Australian Penthouse

Cowboys & Aliens

Director: Jon Favreau
Stars: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano
Paramount Pictures

Hollywood is no stranger to genre blending. In fact, short of the usual fair of reboots, remakes and sequels, it seems to be one of the few vestiges for originality. Case in point, Cowboys & Aliens. An epic collection of Hollywood heavy hitters—from the new and old school—have put their weight behind this seemingly simple mash up: the Old West meets the alien-infested science-fiction genre.

With established bad-asses Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford as leading men and Hollywood hottie Olivia Wilde as eye candy, the on-screen potential is well on the way. Couple this with the behind-camera collective talents of director Jon Favreau (Iron Man), executive producer Steven Spielberg, producer Ron Howard and writing/producer duo Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, and you’d think that Cowboys & Aliens would be a sure thing. But you’d be wrong. Well, half wrong.

The film kicks off with Jake Lonergan (Craig) coming to in a desert with no memory and a strange sci-fi bracelet stuck to his arm. It’s not long before the local not-so-friendly posse rolls around to help Jake prove that he hasn’t forgotten how to kick arse, then it’s off to the local town of Absolution to get acquainted with the locals.

After being patched up by the local preacher (Brown), Jake gets himself into strife with the son (Dano) of the big man in town, Woodrow Dolarhyde (Ford). Forgetful Jake is noticed as a wanted criminal, incapacitated by Ella Swenson (Wilde) and thrown in the back of a prison coach. Dolarhyde wants to exert his own brand of Old West justice on Jake’s hide but before he can, the unthinkable happens: aliens attack.

Of course, this is the premise of the film, but Favreau seems to have a hard time making the western and sci-fi genres gel. Westerns that are done right are all about simple stories, an emphasis on a core character arc and a slow burn with a couple of shoot-outs thrown in for good measure to maintain audience interest until the final showdown. Whereas great sci-fi films of the alien invasion variety are generally fast-paced affairs with plenty of action and an epic fight at the end. Short of the similar end result, these two film genres are worlds apart.

Cowboys & Aliens uses the western genre as the foundation for its pacing, which means that whenever sci-fi conventions are thrown into the mix, it feels a little ‘off’. That’s not to say that the action set pieces are boring; far from it. In fact, the action and cinematography are two of the film’s best elements. It’s a really well-shot film.

Craig and Ford have the right amount of brooding chemistry, taking turns at showing who has the biggest balls and letting the audience know that they’re capable of carrying a film. Olivia Wilde’s character, on the other hand, is mostly forgettable in the first half and, ultimately, serving only as an audience exposition character past the halfway point. At two hours the film feels 20 minutes too long—this could have been remedied easily by removing Wilde’s character altogether without detriment to the film.

Most of all, Cowboys & Aliens suffers under the burden of implied expectation. With such an impressive team of talent on both sides of the camera, it makes you wonder how a novel merging of two established genres could end up all over the place. While Cowboys & Aliens doesn’t come close to being a contender for some of the worst films of 2011, it is unfortunately one of the most disappointing.

Cowboys & Aliens opens August 18

Review: Nathan lawrence

SALT
Director: Philip Noyce
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski
Sony

IF ever there were an argument in favour of formulaic film-making, Angelina Jolie is the sum total of its premise.

Continue reading “Reviews – Film: Salt” »

Greenberg

Director: Noah Baumbach
Stars: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Universal Pictures

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) will make you feel uncomfortable—perhaps even angry.  The too hip, too flip 40-year-old is so far removed from authentic emotion that he exists solely on a superficial level of human interaction where feelings are mere words to be disparaged or dealt out in order to get what you want.  Roger Greenberg sits uncomfortably close to home, because Roger Greenberg lives in us all.

When it comes to cinema, the trick is to make an unlikeable character work on the screen for 2 hours—maintaining audience interest not only in his actions but also in the outcome of his character arc.  Academy Award-nominated screenwriter/director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) pulls this off, finessing emotional lines by examining honestly how crippled emotions, and fear, can affect our lives.

And while Stiller excels as the uptight and distant titular character Roger Greenberg, the heart and soul of the movie lies with Greta Gerwig, in her breakout role as the sweet and naïve Florence.

