Nick Milligan's Blog

Director Darren Aronofsky has long expressed his interest in studies of doomed characters. Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler explored manifestations of grief and regret through compulsions and addictions, and how they lead to the destruction of the self.

The Whale fits into an informal trilogy with those two movies. Charlie, brought to life by a deeply committed performance from Brendan Fraser, is grieving the loss of his partner Alan. His utter devastation at the death has triggered compulsive eating disorder and his weight has grown so large that he is mostly confined to his sofa.

Charlie’s binge eating as a mechanism to numb his crippling pain, depicted throughout the movie in bracing moments of self-harm, has caught up with him. His heart, both literally and metaphorically, is broken. Seemingly resigned to his life coming to an end, he reaches out to his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), in a desperate final act of re-connection and redemption.

Aronofsky has adapted the play of Samuel D. Hunter, a writer who was inspired to pen the work after his own battle with obesity, and the polarising director has done little to hide the scaffolding of the source material. It’s a chamber drama with stagey dialogue – and always feels like you’re watching a play.

Aronofsky and Fraser developed the blocking of the scenes ie Charlie’s movements and daily dilemmas, with the American-based Obesity Action Coalition, and they’ve stated their main desire to contribute to the production was to counter Hollywood’s long-held use of obesity as a vehicle for sight-gags – The Nutty Professor, Shallow Hal etc. They wanted to assist in creating a realistic view of this condition.

The OAC’s input is commendable and you sense that The Whale’s intentions are pure – to convey the realities of people with severe obesity. But cinema is inherently a voyeuristic medium and Aronofsky’s movie is not only an invitation into Charlie’s life and pain, but an open invitation to marvel at his size.

As you watch The Whale and Brendan Fraser within the spectacular prosthesis, whether it’s during scenes of masturbation or a full-frontal shower shot, the camera holds on Charlie, wide and medium shots used to capture the breadth of his frame.

The Whale doesn’t have answers for Charlie’s situation – any “solution” for his mental illness would have been a contrivance. But as you watch the movie, and wallow in its unapologetic sentimentality, you may feel its intentions to humanise people with severe obesity as an unintended act of condescension. The screenplay whispers in your ear: “Big people are people too.” Is this one of life’s paradoxes? To insist someone is human is to dehumanise them?

There’s a proverb that says the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and The Whale brings it to mind. The songwriter Jason Isbell sings “no one dies with dignity” and The Whale brings that to mind too.

While there’s an undeniable beauty in Fraser’s Oscar-worthy performance and he locates dignity in Charlie’s various daily indignities, you can’t escape the feeling that his hyper-realistic depiction of morbid obesity does little more than feed your morbid curiosity.

The Whale is in cinemas now.

The Hollywood recipe for reviving a classic franchise for a new generation has now been firmly established. The recipe makes a cake. Yes, a cake, one that the studio is allowed to have and eat too. 

The first step is to retell the classic narrative as you might in a traditional remake. But rather than wipe the slate clean, you acknowledge the original movie and devise a way to have history repeat itself. They’ve rebuilt Jurassic Park. They’ve rebuilt the Death Star. Michael Myers has escaped again. Another serial killer dons “Ghostface”. 

This method of maintaining canon while rebooting a franchise allows the studio to both entice a fresh audience while catering for nostalgic adults. You can have new characters and also bring back Luke, Leia and Han. You can have your cake and eat it too.

If you have any desire to enjoy Ghostbusters: Afterlife, then you have to completely accept that this is such a cake. This is the intent of both Sony and director/co-writer Jason Reitman. But, unlike the original movies, supernatural comedies for ADULTS, Afterlife is resolutely a KIDS movie. It retells the classic narrative. It pays homage to the legacy of the originals.

Reitman, whose father Ivan directed the 1984 and 1989 movies, treats the material with the reverence it deserves. Let’s face it, 1984’s Ghostbusters is arguably the best comedy ever produced by the Hollywood system, certainly post the American New Wave. Its 1989 follow-up is the most thoughtfully crafted sequel to a hit American comedy. So Afterlife has a lot to live up to.

On the balance of it, Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan have baked the perfect cake. With the wide-eyed wonder and youthful energy of a young person’s action comedy, steered by a talented young cast, the script offers an introduction to the mythology – and fun – of the franchise. Reitman’s proven himself as a writer of sharp indie comedies and he applies that skill here. Afterlife has a number of jokes and one-liners that land, and the theatre I attended often erupted in laughter. 

Paul Rudd somewhat fills the void left by Bill Murray though he, of course, doesn’t share Murray’s darkness, that barely contained melancholy. But Rudd’s got precise comic timing and he proves a valuable addition to proceedings. 

