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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 09 May 2022

Kids know parents pay the bills but at what point growing up do they have a fulsome appreciation of their work and financial status?  It’s an answer that will vary significantly between families depending on the openness of the parents and the savviness of the children.  This question is front and centre in To Chiara, an Italian drama from writer-director Jonas Carpignano.

Set in the region on Calabria in southern Italy, events are told from the perspective of 15-year-old Chiara (Swamy Rotolo).  To help introduce us to the characters, the film opens with the 18^th birthday party of Chiara’s older sister – an evening which has brought the wider family together for food, drinks, toasts, dancing and loud music. 

Events following the birthday celebrations open Chiara’s eyes to a side of her father she never knew.  The reason they live in a nice home and have ample money is because dad is a drug runner for the local mafia.  The clues were always there (such as her dad having secretive conversations with shady men outside the front door) but Chiara had never previously connected the dots.  Perhaps she didn’t know.  Perhaps she didn’t want to know.

This newly found awareness is the best part of the film.  Swamy Rotolo, in her first significant film role, turns in a beautiful performance where facial expressions trump dialogue.  In the second act, the cops close in and Chiara’s father is forced to flee.  There’s a simple but powerful scene where she watches a TV news clip showing her father’s criminal dealings and you get a clear sense of her shock and confusion.  How can she go to school and face her friends with this information now public?

The script weakens in the later stages when it comes less of a family drama and more of a contrived Hollywood thriller.  Chiara, seemingly oblivious to the risks, goes down some dangerous paths and in search of her missing dad.  She meets a curious assortment of people and her eyes are opened to more of her father’s dealings.  How does she feel about it though?  If you knew a close family member was drug dealer, would you help support and protect them?

Drawing on learnings from his last two movies, writer-director Jonas Carpignano has developed an interesting approach to create authentic performances.  He generally uses non-professional actors and, if you’re wondering why so many of the actors in the closing credits have the same surname, it’s because the family we see in the movie is also a family in real life!  The story maybe fictional (don’t worry, they’re not really involved with the mafia) but the strong bond between these individuals is not.

Carpignano also kept them on their toes during the shoot by withholding plot details.  The movie was shot chronologically with actors only given information about their own characters (and not others).  There was also no rehearsal and so the reactions you see from the key players (such as when Chiara opens a hidden door) were, to use Carpignano’s own words, “fresh” and “spontaneous”.

Nominated for best feature at the 2022 Independent Spirit Awards (losing to The Lost Daughter), To Chiara can’t maintain its intensity all the way through but it’s still an interesting, provocative watch.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 27 April 2022

Movies based off long-running, successful television shows, while retaining the same cast, generally tend to be one-offs.  With the first Downton Abbey movie reeling in close to $200 million USD at the global box-office, it has the potential to go much further and become a longer running film franchise.  Downton Abbey: A New Era reunites the much-loved characters in a new adventure pitched at existing fans and those who enjoy a fun period piece.

There are countless subplots but if trying to summarise quickly, the movie is centred around two key narratives.  The mansion’s roof is in desperate need of repair and so the residents of Downton Abbey have, for a sizeable fee, agreed to let a movie studio make a film within its beautiful walls.  It becomes the “film within a film” and features a light-hearted storyline reminiscent of the Oscar winning The Artist.  This was a time when silent flicks were on the out and “talkies” were on the in.

The second plotline takes us to Toulon in Southern France.  Following the death of an ex-suitor, The Countess of Grantham (Smith) has been gifted a beautiful villa (wish this sort of stuff happened to me) which the household can use as a summer holiday home.  Led by the Countess’s son, the Earl of Grantham (Bonneville), a select group has travelled to France to inspect the property and find out what’s truly behind this lavish, unexpected bequest.

