Richard Leonard, SJ - Movie Reviews from Fr. Leonard

Not Quite Hollywood | College Road Trip | The Incredible Hulk

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian | Then She Found Me

Shutter | What Happens In Vegas | Smother

Cactus | The Ten Commandments | Gone Baby Gone | Smart People | The Black Balloon

Definitely, Maybe. | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story | Charlie Wilson's War | The Golden Compass

The wild, untold story of “Ozploitation” cinema: a time when the Australian film industry showed the world explored sex, violence, horror and foot-to-the-floor, full bore road action. An often forgotten cinematic era, these Aussie genre films of the 70s & 80s drew huge box office (Mad Max, Alvin Purple, Barry Mackenzie), repelled critics, and proved the inspiration for some future filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) and the creators of the Saw horror series.

If you intensely dislike “ocker comedies”, slasher films, and the road crash genre, then do not under circumstances go and see Not Quite Hollywood.

If, however, you are an adult who wants to see what all the fuss was about in the early years of the remerging Australian film industry, or you want some nostalgia, then maybe this documentary could be considered.

I am somewhere in between the two positions, appalled at how many bad films were made by filmmakers who just did not care about the content of their films, as long as it was “great entertainment” and made a quick buck, as well as grateful that one film now brings them all together into some sort of coherent story.
This film challenges the regular misconception that the cinema causes social change. It does do that to a certain degree, but much more so it follows social change, reflecting back to a society what shifts have taken place.

1970-1986 was a pivotal era in Australia. The youthful population were strongly asserting themselves over and against the structures and strictures of previously unchallenged political, social, military and religious institutions. Drugs were more available, the sexual revolution was in full flight, protests against the Vietnam War preoccupied University students and freedom without responsibility was the accepted path to happiness.
Not Quite Hollywood celebrates the films of this movement and mindset.

By the mid 1980s these movements were unmasked for the falsehoods they contained and promised. In world now filled with AIDS, social and family breakdown and terrorism, freedom with responsibility became the new mantra.

The problem with this documentary is that while it touches on serious issues of censorship, film funding, and films as a social barometer, it does not dwell here for long enough. There is next to no self critical analysis of just how monocultural, sexist and racist these films were. And in an ironic touch, we return with regular monotony to the godfather of contemporary, violent schlock, Quentin Tarantino, to keep telling us how “cool”, “awesome” and “brilliant” these films were. There is more than a little cultural cringe about it.

One of the most insightful comments comes from Barry Humphries who disliked the ocker culture so much he helped produce the Barrie McKenzie films. “It is amazing how some people see satire as documentary”, he observes.

And given that Not Quite Hollywood argues for a rebirth of these genres in our present industry Humphries ends us being a most unlikely prophet.

Choosing which college to attend can be the most exciting and thrilling time of a young US woman’s life, unless your overprotective father isn’t quite ready to let you go. In College Road Trip, Melanie (Raven-Symoné) is eagerly looking forward to her first big step towards independence when she plans a “girls only” road trip to check out prospective universities. But when her overbearing police chief father (Lawrence) insists on escorting her instead, she soon finds her dream trip has turned into a nightmare adventure full of comical misfortune and turmoil.

Even for the comic road trip genre, College Road Trip is very lame indeed. This film is repetitively episodic with a silly script. It has every road film cliché imaginable: the flat tyre; getting lost in the woods; an out control animal (this time it is a pig); an interrupted wedding; choreographed song and dance routines; a frat party; a groovy black grandma; and a police chase. The four writers threw everything they had at screen and still none of it sticks.

The only surprise is to see Donny Osmond in a lead role, but even that alerts us to how sweet this film’s ending is going to be. Even for a Disney film the final moments in College Road Trip are sickeningly saccharine.

All this would not matter if it were not for the important issue underlying the screen play, how a culture of deceit can arise when parents cannot let go of their children and allow young adults to make adult decisions.

It is a matter of some Catholic embarrassment that the university Melanie wants to get into is the Jesuit’s prestigious Georgetown University at Washington DC. The Jesuits clearly did not cooperate with this film because none of the scenes supposedly on their campus are in fact there, and even when Melanie and her father look up at the founders of Georgetown in the Great Hall, there is not a Jesuit priest to be seen. I don’t think so. If I were president of Georgetown I would sue for institutional defamation.

Based on the Marvellous Marvel comic Scientist Bruce Banner (Norton) is desperately hunting for a cure to the gamma radiation that poisoned his cells and unleashes the unbridled force of rage within him: The Hulk. Banner has been living in the shadows—cut off from a life and the woman he loves, Dr. Elizabeth “Betty” Ross (Tyler). Living as a fugitive to avoid the obsessive pursuit of his nemesis, General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Hurt), he knows that a military machine seeking to capture him and brutally exploit his power is always only a few steps behind.

As all three grapple with the secrets that led to The Hulk’s creation, they are confronted with a vicious new adversary known as The Abomination (Roth), a monstrosity whose destructive strength exceeds even The Hulk’s own. And to defeat this nemesis, one scientist must make an agonizing final choice: accept a peaceful life as Bruce Banner or find heroism in the creature he holds inside The Incredible Hulk.