But there wasn’t just laughs. The pre-ordained cameos elicited from my theatre actual applause. There was a level of excitement amongst the audience not felt for some time. As the nostalgia and schmaltz dials to eleven in the final act, you’ll either embrace the sentimentality or resist it. I got a little choked up. 

While a Ghostbusters movie without Bill Murray riffing as Dr. Peter Venkman in the lead role was always going to feel different (not to mentioned the relocation from New York City), Jason Reitman has created a well-paced adventure for young people. While the cynics might continue to lament the avalanche of recycled content, there’s also something to be said for the safety of nostalgic escapism. As the real world continues to circle the drain, the argument for taking a two-hour detour of laughs, applause and tears feels all the more compelling.

4/5

What the hell was that? 2020. Weird in so many ways. This year ushered in a new cinematic landscape that may prove to be permanent. A seismic shift. Movie theatres stood empty, even after lockdown in Australia was eased, and major studios pulled their tent-poles from the calendar. So did the tent collapse?

We had two big-budget movies released post outbreak, Tenet and Wonder Woman 1984, and both were deeply flawed – the latter by a good stretch more. Independent cinema punched above its weight, as it often does. Of this we can be thankful. Compelling stories – or distractions – were never more required than during the Season of the Virus.

If you were to add up the collective budgets of these 20 movies, you’d find this is the “cheapest” end-of-year list I’ve compiled. What will be the price tag at the end of 2021? What is the future of the cinema-going experience? Of movie engagement? Is the multiplex business model dead? We are sailing into unknown waters. Thankfully, so far, movies have, in their immersive, inviting way, proved to be ports in the storm.

Here’s the 20 best films of 2020. Enjoy.

20. Freaky

Director: Christopher Landon

Release date: November 12, 2020

On paper, this bloody twist on the body-swap sub-genre should not work as well as it does. But with some surprisingly gory deaths and killer dialogue, director Christopher Landon and the Blumhouse factory may have come up with the millennial answer to Scream. Kathryn Newton plays Millie, an unpopular outsider who swaps bodies with serial killer (and blatant Voorhees facsimile) The Butcher, played by Vince Vaughn. Freaky‘s opening set-up populates the movie with innumerable shitty (ie killable) characters, both students and teachers alike, setting the scene for some satisfying mayhem. The casting is key here, with Vaughn’s intensity and comedic chops making him the perfect candidate to play both psychopath and teenage girl. Newton’s no slouch as the film’s antagonist, which is for most of the running time. Freaky‘s a nice surprise.

Bill Camp (left) as “Wilbur Tennant” and Mark Ruffalo (right) as “Robert Bilott” in director Todd Haynes’ DARK WATERS, a Focus Features release. Credit : Mary Cybulski / Focus Features

19. Dark Waters

Director: Todd Haynes

Released: March 5, 2020

Dark Waters is a disturbing story of corruption from the recent past, where an unfathomable evil was perpetuated by a chemicals company that knowingly poisoned the world’s population. You. Me. Everyone. Todd Haynes’ latest effort digs deeper than the incredible facts of the matter. This is not just a portrait of a heroic lawyer, it’s the story of a man that championed a morally bankrupt system, is moved to change and then learns a very harsh lesson. It’s the deconstruction of a man’s hubris. Mark Ruffalo gives another fine performance, one of burgeoning empathy and building dismay, as the lawyer that puts his entire life on the line in the pursuit of true moral justice. In the vein of Erin Brockovich, Dark Waters is an indictment of our times, a portrait of greed, and one of the better legal thrillers of recent years.

18. The Lodge

Directors: Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala

Release date: February 20, 2020

The year’s bleakest horror movie is atmospheric chiller The Lodge, an icy cold study of religious fanaticism, grief and trauma. Central to the film’s premise is an idea that is both brilliant and fantastical, but if one is willing to suspend the necessary disbelief, it is hard not to be impressed by this disturbing horror movie from writer-director duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. Necessary to the film’s measured success is another mesmerising performance from the luminous and utterly watchable Riley Keough, who brings so much hollow-eyed broken gravitas to her tragic character – the childhood survivor of a cult’s mass suicide – that you’re willing to overlook the film’s potential leaps of believability. It’s a ghostly outing that might make you quickly venture to Disney+ to lift your spirits.

I’m Thinking Of Ending Things. Jessie Buckley as Young Woman, Jesse Plemons as Jake in Im Thinking Of Ending Things. Cr. Mary Cybulski/NETFLIX © 2020

17. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Release date: September 4, 2020

Charlie Kaufman’s latest surreal effort as writer-director delivers all the headfuckery we’ve come to expect from this perpetually innovative and imaginative storyteller. The set-up of I’m Thinking of Ending Things is simple – the delivery is anything but. A “Young Woman” (Jessie Buckley) is travelling with her boyfriend to meet his parents at their secluded farm. Her inner monologue wrestles with their relationship. She likes Jake (Jesse Plemons) but she’s thinking of ending things. Are we hearing her inner thoughts? Or are we really hearing Jake’s? There is a lot to unpack in Kaufman’s latest outing, a film about passing time, how we’re shaped by the art we absorb, and our perceptions of the world and relationships around us. Kaufman employs cognitive dissonance to keep us in a state of undefinable dread, leaving us unable to guess where this rabbit hole leads. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is challenging, but as an impressionistic experience it finds its way under your skin.

