Netflix Australia
Film: Clinical (2017, US), directed by Alistair Legrand – out now
Netflix continues to produce and release its own films, and this new horror release treads that perfect line between trashy and clever.
Following in the thematic steps of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, Clinical takes on the idea of revenge on psychiatrists with a hard-edged, tightly contained psychological thriller that occasionally swings into all-out gore.
Dr Jane Mathers is a trauma expert whose new patient, a man recovering from a face transplant after a road accident, prompts some of her own shocks to resurface. As she ramps up her self-medication, her handle on reality slips, and the plot comes satisfyingly full circle with some smart twists and messed-up revelations. A must for horror fans.
Film: I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017, US), directed by Macon Blair – out 24 February
Another Netflix Original; this time, a surprising genre piece. The writer-director Macon Blair’s debut begins with a classic set-up: a passive everyday protagonist pushed to the limit, into action and eventually out of her depth as she begins to realise the malevolence of the world around her (remember Michael Douglas in Falling Down). When Ruth, a humble nurse’s assistant, is burgled, the combination of an ambivalent police officer and a zealous crime-fighting neighbour nudges her toward vigilantism.
The film feels like a dry indie comedy at first (it also won the top prize at Sundance this year) but bends towards the crime genre and even takes on horror conventions, such as the crazed killer who just won’t die. Yet it is a sensitively made debut film with strong character actors, Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood, providing the emotional linchpin throughout the chaos. An interesting new contribution to the world of film beyond cinematic release.
Films: Lethal Weapon 1–4 (1987-98, US) – out now
Revisit these classic buddy-comedy films and be amazed at what action franchises were once like. Danny Glover’s cautious family man and Mel Gibson’s loose unit are LAPD officers following the classic odd couple dynamic as they crack all manner of criminal cases from drug rings to arms trades.
For popcorn entertainment value, the Lethal Weapon series slays most contemporary Teenage Mutant Transformers of the Galaxy-style fare. The films have discernible plots, with action sequences that merely punctuate the plot’s progression when needed. The visuals are grounded in reality, with a reliance on live-action stunts and pyrotechnics rather than the green screens and blurry CGI that have taken over action film-making since the 1990s. The dialogue sparkles with satisfyingly corny one-liners (“I’m too old for this shit”) and the mullets are glorious.
Film: Midnight Special (2016, US), directed by Jeff Nichols – out 24 February
Emotional sci-fi: what a dream movie category. The US auteur Jeff Nichols distils the fears of parenthood into an alien narrative, engaging the science-fiction genre with the intelligence of an art-house sensibility and a big-studio budget.
Midnight Special is also a chase film that drops us into the action without exposition or set-up: devoted father Roy (Michael Shannon, as nervy as ever) goes on the run from a midwest cult and government agents (including shiny-eyed Adam Driver) to protect his son, Alton, who seems to be communicating with extraterrestrial beings.
The chase takes him to the core of his fatherly terrors: that he cannot shield his child from a hostile world; that Alton’s protection lies in Roy’s releasing him. The film’s culmination – a big twisty sci-fi reveal – is as novelistic as any of the genre’s classics and as imaginative and moving as anything I’ve seen in the past five years in either independent or studio film-making.
Honourable mentions: Fargo, season one (TV, out now), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (film, 8 February), Trevor Noah – Afraid of t he Dark (comedy special, 21 February)
Stan
Film: Entertainment (US, 2015), by Rick Alverson – out 3 February
Proof that the most interesting, daring cinema rarely gets wide distribution, let alone in Australian cinemas. A film from the unpredictable peripheries of independent film-making, Entertainment is a bleak vision of the US as a junkyard paradise of lonely souls, empty motels and everyday madness. It’s a comedy of awkwardness and sadness, led by the real-life comedian Gregg Turkington as a failing comedian touring small desert towns north of the Mexican border.
The film is structured around his horrific nightly standup show, before and after which he tries and fails to call his estranged daughter and meets other lost individuals, all emitting their own SOSs into a careless society. Abstract interludes bring us into the comedian’s decaying mind, while the colours of the desert bleed and burn into each other. The writer-director Rick Alverson heard the dying whimpers of the white American male demographic before they became a roar. Hard to find, hard to watch, but so necessary.
Honourable mentions: Jurassic Park (film, out now), Paper Planes (film, 10 February), A Most Violent Year (film, 25 February)
Dendy Direct
Film: Arrival (2016, US), directed by Denis Villeneuve – out 8 February
Another film articulating parental fears through sci-fi conventions; this time the smartest blockbuster of late last year. Amy Adams’ Louise Banks is a lonely linguistics professor, dealing with the death of her small daughter when she’s called upon to decipher the communications of newly arrived aliens.
If much sci-fi is about the philosophical question of what it means to be human, or of imagining dystopia to comment on the politics of today, Arrival takes a more personal, emotive approach to the genre.
In a high-concept, cerebral film, the director, Denis Villeneuve, (of the forthcoming Blade Runner sequel) fragments plot and time in flashbacks and flash-forwards to present a moving meditation about loss: how else do you deal with the loss of a loved one except by rewinding in your mind to relive the best of the past, and fast-forwarding to imagine a better future. Watch with headphones or the best speakers you can: the sound design is created almost completely as Louise’s ears would hear it, putting us into a real place of empathy with her.
Honourable mentions: La Belle Saison (film, 8 February), American Honey (film, 22 February)
Amazon
Series: The Man in the High Castle (2015, US), created by Frank Spotnitz – season two out 10 February
The US streaming giant Amazon entered the Australian market with little fanfare late last year. This alternate-history series about a vast American Reich is the main reason to sign up, with the second season dropping this month.
