Month: September 2021

Entirely predictable, that’s the adjective that springs into shape upon seeing the trailer for “Dream Horse,” a feelgood, “based on a true story” comedy drama set in the down-and-out Welsh village of Cefn Fforest. Unhappy checkout chick and whippet breeder decides, on an irrational whim, to buy a mare to breed a racehorse, funded by £10 a week from a motley syndicate … a recipe for fiscal disaster … only to end up winning the Welsh Grand National, steeplechase race numero uno. Add to that a potentially troubling close-up view of the perils of hurdling to horses (every race seems to feature a perilous tumble), and my first post-lockdown venture into a cinema threatened to be a bore. And yet, writer Neil McKay deftly pins the story around fast-paced, pithy conversations, the casting is sublime, and director Euros Lyn provides an immersion into both race thrills and racehorse syndicate thrills. Toni Collette and Damian Lewis are sturdy lynchpins, playing sympathetic folks with warmth, and humorous recurring cameos from the other syndicate members round out a pleasant hour and a half of classic, heartwarming cinema. Recommended.

Serial killer movies are yesterday’s news, sullied by two decades of repetition. Yet at their best, especially in filmic expression, this sub-genre can encapsulate the ancient good-versus-evil storyline like no other. “The Little Things, ” written and directed by John Lee Hancock, is a return to the classic form of the serial killer hunt: a flawed policeman riven by obsession hunts a almost supernaturally talented killer. Denzel Washington is in superb form as Joe Deacon, a rural cop once an LA homicide detective star, enlisted by an upstart La detective (played quirkily but convincingly by Rami Malek) to stop a run of killings of women. The movie’s atmospherics are brilliant, evoking the seedy side of Los Angeles, and the interplay between the two policemen is haunting. When a lumbering drifter (played with malevolent force by Jared Leto) comes into the frame, the film shifts from pursuit to cat-and-mouse. Brooding and intense, possessed with barely contained emotions of rage and yearning, the film builds up to a series of climactic scenes that might disappoint some thriller aficionados, but which struck me as clever and apt. I was held in thrall for the 128 minutes of The Little Things, childishly lifted up by a return to a sub-genre that informed my middle years. Recommended.

Such a brilliant idea, to situate a drama about a TV news desk around the first quarter of 1986, allowing for six amazing news events to both enrich the character stories but also to illuminate a swathe of themes. “The Newsreader” plonks a rookie reporter (a star turn from Sam Reid), a glam female newsreader (Anna Torv in fine form), a veteran newsreader (acted with aplomb by Robert Taylor), and a curmudgeonly station exec (William McInnes shines) into terrorist bombings, a comet, AIDS, Lindy Chamberlain, and Chernobyl. The milieu of the newsroom is revealed in all its tension and complexity, while the key characters’ flawed yet believable lives mesh and clash with wonderful drama. Each episode zips along and progresses the human stories over the season, and I was impressed by how unpredictable every moment was. Is The Newsreader the most sparkling Australian drama of 2021? Perhaps indeed.

“Death of a Ladies ‘Man” follows on the heels of the much more prestigious release, The Father (graced by Anthony Hopkins among others), which also attempted to portray in film the state of mental collapse of dementia. The Father messed willy-nilly with time. Death of a Ladies Man messes with hallucinations, and is, in my opinion, a much more profound movie. It is also decidedly quirky, with writer/director Matt Bissonnette framing the narrative around Leonard Cohen songs and splashing around garish strange visions. Gabriel Byrne plays a professor beginning to reap the impacts of a lifetime of boozing and philandering, and he suits the movie’s mood and themes perfectly, being world weary and ironic and self-deceitful, but also questing for closure, forgiveness, redemption … the eternal life questions. An ensemble cast revolves around Byrne; notable are Brian Gleeson as the apparition of our hero’s long deceased father and Karelle Tremblay as his foul-mouthed but desperately loving daughter. Fantastical set pieces abound—ice hockey players dancing, a weird band interjecting, an AA meeting turned into a joyous anthem— and, weirdly, fit perfectly. The first third of the film flirts with tedium but once an attentive viewer gathers up the vibe, the final pre-death scenes (none of them formulaic) strike with a hammer of revelation and grief. An unanticipated triumph, is Death of a Ladie’s Man.

“The A Word” centers on Joe, an autistic boy played with brilliance by Max Vento. Joe lives in a world of walking with headphones and obsessively singing 70s and 80s rock music (the music programming throughout all three seasons is a delight). In the first season, parents Alison (Morvern Christie cannot put a foot wrong) and Paul (a stunning performance from Lee Inglesby) struggled to understand and cope with Joe in the wider world. Their surrounding rambunctious families (all casted and portrayed flawlessly) deepened the story with swirling subplots. By Season 2, Joe was in a special school and his parents were divorced but the narrative had deepened, with various other disabled teenagers entering the scene. Season 3 alternates between Alison and Joe in Manchester, and Paul and Joe in the Lakes District (featuring stunning cinematography), and the narrative arc has widened to incorporate a young Downs Syndrome man’s wedding and the pregnancy of Joe’s sister. The British do such soap-opera-like ensemble tales so well, but The A Word transcends the cliches. The script is clever, the dialogue is whip smart, the storylines remain unpredictable, and above all, there is a real, pulsing heart to it all. Seasons 1 and 2 were mesmerizing viewing and Season 3 tops them both. A must-watch.

A tense drama about the aftermath of 9/11, “Worth” is above all a vehicle for the superlative acting of Michael Keaton. Here he plays a lawyer specialising in bulk settlements when tragedies strike or accidents occur, developing formulas that most equitably compensate victims and their families, and then negotiating to ensure his compensation package is broadly accepted. It’s a specialised field that I have some knowledge of, being an ex-actuary, and I was fascinated by this aspect of the movie. After the epochal terrorist attack in 2001, Congress set up a legislated fund to tackle the tragic aftermath, with thousands dead and injured, doing this mostly to head off class actions that might derail the economy, and Michael Keaton’s character is plunged into a maelstrom of conflicts of interest. The supporting actors all do a splendid job, Sara Colangelo directs with steady pacing, and 9/11 is evoked well. All that said, Worth is plagued by the “based on a true story” label, a millstone that almost always seems to leach genuine drama out of a story. Only Michael Keaton’s brilliant evincing of a human under stress saves the film from tedium. On balance, a fascinating tale well told.