Florence is a personal assistant to Roger’s brother, Phillip (Chris Messina) and his wife.  When Phillip and his family take a vacation, Roger arrives from New York to house-sit, where he finds himself marooned—in New York nobody drives, but in L.A., without a car, you’re stranded.  And his initial excitement about meeting up with the friends and former lovers he left behind when he took off for the east coast 15 years ago dims as he realises that his friends have moved on while he has stagnated.

At 40, Roger hasn’t had a meaningful relationship in years, his L.A. friends have families and are either married, divorced or enduring painful separations, and his former flame, Beth (Leigh) doesn’t look as fondly on their early-20s relationship (or with as much gravitas) as Roger does.  Roger is unable to connect on a level that doesn’t exist in the past, and it’s because his “present” is bereft of status, of meaning; he is suffering depression that he won’t admit to and he has no partner and no career. Roger feels like the world has changed and left him behind. But within this isolation and denial sits the luminous Florence (Gerwig).

Florence is the opposite of Roger: she is uncertain yet not insecure while Roger is opinionated yet terrified; she is finding her way and open to learning, whereas he is certain he has all the answers and is resistant to change.  Florence lives in a single room studio apartment and sings at open-mike nights, and the soundtrack, by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, is both nostalgic and uplifting, buffering the movie and supporting the film’s message of underlying hope.

Roger’s former best friend and band mate Ivan (Ifans) is a separated father of one, who tries to connect with his former friend, but Roger takes no interest in Ivan’s life as it is now other than to encourage him to dump his wife.  The singularity of Greenberg’s narcissism and self-involvement is painful yet familiar to watch.  We’ve all met people who exist to serve themselves, who are involved only on their terms, who look over your shoulder in case a more exciting conversation companion arrives—it’s not personal, and they’re not malicious; they just can’t care about you as much as they do about themselves.

A pivotal scene involves Ivan and Roger meeting at a restaurant because it is Roger’s birthday. Roger tells Ivan about Florence, and on a whim, invites her to join them for lunch.  But when she arrives, Roger is immediately uncomfortable—one on side is a friend who knows him too well and on the other is a woman onto whom he is projecting an idealised image of himself, so when a trio singing waiters approaches their table with cake, he freaks out. “I don’t want to be one of those L.A. people where it’s all about them!”, he screams.  The irony being that Roger’s entire life has been about him; he has no sense of humour about himself and no perception of what’s real and what isn’t, only of what fits his idealised version of what’s cool and acceptable and what isn’t and therefore ripe for ridicule.

Roger can’t yet accept that now defines who he is, and it’s who you are now that matters, and the interplay between Florence and Roger throughout the film honestly and simply conveys the revelations we all face on the road to finding ourselves.

Greenberg is released in cinemas nationally on July 22

BENEATH HILL 60

Director: Jeremy Sims
Stars: Brendan Cowell, Steve Le Marquand, Harrison Gilbertson, Bella Heathcote, Jacqueline McKenzie
Paramount

DESPITE almost 92 years having passed since the last shot rang out, nothing can compare with the horror of The First World War (1914-18). But while the military decisions behind the conflict undoubtedly resulted in often senseless waste of life, it also gave rise to unprecedented technological innovation and ingenuity, with many Australians  at the vanguard.

Based on true events, Beneath Hill 60 tells the fascinating and harrowing story of Captain Oliver Woodward and the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, who were brought in by the British to take over mining operations during the brutal Battle of Hill 60 on the Western Front in November 1916. Much of the fighting occurred underground, with both the Allies and Germans tunnelling below no-man’s land to try and gain an advantage.

The film switches between Woodward’s (Cowell) idyllic pre-war life in Queensland, where he falls in love with the beautiful Marjorie (Heathcote), and the blood-soaked battlefields of Belgium, where he must win over his troop of jaded miners and use his technical brilliance to help the Allies detonate 21 massive mines hidden directly under the enemy trenches.

Brendan Cowell delivers an exceptional performance as Captain Woodward, and he’s ably supported by the rest of the non-star cast. On top of that, the sets are fantastic and the excellent cinematography accurately conveys the claustrophobic and extreme conditions under which the Aussie tunnellers had to work.

Educational, entertaining and engaging, Beneath Hill 60 is easily one of the best Australian films of the past decade. Don’t miss it.

Beneath Hill 60 is in cinemas from April 15.

The Book Of Eli
Director: Allen & Albert Hughes
Stars: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis,
Sony

In the beginning, there was The Word.
Continue reading “Reviews – Film: The Book Of Eli” »

Director: Nancy Meyers
Stars: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin

WRITTEN and directed by Nancy Meyers (What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give), this predictable romantic comedy never really gets going.