All up, so far, there have been six films or television programmes dedicated to this much-loved Marvel comic character. To my mind the 1978 television series was the most effective probably because our eyes were not so well trained to enjoy the dazzling CGI and special effects to which we have now become accustomed.

This version of the hulk is much better than Ang Lee and Eric Bana’s laboured effort in 2003, but that is not saying much. This Incredible Hulk does not work well enough to be super action entertainment.
The problem is not with the excellence of the filmmakers. This is a very expensive and assured piece. The problem lies in the storyline. Unlike most of the other Marvel characters, where it is easier to suspend disbelief, the Hulk is an unreal character in a very real world.

And maybe with the present debate around genetic engineering, scientific experimentation and a seeming ethic of “if we can do it we should do it”, the premise upon which the Hulk is based is not unreal enough anymore. It might be prophetic.

Whatever of that, this film is very loud a little and too episodic. We get a character development scene followed by a showdown scene with monotonous regularity. The bloodless action violence will disturb some viewers.

This time the Hulk’s competition turns up. But did the The Abomination have to be English-born, and when he turns into his version of the Hulk, did he have to look disabled? Hollywood films enjoy portraying really evil characters as English, disabled or homosexual.

There are some good touches of humour in The Incredible Hulk, which enables us to see that the filmmakers are not taking it all too seriously. Best of among these moments is when the 1978 Hulk, Louis Ferringo, reprises his security guard role from the 2003 film. In the last five years Officer Ferringo has moved from Berkeley California to Washington DC. And having Robert Downey Jnr. in a cameo at the end as Iron Man's alter ego Tony Stark, may be a promise or a threat, depending on your point of view.

One year after the incredible events of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the Kings and Queens of Narnia find themselves back in that faraway wondrous realm, only to discover that more than 1300 years have passed in Narnian time. During their absence, the Golden Age of Narnia has become extinct, Narnia has been conquered by the Telmarines and is now under the control of the evil King Miraz, who rules the land without mercy.

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie are magically transported back from WWII London to the world of Narnia, and here they meet Narnia’s rightful heir to the throne, the young Prince Caspian, who has been forced into hiding as his uncle Miraz plots to kill him in order to place his own newborn son on the throne. With the help of the kindly dwarf, a courageous talking mouse named Reepicheep, a badger named Trufflehunter and a Black Dwarf, Nikabrik, the Narnians, led by the mighty knights Peter and Caspian, embark on a remarkable journey to find Aslan, rescue Narnia from Miraz’s tyrannical hold, and restore magic and glory to the land.

There are seven books in CS Lewis’ Narnia series: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair; The Horse and His Boy; The Magician's Nephew; The Last Battle. This is the second in the film series, and Disney has already got The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in preproduction and The Silver Chair is slated to appear in 2010.

In 2005/06 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe grossed over $738 million worldwide. It made over $35 million here. With more action and fewer earnest speeches this time around, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian will do even better. It is the most accomplished spectacular film released so far this year.

This is all good news to Christians, of course, because even though CS Lewis rejected the commentary that the Narnia series was a Christian allegory he did so because he was so precise with language, and he held his own and other’s allegorical writing in such high regard. He did concede that the Narnia series was “suppositional”. In his own words, “Let us suppose that reality contained different parallel worlds, and that in one of them the Son of God, as He became Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.”

And in Prince Caspian the supposition we explore is the nature of faith: faith in a God we cannot see, faith in those we can see, converting to new faith and discarding faith that is rotten to the core. It is all on offer here, but should not be taken to extremes because Aslan is a very contrary and toying God figure, made more in CS Lewis’ image, than in any reality within God, at least I hope so.

It is entirely possible, of course, to enjoy this wonderful movie as a vivid fantasy film or see it as an allegory about the defeat of Nazi evil in WWII or even about the medieval Christian crusades to reclaim the Holy Land (Narnia). But whatever way we enjoy it there is something for everyone here.

41 year old New Zealand director Andrew Adamson, who was originally a visual effects supervisor, shot to stardom by directing Shrek, Shrek 2 and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. With Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Adamson has appropriately adapted and updated Lewis’ original text, injecting some contemporary idiom and humour that only adds to the enjoyment of this long film.

And there is so much to enjoy in Prince Caspian. Shot in the Czech Republic, Slovenia (the Bridge scene), New Zealand (Cair Paravel), and Poland, the location scouts have, literarily, had a field day. The cinematography, editing, special effects, sets, art direction, costumes and sound design are all first class.

Except for Liam Neeson as Aslan’s voice, Adamson resisted the temptation to cast huge stars in the first film, and here all the principal actors look even more comfortable in their character’s shoes.

It is unfortunate, however, that in a world when we are trying to build bridges with Muslims that in Lewis’ day the baddies in his book, the “Oriental Calormen”, are Muslims by any other name. It is to Adamson’s credit that he plays this down in the film. For while this exotic evil empire could be Middle Eastern, they could just as easily be very naughty Spaniards.

The values of the film are also first rate. The recurring theme of “things never happen the same way twice” means, in context, that the way Aslan saved Narnia in the first incarnation will not occur again. Indeed more profoundly this time, Peter, Susan, Lucy, Edmund and Caspian have to trust each other, reflect on what they learnt from their experiences last time and hold to faith in Aslan in the face of insurmountable odds. Aslan is with them always, able to be called upon, but is more hidden except to Lucy, the youngest, purest and often wisest of the quintet. Aslan is preparing our pilgrims through time and space for a leadership that counts: in discerning, forgiving, being just and courageous when confronting evil.