Based on Philip K Dick’s novel, The Man in the High Castle begins with the premise that the Nazis won world war two. The US is split between the Japanese Pacific States in the west and the Greater Nazi Reich in the east, with a neutral ribbon running through the centre. The characters, good and bad, are all trying to uncover the identity of a resistance man who circulates subversive newsreels that show the US winning the war.
The series’ rain-shiny, sepia-bled, noir aesthetic is the ideal expression of a society in which reality seems less real than ever. The concept resonates anew in the Trump era, in that it forces us to imagine the world not as it is but as it might become. In this case, though, the show imagines that the forces of authoritarianism will come from foreign sources, rather than domestic ones. Ghostly, unsettling viewing for our times.
Foxtel Play
TV: The Americans, seasons one to three (US, 2013-16), created by Joe Weisberg – out now
This spy drama has been beyond the eyes of many Australian viewers, for lack of a screening platform. Finally, it’s here – thank you, Foxtel Play!
The Americans takes its inspiration from the Soviet sleeper agents sent to the US during the cold war. Elizabeth and Philip (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) have two children, a small travel agency business and a home in suburban Washington DC during the shadowy Reagan era. They are also spies. Their marriage was arranged by the KGB, they never speak in Russian or of their past, and they live in a society that wishes for their destruction.
In the opening episodes, their cover is almost blown and, as the seasons roll on, the increasing pressure of their deadly assignments both threatens their working relationship and deepens their emotional entanglements. What if their fake relationship were to become real? How do they feel about each other?
This is more than a conventional US spy drama. The primary source of tension lies in the use of a spy cover-marriage as a metaphor for long-term relationships: what if the person you were closest to was a perfect stranger?
Bonus info: the show’s creator, Joe Weisberg, is a former CIA officer and the chemistry between Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys was so strong they fell in love on set.
Honourable mentions: Louie (TV, seasons one to five, out now), Money Monster (film, out now), A Bigger Splash (film, out now), Where the Wild Things Are (film, out now)
SBS On Demand
Film: Mr Turner (2014, UK), directed by Mike Leigh – out now
“The universe is chaotic, and you make us see it!”
The art-house auteur Mike Leigh brings us more than a biopic, going beyond even one of his trademark character studies. The loveliest dimension of Mr Turner is the sensibility of colour and light it carries across from the paintings of its subject, the English Romanticist landscape artist JMW Turner. The film is all soft light, backlit faces and pale near-monochrome with shots of gold.
Beyond Timothy Spall’s nuanced performance as the great, gruff eccentric, I think Mr Turner is best absorbed like a Terrence Malick film shot during the golden hour: as a cascade of image and colour, as an ode to the sublime in art history.
Film: Beneath Clouds (2002, Australia), directed by Ivan Sen – out now
Beneath Clouds is an inescapably Australian film. The Indigenous writer-director Ivan Sen has more recently turned to commercial projects with an art-house sensibility (like last year’s noir crime drama, Goldstone), but his earlier, open-ended, experimental works articulate a frustration, resentment, longing and optimism that resonates in softer and stronger ways than his later genre projects.
Over the course of a car trip, teens Lena and Vaughan talk and clash and ally themselves to one another as the landscape rolls by. Lena is the daughter of an Aboriginal mother and looking for her Irish father; Vaughan has escaped from law enforcement; both are tougher and more vulnerable than they seem.
A road trip story, a love story, a coming-of-age search for identity: all these things come together and unravel again in Sen’s singular debut.
TV: Drunk History (2016, US), by Derek Waters and Jeremy Konner – out now
Things have gotten a little too real in real life and politics lately. Drunk History is the antidote. This is the show that proves comedians make the dodgiest, most entertaining historians and think up the tidiest, cleverest formats for television. Its host, Derek Waters, gets a funny genius sloshed and they relay a part of American history that they’re deeply, madly obsessed with (like the great escape of early LSD advocate Timothy Leary, jailed for being smart in a dumb society).
Details and embellishments spill and slur about, while actors enact the story and lip-synch the dialogue. Really, it’s a storytelling show that harnesses comedians’ alien knack for oddball articulation and drawing unlikely connections. The alcohol consumption only heightens their enthusiasm into word-tumbling passion. Besides, what’s the harm in a few more “alternative facts” these days? Great guest stars; look out for Chris Parnell (30 Rock’s Dr Leo Spaceman) as the boozed-up chef and final survivor of the RMS Titanic.
Honourable mentions: The Assassin (film, out now), Toomelah (film, out now), Living Black (TV, returns 22 February)
ABC iView
TV: Art Bites (2017, Australia), directed by Kate Blackmore – out now
The ease and inexpensiveness of making digital television means that ABC iView’s arts programming is taking snappy, nimble shape, with lower-budget, daring, small-scale projects by new directors in a way that old-school television could rarely make room for. And what better mode of viewing for a bite-sized series about internet artists?
The Glass Bedroom is a collection of six five-minute videos offering little snapshots of Australia’s Instagram artists, with a particular emphasis on those twisting gender and sexuality. Amy Louise (@ilovebrucewillis) comes up against censorship of her body on social media, while Rowan Oliver (@everybodysdaughter) works out how to take control of her image in the context of a culture keen to commercialise transwomen’s bodies. But the series is more about lovely images and artists speaking for themselves than deep critical thoughts. Tidy snippets of something else.
Honourable mentions: The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (TV, out now), Newton’s Law (TV, out 9 February)
