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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 01 January 2015

With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (West Side Story, Sweeney Todd), Into The Woods was a successful, much acclaimed musical that was first performed on Broadway in 1987.  Whilst it didn’t take home the Tony Award that year for best new musical (that honour went to Phantom Of The Opera), it’s a show that has proven its greatness over time.  It’s been performed across the globe and has gone through numerous revivals.

I haven’t seen the live musical myself but on paper, it sounds fantastic!  It takes the heroes from several Brothers Grimm fairy tales and brings them together as part of a new adventure.  A baker (Corden) and his wife (Blunt) have been cursed by a witch (Streep) and are unable to have children.  The curse will only be broken if the couple obtain four ingredients that are required by the witch for an important potion.

Firstly, they need a cow as white as milk.  This can be obtained from Jack in exchange for some dodgy magic beans.  Secondly, they need a cape as red as blood.  Little Red Riding Hood is the perfect candidate but she won’t be handing it over without a fight.  Thirdly, they need hair as yellow as corn.  Rapunzel has plenty to spare but it won’t be easy locating her tower.  Finally, they need a slipper as pure as gold.  This is where Cinderella comes into the frame.

There’s a moment in almost every fairy tale where the bad people are punished and the good people “live happily ever after”.  The catch with Into The Woods is that this moment presents itself in the middle of the story as opposed to end.  The show’s second act flips the whole narrative on its head and looks at things from a different, more realistic perspective.  It illustrates life’s many contradictions and the trouble in differentiating “good” from “bad”.  Further, it shows that not all of these characters deserve to live happily ever after.

Director Rob Marshall is no stranger to a big screen movie musical.  His first feature film, Chicago, won 6 Academy Awards including best picture in 2003.  Marshall was heavily favoured to win best director that year but lost to Roman Polanski (The Pianist) in a major upset.   His next musical outing was anything but successful.  Nine, released back in 2009, was savaged by critics and tanked at the box-office.

There are a lot of good reasons to see Marshall’s cinematic adaptation of Into The Woods.  The film opens with a brilliant 15-minute musical number that introduces us to all the major characters.  Having had to endure the horrendous Annie several weeks ago, this opening reminded me of how wonderful musicals can be.  The casting is great, the voices are clear, and the plot is easy to follow.  The creativity shown with the overlapping lyrics and storylines also put a smile on my face.  It’s a lot of fun.

It’s a well written musical but the character who gets the best lines and the most laughs is the baker’s wife.  It’s a role that won Joanna Gleeson a Tony Award in 1988 and Imelda Staunton an Olivier Award (the London equivalent) in 1991.  Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) steps into the character’s shoes here and is wonderfully good.  So too is Chris Pine (Star Trek) who appears in the film’s best song – a duet where two princes agonise about the women in their life who are “just out of reach”.

As much as I loved the lead up, the film struggles to sell the messages contained in its meaningful conclusion.  I’m worried that audiences will be divided about the sudden change in tone (which should have been darker to make it more obvious) and the rush to resolve so many subplots (characters are dying at a rapid pace).

The theatrical version was able to use certain techniques to assist its cause.  For example, the actor who played the villainous wolf also played Cinderella’s charming prince.  It was a way of showing that while their characters may seem very different, their personalities are actually quite similar.  I’m not saying that Marshall should have used the same actor for the two roles in the film (it would have been tricky) but it highlights that important details have been lost in the translation from stage to screen.

Named as one of the year’s top 10 films by the American Film Institute, Into The Woods is ultimately a film that entertains but also underachieves.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 15 December 2014

You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.  That pretty much sums up my thoughts on Annie – a remake of the successful musical that first opened on Broadway back in 1977 (although some will be more familiar with the 1982 film version).  Screenwriters Will Gluck (Friends With Benefits) and Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) have failed miserably in their attempts to take this classic tale, which was originally set in the Great Depression, and adapt it to a current day setting.

Let’s start from the beginning.  Annie (Wallis) hasn’t grown up in an orphanage.  Instead, she’s been shipped from foster home to foster home.  Her latest guardian is Miss Hannigan (Diaz), a welfare cheat who is currently looking after 5 kids.  She’s not doing it out of the goodness of her own heart.  It’s solely because she pockets $735 per week from the government.  The character would be a perfect fit for the next Housos Vs. Authority movie.

Moving along… Annie finds herself rescued by Will Stacks (Foxx), a ridiculously wealthy telecommunications tycoon.  He’s s a repulsive individual who uses his elaborate mobile phone network to illegally spy on his customers.  If you think that’s bad… Stacks’s new goal is to become Mayor of New York City.  He has no actual policies and isn’t really concerned about the city’s residents.  He’s only doing it to further his elaborate business interests.

So why has Stacks taken Annie into his care?  It’s not because he’s kind, generous or sympathetic.  Rather, he’s doing on the recommendation of his political advisers (Cannavale and Byrne).  They all believe it’ll show his “softer side” and provide a much needed boost in the mayoral polls.  What’s the harm in splashing an orphaned young child across newspapers for political gain, right?  Can’t be any worse than setting up a Twitter account in her name to post campaign information!

