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Happy End (2017)

09 Tuesday Oct 2018

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D: Michael Haneke / 107m

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Kassovitz, Fantine Harduin, Franz Rogowski, Laura Verlinden, Toby Jones

For the Laurent family, life is full of challenges. Patriarch Georges (Trintignant) is in his mid-Eighties and suffering from dementia. He has two children, Anne (Huppert), who runs the family construction business, and Thomas (Kassovitz), who is a well respected surgeon. Anne is divorced, but has a grown son, Pierre (Rogowski), who is in line to take over the family business, but he has a drink problem and is prone to angry outbursts. Thomas is married to Anaïs (Verlinden), who is his second wife; they have an infant child. He also has a twelve year old daughter from his first marriage, Eva (Harduin). Eva comes to live with her extended family when her mother falls ill from an overdose of tablets and is admitted to hospital. As she navigates both a bigger family and a bigger house (in Calais), Eva soon learns that everyone has their secrets, from Georges’ determination to commit suicide while he still has the mental and physical will, to her own father’s extra-marital activities, and Anne’s unwillingness to let Pierre assume control of the family business. In different ways, each supposedly well kept secret is revealed over the course of a short space of time, and the Laurents are exposed as the dysfunctional people they truly are…

If you’re a fan of the work of Michael Haneke, then you’ll no doubt appreciate the irony of his latest movie being called Happy End. Here, happiness is in very short supply, and when it is “allowed out” (as it were), it isn’t for long. With themes such as suicide, depression, alcoholism and immorality highlighted within the narrative, it’s no wonder that this is at times heavy going, with no light at the end of the tunnel for either the characters or the audience. Sombre movies such as this one don’t necessarily have to be a chore, or “difficult to watch”, and Haneke is a master at teasing out the most obscure of motivations for his characters’ behaviour, and making them telling, but here the knack seems to have abandoned him. This is a dour soap opera populated by people who are stuck in the routine melodramas of their daily lives and have no idea of how to change anything – except to make themselves even more unhappy. The odd one out is Anne, whose relationship with British lawyer Lawrence (Jones), provides the only expression of hope in the whole movie.

With terrible events happening in isolation or viewed from a distance – a collapsed retainer wall at a Laurent construction site early on is a great example – Haneke ensures that the audience is kept at a distance from both the events themselves and the characters who experience them. This has the effect of dulling the emotional pull of such scenes and denying the audience any connection with what’s happening and to whom. When Pierre visits the family of a construction worker injured during the collapse of the retainer wall, Haneke opts for a long shot from beside Pierre’s car. When Pierre is assaulted, the camera remains fixed, even when he staggers back to the car. This distancing has the effect of negating any sympathy we might have for the character, or any sense of shock or outrage. Only the concern of a passerby registers as an emotional response, but again, Haneke’s approach appears unconcerned with such details. Inevitably, it’s hard to work out just what Haneke is trying to say, or even if he has a message for us in the first place. The situations and conversations Georges et al experience are interesting on a basic level but rarely resonate, and when they do, it’s in a superficial, stylistically clever yet empty fashion that makes you wonder why anyone would want to spend time with such a bunch of self-absorbed ingrates.

Rating: 6/10 – with impressive cinematography by DoP Christian Berger that enhances Olivier Radot’s equally impressive production design, it’s a shame that Happy End emerges as a cold, uninvolving melodrama that tries too hard to make you care about its characters; still, the performances are good – Huppert is superb in what at times feels like a supporting role – but as they’re in service to a script that isn’t quite as well thought out as it needed to be, this remains, at best and worst, the movie version of a curate’s egg.