The final showdown where horse and rider are thrown into the sea is more than reminiscent of the Exodus story when even creation arises to do God’s bidding, and this scene is as exciting and moving as I assume the one upon which it is based.

The reported budget for this film is $180 million, that’s almost $1.3 million a minute. This represents the best value for money for your movie-going dollar this year. Don’t miss it.

Based on the book of the same name by Elinor Lipman, Then She Found Me introduces us to April Epner (Hunt), who is thirty-nine years old. Her biological clock is not so much ticking as sounding an alarm; her charming but immature husband, Ben (Matthew Broderick), decides their recent marriage is a mistake; and her ailing adoptive mother, whom April has been nursing through her illness, dies. As if this weren’t enough to deal with, a brassy, overbearing local talk-show host named Bernice Graves (Bette Midler) shows up out of the blue, announcing herself as April’s biological mother. And she has incredible news: April is the result of a one-night stand Bernice had with Steve McQueen nearly forty years ago.

Devastated on the one hand and bewildered on the other, April finds solace from her rapidly unraveling life in a growing relationship with Frank (Colin Firth), a handsome, warm and suddenly single dad whose wife recently abandoned him and their children. As this new relationship blossoms, April’s general state of confusion gets considerably worse when she finds out that she is pregnant.

Helen Hunt is a distinguished actor, having won four Emmys, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild awards and an Oscar for As Good As It Gets. Then She Found me marks her directorial debut. In fact this film seems to have been something of a personal quest with Hunt directing, screenwriting, producing and starring in it. This is, clearly, a story she wanted to tell. Her star power no doubt helped assemble the fine ensemble, but, at least initially, the audience might wonder why they bothered.

This is a slow-burn film. After a sluggish start, these highly neurotic characters grow on you, by stealth. It may come as a surprise to find just how affecting this film ends up being. The writing is tight, the humour sharp and the acting is universally good, even from the over-the-top Ms. Midler who plays an over-the-top long lost mother.

An unusual romantic comedy, Then She Found Me abjures a polished look for a flat mat, reflecting April’s worldview and her low self esteem. Hunt’s camera is not kind to her own character, but I wondered if April needed to look so dowdy.

The script is unusually complex too, touching on issues of fidelity in marriage, faith, prayer, the biological clock and a baby as a must-have commodity.

It is disappointing to note that the language is frequent and rough, and some viewers will find the way the Lord’s name is abused particularly offensive. And this lack of discipline even extends to casting Salmon Rushdie as April’s obstetrician. This jars and distracts from the central story.

Then She Found Me is a modest film which keeps the focus on deeply flawed characters trying to find the secret to happiness. By the film’s end it presents answers that most Christians know are popular but in the long term quite inadequate.

Immediately after Ben (Jackson) and Jane (Taylor) are married in NYC, he is reassigned to his old stomping ground of Tokyo, for a lucrative fashion photo shoot. It is meant to be a working honeymoon.

As the happy couple make their way on a mountain road leading to Mt. Fuji, their new life together comes to, literally, a crashing halt. Their car smashes into a woman standing in the middle of the road, who has materialized out of nowhere. Upon regaining consciousness after the accident, Ben and Jane cannot find any trace of the girl.

Shaken by the accident and by the girl’s disappearance, Ben and Jane arrive in Tokyo, where Ben begins his work. As from nowhere, mysterious white blurs start to appear in every one of his photographs, ruinuing his work. Jane starts to see images in the blurs and realises it is the face of the dead girl from the road. She is stalking them. But Jane realises that she is trying to deliver a message, but what is it, or better still who is it for?

Based on a 2004 Thai film of the same name, Shutter is an American/Japanese production. If you can take the shocks and violence of this genre, this film is worth the admission price for the cinematography alone. Every setup, angle and edit has been expertly created by Japanese horror master-craftsman, Masayuki Ochiai.

Some viewers who have a propensity for the seizures from strobe lighting need to be warned about a similar effect in one of the best sequences in this film.

The story here is also very good for a horror flick. The idea that the spirits of the unhappy-dead hang around is not new, but Christianity holds rather than having any new form, the experiences that the living may have of the dead are more a projection of their grief or ill at ease conscience. We may be haunted by our powerful and vivid memories than by any disembodied spirit.

Even at a brisk 85 minutes Shutter tends to lag in the second act. The ghost was hanging around a little too much so I was praying for an exorcism, but the last act and its tragic finale is a genuine surprise.

For fans of thriller-horror films Shutter is well above average and for those who may dislike the content of these films its style might have its own allure.

Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher star as two strangers who awaken together to discover they got married following a night of debauchery in Las Vegas. They regret this drunken decision, and decide to split up until as they do one of them wins a $3 million jackpot after playing the other's quarter on a slot machine.

The only way each has a chance to at least getting half the money is through a divorce settlement. Judge Whopper (Dennis Miller), however, wants to defend the bonds of marriage so he orders that before he will allow a divorce a carve up of the money, the couple must live together for six months, try and make the marriage work and attend couple counseling with Dr Twitchell (Queen Latifah). “I hereby sentence you to six months hard marriage”, Whopper declares.

