FILM REVIEW: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Sharmill Films

Now Showing



"Better to be a bird of my tongue than a beast of yours," fires back Beatrice (Amy Acker) at her frien-emy, antagoniser and possible soul mate, Benedick (Alexis Denisof), in the first of a series of on-going verbal stoushes between the two in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

And perhaps there was no better tongue (bird or beast) to adapt the Bard's comedy of romantic entanglements and manipulations than writer-director, Joss Whedon. The creator of hit TV shows Buffy and Angel, and the more cult-ish Firefly and Dollhouse -- not to mention the helm's man of the highest-grossing film of 2012, Marvel's The Avengers -- has a flair for witty vernacular, delivered at rapid fire pace, and generously distributed amongst an ensemble of players.

There's no Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) or David Boreanaz (Angel) (or sadly, The Avengers' Robert Downey Jnr and Gwyneth Paltrow) among Much Ado's ensemble -- plucked from a selection of Whedon's film and TV casts and working for next to nothing on the film which was shot over various weekends (and in black on white) at the director's home, and all on the hush-hush -- but that doesn't make the experience any less entertaining.

The plot of Much Ado is concerned with the impending nuptials of young lovers, Claudio (Fran Kanz) and Hero (Jillian Morgese), daughter of Leonato (The Avengers' Agent Coulson, Clark Gregg), whose house is not only hosting the wedding but playing prison to three traitors, one the brother of Leonato's best friend, Don Pedro (Reed Diamond).

Those three prisoners (Sean Maher, Riki Lindhome, and Spencer Treat Clark), in a somewhat distracting sub plot, plan to foil the wedding by poisoning Claudio's mind about the virtue of his bride. At the same time, Leonato, his daughter and guests decide to play a game at the expense of the cynical, love-doubting duo of Beatrice and Benedick; allowing each to believe the other is in love with them and seeing if, or rather, how quickly the romantic seed takes to bloom.

And Much Ado About Nothing is very much about Beatrice and Benedick. One can imagine the pair were perhaps the prototype for the 'sparring lovers' films made famous by Katharine Hepburn and the likes of Cary Grant and Spencer Tracey with their comic collaborations in the 1940s and '50s (though Acker is physically more Audrey than Katharine, and Denisof, though terrific, is no Cary Grant).

The black and white cinematography (by Jay Hunter) certainly gives Whedon's Much Ado a screwball, rom-com vibe of old, and the slapstick and physical comedy employed by Acker and Denisof has its charm amplified by its disarmingly playful innocence. (Special mention must also be made of Nathan Fillion (star of Firefly and now TV's Bones), who, as Leonato's head of security, makes an ass of himself and effortlessly steals each of his scenes in the process.)

I've never read Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, nor seen any of the previous film versions -- the most recent being Kenneth Branagh's 1993 adaptation starring himself, and then-wife Emma Thompson, as the sparring couple, as well as Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves -- and it didn't much matter. The iambic pentameter may take a little adjusting to, but the barbs and especially the laughs hit their targets in equal measure: funny is funny, whatever the language.

And Much Ado About Nothing is one of the funniest, most charming films of the year. Get thee to a theatre, post-haste.

FILM REVIEW: THE HEAT

20th Century Fox Films

Now Showing



The buddy cop movie is nothing new (Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop, Rush Hour to name but three) but they're almost always male. Even with the advent of Cagney & Lacey, the 1980s US TV show about two female police officers, the female buddy cop movie has yet to break the cinema glass ceiling in quite the same way it has on the small screen let alone in real life.

That's not to say there were never any good-to-great female buddy comedies. In the same years that Cagney & Lacey ran on TV, Better Midler teamed with Shelley Long (Outrageous Fortune, 1987) and Lily Tomlin (Big Business, 1988) to quite wondrous effect. Midler also starred with Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 hit, The First Wives Club, which saw sisters doin' it for themselves (similarly, Tomlin, along with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, did it in Nine To Five in 1980).

More recently, the runaway hit Bridesmaids (2011) put paid to the ridiculous notion (if it ever really existed at all) that women aren't funny. The female ensemble comedy, led by Kristen Wiig, showed women behaving good and badly, and equalling -- and often besting -- their male counterparts, whose comedy antics over the last decade seem to be stuck in a man-child, gross-out rut.

Bridesmaids director, Paul Feig, is at the helm of The Heat, a female buddy cop movie penned by first-time screenwriter, Katie Dippold, which sees two polar opposites -- super-efficient FBI Agent, Ashburn (Sandra Bullock), and subtle-as-a-sledgehammer Boston cop, Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) -- forced to work together to bring down a drug cartel. Their unifying common ground: upholders of the law. Their common enemy: sexism.

