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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 24 July 2024

Rewarded financially (top 10 at the annual box-office) and critically (nominated for a Producer’s Guild Award), Deadpool was what the film world needed when released in early 2016.  It broke the fourth wall, spoofed superheroes, and had (most) audiences laughing with its lewd insults.  I was less enamoured with the 2018 sequel but that was more a product of the weak script as opposed to the fun concept.

After a six-year hiatus, Deadpool (Reynolds) returns at a time when he’s needed more than ever.  That’s not just because the world needs saving from a destructive baddie but also, because superhero movies are losing favour with the public.  Since the turn of the decade, just one release (the creative Spider-Man: No Way Home) has grossed more than $1 billion USD at the global box-office.  This compares with 13 movies, headlined by Avengers: Endgame, which achieved that milestone in the 2010s.

I can happily report that Deadpool & Wolverine is an entertaining riot.  It taps into my dark, puerile sense of humour (admitting that’s not for everyone), refers to other superheroes (some long forgotten), and weaves in the intellectual property squabbles of big Hollywood studios.  As a Family Guy fan, the approach is reminiscent of segments where they mercilessly mock the inconsistencies in iconic films such as Star Wars and The Shawshank Redemption.  It appears no topic is off limits in this new sequel – including the personal lives of the cast.

While it’s structured as an Austin Powers-style spoof, the most surprising positive in Deadpool & Wolverine is the worthy narrative at its core.  Our two heroes are unwillingly transported to a desolate, Mad Max-like universe where they encounter Cassandra Nova (Corrin), the cold-hearted sister of X-Men founder Professor Charles Xavier.  She’s one of the best villains we’ve seen in recent years (her “fingering” is fantastic), and when you throw in a fun performance from Emmy winner Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) as a similarly nasty individual, you’ve got the necessary ingredients for a classic good versus evil tale.

I’ve been a vague in terms of plot and that’s because the less you know going in, the better.  An example is how they explain the return of Wolverine (Jackman) given he was killed off in 2017’s Logan (an Oscar nominee for best adapted screenplay).  The up-and-down interaction between Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman is terrific as they attack each other physically (brutal fights) and verbally (sharp barbs), but slowly grow closer in pursuit of common goals (love a good double entendre).

With countless references to plot points in past cinematic universes (some you’ll get, some you’ll miss) and a well-timed soundtrack including everything from NSYNC to Olivia Newton-John, Deadpool & Wolverine is a clear winner.  See it on the big screen with a big crowd!

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 11 July 2024

Independent American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung wowed audiences in 2020 with Minari, a slow-burn drama loosely based on his own upbringing and about a family who emigrates from Korea to the United States in search of a better life.  Produced for just $2 million USD, it earned 6 Academy Award nominations including a win for best supporting actress (Youn Yuh-jung), and nods for best picture and best director.

You could have given me a gazillion guesses and I wouldn’t have predicted Chung’s follow up feature film.  With a whopping budget of $200 million USD, he’s been handed the reins on Twisters, an action blockbuster which serves as a sequel to the 1996 release starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.  Given its success (it was the second highest grossing flick of the year behind Independence Day), it’s a surprise it’s taken this long for Hollywood to cash in on a follow-up.

Twisters is described as a “standalone sequel” in that there are no references to characters or plot points from the earlier movie.  The prologue introduces us to young scientist Kate Cooper (Edgar-Jones) who, in trying to win a lucrative grant, is working with close friends on tornado research in Oklahoma.  An expedition goes bad, people are killed, and Kate flees to New York City to take a more routine desk job as a meteorologist.

We then slip 5 years into the future where the film’s formulaic setting is laid.  Oklahoma is experiencing a “once in a generation tornado season” and despite Kate professing that “I’m not that person anymore”, she is guilt-tripped out of retirement (for one week only!) by an old friend (Ramos) who is using the latest military equipment to perform 3D scans of tornados and forecast their movements.  She agrees to provide her Nostradamus-like prediction skills because if the work is successful, it has the power to save lives and townships.

