Movie review: Orgasm Inc, The Story of OneTaste, dirs Sarah Gibson and Sloane Klevin (2022)

An unlikely but strangely compelling documentary about a business/cult in San Francisco in the teens of this century called OneTaste. It’s difficult to identify ways to talk about this movie without seeming to be overly judgemental but the filmmakers have provided a comprehensive overview of a dysfunctional organisation. In my view all organisations are dysfunctional in that they always decline to respect the needs of all employees/participants, but OneTaste is a case study in disrespect.

Founded as a vehicle for the ideas of one person named Nicole Daedone who drew people looking for a way to get rich in the Silicon Valley ecosystem of startups to be involved in the organisation. The central focus of the group was a thing they called “orgasmic meditation” (OM) and now that OneTaste has been disbanded the practice continues through an organisation called the Institute of OM.

So far so good.

I mean it’s not hard to believe that in the world of Silicon Valley someone might come along hoping to disrupt the orgasm, right? They did it with everything else. And the number of companies that have failed in Silicon Valley surely outstrips the few that have survived and prospered.

But what appealed to me about ‘Orgasm Inc’ was the way in which a fairly esoteric and strange idea can warp the very nature of the organisation until it becomes so toxic that the FBI gets involved. When you try to monetise something as basic as sex you either get exploitation in the form of sex work or else you get OneTaste, where employees were treated very badly.

I was entranced by the reality TV jive of ‘Orgasm Inc’, it’s sort of a cross between a newscast and ‘My Mum Your Dad’ with a satanic twist to make it compulsively watchable. Seeing how fundamental ideas about self, satisfaction, fulfilment are dragged into the world of transactions – you give me $60,000 and we’ll give you absolute satisfaction – is utterly engrossing because something that hinges upon the most intimate and almost sacred moments of a person’s life is turned into a commodity to be bought at a price.

‘Orgasm Inc’ is a sad tale but we can take comfort in knowing that once tried it will probably never be attempted again. At least in this form. Nobody will again try to lure vulnerable and hopeful people to part with their money on the promise of giving them something rare and beautiful. Right? 

Right ……?

Movie review: Biggie: I Got A Story to Tell, dir Emmet Malloy (2021)

I’ve been watching a few hip hop things on Netflix, there’s a crime drama about the assassination of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Amaru titled ‘Unsolved’ which is ok. I prefer the docos like ‘Biggie: I Got A Story to Tell’. The music industry is particularly well suited to this sort of treatment because of the ready availability of relevant music to go with the on-screen action. It’s easy to find something to accompany the visuals when you’re dealing with a musician.

Another good doco is ‘Onefour: Against All Odds’ (2023, dir Gabriel Gasparinatos) which deals with the Australian drill rap group and their ongoing struggle against Strikeforce Raptor, who have been successful in shutting them down up to this point in time. When the state is against you performing because of the incendiary nature of your lyrics you have a case of censorship on a grand scale. To give substance to the group’s relevance, the filmmakers brought in Osman Faruqi, a left-wing journalist and the son of the NSW Greens politician. I’m not a fan of either of these two characters.

The story of hip hop is inherently cinematic because of its association with crime, violence, cars, guns, and drugs. There’s something anarchic about this underground, which is why the cases of Biggie Smalls and Tupac are still unsolved: nobody will talk with the cops. Hip hop is graffiti, it’s the streets, a strange gallery where people perform some role that is denied them at home.

Another doco is ‘Hip Hop Evolution’ hosted by Canadian rapper Shadrach "Shad" Kabango, which came out in 2016. This is a series and it goes into some detail ion a more geeky vein than the other ones mentioned. I find this show thoughtful and insightful but it’s not as dramatic as the others obviously because crime isn’t the central plot point. Nevertheless this show and the others demonstrate that there’s an enduring audience for this sort of music, which is close to my heart because I use rhyme too in my own poetry.

Movie review: Britney vs Spears, dir Erin Lee Carr (2021)

In recent times I’d vaguely been aware of Britney Spears’ legal situation, which had come to a close, but this documentary adds a lot of flesh to the bones, so to speak. Britney Spears is a talented pop singer and composer but besides unwittingly listening to her songs on 2 Day FM (my favourite radio station), I hadn’t really known much about her life until her legal situation came onto the airwaves while I was driving. 