Colossal (2016)

19 Friday May 2017

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D: Nacho Vigalondo / 109m

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens, Austin Stowell, Tim Blake Nelson, Hannah Cheramy, Nathan Ellison

Gloria (Hathaway) can’t resist a night out with her friends; or more specifically she can’t resist having a drink or two, or three, or four, when she’s out with her friends. Unable to deal with her repeated denials about her behaviour and her alcohol dependency, Gloria’s boyfriend, Tim (Stevens), ends their relationship, forcing her to move back to her old hometown, somewhere she hasn’t been in over ten years. She moves in to her parents’ old home, which is unfurnished. The next day, after having purchased an air mattress to sleep on, she runs into an old friend from her school days, Oscar (Sudeikis). Now the owner of a bar, Oscar takes her there and introduces Gloria to his friends, Garth (Nelson) and Joel (Stowell). Several drinks later, Gloria staggers home, passing through a nearby park on the way.

The next day, the world’s media is in a frenzy over the appearance of a giant monster in Seoul, South Korea. Gloria sees the footage and like everyone else is astonished by it. That night Gloria gets drunk again and goes home through the park. The next morning, the news reports a second appearance by the monster, but Gloria is surprised to see that it makes a similar gesture to one that she makes, and that it looks as if it’s trying to carry something over its shoulder, as she did with the air mattress. Putting two and two together and hoping it’ll add up to five, Gloria heads for the park where she strikes a number of specific poses. When she sees the latest footage, the monster strikes the exact same poses. Realising there’s some kind of link between them, Gloria tells Oscar and his friends.

The appearance of a giant robot alongside the monster is connected to Oscar, who shows signs of drinking too much (while Gloria starts drinking less). With Gloria having spent the night with Joel, and the sudden arrival of Tim, Oscar becomes aggressive towards Gloria, and threatens to cause havoc and destruction in Seoul if she doesn’t stay with him. Unsure of what to do, matters come to a head when Oscar tries to stop Gloria from leaving with Tim…

It’s safe to assume that, however many movies you see in 2017, you won’t see a stranger, more inventive movie than Colossal, the latest feature from Spanish writer/director Nacho Vigalondo. It’s a weird beast: by turns funny, dramatic, thrilling, challenging, poignant, even uplifting – and when was the last time you could say all that about one movie? And Vigalondo has the temerity to make it all look so easy. The movie is an unexpected cause for celebration, because this is a monster movie that is about so much more than just a creature terrorising downtown Seoul a la Godzilla and Tokyo. No, this is a movie concerned with notions of personal responsibility, self-respect, emotional insecurity, and redeeming past mistakes. It’s a movie with a very clear message: it’s never too late to start over, and to confound the expectations of those around you.

What could have been just another derivative monster movie also becomes, thanks to Vigalondo and his cast and crew, a surprisingly well grounded and credibly portrayed examination of survivors’ guilt, as both Gloria and Oscar deal in their very different ways with an event that happened when they were children, and which has left its mark on both of them. Gloria left her hometown for New York and fame and fortune as a writer, but she’s found alcoholism instead. Oscar has remained in their hometown and found that he can’t leave, that invisible ties hold him back, invisible ties, though, of his own making. Both are plagued by a sense of seemingly inevitable decline, that their lives are failing in terms of their potential, and neither of them know how to combat this. But by being given a chance to revisit that childhood incident, and to understand how it has affected them, both have the opportunity to rectify matters and move forward.

Of course, it’s not so easy, and Vigalondo twists the knife into both his lead characters, adding a layer of abuse to his increasingly dark and disturbing tale, and taking the story into places that the average fantasy drama wouldn’t even dream of trying to incorporate. And yet, with all this going on, Colossal isn’t as “heavy” as you might think, thanks to Vigalondo leavening things with massive doses of hope and pitch black humour. He’s helped tremendously by the performances of Hathaway and Sudeikis, two actors who might not be regarded as first choices for their roles, but who excel as two people struggling with their personal demons as best they can. Hathaway hasn’t been this good in quite some time, and she can sometimes seem removed from the character she’s playing, but here the opposite is true. She details Gloria’s growth from self-negating alcoholic to re-empowered avenger with such passion and empathy for the character that her performance gets better and better as the movie progresses. It’s impressive, and it’s courageous, and it’s Hathaway’s most deceptively skillful portrayal by far.

