Scottles Reviews

Jonah from Tonga (2014)

Alright but......

[6/10 · 3 May 2014]

I think out of all of his work now Chris has shown that his strength is in character and situations but not in story. This is the case again with Jonah, although I do think it was better than the J'Amie series.

The problem is it's kind of like the same joke over and over again - and it just wears off. I thought this series started a bit slowly then started to get good with the dance competition and the time in juvenile detention but then failed to fully deliver.

The problem is the character never really got his come-uppance he doesn't grow or change enough to make him interesting or compelling enough to watch over 2 series. Jonah either needed to get the crap beaten out of him so he learnt some humility, or he needed to have something he really valued destroyed by his own actions and then come to realise it himself - and learn and grow from that.

But none of this happens - and once we get the shock and the humour and everything to do with the character and style of the show it just wears thin. I found J'Amie very similar - if she had falsely accused someone of molesting her and all of that came to ahead and she was brought to account by it imagine how good that series could have been - rather than what we got.

Chris is very talented and very insightful and observant - and brave - but I really think he needs to understand story more, and how it works and what it does to character and the audience - and why - in order to get the most out of what he is trying to do.

Jucy (2010)

Victim of its own "coolness"?

[6/10 · 26 May 2013]

Jucy is a challenging film.

On one hand the characters are engaging and charming, the subject matter worthy, and the spirit of the film is good.

On the other hand the script is rushed, there are narrative jumps that feel forced, and it is stuck between not knowing if it is a comedy or a drama, and is unsatisfying as both. Part of the problem is mixing relatively serious/believable characters (Jacky, Lucy) with out an out charactertures (Alex, Dimity) – you just can't flow convincingly between characters and scenes that come from such a different take on life and the issues covered in the film. I say relatively serious and believable characters because Jackie was hardly an accurate depiction of someone with a mental illness requiring medication – she seemed to slip in and out of these states way too conveniently without it having as big an effect on her as it would have in reality.

I think the script needed to be longer, and the subject matter looked at more realistically for it to be a seamless film – it could have enjoyed a lot of highs and lows and had a lot of natural comedy in it as well. Or they could have gone the other way and made it a straight out comedy with little depth but still a lesson learnt – as the Americans would have made it! It felt like it was compressed into a 90 minute "indie youth comedy" and was restricted by all of the limits and clichés of that form that it took on. Just as the characters within the film needed a more mature take on everything, so to did the film makers about the subject matter of this film and film making in general.

That's the constructive criticism! It's still an enjoyable film with a good purpose, just un-necessarily dragged down by things that shouldn't have dragged it down. It was well made for such a small budget and whatever this crowd do next will be worth watching.

The Elegant Gentleman's Guide to Knife Fighting (2013)

How not to make comedy sketches

[3/10 · 3 April 2013]

New sketch comedy shows aren't that common in Australia so it was with great interest that I watched this show, but sadly found it a huge disappointment.

The best thing about the show was that the premise behind a lot of the sketches were funny - but then that was completely smothered and killed in the way they were then played out and made.

Each sketch for the most part was acted, directed and filmed in the style of a drama. This changed their meaning and feeling completely and made what should have been quick and funny (even absurd) scenes slow, torturous and uncomfortable - for example the Prius driving dinner guest. Most of the sketches looked and felt like they were excerpts out of a drama film - and not comedy sketches at all.

There's so much good sketch comedy around from the last 50 or so years - it's not actually rocket science - you think the makers of this show would have done a bit of research. If they were trying to be different just for the sake of it - it's created a flawed product - if they were trying to be different to be funnier - it again hasn't worked. You just have to look at Micallef's Mad As Hell to see there's still a lot of new laughs to be got with in established styles and formats. Reinventing the wheel here has only given us a worse wheel.

Candy (2006)

Good but also over rated

[7/10 · 11 March 2013]

There are many things to admire about this film - the extent of the effect of drug taking that the film goes into (like the miscarriage)- and Heath Ledgers performance; but there's a lot that just doesn't add up or go as well as it should have. Things that concerned me were: Abby Cornish gave a good performance but she spent almost the whole film looking like a gorgeous movie star, not a heroin addicted prostitute. People on heroin pay for it terribly in their physical and mental state and the physical side of it just wasn't captured properly in it. Where were the lesions, the weight loss, the teeth loss - the scabs? There was way too much "Portrait of the Drug Addicts as Beautiful Young Artistes" instead of lost disaffected drug addicted youth. ie too much celebrating their beauty and love rather than a more distanced objective framing of it - especially at the start of the film Ledger was charming and beautifully in the moment in his acting - but his charactersation was all over the place at times - from bumbling hopeless druggy to confident actor in a robbery to hard working brickies labourer -- all of these things are possible in the one character but we don't feel him grow and naturally change to them - it just felt like poor and jarring scripting and directing I felt the voice overs removed me from the action and a closeness to the characters and also created a few narrative jumps - I didn't feel like I was sitting as close to the characters on their journey as I felt I should have A few specific things - Dan's reaction to Candy first prostituting herself was neither one way or the other - something that strong required a strong reaction (after all we're continually told how much they love each other) - but if he wasn't too fussed about it - and if he's like that because of the drugs then we need to see that he is completely done over and desperate for the drugs, which he didn't seem When Candy sits up and tells the real estate agent 'we're drug addicts things are complicated' (or something like that) I didn't buy a word of it ~ she simply wasn't effected enough by her situation to make the words believable Rush was a bit stagey at times too It makes some good points and has some lovely acting in it at times - especially the last scene with Ledger and Cornish - but for me some of it jarred a bit - they just needed to put the boot in a bit more and stop celebrating them and start showing and feeling it more! Perhaps the degree to which they indulged or celebrated the characters prevented Armfield from looking in full detail at all of the scenes - for instance when Dan steals the wallet he doesn't know what the owner will look like - but when he first sees the drivers license and shows it to Rush and asks if he looks like him there's no sense of this being a new thought - it's as if he knows he can pull off the robbery by looking like him before he realises he looks like him! Some narrative advances appeared to come from the writer not the character - the way the robbery is pulled off is highly unrealistic (to the point of almost being comical for all the wrong reasons) - and you get the feeling it happened because the writer wanted him to have a lot of money not because it was a realistic situation faced by the character in his realistic world.

