FILM REVIEW: THE IDES OF MARCH

Roadshow Films

Now Showing

While a perfectly fine political drama, The Ides of March suffers under the misconception that its premise – that politics is a dirty game and ideals are the first thing to die in the pursuit of power – is revelatory. Anyone who ran for student council in high school can tell you it's not. Yet when this truth is revealed to young campaigner Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), his world is thrown off its axis.

Working the campaign for Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), a Democrat hoping to secure that Party's nomination to run for President of the United States, Stephen is a hot shot going places. The rival Democrats want him to come work for them, but he rebuffs the advances of that campaign's manager, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti at his weasel-like best): Stephen is big on loyalty – to both the Governor and the man who hired him, Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) – and his own ideals.

But those ideals don't prevent him from fraternising with Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood), a spunky young intern and 10 years his junior. Gosling and Wood have great chemistry together but I'm guessing it's not hard to feign desire for Gosling (some may say the same of Wood). It's during their midnight assignations that Steven unearths a grenade which threatens not only to rock the Governor's campaign but Stephen's whole belief system.

Clooney's Governor Morris would seem to be an amalgam of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, two of the US Democrats' most promising stars in recent years whose lustre, for reasons of their own doing (Clinton's sexual indiscretions; Obama's mishandling of the GFC, giving Wall Street a free pass), was lost.

A Democrat himself, Clooney, directing his fourth film, doesn't let the Party off easy: there are no Republicans in The Ides of March for the Democrats do a perfectly good job of destroying themselves. Yet none of this in-fighting, backstabbing or abandonment of ideals is as revelatory or earth-shattering as Clooney and his co-writers – Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon, from whose play, Farragut North, Ides is adapted – would have us believe.

Even if ironically, or fittingly, like so many political candidates (and movies, for that matter), the film delivers less than what it promises, The Ides of March succeeds as an engaging political drama. Gosling, on a roll in 2011, Clooney, graciously playing a supporting role, and Giamatti and Hoffman (whom I could have used more of) are all in fine form and worthy of your vote.

FILM REVIEW: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Hopscotch Films

Now Showing

There has been some discussion in the media of late as to whether or not women who choose not to have children (for whatever reason) are selfish. While a silly debate to begin with, a strong argument for the negative is Lynne Ramsay's new feature We Need To Talk About Kevin: anyone, not just women, will abandon the idea of parenthood after seeing this film.

Based on the award-winning bestselling book by Lionel Shriver, Ramsay's film unfolds as a prism of memories belonging to Eva (Tilda Swinton), who is struggling to come to terms with the horrific crime her adolescent son, Kevin (Ezra Miller), has committed. But was it Eva's lack of maternal instinct that lead to Kevin's actions, or, as Eva's memories suggest, was Kevin born the bad seed? Nurture versus nature?

The young Kevin wilfully ignores, taunts and defies his mother which leaves her exasperated and exhausted. Husband and father Franklin (John C. Reilly, underused and arguably miscast), who escapes to the office every day, doesn't see Kevin as Eva does; when daddy walks in the door, it's all smiles.

The behaviour of Kevin in his various stages, may be one of the film's less convincing elements, bordering on caricature, but as I said, these are the memories of a grieving mother and wife, they are not objective flashbacks. Memory is not a reliable tool, and Eva is possibly looking for a way to explain what happened or punishing herself for missing signs that were there all along.

Tilda Swinton is, of course, amazing in the film which she also executive produced. She doesn't do vanity - Swinton appears gaunt and haggard throughout - nor does she make Eva the hero of the piece. We get the sense that Eva never really envisioned herself as a mother and nurturing doesn't come naturally to her; Kevin is a riddle she simply can't decipher. And with the arrival of a daughter, it would seem Eva's easy relationship with her confirms her suspicions about Kevin: it's not me, it's him.

Of course nothing in We Need To Talk About Kevin is meant to be that simplistic. Never having read Shriver's book, I can only go by what Ramsay - making just her third feature, and her first in nine years - has presented. As a film it's an impressionistic piece about memory and guilt, the fractured narrative of which serves to heighten your discomfort as you wait for the truth of what Kevin did to be fully revealed.

And when it's revealed to be something other than a gun which is involved, it's all the more chilling. Kevin, played as an adolescent by Ezra Miller with insouciant menace, may have been born an arsehole but for mine, he chose to be a monster. And make no mistake: if you choose to see We Need To Talk About Kevin, like Eva, you'll be haunted.

