You know, Animal Kingdom is the Australian film I’ve enjoyed most in years.

Thank you very much. I haven’t seen the finished film yet, but I saw a rough cut a few months back and even then I was impressed. I thought that if it improves on this, it’s really going to be great. David’s ability to capture tone and mood is really chilling.

Do you approach an ensemble film like this differently than if you’re the leading man?

No, it’s the same. It has to be. On some level, whether you’re working on Neighbours or working on a 100 million dollar film, you still need to be as convincing as you can in front of the camera.

It’s interesting that lately you’ve played small – but important – roles in so many big films.

I know! I’m in Hurt Locker for about a minute, and people keep congratulating me. I feel like they’re mistaking me for somebody else. I was only filming for three days.

Did you intentionally decide to take these smaller roles?

Not at all. I want to play great roles, and I’d prefer to play leads. That’s my ego talking, I suppose. It can be much more satisfying to delve into something for a decent amount of time. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve dropped off the radar, but the best stuff that I was finding were smaller roles. So off I went.

I think you can frame this in a much more flattering light: you’ve put aside ego to choose the best films and not the flashiest roles…

Well, that’s honest, too. I’ve done things before that I haven’t been fully convinced by. I don’t want to fall into that trap again. It was very strange, though, to bookend these two great films – Hurt Locker and The Road – with their opening and closing scenes. And in between, I did Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories.

Uh, I hope Bedtime Stories doesn’t have too much in common with The Road.

Funnily enough, I was shooting Bedtime Stories when I had to fly to Pennsylvania for two days of The Road. I was in Goofy Adam Sandler World – and then I turned up on set to see Viggo Mortenson dying…

Are you a fan of award shows? Or do you avoid the Oscars like the plague?

My wife and I actually went to the Oscars this year. I was really adamant about hating award shows for the first 10 or 20 years of my working life. I still find them a bit silly, but I’ve become accepting of the fact they’re just how the industry works. It was really fun to go, and I was just really pleased for Kathryn Bigelow that her film did so well. It was unusual because twelve years ago I was also in a film that was up against a James Cameron juggernaut – Titanic. I still think that LA Confidential was the better film. So of course we’re all sitting at the Oscars this year going, well, I know how this is going to pan out. It’ll be Avatar. Kathryn might win best director, but James will win for his technological prowess…

As far as I’m concerned, Kathryn Bigelow deserved an Oscar for Near Dark in 1987! That’s an amazing film.

She’s an amazing filmmaker.

Do you think there’s a difference between being an actor and being a star?

I think a star’s someone who’s sitting at the top of the A-list. Someone who everybody knows, who can get any movie green-lit, who’s the first choice because it means bigger box office. And anybody who’s less known than that moves down the list – the B-list, the C-list. Obviously some people resonate with the greater population. They think: “I want him to be my hero”. Whereas with another actor, they might think: “Sure, he’s great, but he might be a bit confrontational, a bit dangerous. It’s great to see him in smaller roles but he might not be the guy I want to see as the lead.”

So they choose the actors who make them least nervous?

Yeah, that’s right: “At least we’ve got Tom Cruise…” But honestly – there aren’t many stars who aren’t also good actors, too.

This interview first appeared in jmag #40.

SPLICE

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali

Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac

Country: Canada

Many think Frankenstein was the first science fiction story. It tapped into something so powerful we’re still seeing new twists on the story today. This year it’s Splice, from the director of the 1997 lo-fi sci-fi Cube.

Sarah Polley (always excellent) and Adrien Brody (usually terrible, though pretty okay here) play a pair of gene-splicing scientists. Bored with using animal DNA, they introduce something human into the mix and soon have a gooey ‘daughter’ born with a stinger-tipped tail – and she’s growing fast.

Splice’s weighty ethical issues let it take itself pretty seriously for a movie that’s regularly so ridiculous. I mean, there are two pink lumps of Cronenbergian flesh licking each other with monster tongues in the first five minutes, and later there’s a sex scene that’ll keep fetish websites loaded with screengrabs.

But the best thing about Splice’s science-gone-wrong is how it asks the same question that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein asked back in 1818. What’s worse: children or parents? Splice says there’s enough horror in both.

Other reviews this month: Greenberg and The Ghost Writer in cinemas; Youth In Revolt, Cop Out, and Party Down: Season One on DVD.

Issue #42 on sale now.

LOVE EXPOSURE

(AI NO MUKIDASHI)

Directed by: Sion Sono

Starring: Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando

Country: Japan

Love Exposure is a four-hour movie about an expert upskirt photographer – so saying it’s Japanese is probably redundant, isn’t it?

