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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 06 January 2016

There’s a natural pressure when a screenwriter tries to adapt one of their favourite novels into movie form.  They want to take their love for the story and impart similar feelings on a new, wider audience.  It was a challenge faced by Phyllis Nagy who had an extra burden to carry with The Price of Salt (later renamed Carol).  Not just a fan of the book, Nagy was a close friend of author Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) up until her death in 1995.  She wanted to make something great to honour her memory.

Set in 1952, the early scenes are told from the perspective of twenty-something Therese Belivet (Mara), a shy woman who works in the toy section of a large department store.  It is there where she meets Carol Aird (Blanchett), an impeccably dressed mother looking to buy a Christmas present for her young daughter.  They share a simple conversation and Carol makes a purchase.  Their encounter is over in a matter of minutes.

It’s not until just after that Therese notices the gloves left by Carol on the counter.  She gets her address from the order docket, wraps the gloves, and puts them in the mail.  You should already be thinking by this point.  Is Therese just being a nice person or is she using this as a means to interact again?  What about Carol’s perspective?  Did she leave the gloves deliberately or was it just a forgetful moment?

Carol is quick to make the first few moves.  She invites Therese out for lunch and then asks her to visit her country home.  The naive Therese keeps saying “yes” but she’s not entirely sure where it’s leading.  It takes a little time but she finally harnesses the courage and starts probing for information – “I want to ask you things but I’m not sure if you want me to.”

It’s clear these two want to spend time together but those around them are intent on pulling them apart.  Carol has filed for divorce from her husband, Harge (Chandler), but he’s not so keen to let go.  He’s prepared to smear his wife’s name and rely on a “morality clause” to obtain full custody of their only child.  As this goes on, Therese is being pursued by multiple guys who mistakenly believe she is timid as opposed to uninterested.

Carol is a beautifully shot film that captures the mix of nervousness and excitement that comes with most new relationships.  The fact that it involves a same-sex couple in the 1950s adds to the complexity.  It was time when lesbians felt pressure from friends and family to “conform” and marry a man.  A homosexual herself, Highsmith drew on her own experiences and feelings in writing the novel.

Nagy and director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) deserve praise for the style they’ve brought to the material.  As a homage to David Lean’s 1945 classic Brief Encounter, the film is bookended by a scene in a restaurant where Carol and Therese are interrupted at an inopportune time.  This passage also highlights an important detail.  As the power in the relationship shifts from Carol to Therese, the film’s focus shifts from Therese to Carol.

Both Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) and Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) deliver sublime performances with each on track for another Academy Award nomination.  Mara won the best actress prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival where the film had its world premiere.  Costume designer Sandy Powell (Shakespeare in Love) and the talented make-up and hair styling team also deserve praise in helping capture the era.

It took close to twenty years to get Carol made but the wait has been worth it.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 January 2016

Two of my favourite animates features of 2015 were The Good Dinosaur and Shaun the Sheep Movie.  A distinguishing feature is that both relied on minimal dialogue.  They used facial expressions and other visual triggers to tell their stories and generate an emotional response.  An added bonus is that they could be screened in non-English language countries with minimal subtitles.

The Revenant feels like the adult equivalent.  Set in the early 19^th century, the film opens with a team of American explorers trekking through a remote forest and hunting animals for their fur.  They are forced to flee after being attacked by a well-armed group of Native-Americans.  It’s a brutal sequence and the body count is high.

The survivors embark on a long journey home and are guided by Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), an experienced frontiersman.  That is until Glass is savaged by a bear while scouting ahead.  It’s all over in the space of a minute but it’s an intense scene that is tough to watch.  The special effects are seamless and it’s hard to believe that DiCaprio is still alive by the end of it.

His fellow explorers try to stretcher the comatose Glass back to their base but the terrain is too mountainous and his wounds are too severe.  Team leader Andrew Henry (Gleeson) offers extra cash to those willing to stay behind and monitor Glass while the others forge ahead in search of help.  Those selected are John Fitzgerald (Hardy), a man with a shady past, and Jim Bridger (Poulter), a naïve hunter on one of his first expeditions.  Also staying back is Glass’s teenage son.

It’s at this moment when Fitzgerald shows his true colours.  While Bridger goes in search of food and water, Fitzgerald kills the son and leaves Glass for dead.  He fabricates a story about another Native-American attack to throw Bridger off the scent and the two start heading home.

Beware the man with nothing to lose.  It’s a theme that has been explored in numerous films.  Liam Neeson and the Taken action franchise springs to mind.  Glass miraculously survives his wounds and slowly gets back his strength and ability to walk.  He is motivated by one of life’s most common desires – revenge.  His only thought is to hunt Fitzgerald and make him pay.

