The Big Short

(M) ★★★★

Director: Adam McKay.

Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Brad Pitt.

"Why is your hair so weird?"
"Why is your hair so weird?"

THE Global Financial Crisis was a mess – a catastrophic economic meltdown that left millions homeless and jobless across the US and rippled across the world sending entire nations to the wall.

Fittingly, the movie about how that all came to pass is also a mess, albeit a vivid, fast-paced and enjoyable one.

The Big Short is based on Michael Lewis’ novel detailing some of the people who profited from the US housing market bubble bursting (and triggering the GFC) by basically betting that such a thing would happen.

These were the clever cookies who could see the market was built on bad mortgages and fraudulent foundations and destined to collapse, despite everyone in Wall Street working on the assumption the market was too big to fail.

On paper, the story has limited appeal, as most people’s eyes tend to glaze over when they hear terms such as “subprime loans”, “credit default swaps”, and “collateralised debt obligations” – terms The Big Short is teeming with.

But director/co-writer McKay is all too aware of this and makes every effort to jazz up the subject matter wherever possible. Hence we have Margot Robbie in a bathtub drinking champagne as she explains subprime loans to camera, or Selena Gomez at a blackjack table demonstrating how synthetic CDOs work.

McKay throws everything at the screen – hence the mess analogy. The fourth wall is broken repeatedly, while stock footage-style montages pop-up in between quotes from Mark Twain and Haruki Murakami, onscreen diagrams, abrupt edits and a blend of documentary and filmic shooting techniques.

It could come off as desperation or style over substance, but Gosling’s narrator willingly tells us early on that this is boring subject matter that needs to be dressed up. The film runs with the gag, lightening the tone and making its dry topic palatable, no doubt leading to its Oscar win for best adapted screenplay. In some ways, The Big Short is like a flashier version of another Lewis adaptation Moneyball, which made another dull matter – baseball statistics – surprisingly interesting.

The script is accentuated by a couple of key players. Bale is great as real-life neurologist-turned-hedge fund manager Michael Burry, making the character’s eccentricities seem normal and resisting the urge to go full Rain Man.

But even better is Carell, who manages to make the unlikeable Mark Baum (based on real life hedge fund manager Steve Eisman) something close to likeable. It’s another well-rounded dramatic turn from Carell to go with his roles in Foxcatcher and Little Miss Sunshine.

There are good laughs to be had, mostly coming from Baum and his team of financial pessimists, and an oddly emotional moment that stands out because it’s the only one of its kind in the film.

This is the part of The Big Short that is somewhat lacking. While Carell’s Baum gives the film a surprising heart towards the end, it’s a bit “too little, too late”. It’s narrow focus also misses the wider ramifications of the GFC, although there is a nice moment when Brad Pitt’s character points out what has to happen to millions of lives for the main players to make their billions of dollars betting against the banks. A bit more heart might have gone a long way in this very cynical tale.

And, as mentioned, the film is a stylistic mess. As such, sometimes it goes too far, other times it doesn’t go far enough. Thankfully, for the most part it works, but it rides a tightrope a lot of the time.

If nothing else, this film now means McKay AKA the director of Anchorman and Step Brothers has an Oscar to his name. No one saw that coming.

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Spotlight

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Tom McCarthy.

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup.

"Maths? Everyone knows journalists can't do maths."

SINCE 1976, the benchmark for films about journalism has been All The President’s Men.

That tightly scripted drama used strong dialogue, a healthy sense of realism, and great performances – shunning flashiness, contrivances or gimmicks – to tell the true tale of how two reporters helped bring down a president.

Spotlight deserves to be uttered in the same breath as All The President’s Men. It is an equally taut, thrilling and authentic depiction of the press uncovering gross abuses of power.

In this case it is the Catholic Church’s cover-up of widespread child sex abuse in the Boston area, as investigated and uncovered by a team of reporters at the Boston Globe in 2002.

Centring on the paper’s “Spotlight” investigative unit of three journalists and an editor, the film follows their attempts to pull on the thread of one lawyer’s claims that the church had been systematically covering up the heinous deeds of one paedophile priest, unravelling a real-life scandal that not only shook the city and its Catholic community but also shone a light on the actions of priests and church officials across America.

It’s a story that unfortunately resonates around the world, particularly in Australia, where Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy’s own investigations helped trigger the ongoing royal commission into child sex abuse within the Catholic Church in this country.

