Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

The backstory to the man behind "Wonder Woman", William Moulton Marston, is an intriguing story - how his experiences as a psychology professor, as a member of a romantic triad and, eventually, with BDSM played a part in the creation of the most enduring female superhero of all time. Writer-Director Angela Robinson puts this unconventional material into the somewhat more conventional structure of a standard period biopic (where the research occasionally feels a little imposed so that characters are reciting elements of their backstory on one another as a way of squeezing facts that aren't otherwise relevant to the story can get in there) - but there's still a power to this story of smart people giving way to their emotions and facing the oppression that results from their breaches of convention.

The performance of Rebecca Hall as Elizabeth Marston, wife of William, is the one that really sticks out - Hall has a great way of playing both the cynical veneer and the more complex emotions below the surface that really shines here. Luke Evans as William and Bella Heathcoate as Olive, the student who becomes a lover to both of them, are a little more low-key, but they do hit the key emotional points. I kinda wish this had been a little more sexy, a little more radical in telling its story, but still, this is a reasonably successful biopic that keeps itself entertaining.

Brad's Status

This is very much a "white people's problems" movie - kinda petty and a little navel gazing. Concerning a leftish leaning father whose trip with his son to Boston for college pre-interviews brings up his worries about how he's faring in comparison to his old school colleagues, there's a lot of voice over narration and close ups on Ben Stiller's perturbed face. And the self-evident thing (that he appears to be doing reasonably well and his complaints that he's not super-rich and famous are petty marginal distractions) takes until well after halfway through the film to even vaguely become apparent to him. As internal revelations go, it's not exactly mindblowing.

Which is a pity as writer-director Mike White has proved himself talented at unpacking the foibles of progressives (most noticeably recently with the TV series "Enlightened"). And the four friends that Stiller compares himself too (played by White, a surprisingly sexy Jermaine Clement, Luke Wilson and a particularly unctuous Michael Sheen) are not uninteresting characters and could probably use a bit more depth. But all in all this doesn't really give a lot for the 90-odd minutes of screentime.

Bad Genius

This Thai thriller was one I missed when I was at Fantastic Fest, but the buzz was good enough that, even with Manuka only putting on one screening a day at the not-exactly-user-friendly time of 6:20pm, I wasn't going to miss this. And indeed, this is an excellent example of the genre - a heist movie on the unlikely topic of exam cheating. The familiar heist elements are still there - the carefully worked out plans, and the desperate improvisations that have to take place as various complications arise - but in this case they're executed flawlessly, making what should be dull cinematic material (basically, people filling in circles in pencil), into something tense and compelling.

The largely teen cast are playing archetypes (the smart one, the friendly one, the rich one, the poor but honest one etc), but there's just enough rounding off to make sure that they're not mere plot ciphers - these are recognisable kids in a somewhat improbable situation. And as important, they largely keep our sympathies - yes, they're basically committing fraud, and the stakes are pretty high, but it's also kept clear that there are other forces in play pushing them into taking these extreme actions. And the unusual nature of both plot and location (how many Thai High School Thrillers have you seen before) gives it that extra something - virtuoso execution meaning we're never confused or lost by the constantly-moving plot.

Recommended for anybody who's been waiting for a good tense thriller.

Jigsaw

I have to shamefacedly admit I have seen the whole "Saw" series of movies - it's the only purely horror series that's run more than 4 entries that I've seen all of. And I can't necessarily explain why - maybe it's the somewhat soap-opera ludicrous plotting (particularly for the 5 entries thus far that have taken place after the main killer ended up dying - unusually for a series like this, he's managed to simultaneously stay dead and still make active contributions to the mythology through flashbacks and tapes and suchlike).  Certainly the series is somewhat morally dubious through its convoluted moral justifications for elaborate torture-and-death-traps (although Saw VI's revenge on the health-insurance industry is kinda delightful), and it does start to disappear up its on overly convoluted arse, but never the less there is some kinda sick pleasure in such heftily over-plotted fare (in a genre where a lot of films tend to stick to the basics of killer, victim and chasing around with a sharp implement).

