The Dressmaker: Blu Ray Review

The Dressmaker: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

Set in an Aussie small town where everyone is an oddball, The Dressmaker's quirkiness begins to grate pretty quickly.

The deranged and nutty tone sets the scene for a story that's as steeped in tragedy as it is over-the-top garishness. 

A perfectly cast Winslet plays Myrtle, a woman scorned from the small fictional Aussie backwater Dungatar with the belief she caused the death of a boy. Returning to her mother, Mad Molly (a wonderful Judy Davis who imbues her bitter mother with as much heart as she does black humour) after a spell working in high fashion, Tilly sets feathers flying with her seamstress skills and her vampish figure, reminiscent of a Hollywood siren.

But she also captures the heart of Liam Hemsworth’s rugger boy and neighbour Teddy (who gets shirtless on numerous occasions) and begins to melt back to the charms of Dungatar while trying to exact her revenge for years of ostracism.

The Dressmaker is a curio, which is verging on high campery too as Winslet's Myrtle arrives back in town with revenge on her mind and snarling out a "I'm back ,you bastards" from under an icy veneer as the film starts, channelling a wild western showdown soundtrack and signalling something is in the water.

But under the high 1950s fashion is a simple story of reputations unfairly gained and rumours viciously spread among the ghouls of a small town, a trope that many who have tried to flee their past only to run home will recognise. The film heads more for farce and a parody of grotesques in its execution, rather than giving the supporting players a touch more humanity.

For this is a small town where the police are more interested in high fashion than high crime, where one man drugs his wife to rape her in her sleep and where a secret truth has festered for years rotting the community from within – it’s not exactly the most pleasant place to dwell, and Moorhouse works reasonably well from the Aussie ocker source material the Gothic book written by Rosalie Ham.

Of the leads, Davis seriously impresses, giving Molly the emotional arc she needs as the prodigal daughter returns home; elsewhere Winslet’s thawing of the stark and severe Myrtle seems as inevitable as the wonderful dresses she wears but her turn gives the predictable story a kind of watchability that’s welcome among all the frocks and barbs. It’s the mother and daughter relationship that is the real thrust of this film and proves to be the reason to plough on through the nuttiness and extreme stereotypes.

Weaving’s cop also deserves mention; a policeman who is more interested in the fripperies that Myrtle brings from Paris and whose cross-dressing is indulged but never revelled in. Granted, it’s like watching another variation of Weaving’s turn from Priscilla, Queen of the desert but he’s a small oasis in a backwater of confused tone, overlong pacing and dusty yesteryear drama.

Ultimately, The Dressmaker is a celebration of the absurd, a gallery of grotesque and unfortunately, a grating film that will surprise many who are expecting something else than what the poster appears to promise.

Rating:

Game of Thrones: Season 5: Blu Ray Review

Game of Thrones: Season 5: Blu Ray Review

Rating: R18
Released by Warner Home Video

George R R Martin's fantasy shows no signs of slowing - but the television series does show signs of starting to strike out on its own in the latest season of Game Of Thrones.

With the novels' release pace slowing, this latest finds the Westeros tale taking original elements and weaving them into the narrative to make up for the lack of source material.

It also delivers an ending moment that's set pop culture alive in the break between the show and its latest sixth season.

With a power vacuum in place and various people trying to fill it, the fifth season of Game of Thrones is the usual mix of politics, sex, violence and shocks. From the likes of Lena Headey's Cersei, Emilia Clarke's Daenerys and Peter Dinklage's Tyrion, there's plenty afoot as the threads begin to wind closer together.

However, this season is not without controversy with its sexual assault of a main character being a litmus moment for many viewers. And it's easy to see why - sometimes, Game of Thrones prefers to present moments without judgement and that frankness causes discomfort in many.

While the journey doesn't feel as strong this year, there's no denying Game of Thrones' unending power. Though ironically, that may be the saga's problem - it potentially does need to explore an ending sooner rather than later, so that everyone feels satiated and so that the show doesn't hit a decline.

Republique: PS4 Review

Republique: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4

With overtones of 1984, the dystopian story of Republique feels very much like it takes its time to get you into the story and the characters.