Spotlight’s delivery does its subject matter justice. It’s a prime example of what some people may deride as a “people talking” movie, and as such it lives and dies by its cast and its dialogue, but there is nothing terminal here – just a gripping investigation that flourishes in the hands of its actors.

Ruffalo is the pick of the bunch, getting the best outburst in the script, but Keaton is not far behind as Spotlight department head Walter Robinson, a Boston native coming to terms with the malignant roots the Catholic Church has spread through his beloved city. An understated Schreiber is also good as incoming Globe editor Marty Baron, but there isn’t a bad turn to be found here – Oscar-nominated McAdams, Broadway regular James, and the always-brilliant Tucci are in fine form, while even the minor players are top-notch. Michael Cyril Creighton has a scene-stealing turn as an abuse survivor that is typical of the depth of talent on show here, but all are aided by a screenplay that creates well-rounded characters with ease.

Subtle direction from Tom McCarthy, matched by an equally subtle Howard Shore score, give the film a few necessary nudges, but Spotlight is a triumph of script, cast, and editing. The latter helps keep things ticking along, using the continual barriers and hurdles thrown in front of the journalists to help mount the tension, create surprises, and deliver an emotional punch at a slow-burning but satisfying pace.

Ultimately it succeeds because it puts the audience side-by-side with the reporters as they dig their way through a city that lives quite literally in the shadow of the Catholic Church, allowing us to share in the incredulity, disgust and frustration as the facts are presented. There is no need to dress anything up, and Spotlight largely works because it doesn’t try to do so.

Of the five Oscar nominees for best film that I’ve seen in the past 12 months, Spotlight is the most worthy winner.

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How To Be Single

(M) ★★½

Director: Christian Ditter.

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie, Leslie Mann, Nicholas Braun, Damon Wayans Jr., Jake Lacy, Anders Holm.

"You chug like a toddler!"

FOR a film to pass the Bechdel Test, it must feature just one thing – a conversation between two female characters about something other than a man.

The test started as a joke in a comic strip but has become a useful tool for analysing gender inequality in movies – roughly half of the features released by Hollywood fail the Bechdel Test.

Many films fail despite having plenty of good female characters because those women never have a conversation (like The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, for example), so the test certainly isn’t the be all and end all of analysing equality. ​How To Be Single would probably fail the test too, despite its four key players being female and targeting a female audience, because every conversation relates to men. It’s hard to say whether this showcases another shortcoming in the Bechdel Test, or whether it highlights something else that’s wrong with Hollywood. Or neither.

Either way, it’s an unfair test to apply to this particular film, seeing as how its raison d’etre (for better or worse) is exploring heterosexual singledom from the female perspective, and therefore every scene relates to one character or another assessing their very existence through the prism of either being a) with a man or b) without a man.

Central to this navel-gazing is Johnson’s Alice, who “consciously uncouples” from her boyfriend Josh (Braun) in an attempt to “find herself”, with the intention of getting back together again once she completes her mission.

Throwing herself into the solitary life, she gets to know partygirl Robyn (Wilson), moves in with her gynaecologist sister Meg (Mann), and shares a one-night stand with Tom (Holm), who is tentatively forming a friendship with Lucy (Brie).

Each has their own take on relationships. Meg is happy being alone, Lucy dedicates her life to finding her “soul mate”, and Tom and Robyn see being partner-free as an idyllic state that allows for endless conquests.

With its intersecting story threads, How To Be Single feels a bit like a 20-something version of the 30-something love exploration He’s Just Not That Into You (unsurprisingly, both films are based very loosely on books by Liz Tuccillo). But where He’s Just Not That Into You worked well with its ensemble cast, entertaining arcs, and multi-faceted look at relationships, How To Be Single feels stilted and episodic by comparison. So much focus on Alice’s story gives the other characters short shrift – you could cut all of Brie’s scenes and the movie would be punchier and more streamlined, through no fault of Brie’s, while Mann’s storyline is out-of-place and adds little.

It actually feels more like you’re binge-watching a TV show – some weird composite of Girls, New Girl, 2 Broke Girls, and probably some other show with “girl” in the title – on fast-forward, rather than sitting through a single feature-length movie.

The film works best when it’s picking apart rom-com clichés, which it does well, or when Wilson is in full flight. She makes the first half of the film her own with her brash humour, with Johnson a good foil in their straight woman/funny woman pairing.