Thankfully, Annie is a great judge of character.  When asked by her friends if Stacks is a nice guy, her response is “I think so… he just doesn’t know it yet.”  I’d probably say the same thing if given the chance to live in lavish penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the heart of New York City.  Oh, and she gets a cute dog too.  It’s what we all want out of life apparently.

Nothing in this film rings true.  The fact that Stacks’s approval ratings soars as a result of the “Annie factor” is laughable.  If Donald Trump ran for President and took a 10-year-old orphan with him on the campaign trail, social media would eat him alive.  The film’s rushed ending (which I should but won’t spoil) makes even less sense.  Some characters (Stacks included) deserve to be hanged, drawn and quartered.  Instead, they get a warm hug and a pat on the back.

The writers have stuck with many of the songs from the original musical.  They include catchy numbers such as “It’s A Hard Knock Life”, “Tomorrow”, and “I Think I’m Going To Like It Here.”  Unfortunately, the performance of said songs has been overproduced by director Will Gluck.  The choreography is too busy, the lyrics are difficult to follow, and the miming couldn’t be more obvious.  They’re no fun to watch at all.

There are brief glimpses of comedic promise (a scene in a movie theatre springs to mind) but for the most part, this is a bizarre family-orientated musical that requires you to wear thick rose-coloured glasses.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 30 December 2014

Winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival back in September, it’s easy to see why The Imitation Game has been so well received.  The story of Alan Turing is both fascinating and disturbing.

During World War II, Turing was employed by a top-secret government organisation in Great Britain that had been tasked with the responsibility of code breaking.  One of their most important assignments was to decipher messages being sent by German soldiers using their highly sophisticated Enigma machines.  If successful, it would provide the Allies with a wealth of knowledge that would make them almost unbeatable.

Suffice to say that it was lot harder than solving a Sudoku puzzle while on the train to work.  The Enigma machines had 159 million million million possible settings.  If you couldn’t find the miracle answer within a 24 hour period, it was back to the drawing board.  This is because the Germans changed the setting at midnight every day.

It may sound like an impossible task but Turing came up with the answer.  He and his team developed an electromechanical machine that could use predictive text to significantly narrow the number of possible settings.  This provided invaluable assistance to other cryptanalysts who now had the power to crack each day’s code within a matter of minutes.  Many believe that if not for the efforts of Turing, Germany would have won the war.

Using Andrew Hodges’ 1983 biography as its source material, The Imitation Game tells the story using three timeframes.  Most of the film is spent in the 1939-1945 period as we watch Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) go about his work.  He is portrayed as a peculiar individual who preferred to work alone and had a noticeable lack of social skills.  His idea of a compliment is to say “that is not an entirely terrible idea.”

The other two timeframes provide insight into his personal life.  A 1928 storyline follows Turing as a 16-year-old student at an all-boys school in Dorset.  He had few friends but he developed a close attachment to a fellow classmate.  The other subplot is set in 1951 and sees Turing questioned by Manchester police after a suspicious burglary in his own home.

Aside from the absorbing code-breaking premise, there are two powerful elements to this story that leave you with something to reflect upon.  Firstly, once the code was broken, the British military had to be incredibly careful how they used the decrypted information.  If they suddenly turned up at the location of every enemy warship, the Germans would have stopped using the Enigma code knowing it had been broken.

Secondly, the actions of Turing and his fellow codebreakers were classified by British intelligence as being “ultra-secret”.  It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the military files were released and their efforts became known.  It left historians re-writing textbooks and adding a new, important chapter.

It’s always difficult condensing one’s life into a two hour movie but director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters) and writer Graham Moore have made some odd decisions.  The most obvious is the way in which Turing’s sexuality is downplayed throughout (particularly in the 1928 storyline).  It wants us to feel angry when he his persecuted for being a homosexual (it was a crime at the time)… and yet the film makes no effort to show a relationship with another man.  Instead, it focuses on his not-so-interesting friendship with Joan Clarke, a female codebreaker played by Keira Knightley.

The screenplay also appears to have manipulated one too many facts for dramatic effect.  Turing was never blackmailed because he was gay.  He was never accused after the war of being a spy.  He never employed Joan via a crossword competition.  I’ve further concerns about why Turning is portrayed as such an isolated human being.  There’s a scene where he alone writes to Winston Churchill requesting more funding.  The truth is that Turning and several of his colleagues teamed up to write that letter.

Proving to be a strong contender this awards season, The Imitation Game isn’t quite the film that I had hoped.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 13 December 2014

On 6 August 1915, Australian soldiers commenced an attack against the Turkish army in Gallipoli.  It became known as the Battle of Lone Pine and the death toll, on both sides, was huge.  When the final bullet was fired 4 days later, roughly 2,000 Australians and 7,000 Turks had lost their lives.  The battle formed part of the climax of Peter Weir’s 1981 war drama, Gallipoli, which many regard as one of the great Australian films of all time.

Russell Crowe’s directorial debut, The Water Diviner, takes the same period of history and looks at it from a different angle – the aftermath.  Crowe plays Joshua Connor, a Victorian farmer who lost all three of his sons in the Battle of Lone Pine.  Further tragedy was to follow when his wife, unable to cope with the death of her children, committed suicide.  Standing over his wife’s grave, Connor makes one final promise – “I’ll find them and I’ll bring them home to you.”