16. The Nest

Director: Sean Durkin

Release date: Yet to be confirmed

Sean Durkin’s awaited follow-up to hit indie piece Martha Marcy May Marlene plays out like an eerie echo of The Shining, but boiled down to its most austere, unsettling elements. There’s no bloody rampage in The Nest, but there is a haunted father, a big atmospheric house and a general sense of unease that permeates this beautifully realised character study. Jude Law has never been better as the father obsessed with elevating his social status, the means through which, as he sees it, is money. The screenplay shows impressive restraint, never sinking into the over-the-top melodrama that might have tempted other directors. The result is an intelligent familial and psychological horror movie.

15. The Vast of Night

Director: Andrew Patterson

Release date: May 20, 2020

The Vast of Night is a simple yet uber-effective mood piece sure to delight science-fiction fans. Made on an ultra-low budget, this debut feature from Andrew Patterson has a deliciously vintage atmosphere and just goes to confirm the theory that “less-is-more”. Sound is key to the film’s success and story, as a switchboard operator and radio DJ discover a strange audio frequency during one night in New Mexico in the late 1950s. In its middle the act The Vast of Night has a glorious, long tracking shot that floats across the city and through a basketball game. Patterson is a director to keep your eye on, as this feels like the stepping stone to something great.

14. The Trial of the Chicago 7

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Release date: October 16, 2020

Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay about the trial of the so-called Chicago 7 finally made it to the screen this year, albeit the small screen via Netflix, and not directed by Steven Spielberg, which had been on the cards, but by Sorkin himself. It’s a sturdy effort with an impressive cast, elevated in moments by Sorkin’s deft abilities as a cinematic storyteller. The film may never transcend a dramatic reenactment, but all the hallmarks of a good yarn are there – an evil Attorney General wants to bring down a group of innocent liberals in an act of revenge and political point-scoring. And they’re a colourful bunch and we root for them from the outset. Sacha Baron Cohen has never been better as Flower Power icon Abbie Hoffman, conveying the deep thinker beneath his charming anarchist exterior. An Oscar-nomination is likely.

13. The Rental

Director: Dave Franco

Released: July 24, 2020

Two couples rent an AirBnB by the ocean and drop some MDMA. Things get loose. Great horror movies often have a “this could actually happen” premise and this works greatly in The Rental‘s favour. Dave Franco’s punchy 88-minute chiller is impressive, and was deftly written with mumblecore purveyor Joe Swanberg. The result, perhaps, is “mumblegore”, with natural performances from the four central leads. As the festivities slowly rise to a boil, as does the palpable tension. A simple yet very effective horror. Stay tuned for a sequel.

12. 1917

Director: Sam Mendes

Release date: January 16, 2020

The “one shot” gimmick can be a double-edged sword, in that it can drop the viewer into immersive real-time action or draw attention to the presence of the team behind the camera. The latter is best avoided. In the WWI epic 1917, Sam Mendes walks a very fine line. Indeed, the movie is designed to look like it was mostly shot in one take (even though there are a few sneaky cuts). And, for the most part, the writer-director and his iconic cinematographer Roger Deakins (he nabbed another Oscar) disappear, making way for a visceral journey across the devastated French countryside. Their omnipotent camera follows their young heroes through swarms of flies and underground bunkers, over gnawing rats and rotting corpses. You will hold your breath during the white-knuckled finale.

There’s a tidy $100m budget on show, and the set and costume designers have recreated the battlefield and crowded trenches with stunning clarity and attention to detail. Technically, 1917 is a feat in choreography and Mendes again indulges his penchant for poetic visual metaphors. He also shies away from the high-impact gore of other war movies like Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan – though this film does have its moments.

11. Onward

Director: Dan Scanlon

Release date: April 2, 2020

This rollicking road movie about familial bonds is another gem of a picture from Pixar. The film got somewhat lost in the madness of the pandemic, with its cinema run cut short. Sentenced to VOD, it feels like Onward was not discussed nearly as much as Pixar’s other effort of 2020, the slower, less eventful, more contemplative Soul. The latter is a fine film, well designed hitting a lot of the familiar Pixar beats, but lays on the schmaltz a little thickly. Onward, by contrast, works much better and is exceedingly funny for children and adults alike. Director Dan Scanlon’s fast-paced journey through a mythical, modernised Middle Earth, arrives at an ending that feels the most impactful, raw, real and emotionally earned of any Pixar film. Onward has, without doubt, the most devastating finale of any movie in 2020.

