Forgiveness

"You don't want to be forgiven. You want to be punished!" is yelled at ex-cop Tertius Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo, The Mummy) during one of many fiery clashes with the family of Daniel, a young black man Tertius admitted to killing during South Africa's Apartheid. In Forgiveness, the first feature directed by Ian Gabriel, a difficult subject is explored objectively from both sides where there are no easy answers.

Coetzee has travelled to the small fishing village of Paternoster and, with the aid of a local priest, Father Dalton and under the immunity of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he attempts to explain himself to the Grootboom family. The colours of the film are muted and washed out. There's very little life left in this fishing village where the catch gets smaller each year and the only way forward may be for the locals to sell their homes to wealthy white people to use as holiday shacks.

As Coetzee, Vosloo depicts a once strong, powerful man weighed down by his own conscience, kept awake by nightmares of torture and determined to face his guilt. But it is the performance of Quanita Adams as the sister of Daniel that stands out. Her anger at this stranger who has come to her house is deftly handled, and the journey she takes from there is beautifully realised.

Forgiveness rates 3 1/2 stars.

Clean

There's a terrible saying: It takes two to be co-dependant. But that's exactly the kind of relationship between Lee Hauser and Emily Wang (James Johnston and Maggie Cheung) in the engrossing Olivier Assayas film Clean. Lee is a somewhat successful musician, but his best music and his money are a thing of the past. When Lee dies of a heroin overdose in a seedy Canadian motel room, his friends and the media blame Emily's influence as the major factor in his downfall.

Nick Nolte, who seems to be enjoying the plethora of weathered, gruff roles that are coming his way, plays Lee's father and de facto parent to Lee and Emily's son, Jay. After serving six months in jail for drug possession, Emily distracts herself by moving to Paris and doing whatever work she can find, convincing herself that she's making the changes that will see her reunited with her son.

Drug rehabilitation films come along quite frequently. Nick Nolte himself kicked heroin in 2002's The Good Thief and then robbed a casino, but Clean is a more human story. The character of Emily is strongly defined and thoroughly explored. We get a real sense of her life and how she's grown in to her current existence.

Filmed in three countries, mostly on hand-held cameras, and in as many languages, Clean is a visually exciting film with a great documentary feel. Along with the realistic performances, especially from the excellent Cheung, the film has a wonderful energy that pulls the audience along. We want Emily to clean up her act so she can get her son back, but it's evident that an ordinary lifestyle isn't for her.

Clean rates 4 stars.

Keane

The opening scene of Lodge Kerrigan’s film Keane depicts the heart-wrenching desperation and despair of a man, William Keane (Damien Lewis) unreasonably trying to garner information from ticketing staff at the bus station where his six-year-old daughter disappeared several months previously. There’s just no way. It’s the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal and they can’t be expected to remember the little girl in the purple jacket.

Lewis’ brilliantly nuanced performance of the schizophrenic Keane is the backbone of the entire film. He’s in every scene, with the first twenty minutes of the film being an almost lone-hand performance as Keane attempts to follow the fragmented, invented path of where his daughter may have gone that day.

Thoughts of the Sean Penn directed The Pledge immediately came to mind when Keane befriends a struggling mother and her seven year-old-daughter (Amy Ryan and Abigail Breslin) at the transient hotel where he’s moved to in order to be close to the area. He shows interest in the daughter, and there’s a tremendous sense of dread as to what form of relationship will develop as Keane struggles to maintain his sanity.

The film creates a remarkable sense empathy created for this man who we see at times behave violently and irrationally and I don’t think I’ve ever felt an audience will a character to do the right thing as I did with this film. You want him to pull himself together, to wrench himself from the absolute anguish that is evident in every subtle gesture made. An extraordinary performance in a gripping thriller.

Keane rates 4 1/2 stars.

The Take

Naomi Klein, author of the bestselling anti-globalisation tome No Logo has in recent years become the lambasting, left wing, talking-head of choice for news panel discussions and documentaries (The Corporation). It was on such a cable news program that Klein was repeatedly pressed for solutions to what she said were the problems of economic globalisation (something she wasn’t prepared for).

Determined to find answers she subsequently found herself in Argentina with journalist Avi Lewis as they investigated how workers in the recently bankrupted country are taking back their jobs and their rights in The Take.

The recent success of theatrically released documentaries comes as no surprise when you consider that long form journalistic stories are pretty much absent from our TV screens, (at least on the commercial networks) and audiences are craving more than a three minute surface scan of a story. In The Take, Lewis and Klein meet a group of Buenos Aires factory workers who have decided that the value of their closed parts factory to be sold-off is equal to the wages they are owed and have decided to take it over and start producing. Their motto: “Occupy, Resist, Produce” is an echo of action taking place in bankrupted factories all over the once burgeoning middle-class country.

