamm as a Vice Admiral who doesn’t think too highly of Maverick and his unorthodox training methods.

It’s a two-hour movie centred on a single mission but it still moves at a cracking pace thanks to the editing skills of Eddie Hamilton (Mission: Impossible – Fallout).  Rather than watch the in-the-air training runs and then the subsequent on-the-ground debriefs, Hamilton overlays these sequences to save time and maintain the film’s energy.  It all leads to a spectacular action climax which, to promote Hamilton again, is edited in a way which is easy to comprehend.  It doesn’t fall into the trap of being too chaotic.

Knowledge of the 1986 original will help but it’s not essential.  There’s a short flashback and a few well-placed photos that provide background for newcomers.  The emotional core of the film is centred on Maverick befriending Rooster (Teller), the son of his former colleague/friend who died in the earlier movie.  There’s tension between the pair from the outset but given Rooster is one of the selected F-18 pilots, they need to mend bridges and move forward.  The entire cast deserve praise for their performances but the banter between Tom Cruise and Miles Teller set them a notch above the rest.

Directed by the creative Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy), Top Gun Maverick offers a full, complete experience within the action genre.  One of the year’s best.