The year is now 1919 and the war is over.  Connor has made the long trip to Gallipoli so as to find his sons’ bodies and return them to Australia.  He soon learns that a recovery operation is already underway.  Despite being the fiercest of enemies several years ago, Australian and Turkish soldiers were now working together to locate the bodies of those left behind on the battlefields

Leading the operation are an Australian lieutenant colonel (Courtney) and a Turkish war hero (Erdogan).  They want nothing to do with Connor at first.  There’s much work to be done and they’d rather not be side tracked by a near-impossible search for three particular bodies.  Connor wins them over however and over the next few days, he learns much about the atrocities that took place in Gallipoli.

It’s a curious piece of history and I was intrigued by the broad subject matter.  Most war films tend to focus on epic battles and it’s not often that we follow those affected in the aftermath.  Here, Connor is trying to locate his sons... but he requires the help of a Turkish major who was part of the army that probably killed them!  It’s a crazy scenario that only further highlights the futility of war and the value of forgiveness.

Despite my interest, there are several elements to The Water Diviner that left me puzzled.  Embedded throughout the film is a layer of “spirituality” that borders on science fiction.  When Connor reaches Lone Pine, he seems to be guided by a higher power that takes him directly to his sons’ remains.  He also has some kind of “sixth sense” that allows him to see his sons’ final moments by way of flashback.  It’s all very strange.

The film also tries to establish a romantic subplot.  Connor befriends Ayshe (Kurylenko), a Turkish widow operating a small hotel in Istanbul.  Ayshe lost her husband in the war and is now being pressured into marrying his brother (something she objects to).  Given that Connor is still coming to grips with the death of his own wife (it’s the main reason he’s in Turkey to begin with), it’s hard to believe that he can fall so quickly for someone he knows so little about.

Crowe has used a large contingent of Australian actors as part of his supporting cast.  You’re likely to recognise a few familiar faces including Jacqueline McKenzie, Dan Wyllie, Damon Herriman, Ryan Corr, Steve Bastoni and Megan Gale.  The scene stealer is 12-year-old newcomer Dylan Georgiades who plays Ayshe’s young son.  He plays a fun, curious character and shares some great conversations with both Crowe and Kurylenko.

The film recently received 8 nominations for the upcoming Australian Academy Awards (AACTAs) although, in a curious twist, Russell Crowe was overlooked in the best director category.  Hopefully he won’t take that (or this review) too personally.

You can read my chat with star Olga Kurylenko by clicking here.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 29 December 2014

By my count, there were at least 30 reboots, remakes, sequels and spin-offs released in Australian cinemas during 2014.  This year starts in a similar vein with Taken 3, Dumb & Dumber To and Penguins Of Madagascar all released inside of the first two weeks.  It’s as if Hollywood coined the famous mantra – “if you’re on a good thing, stick to it.”

For those keeping score at home, there have been three films in the Madagascar franchise to date.  They have combined for a total worldwide box-office of just under $2 billion (in US dollars).  A fourth instalment is anticipated (with a tentative 2018 release date) but to satisfy us in the meantime, we’ve been given a spin-off which is light in terms of characters but still heavy on action.

Penguins Of Madagascar is centred on the four penguins who only had a small role in the earlier films – Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private.  The film opens with a 10 minute prelude that shows us how they first met and why they went in search of adventure (as opposed to sticking it out with their families in freezing Antarctica).

The premise here is somewhat amusing.  An attention seeking octopus named Dave (voiced by John Malkovich) was once a feature attraction at the Central Park Zoo.  He loved doing tricks and fans flocked to see him.  The arrival of four penguins changed everything however.  No one wanted to see an “ugly” octopus any more.  The public now lavished their attention on the cute, furry, fluffy penguins.

Only two things have kept Dave’s zest for life going.  Firstly, he wants to keep adding to his collection of snow globes.  No issues there.  Secondly, he has a “burning thirst for revenge” against the penguins that cut short his career.  He intends to kidnap every penguin on the planet and, using a specially created serum, transform them into hideous, deformed creatures.

It’s not just our four heroic penguins that are trying to save the day.  A crime-fighting organisation known as the North Wind, which comprises a wolf, seal, owl and polar bear, is also trying to get the job done.  Tension develops between them however with egos getting in the way of the greater good.

The screenwriters have included just enough jokes to keep adults entertained.  I had to smile at a scene when Dave to octopus has trouble trying to use a video conferencing device (it’s like something out of an Austin Powers movie).  There’s also some witty celebrity name dropping during the film’s climax.

Kids are easier to please and will probably lap it up.  That said, it lacks many of the endearing characters that have made this franchise so likable (such as Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, and Manny the giraffe).  The film is also too “busy” in places.  As there aren’t enough meaningful exchanges between the characters, the script tries to compensate with elaborate, over-the-top action sequences.

Big Hero 6 and Paddington have my vote as the best family fare over the Christmas school holidays but if you’ve ticked them off your list, Penguins Of Madagascar is still a viable option.