But How To Be Single falls apart halfway through when its narrative suddenly leaps forward three months in a jarring move it never recovers from. Again, it’s only Wilson and Johnson that salvage it but even that is a struggle as their relationship is pushed to unnecessary limits as the movie collapses in a pile of awkward revelations and resolutions, with a baby thrown in for good measure.

At its best moments, the film is laugh-out-loud funny, with full points going to Wilson for saving the day. Its cast is likeable, particularly Johnson, but How To Be Single has nothing meaningful to say. Ultimately its enjoyable enough, but flimsily pieced together and largely disposable.

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Deadpool

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Tim Miller.

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T. J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapičić.

"Oh my God is that Thor making out with Iron Man?"

ANOTHER week, another superhero movie.

It certainly feels that way, and many are wondering if we’ve hit ‘peak cape’ and how much more milk can be drained from this box office cash cow before audiences start yawning at the sight of another hyper-powered origin story or heroic team-up to save the galaxy.

The comic book well is unfathomably deep – the Marvel and DC archives go back to the 1930s, plus there are any number of other graphic novel houses (Dark Horse, Image, and IDW to name but three) with equally worthy catalogues to adapt. So how does Hollywood avoid inflicting superhero fatigue on movie-goers?

The answer potentially lies in finding new ways to tell these increasingly similar-seeming stories. Which brings us to Deadpool, a superhero movie that strives to be different (and succeeds) in many blood-soaked and swear-littered ways.

If you’ve never heard of Deadpool, there’s a good reason. He’s not an A-list comic book character like Spider-man or Batman, and he hasn’t been around as long as the likes of Superman or even Wolverine. He’s a cult favourite from the Marvel stable, which means that if you have heard of Deadpool, you are super-excited about this movie (and the good news is you won’t be disappointed).

Created in 1991, a bastardised version of Deadpool popped up in the 2009 film Wolverine: Origins, where he was played by Reynolds. But that take on the character was largely derided as an insult to comic book fans. Reynolds, to his credit, kept pursuing a “proper” Deadpool film and when test footage for such a movie was leaked in 2014, the fans went nuts (in a good way). The studio finally greenlit the project and here we are.

The result is exactly what fans wanted. Deadpool is known as The Merc With The Mouth, renowned for his curse-riddled and violence-heavy approach to dealing with baddies, with his signature trait being a predilection for breaking the fourth wall – he’s the comic book character that knows he’s a comic book character.

This film version brings all that to life perfectly, with Reynolds lapping up the dirty jokes and the writers laying the in-jokes on thick.

Reynolds is the key to it all. Not only did he help get the movie into production, he relishes the opportunity to bring Marvel’s most inappropriate superhero to life in true-to-source fashion. This is Reynolds in Van Wilder mode, taking regular potshots at the Wolverine: Origins version of the character, his own good looks, and his other comic book misfire Green Lantern.

By making a Deadpool film the Deadpool fans really want to see, the movie is deliberately niche, which is refreshing in a lot of ways. There is no broad popcorn appeal here and compared to the bloodless violence and PG glee of Marvel Studio’s heavy-hitters, this is a wonderfully puerile claret-soaked swear-fest. It’s also bloody hilarious and hands down the funniest superhero movie ever.

But it’s not going to attract a big audience. It’s a cult classic in waiting, destined to be seen as the black sheep of the X-Men family (this movie exists – somehow –  in the increasingly convoluted mutant movie series). Many of the gags are tailored to a very specific audience and are as “meta” as possible – when X-Men member Colossus threatens to take Deadpool to see Professor X, the mercenary quips “McEvoy or Stewart?”.

The movie is not without its flaws. The lead character’s back story is weaved throughout a protracted highway shoot-out/set-piece in a slightly cumbersome fashion for about an hour, although it does give Reynolds the opportunity to break the fourth wall with regular hilarity.

The plot would also fail any kind of forensic examination, which is a shame – it would have been nice if the writers had put as much thought into the story as they did the huge number of inventive cusses and insults.

But the movie is a winner because it achieves what it sets out to do, and that is to be the ideal Deadpool movie for the character’s fans. It may be at the expense of winning over a broader audience – and you can knock a star or two off this review if you count yourself in that category – but for the rest of us, this swear-tastic super-outing is exactly what we’ve been waiting for.

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The Good Dinosaur

(PG) ★★★½

Director: Peter Sohn.

Cast: (voices of) Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliott, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn.

Acid was way better back in the day.