After winning the Academy Award last year for Birdman, The Revenant marks the next achievement for Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel).  It’s a hugely ambitious project that cost roughly $135 million (twice the initial budget) and took almost a year to shoot.  A contributing factor was the insistence of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity) to only use natural light during the production.  That meant that, on average, only a two-hour window with ideal light was available each day.

Leonardo DiCaprio is currently the frontrunner to take home the best actor prize at the Academy Awards next month.  One reason is because of his terrific performance.  Another reason is because he’s overdue having been nominated 4 times previously without success in the acting categories.  He hardly says a word during the film but you get a clear sense of his character’s pain and determination.  From swimming in frozen rivers to eating a raw bison liver, DiCaprio has described it as “the hardest film he’s ever done.” 

The Revenant is a beautiful film.  There’s no argument about that.  Lubezki’s cinematography is gorgeous and the sound team have done an amazing job capturing the noises from such an isolated location.  The howling winds will stick in your head.

I was hoping for more from the story though.  It’s scant on background information when it comes to the characters.  It also struggles when it moves away from the main narrative.  For example, the leader of a Native-American tribe is trying to track down his kidnapped daughter.  Only a small amount of time is devoted to this key subplot which makes it difficult to follow and appreciate.

More likely to be remembered for DiCaprio’s performance than its slow-paced, grim narrative, The Revenant is an endurance test for both its leading character and the audience.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 06 January 2016

In March 2011, I held a pessimistic view about the Australian economy.  Teaming up with a few friends, we purchased a derivative that was “shorting” the ASX200 (Australia’s top 200 companies).  To sum it up in a sentence – the more the market went down, the more money we made.  Our hunch turned out to be correct.  The ASX200 dropped roughly 20% and we tripled our cash in the space of 5 months.

I’m not overly proud of my investment.  To make a profit, I was relying on bad economic data such as high unemployment and a sagging gross domestic product.  I made the small $1,000 investment to highlight that the world’s financial markets are flawed.  Analysts kept spruiking an economic recovery (and this was pushing stock prices up) but there was plenty of reliable data to suggest otherwise.  The experts aren’t always right.  A lack of regulation and numerous conflicts of interest can make them very difficult to trust.

Never was that more evident than during the global financial crisis (GFC).  In the preceding years, banks had been negligently/fraudulently (take your pick) lending money to property investors who were always going to struggle to meet the repayments.  Instead of wearing the risk themselves, the banks packaged thousands of mortgages and sold them to investors.  Ratings agencies gave them top marks.  The regulators had no concerns.  It all went pear shaped in mid-2007 when mortgage defaults skyrocketed and the housing market collapsed. 

The GFC has already been covered in two brilliant films.  Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job won the Oscar for best documentary feature and used a plethora of interviews to show the systemic corruption that led to the financial meltdown.  That was followed up a year later with J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call – a fictional drama about a bank trying to offload dodgy investments over a 36-hour period as the crisis began to unfold.  These movies left audiences shaking their heads but the startling fact still remains – only one person was ever jailed for their actions during the GFC.  It’s almost impossible to believe.

Director Adam McKay tackles the same subject matter in The Big Short but from a different perspective.  Based on the much acclaimed non-fiction book by Michael Lewis (Moneyball), it begins in 2005 and follows three groups of people who predicted the crisis and profited substantially from the demise of the U.S. housing market.  Framed as a dark comedy, it marks an exciting shift for McKay who is better known for his popular slapstick – Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers and The Other Guys.  Brad Pitt’s own production company, Plan B Entertainment, put up the funding.

The major players in this broad ensemble are as follows.  Michael Burry (Bale) is an introverted, socially-awkward hedge fund manager who has done his homework and has invested a significant part of his portfolio against mortgage-backed securities.  Mark Haum (Carrell) is a pessimistic money manager who has teamed up with Jared Vennett (Gosling) to bet against the blind optimism of the big banks.  Charlie Geller (Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Wittrock) are two young investors who literally started a hedge fund in their garage and now recognise that Wall Street underestimates the risk of catastrophes.

Knowing how it all pans out doesn’t make The Big Short any less compelling.  These guys are continually questioned and ridiculed but you know they’ll get the last laugh during the film’s final act.  The performances are superb with Steve Carell (Foxcatcher) the standout.  He gets the best of the one-liners including a scene where Gosling proclaims that he's “standing in front of a burning house and offering you fire insurance on it.”  There’s another great moment where he debates an investment bank CEO in front of curious onlookers.

Adding to the film’s entertaining allure is its self-awareness.  Characters break from the main narrative and start talking directly to the audience.  Celebrities pop out of nowhere to explain tricky financial concepts by using metaphors.  It’s a touch repetitive in places but I like the approach of McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph (The Interpreter).  They’re using comedy to get their message across.  The poignant final scenes will hopefully get people thinking about whether the financial services industry has learned from its mistakes.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 26 December 2015

Much has been said and written about Star Wars over the past few weeks.  Disney purchased the rights to the franchise in 2012 (by acquiring Lucasfilm) for just over $4 billion USD.  It may sound like an obscene sum of money but given the box-office success of The Force Awakens, it shouldn’t take long for that investment to be recouped.