She’s matched by an intense, unsettling performance from Sudeikis, whose transformation from genial, easy-going bar owner and childhood friend to self-hating, conscience-free thug is one of the movie’s many highlights. When we first meet Oscar, Sudeikis plays him in much the same fashion as he’s played characters in other movies: with his trademark grin, amused yet casual demeanour, and equally casual delivery of his dialogue. Here, Sudeikis gets to subvert that image, and he seizes the opportunity with undisguised gusto. It’s a role that could so easily have descended into that of an unwavering, motiveless psycho, but between them, Vigalondo and Sudeikis have created a character whose psychopathy is believable to the point that when Gloria hits on what “ails” Oscar, the viewer can nod sagely and say to themselves, “that explains everything”.

The other characters aren’t given anywhere near as much depth as that shared by Gloria and Oscar, and Tim in particular is a distracting presence in the movie, with Stevens playing him as a shallow yet well-meaning putz. Thankfully, and one scene late on in the movie aside, Tim appears sparingly, and Vigalondo never makes him seem too important a part of Gloria’s future (she can do so much better and she probably knows it). As perhaps befits the tone of the movie, the visuals are kept muted, with the colour palette restricted to dull browns and distressed greys. The use of the monster and his giant robot adversary is kept in service to the story, and anyone expecting a full-on slugfest to close out the movie will be sorely disappointed. However, what does happen is clever, sad, and redemptive all at the same time, and allows the movie to end on one of the best sighs ever. Yes, a sigh, but one that says it all.

Rating: 8/10 – a bona fide gem, and chock full of surprises, all of them a pleasure to encounter and experience, Colossal is a movie that constantly moves the goalposts in its efforts to provide something different and extraordinary; Vigalondo has made an eloquent, remarkable movie that has something to say throughout and for once, it’s a movie that also knows just how to say it.

The Girl on the Train (2016)

07 Monday Nov 2016

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D:Tate Taylor / 112m

Cast: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramírez, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, Darren Goldstein, Lisa Kudrow

Whenever a novel becomes an unexpectedly massive success – such as Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train did in 2015 – then a movie adaptation is sure to follow. But what happens when the source material isn’t strong enough to support a movie version? What do the makers of such a movie do to combat this? The answer, when you watch the movie version of The Girl on the Train, becomes obvious quite quickly: they don’t do anything, they merely transcribe events and characters to the screen and do nothing to circumvent the problems in the novel. Oh – and they do so in the hope that no one will notice.

From the beginning of The Girl on the Train we have a clumsy voice over that introduces us to Rachel Watson, a thirty-two year old woman who rides the train to and from work every day, and who seems to have created a fantasy world built around another woman (Bennett) that she sees most days from the train. The woman in question piques Rachel’s interest, as she lives a few doors away from where Rachel’s ex-husband Tom (Theroux) lives with his new wife, Anna (Ferguson), and their baby daughter, Evie. Believing this woman to have a perfect marriage (but having no real reason to believe this at all), Rachel is shocked one morning to see her kissing a man who isn’t her husband.

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Rachel is so disturbed by this that she decides to confront the woman. But Rachel is an alcoholic, and though she makes the attempt, she suffers a blackout and wakes the next morning with cuts and bruises and blood on her clothes – but no memory of how any of it happened. Things get worse when a detective (Janney) visits Rachel and asks her if she knows the woman, whose name is Megan. Megan has gone missing, and because Rachel was spotted in the area where Megan was last seen, the detective wonders if Rachel is involved in Megan’s disappearance in some way. Able to stall the detective’s questions, Rachel then makes a fateful decision.

Anyone who has read the book will know that Rachel’s decision is to involve herself in the life of Megan’s husband, Scott (Evans). And the movie follows this route as well – how could it not? – but as with the novel, the movie has the same problem: her decision makes no sense at all. It’s obvious from Rachel’s behaviour – when she’s not fantasizing about a complete stranger, she’s stalking her ex-husband – that she’s got what you’d politely call “issues”, but the only reason the movie has for this behaviour is the fact that Rachel is an alcoholic. It was a contributing factor in her divorce from Tom, and it leads to a couple of minor revelations later on, but it ends up being a catch-all for anything she does that seems a bit manic or ill-advised. The novel tries to make her appear vulnerable; here she just seems desperate.

