The most discomfiting Australian film since 2011's Snowtown, Hounds of Love doesn't achieve Justin Kurzel's level of excruciating brilliance but Ben Young's directorial debut is, for the most part, an excellent foray into the domestic horror genre.
Not based on actual events like Kurzel's debut, Hounds of Love is set during a sweltering December in the lead up to Christmas. It's 1987 and a simpler time in Australia, so much so that when teenage girls go missing with seeming regularity, police brush their parents off with assurances that they've simply run away. No one would suspect their sleepy little 'burb to be the hunting ground of a sex predator or, worse still, a serial killer. Make that two.
For John White (Stephen Curry, perfectly creepy) is ably assisted in his abduction, rape, torture and murder of these young women by Evie (Emma Booth), who shares John's passion for cruel sexual thrills. Or does she? Is Evie also a victim? Certainly of domestic abuse, both physical and psychological, but she's very much an accomplice. Her presence in John's car as he cruises for his prey is the honey in the trap: he can't possibly be a bad guy if he has a woman with him, right?
The opening scenes of Hounds reveals John and Evie's modus operandi, from pick up to disposal, so we know what's in store for Vicky (Ashleigh Cummings) when, after climbing out her bedroom window to attend a party after being grounded by her mother (Susie Porter), she's picked up by the predators with the promise of cheap pot, and then cheaper wine, back at their place.
Cue (not completely unwarranted) accusations of torture porn as we spend the next 36 or so hours inside an unassuming brick house on Malcolm Street as a series of humiliations and horrors unfold for Vicky, and also Evie. As Vicky takes every opportunity to escape -- from an encoded runaway letter forged at knife point, to attempting to get inside Evie's head -- Evie slowly becomes unhinged; suspecting that John may be taking more of an interest in their latest capture than he usually does.
For the first hour of Hounds of Love, the tension is palpable as we bear witness to two monsters at play and watch, helplessly, as their victim suffers at their hands (and the sex toys contained in a brown shoe box). It's a controlled study in the banality of evil.
But then Young seems to remember his film is also a thriller and, whether to hit certain beats or draw out the tension, his film begins to lose momentum. Young even gives a nod to Silence of the Lambs in the film's climactic moments, which are tense but also a little too drawn out. In its best moments, however, Hounds of Love is truly horrifying.
The Zookeeper's Wife, directed Niki Caro (Whale Rider, 2002), is adapted from the 2007 Diane Ackerman novel by Angela Workman, and it is very much a workman-like effort. Solid and tasteful (and handsomely mounted for just $20 million) it's not the least bit remarkable: the film trades on cute animals and the horrors of the Holocaust to wring tears from the audience.
Jessica Chastain, who is also a producer on the film, is valiant in spite of her distractingly thick Polish accent. She plays Antonina Zabinski, the wife of the keeper at Warsaw Zoo, Jan Zabinski (Johan Heldenbergh), who together, when war arrives, decide to use their bombed out animal park to house, hide and aid in the escape of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto.
Although based on actual events – and end credit tells us that the Zabinskis saved some 300 lives, men, women and children – the film is more storybook than history book. That's not helped by Daniel Bruhl as Lutz Heck, a snarling Nazi villain and fellow zoologist with an eye for Antonina. (Ironically, among a cast who speak English with varying Polish accents, German actor Bruhl sounds the most English.)
You may get weepy during The Zookeeper's Wife but Caro's film boasts very few real emotions and only the occasional dose of suspense. Perhaps Ackerman's novel would be a better place to learn about the heroics of the Zabinskis; good people who risked their own lives to save others from a once unimaginable horror which is, sadly, all too believable today.
Besides a complicated mother-daughter relationship and a ubiquitous feline, there is a world of difference between Isabelle Huppert's two critically-acclaimed films of 2016, Elle and Things To Come; Paul Verhoeven's rape-revenge thriller is as in-your-face as Mia Hansen-Love's study of female mid-life crises is meditative. Both films, of course, boast a stellar performance by Ms Huppert, as inscrutable in the former as she is transparent (yet somewhat elusive) in the latter.