It wasn’t as widely publicised but the Iconix Brand Group took a similar path with Peanuts.  They purchased the rights to Charles Schulz’s famed comic strip in 2010 for $175 million USD.  The Peanuts characters can be found in television ads, greeting cards, and toy stores but their popularity has waned in recent years.  Iconix wanted to make more from their investment and so a new Peanuts movie was put into production – the first to be played in cinemas for 35 years.

They should be happy with the finished product.  Snoopy & Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie has made $127 million at the U.S. box-office thus far and is touted as a likely Oscar nominee in the best animated feature category.  Just as pleased will be Craig and Brian Schulz, the son and grandson of the late Charles Schulz (who passed away in 2000).  They spent several years writing the screenplay, along with Cornelius Uliano, and ensured the film remained faithful to the comic strip adored by readers for half a century.

Packaged into a nicely-paced 88 minutes, The Peanuts Movie has two storylines running concurrently.  The more prominent narrative sees Charlie Brown on a quest to win the affections of the Little Red-Haired Girl.  It’s not easy given his shy, insecure disposition and his uncanny knack for causing mayhem.  The other subplot is more “action packed” and chronicles Snoopy’s attempts to rescue his beloved Fifi who has been kidnapped by the Red Baron.

Those new to the Peanuts may battle with the abundance of characters (it’d be like watching a Simpsons episode for the first time) but the film is still easy to like.  Kids will be able to follow the simple storyline and will enjoy the misadventures of the good-natured, well-intentioned Charlie Brown.  It’s also nice to see an animated feature without a crazy, over-the-top villain.

Older audiences will chuckle at some of the film’s finer details.  There are a few adult references as well as throwbacks to Schulz’s black and white comic strips.  The animation is superb with director Steve Martino (Ice Age: Continental Drift) creating 3D computer animation that still looks like it’s been hand drawn.  It’s another tribute to the comics and you’ll notice the characters don’t move as fluidly as in other animated films.  Martino has also used the iconic jazz piano composition “Linus & Lucy” numerous times as part of the soundtrack.

Snoopy & Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie is the pick of the family fare over the Christmas school holidays.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 January 2016

There’s a bit of fluff on either side but Sisters is centred on an epic party thrown by two middle-aged siblings.  Their motivations are a mix of nostalgia and self-interest.  It’s the last night they’ll spend in their childhood home which, having been held in the family for decades, is being sold by their parents to a smug young couple.  It’s also a chance to have a good time and forget about their deep-seeded troubles.

Writer Paula Pell (who has a background on Saturday Night Live) is trying to tap into the success of other great party movies such as Superbad, Project X, Animal House and Old School.  Most invitees are neurotic.  There’s a nonchalant dealer carrying every drug imaginable, a liquor store owner looking to get laid, a group of rebellious beauticians being employed as slave labour, a couple addicted to having sex in public, a nerd who thinks all his jokes are funny (they’re not), and a pretentious woman with a major grudge against the party’s hosts.

As you’d expect, it becomes increasingly outrageous with each passing scene.  For the most part, the characters are trying to win laughs through silly, immature dialogue.  They talk a lot but it’s not particularly profound or amusing.  That said, there are unexpected flashes of humour that do surprise.  A conversation shared between a flirting Tina Fey and a monotone John Cena is a major highlight.  A bedroom scene involving Amy Poehler and Ike Barinholtz also wins big points.

There’s a darker undertone to the story that is touched upon but not given the gravitas it requires.  Both of the party’s hosts, Kate (Fey) and Maura (Poehler), have got issues.  The self-centred Kate can’t hold down a job because she’s incapable of showing respect and consideration to others (evidenced in the film’s opening scene).  She’s about to be kicked out of her home, she cares little for her parents, and she has a strained relationship with her only daughter.  Maura’s problems aren’t as serious but her worrying, overly-cautious personality is clearly impeding her ability to find happiness in life.

Their issues come to the surface during the party but it’s hard to buy into the resolution given the film’s light nature.  It lacks the realism and complexity that we saw from Amy Schumer in Trainwreck, a superior comedy about an insecure woman getting her life on track.  Perhaps Pell should have ditched the characters’ troubled backgrounds and stuck with carefree, cringe-worthy material all the way through.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are two long-time friends who should work well off each other.  You only have to watch their opening monologues at the last three Golden Globe Awards to get a sense of that.  They’re giving it their best shot in Sisters but it feels like a missed opportunity to create something with a bigger heart.