Before you sink your teeth into the movies arriving in 2010, here are three interesting and entertaining ‘under-the-radar’ films (in Australia, at least) you may not have seen in 2009.
—
Good
Good is a startlingly seductive and deeply disturbing film by director Vicente Amorim. Starring Vigo Mortensen and Jason Isaacs, the story follows John Halder (Mortensen), a likeable if slightly eccentric professor in Germany in the 1930s and the unsettling course his life begins to take as the Nazis rise to power. The movie, especially early on, is fun, charming, drenched in warm colours, and ultimately beguiling, as Halder is all too easily swept up by events he deems out of his control. The acting is natural and wonderfully understated, and it is all the more biting for it as the comfortable ease of the film’s beginning is quickly unravelled into something wholly darker and psychologically confronting. By the film’s end, I was left deeply unsettled, horrified and more than a little taken aback at this portrayal of just how effortlessly ‘a good man’, and indeed a whole nation, can fall so very far, without even realising it.
PUSH
Director Paul McGuigan’s (Lucky Number Slevin) latest is a very unusual sort of film. On the one hand, it’s a relatively low-budget, gritty-looking indie film, shot on location in Hong Kong with an almost artsy exploration of the real city, in lieu of the ultra-sleek ‘surface’ normally given screen time in blockbusters. On the other hand it’s a slick, well-paced, action-thriller about psychics and secret government divisions, and has a line up of emerging name actors including Djimon Hounsou, Dakota Fanning, Chris Evans and Camilla Belle. For me, those two kinds of film put together is exactly my kind of thing. For many others, the combination seemed too incongruous and the film came and went quickly and quietly with little success, as much due to poor marketing and even poorer distribution as anything else. Yet despite this, PUSH is a clever, well crafted and thoroughly entertaining piece of cinema (on the flipside, resident critic Anders Wotzke strongly disagrees in his review). The action is gripping, and to my great relief overwhelmingly live-action – relying largely on stunt work and wires over flashy CGI. The story has a grand background, but is refreshingly intimate in scope, and its accompanied by a highly addictive musical score by Massive Attack’s Neil Davidge. This is not a superhero film; the world is not at stake; and the characters are simply trying to survive as best they can. PUSH is not for everyone – it’s a little too artsy and intelligent for the comic book blockbuster crowd, and it’s too outlandish and unashamedly entertaining for the indie film festival sort. But if you’re able to appreciate the merits of both, you might find this film, as I did, one heck of a ride.
Zombieland
Chances are, you may have actually seen Zombieland, persuaded perhaps by good word-of-mouth reviews to check it out. And Zombieland, director Ruben Fleischer’s first film, is definitely worth checking out. Its all-too-conventional marketing does not do the film justice. Yes, it’s a zombie film. It involves a heck of a lot of zombie-killing. It does this remarkably well too, and for such a low budget, the oozy, bloody effects are surprisingly spot on. It’s also a good old American road trip film. It even has a side-splittingly funny cameo by Bill Murray. But more than that it’s a witty, refreshingly fun and delightful film. The characters, named after their respective hometowns; Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg); Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson); Wichita (Emma Stone); and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) are genuinely endearing. Most of all, Zombieland is hilarious. If you’re not laughing out loud until you’re sides hurt or tears start rolling, then cynicism and jadedness have probably consumed your soul just as the film’s zombie’s have devoured America.
