October 4

American Animals
A Prayer Before Dawn
Italian Film Festival - last few days

I've  missed a couple of the films opening today, like Venom (what, another Marvel movie!) and the adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. But I've got two strong films for you, plus the ongoing Italian Film Festival. 

American Animals

Director: Bart Layton
Length: 120 min

© Madman - true crime creatively portrayed in a
tense and salutary heist tale.

This is a true crime story that quite beggars belief. Four  college friends living in a Kentucky university town in 2004 all feel to some extent that their lives are meaningless and boring and they need some “defining event” to make it all worthwhile. So they hatch a plan to stage a daring heist in the special collections room of the university, aiming to steal a rare book of Audubon’s bird paintings. They plan their heist as if they are living a Hollywood movie – lots of ideas and no experience. Layton uses an audacious narrative construct – he has the real men, now in their thirties, talk to camera about how they remember the events, and then he intersperses the reflections with reenactments, sometimes morphing one “real” memory with the dramatic recreation. The parents of the boys and local townsfolk also reflect upon the events, creating what feels like a cross between a doco and a heist thriller. The action barrels along at a pace, and the four young men playing the boys present a chilling salutary lesson for disaffected youth and how bad choices can derail promising young lives. Ann Dowd (so excellent as Aunt Lydia in Handmaid’s Tale) rounds out the cast as the librarian. The film is extremely well made but I found myself emotionally disconnected from the characters and even their real-life counterparts.
3.5 - well recommended!

A Prayer Before Dawn
Exclusive to Cinema Nova
Director: Jean Stephane Sauvaire
Length: 116 min

© Nova/Disney - one of the most gruelling
films I've ever experienced - but brilliantly made.

Billy Moore (Joe Cole) lived his young life in Liverpool public housing, a victim of parental abuse and doing drugs and crime by the age of 16. After several jail stints and rehab, he went to Thailand to hopefully turn his life around and become a boxer. That's all background to where the film picks up: Billy is living a life of squalor and once more involved in the crime and drug scene. Thrown into a notorious Thai jail, he is convinced by prison authorities that the only way he will survive is to get himself onto the Thai boxing (Muay Thai) team, which he does. The film is based upon Moore's eponymous memoir, with the added phrase A Nightmare in Thailand. Nightmare is the operative word, making Midnight Express look like a kids' picnic. Sauvaire uses Cole as only one of two professional actors, the rest being real ex-prisoners, who helped with the film's scripting and who give the whole a mesmerising, terrifying realism that envelops the viewer. The aim seems to be to give the audience as visceral a feel of life in the overcrowded cells as possible, with the heat, sweat, violence, and brutal near-animal conditions. The film-making is so masterful it is at times almost unbearable to look at the screen. I can't recommend it to anyone who hasn't got a super-strong stomach, yet it is one of the truly memorable films of the year and Cole's performance is impressive.
4 - highly recommended! - (or is it 1, as in "don't do it"?)

Italian Film Festival - ongoing
Loro
Director: Paolo Sorrentino

© Italian FF - love him or hate him, Silvio Berlusconi
is a memorable character!

The Italian Film Festival is heading for its final weekend in Melbourne, but there is still a chance to catch some excellent films. One I saw belatedly, and recommend highly is Loro, which was the opening night film.
For anyone who saw The Great Beauty, you know what a marvellous visual sensibility this director has. It's all here, leaping off the screen, in this over-the-top story of the infamous Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, impressively portrayed by Toni Servillo. The film follows two threads - Silvio and his decadent lifestyle, and Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio), a vulgar pimp who'll stop at nothing to get himself noticed by the upper echelons of power. The film is at once satirical, an amazing portrayal of abuses of power and over-indulgence, and a fascinating look at a man who is both to be pitied and despised. There's a lot of flesh and non-PC stuff happening here, but whatever you think of the man and his shenanigans, you won't be bored.
4 - highly recommended!
For more dates and times, visit www.italianfilmfestival.com.au