As part of her adventures, she encounters Tyler Owens (Powell), a self-described “tornado wrangler” who seems less interested in tornado research and more interested in self-promotion on his widely watched YouTube channel.  Their early interactions are frosty but as the days pass, they realise they have more in common, in terms of both background and values, than they first thought.

It’s a contrived narrative but Twisters is worth the price of admission.  A few supporting players are caricatures (e.g. the English journalist, the property-buying cowboy) but the three leads do a great job in creating plucky characters.  After the success in recent months of Anyone but You and Hit Man, Glen Powell has mastered the art of creating a likeable protagonist caught up in a cheesy, unrealistic scenario.  Daisy Edgar Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing) and Anthony Ramos (In the Heights) also give it everything with their emotive roles.

Director Lee Isaac Chung is a natural when it comes to the action genre.  The pace is fast, the visual effects are convincing, and the sounds are epic.  I found myself caught up in the excitement of key scenes as the heroes extricated themselves from tornado-related terror (while superfluous folk got sucked up into the sky).  See it on a big, big screen!

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 22 July 2024

Spanish journalist-turned-author Francesc Escribano has always been attracted by the work of activists who “devote their lives to their beliefs.”  The subjects of his non-fiction books have included Salvador Puig Antich, a 25-year-old militant who was executed in 1974 for his involvement in bank robberies, and Pedro Casaldáliga, a libertarian Brazilian bishop who ran afoul of his country’s government and the Vatican during the second half of the 20^th Century.

Another of his works, first published in 2012, is the source material for The Teacher Who Promised the Sea, adapted for the screen by Albert Val and directed by Patricia Font (Cites).  It tells the story of Antoni Benaiges (Auquer), a Catalan teacher who was posted to a tiny, rural public school in northern Spain in 1934.  He introduced revolutionary teaching techniques which engaged his young students but his secular, left-leaning views earned the ire of the town’s religious and political leaders, and would ultimately lead to his death.

We know this from the outset as the film focuses on two timeframes.  The first is set in 2010 as a middle-aged woman, Ariadna (Costa), yearns to know more about her family’s past.  Her ailing grandfather is tight-lipped about his troubled upbringing, but she knows her great-grandfather was murdered in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War.  Hearing about a recently discovered mass grave, she travels alone to the city of Burgos to see if it contains his skeletal remains and any other personal belongings.

The second timespan takes us back to 1935 where Ariadna’s granddad was a pre-teen kids in the classroom of Antoni Benaiges.  There’s no question Benaiges’s approach was unorthodox, but the children were absorbed, and the class size grew.  In addition to the basics of maths of Spanish, Benaiges had a small printing press and tapped into the students’ artistic creativity by having them write short stories which could be published.  One of these books centred on the children’s perception of the sea, which none of them had seen before, and inspired this film’s quirky title.

The world is filled with little-known true stories and The Teacher Who Promised the Sea is another great example of how cinema can be used to bring them to our attention.  It’s an absorbing, heartfelt movie with superb performances – from the happy-go-lucky Benaiges we see in 1935 through to the stressed, concerned Ariadna we meet in 2010.  The young children, despite limited acting experience, are also superb.  As director, Patricia Font deserves praise in weaving the two time periods together.  It’s as if we’re on the same knowledge-collecting expedition as Ariadna. 

Nominated for 5 Goya Awards (the Spanish Oscars) including best actor and best supporting actress, The Teacher Who Promised the Sea reminds us of humanity’s beauty… and tragedy.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 10 July 2024

Hollywood has made some wonderful movies showcasing the bravery of astronauts and the technical nous of those working behind the scenes at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).  First Man centred on Neil Armstrong, Hidden Figures spotlighted female African American mathematicians, and the award-winning Apollo 13 chronicled one of the great rescue missions of all time.

Unfortunately, Fly Me to the Moon can’t match any of the aforementioned films when it comes to credibility and excitement.  History books look back fondly on Americans stepping foot on the moon in July 1969, but it was a chequered lead up in terms of government and public support.   With several competing priorities (poverty, civil rights, Vietnam War), many soured on the enormous taxpayer funded price tag of the Apollo moon landing program.