Set within the facility known as Metamorphosis, and concentrating on a character called Hope, you are tasked with the possibility of helping her, before she is "re-programmed" by the masses within. Full of cameras and options to view round, you're going to need all of your skills to help and ultimately try to free Hope before the state wins.

Based on an episodic iOs game and ported over to the PlayStation, Republique is a game that requires some patience to claim an ultimate reward. The stealth-adventure title needs you to be able to plan what you want to do and to execute it in a manner that's deft, clever and requires you to think ahead about what is needed.

Flicking around cameras proves to be a clever touch in this tale that lingers on its surveillance ways in a clever mantra that feeds into the dystopian feel of the game - heck, even titling the heroine Hope is a sledgehammer move that somehow manages to work.

Simple controls make moving Hope an easy task, and given this is one of the major advantages of the PlayStation version, it's no wonder the game's a bit more immersive than it ever was.

Simply executed and beautifully rendered in parts, Republique is a player experience that really somehow manages to defy expectation and description. It's a stealth game that requires thought and an immersive experience that somehow manages to transcend its origins and becomes its own beast.

Experimenter: DVD Review

Experimenter: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Vendetta

Realising that exploring social experimenter Dr Stanley Milgram was likely to be a controversial choice, the writer, director, and producer of it all, Michael Almereyda could have been on a sticky wicket.

However, by choosing to break the fourth wall conventions in this biopic a la Bronson, he removes the controversy of the man himself and ends up providing a more rounded insight into Milgram.

The film begins with Milgram's most incendiary experiments into the human condition, wherein he managed to put two subjects - a teacher and a pupil - into a room and made them administer shocks to a stranger. Based on Milgram's childhood growing up as a Jew and being influenced by events in the Holocaust, Milgram's reasoning for his trial appears sound - what could provoke any right minded person into such horrific action?

The Milgram experiments clearly had ripples and ramifications and Almereyda's exploration and presentation of them is nothing short of a shock to the system.

By using the aforementioned fourth wall convention and using photos for backgrounds for some events and meetings, it's a bolt upright reaction to what transpires on the screen. (And even has a feel of TV series Masters of Sex about it in its recreation) - but in many ways, it's a film that defies convention for a man who ultimately defied his own conventions.

Sarsgaard is a cool crisp slice of clinical perfection as Milgram, each word carefully and theatrically  delivered for maximum impact and each dryly wry witticism despatched with ease; there's plenty of humour in this film that's essentially a snapshot of a biopic.

By keeping it free of the minutiae of Milgram's life and investing us solely in pivotal moments at certain points in time, Almereyda's concocted something smart and involving.

Exposition serves for explanation and shifts of time periods within the film, and the discussions raised within will likely provoke some incisive and robust debate as the movie ends. However, rather than bogging down the film in stuffy discussion, thanks to some excellent casting (look for the cameos who make up the subjects of the initial Milgram experiment) and a great performance from Sarsgaard and a return to form for a long time absent Winona Ryder as his wife, Almereyda provides a film that hits squarely and confidently what it wants to do.

It may skirt around some issues and some of the ramifications of the experiments (there's an unexplored inference that Milgram was being tailed and one of his colleagues dies early in age, both of these are left to linger frustratingly rather than be delved deeper into), but Almereyda's never interested in anything more than using the style and the effortless ease of his leading man to deliver a fascinating take on a thrilling subject. 

Newstalk ZB Review - Reviewing Eddie The Eagle, 25 April and Creed

Newstalk ZB Review - Reviewing Eddie The Eagle, 25 April and Creed

This week it was the turn of Eddie The Eagle under the Newstalk ZB Review spotlight.

I also took a look at 25 April, the NZ Gallipoli animated film and on DVD Creed.

Take a listen below:

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-eddie-the-eagle-doesnt-quite-soar/

The 5th Wave: Blu Ray Review

The 5th Wave: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Ent

Another YA outing gets a big screen event movie with Rick Yancey's alien invasion story hitting the cinemas.

And once again, all the tropes of the genre are in place, but this time around, they feel more derivative and installed into the narrative via a checklist, rather than dramatic necessity.