I only listen to music in the car so this is not surprising. The documentary is quite one-sided, which is a shame, as Spears evidently had problems with relationships. I was struck by the lack of confidence her family had in her ability to make good decisions regarding who to spend time with. When her health spiralled out of control due to substance abuse this became a matter for the courts to resolve. I took onboard the faceless functionaries the court relied on in making its decisions, but most people have to subject themselves in similar ways at some point in their lives, notably when they get old and power of attorney comes into play.

The legal systems used in the two countries (US and Australia) being different is one hurdle that I had to surmount when viewing this movie. But the bias on the part of the filmmakers was unnecessary I thought. I don’t particularly care about Britney Spears one way of the other and in my life I will no doubt be at some point subject to someone else’s control, but were the conditions of the guardianship actually so onerous? I mean, Spears wasn’t living in a locked room with no food or shower facilities. A lot of people in the world have to cope with far more difficult conditions. It strikes me that Spears brought a lot of the problems on herself by capsizing so easily, though having never had to deal with such adulation – they either raise you up on a pedestal or try to bring you down – I can’t categorically say that I’d cope any better than she did.

This is a decent program however, and it shows a bit of what it’s like to live in LA, which was nice. I think it could have had more palm trees though. Perhaps someone can do a follow up show now that Spears has gotten control over her finances. I wonder if she learned anything about life during her guardianship. That’s definitely something I’d like to know.

Movie review: Reptile, dir Grant Singer (2023)

“Creepy” is the word to describe this directorial debut by a music video maker. The next one that comes to mind is “brilliant”. Without using excessive violence, Singer manages to convey the true horror of killing. The plot is hard to follow because the scripting is very basic, you get just enough information to barely follow the story, but it’s very little to go on. You feel as though you are in the shoes of Tom Nichols (Benicio del Toro) as he tries to track down the assassin of a real estate agent.

The title is clever as well. In one scene the victim Summer (Matilda Lutz) finds a snake skin in the house she’d selling. She picks it up and puts it back down. Within minutes she’ll be dead, stabbed many times so hard the blade wedges in her bone. The secondary characters are also creepy and the amount of information you know about people is, as in real life, sometimes incomplete. So when Tom asks his boss Robert Allen (Eric Bogosian) about a car in Allen’s garage, you feel the distance between the two men, the inseparable gulf that exists even between people who see each other every second day; Allen is also the father of Tom’s wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone).

You also feel Tom’s inner anger, as when he confronts a workman who’s been doing up his kitchen. Tom thinks that the guy has designs on Judy so he threatens him with violence. You find unaccustomed behaviour by the major characters like this all the time in ‘Reptile’ so you’re always on your guard in case someone you’re supposed to trust turns out to be guilty. This is the way the world is.

When I decided to watch ‘Reptile’ I’d already come across the movie before. This was in a tweet where someone had said that the movie was slow and that they’d guessed the killer at the beginning. I find this hard to believe, at least I find it hard to believe that the killer was already accounted for in this interlocutor’s imagination. I can see how the movie might seem ponderous to some, as nothing much happens for long stretches of time. The camera work is however excellent in an effort to add to that “creepy” feeling I mentioned earlier. I loved the movie in all of its aspects, and recommend it to anyone.

Movie review: Take Care of Maya, dir Henry Roosevelt (2023)

I’ve seen a few documentaries recently about abuse of children but ‘Take Care of Maya’ is the opposite, where parents have been abused by the legal system. It’s a tragic story but apparently quite common if you go by what the filmmakers have to say. Maya is a ten year old girl with a rare genetic disorder and when the pain prompts her parents to take her to hospital they are accused of abuse. The outcomes are just awful and illustrate how a few bad actors can poison the system for everyone. There are more stories like this and it makes me ashamed to be such a devotee of crime dramas. I think, “If this type of thing is happening what am I doing looking at shows where the police are the good guys?”

‘Take Care of Maya’ is a gentle story and not a blockbuster by any means. I came across it when I did a search for the word “docuseries” on Google; it was one of a number of programs listed in an internet story that came up in the search results. I went to Netflix and bookmarked many of them and so far all have been worthwhile. ‘Take Care of Maya’ is no exception, it reminded me of the false accusation shows I had been watching. I stopped watching them because it became too painful. Certainly ‘Take Care of Maya’ is painful. I guess the payoff comes where you think about the fact that, just by watching the program, you are somehow doing some good. If your completion of the movie encourages Netflix to sponsor another, similar program, then you’ve contributed in some small way toward a better world.