IF any of the other animation houses released The Good Dinosaur, you’d consider it a hit.

But by the lofty storytelling standards of Pixar, it is merely good. Really good, but still just good.

Being released the same year as possibly Pixar’s greatest film – Inside Out – means it’s impossible not to look at the two movies side by side, which puts The Good Dinosaur at a disadvantage. Next to the remarkable script of Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur feels so simple, conventional and even clichéd.

Thankfully, like all Pixar films (bar Cars 2), The Good Dinosaur has so much heart and integrity and so deftly handles its jokes and emotions that you can overlook the plainness of the story.

The set-up is intriguing – in a bizarro world where the asteroid that wipes out the dinosaurs misses Earth, we end up with a dino-society of sorts.

The herbivores are crop farmers, the carnivores run cattle, and the humans are not that different from the other non-sapient mammals running around.

Our hero is Arlo (Ochoa), a scared little apatosaurus desperate to “make his mark” but haunted by a family tragedy.

A run-in with a human child, who Arlo names Spot (Bright), whisks the pair a long way from Arlo’s home, and the two must work together to make it back.

The Good Dinosaur’s plot is of the Homeward Bound variety, with a boy-and-his-dog dynamic thrown in – the twist being the boy is actually a dinosaur and the dog is actually a boy.

Once Arlo and Spot team up, the film finds its feet as it gets a much-needed sense of humour and stops labouring its message about overcoming fear in order to make your mark in the world.

It’s still a very normal story dressed up in some rather eccentric clothes, and at times the movie almost feels too weird for its own good. We get cowboy tyrannosaurs, storm-chasing pterosaurs, and raptor rustlers, but weirdest of all is the look of the dinosaurs, which takes a while to get used too. The photo-realistic world they live in is visually stunning, but it makes the cartoonish, plasticine-like characters seem out of place.

Despite its formulaic story, it still manages to the push the right buttons. There will be a few happy tears at the end, and there are a couple of decent laughs.

In the wake of Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur could be seen as a deliberate attempt at a simpler film that’s more kiddie-friendly and less cerebral and inventive.

As such, The Good Dinosaur is good enough, even if it’s not as Pixar perfect as we’ve come to expect.

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Inside Out

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Pete Docter.

Cast: (voices of) Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Richard Kind.

"They elected who as president?"

INSIDE Out is proof positive that when the Pixar brains trust puts its collective mind to an idea, they can do anything.

The thought of doing a film largely set within the head of an 11-year-old girl and where the principle characters are her emotions would send every other animation studio reaching for the metaphorical paracetamol before immediately turning its attention to another Madagascar/Ice Age/Shrek/Despicable Me sequel/spin off.

Not Pixar. Having already pushed the boundaries by using a grumpy elderly widower as a hero, making a largely wordless enviro-centric sci-fi flick, and celebrating the joys of food with a cast of rats, the concept at the heart of Inside Out is a bold yet natural progression for this game-changing institution.

But the fact that they pull off this hair-brained idea so brilliantly and beautifully is enough to make you want to stand up and applaud.

The 11-year-old girl in question is Riley (voiced by Dias) and the emotions in charge of the control room that is her mind are Joy (Poehler), Fear (Hader), Disgust (Kaling), Anger (Black), and Sadness (Smith). All are tested when Riley and her folks (Lane and MacLachlan) sell up their Minnesota home and relocate to San Francisco, triggering something of an emotional breakdown for the girl and her anthropomorphic feelings.

Director Docter (Up, Monsters Inc), the screenwriters, and Pixar's brain trust reportedly spent three and a half years getting the story of Inside Out exactly right, and it shows.

The script sets up Riley's internal world with an ease that belies the amount of thought, research and sweat that must have gone into it - in the charmingly simple opening, we're introduced to the emotions, their roles, and the creative way the film demonstrates such intangible concepts as making and storing memories and the things that are important to Riley in her own mind.

At its simplest it's a journey story - two of the characters are trying to get from one place to another - but that journey takes us through some fascinating locations we've never seen in a family film before. Abstract thought, the subconscious, the imagination, "the dream factory", long-term memory - these are all shown in inventive ways, as are the critters that populate these areas.

But this is so much more than just a journey. There is a level of depth, heart, reality, beauty, honesty and, of course, emotion in this film that is astounding for any type of movie, let alone something that's largely marketed to kids.