There’s a lot going on here.  Television affords the luxury of developing subplots across multiple episodes but by using the medium of cinema, it’s a battle to give everyone a deserved amount of screentime and squeeze it all into a two-hour run time.  I’ll admit the editing feels a little choppy with the continual back-and-forth between Yorkshire and Toulon.  New characters, such as the previous owners of the French villa, are feebly developed and are just rehashing the same material in each scene.

The best part of Downton Abbey: A New Era is the in-house movie shoot and the excitement it generates, particularly amongst the starstruck staff living downstairs.  It affords an opportunity for cute humour – highlighted by a scene where the servants go through a role-reversing transformation when used as extras in the film’s big climax.  Laura Haddock is the pick of the new cast members with her “fish out of water” performance as a snobby yet vulnerable actress who is terrified by the arrival of “talkies”.

Of the regulars, Maggie Smith again gets the best of the one-liners and solidifies her reputation as the series’ heart and soul.  She’s not a big fan of the movie being shot at Downton (“I’d rather eat pebbles”) and her cranky interactions with fellow members about the subject create much needed humour.  It helps compensate for the lack of tension.  Everyone is too polite and civil!

Shot in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (the lack of projects made it easy to bring the cast back together), Downton Abbey: A New Era isn’t breaking new ground but it’s still easy to watch.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 04 May 2022

I didn’t know what a “multiverse” was six months ago but having seen Spider-Man: No Way Home, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and now Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I realise it’s a fast-growing concept to add freshness to the science fiction genre.  Characters can travel to alternate universes and meet different versions of themselves and loved ones.

With the Marvel Cinematic Universe introducing the idea in the most recent Spider-Man flick, writer Michael Waldron (Loki) ups the stakes here.  Our beloved Doctor Strange (Cumberbatch), described as “a sorcerer with the power of God”, meets a young woman who has the rare ability to open portals and allow travel between other universes (she’s visited almost 100 of them).

As you can imagine, it’s an incredibly powerful gift which villainous folk would like to get their hands on.  It also raises a philosophical, moralistic question for audiences to ponder.  If you knew of another universe where you were much happier, would you want to go and stay there?  Doctor Strange must give it thought himself.  Given he “lost” the love of his life (McAdams) in his regular verse, is there an alternate reality where they ended up together and lived happily ever after?

There are glimpses of promise here but on the whole, it’s an underwhelming effort from Marvel Studios.  Not helping matters is that Everything Everywhere All at Once, still in cinemas and doing nicely at the box-office, offers so much more in blending outlandish science fiction with genuine human emotion.  Thanks to its important opening act, before the chaos begins, you grow an attachment to its characters and understand their internal struggles.

That’s not the case with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  Significant chunks of time are devoted to action where people are conveniently using magic spells (music notes???) and shooting weird colourful stuff out of their hands.  The problem is that you don’t really care about anyone.  Without giving too much away, they try to offer depth to the remorseless villain by saying they’re driven by “family” but it’s a weak, superficial justification for someone who just a simplistic, one-dimensional baddie.

The most interesting character in the film is America Chavez (Gomez), the woman with multiverse-travelling skills, but only a fleeting amount of time is spent delving into talents and her trauma-laden upbringing.  The movie needed more of America and less of the clumsy romance stuff (the interactions between Cumberbatch and McAdams are so dull).  Even the cameos (adding little) and post-credit sequences feel sub-par by the franchise’s normal standards.

Offering little in the way of laughs or suspense, and serving up tired lines like “get the hell out of my universe”, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is more over-the-top spectacle than it is heart.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 26 April 2022

Movies about robots and artificial intelligence are not new but After Yang takes interesting ideas and weaves them together into something emotional and thought-provoking.  Writer-director Kogonada doesn’t waste time (and money) exploring the intricate details of this futuristic world.  Rather, it’s very much a tale of family dynamics and reminding us of the intrinsic value of human connection.

The story is told from the perspective of Jake (Farrell), a middle-aged man who lives with his wife, Kyra (Turner-Smith), and 9-year-old adopted daughter, Mika (Tjandrawidjaja).  There’s one other member of the household, Yang (Min), who is described as a “techno-sapien”.  He’s an adult-sized, lifelike robot who was purchased second-hand so as to give Mika someone to play with while growing up.  Who needs a babysitter when you can get a droid instead?