After setting the scene early on, Klein and Lewis take a back seat and allow the workers to tell their story, (which is extraordinarily affecting at times) whilst manufacturing a case against the types of IMF economic reforms that brought this once striving nation to its knees. They demonstrate the ability of the people to affect political change, and if nothing else The Take should certainly implant a couple of questions in the mind of viewers in regards to our own government’s stripping away of worker’s rights.

The Take rates 3 1/2 stars.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Originally uploaded by Struthers.

If your home planet has just been destroyed and you find yourself transported aboard a hostile alien spacecraft, then you might require some information as to your new surroundings. Fortunately for anyone finding themselves in such a situation there’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, an easy to follow manual for those on the move throughout the universe.
For Arthur Dent, Martin Freeman (The Office), spending the morning laying in front of a bulldozer that’s attempting to build a bypass through his home, quickly becomes a moot point when his neighbour and friend, Ford Prefect (Mos Def) informs Arthur that he is both an alien and that the planet has been slated for destruction in twelve minutes in order to build an intergalactic super-highway.
With grand themes of life, the universe and everything, Hitchhiker’s occasionally dips into sappy sentimentality, but it doesn’t linger there long, and it’s the wonderful silly British sense of humour shines through from beginning to end.
While he didn’t live to see his endeavours, Hitchhiker’s was written by Douglas Adams, and has already been a successful radio series, a trilogy of four books that sold in the millions and a six part television series. So there had to be something new for the old fans while not alienating any new ones and they pull it off.
There’s more action, snappier dialogue, and the fantastic Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the dim-witted, narcissistic president of the galaxy.
The advances in special effects technology add to the realism of the project without becoming burdensome and along with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop they’ve come up with some wonderful looking aliens and worlds to fill the screen.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wild nutty ride and it rates 4 1/2 stars.

The Year In Brief

Closer - 5 stars. Dialogue to die for. Direction from a master. The other Julia Roberts. The rest of the cast. Ideas. You'll talk about it afterwards for sure.

Sideways - 4 stars. Cack-your-dacks time.

The Motorcycle Diaries - 4 1/2 stars. Compelling, beautifully realised biopic that doesn't try to cover a lifetime (Ray).

Hotel Rwanda - 3 1/2 stars. The West's secret shame, a secret no more.

Milllion Dollar Baby - 2 1/2 stars. The first two acts are the stuff of sporting movie cliche, (watch Girlfight instead).

House of Flying Daggers - 2 stars. Half the film Hero is. Relies too heavilly on CGI.

The Life Aqquatic with Steve Zissou - 4 1/2 stars. The right amount of quirk, great jokes and a brilliant cast.

Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst - 3 stars. Not as good as last year's The Weather Underground, but bizarre and fascinating real events unfolding in front of the world.

Bad Santa

Bad Santa
Originally uploaded by Struthers.

The true meaning of the spirit of Christmas is well-worn cinema territory, and thank Christ that Bad Santa is nowhere in the realm of family holiday cheer. In fact if your kids are the kind who still leave out cookies and milk for the fat guy, then keep them well away from this hilarious gem.
Director Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World) pulls no punches in his depiction of an alcoholic Santa who hates children and his equally foul-mouthed elf (Tony Cox) who each year work in a different shopping mall, before robbing the place of it's holiday takings on Christmas eve.
Santa Clause (Billy Bob Thornton, A Simple Plan) is on the slippery slope to alcoholic oblivion, soiling himself more often than the spoilt children who sit on his lap each day. However firing the duo is impossible for the store manager (the late John Ritter), as his elf is not only a "little person", but he's also black.
Things get interesting for Santa when two people enter his life. He finds himself, between swearing fits, having to placate an 8-year-old boy who believes he really is Santa; and a barmaid (Lauren Graham, Gilmore Girls), who has a thing for guys in the red suit.
With a nosey store detective (Bernie Mac, Oceans 11), sniffing around, and in a film where Santa has exactly zero redeeming qualities, you can be sure this bad boy isn't ending like other Christmas favourites; Miracle on 34th Street, or The Santa Clause.
The script is hilarious, Billy Bob is pitch-perfect, and the story flies by while the jokes keep rolling. Bad Santa is brilliant and bawdy and shows us what the true meaning of Christmas really is. (Commercialised robbery).

Bad Santa rates 4 1/2 stars.