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Reviews
Moonfall (2022)
Rediculous, watchable mindfluff
Moonfall suffers from a major case of non-believable storylines, melded with decent CGI and a write-off of a script. But for those of us who can't breathe without a disaster flick at least once a year, Emmelich has done it again. Taken a good cast, an unbelievable script and some decent scifi special effects and made a movie that stopped me from going shopping for a few hours.
The whole storyline is beyond silly, but that's what I liked about it. I kept looking at the cast thinking "what are you doing there?", and I reckon they possibly asked themselves a similar round of questions. The whole thing is a stretch at the best of times, downright stupid at others, but, it's watchable fluff.
The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)
Like a big, warm hug
I adored this, and after years of hearing how much trouble Shia LaBeouf is, it's also gone an enormous distance toward redeeming him in my eyes. His warm and heartfelt relationship with Zack Gottsagen comes across on film, and Gottsagen leads by example - forcing LaBeouf to give an honest, open performance to match his own, or be left in Gottsagen's wake.
Bruce Dern & Thomas Hayden Church top & tail the film with wicked little pieces. It's a shame Church wasn't given more screen time to develop his character's motivation for change - but it's a solid spot none the less. Dakota Johnson is only a couple of jobs away from never having to hear the name of "that" film again, the one that launched her career. She's turning into an exceptional workhorse, outpacing both her parents. While the Peanut Butter Falcon is Gottsagen & LaBeouf's story, Johnson again gets cut short for time to develop her character - but oddly her and Church's rushed developments don't disrupt or destroy the picture overall.
It's a film for slightly older audiences because of the violence - and I'll say it, the guns - but it's got valuable lessons to hand around to a lot of people, including the First Rule: Party.
Definition Please (2020)
Rises above it's potentially cringe-making central topic
Adult movies about spelling bees - one had to arrive in a format that made it accessible and visible outside the current dominant demographic of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Renaming it the "Scribbs" event didn't even fool this Caucasian Australian.
First of all, don't be fooled into thinking this is a kid's film just because it opens with our Scribbs National Champ on her victorious media tour, including a starring turn standing next to Levar Burton (Australian Trekkies have been denied regular access to Levar's reading & educational career post TNG). The adult orientation kicks in pretty quick.
The story of someone who had super-early super-success - essentially peaking before they turn 10 - is familiar to quite a few of us. Definition Please works through the strain this kind of prodigious early start places not only on the performer, but also in those close to them. Mixing in family crises with the ongoing search for self-acceptance makes this a film that is entirely relatable, even if you've never been past the local rounds of a school spelling/maths/writing/poetry/art/music (anything but sport, essentially) competition.
It's a film for us oddballs, use weirdos who ran for school council, went to those regional education seminars, had meetings with the school principal that didn't involve your parents *nor* discipline.
Back to the Outback (2021)
Multiple layers of fun & strong Aussie cast
I'm not a big fan of animated films; no particular reason, but they just don't often appeal to me. Back to the Outback not only bounced over that hurdle, it had me texting recommendations to watch it to family before I'd finished my first run through.
It's a zippy little adventure film that makes really clever use of casting and scripting to provide a hour and a half's entertainment for everyone in the family. The characters are super-cute, the story isn't mind-bendingly original but it has enough twists & humourous moments that I found myself laughing out loud (alongside a couple of groans that I suspect were deliberately drawn out by some really clever voice over work by some of our best actors).
I'm usually a one-and-done film watcher - but if I arrived somewhere and this was playing, or a friend suggested catching it at the theatre, I'd be happy to front up for a re-watch. Probably perfect, because somehow I suspect this might end up on my family's Christmas Day Movie List - deservedly so, too.
Well worth watching alone or it would be a bunch of fun as a slightly more interactive experience with kids "suggesting" pathways for our heroes. It's put together in a fashion that lends itself to a panto-type home audience - pipe up & see if you can help U. S. S. Out of trouble :)
L'ultimo squalo (1981)
Italianate "Jaws"
I was mid-"Shark" festival - I'd decided to watch a bunch of films featuring sharks - and this rolled onto my screen. I almost gave it the flick as soon as I saw the 70s/80s letterboxing and the extended windsurfing intro scene; but Vic Morrow's name appeared in the credits about the same moment I found the remote, so it's got a reprieve. Kind of glad it did.
It turned out that this was Morrow's fourth-to-last film before his tragic death the following year.
It's Jaws, with a *much* better-looking cast mostly of Italian descent/origin, a crew with similar geographic characteristics, and a people-focussed storyline rather than the creature-feature Jaws became by its end.
Shot with a European market in mind, the film is gorgeously coloured - that lovely mix of vibrant pastels & warm earthy tones that pervade Italian movies from the 1950s onwards is really apparent in the "prepare to die" scenes filmed around the town in the first half of the film.
The most bizarre scene of the film is the windsurfers' love-fest, capturing them all bedding down, on their boardsX kn the beach, unknowingly snuggling up meters from the great white of the film's title who's paying little heed to the shark hunters' guarantees of safety for the young surfing crowd.