Because it is terrible if parents are penalised for just taking care of their children. In the case of Maya’s mother Beata, I think a contributing factor is the fact that she was born in Poland and so came to America after her base character had been formed. Her way of dealing with the crisis meant that she rubbed the authorities up the wrong way and perhaps there was a degree of racism involved on their part as well. I wonder. Certainly the relations between Maya’s parents and doctors soured quickly once the girl was in the hospital. I think that the whole story is ghastly, but what does it say about humanity if we deem such displays “watchable”?

Movie review: The Craigslist Killer, dir Stephen Kay (2011)

This cosy little movie by New Zealand director Stephen Kay is a keeper, it came out over a decade ago and seems good now. We never had Craigslist in Australia so it’s a bit hard to relate but I liked the early-century vibe when the internet was still a bit of a novelty. 

You can guess the plot roundly from the title – a guy starts robbing people, and kills one he meets on the internet site – but the beauty of this film is in the superior directing, the neat script, and the wonderful acting. I think the whole thing is pitch-perfect and lovely.

It’s hard to remember, now, a time when the internet was a novelty, but it really wasn’t so long ago. Jake McDorman plays Philip Markoff, a medical student who goes online behind his fiancee’s back to make liaisons with masseuses so that he can get money to feed his gambling addiction. During the day he sparkles as the top med student and at night he turns into a homicidal creep. McDorman is matched with Agnes Bruckner as Megan McAllister. Based on a true story the website took down the particular page Markoff used after the crisis played out in Boston.

What I liked most about this film is the way everything fit perfectly into place. There’s not an instant of dead time, no unnecessary shots, like a lace collar on a Renaissance gentleman. I really can’t say enough good things about ‘The Craigslist Killer’ and I’m glad I bookmarked it. I’m not sure when I bookmarked the film but it would’ve been a while ago because I don’t remember doing it. I am a fan of crime dramas so it’s no surprise that I did.

Movie review: Worth, dir Sara Colangelo (2020)

A lot of shots with a hand-held camera doesn’t save this film from being heavy. This is unsurprising as it’s based on true events depriving the filmmakers of a degree of latitude in the scripting. Nevertheless I did work while watching the film as it didn’t really grab me. 

The idea behind the film is to describe the process following the Twin Towers where the government compensated people for the loss of loved-ones. Michael Keaton plays Ken Feinberg, a lawyer tasked with this job by the US president. Stanley Tucci plays a rabblerouser with a blog who tries to criticise the administration, and Feinberg in particular, demanding that the victims of the disaster be treated with respect.

When American movies try to be French movies you get this sort of ponderousness which can be offset by dialogue but there’s not enough of that here. In any case you wonder how much we really need to see a movie about the injustice that was 9/11. Sure it was an injustice but it had its reasons for occurring, and so far I’ve not seen any movie or TV show that delves into this part of the drama.

If it wasn’t a legitimate source of drama we wouldn’t get croakers like ‘Worth’.

9/11 certainly was dramatic but we must face the causes head on as a society (and perhaps Australia is as culpable as America since we joined the War on Terror straight after the planes struck the skyscrapers) so that it doesn’t happen again. So far we haven’t done that. There have been vague ideas thrown around but as a community we are still just beginning to face up to what happened in the decades leading up to 2001.

I’m really not sure that ‘Worth’ was worth making, in fact I’m sure it wasn’t and that the money spent on this lemon could’ve better been spent elsewhere, as I’ve suggested. When will we get a Netflix docuseries examining the intelligence and Defense failures that resulted in al Qaeda organising the pilots for this much-discussed but thoroughly misunderstood attack on US sovereignty. Some people think bin Laden a hero, some the devil, but the truth still hasn’t come out, that’s for certain.

Movie review: True Story, Netflix (2015)

I had a personal interest in this movie because of the plot, which involves a New York Times reporter named Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) who gets laid off by his employer for falsifying information in a feature story. He’s then contacted by another reporter (Ethan Suplee) who tells him that his name had been used by an accused murderer when he was found living temporarily in Mexico. Finkel has his interest piqued so goes to see the guy (James Franco) in jail.

This is an interesting movie by a first-time director (Rupert Goold) and the acting is very low-key. Even at the points of highest emotional tenor the drama is pretty flat, though having worked as a journalist I probably felt the peaks and troughs keenly. More keenly than most? It’s difficult to say as I haven’t talked with anyone about the movie, but going by the quality of the directing and of the acting I’m sure everyone can come away with a good experience.