In the case of Fly Me to the Moon, that’s about where the truth stops, and the fiction begins.  The main narrative revolves around three key individuals.  Moe Berkus (Harrelson) is a secretive figure working for President Richard Nixon who wants to spruik interest in the space program.  Kelly Jones (Johansson) is a colourful, chatty marketing guru employed by Moe to generate positive buzz for NASA.  Cole Davis (Tatum) is the Launch Director for the upcoming Apollo 11 mission and is focused solely on getting the job done.

None of these people existed in real life.  I understand when a group of characters are merged into one to help a movie’s runtime (as they did with Jonah Hill’s statistician role in Moneyball) but why be so flippant with facts here?  Actor Ed Harris iconised Flight Director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13 (earning an Oscar nomination for his efforts) and so it’s weird to see Channing Tatum play a shallower, goofier version of the same person but with a different name.  Tatum is anything but convincing.

The film may have worked better if it went the fully comedic route (playing for laughs as opposed to accuracy) but there’s a raft of tonal changes which don’t suit.  Given the silliness of these fake characters and some of their actions, it’s hard to take them seriously when the film rushes through dramatic plot elements like Cole’s internal turmoil over three astronauts who perished in the first Apollo mission.

One positive is the broader performance of Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation) who infuses her character with feminine power and non-stop energy.  When you throw in the editing, time period and striking costumes, it reminded me a little of what Renee Zellweger achieved in the 2003 cult classic Down with Love.  Despite her best efforts, I wasn’t as sold on the small romantic subplot between her and Tatum (I’ll blame the writers there).

Likely to generate chatter amongst conspiracy theorists (you’ll know why once you’ve seen the movie), Fly Me to the Moon wants to be light and fun but, unlike the Apollo 11 astronauts themselves, struggles to achieve its mission.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 15 July 2024

Author Lily Brett was born in Germany in 1946, grew up in Australia, and now makes a home for herself in the United States.  Her works (books, essays, poems) have received acclaim, and it was her most successful novel, Too Many Men, which won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize when first published in 1999.  Drawing from her own life, it was the fictionalised tale of a middle-aged woman from Melbourne who took her aging Jewish father to Poland for the first time in four decades after surviving the Holocaust.

Brett’s novel is the source material for the re-titled Treasure, a cinematic adaptation directed and co-written by German Julia von Heinz (And Tomorrow the Entire World).  It features a largely unknown cast apart from the two leads.  Emmy nominee Lena Dunham (Girls) steps into the shoes of Ruth, a 36-year-old journalist travelling to Poland to learn about her family history and craft an article worthy of publication.  BAFTA nominee Stephen Fry (Gosford Park) plays Edek, her elderly father who accompanies his daughter on the trip and provides insight on his own Polish upbringing.

Set in 1991, Treasure is structured as a dark comedy, but the dramatic elements are more pronounced than the comedic ones.  Accompanied by their jack-of-all-trades taxi driver (Zamachowski), the pair visit Edek’s dilapidated childhood home from half-a-century ago and discover family heirlooms (a tea set, a silver bowl) they’d left behind after fleeing the Nazis.  They also visit the “museum” in Auschwitz where Ruth sees the camp building her father was detained in.  It triggers a flood of repressed memories which leaves you wondering if the trip is a help or a hindrance to Edek’s attitude and psyche.

The film’s most interesting layer is a more traditional one – an exploration of the relationship between father and daughter.  Edek is a “glass half full” guy who loves interacting with others and focuses on the positives of his current life.  Ruth is a “glass half empty” person who pours herself into work and is struggling to find a sustained sense of happiness.  The pair argue about trivial details at first, but things get more heated when Edek makes inferences about her failed marriage, and Ruth pushes for more information about her dad’s mental scars.

It’s repetitive in places and not all subplots add value (like Edek’s interaction with two Polish females at his hotel) but the thought-provoking interactions between Dunham and Fry make the film work as a whole.  Fry’s accent is a hammy but it’s still great to watch their respective characters as they push each other’s buttons.  They each get a chance to display likeability, vulnerability, and nastiness.

Selected to play out of competition at the Berlin Film Festival back in February, Treasure is worth a look-see.