Cannes Man (1996)

Enjoyable but average

[5/10 · 5 January 2013]

Although the film has a great premise and a good point to make as I was watching it I couldn't help but think how much better it would have been had it been made by Woody Allen. The execution would have been so much better. I can only think they relied too much on improvising and whoever they could presumably talk into participating while they were at Cannes, rather than scripting it all and making it from scratch as Allen would have. Much of the acting isn't quite of a high enough standard either, but none the less its still and enjoyable film to watch.

Trading Places is another film that comes to mind when watching this - along with The Player - and ensemble pieces like Best In Show and This Is Spinal Tap. All of them cover either similar themes, or were made in a similar way, but yielded a better result. Perhaps the difference with Best in Show and Spinal Tap is that their makers had a firmer idea of what each scene was meant to cover before it was improvised, and from the outset they had a stronger script/structure - this film seemed to lack a little in that regard, as well as having some average acting. I thought Sy Lerner's character was a bit confusing too - at the start he seems to be a bit of a schmuck past his best days, yet he still seems to carry a lot of clout and when he starts wheeling and dealing.

Little Fish (2005)

Over rated

[5/10 · 4 November 2012]

I found Little Fish way too slow and even turgid, it has a ponderousness which is at times nice, but frequently boring. The big problem is most of the dramatic action that is effecting the characters has already happened years before the film takes place, and at times when the various characters have intense moments about these long gone events it just makes the acting seem melodramatic because we haven't seen or felt the events they are talking about. In fact the whole piece comes across as a third act in a much larger story, and if we'd seen these original events the characters and their actions would seem much more natural.

Unlike Animal Kingdom which has similar pacing but which only grows in intensity as the characters unravel because of things they are doing now, the pacing here just slows everything and waters down what interesting content there is. It's alright for the theme to be looking at people struggling with their lives after these big events, except there was way too much of them struggling with these past events rather than their lives now - all of the emotional and narrative action is centred around things we haven't seen and which aren't really explained clearly either.

Hugo Weaving is brilliant and the film is worth seeing just for his performance alone. There was something about Cate Blanchett's performance I didn't like - it seemed just a bit too much of a one note take on her - there was lots of hair flicking and annoyance - but the character wasn't infused with any kind of nobility as she tried to overcome the effects of her past wrongs - that would have made for a much more engaging performance and given us some empathy for her. But then again maybe she really did hit the nail on the head because if she's selfish enough to become a drug addict in the first place there's no reason why some of those character traits wouldn't have carried over afterwards as well.

Maybe as film maker myself I find it frustrating that a film that is clearly not ready to be made simply because of the script, can get made with a good budget and a good cast. The photography and music were very nice though.

Puss in Boots (2011)

Below average but enjoyable

[4/10 · 15 December 2011]

Here's the good news: the artwork is outstanding, and the kids will love it for the most part.

Here's the bad news: the story is cobbled together and confusing - children used to strong story backbones like the Pixar films may find their attention wandering. I mean compare this to Up - it's chalk and cheese.

This comes across as an idea (money making opportunity) looking for a real story to carry it - it will be enjoyable for kids, so shouldn't be avoided, but it will hardly be remembered in a few years time.

For some reason IMDb likes 10 lines to make it a legitimate review! - strange because this film doesn't need 10 lines to get to it's gist!

The Timeless Land (1980)

Now available on DVD

[11 October 2006]

It's just come out in the ABC shops - see: http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=740972 In order to for this now to be posted i have to fill up 10 lines. How should I do that - well i saw this show back in the 80's and enjoyed it. I liked Against the Wind more - but this was good - I've even got the book about the making of it. You don't see them very often! Now I'm going to try submitting this again - why did they come up with this rule? Okay so that wasn't enough - I need another 4 lines - this is insane - anyway all i wanted to do was to show that it's available on DVD - perhaps I should have started a message about it in the forum section - oh well -- The girl from Upstairs Downstairs is also in it - can't remember much else - time to check again (here's hoping) Scot

Madagascar (2005)

Disappointing

[5/10 · 29 June 2005]

The art work was nice - but really the film is full of half developed themes, half developed characters and half developed story lines. Thankfully it wasn't as in your face as Sharks Tale, but is no where near as good as the Pixar cartoons like Toy Story. Even my kids got a bit bored (age 3 and 5) interestingly they seem to be able to follow the Pixar ones better with more involved stories and characters - perhaps kids aren't as dumb as people like to think - and in fact I wonder how well Dreamworks SKG understand the way kids think - Shrek was too scary, Sharks tale too loud and spasmodic - Madagascar was a step in the right direction but needed a lot more script work before it was made - it could have been quite good.