Still, the series eventually took a break with the seventh entry, somewhat hopefully entitled "the Final Chapter". OF course, you can't keep a profitable series down and seven year's later it's back for more, this time directed by the Spherig Brothers (previously responsible for inventive sci-fi/thriller films like "Daywalkers" and "Predestination"). Alas, this is kinda sabotaged by a rather uninventive script - it seems content to do all the bog standard "Saw" things in pretty much the most bog-standard ways. There's a bunch of people involved in a bunch of death traps, there are police investigating, there are a couple of twists here and there, there is a clear sense that these theoretically meticulously planned deathtraps actually only play out the way they were originally planned due to pure luck, and there are a whole heap of flashbacks near the end to explain what was really happening the entire time. But there's not a whole heap of invention here - it's very much going through the motions most of the time, and Jigsaw himself comes across as a bit of a tiresome old bore ranting about the same old nonsense about people needing to improve themselves through survival of elaborate death traps, like a particularly grim Tony Robbins. THere's not a great deal of surprise or delight and the characters aren't striking enough to invest in any of their struggles. Ironically, it's all very mechanical. I can't recommend this as anything but a series obligation for the completist.

Suburbicon

This is an odd duck - a Coen Brothers screenplay that they decided not to make, "improved" by George Clooney and his writing partner Grant Herslov in the filming. The bones of the Coen script are reasonably apparent - it's one of their riffs on genere pics, in particular wandering close to James M. Cain. But Clooney's adaptation seems to serve to lessen the film, ironically by trying to make it do more than it's really designed to bear. 

For a start, as a director Clooney has far more of a mixed record than may be immediately apparent - his "Good Night and Good Luck" is a great film, certainly, but his adaptation of "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" is lesser work and similarly, his attempts to play light with "Leatherheads" and "Monuments Men" mostly have sputtered. The necessary lightness required to do this kinda suburban satire seems missing, and, particularly in the setup, there's awkward gear shifting between the murderous family deceptions with Julianne Moore and Matt Damon which feel very Coen-ish and the accelerating intimidation of a recently-arrived black family (which feels utterly imposed on the script and weirdly under-served - the black family basically exist entirely to be persecuted). By the middle when it has become apparent what everybody's agenda is, the Damon/Moore plotline accelerates (also gaining particularly when Oscar Isaac as an insurance investigator shows up), but the segregation plotline resolutely fails to mean very much or get us very invested on either side of the divide. 

So this is a disappointment - there really was enough there with the noir-thriller aspects without trying to "improve" it by trying to bring in hamfisted social satire. 

Three Summers

Ben Elton is one of those performers who was big in the 80s and has spent much of the last couple of decades somewhat reviled. And it's true that he's had some high profile crashes ("Live on Planet Earth") and has, even worse, written jukebox musicals of dubious merit (the well known "We Will Rock You" and the lesser known "Tonight's The Night"). But if the ranting outrage has been replaced by something a tad gentler and more consumer friendly, a little bit of the political intention remains behind in "Three Summers", a gentle comedy taking place over three annual folk music festivals in a small Western Australian town.

There's a little bit of subplot overload, such that a couple of the cast on the poster end up with little to play (Deborah Mailman in particular is there to provide very brief support to two characters and never really gets any decent jokes), but the general intention, to use the music festival to reflect various elements of society, whether it be racist granddads, Aboriginal traditionalists, right-on protesters, self-righteous musical innovators, just-getting-by performers, immigrants, career mothers or officious security guards, gives us a range of stuff to tell. And if there's rarely a particularly quoteable one-liner, there's at least a gently pleasant feeling from the main plot thread as a theramin playing experimentalist meets a violin-playing traditionalist and they both soften towards one another. And while there is a thread to parody right-on-political-statements, there's also a little bit of a burst of them as well, presented somewhat more softly.

I can't bring myself to hate this, it's soft and gentle and kinda likeable. But I can't really say it demands to be seen either.

Brigsby Bear

25 year old James has been raised his whole life in a secluded location, his only form of entertainment the series "Brigsby Bear Adventures" which he watches on videotapes, enjoying its strange mix of space adventure and maths and moral lessons. But when he suddenly has to face the world and discovers nobody else has ever heard of Brigsby, he becomes increasingly obsessed with sharing it with everybody he knows.

This is, needless to say, a somewhat unusual story. Star and writer Kyle Mooney is a Saturday Night Live vetran, and like much of the SNL spinoffs, it's a film about an obsessed manchild, but in this case, the obsession is treated somewhat differently, not so much a case of pop-culture cool as something far more personal and fundamental. It's also got a surprising sweetness to it - the situation it describes is somewhat extreme but the film isn't particularly interested in mocking James or anyone else. There's some nice supporting turns too from Mark Hammil in a role somewhat unlike his usual work and Greg Kinnear in one of the better roles he's had lately as a police detective who's also a wanna-be thespian. There's a deeper examination about the role of pop culture in our lives than we usually get - about how it may shape us and how the relationship between fan and creation goes both ways, covering both the joy of engagement and the melancholy that pop culture obsession can be a diversion from. A genuinely sweet film.