Movie Review: The Dry (2020)

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From the desolate, sun-drenched terrain of beige, brown, and yellow as far as the eye can see to the constant threat of bushfire thanks to the dryness of the environment and its unforgiving temperatures, the moody mythos of rural Australia is perfectly suited to western noir storytelling.

Not quite John Ford and not quite John Dahl – to audiences in the American southwest watching director Robert Connolly's new adaptation of Jane Harper's award-winning first novel “The Dry,” the film's overwhelmingly massive landscape seems equal parts foreign and familiar as it spools out before us onscreen.

Easily the most important character in this slow-burn thriller, in the hands of Connolly, his co-scripters Harry Cripps and Samantha Strauss, and his gifted lead actor Eric Bana (who also produced), the setting serves as a terrific allegory for the internal battle playing out in the mind of our main character as well.

As Australian federal police officer Aaron Falk, Bana's conflicted protagonist leaves his residence in Melbourne to return to his rural hometown of Kiewarra for the first time in over twenty years in order to bury his best high school friend Luke (Martin Dingle Wall) who killed his wife and young son in an alleged murder-suicide. Unwilling to believe that their son could do such a thing, after visiting with Luke's parents, Aaron promises them that he'll look into his family's deaths, even though he has no jurisdiction or any real link to the man his former friend had become after all this time.

An intelligent, evocative look at the way that the past and the present can coexist simultaneously, as Aaron investigates the present-day crime alongside a young sergeant (played by Keir O'Donnell), the film reveals more about his complicated history with Luke, including the suspicious death of a beautiful young woman they knew in high school that still haunts Aaron to this day. Feeling like the two cases are inextricably linked (or perhaps just needing them to be in order to find closure), just like the dry tinder of the ground beneath his feet that could catch fire at any moment, Aaron must figure out what is and what is not in his power to control.

A methodical actor who's at his best when playing contemplative characters who keep their cards close to their chest while embarking on external missions that wind up having to do more with what's going on internally than anything else, “The Dry” boasts one of Bana's strongest and most introspective turns in years.

Shot four-and-a-half hours outside of Melbourne in the flat, dry landscape of the Wimmera region of Victoria with its wide-open spaces that convey both mystery and danger and the secrets of a small, deceptively close-knit community beginning to come undone, “The Dry” feels like a western neo-noir descendant of “One False Move” and “Flesh and Bone.” But like an existential mystery made by a post-“Paris, Texas” era Wim Wenders, “The Dry” is much more intrigued by the psychology of its people rather than the traditionally plot-heavy machinations of a '90s thriller. Richly atmospheric and decidedly deliberate, it's the best Australian film of this type since director Ivan Sen released the brilliant sequel to his breakout hit “Mystery Road” in 2016 with “Goldstone.”

Taking time to develop, as we meet the people of Kiewarra, we aren't quite sure who and how many of these citizens and threads might prove to be connected in nefarious ways. One of those films where you find yourself following Bana into a small-town bar, look around and instantly know that every single person onscreen has an unpredictable story to tell, while a few of its supporting characters – including Aaron and Luke's old friend Gretchen (well played by Genevieve O'Reilly) – are a bit shortchanged by the narrative as a whole, it's a truly effective sleeper overall. Preferring to take the long way around in such a way that the film's first hour requires the patience of a prestige TV mystery series, once “The Dry” finds its footing, everything clicks into place.

Building up energy as it continues like a cyclone whipping around dust in the Victorian flatlands, as Aaron works to solve both cases using his heart as well as his head, the film reaches a conclusion as shocking as it is true. Surprisingly stellar in its deployment of red herrings and misdirection, in offering viewers a brainy, unexpected respite from mindless studio ventures, “The Dry” strikes a match against celluloid and brings the heat of summer movie season directly to the screen.

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Movie Review: Star Trek (2009)

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Last week, Hugh Jackman officially kicked off the summer movie season by clawing his way into the international box office with the number one blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To this end, it's probably a good thing that television brainchild turned action director J.J. Abrams didn’t call his take on the science fiction classic Star Trek: Origins. However, as we learn right from the start of this deafening loud but truly entertaining summer popcorn movie, he very well could have.