Kickass's Chloe Grace Moretz stars as Cassie, a high schooler whose life changes when aliens invade via a succession of attacks. After surviving electrical attacks, natural disasters, fatal disease a la Avian Flu and then body snatcher style invasion a la The Invaders which wipe out her family bar her brother, she finds herself on the run. With a desperate race to save her young brother from the army's clutches and from their weaponising him, Grace Moretz gives everything to the film and sells every ludicrously predictable turn it takes.

It's just a shame that the film gives nothing back.

Despite a stunning first 30 minutes that see the alien menace cleverly and craftily energise the story, it stalls and hits a sickening thud when it realises it needs to weave in the tropes of the genre. (Young love, life after high school seeming like the end of the world, a mistrust of authority etc etc)

After the action slows, The 5th Wave becomes an unconvincing sludge of a film that's barely able to build on the mistrust and premise. The story fractures into Cassie's search and meeting of a charisma-free dishy designer stubble potential love interest and her brother's involvement in the weaponising-our-kids-storyline - and the result is one of tedium more than anything.

Ending on a whimper and the limp promise of yet more, The 5th Wave is a frustrating experience.

Despite a crowded genre with The Hunger Games, Divergent, et al, thanks to Grace Moretz's turn and a terrific start, it could have been so much more and never once delivers anything original or compelling past its invasion schtick. It sanitises its potential brutality and its de-humanising of its lead, and therefore ultimately sells everything short that it sets out to do.

Turns out The 5th Wave from the aliens, that threatens all our lives, is actually tedium.

Rating:

99 Homes: Blu Ray Review

99 Homes: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Madman Home Ent


That 99 Homes leaves you seething is a testament to the power of this drama and the moral turpitude it throws you into as this take on the American dream and the obsessions with property play out.

In an entirely relevant parallel given how over-heated the world's property markets are, Garfield is Dennis Nash, a father whose Orlando family home is foreclosed by the bank in 2008. Believing he has 30 days to fight the repossession, Nash's shocked to find the police on his doorstep the next day, demanding he, his mum (a solid Laura Dern) and his son leave immediately.

Also on the scene of the repossession is the lizard-like Rick Carver (an excellent Michael Shannon), a former real estate agent who is now head of his own realty company and who specialises in taking homes and turning profits - whatever the cost and with no regard for the emotional fall-out.

Humiliated and homeless, Nash is forced to work for Carver in a (contrived) series of events, but soon finds his desire to ensure his family has somewhere to live is over-stepping his basic humanity as his Faustian deal with Carver descends to new depths.

99 Homes is a powerful searing drama; it gives a human and inhuman face to the property crisis that beset America and that teeters on the edge worldwide currently.

Shannon's nothing short of electric and horrifying as Carver, a man whom we first meet at the scene of a suicide of an owner whose home has been taken by Carver's realty business. But in typical anti-hero stance, Carver doesn't care about the human cost of his business and Bahrani isn't really interested in fleshing out his character other than a few piecemeal scenes that give chilling insight and horrifying human touches to this monster of a man.

Equally, Garfield's Nash is played well; the conflict he feels is clearly marked early on, but the gnawing sickness of reality and desperation provides plenty of dramatic fuel as well as plenty of debate over what you would do. The line between black and white blurs easily in this morality tale, given human form and faces which can't be blocked from memory.

As this suspenseful thriller plays out and Nash dances ever closer to the devil, the intensity of the film ramps up, even if the credibility of some of the situations edge dangerously close to convenience rather than natural drama. Certainly, the balance of rational from Nash compared to Carver's clinically cold and despicable attitude is nicely struck early on, and both Garfield and Shannon's performances remain the real reasons to stay so engaged with 99 Homes throughout.

If anything though, 99 Homes is Shannon's film - it's a blistering turn that sees him blow smoke on the fire of who's fuelled this situation and Bahrani fans it by insinuating everyone is to blame, given that the banks lend more money when the home hunters are eager to gobble it up.

Ultimately, 99 Homes is a recession drama and a searing, sickening commentary that will eat at your soul long after it's done  - and thanks to its morally compromised leads, the desperation of Nash and the almost vulture like behaviour of Carver will pick at you long after the lights have gone up.

Rating: