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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 17 September 2018

There’s a Facebook page I follow which features old photos of Brisbane going back to the 19^th Century.  I’m a sucker for nostalgia and it’s cool to see how much has changed (and not changed) in recent decades.  If that kind of thing is of interest to you, Ladies in Black is worth your money for its setting alone.  It takes place in Sydney, 1959 with the focus being the hard-working ladies who serve customers in a David Jones style department store known as “Goode’s”.  There are no EFTPOS machines, bar codes or high-tech sound systems.  This was a time when customers were greeted by a doorman and soothed by the beautiful music of an in-store pianist.

Based on the novel by Madeleine St. John and brought to the screen by director Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant, Driving Miss Daisy), Ladies in Black spreads its time across a wide assortment of characters.  Lisa (Rice) is a 16-year-old who has accepted a summer job at Goode’s to help in the women’s clothes department over the busy Christmas period.  She has loftier goals of going to university and studying arts but this is her chance to put a few dollars in the bank before going down that path.

A group of women take the inexperienced Lisa under their wing and show her the ropes.  Miss Cartwright (Hazlehurst) is the wise elder stateswoman who is quick to defuse tricky situations – everything from vomit on the floor to an ill-fitting dress.  Fay (Taylor) and Patty (McGirr) are two close friends who love to gossip about customers and snarky staff members.  Madga (Ormond) is an immigrant from Slovenia who schmoozes clients with her European accent and extensive knowledge of fashion.

There’s not a lot of conflict in the movie but that’s not its intention.  This is a fun, easy-to-like drama about good things happening to good people.  Everyone has something to learn and something to share.  Fay is quick to share her wisdom when it comes to customer service and in return, Lisa teaches her about classic literary works including Anna Karenina.  Madga provides a crash course in expensive, high-end fashion and again, Lisa repays the favour by helping find a date for Magda’s migrant friend (Corr).

There are a lot of great individual scenes.  One of the best arrives early in the film when Lisa tries to convince her conservative father (Jacobson) that she should attend university.  Her mother suggests she wait until he’s in a good mood… and the perfect time arrives when he backs the winner of a horse race.  Another sequence takes us back to a long-forgotten time when school results were published in major newspapers and Lisa’s father is inundated with congratulatory words.  There’s no shortage of laughs either with Beresford including a running gag about the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne.

The performances here are top-notch.  17-year-old Angourie Rice (The Nice Guys, The Beguiled) is one of the best teen actresses in the business and is immensely likeable as the sweet-smiling Lisa.  Her character has a charm and innocence that reels in friends like a magnet.  Julia Ormond (Legends of the Fall) brings a great accent and take-no-prisoners vibe to her role as Magda while Rachael Taylor (Red Dog) is terrific as she illustrates the insecurities of the doubting Fay.

There’s a deeper layer to the narrative which offers a 1950s perspective on issues such as women’s rights and immigration but it’s not pushed in a heavy-handed manner.  Bruce Beresford’s gets his message across by having us fall in love with these wonderful characters and for that reason, Ladies in Black is of the year’s best Australian flicks.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 10 September 2018

Director Marc Foster has made some very good films (Monster’s Ball, Stranger than Fiction World War Z) but it was pressure from his 6-year-old daughter that lured him into different genre.  She was tired to him making movies for “grown-ups” and so when the script landed on his lap for a live-action Winne the Pooh film, he was quick to throw his hat in the ring and pitch his vision to Walt Disney Pictures.

Christopher Robin is based on the famous characters first created by author A.A. Milne in 1926 but this is an original story.  In this books, Christopher Robin was a young boy who was best friends an assortment of characters including Pooh, Tigger and Eeyore.  His narrative wrapped up the final chapter of Milne’s second book when he left the Hundred Acre Wood behind and headed off to boarding school.  The time had come to shred his innocence and learn about the real world.

After a great introduction that reflects on Milne’s writings, Foster’s film then introduces us to the grown up version of Christopher Robin (McGregor) who is living on London in the years following World War II.  He’s happily married with a young daughter but is work-life balance is completely out of kilter.  He recently had to cancel a family holiday to the country because his demanding boss asked that he work all weekend or an urgent report to cut costs from the company.