But as her involvement with Scott is passed off as trying to help (and punish Megan if she stops being missing), Rachel abandons all sense of decency and respect for the ordeal Scott is going through, and pushes her own agenda, which is to find Megan’s abductor or killer – and hope that it isn’t her. This leads to a couple of major revelations, and a final denouement that will have female audiences cheering, and male audiences shaking their heads at the reverse misogyny on display. In essence, the problems in the novel have become the problems in the movie.

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The main problem audiences will have is a lack of someone to even remotely care about. Despite a powerful and from time to time, deeply moving performance by Blunt, The Girl on the Train operates in an emotional vacuum. The trials and tribulations of the various characters are often on display, but it’s like watching a trio of strong-minded women who’ve all decided to give up on being independent, and who can only define themselves through their relationships with men. Rachel is the ex-wife who can’t deal with the fact that her marriage is over, Megan is the wife who needs affairs to feel some kind of connection with herself, and Anna is the ex-lover turned second wife whose chief function is being the mother of Tom’s child. Viewers may find themselves put off by the relentless undermining these characters experience, and the various ways the movie reinforces the ways in which said characters were undermined in the novel.

But beyond all the ersatz feminism, there remains the problem of the central mystery. Megan’s disappearance becomes a murder enquiry when her body is discovered in some nearby woods. But though Rachel wonders if she did kill Megan during her blackout, the likelihood of that actually having happened is so small it’s on a virtually sub-atomic level. So that leaves Anna, a character so gloriously one-dimensional that Ferguson’s talents as an actress are wasted; her husband Tom, whose outward calm and sincerity masks a need to control his environment; and tortured husband Scott, whose wild, angry outbursts could be a smokescreen for something much darker. And those are the only suspects, as the man Megan is seen kissing is her shrink, Dr Kamal Abdic (Ramírez), and despite the screenplay’s ham-fisted attempt to put him in the frame, he’s the classic red herring. This then makes it easy to work out who killed Megan, and also why.

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For a thriller based on the novel “that shocked the world” – really? – The Girl on the Train is a bit of a damp squib, only showing signs of life when focusing on Blunt’s portrayal of Rachel. Blunt brings some much needed craft to her performance, ensuring that while everyone around her aims for competent, she’s proving capable of giving a layered, compassionate performance that elevates the material whenever her alcoholism is mentioned, or she’s on screen. In contrast, Taylor, who failed to find the motivation to make The Help (2011) as compelling as it should have been, leaves the viewer with the feeling he’s only semi-engaged with the project, and as a result, none of it resonates in the way that it should. It all leaves the movie looking and sounding like an uninspired echo of the original novel – and a less than engaging one at that.

Rating: 5/10 – slickly, professionally made, but as hollow as an Easter egg, The Girl on the Train delivers low rent thrills and annoying plot developments as it unfolds the mystery of Megan Hipwell’s disappearance; the non-linear approach of the novel is retained, and used to good effect, but this is still one literary adaptation that should have been more enticing and rewarding than it actually is.

I Smile Back (2015)

23 Monday Nov 2015

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I Smile Back

D: Adam Salky / 85m

Cast: Sarah Silverman, Josh Charles, Thomas Sadoski, Skylar Gaertner, Shayne Coleman, Mia Barron, Terry Kinney, Chris Sarandon

When we first meet Laney Brooks (Silverman), she’s in her bathroom, looking out the window at her husband Bruce (Charles) and their two young children, Eli (Gaertner) and Janey (Coleman), as they all shoot hoops. But she’s not actually seeing them. Her gaze is too distant, too removed from what’s going on outside. Instead she’s remembering recent events in her life: taking her kids to school, getting Chinese at a local restaurant, a dinner party with their friends Donny (Sadowski) and Susan (Barron), the unexpected arrival of a dog called Bingo… and then she snorts cocaine before taking a bath.