In an embarrassingly lightweight role, Meryl Streep plays Jane, a wealthy divorcee who embarks on an affair with her recently remarried ex-husband Jake (Baldwin). To complicate matters, Jane also has feelings for nice guy Adam (Martin), a divorced architect who isn’t as fun as Jake but promises a brighter future. With three great comedic actors in the main roles, we were waiting for a funny twist on the standard rom-com formula, but it never came.

Nudging two hours, the film feels very drawn-out and the characters are one-dimensional. Having said that, Alec Baldwin is definitely the star of the film. He at least puts some gusto into his performance and manages to eke a few laughs out of an otherwise underwhelming script.

Check out the top five Penthouse holiday flicks for this Summer… Continue reading “Reviews – Film: Top Five Summer Movies” »

Movies, books, games and music from the pages of Australian Penthouse. This month, we review movies including Star Wars, Che and The Hurt Locker; books including Fit to Print, Twisted Triangle, Rain Gods and Deer Hunting With Jesus; and games including The Conduit and Shadow Complex. Continue reading “Reviews – Film: Star Wars, Che, The Hurt Locker and more” »

The Road

Stars: Viggo Mortensen,
Kodi Smit-McPhee,  Charlize Theron,
Guy Pearce
Director: John Hillcoat
Icon

Review:  Meg White

THE Road’s closing credits barely make it on screen before people begin groping through the dark towards the exit;  simultaneously searching for the composure to face the world, and responding to the urge—the drive—to just get out, to create as much distance as possible between themselves and the  desolate horrors they have just endured vicariously.

Once the cinema’s inner sanctum has fled to find refuge in areas reserved formally for waiting, the debriefing begins… Along with the theories, the personal anecdotes, and the buzz that good art churns in its wake.

Attempts at quantifying and justifying reasons for whichever afterglow (melancholy, despondent and anhedonic, for the record) we’d each been left with varied just enough to miss the point spectacularly.  One man cites the existence of his own children as the sole reason for The Road’s impact and relevance.  A woman, confused,  asks:  Did they explain ‘it’ more in the book? Another cannot move past the fact that the lead characters were without names . Finally, a man in the corner states:  “The director thinks it’s a love story”.

As with everything else with this movie, the director, John Hillcoat (The Proposition) is exactly right.

The Road is a love story.  It’s a story about finding something to love in a world turned to rank ash.  It is a story about being hounded, relentlessly dogged by grief and trauma and fear, and loving someone enough to keep going.  It is an ode to inevitability, to courage and to the constant struggle between true desperation and humanity.

The Road follows a father (Viggo Mortensen) and son’s (Kodi Smit-McPhee) pilgrimage to the coast through the hostile remnants of a gutted and burning world.  The few inhabitants that remain are reduced to brutal hostility and cannibalism, where everyone and every thing is prey or preyed upon.  There is no energy, no food, no animals, no trees, no future.  Every house, store and vehicle has been ransacked and bled of its resources.  Living is reduced to a process of survival and resignation: existence.

The cast is superb. Mortensen, as The Man, and Smit-McPhee, as The Boy, paint an understated and harrowing picture of suffering and bone-weary determination, and there is not a moment that either actor lets you doubt them.  Charlize Theron is the wife and mother, a totem of despair whose sole function seems to compound heartache.  She appears mostly in The Man’s lush flashbacks of the time before the cataclysm, which not only weighs on him as misery, but acts as a visual counter-point and contrast to the colourless and helpless landscape of the film’s present time.

Performances from Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, and Michael K. Williams (The Wire) are brief yet imposing.

Filmed primarily in Pennsylvania, The Road’s barren and bubonic landscape assumes the significance of a character in itself.  The Man and The Boy hide from the country just as often as they do the scavengers they share it with, and it is the obstinate hostility of the land that, in the end, most overwhelms the characters and audience members alike.

As challenging as The Road is to sit through, the experience is far from unpleasant. There is heart imbued in every frame of this film, and as such the experience should be cherished.  Like the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy from which it was adapted, The Road is a movie that cannot and should not be ignored.  It is significant.  It is flawless, necessary viewing for anyone who has ever lost faith in humanity.

The Road is in cinemas nationally from January 28, 2010