It begins with Yu being forced into confession by his Catholic father. At first he invents his sins, but soon decides to actually commit them. After he’s told that everything he seeks can be found “between a woman’s legs”, he becomes an urban ninja of voyeur photography.

That’d be enough insanity for most films, but Love Exposure is more ambitious. It’s also a family farce, redemptive love story, cross-dressing kung fu comedy, and hysterical psychodrama. Its relentless exploration of how religion and sex combine gives it unexpected depth among the erection jokes. (It uses the word “pervert” so often that somewhere John Waters’ ears are burning.)

Could it’ve been shorter? Sure. But I have no idea what could’ve been cut. I just pretended it was a TV miniseries and watched it in three chunks. When you watch it – and you should – I suggest you do the same.

Other reviews this month: the less-painful-than-expected Shrek Forever After in cinemas; Tom Ford’s A Single Man and Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland on DVD.

Issue #41 is on sale now.

HARRY BROWN

Directed by: Daniel Barber

Starring: Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer

Country: UK

Michael Caine has always been a “working actor”, happy to accept a role now rather than wait around for something better. It’s why he’s been in so many great films as well as so many shockers. Harry Brown is somewhere in the middle.

This “vigilante pensioner” flick plays shamelessly into the story currently fuelling newspapers worldwide: KIDS THESE DAYS ARE SOCIOPATHIC MONSTERS WHO’LL KILL YOU AS SOON AS LOOK AT YOU, GRANDPA! Caine brings echoes of his legendary 1971 Get Carter hardarse to Harry – an elderly ex-marine who decides enough is enough. The emotional realism of his performance gives the movie a classiness that doesn’t mesh with its grimy, cartoonish thrills. (Especially the ridiculous digitally-added spurting blood.)

Most vigilante films pay at least a little lip-service to the fact that revenge is wrong – fun, sure, but wrong. Harry Brown has no such qualms. You’ll have to balance your desire to see Michael Caine kill teenage thugs with how dirty cheering him on might make you feel afterwards.

Other reviews this month: Fish Tank, Baghead, and True Blood: Season Two on DVD.

Issue #40 on sale now.

BAD LIEUTENANT – PORT OF CALL – NEW ORLEANS

Directed by: Werner Herzog

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer

Country: USA

I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that Nicolas Cage was developing a new kind of acting that will only be properly understood by future generations. Kooky cop drama Bad Lieutenant – Port Of Call – New Orleans suggests maybe I was right.

Director Werner Herzog (of Grizzly Man fame) says it’s not a remake of the infamous Harvey Keitel film Bad Lieutenant; he says he hasn’t even seen it. It’s just another story about an out-of-control, drug-snorting cop. This one is set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, although it looks like it was filmed on leftover porn sets sometime in the mid-1980s.

The script – from a writer of TV cop shows like NYPD Blue – is nothing special, but the movie’s offbeat style makes it oddly fascinating. It’s like Herzog created an entire film from his lead actor’s DNA. After phoning in so many performances, Nicolas Cage gives this one everything he has. Even if you think his acting is laughable, this is a movie that gets the joke.

Other reviews this month: anthology film New York, I Love You, The White Ribbon, and The French Kissers.

Issue #39 on sale now.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY

Directed by: Michael Moore

Country: USA

“Capitalism is evil”. That’s a direct quote from Capitalism: A Love Story, the latest of Michael Moore’s documentaries about what’s wrong with America. (In case you’re wondering, the answer is: a lot, actually.)

In his sledgehammer style, Moore wades into the US economy: families evicted from homes; hilariously evil memos leaked by major companies; profits made on human misery; all ending with post-Katrina New Orleans and demands for revolution.

Fans of his mid-90s TV Nation series will find even fewer stunts this time, and those that remain – like driving an armoured car to bailout banks and demanding money back – are weak. Instead, Moore relies on sincere voiceover, melodramatic music, and ironic stock footage to spice up his interviews.

It’s effective enough, too. It’s just hard to watch Moore using the same leading questions, manipulative visuals, and fear-mongering that are usually considered the domain of his political opponents. Does refusing to use those same underhanded tactics make you noble – or just naive? I honestly don’t know.

Other reviews this month: Paul Greengrass’ Green Zone and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs in cinemas, and Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl, Paranormal Activity, and FOX’s Glee on DVD.

Issue #38 on sale now.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

Directed by: Grant Heslov

Starring: Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges

Country: USA

The Men Who Stare At Goats starts with the statement: “More of this is true than you would believe.” And that’s both what’s wrong and what’s right with the movie.