10. VFW

Director: Joe Begos

Release date: February 14, 2020

This year director Joe Begos gave fans of ’70s exploitation flicks 90-minutes of blood-soaked mayhem. From the gang at Fangoria studios, whose production credits include S. Craig Zahler’s three gems Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete, came VFW, a loving tribute to the grindhouse fodder of the ’70s and ’80s. The set-up is all too familiar – think Assault on Precinct 13 or From Dusk Till Dawn. In VFW we have a group of foreign war veterans in their booze-soaked hangout under siege from a marauding horde of zombie-like leather-clad junkie punks. The film doesn’t reach any great heights, but it’s fun, ultra-violent and the cast of horror veterans invest in the screenplay with an arresting level of realism. It’s well written and well-made for this sort of thing, and mostly steers clear of political sentiment. Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) is the perfect battle-hardened lead amongst an equally steely and sturdy cast of action and horror stalwarts. Fred Williamson’s in there. William Sadler’s there. The group’s camaraderie is key to the film’s success. VFW is worth a look for grimy exploitation devotees, especially fans of John Carpenter.

09. Possessor

Director: Brandon Cronenberg

Release date: October 29, 2020

You’ve got to feel for Brandon Cronenberg. That distinctive surname sets the bar unfairly high for a burgeoning director, and there’s no doubt his father’s legion of fans flocked to this movie expecting a work worthy of the name. You can understand why. Iconic genre-filmmaker David Cronenberg, the Canadian granddaddy of hallucinatory body horror, is influential. A favourite of many (this reviewer included). And he has often been accused (often inaccurately) of cold detachment from his subject matter, whether it be The Fly or Videodrome or more recent masterpieces like Eastern Promises.

With Possessor, the ultra-stylish second outing from his son Brandon, you can feel the Cronenberg DNA at work – the visceral headfuckery, the distinctively nightmarish aesthetics. If anything, the bleakness and emotionally austere delivery of Possessor make it an even colder experience than his father’s movies, never moving but always engrossing. The plot is relatively simple – a world in which a clandestine technology company carries out assassinations. They do this by entering the mind of an innocent party, “possessing” them and using them to do their dirty work. The perfect crime. One of the seasoned killers, Taysa (Mandy‘s Andrea Riseborough) is losing her humanity every time she enters and controls someone’s mind. Every murder is eroding her soul.

With some shocking violence, memorable dream sequences and upsetting turns, Possessor sees the younger Cronenberg stake his claim as someone to be assessed on his own merits.

08. The Invisible Man

Director: Leigh Whannell

Release date: February 27, 2020

While its wokeness hangs heavily on its sleeve, Leigh Wannell’s update on the H.G. Wells classic The Invisible Man contains some of this year’s most hair-raising moments. Turning negative space and slow pans of empty rooms into their own formidable brand of white-knuckled terror, the film’s middle act features the most shocking cinematic surprise of 2020. Elisabeth Moss might be cinema’s most deeply committed working actress and she brings every fibre of the tortured, dogged and dignified resilience of previous roles to this battle of wits with her disturbed, deranged and transparent foe.

07. Color Out of Space

Director: Richard Stanley

Release date: February 6, 2020

Director Richard Stanley makes an esteemed comeback to the big screen following his now folklorish exit from the 1996 disaster remake The Island of Doctor Moreau. With better weather, a smaller budget and no Val Kilmer or Marlon Brando with which to contend, Stanley oversees a tonally spot-on adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. A strange rock falls to Earth on a family’s property and begins to change the landscape. Lovecraft’s atmospheric and vivid tale leaves plenty of room for inventiveness and Stanely doesn’t disappoint, unleashing another scenery chewing performance from Nicolas Cage, along with some stellar set design, saturated amethystine cinematography and superb body horror. The result is really great – and one of the best Lovecraft adaptations of recent memory.

06. Palm Springs

Director: Max Barbakow

Release date: November 20, 2020

Another film about time loops? Queue the yawn. But what could have been an exercise in frothy deja vu turned out to be the year’s funniest comedy. Intelligent and gilded with some genuinely dark turns, Palm Springs makes the requisite observations about life and the passing of time whilst brimming with sizzling humour and genuine surprises. It’s not hard to see why it broke the price tag record at Sundance, with Hulu and Neon paying a record-breaking $17,500,000.69 (the $0.69 nabbing them the gong). Palm Springs also continues the hard theory that any film is elevated by the presence of J.K. Simmons.