During their enforced and celibate cohabitation the newlyweds devise ever-escalating schemes to undermine each other and get their hands on the money – only to find themselves falling in love amidst the mutual backstabbing.

The title of this film plays with the common and contemporary throwaway line, “What happens on tour stays on tour”. The idea that we can become a different moral person away from home without any effect on our day-to-day lives is as naive as it is immoral. We are our behaviour at home or on tour, and, in a sense, our integrity is more to be judged when we think no one is looking then when we are under the usual scrutiny.
In the most circuitous of routes, and thanks to the judge, the stupidity of a Las Vegas marriage has ramifications at home for this hapless couple. Don’t let it bother you that the set up of the film is wrong: Nevada divorces are as easy to procure as Nevada marriages, and with three million dollars at stake one wonders why they would begin their divorce proceedings in a New York Court.

Cameron Diaz again does the girly thing very well, but Ashton Kutcher again fails to impress on us his dramatic range. The film is well edited, but inexplicably there are several continuity mistakes and an extremely loud soundtrack.

There are a few laughs on the way through, but the ending is so utterly predictable it is merciful that it only takes 95 minutes to get there.

I was concerned that the slapstick comedy plays domestic violence for laughs and while trying to avoid very coarse language, which would have attracted a tougher rating, it pays no mind to how offensive the word whore, Jesus and Christ as are to some viewers.

If you saw the 1998 film Sour Grapes and the more recent How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days, then you already seen this imitation of those two – just rolled into one.

Noah Cooper (Shepherd) is 29 and happily married, but things change quickly. Firstly Noah is fired from his job as physiotherapist just as his wife Clare (Tyler) announces that she wants to have a baby as soon as possible. At the same time Clare’s socially awkward cousin turns up for an extended stay in their home while he does a screenwriting symposium. To top it off Noah’s parent’s 30 year marriage breaks up and his mother Marilyn (Keaton) moves herself and her five dogs in with Noah and Clare. She takes over their house and their lives.

What is it these days about yesterday’s movie divas making contemporary comedies about being dragon mothers? In 2005 we had Jane Fonda in Monster-in-Law and now we have Diane Keaton in Smother, which could just as easily have been called Monster Mother. The idea of an unbearable mother is hardly new territory for a film and this particular one brings nothing fresh or interesting to the mix.

That said, there are some funny scenes and a few good setups, but they are mixed in with some unnecessary crudity and sexual innuendo which reduces the film to the level of schoolboy hilarity.

There are also some elements in the film which are very distracting. Liv Tyler’s Clare is so breathy one could think the audience will soon find out she is dying of emphysema. Nothing would surprise me in this script.
And while we all know that Diane Keaton’s neck must never be seen, her turtle-necked-sweater eccentricity is now starting to steal her scenes.

The downtrodden suburban wife Marilyn is also a compulsive eater, except she has a 24 inch waist and the sort of fitness only Hollywood personal trainers can get out of their most famous clients.

This overwritten, overacted film left me wanting to suggest to Noah to build an Ark and get the hell out of the dysfunctional world he had allowed to engulf him. The film opens at Halloween, the traditional day when we warn off evil spirits. It is hardly an accident in the script. I just wish Noah took it heart and got a good Exorcist to help him out, and that could have been funny.

Smother is only for the coldest and wettest of days, and, even then, only if you must.

Eli (David Lyons) is kidnapped from his Sydney home in the quiet hours of the night and, the kidnapper, John Kelly (Travis McMahon), embarks on a journey into the Australian Outback towards the place where his hostage is due for delivery. As time and distance roll by, the strength and endurance of both men are tested. When a violent unexpected event occurs on the roadside, both men discover something they were not expecting.

Cactus is a fairly decent psychological thriller from our local industry. Shot in high definition, in sequence, and quickly it has a slow enough start, with endless shots of the Australian bush, but it gains momentum by the end of the first of its three acts.

Written and directed by Jasmine Yuen Carrucan, Cactus has several excellent “reveals”, those filmic moments which the audience is let into an essential element in this vigilante justice drama.

As with most films in this genre, the believability factor is hard to maintain. For instance the idea that a driver thinks he can close an outback main road and not be detected is beyond the pale. Also, it really stretches our belief to accept that within two days of a kidnapping and torture, the abductor and the abductee form a bond.

Much more seriously is the lack of character development in the story. For us to invest in this setup we need flashbacks, or more history of the two men. This information need not give away the plot, but teases the audience into the psychological mosaic which sees these two men in this place right now.

To some viewers the violent language and atmosphere of Cactus will be too much, but within this desperate situation rules civility count for nothing.

This children’s film is a retelling of the life of Moses (Slater). Narrated in grand style by Ben Kingsley, Moses is given away as a baby and sent downstream on the River Nile where he is found by Pharaoh’s daughter who takes the child as a gift from God and raises him as her own, an Egyptian Prince. Moses later discovers he is a Hebrew by birth and is then called by God (Gould) to become a prophet to the Pharaoh, Ramses II, (Molina) and to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised Land. After the plagues Pharaoh relents and lets the Hebrews go, until he has another change of heart and leads the army in pursuit of them. After their deliverance, Moses is given The Ten Commandments, which rules over the wanderings of the Jewish people until they are admitted to Promised Land, except for Moses who is prevented from leading them in as pay back for the people’s lack of fidelity to the Covenant.

