Tag: Crime

Jasper Jones

Rated: MJasper Jones

Director: Rachel Perkins

Producers: Craig Deeker, David Jowsey, Anita Sheehan

Written By: Shaun Grant, Craig Silvey (story)

Based on: the novel ‘Jasper Jones’ by Craig Silvey (2009)

Starring: Angourie Rice, Hugo Weaving, Toni Collette, Dan Wyllie, Levi Miller, Aaron L. McGrath

The purpose of a good film is to resonate with its audience and to change our perspective: Jasper Jones did just that for me and stuck around long after I left the theatre behind.

The story of Charlie’s coming of age is about the choices we make based on what we think we know and how sometimes misinformation gets confused with facts.

We tell ourselves our life story everyday, shaping our sense of identity, our purpose. To the point that only a catalyst event can set things straight.

The night Jasper Jones finds Laura’s body, he knows that would be the end of him. As a mixed race outcast, the town he calls home would find him guilty in the blink of an eye.

And so he reaches out to young Charlie, asking for help in the middle of the night. It is a move made out of desperation, as he fears for his life.

As the plot advances, we submerge into a time and place where gossip is the common currency and nothing is what it seems behind closed doors. Where Jasper, Charlie and Eliza embark on a courageous adventure to solve a mystery, while most of their community chooses to look away.

As director Rachel Perkins stated: ‘Stories, in the words of our writer Craig Silvey, exist to promote empathy, to test preconceptions and to transform opinions. The audience will ultimately be the judge if we have succeeded in that quest.’

Jasper Jones is a best-selling Australian novel by Craig Silvey. 
The novel has received broad critical acclaim and commercial success including being shortlisted for the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2011 and shortlisted for the Australian Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2010.

Live by Night

Rated: MA15+Live by Night

Director / Screenwriter / Producer: Ben Affleck

Based on a novel written by: Dennis Lehane

Director of Photography: Robert Richardson

Starring: Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Matthew Maher, Miguel J. Pimentel, Max Casella.

Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) is a man recently home from WWI.  After seeing so much wasted bloodshed, he refuses to believe in a system that applies no value to the people it governs.

The son of Boston’s Deputy Superintendent, Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson), a good cop and a cop who loves his son, Joe goes about life without regard for the law. He robs banks and falls in love with a gangster’s Molly, Emma Gould (Sienna Miller).

Joe wants to be free.And he is free, until the Italian Mafia decide they want the Irishman on their side.

Live by Night isn’t one of those gangster revenge films full of sociopaths and relentless shoot-outs. This is a film shown beautifully through the authentic setting of those 1920s streets of Boston and the vast skies reflected in the snake-like curving rivers of Miami.

It took a while but I was eventually absorbed by this story based on a novel written by Dennis Lehane (winner of the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Novel of the Year). The screenplay written by Ben Affleck has the benefit of well-thought characters and a ring of truth about the era: Prohibition and the underground rum trade in Tampa, racism, the fight for the American Dream. But what is The Dream? Girls, money, power, love?

Freedom?

There was a complexity here. This is a story about a man who wants to survive. But not at any price, not while there’s still a piece of heaven here on earth.< With an adaptation of a novel, it’s not easy to convey all without glossing over moments that would have been given more depth in the text. Although each character was portrayed so the fierceness, evil and beauty was shown in the dialogue, some extra seconds of those facial expressions would have conveyed more. Offsetting the lack of depth was the beautiful camera work by Robert Richardson, giving access to the film through the depiction of setting. I imagine it must have been difficult for Ben Affleck to act and direct in the same film. To be the one to portray what you have written, to show the vision of the story must be a hard task. And it shows. Ben being the least impressive actor in the film. I’m not saying his acting was bad, I’m just saying it wasn’t as believable as the performance of say, Sienna Miller or Matthew Maher (as RD Pruitt).  Thankfully, the rest of the cast are phenomenal, given direction by the screenwriter, Ben. A headful, I know. And a hint into the space that is Ben Affleck. What an achievement. Overall, Live by Night is one of those quiet movies that creeps up on you, a slow absorption into the point-of-view of Joe that doesn’t smack you in the face because that’s not in his psychological make-up: ‘I don’t want to be a gangster. I stopped kissing rings a long time ago.’

A sometimes bland film but a cracker of a story.

Nocturnal Animals

Rated: MA15+Nocturnal Animals

Director: Tom Ford

Screenplay: Tom Ford

Based on: Tony and Susan, written by Austin Wright (first published in 1993).

Starring: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Andrea Riseborough; Michael Sheen.

A dark emotive story within a story that’s sometimes confronting and always thought-provoking.

Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is living the life she thought she always wanted: a successful gallery owner married to a handsome husband.  But as her marriage begins to disintegrate she begins to think of her first husband, Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal), often.  When she receives a manuscript from Edward, dedicating the novel to her, the film shifts from the life of Susan Morrow to the story written in the novel.

There’s a stark simplicity in both tales here, yet together they create a delicate knot of tragedy.

The garish setting and understated elegance of costume and character is how director and screenwriter, Tom Ford, shows the reality of Susan Morrow.  Art can be trash – ‘It’s trash’ states Susan.  A statement of regret and a hint of her feeling of loss.  Yet the second story, the novel, is a stark crime novel, set in the desert of Texas.  A tale of family, murder, revenge; of the simplistic reality of life. A gut wrenching story compared to her quiet grief and disbelief of the life she’s currently living.

Nocturnal Animals shows the emptiness found in life where priorities made outside ourselves lead to choices that are later realised as mistakes.  And living with those  mistakes creates an emptiness.  What was so important is no longer what life is.  Sometimes, it leads to so much trash.

There’s an influence of the superficial world of fashion here, stemming from Tom Ford’s past life as a fashion designer.  But he uses the contrast the two stories (the life of Susan Morrow against the story written by her ex-husband), of the beautiful house and extravagance of the successful against the dust and murder in the novel, together, to combine both stories into the complex emotion of loss.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the ex-husband and character in the novel as a sensitive, complicated yet good man, well.  There’s just the right touch here, a subtle and realistic tone.

I remember first seeing Amy Adams in the film Junebug (2005) – those soulful eyes used by director Tom Ford so well here.  It’s remarkable how well she plays tragic torn sadness.

And the highlight, Michael Shannon as the down-at-heal Detective Bobby Andes.  A likable character.  The only truly likable character which makes the story all the more real because the characters are complicated.

The film is based on the novel, Tony and Susan, written by Austin Wright.  The novel unsuccessful at first because thought to be too literary, but then enjoying critical acclaim when released in the UK.  Then taken up and written for the screen by Ford.  An ambitious project.  Yet the cast, pacing, orchestral soundtrack (Abel Korzeniowski) and setting frame the story beautifully.  But this isn’t a beautiful story, this is a thought-provoking tale, shown to confront the audience because the truth is fragile and delicate.

It’s difficult to rate this film as I didn’t particularly enjoy watching.  Yet, the film resonates. It’s not about the enjoyment, but capturing the emotion of regret.

‘I have no right to be unhappy because I have everything’, says Susan Morrow (Amy Adams).  ‘Happiness is relative,’ replies her friend at a dinner party.  A bourgeois luxury.  Yet grief and loss equalises all.

Goldstone

Director/Writer/Music: Ivan SenGoldstone

Starring: Aaron Pedersen, Alex Russell, David Gulpilil, Jacki Weaver; David Wenham.

Sequel to Mystery Road (2013).

A crime drama set on the backdrop of the desert mining town of Goldstone.

Goldstone gets you thinking about the value of life out in isolation where the threat is from the people who run the town and earn the mighty mining dollar.

Out there in the desert, the desolate packed earth runs through the veins up to the soul of those unable to quench it.

This is a film driven by the strong performances of Aaron Pedersen as Jay Swan, the grieving drunken cop sent to the country of his mob to find a Chinese girl gone missing.  And Jacki Weaver as the Mayor: a cold character, with the ice in her stare showing the predator beneath her floral apron.

David Wenham as Johnny, the head of the mining company, was also a stand-out performance: an iconic Aussie character with his stubby shorts, long socks pulled up to the knees and glasses from the ’70s.

And the Indigenous people also play a part in this film, with old man Jimmy’s (David Gulpilil) voice echoing off the red rock reflected on the water of secret rivers.

It’s unique, the setting of this film.

Director Ivan Sen makes the most of the endless land and rosy sunsets by taking shots from high above to show the utter isolation of the place.  He uses the quiet threat of the land where wild half-breed dingoes and flies will eat you if you happen to get lost.  The lone cop, Josh (Alex Russell) telling the detective, the outsider, ‘Be careful where you step, there’s plenty of snakes around’.

And I found the quiet of the film interesting, with a soundtrack made up mostly of the desert wind and bird call of the outback.

This isn’t a film that entertains but takes you on a journey of crime in a place so isolated, the one cop in town is seemingly unable to fight it.

It’s a different set of rules in Goldstone, amongst the hawks and red dirt.  And this film highlights the difference between the organic, the value of fish in the river compared to the fake power of money.

Goldstone is glittering glass often mistaken for natural material.  And like the title of this film, money is just paper.  Human trafficking is not of the earth.  It’s a human trait, like fake gold.

So yes, this is a quality film that gets you thinking, but it’s such a quiet slow burner you need to concentrate with this one.

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