05. The Gentlemen

Director: Guy Ritchie

Release date: January 01, 2020

After some big budget style-over-substance forays into the Arthurs – Arthur Conan Doyle and King Arthur – and the dreaded Man From U.N.C.L.E and Aladdin, Guy Ritchie returns to the fertile earth of ultra-cool and ultra-Cockney gangster fare. This return to familiar territory instantly pays dividends, with The Gentlemen undoubtedly his best directorial effort since Snatch 20 years ago. A gallery of sharply dressed, silver-tongued crims does battle in this superbly crafted black comedy. Hugh Grant, in his greatest role ever, steals the show as the seedy, scheming narrator. Ritchie’s winding plot will keep you guessing – and, most importantly, entertained – until the final moments.

04. The Trip to Greece

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Release date: May 20, 2020

In their fourth and supposedly final outing, the Princes of Patter return for a trip throughout Greece, tracing the journey depicted by the great Homer (no, the other one) in Odyssey. By now you likely know the drill: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as exaggerated, distorted versions of themselves, embarking on a metafictional journey through incredible restaurants, hotels and European idylls, all the while needling and one-upping each other with sublime and endearing wit. But what elevates Michael Winterbottom’s ongoing passion project, truly the most deliciously indulgent of all franchises in modern cinema, is the subtext. Coogan and Bryon as Coogan and Brydon tease out the comic tragedy of mid-life crisis, the disappearing dreams, the realisation that glory might be in your rearview mirror. The Trip to Greece casts the net even wider, seamlessly touching on a refugee crisis and, more profoundly, the decline of ones mortality. Is there another trip left in them? One can only hope.

03. Mank

Director: David Fincher

Release date: November 19, 2020

The Fincher family passion project Mank finally came to our screens this year, and it did not disappoint. Written by Jack Fincher and directed by his formidable son David, this black and white labour of love pays homage to legendary cad and Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. “Mank” Mankiewicz. Employing the same non-linear structure as Kane, the legendary film that would earn both Mank and its young director, Orson Welles, an Academy Award, the film is exquisitely written and acted. The dialogue sizzles. It’s a tale about the persuasive power of filmmaking, morality and legacy, and deciding whether you want to be the monkey or the organ grinder. Mank‘s impending Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay feels pre-ordained.

02. Uncut Gems

Directors: Josh and Bennie Safdie

Release date: January 31, 2020

Few horror movies of recent years have been capable of inducing the same stomach-clenching, sweat-inducing anxiety as the Safdie Brothers’ breathless depiction of addiction. Uncut Gems is its own type of horror movie and it will set your heart racing. Adam Sandler gives a career-defining performance as Howard Ratner, modern cinema’s most tragic figures. Sandler’s performance embodies what it is to be a hopeless addict – no win is ever big enough – and this harrowing rollercoaster ride plummets us into a downward spiral that you won’t soon forget.

01. The Lighthouse

Director: Robert Eggers

Release date: February 6, 2020

How does one describe The Lighthouse? Impressionistic. Mystical. Mythological. Demented. Haunting. An enigmatic piece of filmmaking from The Witch director Robert Eggers. It’s a turbulent two-hander; a pair of men played by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, tending to a lighthouse, stranded on an island in the midst of a volatile storm. Isolated. Prone to wanderings of the mind. Reality and fantasy throw down, bare-knuckled. Eggers, a student of myths and folklore, references Proteus and Prometheus from Greek mythology as the inspiration for Dafoe’s and Pattinson’s characters. But there are many layers of subtext to this ambitious film. Shot in gorgeous black and white and in the very old fashioned 1.19:1 ratio, the image is almost a square, captured on antique cameras from 1912 and the 1930s. Each frame is composed as its own work of art. The two lead performances are, in themselves, forces of nature. Dafoe transforms into some otherworldly creature, spewing demonic vitriol in long geyseric eruptions. Pattinson holds his own and has never been better. In its more explosive moments, this is the most ferocious performance of his career.

As we draw closer to the sumptuous shadow of All Hallow’s Eve, there’s no better time to sink your teeth into some classic cinematic creep-fests. Here’s a witchy selection of gothic horror gems, a list that avoids realistic slasher gorefests in favour of supernatural frights and raunchy delights. Trick, treat and repeat.

[image error][image error][image error]

DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE

Directed by Michele Soavi, 1994

Undoubtedly one of the best films ever made, Dellamorte Dellamore (released in the US as Cemetery Man) is Michele Soavi’s 1994 erotic existential zombie masterpiece. This was Soavi’s first foray into directing after his stint as Dario Argento’s assistant. A droll, gun-tottin’ Rupert Everett plays Francesco Dellamorte, the caretaker of the cemetery in a small Italian town. With the assistance of his Igor-like colleague Gnaghi, Dellamorte faces an emerging epidemic – some corpses return on the seventh night of their burial. As is standard zombie law, cracking the skull puts them to rest for good. The work takes its toll however, and Dellamorte’s grip on reality, the margin between life and death, becomes blurred. Soavi’s phantasmagorical tale is full of killer dialogue, torrid romance, bleak hilarity, a memorable score and operates as many a great opera, with a masterful balance of tragedy and farce. Do yourself a favour and visit this cemetery on Halloween.