And sure enough, by cleverly avoiding the trappings of the franchise’s more than forty-year history on screens both big and small—he bravely chose to hit “reset." In doing so, he conceived a work, along with his Mission Impossible III, Lost, and Alias screenwriters Robert Orsi and Alex Kurtzman that started at the very beginning of the Trekkie mythology as conceived by its mastermind and creator, Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s.

While it’s definitely a Paramount Studio classic and not part of the Marvel Studio umbrella (a la Wolverine)-- the film’s incredibly effective opener utilizes two of the strongest elements of last year’s Marvel Robert Downey Jr. double-play in the form of director Jon Favreau's Iron Man and its Marvel companion, The Incredible Hulk from Transporter 2 director Louis Leterrier.

One of the gifts that we've begun to take for granted when it comes to J.J. Abrams that made me an Alias fan right from the start is his truly unique, confident, and powerful ability to draw upon raw human emotion that builds into extraordinarily riveting (yet natural) plot points within the framework of the most complicated action sequences you can imagine.

In the bravura opener of Star Trek that serves as either a literary-like prologue managing to satisfy comic book fans and those who worship at the altar of Russian tragedy, he blends action and drama in a daring pre-credit sequence. Within moments, we witness the birth of the man who will become the notorious James Tiberius Kirk as his father sacrifices his life to save countless others in an escalating war with the monstrous Romulan villain Nero (a nearly unrecognizable turn by otherwise dishy Munich star Eric Bana).

Segueing from dazzling effects work as the battle rages on with scenes of Kirk’s mother in labor—Abrams takes an operatic cue to use simply visuals and a gorgeous score by composer Michael Giacchino as we view the sequence as if it were a modern day silent film until Kirk’s cry as a newborn bursts onto the soundtrack like a crescendo.

Unexpectedly moving and cinematically daring—it takes the opening of Leterrier’s beautiful beginning of Hulk a step further by wordlessly bringing us into the visceral realm of the film. And indeed, this was no accident as Abrams admitted to Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic that it was “the visceral experience, the feeling, the emotional experience” he “always [found] more critical than the intellectual one” that had made him “more of a Star Wars man growing up.”

And honestly, before I’d even read the article in The Republic, it’s one I referenced in my hastily scribbled screening notes when I wrote that George Lucas should’ve consulted Abrams for the development of his horrific prequels that seem to be a cautionary tale against too much CGI.

Yet, forgetting the sins of the latter day Lucas-- the man's earlier work provides an influence you can spot throughout Abrams’ version of Star Trek. When you couple this with Abrams' dedication to Roddenberry’s source material, it makes a stirring concoction of classic sci fi to reach devotees of both franchises.

And indeed Wars and Trek have become part of this generation's DNA and throughout Trek, Star Wars doesn't seem too far from Abrams' mind as it appeared to influence aspects of the film whether it’s in the way that the young Spock reminded me a bit of Luke Skywalker or Kirk giving off a distinct Han Solo vibe.

However, it’s just one of several post ‘60s works Abrams drew inspiration from as collaborators in Paramount's official production notes cited Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff as another film that lended to Trek's "origin" structure. And it definitely stands out when we catch up with the mischievous ladies man James T. Kirk (Bottle Shock’s Chris Pine), the gorgeous brainiac Uhura (Guess Who star Zoe Saldana), and the paranoid chatterbox scene-stealer Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban) as they train at Starfleet Academy.

However, prior to their training-- the vastly different childhoods of Earth resident Kirk and Vulcan inhabitant Spock are touched upon in another nicely paced storytelling approach by Abrams and his writing team. While things for Spock are quite difficult as he faces intense prejudice and bullying for being the product of a Vulcan father (Chariots of Fire’s Ben Cross) and human mother (Winona Ryder), Kirk gets an Iron Man-like introduction. Yet to switch things up in a delightful futuristic anachronism, Abrams substitutes ACDC’s “Back in Black” used in Favreau’s film for the Beastie Boys' anti-authority classic “Sabotage” as he’s chased by a flying motorcycle cop while careening down a desert road.

Thereafter we're reunited with the adult versions of the two characters and the primary cast at Starfleet. And very quickly we see the makings of the captain Kirk would become, having to leave his tendency for Top Gun Maverick style heroics and bar brawls behind under the guidance of the tough but fair Captain Pine (The Republic of Love’s Bruce Greenwood) and the half-Vulcan, half-human with a chip on his shoulder larger than those memorable ears in the form of Dr. Spock (Heroes’ Zachary Quinto).