Faced with this kind of introduction to a character, some viewers may feel that they don’t want to spend any more time with them and will decide to go watch something else, something more light-hearted perhaps. But they would be missing out on one of the most impressive performances by an actress in the whole of 2015.

As I Smile Back progresses we come to realise that Laney has a heck of a lot more problems than just taking cocaine. She drinks to excess, pops pills like they’re sweets, and is cheating on Bruce with Donny. As well as struggling with being a wife, she struggles with being a mother, being overly fearful for Eli in particular, while proving unable to manage something as simple as bringing her school I.D. badge with her when she drops the kids off. She’s always a second or two behind everyone else, always a little distracted, always a little “vacant”.

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It’s at around this point in Adam Salky’s take on the novel by Amy Koppelman (who also co-scripted with Paige Dylan) that the viewer begins to realise that Laney is suffering from depression and has mental health problems; the irresponsible behaviour is merely a sign of her inability to cope with every day life and its responsibilities. The average viewer will also realise that the movie can now only go in one of two ways: either Laney will hit rock bottom, get help, and get better, or she’ll spiral out of control until tragedy strikes. But Koppelman’s story takes a third way, one in which Laney has every opportunity to avoid ruining the rest of her life, but the question is: will she?

Thanks to the aforementioned impressive performance by Silverman, the answer to that question is not as simple as expected. There are some formulaic twists and turns to the story that most viewers will see coming, but on the whole, Laney is a character to root for, even when her self-destructive behaviour would have most people walking the other way. Silverman is incredibly good as a woman weighed down by the trauma of being abandoned by her father when she was nine, and whose inability to deal with the subsequent issues that have grown up around that event has led to the addictive behaviour that dictates her daily life. She has a loving husband, two great kids (though the movie hints that Eli may end up emulating his mother when he’s older), and an outwardly envious lifestyle. But for Laney, everything comes to an end; why not her marriage and all that goes with it?

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After she drinks and takes too many drugs one night, Laney has a spell in rehab, and the movie starts to give her a chance, though there’s a noticeable distance now between her and Bruce that doesn’t bode well for the future. She talks about her father, and the fact that even though she knows where he lives, she hasn’t contacted him in thirty years (and vice versa). It becomes a challenge, to visit her father, and when she does Laney discovers that seeing him wasn’t such a great idea. From then on, things begin to spiral out of control again.

Let’s say it again: Silverman is magnificent as the self-torturing Laney. It’s the kind of dark, messy role that comediennes seem to be able to pull off without any problem at all, and Silverman gives a breathtakingly honest portrayal of a woman whose feelings are so raw, and yet who can’t connect with her emotions. And if you thought that this wouldn’t be an uncomfortable movie to watch because of Silverman’s presence, then there’s a scene involving a stuffed toy that shows just how committed the actress was to the role.

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But, sadly, Silverman’s performance isn’t matched by Salky’s direction. The movie suffers from an icy tone that matches the wintry New York state locations, and Salky never fleshes out the characters around Laney, leaving Bruce to look and sound like a self-important grump with no amount of sympathy for Laney’s problems, while Sarandon as Laney’s father can only do limp regret in his brief scenes. The camera spends quite a lot of time observing Laney, and only gets in close when she’s really hurting or in trouble. Otherwise there’s a detachment going on that hampers the viewer from connecting with Laney, and stops any sympathy for her from becoming full-blown. It’s as if Salky has decided that, despite the obvious emotional traumas that Laney experiences, his movie is going to be more of an intellectual exercise, an examination of a character as they descend through their own personal hell. It’s not an approach that works, and detracts from the limited “enjoyment” the movie has to offer.