For obvious reasons I wanted to like this film, be able to recommend it and, indeed, promote it to you. Sadly for me, and maybe for the film, I cannot do any of these three things.

Given how good animation films can be these days, this version of The Ten Commandments looks like amateur hour. With such a star studded cast, I can only think that the producers spent all their money on the actors and had little left over for the vision and the music. But this is not a radio play, it is a film, and, even though it only goes for 85 minutes, it fails to have any real visual or aural interest.

It also makes a number of biblical errors and unnecessary embellishments on the story. The most serious one is to use the word Jehovah as a translation for the Hebrew name for God, YHWH. The term Jehovah was first used by Dom Raymundus Martini, a Spanish Dominican, who in 1270 tried to Latinize the Old Testament name for God. He did his best but was wrong. Even a little bit of research by the filmmakers would have shown how inappropriate this is in the 21st Century.

This is only one of several textual problems in the screenplay which means that ‘spotting the error’ might be the only creative way to view the film. A missed opportunity if ever there was one.

The Boston neighbourhood of Dorchester is a gritty, working-class area lined with the wreckage of broken families and dreams. Here 4 year-old Amanda McCready goes missing without a trace. The police fail to turn up even the narrowest lead, so Amanda’s desperate Aunt and Uncle plead with local private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Affleck) and Angie Genarro (Monaghan) to take the case.

Because they have never done a child abduction case before they are hesitant, but they know the neighbourhood well, and they also know the truth about Amanda’s drug-addicted mother Helene (Ryan). As they dig into her story, they find themselves on a trail that winds into the dark heart of Dorchester and through a chain of drug-dealers, ex-cons and child abusers, but brings them no closer to Amanda. In the glare of the media spotlight, they join forces with a relentless detective Remy Bressant (Harris) and police captain Jack Doyle (Freeman). And just as it appears that the emotionally wrenching case is about to be cracked, in the flash of gunfire, the sad truth of Amanda’s fate is revealed.

As everyone attempts to move forward, a haunted Patrick Kenzie cannot walk away. As he backtracks through the clues, he finds himself lured into an ever-intensifying web of lies and inexplicable violence. And he comes to see the shocking secret that hid the truth. It is then that he faces the greatest moral dilemma of his life.

Novelist Dennis Lehane wrote the book Mystic River and then wrote Gone Baby Gone. Both are set in working class Boston. Both are about traumatic childhoods and the abuse therein, and both are about people being haunted by the past. Ben Affleck, along with Matt Damon, won an Oscar for his “Good Will Hunting” screenplay. Here he team up with Aaron Stockard to adapt Lehane’s novel for the screen. Affleck also directs.

Gone Baby Gone is not an easy cinematic experience. If you took the Lord’s name out of the screenplay it would be twenty minutes shorter, but, besides that, there are also shocks, violent language and a disturbing atmosphere that creates the dark world it describes.

While many of us may not want to enter this domain, it is sobering to find out that 2,000 children go missing in the USA every day. I am not sure what the figures are for Australia, but many parents know the anxiety behind this statistic.

On one level this film is a very ambitious and generally successful debut for Ben Affleck as a director. He draws out fine performances from this top-rate cast, but there are problems too. The broad Bostonian dialogue is so quickly delivered that it is sometimes unintelligible. We need subtitles. The four act structure makes for a convoluted plot and at times this seems unnecessarily complex. But worst of all Casey Affleck may be a fine actor, and he does some good work here too, but he is the wrong age for the part. His 32 year old baby face is a distraction because it is hard to believe him in this role. It is always dicey for a director to hire his family.

Given the confusing world it portrays, it is no surprise that the morality of Gone Baby Gone is confused as well. As smart as some of these characters are, and as often as they invoke God and the saints, and quote the New Testament and the moral teachings of priests, none of them seem to know much about objective and subjective mortal sin and the conditions for moral culpability. They need a good confessor to help them out. For while evil acts remain evil, my culpability for an evil act can only be judged by the seriousness of the act, my freedom to choose, my knowledge of the action and its consequences and the formation (or lack of it) of my conscience.

Gone Baby Gone in no way answers the moral questions it raises, but it does give us pause for deep reflection on moral choices and social policy that are affecting children’s safety right here and now.

Lawrence Wetherhold (Quaid) is a widowed and unhappy English professor. He has a manuscript entitled “The Price of Postmodernism: Epistemology, Hermeneutics and the Literary Canon” which he cannot sell to a publisher. The Professor hates his students and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is a very grumpy dad at home. He has alienated his son and turned his daughter into an overachieving, friendless teenager.

While trying to get his car out of the University pound, he has a fall and ends up being treated in the local hospital by Dr Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), a former student who once had a crush on him. It turns out she still does. They start having an affair. At the same time his down-and-out adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Hayden Church) appears on his doorstep and is taken in by his children.

