Author: Mark Goodyear

For every debut feature I review, particularly those funded from the smallest and most independent of production companies, there should be an assumption, if I don’t say it explicitly, that I have nothing but respect for the brave directors leaping into something incomparable to anything else. Nothing is easy in filmmaking least of all if it’s your first real attempt, and no matter the final product, the effort is to be applauded. 

Eli Batalion is no exception and his work with his feature debut “Appiness”, while lacking in critical areas, are surprisingly solid and well worthy of applause. The film follows Eric (Batalion), an almost-thirty stuck in a dead-end job he hates, and Raj (Varun Saranga), his high school buddy in almost the exact same situation except he’s good with women and Eric isn’t. Once both free of their hated vocations they find themselves lead to one idea, to make an app so successful that when they sell it to the highest bidder, they’ll never have to work another day in their lives. 

Things don’t go exactly according to plan, as anyone who has ever seen a movie would guess. In fact, there’s an air of predictability marring the entire film; quite simply nothing happens that feels like any form of original thought. The only saving grace in this respect is the humour. It’s nothing new, there’s too much toilet humour and a lot of very on the nose sexual references, yet beyond all odds and logic, the film is quite funny. There’s plenty of laugh out loud humour especially from the utterly silly friendship between Raj and Eric who share so much and yet aren’t even really friends. 

All in all, they are likeable characters, all of them. As a trio, when including Eric’s love interest Jeanine (Amber Goldfarb), they are uniquely endearing. Unfortunately, despite this being a strength of the film, it becomes more of a detriment. Their friendship, and the whole film for that matter, has the distinct feeling that it would have worked better in a television format. Despite dramatic reaches for inspirational moments and attempts at heartfelt silver screen romance Appiness never feels like more than an extended sitcom episode. The many quirky side characters don’t help in this respect, like tech blogger Sierra (Jayne Heitmeyer) who is a not so secret dominatrix, or Vito (Carl Alacchi) the mob boss with a thrown in and needless cameo that only amounts to him being fooled into the film’s resolution. 

Looking further only reveals a tragic lack of depth. Everything is surface level with only the potential to matter rather than actually meaning anything. Both Eric and Raj have deep engrained family issues that only result in gags and cheap payoffs. And the romance angle amounts to quiet guy gets girl just because they meet coincidentally and like computers. The pieces are there, it is perfectly modern in terms of the overarching story, the characters are likable, the performances are strong in the aspects they need to be, but when there’s no substance, not even a façade, then what’s the point of watching?

And even after saying all that I think there’s something here. There’s a moment in the film, where Eric and Raj argue on a bridge where everything feels important and complete as if finally capturing all of what Batalion intended. It’s the best shot in all of Appiness and the beauty of it inspires the characters words to actually mean something, if this moment can be taken and expanded upon something quite wonderful could come out of it. 

Despite a likeable cast and some funny moments, Appiness lacks too much depth to be considered worthwhile.

When The Painted Bird ends, there’s such a corrupted feeling about everything for a few moments, as if we don’t deserve the privilege of watching someone go through such atrocities when someone lived them. It’s worth noting that the events of the novel by Jerzy Kosinski, which the film adapts, aren’t autobiographical, but others more than likely lived out horrifyingly similar situations.

The Painted Bird is about a nameless young Jewish boy (Petr Kotlar) and his terrifying fight to survive in war-torn eastern Europe during World War II. We meet him left in the wake of his parents leaving him in the hands of an elderly woman, and things quickly go awry seeing the boy become homeless and hopeless facing persecution at every turn. Quickly, his innocence decays, leaving us only a husk of a child who fights horror after horror with little to no chance of escape.

This is the most challenging viewing experience of any film I’ve ever seen. There were many moments where my hand rose to shield my eyes as startlingly real atrocities occurred. Václav Marhoul directs with such a heavy hand that throughout the impact only rises and rises to a melancholy crescendo. There is no pure instance of love in the harsh world of The Painted Bird, what few moments there are always come with a catch.

The purest love comes from a priest played wonderfully by Harvey Keitel, yet he is sickly and unfortunately ignorant seeing him leave as quickly as he arrives. Without him, there is little to no light in amongst the dark. Throughout there is brutal murders, assaults, a case of incest and one of bestiality and even an eye-gouging that would make Game of Thrones fans shudder.

Yet for all the desire to disengage and look away from this hellscape, you never do. You peak through your fingers as they cover your eyes, you fear even blinking in case someone finally ends the odyssey of the boy. In a film so full of desolation and death anything is possible, which forms an uncommonly engaging experience.

And none of that would work so well without its star. Debuting actor Petr Kotlar isn’t called on to do much, in fact, he hardly has any lines and rarely shows emotion. Despite this, he still stands tall as a performer, and it’s his ability to make himself absent that makes his performance so compelling.

He manages to come across as if the real little boy on the inside, whom we glimpse at the beginning, has run away and is outside of the body that we see for the rest of the film. He wholly encompasses tragic transformation and embraces his duality as it all comes full circle for the briefest of moments at the end, it’s that brilliant. For an actor so young this is an unbelievably complete and controlled performance that would take a level of maturity most teens aren’t capable of let alone 9-year-olds.