And there are some interesting ideas at play in The Heat, particularly in relation to how women are treated and, in turn, respond in a predominantly male work environment. McCarthy's Mullins commands fear but not respect, while her dress sense and personal hygiene not only repels people but any risk of being sexualized by her male colleagues (not that Mullins is sexless; we encounter a couple of her broken-hearted one night stands).

Bullock's Ashburn is an over-achiever which means she's very good at her job but seems oblivious to the fact that her success makes her male colleagues look bad and feel threatened. That, of course, isn't Ashburn's problem -- as is often the case, it's the men's -- but there's no 'I' in team, and they already have one in Dicks Only Club (however small).

Not that Feig and Dippold are too preoccupied in hammering home the feminist message as the two comediennes go about breaking down doors, more so literally than figuratively. When neither officer is taken seriously by their commanders (one played by Oscar nominee, Demian Bichir) and removed from the case, they essentially go rogue with Ashburn encouraged to loosen up and Mullins, already armed to the teeth, to smarten up.

And as you'd expect (though not as much as you'd hope), Bullock and McCarthy bring the laughs, particularly in the film's second half where Mullins' obnoxious ways make way for some humanity, and Ashburn removes the by-the-book stick from her ass. But be warned: there's a tonne of language and the occasional graphic violence (including a do-it-yourself tracheotomy and a knife to the thigh) which may shock fans more accustomed to Bullock's The Proposal or McCarthy's Mike & Molly personas.

Focussing on the comedy, The Heat is nowhere near as funny as last year's buddy cop movie, 21 Jump Street. That's not a boy versus girl thing just a mere buddy cop comedy comparison (give me Melissa McCarthy over Jonah Hill any day, I say).

But it's never easy being the first (just ask former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard), and if The Heat inspires a female buddy cop movie sub genre then that's something (I guess). There's already talk of a sequel to The Heat, and we can only hope that next time out the rest of the vehicle is as sound as the female duo driving it.

FILM REVIEW: THE LONE RANGER

Walt Disney Studios Films

Now Showing



After successfully teaming up on the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films and the Oscar-winning animation, Rango, director Gore Verbinski and leading man Johnny Depp no doubt thought combining the two -- a rollicking, blockbuster adventure and a slightly off-kilter western -- would be equally as rewarding.

Thus we have The Lone Ranger, a 149-minute refashioning of the classic TV and movie hero (first appearing on radio in 1933) who dons a black mask, rides a white horse named Silver, and is accompanied everywhere by his Comanche sidekick, Tonto; riding across the post-Civil War American Old West and righting wrongs wherever they find them.

The film is an origin story, recounted by an old Tonto (Depp) to a young boy who, in 1936, encounters Tonto as a sideshow exhibit in a travelling carnival. The old man may no longer have his wits about him but we eventually learn that he never really did; Tonto's mind damaged at a young age by his guilt and the greed and avarice of the white man (for all its faults, Verbinski's film doesn't skimp on the atrocities committed by the settlers and the US military against the Native Americans).

Tonto arrives via train and in chains at the same time that lawyer, John Reid (Armie Hammer), returns to his home town, greeted coolly by his US Marshall brother, Dan (James Badge Dale), and noticeably warmer by his sister-in-law, Rebecca (Ruth Wilson). But before long the Comanche and the lawyer will become reluctant partners in their pursuit of the outlaw Butch Cavendish (an oily William Fichtner), the man responsible for Tonto's mental anguish and who kills John's brother.

Through near death and vengeance, a hero is born. A hero, mind, who isn't particularly well equipped for the ways of the West. John Reid is a man of letters not guns; he often refuses to carry let alone fire one. Kind of like Batman. (Contrast that with the US cavalries eagerness to shoot first and ask questions never.) Yet together, John and Tonto make for a formidable team and close enough to one functioning man.

There are other sub plots involving the railway (a pet project of Tom Wilkinson's snarling industrialist, Latham Cole), and the mining of silver. And there's Helena Bonham Carter, too, as a brothel madam with something under her petticoats that really goes off! But Bonham Carter, who has a mere two scenes in the film, is just one of the many distractions, plot convolutions and drawn out set pieces which contribute to The Lone Ranger's runtime and not its 'pro's' column.

Indeed, the third act (or 'the last of the big set pieces') of The Lone Ranger involves two trains hurtling in the same direction with an assortment of the film's various characters alternating between the two. I lost track of just who was on which train, and I'm not sure it made much of a difference: like the two hurtling trains, the destination of Verbinski's film is never in doubt, it's the roundabout way we get their which is incidental.