It’s at this point that Winne the Pooh re-enters his life unexpectedly and the pair go on a trip back to the Hundred Acre Wood to help Pooh find his lost friends.  The analogy here is obvious.  We often lose our sense of fun and adventure when we become adults and with Christopher’s life dominated by work, the time has come to tap back into his childhood and relook at things with a fresh perspective.

It’s heavy-handed in places but the writers could be forgiven given this is a family film targeted at people of all ages.  Children should engage with the cute, fluffy characters and will absorb the obvious messages.  There’s not as much for the adults but they should still get a laugh from the manically depressed Eeyore (voiced by Brad Garrett) who can’t catch a break.

When it comes to the work of the animation team, the level of detail is outstanding.  They’ve even included the stitching lines on these stuffed creatures to make them look and feel like they’ve been pulled from a toy box at home.  Many voices will be recognisable such as Toby Jones as Owl and Peter Capaldi as Rabbit.  Jim Cummings provides the voice of Pooh and you couldn’t ask for anyone more knowledgeable given he’s been voicing the character in Disney cartoons since the late 1980s.

Complete with fresh songs from 90-year-old Richard Sherman (Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), Christopher Robin is textbook family entertainment.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 13 September 2018

In 1987, 25-year-old Shane Black landed his first significant role in Hollywood.  He played a U.S. mercenary who was brutally killed by an alien in the original Predator.  Since that time, Black has made a name for himself as both a writer (Lethal Weapon) and a director (The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang).  It’s a cute touch that the now 56-year-old Black sits in the director’s chair for this new Predator flick.  It’s now his decision as to which characters will meet a grizzly, gruesome demise.

It comes with a completely fresh cast but The Predator is best described as a sequel (as opposed to a reboot) as it makes reference to events in the earlier movies.  It opens with a sequence that will sound familiar to fans of the series and the broader genre – an alien spaceship slips through a black hole and crashes in a secluded forest on Earth.  On board is a large, hideous creature who is almost impossible to kill due to his agility, strength, and cloaking powers.

There’s an amusing, Family Guy style gag in the movie about why scientists refer to the creatures as “Predators”.  That name isn’t fully appropriate as they only attack people who are armed and they don’t rely on humans as a source of food.  Alternative descriptors are suggested but for whatever reason, Predators is what we’re stuck with.  These scenes are relevant as they highlight that The Predator is as much of a comedy as it is a sci-fi thriller.

The characters are an eclectic bunch.  Boyd Holbrook (Logan) heads a group of military misfits who find themselves in the firing line of not just the Predators but also a secretive government agency, headed by the villainous Stirling K. Brown, looking to protect their alien research.  I’d humorously argue that these guys end up killing more humans (for good reason I might add) than they do aliens!

Other “good guys” include Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse) as a scientist who finds herself in the firing line and the adorable Jacob Tremblay (Room) as a young boy with autism who comes into contact with alien technology.  Australian Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck) also gets a few good one liners as a mother who finds her house overrun by the military folk as they hide from the approaching creatures.

This is mindless, harmless entertainment.  Aside from the laughs, it’s not offering much in terms of thrills and originality.  We’ve seen this movie before and, based on the climax, we’re likely to see it again.  I have no issue with the cast and their wide range of personalities.  My problem is that it’s such a familiar narrative and there’s nothing special about the major action pieces.

Box-office will determine whether there’s a 7^th film (if we include the Alien v Predator movies) in this long running franchise.  If there is, I’ll be going in with lower expectations.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 06 September 2018

Standing in line for a movie can but quite tedious but the PR company behind The Nun made that experience more entertaining at the film’s Brisbane premiere.  People dressed up as nuns, with full black face masks, would go up to folks in the queue, stand right next to them, and then stare for an awkwardly long period of time.  It was creepy but also kind of cool.

I wish I felt a similar vibe on leaving the theatre but alas, The Nun is light on story and scares.  It’s the 5^th film in the fast growing Conjuring Universe which began in 2013 with The Conjuring and has continued with a sequel and two Annabelle movies.  Those that saw The Conjuring 2 (released in 2016) will already be familiar with the demonic character which is centre stage in this instalment.

