FILM ... with Tim Milfull
2011 has been quite a good year for cinema, both internationally and at home, where at least one film featuring a dog made an absolute mint. Now, I’ll be howled down for saying this, but while Red Dog was a competently made film that pressed all the right buttons, more than $20-million in box office takings doesn’t necessarily mean Kriv Stenders’s film was the best released in Australia this year.
I would give that honour to Justin Kurzel’s much less entertaining, but completely compelling Snowtown, based upon the horrific murders committed in the Adelaide hills by John Bunting and his perverted mates.
Elsewhere in Oz, Daniel Nettheim adapted Julia Leigh’s novel The Hunter into a beautiful film starring Willem Dafoe and set in Tasmania about one man’s redemption. And Jonathan Teplitzky also made a redemptive film starring Matthew Goode as a self-destructive chef ruining his life and those of others in Bondi – while Burning Man wasn’t released in time for the 2012 AFI/AACTA awards, I’m hoping the film will scoop the pool next year here and overseas.
On the international stage, quite a few films left a lasting impression, with Alejandro Gonazález Iñárritu’s Biutiful offering a heartbreaking role for Javier Bardem as a small-time grafter battling cancer, single-parenthood and a looming tragedy involving illegal immigrants. In Black Swan, Daniel Aronofsky continued the excellent form that brought us The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, by putting Natalie Portman through her paces as a ballet dancer obsessed with perfection; while debut filmmaker, Tuse Tamasese wrote and directed The Orator, a simple but powerful story about a small man faced with big challenges in Samoa.
Smuggled out of Iran on a memory stick baked into a cake, Jafar Panahi flouted his government’s cruel censorship in This is Not a Film, which documents his frustration and agony as he counts down the final days of his appeal against a conviction for violating laws regarding filmmaking; and in South Korea, director, Kim Ki-duk ended his self-imposed three year break from directing by recording a protracted rant against his fellow filmmakers and their industry, and in some ways against himself, in a powerful but ascetic documentary called Arirang.
Finally, having seen almost three hundred films this year, I rarely watch something more than once, but I have to say that John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard(below), starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle as a pair of mismatched law enforcement officers, was one of the funniest films I watched in 2011. I saw this one twice, and would watch it again right now if the opportunity presented itself. And what’s coming up? They don’t call the next few weeks “the silly season” just because of the holidays; between now and the end of 2011, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of films being released theatrically, most probably because the Golden Globes and Oscars are just around the corner.
So I thought I might give you some hint of what’s coming in the eight or so films opening on Boxing Day. If you’re looking for some respite from the heat the day after opening the presents, there is some Victorian-themed action and drama, a caper film and a biopic, and some spectacular animation.
Robert Downey Jr reprises his role as history’s greatest detective in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (above), where he will have his first encounter with his notorious adversary Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris).
Elsewhere in London, Glenn Close pulls off one of her most unusual roles, playing the eponymous Albert Nobbs, an ageing woman masquerading as a man in order to get by in a society that looks unsympathetically on the fairer sex.
A few decades later, Steven Spielberg’s latest epic, War Horse, sees a young man wage a desperate battle to rescue his beloved horse, which has been sold to the US Cavalry before they head off to fight the Great War.
Spielberg has been a busy man, also releasing another blockbuster in The Adventures of Tintin, which mashes a couple of the intrepid reporter’s escapades together in a frenetic 3D-fest.
Fast forward almost a half-a-century, and Meryl Streep has positioned herself to win yet another Oscar for her portrayal of one of England’s more notorious Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
Half a world away, a problematic penguin is having problems coming to terms with the dancing habits of his mates in Happy Feet II, while in Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo, Matt Damon plays a single father who moves to the country to rescue a struggling zoo, and in New York, Ben Stiller’s hotel manager, Josh must find a way to recover the pension funds of his staff after an unscrupulous embezzler rips them off in the sometimes ridiculous caper film, Tower Heist.
There are more than 10 films being released in January, so I’ll look forward to telling you something about them in the first issue of The Independent for 2012. Have a wonderful break, and don’t spill the popcorn.