The film wastes no time establishing drama.  After a fun, creative opening credits sequence, Yang’s computer core experiences a major malfunction and he is seemingly beyond repair.  As you can imagine, it’s an event which impacts the family quite deeply.  The young Mika is the hardest hit given Yang had always been a loving brother and invaluable friend.  It’s the first time she’s experienced grief of such magnitude and, as evidenced by a fight at school, she’s clearing struggling.

That said, Mika’s story in the film is secondary to that of Jake’s.  When he takes Yang to a repair store in a last ditched chance to fix him, Jake learns that inside the body is a small hard drive that retained a few seconds of memory from each day in Yang’s life.  Such devices were made illegal not long after their creation but Yang was one of the rare robots that slipped through the cracks with the technology.

Using a special pair of virtual-reality glasses, Mika is able to watch these fleeting moments of Yang’s existence of which he and his family and prominent throughout.  It raises an intriguing question.  If you had the chance to look back and relive intimate moments from earlier parts of your life, would you do it?  Is it better they remain memories and not taint your current life?  One should never live in the past after all.  Or could they be used in a positive way to remind Mika of “better” times and help him appreciate the value of what he has today?

After Yang spins off in a few more curious directions but I’ll conceal those details in the hope readers will want to see this film.  Kogonada repeatedly uses a select number of small, tight locations (house, shop, museum) and avoids wide panoramas.  Even shots in the car have a blurry backdrop!  This keeps attention/questions away from the broader world and maintains the focus on the life and changing emotions of the family members.

Based on a 2016 short story published by American author Alexander Weinstein, After Yang is a cross between Ordinary People and Black Mirror.  Works for me!

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 03 May 2022

There’s no questioning the knowledge and passion that writer-director-star Leah Purcell has for this material.  Drawing from the famous 1892 Henry Lawson short story (it’s just over 3,000 words), Purcell added significantly more detail and crafted a highly acclaimed play which premiered at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre in 2016.  Three years later, she expanded on the material and published a 288-page novel.  Now, she’s turned it into a feature film which is being released in cinemas across the country.

Set in the Australian outback in the late 19^th Century, the story is centred on Molly Johnson (Purcell), a pregnant mother who is tending to her husband’s property in the Snowy Mountain while he is away for several months droving sheep.  It’s a tough, harsh world and Molly is a product of that.  She’s grown accustomed to her husband’s absence and, operating with very little money, she grittily raises her four kids in a tiny timber shack.

I wouldn’t say Molly is comfortable with her life but she enjoys the solitude of her remote home as opposed to interacting with drunken, not-so-welcoming locals in the nearby town of Everton.  Unfortunately, she’s about to be drawn into problems not of her making.  An Indigenous man has been accused of murder and when he arrives on Molly’s doorstep looking for assistance, she must make choices which could impact the future of her family.

There are other storylines at play and the most notable is the connection between an English couple (Reid and De Gouw) who recently emigrated to Australia.  He’s a police officer trying to bring “law and order” to the corruption-laden town while she’s a progressive writer trying to shape community views on issues like women’s rights.  I wasn’t overly convinced by these smaller subplots and I think they lack nuance and conviction.

It’s easy to forget the film’s minor weaknesses when you see the tour de force lead performance from Leah Purcell.  She pours so much into the title character and, as an audience member, you understand every emotion she experiences and the rationale behind every tricky decision she makes.  It’s one of Purcell’s finest roles and hopefully she’ll receive acknowledgement later in the year at the AACTA Awards.

Chosen to open both the Brisbane and Melbourne international film festivals in 2021, it’s taken a long time for The Drover’s Wife to receive a national cinema release but, if you’re one who enjoys interesting Australian cinema, you’ll find the wait is worth it.