Christian Longo, the accused, is a plausible foil for Finkel, they both have their own ways of communicating but find common ground despite differences in background and in experience. The ending is completely opaque so even though not much happens you have a good cinematic experience. I really liked the subdued mood the movie expresses, it is in stark contract to most filmic productions which rely on either violence or fast motion (the threat of violence) to sustain themselves. ‘True Story’ is miles away from your standard Hollywood production in this regard. Definitely worth watching even if you have no experience with news production. But, then again, most people believe that they do because they read newspapers.

The news media is often part of movies and TV shows because it’s an efficient way to show a change in the plot. Once something important becomes common knowledge, and is no longer a secret, then it’s on the news and you get reporters and TV anchors talking to camera, or else you get a gaggle of reporters with cameras and satellite dishes congregating outside someone’s house. The news is a plot device so it’s a commonplace. Where ‘True Story’ is different is in how the ethics of news is foregrounded. Instead of a dupe the media becomes a standard-bearer for morality, a sort of cult of veracity where sins are punished with expulsion. In a way that is uncommon, ‘True Story’ talks about what it means to be part of that industry.

Movie review: Lead Me Home, Netflix (2021)

Made my Pedro Kos and Jon Shen, ‘Lead Me Home’ is very short but very poignant. It’s incredibly difficult to make a topic like this palatable but using all the cinematic craft at their disposal the directors have achieved their goal. This is a stunning film that NEEDS to be repeated. 

In the film you come to know or at least recognise a few faces of people who are living rough. In America “homeless” only applies to such people so they count their homeless differently from how we do it in Australia. Different countries count homeless people in different ways. In Australia a person who is “homeless” can be living with a friend or relative, or else in some sort of precarious accommodation that doesn’t meet the necessary criteria to be called a home. In the US a homeless person lives on the street. Period. So the figure of 500,000 homeless that they plaster on the screen at the end of the movie is definitely an underestimate. Just as a matter of interest some countries count people in jail as homeless.

By focusing especially on a few individuals in the movie the filmmakers manage to humanise a complex problem. In one segment a person lists the reasons he has for being homeless, and yes that list can be long. It can include domestic problems such as DV, drug abuse, mental health problems, unemployment, or else a mixture of some or all of them.

I loved the use of establishing shots in the film, the way they used images of skyscrapers being built to contextualise the tents, the cars with flags draped over the windscreen for privacy. I just goddarn loved the visual qualities of this fabulous movie so much it almost made me want to cry. Because homelessness is such a confronting subject. The film only takes on West Coast cities like San Francisco and Seattle but homelessness is a universal issue, one that governments in some jurisdictions (such as New York and Finland) have successfully tackled. I’m not sure about New York but Finland has eliminated homelessness from what I heard last.

Everyone needs a home, and the subject of homelessness has found one in this touching film. Let’s hope there is a longer one soon, or else a docuseries that can focus in more depth on specific individuals, tracing their journey to destitution. Only in this way can we find a solution because politicians – who have the power to fix the problem – listen to what the community says as this film shows in the town hall meetings.

Movie review: Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t know Me, Netflix (2023)

Like a westerly wind the name Anna Nicole Smith had some resonance with me but I didn’t know anything about her life before watching this movie. From a small town in Texas to overdose on medications, Smith was a kind of phenomenon who used her natural charms to take on the world but lost.

It’s hard to understand exactly where things got out of hand but there appears to be a lesson in this movie somewhere, probably because it’s so well made. I felt like I was really looking at America for the first time, the glitz and glamour, the empty promises of beauty, the diet pills, the painkillers, the cocaine, more painkillers. If China ever wanted an ad to show the world in order to back up its claim to be able to do society better than the US this film is it.

There’s even a contested estate to ripen the mix. Money money money money. Money. I really liked Smith however, and felt for her at every step. As she said there’s more mileage to be made from sad stories than from the happy ones, an excuse she used to justify taking elements from a friend’s life to embellish her own biography. Smith didn’t come from a broken home though the father was absent, she just wanted to get out of Mexia, Houston strip clubs were her ticket to fame and she grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Smith would go on to feature in Playboy and in ads for Guess jeans, it’s that Anglo dream of perfection again (see yesterday’s review).

Because there’s lots of money involved however it’s a lot of fun. Money is an elements of underbelly-type shows that always attracts a crowd of onlookers. Like paparazzi outside a Las Vegas disco we’re searching for that explosion of fame and stardom to enliven our lives. With Smith it was also commonplace, her reality TV excursions bringing her down to the level of the midday watcher of ‘Dr Phil’ or ‘Judge Judy’. Those lonely afternoons when you’re at home with nothing to do these days you don’t have to watch reruns of ‘Star Trek’ you can catch a documentary on Netflix. I did.