At the lowest age bracket, which is lower primary school-age children, there is enough light and movement to keep them interested, plus they're bound to have a basic enough grasp of different emotions to keep track of things.

At the "tween" level (and for early teens), the subject matter is bound to resonate, as they've just gone through these kind of pre-pubescent mental shifts or are just about to go through them. It's dealt with so simply and truthfully that it has to hit the mark.

Realistically though, this is a movie for the parents. This film is a grown-up wolf in kid's clothing, or mutton dressed as lamb, to labour the sheep analogies.

It's bright colours and cartoonish characters may make it look like its targeted at the young'uns, however the beautifully nuanced ideas such as the loss of innocence and the importance of sadness reveal this as the mature think-piece it really is. It's a movie about kids trying to understand who they are, and as a result, it's about and for parents trying to understand their kids.

Inside Out is also laugh-at-loud funny, cry-out-loud moving, and genuinely thrilling, exciting and fascinating.

Picking the greatest Pixar movie was already difficult, but the arrival of their latest effort just made it all the harder.

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Interstellar

(M) ★★★½

Director: Christopher Nolan.

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, David Gyasi, Wes Bentley, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, John Lithgow.

McConaughey took a wrong turn in the produce aisle.

FILM-MAKERS have long tried to predict the future.

One of the most intriguing of these sci-fi predictions is 2001: A Space Odyssey - a film that's now confusingly set in the past - and it is the obvious reference point for Christopher Nolan's own attempt at prophetic cinema.

Just as 2001 wanted to explore the possibilities of space and beyond, Interstellar aims to go to the final frontier and further, all the while exploring the nature of humanity and the unknowns of the universe.

Even the structures of the two films are similar, which makes it even harder to avoid these comparisons - it's impossible not to think of Interstellar as Nolan's Space Odyssey.

As such, this film is incredibly ambitious, even for the director who took us into a dream inside a dream inside a dream with relative ease. However, this might be a starbridge too far.

As fascinating and scientifically intriguing as it is, Interstellar asks a lot of the viewer in terms of endurance (it's almost three hours long) and whether you will buy into the plot twists that come with its cosmic destination. And after just one viewing it's not immediately obvious how successful it is.

The film spends the first hour on Earth sometime in the possibly not-too-distant future, where climate change has wiped out billions of people and ruined most of the world's crops, leaving the planet a dusty husk of its former self.

Among the farmers struggling to keep the world's mouths fed is Cooper (McConaughey), a former test pilot who turns to corn farming after the government shuts down non-essential programs, and while he still secretly yearns for the adventures of his youth, Cooper is mostly content to raise his two kids.

That is until some weird happenings in the family home inadvertently lead him into space as part of a mission to find a new home on a new planet in order to save what remains of humanity.

Obviously there are some major plot points removed from this synopsis, but you're better off not knowing them and just enjoying the surprises. Nolan's typical secrecy meant the trailers gave away little about this film in the lead up other than "McConaughey goes to space to save dusty world" and that's one thing of the key things Interstellar has going for it - it's a journey into the unknown for the characters and audience alike.

But is it an enjoyable one? That's the question you might find yourself asking as you walk out of the cinema after three bum-numbing hours.

Interstellar is definitely fascinating. It's filled with amazing ideas, stunning visuals, great performances, and what is apparently a level of scientific theory that's interesting if you're so inclined.

But after all this brain fodder and some genuinely awe-inspiring moments we finally reach the third act - and it's a long time coming - the story takes a turn that will either leave you tearing up your ticket or glued to your seat.

My initial reaction was the former but the more the film went on and the more I think about the film in the hours since watching it, the more I am willing to forgive it. Maybe. To be honest I'm still undecided.

And that's the general feeling I'm left with after seeing Interstellar - a sensation of indecision.

Large parts of the film are stunning, such as the depictions of blackholes, wormholes and space travel, but other bits are not so great, such as some of the dialogue, the lack of characterisation, and that plot twist. There are questions unanswered - some deliberately so but some seemingly ignored - and while this does make me want to watch it again to dig a little deeper into the film, its length is kind of off-putting. At the same time, the fact that I'm still thinking about it so much is probably a positive.

Interstellar is ambitious, perhaps overly so, and it's engaging and intriguing, perhaps at the expense of being truly entertaining. For now, the best I can say is that, yeah, it's pretty cool and particularly impressive on the big screen but not quite the five-star classic that Inception or 2001: A Space Odyssey is.

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