The premise of this film runs like this: smart people might be academically gifted but can be so lacking in nearly all others essential human qualities that their brains alone do not help them live happy lives.
The producers describe this film as a comedy. There are two problems with this. Firstly the setup has to be funny. It’s not. Secondly, for us to laugh along with this dysfunctional bunch we need to like the main characters. While the unhappy nuclear family are dealing with their grief for a lost wife and mother, for us to care about Lawrence Wetherhold we need to like them alot earlier than the last 12 minutes of the film.
In fact the characterisation of Wethergold is the stereotype of the arrogant, insufferable University academic which the cinema seems to prefer to any other. But even by the US cinema’s standards, this creation is an extreme example of the beast.

Vanessa Wethergold is such a chip-off-the-old-block, that she is equally annoying. James’ poutiness is understandable given the family dynamics, but his character does not to help lift the mood, and so it is only their academically but more emotionally intelligent uncle who seems to have any insight into the home at all. At one stage he says to Dr Janet, “These children haven't been properly parented in many years. They're practically feral. That's why I was brought in.”

This is a feature debut for Noam Murro as director and his work needs some attention as well. There are many, many short scenes here which only adds to the episodic feel of the whole piece, and the audience longs just to settle down and let this fine ensemble cast settle into a couple key events.

This film has a couple of funny moments, but that only makes it mildly amusing, so I think the smart money is on giving Smart People the miss.

Thomas (Wakefield) is nearly 16. His dad is in the army and the family is moved again to a new house and school. His older brother Charlie (Ford) announces their arrival to the neighbours by banging a wooden spoon and wailing on the front lawn. Charlie doesn’t speak. He’s autistic and has ADD. He is sometimes unmanageable, and his behaviour can be anti-social. Thomas resents his brother but wishes he didn’t.
The Mollisons might be an army family; but they do not live a regimented life. It is far from a regular household. Thomas’s cricket-obsessed father, Simon (Thompson), talks to his teddy. Simon and Maggie (Collette) are openly affectionate, and Maggie is heavily pregnant with “a little surprise”.

One morning, the semi-naked Charlie escapes the house and leads Thomas on a chase across the neighbourhood. Charlie bursts into a stranger’s house to use the toilet; and Thomas finds himself face to face with Jackie Masters, a new classmate. The trouble is she is in the shower.

Maggie has complications with her pregnancy and becomes bedridden. Thomas and Simon between them take on Charlie’s daily routine; and Thomas experiences the very demanding aspects of coping with his brother: the toilet troubles, shopping centre tantrums, and the ridiculing that comes from riding in the Special School bus.

Thomas’s birthday dinner turns into a nightmare. Pent-up frustrations about his brother pour out that are both confronting and ultimately heart-warming.

The Black Balloon was accepted into competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. A low budget production, it does not spare the viewer from imagining how any of us would cope with having a son on the cusp of manhood, who is autistic and has ADD.

In a truly remarkable performance, Luke Ford’s Charlie is both lovable and demanding, but the stress he places upon the family is almost intolerable to watch. The sobering thought is to consider how many families live this all-too rarely seen life every day.

This film is all about the extent of sacrificial love, what parents will do for their children, and how far a brother will go to carry his sibling. In doing so, be warned that director Elissa Down does not spare us much of the extremely challenging situations and issues this family have to face. It is, by turns, complicated, tender, violent and chaotic.

One of the major themes running throughout this film concerns Thomas’ swimming lessons at school. Apart from the all-too obvious appeal this is making to young men and women who want to see impossibly beautiful kids their age parading around in their swimming gear, Thomas has to learn to sink or swim.
It is a metaphor for his life at home as well. With the obligatory subplot of Thomas’ coming of age love story, he finds that taking the plunge initiates him into a new life that gives him the strength to carry many burdens, including his brother.

The Black Balloon is a modest Australian drama that admirably achieves everything it sets out to do, affectionately lifting the lid on some significant suffering in the suburbs. It is raw in parts, but so is this slice of life, but this story ends up being about amazing grace. It deserves to do well.

Will (Reynolds), a 30-something Manhattan dad in the midst of a divorce, is surprised when his 10-year-old daughter, Maya (Breslin), starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love.

His story begins in 1992, as a young, starry-eyed aspiring politician who moves to New York from Wisconsin in order to work on the presidential campaign. For Maya, Will relives his past as an idealistic young man learning the ins and outs of big city politics, and recounts the history of his romantic relationships with three very different women.

Will hopelessly attempts a gentler version of his story for his daughter and changes the names so Maya has to guess who is the woman her dad finally married. Is her mother Will’s college sweetheart, the dependable girl-next-door Emily (Banks)? Is she his longtime best friend and confidante, the apolitical April (Fisher)? Or is she the free-spirited but ambitious journalist Summer (Weisz)?

As Maya puts together the pieces of her dad’s mystery love story, she begins to understand that love is not so simple or easy.

At just under two hours Definitely, Maybe is also far too long for the light story it tells.

But from the start there is a distracting and annoying believability problem. Ryan Reynolds is 31 years of age, and he looks boyish for that. As the film goes back from Ryan at 20 and Ryan at 35, Ryan never ages. Reynolds does a good job as far as it goes, although the number and strength of the times Will takes the Lord’s name in vain is offensive, but the believability factor unravelled the film for me.