[image error][image error][image error]

THE SENTINEL

Directed by Michael Winner, 1977

Upon its release, Death Wish director Michael Winner’s effective supernatural horror movie The Sentinel was unfairly compared to The Exorcist and The Omen and fairly compared to Rosemary’s Baby. While it’s not quite in the same league as those three films, this creepy tale of a model that moves into an eerie Brooklyn brownstone builds to a lingering finale. While the film is mostly an atmospheric piece, the screenplay is punctuated by some unexpectedly gruesome and shocking moments. The incredible cast features a fiendish Burgess Meredith, Ava Gardner, John Carradine, a masturbating Beverly D’Angelo, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Walken, Eli Wallach, Jerry Orbach, Tom Berenger, Chris Sarandon and the breathtaking Cristina Raines as the lead. Full of ghoulish intrigue, this gothic outing is a perfect flick for Halloween.

[image error][image error][image error]

CAT PEOPLE

Directed by Paul Schrader, 1982

Paul Schrader’s erotic tale of sexual awakening and otherworldly transformation weaves the dreamlike atmosphere necessary for such heady themes. And, quite smartly, Cat People takes itself seriously in a way few modern films would dare, given its fantastical subject matter. But the elements combine to a sensuous whole – David Bowie’s theme song, the score by Giorgio Moroder, the New Orleans setting, the typically devilish performance by Malcolm McDowell and the stunning, otherworldly presence of lead actress Nastassja Kinski.

[image error][image error][image error]

THE HOWLING

Directed by Joe Dante, 1981

Warner Bros. were so impressed with Joe Dante’s erotic werewolf fantasy The Howling that they offered him Gremlins shortly thereafter. Both films centre on transformation, though The Howling does so by mining werewolf folklore for its primal, carnal subtexts. One of three superb lycanthropic fantasy movies made in ’81, alongside An American Werewolf in London and the vastly under-appreciated Wolfen, The Howling‘s strengths are Rob Bottin’s superb practical creature effects and a fine cast led by Dee Williams’ dogged news anchor – and the finale is a killer.

[image error][image error][image error]

FRIGHT NIGHT

Directed by Tom Holland, 1985

This cult favourite and fun riff on Rear Window is worth a visit this Halloween, with its underlying themes of teenage angst and insecurity, suburban paranoia and a note-perfect performance by Chris Sarandon as that all-too-charming neighbour. While leaning into the ’80s horror comedy cheesiness, the final act is surprisingly sexy. Holland and his team go to town on the practical creature effects. Unfortunately the 2011 remake lacks the texture and spark of this kitsch, enjoyable and spooky classic.

[image error][image error][image error]

SUSPIRIA

Directed by Dario Argento, 1977

Woe be the person that compiles a Halloween movie list and omits Dario Argento’s vivid and phantasmagoric masterpiece Suspiria. With its sustained waking-nightmare atmosphere, sensory unease and saturated set design, few movies evoke the spirit of Halloween as effectively as this absolute must-watch. The recent remake by Luca Guadagnino is, in its own way, quite brilliant, but vastly different in visual style and tone. Argento’s Suspiria is where the witchiest of witches roam.

[image error][image error][image error]

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK

Directed by André Øvredal, 2019

This Guillermo Del Toro produced film might be based on a series of short horror stories written for children, but trust me when I say – this flick will fuck them up. It’ll scar them for life. And they’ll be all the better for it. Such is the nightmarish qualities of its brilliant creature designs, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a perfect Halloween movie. In fact, it takes place on Halloween in 1968 and is a celebration of the power of storytelling. From missing toes to spider bites – to the completely fucked up “Jangly Man” – this series of monstrous encounters, framed within the discovery of a cursed story book, will get under your skin. With a story by Del Toro and esteemed direction by impressive Norwegian director André Øvredal (Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe), you’d be silly to dismiss this as a kids movie – it’ll shake even the most resilient adult horror movie buff.

[image error][image error][image error]

THE WICKER MAN

Directed by Robin Hardy, 1975

Truly one of the all-time great horror movies, this disturbing journey into a mysterious pagan cult, seen through the eyes of a Christian police officer in search of a missing girl, contains one of the most shocking finales on celluloid. Frequently copied but never surpassed, The Wicker Man embodies the spirit of Halloween, weaving themes of sexual repression under religious doctrine, mischief and carnal abandon, and striking imagery, into a compelling mystery. Hardy’s direction blurs the lines between dream and nightmare, typified by Britt Ekland’s naked siren song through a hotel room wall, the ultimate enticement for our righteous hero.