That said, Depp and Hammer make for an enjoyably loopy couple though not quite as much fun (or anywhere near as homoerotic) as Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (even as much as composer Hans Zimmer's score makes nods to those films). And in some way to ward off the inevitable (and perhaps not unwarranted) cries of racial insensitivity aimed at Depp playing a Native American, he and Verbinksi have beefed up the role of Tonto: he may be the sidekick but Tonto doesn't play second fiddle to anyone.

Sadly, Depp's performance can't elevate The Lone Ranger in the same way he did the first of the 'Pirates' films, and the film doesn't even come close to the kooky, ornery antics of Verbinki's Rango. You may not be able to shake the ear worm that is the William Tell Overture (which, as the iconic Lone Ranger theme music, makes an inevitable if incongruous appearance late in the piece) but you'll have a harder time than a geriatric Tonto recalling the rest of the film.

FILM REVIEW: TO THE WONDER

Roadshow Films

Now Showing Sydney/Melbourne in limited release



After waiting some seven years for his previous film, 2011's The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's follow-up arrives almost prematurely. Having made only 5 films over a 38-year period, Malick's To The Wonder seems positively rushed; premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in 2012 and arriving in Australian cinemas (well, a handful of them) just two years after the Palme d'Or winning The Tree of Life.

And while not meaning to look a gift horse in the mouth, perhaps Malick is a director who is best served by taking his time. For while beautiful to look at (kudos to cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki), this meditation on the elusive nature of love, its ebbs and flows, and the unpredictability of the heart feels both incomplete and inconsequential.

Non-fans of Malick's previous film (and there were many) will find little (other than a shorter running time) to dissuade them of their frustrations and doubts this time around. And even those who were fans (myself included) of his epic study of love, life and the universe in The Tree of Life will have their patience sorely tested. For while we have the same stylistic principles -- stunning imagery of the natural and man-made world, swelling classical music, and whispered dialogue -- there's very little for one to actually grasp.

Trading the epic for the intimate, To The Wonder is, at its most basic, a love triangle: Neil (Ben Affleck) meets and falls in love with Marina (Olga Kurylenko) whilst in Paris, and invites her and her young daughter, Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline) to come live with him in Oklahoma. And they do, but the romantic fervour between the two soon wanes, and the young girl longs for Paris and her friends.

When Marina decides she and Tatiana will leave when her Visa expires, Neil rekindles a relationship with a high school flame, Jane (Rachel McAdams), but this ends just as abruptly as it began when Marina decides she cannot live without him, and returns from Paris to live with Neil.

All three actors are under-served by Malick, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the rumours that the director didn't use a script but merely discussed the idea of a scene with the actors before shooting proved to be true. Affleck is the worst served, required to do little more than look pensive and masculine as the women in his life twirl and twirl (there's a lot of twirling in this film!) around him. (Here's hoping the recent Oscar-winner for Argo used his time on set as a directorial masterclass, in both what to do and what not to do when making a film.)

Kurylenko, on the other hand, receives the lion's share of screen time and Lubezki's camera loves her. And she is lovely. I've never noticed before just how beautiful this Ukranian-born actress (from Quantum of Solace (2008) and this year's Oblivion) is. But beauty for beauty's sake does not a great film make.

The film also features Javier Bardem, playing a local priest, Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), who can no longer feel God's love. He still administers to his faithful but even they can sense his discontent; one parishioner tells him he needs some excitement, another prays for him to find joy. I'm not sure if this character and storyline were an after thought or taken from another of Malick's story ideas, but it feels disconnected from the main story, especially as Father Quintana has little interaction with Marina and Neil.

That Malick is currently in post-production on not one but three features (two scheduled to debut later this year, the other in 2014) does not bode well, certainly not if To The Wonder is an indication of the director working at maximum capacity. Malick will turn 70 this year, and one can't help but wonder if the man has suddenly been made aware of his mortality; realising that he has so much more to say and possibly not all that much time (heaven forbid) left to say it?

Cinema needs filmmakers such as Malick, a visual poet and philosopher who dares to dream big and feel deeply. And while we all lament that we have to wait years between films, I prefer the wait to the alternative: a beautiful though less substantial offering.

To The Wonder isn't without merit, and worth seeing on the big screen if only for Lubezki's imagery, but it's minor Malick (and yes, I can appreciate the irony in that near oxymoronic statement). Then again, given the current state of filmmaking and distribution, that we get any new Malick film at all is something to wonder at, even if the film isn't some kind of wonderful.