Movie review: White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch, Netflix (2022)

A fascinating view into the ways the world has changed in the past 25 years, ‘White Hot’ focuses on body image and race as they were used by the clothier for many decades. As far as I can tell the problems with managerial monoculture that the movie describes have changed at the brand but it took a severe deterioration in the public image to arrive here.

Abercrombie & Fitch has never really existed in Australia so the brand hasn’t had much of an impact here, we have Gap and Banana Republic but not A&F. For this reason the issues the show deals with haven’t played out, for example the off-colour printed T-shirts that caused Asian Americans so much discomfort.

I was drawn in as brand imaging is such an important aspect of life for me, I watch commercial TV a lot so am always surrounded by jingles, logos etc. I came away feeling as though I had been exposed to a rare thing, a brand laid bare. People go about their lives immersed in this matrix of signs, what postmodernists call the “socius” and really never think much about it. ‘White Hot’ gives you an opportunity to go into a lot of detail about how a clothing brand functions.

A&F prided itself on being able to package “cool” and this took the form of a certain type of preppy all-American buff and vigorous youth. In fact store imaging often featured bare male torsos with white skin. Things started to go south when it became apparent that featuring all-white store clerks and models, and all-white management was harming the brand because a lot of the broader community felt left out. Profits got pummelled and A&F brought in a diversity manager. Nevertheless the company’s senior ranks continued to be mostly older and white. It wasn’t until a number of lawsuits were brought against the firm, allied with plunging sales in the teens of this century, that the hierarchy buckled and started to morph into something more closely resembling modern America.

If you enjoy watching ‘Gruen’ you’ll love this show. It’s also good for people interested in, as mentioned earlier, the ways that America has changed in the past quarter-century.

Movie review: The Bleeding Edge, Netflix (2018)

This amazing documentary movie is a game changer literally in its effects. It chronicles parts of the lives of some survivors of ineffective medical devices. The show focuses especially on the Food and Drug Administration, which is the US govt organ responsible for monitoring and controlling what pieces of technology can be used on humans.

When I started watching this show I wasn’t all that impressed but if you persevere – it is serious and confronting – the rewards are there. In particular the show deals with a contraceptive device made by Bayer called Essure, a small coil inserted in the fallopian tube. It is designed to create scar tissue so that pregnancy is rendered impossible, but the reactions of the bodies of some women caused pain, incessant bleeding, and associated life problems such as an inability to have intimacy, unemployment, and homelessness.

When I say this movie is a game changer I mean it but I won’t spoil the suspense by revealing now how that happens. Needless to say I was impressed by the efficacy of the filmmakers and equally disappointed by the FDA. The threshold for getting a medical device approved by the FDA is far lower than for drugs and there is an indecent amount of lobbying done. In addition to the money being spent to convince lawmakers to vote a certain way is the revolving door of lobbyists, manufacturing company executives, and the FDA itself, so that an FDA senior official will be later employed by a manufacturer once their time with the administration is over. This cosy relationship between the FDA and industry resembles the situation in Japan where senior bank employees are employed in the ranks of subordinate companies in a process known as “amakudari” (which translates roughly as “sweetness descending”).

‘The Bleeding Edge’ mercifully censors the operations so that you’re not shown all the gory details, but the stories of the women involved are sufficiently difficult to learn about that it indeed becomes easy to switch off. When I came back to finish the program I was enlightened and amazed that this story hadn’t been more fully reported by journalists. I hope many people watch it in order to understand better how Capital can destroy lives when the main purpose of its organs is to make money. In the world of medical devices the primary purpose should be to improve lives.

Movie review: Shania Twain: Not Just a Girl, Netflix (2022)

Of course I knew the name vaguely and once I heard the songs I knew the songs but I had no other knowledge of Shania Twain before watching. So it’s a good movie because I didn’t need to be a fan. There’s something genuine about the movie, as though everyone were singing from the same songsheet: Twain is an honest broker who grew up poor and made it big in the world of entertainment.

She’s a true star but she is still rooted to the earth. 

Perfectly paced, the sections follow one after the other in order, the subtitles sparkling with different colours just like the singer’s life. Probably you know more about it than I did, but a few facts won’t be out of place. Her mother supported her development from the age of eight, taking her to bars to sing in rural Ontario, so from an early age she was acclimatised to the stage. Her mother was a force behind her when she was small and then later she met Mary Bailey a Canadian singer who helped her develop. Then Twain met producer Mutt Lange.