The script too has its faults, not least in the way that it avoids providing a convincing explanation for Laney’s mental illness/depression, and instead shows her popping pills, snorting coke, and gulping wine over and over, as if we won’t be aware of how addictive her behaviour is unless we keep seeing it. Eli’s problems are introduced but no attempt is made to resolve them, and her affair with Donny (which has so much dramatic potential) is dropped without a backward glance. Also, the scenes at the rehab centre are too short and too lacking in depth for them to be anything other than a bridge between two sets of aberrant behaviours, and the advice and comfort given by Laney’s psychiatrist (Kinney) is banal to the point of, well, extreme banality. But the final scene in the movie is thematically perfect, and ties in neatly with Laney’s problems, albeit to heartbreaking effect.

Rating: 7/10 – if it wasn’t for Silverman’s superb, and often harrowing, performance then I Smile Back wouldn’t be an attractive prospect, thanks to Salky’s distant feel for the material, and the repetitive nature of Laney’s behaviour built in to the script; but Silverman is superb, and her performance holds the movie together in a way that should be rewarded come Oscar time, but which will probably be ignored in favour of more mainstream, multiplex-friendly portayals – and that really is depressing.

Ruben Guthrie (2015)

24 Saturday Oct 2015

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Ruben Guthrie

D: Brendan Cowell / 93m

Cast: Patrick Brammall, Alex Dimitriades, Abbey Lee, Harriet Dyer, Jack Thompson, Robyn Nevin, Jeremy Sims, Brenton Thwaites, Aaron Bertram

Four-time advertising award winner Ruben Guthrie (Brammall) has it all: the high-paid job that he’s phenomenally good at, the luxurious home with a pool, a beautiful model girlfriend, Zoya (Lee), and a drink problem to match it all. At a party to celebrate his latest awards win, his boozy, extrovert behaviour proves to be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back for Zoya when Ruben finds himself up on his roof and jumping into his pool – and breaking his arm in the process. It’s time for Ruben to face up to his drinking problem and get some help.

So far, Brendan Cowell’s adaptation of his own stage play seems perfectly straightforward, and most viewers will believe they know exactly how the rest of the story will play out. But Cowell’s a shrewd writer who knows his story too well, and Ruben’s journey takes several unexpected turns along the way. He goes to his first AA meeting and instead of being ashamed or embarrassed, he reverts to his usual laddish behaviour and insults everyone. This leads to Zoya giving him an ultimatum: stay sober for a year while she’s gone, and if he can stay sober, to come find her. He somehow manages not to drink, revealing that he has a degree of self-control he either wasn’t aware of, or knew he had but has chosen not to use. At work though, his usual intuitive command of what makes for the best advertising is shown to have deserted him, so much so that his boss is thinking of replacing him with a talented/super chirpy youngster (Thwaites).

And in an effort to kick a character even more when he’s down, Cowell adds further fuel to the flame of Ruben’s reversal of fortune by having his parents (Thompson, Nevin) split up, and his gay best friend Damian (Dimitriades), who’s a bit of a sponger, move in on a temporary/permanent basis. But Ruben proves to be a forbearing soul, and with the aid of fellow alcoholic and mentor, Virginia (Dyer), he weathers the storm of these setbacks, and begins to find a way through them that makes him both stronger and more determined than ever to win Zoya back.

Well, determined might not be the right word, because he succumbs to the emotional fragility and neediness that Virginia exhibits around him and they become a couple. Now, in Australia, this could well be construed as acceptable behaviour on Ruben’s part, but when Zoya’s face adorns a whole wall in Ruben’s home as a permanent reminder of their five years together, you might expect him to be a little more circumspect. But nobody, not even Virginia (who might like to know where she stands in all this) mentions it, and Ruben himself seems to be oblivious to the double standard he’s following. It’s here that the movie finds itself in deeper, darker territory for a while, as Ruben’s sobriety leads him to make all sorts of decisions that he wouldn’t have made as a functioning alcoholic.