FILM REVIEW: THE TALL MAN

Hopscotch Films

Now Showing

Palm Island, off the east coast of Queensland, is a beautiful location and a tropical idyll. But looks can be deceiving, and when one of the indigenous locals died in police custody in 2004, all kinds of ugly were revealed, extending across to the mainland and the heart of the Queensland Police Force, and back to the island's aboriginal penal colony past.

Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for swearing at police officer, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, and a mere 45 minutes later died in a cell at the Palm Island Police Station. Despite suffering injuries consistent with those sustained in a car crash - including four broken ribs and a liver almost cleaved in half - Hurley maintained that Doomadgee was never beaten and that his injuries were sustained in a fall whilst being taken from the paddy wagon to the cell where he died.

But from the moment Doomadgee was found dead, the police investigation was compromised, and standard procedure ignored. A miscarriage of justice which began with the arrest of Cameron Doomadgee (for swearing at a police officer; offensive but not really an arrest-worthy offense), reverberated long after his death: Doomadgee's son, and the man who shared that fatal cell with the deceased, both committed suicide not long after.

A Coronial Inquiry into Doomadgee's death ruled Hurley responsible but the Queensland Department of Police Prosecutions not only reversed that decision but ruled the death an accident. When, at the behest of the Queensland government in 2007, that decision by the DPP was to be reinvestigated, the Queensland Police Department came out in force in support of Hurley with strike action a constant threat.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, no one from QLD Police would agree to appear in The Tall Man, Tony Krawitz's doco based on Chloe Hooper's non-fiction book, which recounts all of these events with clarity. Hurley's defense is left to video footage of the investigation, court recordings of Hurley's testimony, and character references from (white) locals from his previous postings.

Interviews with family, friends and the partner of Doomagdee paint a portrait of an imperfect but no less loved man while also capturing the anger and, as much as film can, their grief. And make no mistake, The Tall Man will anger and sadden you in equal measure. Whether Doomadagee's death was racially motivated or not, you can't help but feel ashamed of the ongoing tensions between black and white Australia, as well as those between Aboriginals and police.

Naively, I believed that aboriginal deaths in custody had come to a head in Australia in the early 1990s. The Tall Man acts as a sobering reminder that even in the 2000s, Australia still has a long way to go.

FILM REVIEW: MONEYBALL

Sony Pictures

Now Showing

Moneyball could best be described as the baseball film for people who don't like baseball films. And an even better one for those who get off on numbers and statistics, for director Bennett Miller's film (from a screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin) is less concerned with what happens on the field than the machinations behind the scenes when a major league baseball team turns to an unorthodox theory to better its fortunes.

Having just lost their shot at the 2001 World Series, the Oakland A's are reeling; not just from the loss but the loss of three of their best players snapped up by bigger teams with even bigger cheque books (an opening title card tells us Oakland operates on a budget one-third the size of the New York Yankees).

Oakland's general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), tired of losing his star players to other teams and no longer willing to pursue players as if money were no issue, happens upon a system - and a man - offering an alternative. The system is 'moneyballing', whereby players are selected on their stats (ie their merits) rather than the perceived notions of baseball success - hardhitting, athletic prowess, and talent scouts' intuition - and signed-up at a fraction of the price of their more fancied peers.

It's an idea championed by Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), an Economics graduate from Yale who looks as though he should be cutting the players' cheques rather than determining their positions on the team. But Beane, much to the chagrin of his Oakland colleagues, embraces both the theory and the man.

And Pitt and Hill make for the perfect odd couple pairing of 2011, with Hill's Brand playing straight man to Pitt's at times manic Beane. When he's not stuffing his face with food, Beane's upturning furniture and throwing any object within his grasp that isn't nailed down whenever in a fit of pique.

And that's a lot in the early days of implementing the moneyball strategy, when the team can't manage a win and the field manager, Art Howe (the underused Philip Seymour Hoffman), refuses to play his players as instructed. But then something clicks and the underdogs become serious contenders for the title.

But as stated, Moneyball isn't about what happens on the field. Indeed, fans of the sports film archetype will be dismayed with Bennett Miller's treatment of the conclusion of the Oakland A's journey. Never mind. Miller, making his first film since the Oscar-nominated Capote (2005), keeps us genuinely intrigued by the front-of-house workings of the Oakland A's, assisted greatly by the Zaillian-Sorkin screenplay (though 'The Baseball Network' it's not).

Moneyball is also helped immensely by having its star, Brad Pitt, in top form (though for mine, not Oscar worthy). It's Beane's journey that is the real story here, and Pitt, firing on all cylinders as a man whose own major league dream was dashed and decides to shake up a decades old system, gives Beane the right mix of arrogance and pathos.

The film may falter as it enters its third hour (it's 133 minutes) and rounds for home, but Pitt doesn't: he hits it out of the park.