The rest of the story is best left to the moment you watch it on the screen, suffice to say it’s no secret that Twain made it big with a string of hits.

The thing about this movie is that it’s not necessary to be a fan to enjoy it. It doesn’t fetishise the subject. It doesn’t try to make you accept one position over another. It’s just a straight recount of success and aren’t we all interested in success? So even if you don’t particularly like Twain’s music you can come away from this show with a sense that you’ve learned something new about life.

Colour as a plot device

It feels like eternity has passed but since I did the ‘Death by cop’ series only two months has gone by. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about the show in July so haven’t been painting much, but a few days ago I went back to what I did last year.

And reinvented it.

Last year I was making colour watercolours with collage but I hadn’t turned the paintings into series yet. A month ago I did so and therefore had something to think about when it came to doing ‘Colour as a plot device’ (which will also be the title of the show). I specifically wanted to use nine panels and made nine watercolours but then at the last minute broke up another series and used one panel from that in this new work.

I think about how artists are portrayed in popular culture, they’re usually denigrated on account of their enthusiasms, rendered in a way that makes them unpalatable. They don’t fit in. They’re deliberately different and use that as a weapon to attack the status quo. But ‘Colour as a plot device’ uses tropes from that same place to turn the mirror around, you see familiar elements of cultural iconography but the gorgeous background makes them look like they’re seen in front of a splendid sunset. We all seek to escape and when we’re caught up in a net we struggle all the harder.

I think about popular culture and what it means. That policeman, that joker, that criminal, that reigning monarch, all fit into destiny’s tableau like parts of a puzzle. You belong to an organisation you fit into its matrix, you belong to a community you conform. You settle in for the ride. You mix and mingle. 

And smile.

Movie review: Say Yes Again, dir Harry Shui (2021)

This curious Taiwanese homage to ‘Groundhog Day’ (1993) has a distinct feel, the sentimental romance of Cai (Guo Shu Yao) and Luke (Kent Tsai) giving it a bright lustre that the comedic original lacked. Every morning Luke wakes up and goes through the motions of asking Cai to marry him and every time he does this he collapses in a faint and goes unconscious. When he doesn’t repeat the steps the day of his marriage proposal has mapped out for him he’s delivered a message that knocks him out anyway and so the cycle continues unabated. 

How he counters this tendency is where the drama fits in, but how real is it all? This concept movie forces you to stretch the boundaries of logic as you try to make sense of the plot, but it’s also topical in that the drama is centred on a failure of Luke to be adequately responsive to his girlfriend’s needs. I was deeply impressed and really enjoyed everything about the movie even Luke’s tendency to ham it up. To offset this distracting aspect of the main character, Cai is understated and austere. Cai’s friend Yao’s delicate beauty offers a contrast to Tsai’s conventional appeal.

This film was part of last year’s SciFi Film Festival.

Movie review: Bordertown: Mural Murders (2021)

At the beginning of this wonderful sequel Kari (Ville Vertannen) is in a mental institution that reminded me – with its faded glamour, a relic of a forgotten past resuscitated in the modern day – of the hospital in Tokyo I was put into in 2000 for a similar reason. Kari’s out of the force and is dishevelled with a raggedy beard and uncut hair, but Heikkinen (Johan Storgård) brings him onto the case of a murderer who’s been dubbed the “Judge” because he or she kills people listed on social media as unnecessary. The way the crowd cancels people these days on account of their actions or even their words enters the frame of ‘Bordertown’ with its dark glamour.

I wasn’t entirely convinced by Kari’s post-crisis docility. In movies and TV shows madness is often portrayed like this, or else it’s a kind of mania. A more realistic representation of mental illness might be harder to find as it’d require specialised knowledge in the scriptwriting stage. Most writers for cinema and TV won’t have the necessary knowledge that’d allow them to understand what something as obscure as delusion looks like, or would look like if you were trying to depict it on film.

Real life behaviour and acting being necessarily different. Kari’s quiet moroseness seems likely but it’s somehow distant from my lived experience. Whereas a person really suffering from this type of debility might be difficult to deal with and irrational at times of stress, Kari seems, when he’s inside the dilapidated hospital with his high ceilings and moulded doors, to be quite comfortable. He’s unfazed by the gruesomeness of the murder that Heikkinen brings to his attention, whereas in real life it would be traumatic for him to be confronted again by scenes – in a photo or relayed via words in a conversation – that would quickly bring back the trauma that’s led to his retirement from the force.

