The Babadook - pro & con (with Eve Lucas)

(Originally appeared in EXBERLINER on May 7, 2015)

CON: Ba-ba-boring

While its coldly pristine photography pleases the eyes and the rare female-driven narrative is very much to be appreciated, this insipid excuse of a horror film bores more than anything else. Yes, childrearing is tough and exhaustion could be the least agreeable of sensations, but a tired mother and petulant son do not make for a scary movie. In the course of the story, which weaves together the familiar haunted house setup and a frustrating case of ineffective parenting, we feel sympathetic toward our first overtaxed, then wrongly accused heroine. But fear – that trickiest of emotions to artificially encourage – remains elusive. There are jumpy moments (almost exclusively the result of sudden movements or loud noises) but the difference between such instant, knee-jerk reactions and the lingering, purely psychological response of dread should be clear.

And so we wait for the poor woman to relax, the nasty kid to calm down, and the director to stop startling us with pop-ups or screams. But that’s pretty much it. The performance by Essie Davis is intense and technically sound, marking the progression of her character's unravelling with escalating force. But seen from the perspective of a genre film lover, it feels like a wasted effort in a fundamentally misguided attempt to terrorise.

PRO: Whose mind is it anyway? (by Eve Lucas)

Worried about things that go bang in the night? You should be. Not the page-bound variety, the Babadook nursery spook of infantile fears with which young Samuel (Wiseman) terrorises single mother Amelia (Davis), insisting on nightly inspections of dark spaces before creeping into her bed and robbing her of what little sleep remains.

No. It’s inner demons that can rise and destroy. Like all good monsters, they’re in the mind – and not just those of children. First-time director Kent hints as much when we learn early on that Amelia was the author of “oh, some children’s books” before she lost her husband in an accident on the way to the hospital for Samuel’s birth. Six years on, that violent tragedy and its unarticulated legacy has found darkness in Amelia – and in a terrible voracity that sucks mother and child into the cellar of unresolved trauma. Set largely in a house of blues and greys that reflect chillingly on a doomed family, Kent develops the Babadook as an amateur monster who moves with desperate crudeness before exploding into a metaphor for mind games that we ignore at our peril. Frightening in implication more than affect, "The Babadook" will throw its shadow over your dreams for longer than you might expect.

The Water Diviner

(Originally appeared in EXBERLINER on May 7, 2015)

Boasting the visual opulence of a cross-continental spread and the historical gravitas of World War I, this drama-adventure nevertheless fails to engage, move or inspire, proving that debut director Russell Crowe still has some way to go as a storyteller.

Based on true events about a family man from Australia who ventures into the turbulent political hot zone of post-war Turkey to find his missing sons, one suspects the potential for an emotions and adrenalin-filled ride is there. Sadly, such promise is not to be for the film is doubly dulled by a lack of focus and the plainness of its voice. Subplots that don't go anywhere get picked up and dropped off with little consideration for timing. The blandly benevolent tone used to describe forgiveness, reconciliation and a burgeoning romance lends the proceedings an overall sense of limitation despite the obvious grandness of their scale.          

The movie does feature striking imagery, however, with the baffling geometrical wonders of a mosque interior and the stunning shades of light thrown by the setting sun gloriously captured on fine, dusty lens. But all that beauty ultimately can't make up for the low stakes, the weak pulse and the punch that never came.

Short takes

"Tracks" chronicles one girl's journey through the vast expanse of the Australian outback with four camels and a dog. It's easy to like since the concept behind it about men versus nature is graceful in its simplicity and the movie itself is competently made throughout. The photography is unsurprisingly gorgeous, capturing the barrenness of the desert and the translucence of the ocean in all their grandeur and purity the beauty feels holy sometimes. As a dramatic feature it's rather undercooked, though, limited in its ability to surprise and move by the trappings of a real-life story. The challenges along the road are all more or less forseeable and none of director John Curran's attempts at developing an emotional association with the protagonist, whether from the angles of a love interest, a loyal pet or a troubled past, has the needed space to brew.

"Neighbors" by Nicholas Stoller has a premise that shouts comedic potential but never really delivers on that promise. The script lacks fluency and in its haste to pack gags and retain a shred of emotional relatability somehow misses both the anarchic outrageousness and the tender core it aims for. Even with a brisk running time of 96 minutes, the jokes often feel repetitive or forced. All the major cast members have their moment to shine but none is consistently good. Faring especially poorly is Seth Rogen, who has rarely tried this hard and come off so obnoxious on the big screen. The talented Rose Byrne is mostly wasted in her flustered efforts to catch up with Rogen's obvious, excessive improvisation. And Zac Efron is just not very funny. That the movie gets stolen by a dialogue-less infant says a lot about the quality of the material.

"Reaching for the Moon" tells the romance between famed American poet Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares in by-the-book biopic format, with all the ups and downs pretty much mapped out from start to finish. Director Bruno Barreto hardly ever tries anything remotely innovative, so while the two-hour film flows by smoothly enough, it also remains resolutely unremarkable. Technical aspects are uneven. Best in show is the diverse, subtle costume design while the original score is constanttly overwrought, adding unnecessarily sentimental notes to an already soapy narrative. Lead actress Glória Pires has charisma to spare but is rarely given worthy lines to deliver. Views of Rio de Janeiro's sweeping coastline and Samambai's lush ridges offer welcome respites from the stupor of melodrama.

"The Selfish Giant" is the kind of movie to watch when one's feeling a little too comfy in their blessedly unchallenged existence. Set around an impoverished community in rural England, it's about people who have not known one easy day in their life. Through lucid lensing that communicates a depressing urgency and puts the ugliness of it all in striking focus, writer/director Clio Barnard hits that gritty note from the get-go and never strays. With sober, compact language, verbal or visual, she takes you to a place and time that feels awfully real. Child actor Conner Chapman is so well-versed in the calloused language of the abused and so practiced in the expressions of the perpetually disappointed it's heartbreaking to watch. Not terribly original but authentic to a fault, this movie is a powerful, relentlessly bleak dose of social realism.

The Great Gatsby

The 66th Cannes Film Festival opened tonight with Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby". A flawed film in many ways- faulty editing, uneven acting, repeated use of sweeping, zooming, downward-peeking camera angles for the benefit of 3D effects left a chunk of the movie sagging and tired, while some oddly theatrical staging hurt the dramatic tension in a couple of key scenes- but there's no denying the spectacular set and costume design, the bold and often sizzling music choices and the sheer manic energy that sprang from the creative force behind such crazy aesthetic details.

The ending is nice, appropriately subdued and beautifully tragic, it's just a pity that what came before it feels so inconsistently brilliant and that it took so long to get there at all.