The worst thing by far, however, is that this film does the very thing it parodies.

Maya starts her questioning of her father’s love-life because her sex education class at school gives too much information to the still too-young. When they find out, Will and the other parents are shocked by this sexualisation of their children, but the film goes on to do exactly the same to Maya, and now Will is a willing accomplice.

Having a child as the driver of a romantic comedy grates on every level. We know from Little Miss Sunshine what a talented young actress Isla Breslin is, but here director Adam Brooks allows her to be a precocious brat. The fault also lies in the screenplay, which has some clunky dialogue and stupid setups.

The versatile Johnny Depp stars as Benjamin Barker, a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years on the other side of the world, who escapes back to London with a vow of revenge, opposite Helena Bonham Carter as his obsessively devoted accomplice, Mrs. Nellie Lovett.

Adopting the guise of Sweeney Todd, Barker returns to his old barber shop above Mrs. Lovett’s pie-making premises, and sets his sights on Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who, with help from his nefarious henchman Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall), shipped him off on a trumped-up charge in order to steal his wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), and his baby daughter from him.

Mrs. Lovett tells Todd that his wife poisoned herself after Judge Turpin took advantage of her. But when a rival barber, the flamboyant Italian Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), threatens to expose Sweeney’s real identity, Todd kills him by cutting his throat. Not knowing what to do with the body, Mrs. Lovett sees this crisis as a potential solution to her ailing business — and suggests using human flesh as the filling for her pies.
Sweeney discovers that the Judge has turned his amorous affections towards Johanna (Jayne Wisener), Sweeney’s now teenage daughter, who has become Turpin’s ward. Imprisoned in his house, Johanna is noticed one day by Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), the young sailor who rescued Sweeney from the sea. Hopelessly in love, Anthony vows to rescue Johanna and marry her himself.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Lovett’s pies soon become the talk of London, and as business booms, she dreams of respectability and a life at the seaside with Sweeney as her husband and her young charge, Pirelli’s former assistant Toby (Edward Sanders), alongside as her adopted son.

But Sweeney has only revenge on his mind — to the detriment of anyone or anything else.

For readers unfamiliar with the Stephen Sondheim opera, it is essential you know this as it belongs to the horror genre. With Tim Burton directing we are not spared any violence, gore or shocking detail. Burton’s body of work is equally dark.

That said if you can endure, or even like, the horror genre, this is as stylish as it gets. Sondheim’s mastery as lyrist and composer are released to great effect here. While the singing is not as good as some of us may have heard, the acting is excellent.

Indeed Johnny Depp confirms his status as the most creative actor alive today which a menacing turn as the revengeful Sweeny. His breathy singing fits the role.

Alan Richman recitative-style for Judge Turpin may not do justice to the musical score, but his presence, carriage and intensity embody evil itself.

The big surprise is Helena Bonham Carter. Her Mrs. Lovett is outstanding. On the stage a more mature artist is usually cast in this very demanding role. Opera Australia’s Judi Connelli was the best Mrs. Lovett I have ever seen, but Burton’s decision to cast a younger woman enables the sexual attraction of Mrs. Lovett for Todd to be believable. And though Bonham Carter is not a great singer, she entirely sells us a character that can be tender, desperate, funny and totally terrifying.

Sacha Baron plays Pirelli and it’s hard for me to think that Borat had not taken a tour of Fleet Street.
On the surface of things the values of Sweeney Todd are dreadful and death filled – one unsuspecting person after another murdered and minced up in a revengeful blood lust. In the end, however, the story demonstrates how futile and ultimately destructive retribution is.

Sweeney Todd recently won A Golden Glove for Best Film the musical or comedy genre. The violence is at the same time gross and cartoonish, the production design as dark as the story. But given that it neither glamorises nor moralises the dysfunction it portrays, then, adults who know what to expect can find this is a horror film of the highest standard.

Walk Hard story is about a fictional music legend, Dewey Cox. Written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan, the film is a satire of all those musical real-life stories you might have loved and hated.

I have to confess that I know next to nothing about rock ‘n’ roll history. Given the large numbers of rock biopics we have had in recent years, I thought this film was another in this series, that there must have been a rocker called Dewey Cox who had a string of hits in the 50s and 60s.

Dewey is a wonderful creation, and it matters to know this because then you can relax and enjoy the satire of this film from the outset. The opening flashback scene is especially appalling when you think it’s serious.

The Dewey Cox story is high risk humour because it mocks June Jihus that don’t deserve to be pilloried like Walk the Line, Ray and Dreamgirls. And while it has Jim portraying what seems like the mandatory rock biography – poor, sad and wild child, gets accidental break, is discovered and then hits the big time. As his career soars, his personal life descends into a substance abusing, orgiastic, unfaithful mess.

Walk Hard has some good, if dark, comedic moments. But it runs out of ideas about two thirds of the way through and is much less satisfying from there on to the end.

Charlie Wilson (Hanks) was a bachelor congressman from Texas whose “Good Time Charlie” personality masked an astute political mind, deep sense of patriotism and compassion for the underdog. In the early 1980s, with the looming advance of a Russian invasion, that underdog was Afghanistan.