Although those familiar with the series recall the dynamic friendship of Spock and Kirk and the way they complemented each other—getting to that point in this film isn’t reached until the end. Typical for the Joseph Campbell-like Hero's Journey (a George Lucas favorite), it occurs as the U.S.S. Enterprise crew members (also consisting of John Cho’s Mr. Sulu and Anton Yelchin’s Chekov before Simon Pegg’s Scotty arrives very late into the picture) find themselves jeopardized when Bana’s über-villain makes a recurrence.

Easily setting the audience up for an inevitable sequel by crafting a new Star Trek mythology that builds from the preexisting one as in-jokes, signature lines and even an extended cameo by Leonard Nimoy abound—it’s a highly satisfying “reintroduction” to the characters.

Despite this, it’s safe to say that die-hard Trekkies may resist change and even those—like myself—who’ve only seen one of the films and a handful of classic episodes definitely missed the intellectual allegories that existed on the small screen. For beneath the cheesy pretext of the Shatner era series-- vintage Star Trek also managed to comment on race, religion, prejudice, politics, war, disease, diversity and more during the Vietnam era by providing an atypical science fiction version of a positive and damn near Utopian—as opposed to doom-ridden and dystopian—view of the future.

And while overall, it’s a blast and a true big screen cinematic experience, I wished that some of the awesome Star Wars like action sequences may have been infused with the same level of Abrams intelligence he imbued into the film’s opening. Moreover, even though he revealed to Goodykoontz that he “thought the original show was too intellectual” and wanted to emphasize the adventure based pleasure of Lucas’ universe that enraptured him as a child—I’m hopeful that, along with his talented screenwriters-- they’ll pack a little more brain crunch into the next delicious bag of popcorn they manage to “beam up” in the future.

Star Trek

Romulus, My Father

Director:

Richard Roxburgh

Shortly after young Rai (Kodi Smit-McPhee) begins noticing that women in his desolate town seem to be so struck by his exceedingly handsome father Romulus (Eric Bana) that they stare openly with smiles as bright as the Australian sun, a woman returns who had smiled at him decades earlier in World War II.

With the arrival of his restless mother Christina (Franka Potente) who-- as Romulus phrases it-- seems to come and go as if their home is a hotel, young Raimond Gaita begins to become acquainted with the indescribably intense and complicated relationship shared by his passionate, quiet Romanian father and beguiling German mother who’s always had more than just a wandering smile for masculine passersby.

Unable to be content in the hot desert with her husband and son, Christina has set up a second life in 1960 Melbourne, moving in with the brother of her husband’s best friend Hora (Marton Csokas). Instead of divorcing her for her frequent infidelities which we learn are nothing new, Romulus explains that he’s unable to turn his back on Christina whom he feels not only needs him but whose love affects him to such an extent that at times it’s driven him to suicidal actions. After such a stunt puts his father in the hospital once again, Rai starts getting bounced from one place to the next as he comes of age when staying with friends and family, all the while hoping that the catastrophic fire and gasoline relationship between his parents will somehow get resolved.

Sumptuously photographed by Geoffrey Simpson (Oscar and Lucinda, Under the Tuscan Sun), the film marks the directorial debut of Richard Roxburgh who, after seven years of labor on his pet project, finally saw playwright Nick Drake’s adaptation of Raimond Gaita’s memoir realized on the big screen. Winner of four Australian Film Institute honors including Best Picture and three richly deserved acting accolades for Bana (in his finest performance since Munich), Csokas, and McPhee, Roxburgh’s work is not only a remarkable achievement but also provides greater proof of Bana’s range with a turn that, while shy on dialogue, manages to convey planets of emotion in a few chosen reactions.

However, the film itself does frustrate viewers in its devastating second half, making us wish that greater detail had been transferred from Gaita’s book in reference to his parent’s courtship and background since we wonder just what had happened in the war to make them so mentally unstable. Despite this, it’s a lush, old-fashioned and impressive film that additionally benefits from extraordinarily magical touches of cinematic poetry such as the exquisite bookend of Romulus and Rai tending to bees that have fallen from a hive which echoes the healing bond of their relationship.