A professor of philosophy at a Paris university, Nathalie Chazeaux (Huppert) is adored by her students and lives a comfortable bourgeois existence with her husband, and fellow professor, Heinz (Andre Marcon); their two children, Chloe (Sarah Le Picard) and Johann (Solal Forte), having already flown the family nest. Seemingly living in domestic and professional bliss, Nathalie is soon shaken from her bubble; first, her mother (Edith Scob) has to be moved to a nursing home, having threatened self harm and calling the fire department once too often (the aforementioned cat, a black and obese creature named Pandora, belonging to her but falling into Nathalie's care); and then Heinz reveals he has a lover, and he will be moving in with her.
Forced into a mid-life crisis, Nathalie doesn't rail against the world, or even her philandering husband. She seems to take it all on the chin with resolve if not good grace; the occasional cry her only concession to her lot. She doesn't seem to have any friends either (at least none Hansen-Love seems concerned with introducing), other than former student and self-professed anarchist, Fabien (Roman Kolinka). Nathalie -- and Pandora -- travelling to his country farm where like-minded radicals drink, smoke and debate the ways of the world. Or just go swimming, and drink and smoke some more.
Unlike a film about a man's mid-life crisis, there are no sports cars or sex-capades. And while Hansen-Love may tease at an obvious attraction between Nathalie and Fabien, she knows better than to deliver on cliche. On the other hand, when Nathalie scoffs at the suggestion of romance, declaring "I'm a grandmother", the audience just as easily scoffs at the suggestion that Huppert could be anything but desirable at any age.
The lack of action may bother those more conditioned to a Hollywood take on mid-life crises, but Hansen-Love's films aren't driven by, or are slaves to plot; things happen just as they would in life: there's no heightened emotions or contrived events in Things To Come, just her fifth feature (though you may need a degree in philosophy to obtain some deeper meaning). Life has handed Nathalie some lemons, and she's going to make the best tasting citron presse she possibly can.
Career woman and doting grandmother may seem at odds -- and not particularly heroic in a filmic sense -- but by the time Unchained Melody plays (performed not by The Righteous Brothers but by 1950s a capella group The Fleetwoods), you get the sense that Nathalie is going to be just fine.
Not nearly as clever or as much fun as The LEGO Movie, the surprise animation hit of 2014 that boasted both laughs and smarts for all-ages, The LEGO Batman Movie arrives to take some much needed piss out of the super-serious superhero genre. If it's not the LEGO movie we deserve, it's the one need.
And even more so than its predecessor, the humour and themes of The LEGO Batman Movie are aimed at an older audience. Younger kids may be dazzled by the colour and movement that abounds in director Chris McKay's feature, but its core story of an isolated orphan-cum-hero vigilante who fears connection and commitment, familial or otherwise, will be of no interest to tykes who are here for the (yellow) man in black tights.
After Batman (Will Arnett) saves Gotham once more from The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) --steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that he and his nemesis have any kind of relationship -- the caped crusader inadvertently sets in motion a plan that sees The Joker banished to the Phantom Zone: a space prison which holds the universe's most evil villains: Godzilla and King Kong, the gremlins and Daleks, and the raptors from Jurassic Park. From here, The Joker will initiate a prison break, unleashing all manner of villainy on Gotham.
The plethora of villains, super and celluloid, who abound in this very silly caper are voiced by a name cast (Conan O'Brien, Jenny Slate, Eddie Izzard, Zoe Kravitz) to little or no effect which is disappointing; McKay and co. (there are five credited screenwriters) seemingly gathering more pieces than the instructions called for.
Meanwhile, Batman, a.k.a Bruce Wayne, accidentally adopts an orphan, Dick Grace (Michael Cera), whom Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), Bruce's long-suffering manservant, believes could be the making of the man; Bruce, however, sees him as a lackey who is only too eager to be at his beck and call. Bruce also falls for the new Police Commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), a no-nonsense woman who has no time for vigilantes, lone wolves -- or narcissists. Sorry Bruce.
But Batman will have to play nice if he wants to defeat The Joker. 'There's no 'I' in team' and 'family is what you make it' are the two messages children may be able to take away from this fizzy confection. But it's the adults who will have the most fun in this sporadically entertaining flick.
