Posts Tagged jmag
Repo Men: jmag review
Here’s my review of the odd sci-fi Repo Men, just in time for its DVD release, from this month’s triple j magazine. (It’s our horror-themed issue, which happened to give me the perfect excuse to pester Joe Dante about my favourite ever zombie film, Homecoming. Check it out.) But anyway…
REPO MEN
Directed by: Miguel Sapochnik
Starring: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga
Country: USA
In the near future, you’ll be able to extend your life by buying artificial organs. If you can’t make the massive repayments, a repo man – like Jude Law’s Remy – will break into your home, cut you open, and take them back.
That’s the premise of the sci-fi Repo Men, from first-time feature director Miguel Sapochnik. And while it’s great to see Jude Law embracing his receding hairline, his performance is pretty dull at first. His snarky voiceover is unnecessary, and every scene with his family is dead weight.
As Remy has a crisis of conscience, though, the movie develops its black sense of humour. Remy’s co-worker (Forest Whitaker) leaves a BBQ to “get more meat”, for example, and later there’s a bloody sort-of-sex scene that’ll make your jaw drop.
Repo Men borrows its future noir aesthetics from Blade Runner, and its big fight scene from Old Boy. It’s so indebted to other films that it’s like its own characters: mostly transplanted parts, but still capable of pumping blood.
Other reviews this month: The Girl Who Played With Fire, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and the doco Food, Inc.
Issue #44 on sale now.
Guy Pearce: “They’re mistaking me for somebody else.”
With David Michôd’s crime drama Animal Kingdom now out in the USA, I thought I’d post my jmag interview with its cop-with-a-conscience, Guy Pearce. It was a pleasure to be able to start an interview like this and mean it…
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: jmag review
Here’s my quick review of the new sci-fi / horror Splice from this month’s jmag. It was the second Adrien Brody movie I’d seen in consecutive days, but thank god here he doesn’t use his hilarious ‘yeah, I once saw an Clint Eastwood movie, so what?’ voice from Predators…
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: jmag review
Despite my usual demands that every film should be 87 minutes long at most, I enjoyed the hell out of Sion Sono’s truly epic Love Exposure, coming out soon on DVD. Here’s my quick review from this month’s jmag – though I must admit that fitting four hours of oddness into a couple of paragraphs might’ve been beyond me.
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.