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Of course, further complications ensue when his father becomes ill, his parents’ relationship becomes even more confusing, he has a major falling out with Damian, and just when you think that things can’t possibly get any worse for him, Zoya turns up out of the blue, and he finds his mother pushing him to resume drinking… because when he’s sober it makes him less of a(n Aussie) man. By now the movie is hell-bent on being a dark comedy, as Ruben’s world continues to implode with the force of a thousand beer bottles crashing to the floor. And then Cowell dispenses with the last shred of Ruben’s self-confidence, and with his main character curling up on the floor, he delivers one last kick to the head.

This is a sincere movie that isn’t just about alcohol addiction and its effects on the addict and the people who love him or her, but a (some times) powerful depiction of all sorts of forms of addiction, from booze to drugs to sex to relationships and back again. It’s also a very funny examination of the pitfalls of modern day living, and the culture of expectation and acceptance of social drinking. It’s often said that everyone drinks in Australia, and that they’re the greatest nation in the world for coming up with ways to justify getting rotten, but while this is a proud boast Down Under, Cowell is canny enough to hold up a mirror to modern Australian society and expose the “rotten” underpinning that stops it from collapsing in on itself. That Ruben bucks the trend for so long is both impressive and unusual.

With Cowell providing such a clever script, and creating a visual style for the movie that confronts and reflects the consequences of Ruben’s decision to quit drinking, it does seem a shame when he develops butterfingers and drops the ball, however momentarily. The aforementioned scene where Ruben’s mother tempts him to return to “the dark side” by having a drink is by turns clumsy, awkward, horrifying, and unnecessary, a way that the movie can explain the social pleasures and pressures of drinking, and advance the plot towards the final third. The role of Damian in proceedings is never clear: he’s not Ruben’s conscience, and nor is he the kind of arch manipulator that a more superficial script might have painted him, but he is surplus to requirements in terms of the dynamics of Ruben’s relationships, and how Ruben sees himself in terms of others around him.

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The cast are uniformly good, with Brammall keeping a firm grip on some of the script’s more vague motivational moments, and his performance as Guthrie is both staid and delirious, as the script requires. Dimitriades keeps Damian from becoming a completely stereotypical role, while Lee is allowed to be more than just a pretty face. But it’s Dyer as the addict’s addict – she’s firmly addicted to Ruben, amongst other things – that draws the most attention, and hopefully the movie will lead to bigger and brighter things for the actress. As expected the movie’s patriarch and matriarch dance lightly but with maximum effect to the tune of Cowell’s musical trenchwork, and Thompson and Nevin appear to steal their scenes with others with so little effort it’s almost embarrassing.

All in all, Cowell’s ode to Australia’s national pastime of hitting the turps is a lively, enjoyable movie that makes several relevant points about addiction, and is clever enough to know when to be funny, when to be serious, and when to mix the two elements to their best advantage. It’s a movie that’s a little rough around the edges, and some scenes go on beyond their necessary lifespan, but these are small beer in comparison to the good work found elsewhere. And if Ruben’s next adventure, should it happen, sees him pitch up in Prague in search of Zoya, then Cowell’s acknowledgment that “those motherf*ckers can drink” may well be the challenge that our hero needs.

Rating: 7/10 – hiding a warm, gooey centre amongst the emotional drama and the often ludicrous humour, Ruben Guthrie is a movie about need and addiction that doesn’t downplay the seriousness of the subject matter, but which also manages to find the absurdity in a lifestyle that is ultimately as hollow as an empty beer bottle; Cowell has made a good first feature, and while it has its faults, his commitment – and that of his star’s – isn’t one of them.

The Trials of Cate McCall (2013)

14 Sunday Sep 2014

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Trials of Cate McCall, The

D: Karen Moncrieff / 89m

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Nick Nolte, James Cromwell, Mark Pellegrino, Anna Anissimova, Taye Diggs, Kathy Baker, Clancy Brown, Brendan Sexton III, David Lyons, Ava Kolker, Isaiah Washington, Dale Dickey, Amanda Aday

Cate McCall (Beckinsale) has her fair share of problems.  Despite being a talented lawyer, she has a serious drink problem that has resulted in her being put on probation and assigned to work in a small law office.  She’s also trying to retain custody of her daughter Augie (Kolker) following the break up of her marriage to Josh (Lyons).  As she fights to regain control of her life, Cate is assigned an appeal case involving Lacey Stubbs (Anissimova).  Lacey has been convicted of murder, but claims she was set up by the lead detective on the case, Welch (Pellegrino).  She also alleges that, while in prison, she was raped by a guard.