The Other Boleyn Girl

Director:
Justin Chadwick

Having never read Philippa Gregory’s novel, I remember the first time I saw the previews for The Other Boleyn Girl, which seemed to set up the movie as the ultimate catfight between two beautiful women played by Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson over the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Eric Bana and thought, well, Scarlett’s got the edge on this one, given the amount of press she’s gotten for her, ahem… exploits (I’m still trying to block out the Benicio in an elevator tale that I’m hoping is a rumor). After talking to a few people who’d read the novel, I found I wasn’t alone in my thoughts as a friend who came along to the screening also mentioned that it seemed like an odd casting choice to have Scarlett Johansson portray the pretty, sweet and innocent Mary Boleyn and cast Natalie Portman as the wickedly scheming tease Anne Boleyn, yet only a few minutes into the film, we realized they’d made the right choice. After having subjected Jude Law to an auto accident in the streets of London with her very appearance and tantalized Clive Owen in Closer, Natalie Portman (who indeed kicked off her career in Lolita like roles in The Professional and Beautiful Girls) has become one of our most fascinating and versatile actresses—a consummate professional who can tackle any role and accent (from Where the Heart Is to Cold Mountain)-- she’s come into her own and has the perfect platform in British television director Justin Chadwick’s latest feature film The Other Boleyn Girl.

Chronicling the Boleyn family from children playing in the field where they are observed by parents Lady Elizabeth (Kristin Scott Thomas, thankfully getting a chance to convey emotion) and Sir Thomas (Mark Rylance), they’re summed up as Mary, the sweet and fairer golden-tressed beauty verses the eldest daddy’s girl Anne, who while pretty, isn’t as classically beautiful as her sister, yet she has an edge about her that enables her to go from seductive to manipulative at the drop of the hat. It’s precisely this quality that inspires her father along with her morally reprehensible social climbing uncle The Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey) to set Anne (Portman) up as flirtatious bait in the hopes that she may catch the heart and body of powerful hottie and King Henry Tudor a.k.a. Henry VIII (Eric Bana) who may be in the market for a mistress, seeing as though his wife Catherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent) has yet to bear him a son. After a spill that injures his masculine pride more than his body that one wonders may have been spurred on by the aggressively suggestive Anne, Henry’s attentions fall to the young woman nursing him back to health, the newly married and simple Mary (Johansson) whom he soon orders to come to court under the guise of being his wife, the Queen’s newest lady in waiting. Although her sister is invited along as well, Mary quickly learns his real motives when he summons her to his room almost immediately and the two begin an affair which blossoms into love on her side and something very nearly similar for Henry that deepens when she becomes pregnant with his child. While we’re never quite sure what becomes of Mary’s husband, the jealous Anne receives her comeuppance when she maneuvers her way into marrying a man betrothed to another before it’s annulled and she’s shipped off to France but she gets the last laugh when she’s sent to divert the king from taking yet another mistress as Mary, now bedridden and in a fragile state, looks on worried for her child. Despite the fact that her very purpose is to keep his attentions on Mary, we all know Anne’s true motives, especially women who have most likely gone to school with at least one (or in my case) several girls who make it their goal to steal men no matter what the cost, almost more for sport and social stance rather than for any real affection. Anne works her magic, toying with Henry like a puppy, sending back his gifts and bending him to her will before she’ll give him any hope of her body (his first wish) or her heart (his second) and it’s these scandalous motives that sets in motion the legendary events to follow as she tries to become Queen.

A sixteenth century soap opera, exquisitely photographed with enough sumptuous art direction and costuming to dazzle the senses in the same way as did Sofia Coppola’s similarly themed eye candy epic Marie Antoinette. However, while Antoinette was more of a modern and sensuous take on history, Boleyn, which was originally adapted for British television in 2003, is strengthened by its complicated plot and exceptional acting. Despite the grumbling of some theatergoers of seeing Bana as a far more intoxicating and alternately sensitive yet frightening Henry VIII, the casting of him in the lead I feel augmented the Boleyn’s feud for his affections and made it a bit more relatable. And as for the writing, there’s no more capable scripter than The Queen’s Peter Morgan who as Variety’s Derek Elley wrote not only “eliminates many of the more fanciful potboiler elements of the novel” but also managed “the difficult trick of making the narrative crystal-clear without dumbing down the actual material.” In other words, go see it and pick a side, even though it is Portman’s exceptional turn that, like Henry VIII, you will find commands the most attention.