FILM REVIEW: THE WAY, WAY BACK

Studiocanal

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When on the eve of your summer vacation, your mum's boyfriend informs you that he thinks you're a 3 (out of 10), you could be forgiven for thinking its going to be one of the most memorable summers of your young life, if for all the wrong reasons.

14-year-old Duncan (Liam James), with his hang dog expression, certainly looks like a young man destined for the gallows; his death row digs taking the shape of the summer beach house of Trent (Steve Carell), the douche-y boyfriend of his mum, Pam (Toni Collette). Trent's self-obsessed teen daughter, Steph (Zoe Levin), is a fellow inmate.

But as in most coming-of-age films, this is the summer that will change Duncan's life; the summer that he meets someone special. No, not a girl -- although Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), the blonde neighbour and daughter of gregarious lush, Betty (a scene-stealing Allison Janney), is not without her appeal -- but a man.

Well, a man-child. Owen (Sam Rockwell), the manager of the local water park, may be suspended in adolescence but he is the exact kind of male role model Duncan, whose own father is M.I.A, is in need of. Carefree, immature and yet deceptively sage, Owen is the kind of mentor/big brother/cool uncle we all wish we had when growing up, and Rockwell imbues him with just the right amount of his manic charm in a winning performance.

But it's young Liam James who carries the bulk of the film, and he does so admirably. It helps that he is close to Duncan's age (unlike so many American teens played by 20-somethings), with his slight frame and freckled face exuding vulnerability whilst he tries admirably, like most teen boys, to stifle every emotion bar anger.

Thankfully, The Way, Way Back is free of wisecracking or hindsight voice-over narration. Kudos to writer-director team Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (the pair, who have small roles as water park employees, scripted 2011's The Descendants), who have wisely chosen to allow the audience to experience everything as Duncan does, in the moment and at face value.

And while The Way Way Back may not have the emotional authenticity of another recent coming of age film, 2012's wonderful The Perks of Being A Wallflower, it's not without its feels. While we've not all been in Duncan's exact situation, we've certainly all been teenagers at one point and there's much to identify with and relate to in this young man's unforgettable summer, one that will leave you with fond memories too.

FILM REVIEW: BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

Roadshow Films

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Fresh from the 2012 success of Magic Mike, director Steven Soderbergh takes another look at innocence and the American dream corrupted with Behind The Candelabra, based on Scott Thorson's autobiographical account of his six-year relationship with the one-time highest paid entertainer in the world, Las Vegas piano man, Liberace.

Thorson (Matt Damon), an animal handler on film sets with dreams of becoming a veteranarian, is blindsided when he's introduced through a mutual acquaintance to Liberace (Michael Douglas) in the late 1970s. It's not exactly love at first sight but Scott is enamored with both Liberace's talent and his life of luxury. Liberace seems to be smitten, too, and it's not too long before Scott, one-time foster kid, becomes son, lover and protege to the entertainer, moving into his Las Vegas home.

And yes, there will be sex. Soderbergh, Damon and Douglas don't skimp on the explicit nor the intimate nature of Thorson's and Liberace's relationship, so those who are grossed out at the mere thought of Damon and Douglas making out, you'd best brace yourself for plenty of it and in various states of undress.

Not that Behind The Candelabra is a tawdry, seedy expose of the life of a closeted celebrity (yes, the fans actually thought Liberace was straight!). But much like Soderbergh's Magic Mike, it's an age old tale of how a cocktail of fame, money and drugs, consumed whilst living life in the fast lane can up-end the highest of flyers: absolute hedonism corrupts absolutely. Not surprisingly, the party ends in the early 1980's with the onset of the AIDS virus.

Filmed for American pay-for-view network HBO but released theatrically in most other parts of the world, Behind The Candelabra doesn't suffer any for being a "TV movie". The production, set design, and art direction all top-notch, gaudily depicting a world where everything that glitters may well indeed be gold but not necessarily a fairy tale. Kudos, too, to the make-up team who not only subtly age the actors but "rejuvenate" them post-plastic surgery (Rob Lowe's funny-scary surgeon is the stuff of nightmares).

And the costumes? If you can't have fun with Liberace's wardrobe (and the late 1970s-early '80s generally) then you're not really trying. And Ellen Mirojnick seems to have had a ball, whether it's one of Liberace's on-stage numbers (a white fur coat with a train to rival any royal wedding gown) or one of Scott's barely-there swimming costumes.

But it's the acting which makes Behind The Candelabra a winner. Damon, despite being almost two decades too old for the role, perfectly captures Thorson's wide-eyed innocence and his transformation from adoring young lover to embittered ex.

And Douglas manages to make Liberace both the camp, flamboyant showman that we know he was whilst also grounding him in a reality as an ageing man, as vain and vulnerable as anyone and whose demons could not be bought off by fame or riches but merely held at bay for so long. (The ensemble also features solid turns by the likes of Scott Bakula, Dan Ackroyd, and Debbie Reynolds as Liberace's mother.)

Depending on your point of view, Behind The Candelabra is either Soderbergh's first foray as a director into television or his cinematic swan song. Either way, it's an entertaining missive heralding the end of an era and the beginning of something new and exciting.

FILM REVIEW: THE WOLVERINE

20th Century Fox Films

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Confession: I am not a Hugh Jackman fan. He has yet to convince me in any film role to date. Not even in Les Miserables, where he played Jean Valjean and sung his way to an Oscar nomination, could he win me over. And while I'm not about to concede defeat, I'll readily admit that I did not hate The Wolverine (like I did its predecessor, 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and as a non-fan, I'll suggest this is probably as good as Jackman gets.

