Rather light amateurish Brazilian comedy which nevertheless has a really nice heart. Lucas (Paulo Sousa) lives with his religious aunt Lourdes (Juliana Zancanaro)
in a small country town. She announces one day that a cousin of Lucas’s is coming to stay for a few days because he has been in trouble with the law and spent time in jail. Lourdes goes off for a few days and Mario (Thiago Cazado) arrives. He is charming and a bit of a wide boy and starts to liberate Lucas from his stuffy lifestyle and the two boys begin a romance.
Meanwhile, Julia (Duda Esteves) a member of the local church group keeps coming round for piano lessons and throwing herself on Lucas.
When she discovers that the two boys are boyfriends she hits the roof and plans to “out” them at a church meeting. Lourdes returns and the whole situation comes to a head.
The acting is a bit overdone by some of the minor characters and the script is patchy, but the film has a freshness and a light comic tone that is laudable. Clearly an independent movie with Thiago Cazado acting
, directing and scriptwriting but for the small budget it is pretty well put together.
♦♦
, a police officer who recognizes she hasn’t done enough to protect the girl.
an Iranian born teenager running from the white brothers of his girlfriend,
since they want revenge on a wog fingering their sister. Finally, Lan (Jenny Wu)
is running away from a brothel that she was forced into by unscrupulous foreigners taking advantage of foreign students. All of these are contemporary issues in multicultural Australia and the idea is to give them an airing here.
Mostly it works although a lot of issues are thrown at the audience during the film and are mostly not solved. It is the depiction that is most important but in short, aboriginal – white relationships, human trafficking and white Australian vs immigrant families
are the main themes.
shows his experience and anchors this film playing a bankrupt farmer who gets caught up in one of the stories
and Sean Keenan does well as a nasty piece of middle class white trash. Also good to see Brisbane as the setting for a movie but apart from the heat and lush vegetation, it doesn’t inspire.
His films are small events really and yet he transforms them into art and shows how the mundane can be often very meaningful.
works at a wood and carpentry shop and has a house which one or more other men share. He invites Gabriel (Gastón Re) to take an empty room. Gabriel is your typical silent type and the blond of the title. Juan is more outgoing and sleeps around with both sexes although his public image is that of one of the boys.
After a few weeks in the house a relationship develops between the two men, revealing something of their past as well as their present (Gabriel has a young daughter). This relationship, largely managed by Juan is unpredictable and yet becomes something quite strong for both men.
How will this pan out? Will they come out? Will they break up? Berger keeps us in suspense with Nahuel Berger’s haunting photography and subtle music by Pedro Irusta. We see plenty of nudity but totally fitting in the context. Slow but real and moving.
is a Hebrew dialogue coach on an Israeli Palestinian soap opera. He travels in and out of Israel every day. Sometimes he suggests changes to the dialogue.
When the main writer bows out he is approached by the producers to take over the job and gets ideas and inspiration from family, friends and most frequently the checkpoint commander he sees everyday.
This latter, Captain Assi (Yaniv Biton) is keen to become more involved and starts suggesting plots which include a wedding for the final episode between the Israeli general and the Palestinian spy
masquerading as a café owner (Lubna Azahal).
The whole story of how the plot keeps changing depending on the TV channel owners, the public and the friends of Salam is very amusingly and naturally handled.
There is also a subplot concerning Salam’s own romantic life
with local doctor Mariam (Maisa Abd Elhadi).
is asked to take a former schoolmate who he hated back to a friend’s reunion across country.
Expecting the worst, Harry (Niko Terho)
turns out to be very different than he imagined and a friendship/potential romance starts up with Sam’s best friend Stasia (Britt Baron)
as the third party in the middle. Most of the rest of the film takes place in Chicago over the next couple of years as we follow this relationship
and its ups and downs.
Nothing new again but good for a pleasant evening in.
set the day before the wedding of Daniel (Anthony Rapp) and Christopher (Jonathan Bennett).
They seem perfectly matched but the stress of the event, much of which Daniel is trying to run by himself, the arrival of friends including one long-lost friend
and of family each with their own take on marriage, raise temperatures and friction. Thanks to good acting,
especially Sam Anderson
as Daniel’s father and Alyson Hannigan
as his sister, the rather preachy and obvious script comes across quite naturally. Photography is excellent and in Tunick manages to create a certain atmosphere.
Nothing new or groundbreaking but a work he can be satisfied with.
in the trenches are sent to deliver a message to the commander
on a front occupying recently evacuated enemy ground. The message was to abort a planned attack into enemy lines which would have been an ambush. So there is a time limit and they have to navigate all sorts of obstacles: possible booby traps, trenches
and fields full of the dead, fire, plane crashes,
snipers, etc. You may say that it is all a bit much and far from the tedium of war but I guess this is the Hollywood story part, throwing all the challenges into one day. Some commentators got more obsessed with the fact that it is allegedly made in one shot – certainly it flows like a real time or just faster than real time movie.
My take is that it is an archetypal story about rising to superhuman challenges and dealing with the bad points in all of that. This is enough for me to give it the narrative base it needs: more character development or backdrop to the war or the opposing sides is not necessary, it is about how ordinary men rise to the challenge.
, excellent direction from Sam Mendes
and even Thomas Newman’s music is a class above these usual blockbuster soundtracks. George Mackay and Dean Charles Chapman
are fine in the leads and a variety of well known actors have small parts in amongst the huge numbers of boys sent to their fates in that cruel war.
The lead is Jonas, a hospital porter now and estranged from his parents and cheating on his boyfriend.
18 years previously he was at school and was befriended by Nathan,
the typical carefree new kid who has pizazz and helps Jonas counter the school bullies. As their friendship deepens,
we get to know Nathan’s mother, who is a wise and sympathetic character well played by Aure Atika
. Felix Maritaud is very effective as the Jonas of today while Nicolas Bauwens and Tommy Lee Baik
convince as the adolescent Jonas and Nathan. The setting in the Toulon area is attractive
and the part of the movie staged in the 90s seems authentic.
A decent watch with appropriate European depth of character.
Perhaps the story could have been fleshed out more.
Theo has long rejected her and has no apparent emotional intelligence spending his time gambling and drinking. The trigger for all this is way back in the past when his mother died violently and his father favoured the other son (George Georgiou) who has been bringing Luka up. That flank is failing as Luka’s aunt has just died of breast cancer and uncle is falling apart in business and health. Theo falls ill too, meets a doctor (Scottie Thompson)
who looks like she’ll be the new mother figure Luka needs, but gets rejected too. Then there is Grandad shut away in a geriatric home. There are some Greek religious festivals,
a priest who seems to be pulling some strings, some magic realism effects as Luka teleports back into her mother’s life
after touching some family heirlooms. And there is very little change of pace. It’s not a bad film, it is not so obvious, so you have to piece things together and we get a rather sanitized look at a new community
but at the end of the day it peters out despite the good will of the actors.
and his rise and fall in the late 90’s. The usual Tsiolkas elements are in place: a gay protagonist
, class issues,
being the son of a migrant, anger management, depression. It is a competent series without being exceptional. Elias Anton
is a good central figure as swimmer Danny Kelly and it is the scenes with his coach that give most satisfaction. Matt Nable as Frank Torma
, the ex-Hungarian swimmer and swim coach is moving and totally credible in his role in a wise and humble journeyman with a touch of genius. Danny’s family is headed by ambitious mother Stephanie, well played by Victoria Haralabidou and the love attraction is Martin Taylor (Ben Kindon)
with his mother played especially well by Rachel Griffiths.
which helps to illustrate the state of mind of the lead character. Watchable and a satisfying story competently told.
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