With the help of her mentor, Bridges (Nolte), Cate begins to look into the case and finds quickly that some of the witness testimonies don’t match up, and that there are problems with the police evidence.  Lacey maintains her innocence, while Welch proves evasive and aggressive when Cate talks to him.  As Cate begins to suspect a miscarriage of justice has taken place, the pressure of trying to deal with both the case and spending time with Augie begins to affect her ability to maintain her sobriety.

The appeal hearing sees Lacey’s case upheld, but Cate’s success is short-lived.  No sooner is the hearing over than she begins to uncover further evidence that Lacey has been lying all along.  But can she trust this new evidence?  Now Cate has to find out whether or not she was used by Lacey, and in the process, decide if being a part of Augie’s life is appropriate for her daughter while she still has a drink problem.

Trials of Cate McCall, The - scene

From the outset, The Trials of Cate McCall tries hard to be different from all the other courtroom-based dramas out there, and in terms of its title character, it certainly succeeds.  Cate McCall is, frankly, a bit of a mess, and while the reason for her drinking problem is adequately explained, the movie’s determination to make things difficult for her at almost every turn borders on the sadistic.  It’s only within the confines of the courtroom that she’s allowed to hold it together and have any success; outside, and she makes mistake after mistake, sometimes deliberately.  There is an element of masochism as well in these moments, as if Cate is punishing herself, and while on a psychological level this is all completely understandable, it makes for a somewhat frustrating viewing experience.  It’s not long into the movie before the viewer will be wondering, just how much more can this character take before she puts her head in the oven?

But Cate’s work keeps her going, even while she screws up everything else in her life.  The two worlds she inhabits, her professional and private lives, are addressed with equal gravitas, and thanks to Beckinsale’s committed, earnest portrayal, the movie is on solid ground when Cate tries to deal with the responsibilities of both (even if she fails more often than not).  It’s an unselfish performance from Beckinsale, an actress who can do a lot more than wear tight-fitting black leather and make fangs look sexy, and she’s at her best when the script piles on the setbacks (she even ends up in jail at one point, that’s how bad things get for her).  Beckinsale is also clever enough to ensure that Cate isn’t entirely sympathetic, and this helps make the character more credible.

She’s ably supported by the likes of Nolte (grizzled, understanding), Cromwell (sanguine, duplicitous), Anissimova (nervy, put-upon), and Pellegrino (arrogant, shady), and there’s a winning performance from six year old Kolker as Cate’s troubled daughter (Augie though – really?).  With such a good cast – and one that can find room for actors such as Brown and Baker in minor roles – the movie’s mix of domestic drama and courtroom machinations is handled well by writer/director Moncrieff, even if there are moments where plausibility is stretched so thin it’s practically see-through (the prosecution’s withholding of exculpatory evidence is a case in point; the ease with which Cate and Welch bury their differences is another).

But all in all, the movie is a worthwhile watch though it plays flat through certain stretches – the repetitive bickering between Cate and Josh, the subplot involving Cromwell’s lecherous judge – and the issue of Lacey’s guilt can be guessed from the beginning, but away from the courtroom there’s enough to keep an audience engaged and wanting to find out what happens next.  Ultimately though, and aside from the reliability of its cast, the material isn’t solid enough to withstand close scrutiny (or cross-examination), and while it’s entirely respectable in its aims and intentions, it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Rating: 6/10 – with alcoholism, murder and a custody battle occupying the time of its main character, The Trials of Cate McCall is actually less intriguing than it thinks it is; Beckinsale is the movie’s major asset, and while there’s nothing to suggest this might be the beginning of a series, another visit with Cate could still be something to look forward to.