But this is fiction and it doesn’t really matter if it’s not true-to-life. Or does it? A show like ‘Bordertown’ stakes its reputation on its ability to both capture the viewer’s imagination and to offer a type of verisimilitude that daytime soaps, for example, long ago left behind in their quest for ratings. ‘Bordertown’ captured some of the gravitas of soapies in the three seasons that came before the feature-length movie currently being reviewed, and it furthermore trades upon the sense of history that that involved, Kari becoming for the filmmakers a kind of legend, and his sidekick Lena providing a grisly counterpoint to his slow intelligence. Nobody solves crimes like Kari and no-one gets the truth out of a witness or a perpetrator like Lena.

The trick for the filmmakers in this additional feature is to make something both novel and identifiable. I think they’ve one a good job with ‘Mural Murders’ but I wonder if more instalments will get made. It might be time to retire the animal.

Movie review: Elon Musk, The Real Life Iron Man, dir Sonia Anderson (2018)

I always thought Musk was Russian or that he was born in Eastern Europe. Turns out he’s originally from South Africa! How obtuse of me. I appreciated the opportunity given to me in order to finally learn the truth. 

Watching this efficient documentary I also learned that Musk is certainly an unusual person and that the public persona that pursues and defines him is not an accurate index, I think, to his actual worth. What an extraordinary life for an engineer to live. 

And to live by example. Most people won’t have the insights at their disposal that this movie contains, so it’s worthwhile for anyone to make time to see it on Amazon Prime. From romance to education, and from startups to success, ‘The Real Life Iron Man’ covers all bases with elegance and aplomb. Highly recommended even if you’re not currently hankering after a Tesla Wall (I wouldn’t mind having one in my basement, and maybe I will once I get an EV).

An ability to turn good ideas – what anyone alive today might dream up over a cup of coffee with a friend – into concrete reality and in doing so turn a handsome profit (one interviewee says he has the Midas touch), is what makes Mush exceptional. Having said that, the example he’s set for other people might strike some people as frivolous. I admire the ability of SpaceX rockets to return safely to earth on the force of their engines, but for Jeff Bezos to them set up his own aerospace company with the aim of reaching other planets seems like overkill. How many billionaires does it take to change a lightbulb? 

That Bezos has chosen to screen this movie on Prime is like Channel Nine running stories on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald about what Network Ten’s morning show hosts are up to. All of the chatter about technological innovation, space travel, and astronauts helps all of these men run a PR campaign that can have a secondary aim: to stop people complaining about inequality. 

If people are busy talking about orbiting space stations instead of moaning about how Amazon employees are paid the minimum wage then there’d be fewer people bitching about the astronomical sums of money these men earn each day. But as one of the interviewees in ‘The Real Life Iron Man’ points out, Musk isn’t in the game just for the money. If he had been, he would’ve quit and retired to Monaco after selling PayPal. The fact that he’s invested his cash in new businesses that’ve subsequently turned out to be successful, and that have actually increased his net worth, is an index of the kind of man that he is. 

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Movie review: The Last Duel, dir Ridley Scott (2021)

This long movie is tight as a drum so even though I had a sore bum on occasion while sitting in the cinema, and had to shift in my set a few times, I only once felt impatient. At over 150 minutes it’s a marathon but there’s not an ounce of fat in this spectacular film.

Ben Affleck at Pierre d’Alencon is particularly good though Ridley Scott gets fabulous performances out of all of his main players. I was efficiently transported back 700 years into another world, a place where women had few rights. In the context of #MeToo, Scott’s choice of a theme is timely, his script demonstrating why human rights are so important. The broad appeal of legalisms to people – who structured their lives and beliefs around what was licit and what was illegal – have about them the kind of truth that you find in Shakespeare, so I felt that the writers got close to reality. How refreshing! A window into a lost world awaits the committed filmgoer.

I met a friend who loves history at Palace Cinema in Central Park and while we waited for the session to start we sat on a sofa looking out over the square where the brewery used to stand. The rhythms of the old industrial buildings have been replicated in the lines of the new apartment block built nearby, demonstrating how we privilege the old nowadays at a time when we’re shooting forward so rapidly it makes many people’s head spin. We lose our heads on occasion but cultural products like ‘The Last Duel’ can help to anchor us if we take the time to think about how lucky we are.