Charlie’s longtime friend, frequent patron and sometime lover was Joanne Herring (Roberts), one of the wealthiest women in Texas and a virulent anticommunist. Believing the American response to the invasion of Afghanistan was anaemic at best, she prodded Charlie into doing for the Mujahideen—the country’s legendary freedom fighters—what no one else could: secure funding and weapons to eradicate Soviet aggressors from their land. Charlie’s partner in this uphill endeavour was CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman), a bulldog, blue-collar operative who worked in the company of Ivy League blue bloods dismissive of his talents.

Together, Charlie, Joanne and Gust traveled the world to form an unlikely alliance among Pakistanis, Israelis, Egyptians, lawmakers and a belly dancer. Their success was remarkable. Over the nine-year course of the occupation of Afghanistan, United States funding for covert operations against the Soviets went from $5 million to $1 billion annually, and the Red Army subsequently retreated from Afghanistan.

In this film it is hard to know where the truth stops and the storytelling begins. If only half of this tale is true then it is an extraordinary piece of history.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Charlie Wilson is just played for laughs. As with the best political satires, this film has decent social bite. It’s not just the rightness of the cause to eject the Soviet aggressors in Afghanistan, but, more so, how “mission accomplished” on the part of the USA led to a power vacuum, the rise of the religious-right Taliban and to geopolitical instability we have today.

Tom Hanks plays the complex Charlie Wilson to perfection – a sleazy, womanizing dreamer who, when confronted with the human face to a political crisis does everything he can to help. Philip Seymour Hoffman is equally as good as the foul-mouthed, disaffected CIA operative, Gust. He has the best lines and he delivers them with relish. It is only Julia Roberts who fails to convince us she is a Machiavellian Texan matron.
All three actors assure this film of a wide audience, though there is some nudity, a sexual themes and language that some viewers will find offensive. For those who do see Charlie Wilson’s War, I hope they reflect on how necessary it is to, both, right wrongs and then see through the defence of the good into long lasting benefits.

It is easy to see the deficiencies of the USA’s foreign policy in this regard, but we might also think about how this win and move on attitude manifests much closer to home.

Compass off course — For well-informed Catholics The Golden Compass can easily be taken as a direct and nasty attack on the mission and ministry of the Catholic Church.

For those who have little or no background with ecclesiastical jargon The Golden Compass can simply be understood as a very complex, expensive but mediocre piece of fantasy entertainment.
Given the sudden shocks, thundering soundtrack and convoluted storyline, this film is certainly not for children under the age of 15. I am amazed the Australian censors have only given it a PG rating.
But should adults see it?

The author of the book upon which this film is based, Philip Pullman, is an avowed atheist. His novel is a much more explicit attack on the role of organised religion, and Catholicism in particular, in the way he perceives it promotes faith over scientific reason.

It is entirely to director/screenwriter Chris Weitz’s credit that the all-out assault of the book is not replicated in this film. But there is still plenty on the screen from which Catholics can take offence.

The baddie in The Golden Compass is “The Magisterium”. Though Catholicism does not have an exclusive claim on this term, it is usually applied to the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church. It comes from the Latin word “magister” meaning authoritative teacher. The words magisterial and magistrate come from the same source.

In the film The Magisterium exists because people “need them; they keep things working by telling people what to do.” And in the weakest of concessions it is admitted by the cruel Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) that they give the orders “in a kindly way, to keep them (people) out of danger.”

The Magisterium’s headquarters is a Kremlinesque building with bell towers where clerically and episcopally clad officials, wearing pectoral medallions, are called “My Lord” as they try to suppress the truth. And what’s the truth?

The truth is that people might find out that there are other beings in other worlds who do not need The Magisterium, and that these beings do not have a daemon, Pullman’s archetypal animal equivalent of a Christian soul.

Most contemptible of all, however, is how The Magisterium keeps the poor in line by sending out “gobblers” who abduct poor children and transport them to “experimental stations” in remote places where they “help children grow up” by forcibly performing operations on them to separate their bodies from their souls.
The allusion here to the tragic and sometimes criminal stories of the abuse of children in Catholic institutions, is as ham-fisted as it is affronting. In Pullman’s world nuns and brothers dehumanised all the children in their care at the behest of The Magisterium.

It is easy, therefore, to see why some Catholics think that in the wake of The Da Vinci Code, The Golden Compass appears to one in a series of attacks on the nature of Christian faith and a further punishment for the very few people who did unspeakably criminal things toward the vulnerable.

This reprehensible assertion provides no concession to the fact that, outside government, the Roman Catholic community is the most significant provider of education, healthcare, welfare and pastoral care in the world.
Given its star power The Golden Compass has had very disappointing returns at the box office in the countries where it has opened. I am unconvinced that those who called for a boycott of the film can take much credit for that. In a free and democratic society adults can see what they like, but, equally, Pullman and Weitz have to take responsibility for the atheistic allegory they present here for public consumption.
I think the main reason The Golden Compass has not done as well as some might expect is that given its reported $200 million budget, it is not anywhere near as good as the many and better examples of the science fantasy genre which are around at present.

These other films explore metaphysics, metaethics, other worlds, other beings and transcendence without resorting to thinly-veiled attacks on Catholicism in particular, who, for all its many shortcomings, does much more good than harm on any given day.