I do think that maybe this film, and Jaws, could've saved a lot of lives if they'd just hired some of the lifesavers from Bondi or Bell's Beach. The locals they use can't seem to spot a 35-foot shark until he, well, bites them in half. Not a great way to build trust in a profession. And frankly, building a shark-proof net, then not checking it again until after the competition day, well, that's just outright foolhardy, folks - I think the shark deserves his free dinner on the strength of that stupidity alone.
Yep, it's Jaws with a different sensibility. Probably a lot better film in a lot of ways, but does suffer a little from its mixed parentage - a purely American film or a purely Italian one would've been an easier nail to hit on the head. It's not awful, but it didn't excite me, either.
Shark Huntress (2021)
Takes itself too seriously & suffers for it
The cinemaphotography on this is striking - from the opening shots, the DP has it nailed. And it appears, sadly, to be the strongest aspect of the film.
The story is confusing, and even the explanatory discussions between characters don't serve to clarify anything. "Your mother had a secret lab, that wasn't a secret. She shot a video in front of the dream lab but had a real one in a secret location." What? Why? Whose guru are you, anyway, and why are you hanging around with a bunch of kids, and one od those kids' mums?
Nothing really makes much more sense than that the whole way through. As others have pointed out - randomly attacking a shark seems ... random. But, maybe the connection is the Channel 10 news report included early in the film that says Great Whites don't patrol Micronesia, and don't come within 1000km of where the "murder" took place. So, possibly the "that's the one" assumption is based on their not being any other Great Whites within cooee.
Most of all, I'm struggling to work out the connection between the shark attack and the crusade against polluters of plastic. Just doesn't seem to have the synergy I'd normally go for in a movie storyline.
I watched this as part of a "shark film" binge - you know, the bunch of Asylum Mega Shark films, and other bogus scifi B and Z grade creature-features. This one, she's not like the others. Shark Huntress tries to take itself seriously as an eco-flick, and it suffers from a low-grade script, dreary acting, and zero tie-in between the shark attack and the eco-warrior side of things (apart from an early one-liner about disturbed migratory patterns).
Don't flick this on looking for a good time. It's trying to get across a serious message and makes itself unwatchable in the process.
Land Shark (2017)
For "Z-grade" film fans only
Land Shark borders on "so bad it's funny", but sadly takes itself just a fraction too seriously to get there. The story is absurd, the writing preposterous, the acting could be beaten out by a decent number of high school productions, and the special effects ... aren't.
The film's highlight is the singular shot of the land shark moving up/across the one bit of beach they got a permit to shoot on, and the lowlight the infuriating beep of the tracker that runs in the foreground sound channel for a good 30% of the film, or more. The land shark's collection of semi-feline growls & roars are just mystifying.
Don't hold your breath to see the full shark model - it doesn't show up until around 46 minutes in; and when it does, leaves more questions than it resolves. You'll understand more if you can make it to that point of the film.
The only - and I'm pretty sure about this - saving grace of the film is that the lead - Sarah French - acts rings around the rest of the cast. She's the only person on screen who doesn't sound like her lines were being delivered by a bicycle courier with a flat tyre & sore legs. Although, the derro - who I'm reasonably suspicious was meant to be a running gag - comes in a strong second, on the strength of his death scene.
It's a train wreck of a film, but get yourself as sauced up as the eyewitness interviewed just before the two fishermen, and you might make it through. I give it 2/10 because it's following the same story at the end as it did at the start (and maybe that's part of the problem), but it doesn't pretend to be anything it's not - a fabulously bad film about sharks on land.
Galaxy (1986)
Tacky, trashy misnamed fun
Currently floating around as "Battle for the Planet" on Freeview streamer Tubi this is a Z-grade gem. Horrible effects, possibly the worst creature to ever grace a non-creature feature, schlock and enough double entendres to sink a battleship. And those are the highlights.
But it's fun, doesn't take itself seriously and there's enough mid-80s hair and fashion that you just can't put it out of its misery by turning it off. Grab a beer, some mates and some weed, and enjoy. This is a film from the world before social media, review aggregators and decent CGI.
Just laugh at it - it's all the movie wants from you.
No Way Get F*#ked F*#k Off! (2008)
Ah, nostalgia
The Angels are most often described as one of Australia's iconic rock and roll outfits; their high-energy shows in the late '70s and into the '80s could take a lukewarm audience and turn them into a screaming hyena pack. It was rock and roll, it was loud, and it was good.
The name of the doco is taken from a traditional audience response to a chorus line in one of the band's more famous songs: "Am I ever going to see your face again." Every time the band asked the question, the response roared back "No Way Get F*#ked F*#k Off!" Cathartic stuff for a teenager; but now almost an Australian cliché.
It's 30 years since the band played together; and here's a film about how a bunch of older rockers get back together and tour again. More wrinkles, more oxygen cylinders, more internal politics; and some brutal honesty. As a piece of film making it's not going to win awards, but as a trip down memory lane, it's worth the hour.