[image error][image error][image error]

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 1992

Perhaps one of the last great big-budget studio horror movies, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a timeless tale in the hands of one of the greatest mainstream filmmakers. Coppola pays homage to the classic vampire movies by refusing to use digital effects – everything is practical and in-camera – but also vehemently avoids the standard Nosferatu look, instead devising a fresh and now iconic Count Dracula (the movie understandably won Academy Awards for both its costuming and make-up). Gary Oldman is superb as the ancient count, at once horrifying and fragile; a seductive monstrous bloodsucker and a pitiful, heartbroken and tortured soul. Coppola leans into the gothic eroticism of Stoker’s novel, crafting an atmospheric, intoxicating and sensuous nightmare.

By Nick Milligan

I had a number of childhood obsessions, but looming largest amongst them was my passion for dinosaurs. I pored over books and watched documentaries on the ancient reptiles, learning my archaeopteryxes from my ankylosauruses. My favourite place on Earth was the Australian Museum in Sydney. If there was an established and accepted dinosaur, I knew its name. I’m not alone in this interest, of course, as the existence of dinosaurs continues to spark the imaginative synapses of young people around the globe.When the theatrical trailers for Jurassic Park appeared in early 1993, my dino-obsessed brain couldn’t contain its excitement. The arrival of this film would be the most important event of my life.

I counted down the days until its release in September that year. Frustratingly, it had been out in America since June. Not fair. Babies born of this century won’t be able to fathom the idea that a movie could be a cultural phenomenon. Every person you knew went to see a movie. It was discussed. It was seen twice or more. Those days are gone. Not even the latest Star Wars flick or an Avengers’ on-screen orgy can reap the same level of hysteria as landmark films of the previous century (though The Force Awakens is the closest a film has come for over two decades).

[image error]

Now Tiger King enters the zeitgeist faster than anything on the silver screen. Jaws and The Exorcist were before my time, but Jurassic Park was of my time. When it opened in September 1993, Maitland Cinema 4 (now Reading) had the movie running all day, on all four screens, and there was a queue around the block for every screening. We don’t really queue for movies anymore. Now having six people in front of you can be too much. Where I differed from other nine-year-old kids was that I’d been fairly sheltered from scary movies. My mum had a clear idea of the sorts of films I was allowed to see at any given age (usually years after what seemed reasonable to me). But I was allowed to see Jurassic Park.

However what the trailers for the film didn’t really convey, was that Steven Spielberg’s latest masterpiece was not a kid-friendly outing. Jurassic Park was, and still is, a horror movie. Yes, a horror movie. Jason Voorhees’ machete has been substituted for the scythen talon of a velociraptor.It’s telling that, before its release, Spielberg stated very clearly in the press that he wouldn’t allow his eight-year-old son Max to see the film. “It was too intense,” he said. The outspoken critic of Hollywood violence, Michael Medved, said that any parent that took their child to the film was “guilty of unconscionable child abuse”.

Amazingly, Universal Pictures managed to get Jurassic Park a PG rating in Australia and the UK, largely down to its loose educational value. The UK’s National History Museum’s dinosaur expert Dr Angela Milner praised the movie’s accuracy and welcomed the classification, but admitted it might scare nervous children.

Like many horror movies, Jurassic Park opens with a death that sets up the coming jeopardy for future characters. In the opening of Spielberg’s other landmark horror movie, Jaws, we see a beautiful young naked girl scream in pain and terror as she’s dragged beneath the ocean’s surface by an unseen monster. In the opening scene of Jurassic Park, a humble crew member referred to as the “gate keeper” is slashed and devoured alive by an unseen monster as he screams in agony and dies in the arms of Bob Peck’s steely game-hunter-cum-park-ranger Muldoon. The horror is not lost on Spielberg. The combination of inhuman squeals and shots from the monster’s perspective are all tropes of the genre. Even my dino-obsessed brain was not ready for this. As I sat, wide-eyed, in my seat, my crippling excitement quickly turned to shock. Like, actually shock. Medical shock. I turned white. I felt faint. I felt like I would throw up into my popcorn. I sat, catatonic, through more of the film, the images washing over me. But I was still stuck in that opening sequence. My impulse was to leave. I turned to my dad and whispered that I had to go to the bathroom. There I sat in a cubicle, seat down, and stared at the back of the cubicle door. Terrified.

I eventually summoned the courage to return to the cinema. When the T-Rex finally eats that snivelling lawyer Gennaro, the guy marked for death the moment he appears in frame, I really needed to get out of there. I returned to the cubicle. My dad eventually came to find me and asked if I was okay. As this was 27 years ago, my memory is a little fuzzy, but I imagine I made up an excuse and said everything was fine. Dad returned to his seat and encouraged me to do the same.