The Wolverine, the latest X-Men cinema outing, is the sixth time Jackman has donned the metal claws and mutton chops to play Logan, a.k.a Wolverine, a mutant with an admantium skeleton and burdened with both immortality and a hero complex. Haunted by the death of his love, Jean (Famke Janssen), (a spoiler if you haven't seen X-Men: The Last Stand) and mocked by his own immortality, Logan has chosen to hide himself away from the rest of the world where he can do no harm (unless you happen to be a local hunter who pisses him off).

But Logan is tracked down by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a sword-wielding nymph whose come to escort our hero to Japan at the bequest of a dying old man. That's billionaire Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), who befriended Logan in the dying days of WWII immediately following the nuking of Nagasaki; the two holed-up in an underground prison where Logan was being held as a Japanese POW.

Some 60-odd years later, Yashida, riddled with cancer, wants to repay Logan for saving his life by granting him his mortality, which is to say, extracting from him that which makes him immortal and implanting it in his own body. Oh, the hubris of the rich!

But as tempting as that offer may seem, Logan refuses his dying friend's request and before he can say 'sayonara', the old man is dead, the Yakuza crashes the funeral, and Logan, whose regenerative powers seem to be slipping, is forced to become the protector of Mariko (Tao Okamoto), Yashida's granddaughter and heir, who would seem to be the target of evil forces both outside of and from within the House of Yashida.

So ensues an action adventure criss-crossing Japan (shot both on location and here in Sydney, Australia) involving said Japanese Mafia, ninjas, bullet trains, love motels, and a toxic-tongued villainess named Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova).

And if there's one thing to be said in favour of The Wolverine, the near-to-last and arguably least of the 2013 U.S. summer blockbusters, it's that its female characters -- Mariko, Yukio and Viper -- are not weak. Mariko is no damsel in distress, Yukio can kick ass with the best of them, and Viper, despite her skin-tight apparel and wicked tongue, has no use for men unless they're paying her (to kill, that is).

And Jackman's not bad either. He has the requisite amount of beef cake, hard ass and scowl-y but he also manages to give Wolverine a sense of humour, even if it's less frequently deployed than his admantium claws. What Jackman, director James Mangold, and screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank, don't do is spend too much time dwelling on the theme of mortality which is a shame given it is the first time in the Wolverine character's film history that he's actually had to face the very real possibility of his own death.

Not that death will visit Wolverine any time soon. The next X-Men film, Days of Future Past, which sees the younger cast of 2011's First Class combine with the alum from the original X-Men trilogy, will hit cinemas in 2014. And no doubt there will be another solo outing by Jackman's lone wolf; a superior sequel will no doubt be paid in kind by the character's and series' fans at the box office.

FILM REVIEW: THE CONJURING

Warner Bros./Roadshow Films

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By Guest Reviewer Aaron Smith

Before there was Amityville, there was Harrisville. Roger and Carolyn Perron (Ron Livingstone and Lily Taylor) are confident that a move to the small, countryside town of Harrisville, in the state of Rhode Island, will bring a healthier and happier way of life for themselves, and their five daughters.

It’s 1971 and the Perrons risk their limited finances to secure a sizeable waterfront property featuring a large and charming old farm house. Sure the house is a fixer-upper, but it’s more important to them that their new home has fresh air, privacy, and space for the girls to run around with the family dog, Sadie. What they didn’t bargain on (it certainly wasn't in the brochure) was the dark and malevolent entity that begins to make them feel very unwelcome.

If it all sounds familiar, that’s because we’ve seen many similar horror films, including The Amityville Horror (1979). The commonality with these two stories isn’t just that the name of the towns end in ‘ville’. It’s that both stories can be found in the case files of real life paranormal investigators, the Warrens.

Ed and Lorraine Warren (here played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) claimed to have investigated over 10,000 hauntings during their career. Ed, a World War II US Navy veteran and former policeman, became an author and lecturer in demonology, working closely with wife Lorraine, a self-professed clairvoyant. Together they founded The New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952.

Many of the cases that the Warrens investigated have been featured in documentaries, such as Discovery Channel’s A Haunting, and books written by themselves and others. They pioneered modern methods of paranormal detection utilising the technology of the time, such as photography and video triggered by sudden thermal changes in the environment.

An earlier case (and our introduction to the Warrens) involving Annabelle, a possessed doll with a penchant for crayons, is creepily amusing. The Warren’s family house (they also hve a daughter, Judy, played with wide-eyed innocence by Sterling Jerins) contains a secured room for the storing of haunted artefacts and religious items gathered from past cases. Better that they are kept under their supervision, rather than go back out into the world to cause harm. (Annabelle gets locked in a glass cabinet within said room, never to cause mischief again – they hope!)

Director James Wan (Insidious, Saw, and the soon-to-be released Insidious Chapter II), and writers Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes (The Reaping), do a terrific job intertwining the stories of the two families. Having the focus on suspense rather than gore was much appreciated. Respect and real affection is shown towards all of the characters, and the subject matter. And while all cast members give impressive performances, not surprisingly it’s Vera Farmiga as the compassionate and generous Lorraine who is a stand-out.

So, too, the look of the film. The 1970’s retro styling of the opening credits sets the tone for the whole film, with outstanding set design and costuming giving the film an authentic look. Special mention must also be made of cinematographer, John R. Leonetti, who is able to seamlessly make the audience feel as though they are there in the house experiencing the danger beside the Perrons and Warrens. My favourite sequence, involving a change in the weather and a bed sheet, still gives me chills. Is awards attention for Mr. Leonetti too much to ask?

There's also fun to be had spotting references to other, older horror films, like Poltergeist, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Child’s Play and Candyman. And while the climax wrapped things up a little too conveniently, I'd highly recommend The Conjuring to anyone who enjoys a good old fashioned scare.