There can be no understating how important of a story this is. People need to see this as a timely reminder of why we should always actively avoid war. It isn’t worth stealing the youth from unknowing children, nothing is. Yes, many disgraceful acts are unique to World War II, and the world will hopefully never see the likes of them again. But more war breeds more death and breeds more stories like this one; we must never let humanity become a monstrosity in this way again, and The Painted Bird speaks more to that than any film ever made.

The Painted Bird will stay with you long after the credits roll, more than likely it will stay with you forever. Which is good, let it serve as a reminder never to let this happen again.

Recent Australian films have a knack of falling into two distinct categories. The first is picturesque dramedies that really only amount tourism ads with a story. The second is gritty and violent critiques of our past, generally intensely justified ones. The True History of the Kelly Gang ultimately rests in the latter group but is so absurd and trivial that it attempts to make a third group which sees history mutilated into a cinematic playground.

It sounds scathing to call a film absurd and trivial, but that is not my intention. The team of the director Justin Kurzel and his screenwriter Shaun Grant have combined to make something genuinely intriguing as they embrace the falsehoods they tell to maximum effect. They make it very clear in every facet of the film that none of this bar the most basic points ever happened, which creates quite a unique atmosphere. Unlike most historical fiction, this isn’t an epic. Instead, The True History of the Kelly Gang is almost a satire.

We follow the most notable Kelly of all, Ned (George MacKay & Orlando Schwerdt) from his tumultuous youth to his harrowing final days. It’s a tale of how the sins of the mother and father destroy the son, with his mother Ellen (Essie Davis), being the chief emotional manipulator of his demise. Family is everything to the Kelly’s, and his fate intertwines with them in the most tragic of ways. As Ned grows up, he attempts to leave his family behind him and chase something more significant, but when he returns, he sets in motion events which destroy his family and put him on the run.

Plenty of the narrative revolves around crossdressing, but it never develops a correlation to sexuality, rather it links to insanity. There is a discourse about how sex as a man is better in a dress, and a significant character gets his proper introduction wearing stockings and nothing else as he converses with Ned, it’s all incredibly strange. Yet the grittiness of the tale remains steadfast, and the Australian frontier is harsh as ever being spectacularly filmed by the cinematographer Ari Wegner. This generates a stark clash of themes, which works partially to the films credit seeing as how the film works best as a balancing act of tone. Remarkably this mash-up manages to work far better than one would assume.

However, as a piece of work with something to say The True History of The Kelly Gang falls a staggeringly short. There isn’t any insight into Kelly, his madness, or the period; which struggles to come to life on screen outside of the apparent fact that life was difficult. Drive is ultimately what the film lacks above anything else, what was the purpose of this endeavour into the avant-garde? The fact I cannot provide an answer to that question is the biggest issue of all. Yes, it ends as a critique of a man who is wrongly considered a legend and attempts to destroy his mythical nature. But, Australia has already heard this message, few still hold Ned in the same regard they once did, it’s rare he’ll even be mentioned in most places. This considered I’m not sure a film distorting someone so long gone, who had no grand impact on the world and what little he did fast fading, needed to be made, just read the book.

The performances are strong all round with rising star George MacKay bringing the perfect kind of crazy to the role. Russell Crowes small appearance is also enjoyable, and his encounters with Charlie Hunnam are both disturbing and hilarious. Those aside there is one man who steals the show, Nicholas Hoult as Constable Fitzpatrick who is just simply engrossingly absurd and cruel. The True History of The Kelly Gang is at its best when he’s on the screen, which is unfortunately not enough.

The True History of The Kelly Gang is a wonderfully gift-wrapped present that excites you even to look at but lets you down when you open it and find nothing.

Richmond Virginia, like so many other cities and towns before and since, is home to a jail. The host of those awaiting trials and sentencing jails see a revolving door of inmates throughout a year. Sam Bathrick’s new documentary 16 Bars takes us inside Richmond city jail and explores the lives of four inmates.

The problem with many jails in the United States, including the one we visit in Richmond, is that the faces are becoming all too familiar and through investigating an unnerving reality 16 Bars uncovers why. 

With the help of Grammy award-winning artist Speech Thomas, we explore the stories and themes that have seen black men thrown into incarceration for severe drug abuse. Speech came to Richmond jail after hearing about a rehabilitation program implemented there that gives the inmates access to a recording studio. He begins recording and producing their lyrics into songs which sees the men express themselves in ways they would have been otherwise incapable of. Speech allows them an all too brief embrace with their inner turmoil. Then, it falls to the men themselves and how they turn from reuniting with the past to embracing the future. 

Some find it easy to live on the outside after being locked up. Others see no other way of living differently from how they lived before. When you face abuse as a child, or you can’t control yourself no matter how hard you try, the odds are already heavily against you, and that’s what the men we meet face. In leaving, they return right back to the circumstances that saw them become who they were when arrested, and they re-offend.

The program attempts to change that. It’s a process of strengthening their will and expression for them to transcend their past sins, and the men we follow genuinely believe in it for a time. 

