Salt (M)
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Leiv Schreiber
Director: Phillip Noyce
Rating: 3.5/5
100-minutes, now screening.
After seeing Phillip Noyce’s Salt, I’ve decided I can forgive Kurt Wimmer for the execrable Law Abiding Citizen, which starred Gerard Butler as an improbable assassin avenging his murdered family.
The latest film for Angelina Jolie is quite a sophisticated affair that digs deep into the realms of covert operations. Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, and when we first meet her, Salt is being tortured by particularly nasty North Korean interrogators who are unconvinced that she is actually an American businesswoman, rather than the spy that they believe she is.
After a tense border exchange, it becomes clear that Salt actually is a spy, and a pretty talented one at that. Two years later, she is working alongside her boss, Ted Winter (Leiv Schreiber) when a walk-in defector ‘exposes’ her as a deep-cover Soviet spy. And suddenly all hell breaks loose – Salt is on the run, and the entire US law enforcement organization after her, convinced that the visiting Russian President is her next target.
Noyce has garnered a solid reputation as a purveyor of quality action and suspense, and Salt is no exception. Once she’s on the run, our heroine doesn’t stop until the credits begin rolling (very cleverly leaving the option open for a film or TV franchise).
Schreiber offers a rock-solid supporting role as Salt’s bemused superior, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is excellent as the sceptical head of another covert agency. Stick with the black and white morals of this kind of action writing, Kurt; when you start playing with the grey, you make a mess.
Bittersweet saga of tragedy and loss
Father of My Children (M)
Director: Mia Hansen-Love
Stars: Louis-do de Lencquesaing, Chiara Caselli
Rating: 4/5
108-minutes, now screening.
Mia Hansen-Løve is the partner of veteran French director, Oliver Assayas, and the influence of Assayas shows in her latest film, Father of My Children, a gentle, bittersweet film about a family coping with tragedy and loss.
The eponymous father is Grégoire Canvel (Louis-do de Lencquesaing), a critically successful producer running Moon Films, which has a respected catalogue of productions going back decades.
By day, Canvel maintains a frantic schedule juggling productions, fighting for money, arguing with unions, negotiating new deals, and worrying about the future of the company that has become his life.
By night, the dedicated father cossets his three children and a loving wife, heading away to the country home on weekends, and surreptitiously trying to run Moon Films when away on family holidays. When creditors begin closing in, and film productions stall for want of funding, Canvel makes a devastating decision, and his wife, Sylvia (Chiara Caselli) is left to pick up the pieces.
In Father of My Children, Hansen-Løve has assembled an excellent cast, with the performances of de Lencquesaing and Caselli ably complemented by three very good child roles: Clémence (de Lencquesaing’s daughter, Alice), Valentine (Alice Gautier) and Billie (Manelle Driss).
The script – also penned by Hansen-Løve – offers a subtle vision of contemporary French life, and in a special bonus for film-lovers, opens a tantalising window into the hectic and frantic life of an independent production company. This is simple, beautifully-wrought storytelling at its best.
THE BINGE
Directorial debut shows style
Survive Style 5+ (M) available from 1st September
Undead (M) now available
Reel Anime Film Festival 2-15th September at Dendy Portside
Russian Resurrection Film Festival 1-8th September at Palace Centro and Barracks
Gen Sekiguchi’s debut feature, Survive Style 5+ (pictured above) offers an intriguing premise, uniting five narrative arcs with a theme of violence, and the common element in all of the stories is a Brit hitman plagued by existential angst (played by Vinnie Jones).
Featuring Japanese heavyweights like Tadonabu Asano and Sonny Chiba, this mix of the surreal and the banal is very entertaining. And in a re-release – probably in line with the recent success of the Spierig brothers’ vampire gorefest, Daybreakers – Madman has decided to give their debut feature, Undead another run.
This sci-fi/zombie cross-over pitches a small-town outside Brisbane against itself, as a meteor brings a reanimating disease to Earth to raise the dead. This is the kind of film that would make Peter Jackson proud: splatter film at its very best! Keep an eye out for more slick stuff from the boys, as they’re aggressive about reanimating the Queensland film industry on a more global scale.
Anime lovers will be delighted to hear that Reel Anime will be back at Dendy Portside in the first half of September, offering the next filmic chapter in the Evangelion series – Evangelion 2.0: You Can[Not] Advance – to befuddle us all. Kazuyoshi Katayama’s King of Thorns offers a futuristic version of Sleeping Beauty, as humanity’s survivors wake from cryogenic sleep to discover the horrors of alien invasion.
In Summer Wars, Mamoru Hosoda builds on the reputation he garnered with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Takeshi Koike’s Redline tosses Speed Racer out the window, bringing us one of the most exciting anime car-racing films in recent years.
For more details, go online to www.madman.com.au/reelanime
Finally, the first week of September offers another distraction as the Russian Resurrection Film Festival rolls into town again. I saw four screeners, including the dramatic twentysomething drama, Parental Guidance, a harrowing adolescent school feature, Everybody Dies, But Me, a Second World War tragedy in One War, and the bittersweet ideological angst of The Miracle. There’s plenty more on the program, including a kids’ animation – Belka & Strelka: Space Dogs in 3D – and a comprehensive WWII Retrospective, featuring an impressive array of vintage Soviet films.
For more information, check out www.russianresurrection.com