It works best when it’s showing the secret history of the US Army’s unit of psychic spies, trained in paranormal abilities by a Lebowskiesque guru played by Jeff Bridges. These flashbacks, though, are intercut with a tacked-on storyline in the present about a journalist (Ewan McGregor) stumbling across a man who claims to be a member of “Project Jedi” on a secret mission in Iraq (George Clooney).

Sounds awesome? It’s inspired by Jon Ronson’s wildly entertaining book, but it misses the point that the book’s fascinating precisely because it’s non-fiction. (I mean, the soldiers are trained in something called the “sparkly eyes technique”!)

While The Men Who Stare At Goats is intermittently entertaining, it turns everything into farcical comedy. It should’ve realised that when your source material is this batshit, you play it straight.

Just one other review this month: the bizarre Twilight Zone-inspired Pontypool.

Issue #37 on sale now.

ANTICHRIST

Directed by: Lars von Trier

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Country: USA / Denmark

After watching Antichrist, all I wanted to do was get Lars von Trier drunk and ask him: “Really?”

He has Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg give incredibly raw, honest performances as a couple dealing with the death of their young child; but he puts them in a film so over-the-top it often seems like a Flying High-style parody of art cinema. And that’s before a talking fox arrives to announce that “chaos reigns!”If you were too squeamish to see Antichrist on the big screen, don’t worry. Once things turn violent, it’s still not that bad – well, except for the bit with scissors, anyway. (Shudder.) It’s just the way he’s mixed violence with explicit sex that makes it shocking.

Antichrist is full of beautiful, nightmarish imagery: you could freeze it at random and create a perfect oil painting. Sometimes the movie seems like it’s inching close to saying something profound… only to run away giggling again.

So, Lars: should we take this psychodrama seriously? And how about that drink?

Other reviews this month: Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, Hillcoat’s The Road – more on that here – and Final Destination 3D.

Issue #36 on sale now.

Just before Christmas last year I had the chance to chat with everyone’s favourite dirty uncle of cult cinema, and there’s a lengthy chunk of the interview now online.

Even when I haven’t thought much of one or two of John Waters’ films, I’ve always admired him for how excited he remains about other artists’ work, and not just his own. Film, theatre, fine art, you name it. So in the grand tradition of the Heathers lunchtime poll I asked him the following: if 1950s-style aliens arrived on earth to destroy all our movies and you could only save one film, what would it be?

His reply: Boom!

It’s the best failed art film ever. Elizabeth Taylor plays Sissy Goforth and Richard Burton plays the Angel of Death, a gigolo who comes to live with rich ladies before they die. It is staggering to see this movie. I could watch it over and over and shout out all the dialogue. It has Richard Burton saying for no apparent reason: “Boom… the sound of knowing the next moment you’re alive…”

(He gave me some good advice about surviving Christmas, too. While he loves it, he said he “understands people hating it. I think the biggest mistake you can make about Christmas is ignoring it.” Next Christmas, as Stephen Colbert would say: pick a side! We’re at war!)

Go read it, because he’s awesome. There’s some more of the our conversation – including why he thinks the Marquis de Sade is more famous than the Beatles – in the latest jmag.

THIRST

Directed by: Chan-wook Park

Starring: Kang-ho Song, Ok-vin Kim

Anyone who’s witnessed the five-star, what-the-hell-am-I-watching? spectacle of Oldboy knows that Chan-wook Park’s films are rollercoasters: funny, scary, and violently melodramatic.

His latest, Thirst, isn’t just a vampire movie; it’s also the weirdest literary adaptation you’ll ever see. It’s inspired by the decidedly non-vampiric Émile Zola novel “Thérèse Raquin”, but twisted into a slow-boiling, genre-smashing story of an infected priest and the temptations of bloodlust.

Thirst is being hailed as everything that Twilight isn’t. (Personally, I think vampire lore is big enough for both sparkling and non-sparkling varieties.) Thirst is missing the momentum of some of Chan-wook Park’s other films, but manages to make vampires feel fresh again.

Did I mention wetness? The impeccable sound design makes this one of the schlurpiest films in cinema history, all blood and snot and seawater. Sam Raimi’s recent Drag Me To Hell was obsessed with horrible things happening to mouths, but Thirst will make you long for simpler times when people just used to get stabbed in the eyes.

Other reviews this month: Away We Go, Coraline, and Where The Wild Things Are. (Here’s something of an extended 12″ remix of my Wild Things review.)

Issue #35 is on sale now.