Even though the law has changed however, there’s still a way to go before things reach a point of equilibrium that we can all be happy with. After the movie my friend and I went to Spice Alley (getting the go-ahead from staff at the entrance who checked out vaccine passports) and later, during our conversation in the Agincourt Hotel (the name with historical resonance in the context of the movie because it celebrates a later English victory over the French) we both congratulated the state government on its decision to build more domestic violence shelters. Protecting women and children is still a public matter.

D’Alencon is important because of his animus against Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), who marries the daughter of a woman whose father had earlier sided with the English against a French king. De Carrouges has to fight for his privileges and when d’Alencon decides to gift an official role not to de Carrouges, whose father had once held it, but instead to Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), de Carrouges’ friend, the two men’s relationship sours.

This isn’t the end of the conflict however, and when de Carrouges’ wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) gets involved things spiral out of control. The legal arguments are mirrored by the battle scenes, the community at the time becoming caught up in drama where the rights and desires of individuals are in conflict with those of the state and of other individuals. Even today courtroom drama is common, let alone police procedurals (so much so that they seem a dime-a-dozen), so the essential truth of ‘The Last Duel’, which refuses to pornographise poverty, is revealed in its nuance. In fact this subtlety is probably why the film has done so badly at the box office. It’s too grey to appeal to Americans who, on the strength of the argument raised by this movie’s slow ticket sales, appear to need absolutely good or absolutely bad characters. I was entranced. 

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Wait a minute! If you’ve enjoyed this review you can read more at my Patreon – but you’d have to subscribe. It’s a small cost for regular book reviews that are as incisive and elegant as what you’ve just sampled. Your support is much appreciated …

Movie review: Hal and Minter, dir Ram Devineni (2021)

A relaxed sort of “New York state of mind” pervades this short film, which is available on YouTube and which includes a series of segments showing Hal Sirowitz, a poet who has Parkinson’s Disease, and his wife Minter Krotzer, who cares for him. Sometimes the pair read from their work and sometimes friends of theirs are included in scenes of dialogue. 

I loved how this movie talks about the importance of making art and how it can give meaning to lives that might otherwise lack coherence. Sirowitz and Krotzer see and understand the world though the things that they make, which allows them to meet challenges with a subtle grace and with a fortitude that is inspirational. 

Making art does help you to avoid such negative emotions as regret, envy, and spite, it lifts you up because, by holding a mirror up to your life, one that you control, you are able to see what it is that’s really important. This knowledge anchors you and helps you to weather the inevitable reverses that many are prey to giving in to lacking something to sustain them in their trials.

Movie review: Schumacher, dir Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns, Vanessa Nöcker, and Michael Wech (2021)

This is a slower production than ‘Drive to Survive’ (which I reviewed recently) and its more poetic tendency goes right through to the end. Less dedicated to the speed of racing, it misses making some key points about Schumacher’s life (which I’ll get to later). 

The TV production has shorter segments and relies more on music to generate atmosphere but like the makers of that show Kammertons, Mocker and Wech also rely on friends and family to develop the plot leading up to 2000, the year Schumacher won the world title for Ferrari. While there are similarities between the two productions I felt that the TV show is more about the industry because it doesn’t take sides. 

‘Schumacher’ is firmly on the side of the protagonist, a shy and reclusive man who was dedicated to his wife, a woman who accompanied him around the world to complete races held in different countries. 

His modest background makes him stand apart from many Formula 1 drivers, though like his competitors he knew early on what he wanted to do with his life. Starting out with the Benneton team Schumacher quickly made his mark until he transferred to Ferrari which, at the time, was weak. Helping the team to rebuild its standing in the rankings, he continued to win even after he won the top prize. He left the team in 2006 but was restless and hungry for speed – sometimes parachuting in Dubai with his wife in tow. They remained inseparable – and this continues down to the present.

It’s his need for speed that brought Schumacher back to Formula 1, when he joined the Mercedes team. He met his match in France skiing – still searching for that elusive experience governed by speed – and has since been recovering. The filmmakers do not show Schumacher as he looks now, so viewers and fans have no opportunity to really reflect on mortality. This might’ve been an additional gift (to people with disabilities) he and his family could make but they declined. Corinne, his wife, saying that just as Michael protected them when he was capable, now that he’s not they are protecting him.

Ayrton Senna crashed and died when Schumacher was an up-and-coming driver. Unable to take a turn at speed Senna crashed into the barriers and didn’t make it out of the car alive – or if he was alive when the emergency crew extracted his body from the wreck, he soon succumbed to his injuries. It’s hardly surprising to learn that a similar – if less dramatic – fate awaited Schumacher, a man who in truth lived life in the fast lane.