CINEMA
End of the world comes early with Nolan shocker “Tenet” (M) FOR several months, local cinemas have displayed publicity for writer/director Christopher Nolan’s behemoth sci-fi, fantasy, actioner, end-of-the-world movie with overtones of wealth-based class distinction. It’s arrived. Imagine a lemon chocolate sponge cake full of fruit and nuts, cooked by deep-frying in hot oil. Eergh! The IMDb estimates that it has cost Nolan’s backers $US205 million. If you look at it hard enough, it’s possible to discern a sort of, kind of message about the future of our planet. But you’ve got to look really hard among its complex elements. In particular, you need to work out whether what’s going on is now, in the past, or yet to happen. It’s not completely without merit. A long sequence involving a gaggle of heavy trucks led by a splendid fire engine along a freeway is exciting and sets some sort of benchmark for future action movies. Where would movies be these days without cameras mounted on drones? Who’s in it? Probably not as many actual people as are actually visible rushing about the screen in various military-style manoeuvres. Playing the principal good guy, known only as The Protagonist, is John David Washington. As Andrei the baddest baddie, Kenneth Branagh shouts a lot. As Andrei’s much put-upon wife Kat, Paris-born to a Polish dad and an Irish mom and Melbourneraised Elizabeth Debicki looks delectable.
“Tenet”... Imagine a lemon chocolate sponge cake full of fruit and nuts, cooked by deep-frying in hot oil. Eergh! IMDb lists her first of an essentially male cast. IMDb got it right. Nolan directs with a fondness for destruction – characters, cars, buildings, a Boeing 747, once the queen of the skies but now fit only to taxi into a disposable airport building. He shows wrecks of other buildings then runs the film backwards to show them before demolition. It’s a trick that quickly begins to pall. The dialogue is muffled and garbled, to the extent that it really was hard to figure out just what the film was trying to tell us aurally that its images couldn’t do. If you simply must see “Tenet”, I suggest you empty your bladder before it starts and
bring a cut lunch. It runs for 154 minutes. I’ve seen longer movies but none of them as ultimately disappointing. At all cinemas
“Les Misérables” (MA) A DECADE ago, Mali-born writer/director Ladj Ly filmed local cops in the Paris suburb of Montfermeil. At a press conference at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, he spoke about its conception and gestation: “The starting
point… was a police blunder that I filmed 10 years ago. For five years, I filmed scenes in my neighbourhood – we filmed the cops – it was a neighbourhood where a lot of things happened and I started to film the cops and then I actually filmed a cop blunder…” From that, it should be apparent that Ly’s 104 minutes movie isn’t going to try to encompass Victor Hugo’s massive (655,478 words in the original French) novel. The only direct reference to the novel is a passing reference to Montfermeil, where the dialogue suggests that it was written – in the novel the Thénardier family keeps an inn there. In Ly’s film, Montfermeil has a significant Muslim population. The most appropriate description for both is a toss-up between underprivileged and impoverished. Today’s the first day there for experienced cop Ruiz (Damien Bonnard). In the car with local veteran cops Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga) of Paris’s Anti-Crime Brigade, he’s going to learn the territory, its people and its problems. And how the local cops do things to keep a lid on a community that could boil over into violence and riot at any time. Like today. It starts routinely enough. Ruiz meets the mayor (Steve Tientcheu). And the proprietor of a popular café. Among the teenagers who roam the streets, Issa (Issa Perica) stands out for no particular
reason – yet. A van full of roustabouts from a local circus turns up demanding the return of circus property. What is it? It’s improbable, not impossible, and a delight to see when it finally makes an appearance. I won’t spoil the pleasure for you. “Les Misérables” is about adolescent energy, social tension, the plight of people there because there’s no other available place to live. The mayor tries to keep a lid on things while looking after his own interests. Tensions build. Not least between Ruiz, who wants to do his job by the rule book, and Chris who has his own way of confronting issues. It’s exciting, vigorous, confronting, sympathetic, a day in the life of people abandoned by society. And fresh, optimistic, doing their best, following one faith in a location surrounded by folk of a different faith. The film pays little or no attention to religious differences. But the undercurrent is always there, “Les Misérables” was voted best film at this year’s Césars (France’s equivalent of the Oscars). I left it delighted and refreshed after the disappointment of what I’d seen earlier that day. At Palace Electric
WATCH IT! / streaming and stuff
‘Streamtember’ coming to screen near you! SEPTEMBER is going to have a streaming surplus, with a bunch of new stuff to binge coming as different platforms fight to get viewers locked in as they approach the end-of-year holiday season.
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28 CityNews September 3-9, 2020
Here’s a few of what I reckon will be worth looking out for. “The Devil All the Time” is Netflix’s newest big-budget movie that’s been rustling up quite the hype. It’s a psychological crime film with a star-studded cast: Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård and Mia Wasikowska. Or, in that order, we might know them at their most recognisable: Spiderman, Twilight Vampire Dude, Pennywise the Clown and Alice from Wonderland (fun side note – Mia Wasikowska grew up in Canberra and studied drama through Karabar High School’s distance-education unit). That’s only the beginning of the massive cast and the ensemble is certainly fitting for the lineup of characters to be portrayed: a false preacher, a pair of husband-and-wife serial killers and a disturbed war veteran, just a few of the moving pieces of this intricate plot. It’s based on a bestselling 2011 book of the same name and has sparked enough interest to get the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal coming over to produce. Such talent is sure to secure Netflix a whole bucket of viewers – I’ll definitely be one of them. It hits the streaming service September 16. Stan is set to stir the already well churned political pot with its new series “The Comey Rule”. This one stars Brendan Gleeson who’s rather boldly playing an interpretation of a man you might have heard of: Donald Trump. He’s accompanied by Jeff Daniels as FBI director James Comey, probing the 2016 election and particularly the controversy
Tom Holland in Netflix’s “The Devil All the Time”. about the Russians having some involvement. I may be spit-balling here, but the timing of this two-part drama seems more than a little deliberate given a presidential election set for not two months after its release. What statements it makes, and how it handles its delicate subject matter will be fascinating to see. It’s on Stan from September 27. Moving from the cheery matters of serial killers and intense political conflict, Disney Plus is going down its well-trodden wholesome route with a new documentary series – “Becoming”. Each episode follows a different celebrity back to their hometown where they explore their childhood, their influences and what set them on the path they chose. These real-life stories include musicians, athletes, entertainers and everything in between. All episodes of “Becoming” will be out on the platform from September 18. Over on the platform a little more forgotten about in Oz, Amazon, is the second season of
“The Boys”, about to drop September 4. It seems that in the current supreme reign of comic-book adaptations every streaming service needs their own group of caped crusaders. Amazon’s effort quite cleverly mixes up the formula. “The Boys”, unlike what’s generally seen in the genre, is a dark comedy. Like, really dark. This one is definitely only for the adults. It’s about a multi-billion-dollar mega corporation that acts as a management-like business of superheroes, and covers up any of its dirty secrets. The Boys, a group of vigilantes, seeks to try to expose the company and the corrupt superheroes they represent, making it a series that quite cleverly subverts the genre we see so done to death. So that’s September; there’s certainly no shortage of variety being generated in our ever-growing streaming superverse.