The franchise likes to jump around in terms of timelines and The Nun takes us back to the year 1952 and a secretive convent located in a Romanian forest.  A crossword-loving priest, Father Burke (Bichir), has been instructed by the Vatican to investigate the unusual death of a young nun.  He is accompanied by Sister Irene (Farmiga), a young woman who has mysterious visions that will be of relevance.

If you’ve seen the earlier movies, you should have an idea what to expect here.  There’s some nasty stuff going on inside the convent but to help prolong the narrative, the surviving nuns are cryptic in providing information and clues.  The bottom line is that there is a demonic presence which takes the form of a nun and is intent on destruction.

We’ve seen some creative horror-thrillers this year (A Quiet Place, Hereditary) but The Nun lacks originality and relies too heavily on clichés and formulas.  There are scenes where you catch a glimpse of something ghoulish before it runs away.  There are creepy shadows that loom out of nowhere and are designed to scare.  There’s a blaring film score mixed with moments of silence and loud screams.

With just two major characters, neither who are particularly interesting, the film struggles to build a compelling narrative.  We’re just going through the motions watching them stumble around the convent and making dumb decisions.  Taissa Farmiga steps into the shoes of Sister Irene – a curious touch given her older sister, Vera Farmiga, played an integral character in the two Conjuring movies.  She gets the best of the material with Demián Bichir looking bored as Father Burke.

We’ll be seeing more from the franchise given its continued success at the box-office but in my opinion, it has run out of puff.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 10 September 2018

It’s not an entirely original concept (see Unfriended back in 2015) but Searching still wins points for being a not-so-ordinary thriller.  The hook is that it’s set entirely on computer screens.  Every event that takes place is viewed through someone’s iPhone or home PC.  It sounds limiting but you may be surprised how much of your own communication and news consumption comes via the internet.

There’s a cute, nostalgic introduction that will warrant a smile from older audiences.  It follows the upbringing of 16-year-old Margot Kim (La) but only in the sense of her online activity.  It begins with her father, David (Cho), setting up a login account on their home computer (using a humorously old version of Windows).  We then see her upload photos of key events, book in calendar appointments, and create her first Facebook profile.

Now that we’ve brought up to speed, we watch a FaceTime conversation where David is told by his daughter that she’ll be pulling an “all-nighter” at a friend’s house as they study for an upcoming exam.  He wakes up the next morning to find several missed phone calls from Margot but on calling back, she fails to answer.  He’s slightly concerned but his assumption is that she’s gone straight from the friend’s house to school and they’ll see each other that night for dinner.

It’s not until later in the day that he realises something is wrong.  She didn’t attend school and she missed an afternoon piano lesson.  Even more alarming is the revelation from the piano teacher that Margot cancelled her lessons six months ago.  He gets in touch with several of his daughter’s school friends and learns other unexpected things.  Consumed with a mix of worry and shock, he calls on the assistance of his brother (Lee) and a renowned police detective (Messing) to put the pieces of the puzzle together and find Margot.

There is plenty to think about here.  There’s a part of the movie where David is able to hack into his daughter’s social media accounts and go through her list of friends and past conversations.  It’s amazing how much we reveal about ourselves through online mediums and it comes as a huge eye-opener to David.  Can you imagine your friends and family digging through your private emails and online conversations?  Would it portray you as a different person to the one they’re aware of?

The film is not without its flaws.  In keeping it all confined to the computer screen, there are some news stories watched by David that don’t feel authentic.  They are providing footage or giving up information that would not normally be televised.  That said, 27-year-old director Aneesh Chaganty deserves praise for his creative vision.  He made a name for himself in 2014 when he crafted a 2 ½ minute short film, shot entirely using smart glasses, that follows a person travelling from America to India to deliver an envelope.  It’s now attracted close to 3 million views on YouTube.

It’s amazing how Chaganty creates tension by simply watching people type on a screen (including the wait for a reply) and scrolling through old messages.  It’s easily to overlook the actors in a movie like this but John Cho (Star Trek) is terrific as the distressed father.  We may not have been in the same position before but you’ll still relate to his actions and emotions.

Things get a little too “twisty” during the climax but Searching is a cool concept with strong execution.