There’s repeat offender Garland who is hanging on for one final chance to be with his girlfriend and turn his life around. Then there’s De’vonte, the youngest of the four who followed in the criminal footsteps of his mother and became a dealer. Anthony is another inmate, he saw his mother abused and then watched her lie to the police about how it happened, he faced abuse himself not long after, and he’s a violent man as a result; he relapses more than any of them. Finally, we come to Teddy, who when we meet him first has been out for four days.

He saw a man killed right in front of him in his youth while trying to buy drugs. At 15 he developed an addiction to crack and pain pills so that he could deal with the things he’d seen. Of these men, Garland may be the only real criminal, and he takes legitimate steps to reform. The other three didn’t choose crime; they had it thrust upon them by circumstances out of their control. 

16 Bars is an exceptional example of documentary filmmaking being the heart and soul of truth. I honestly believe the most worthwhile stories to tell via documentary are those that otherwise would never be told, and that’s precisely what this is, delivering a voice to the voiceless.

Yes, they have broken the law, and each of them alludes to the fact that they have endangered other people’s lives which is entirely unacceptable but to use the word of Speech “I do believe in redemption, with everybody, with anybody, no matter what they’ve done”. 

Through an unwavering lens, 16 Bars investigates the ways humanity traps itself in a cage through cycles of crime. Sam Bathrick has created something special with his efforts in telling a story the world needed to hear.

1917 isn’t a gimmick. It’s not Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins deciding that making a film look like one continuous shot would be a fun thing to do. Rather, 1917 is nothing short of a complete tour de force from both sides of the camera, and one of 2019’s absolute best films. 

The script is astonishingly Mendes’ first-ever writing credit, and the only reason he wrote it is because of how deeply personal the story is for him. He, along with his writing partner Krysty Wilson-Cairns, based the film on the experiences of his grandfather in The Great War and the stories he told Mendes. This simple fact is why the film is so moving, so personal and impactful.

George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman play Lance Corporals Schofield and Blake. Two young British soldiers whom we meet unassumingly as they find what rest they can while fighting on the Western Front. All too soon Blake is ordered to pick a man and report to General Erinmore (Colin Firth) and thanks to being right next to him Schofield is the lucky chosen man. They walk and pass a seemingly endless amount of men, many of whom would charge to their death in days to come.

And, as always in war films, these men and their sacrifice and the needlessness of their mass death is the focus. Once with the general, we find out that in amongst the devastation, Blake and Schofield have the rare opportunity to prevent tragedy and save Blake’s brother. His brother is a member of a company of 1600 men, stationed deep in enemy territory, about to walk into a German trap that would see all of them slaughtered.

With the telephone lines cut, there is only one way to deliver the vital orders to the man that needs to see them, on foot and through no man’s land right on the tail of a retreating German force preparing to sucker punch. Desperate to ensure his brother’s safety, Blake sets off leaving Schofield no choice but to follow.

We follow them for every step of their arduous journey, from the dank trenches to the desolate no man’s land, to the grassy rolling fields of northern France. Each is more breathtaking than the next and filled to the brim with nail-biting tension. There’s nothing quite like the experience of watching 1917 for the first time; you forget to breathe, the camera passes so many horrors the basics of a corpse seem mundane by the end. There’s the eeriest feeling that it’s all a bit too real, and then there’s the harrowing question all World War One films ask, why did the world put itself through all this again years 20 years later? These thoughts and questions flow through your mind as you watch and simply soak everything in, stunned.

Each and every second of this is captured by Deakins who outdoes even himself with the cinematography. The actors are the focal point of almost every shot, and he does them a great service. He captures them on the forefront of disaster in ways no other film has ever done and may never do again for a long time. There are moments where you feel like time has stopped, you aren’t watching anymore; you are there stuck in a moment. No one in the world creates these infinite moments like Deakins. He’s a master of developing the sensation that you’ve entirely handed yourself over to a film and 1917 owes him much for its brilliance. 

By comparison, Mendes’ career tells a different story. He misfired with Spectre, his efforts there lacked the thrills of Skyfall and felt incredibly underwhelming at the time. There’s no better way to bounce back than with something as intense as 1917. Above all else, applaud him for his courage. He took 100 million dollars from a studio and set out to shoot, on location, a film designed to look like one continuous shot, set entirely around two young actors who’ve only recently begun to gain exposure at the Hollywood level. He took this impossible ambition and made it something out of this world and deserves his name up there with the likes of Scorsese and Tarantino as one of 2019’s finest directors. 

Yet Mendes and Deakins would have nothing if it weren’t for the extreme talents they placed before our eyes. The biggest regret of this awards season is the lack of recognition coming for the two young leads. They are chameleons in their roles, uncovering parts of their range that I can’t wait to see again in different circumstances. In a different year, they could both be frontrunners for Academy Awards, but the powers that be have decided this year isn’t that year. After seeing the film though and soaking in the stunning conclusion, you realise that you have just seen two future superstars take their first steps to the top of the mountain and that’s more exciting than anything else. 

1917 is awe-inspiring at every turn and will be immortalised as the moment George Mackay and Dean Charles Chapman made it big on the silver screen.