I don’t blame him, not at all. I mean, it’s fucking Jurassic Park. On the big screen. For the first time ever. As I recall, I didn’t rush back into the cinema. I suspect I checked out the arcade machines and stalled for time. I have a faint memory of returning in time to see the velociraptor kitchen scene. That happens not too long after Laura Dern’s Dr Ellie Sattler triumphantly exclaims into her headset, “Mr Hammond, I think we’re back in business!” after rebooting the park’s generators. That’s when Jurassic Park becomes a full-blown slasher movie. It was night when we left the movie. I passed a lot of my school friends in the various two-hundred metre queues that snaked throughout Maitland’s CBD, waiting impatiently to get into their evening session. I told them how awesome it was. How much I’d enjoyed it. But really I was filled with sorrow and rued my cowardice. I’d counted the days to watch that film and, in the end, been too much of a chicken to even watch it.

I saw the complete film about a year later on rented VHS. On our tiny television. And, of course, I’ve watched it innumerable times since. But last night, for the first time in 27 years, I sat down to watch Jurassic Park at the cinema, this time on the gigantic Titan XC cinema screen at Reading Charlestown. I’ll save my rant about the film’s merits and how well it holds up for another time. But I will say this: as I extended the recliner seat and put my jacket over me as if it were a blanket, I was taken back in time. Not 65 million years, but to September of 1993, when a wide-eyed kid had the wind knocked out of him by a master filmmaker and the potentially harrowing power of cinema. I didn’t just watch the movie for the shabby, decaying version of me that exists today but for my nine-year-old self. I watched it for him. Thinking about that scared kid from long ago, I was sad at the thought that I might never again have as palpable a reaction to a movie and that my trauma represented an innocence that is truly lost. But, last night, when that first brachiosaurus appeared on screen, pacing gracefully through frame, brought to life not through DNA alchemy but the waking dream that celluloid affords us, I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear.

[image error]
By Nick Milligan

As the cinematic landscape continues to shift, it’s hard to know from where the next filmic gem may be uncovered. But if one keeps their ear to the multiplexes and their eyes to the ever-growing roster of streaming services, it’s still possible to find some absorbing movie experiences.

This year saw some accepted masters remain at the top of their game – like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino – and some renegades lurk ominously at the fringes but continue to stamp their name as must-watch filmmakers – like Lars von Trier and S. Craig Zahler.

This was also the year that two directors really confirmed for this film-lover that they’re ahead of the game compared to their contemporaries – Bong Joon-ho and Karyn Kusama.

The past twelve months were tough for me personally, so many films passed me by. I’ll catch-up. But I still crammed many in – here’s the best 20 movies I watched in 2019.

[image error]

20. DOLEMITE IS MY NAME

Director: Craig Brewer

Release date: October 25, 2019

Eddie Murphy uses his enduring star power to shine a light on cult comedian and blaxploitation pioneer Rudy Ray Moore in this entertaining biopic. Director Craig Brewer – who rejoins Murphy for the impending sequel Coming 2 America – takes a straightforward approach to capture Moore’s tireless entrepreneurial spirit and Murphy’s undeniable presence onscreen. Dolemite Is My Name is a fascinating look at a comedian to which many folks outside America might remain completely oblivious and, with a compelling performance by Murphy, it proves to be surprisingly inspirational.

[image error]And Leonardo DiCaprio has never been better. He imbues Rick Dalton with desperation, frailty and genuine pathos – a loveable narcissist through which we view the end of an era. And for Brad Pitt as the roguish stuntman Cliff Booth, it’s a career-defining performance.

[image error]

The Green Book, written and published by its namesake Victor Hugo Green, was a travel guide for African Americans. Printed in the 1960s, the handbook listed safe places to eat and stay, particularly in the Deep South where the Jim Crow segregation laws were in full flight.

The metaphor fits neatly over Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a New York City Italian heavy who works as a bouncer in a nightclub. Tony Lip has a reputation for solving disputes with his fists. He’s approached by a record label to drive and safely escort one of their star musicians, black virtuoso pianist “Doc” Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), on a tour through the Deep South, where racism is still indulged and enacted with chilling casualness.

The opening scenes of Green Book, based on a true story, tell us that Tony Lip is prejudiced against black people. But he’s out of work for two months while the nightclub where he works is renovated, so he takes the job to guide the Doc on his tour. They clash at first. Tony’s an every man, uncultured in any global sense of the word. Doc, on the other hand, is extremely cultured – well-travelled, eloquent, multi-lingual and, as far as Tony’s concerned, incredibly pompous.

From here the film becomes a road movie – a reverse Driving Miss Daisy – that takes us on a tour of the Deep South’s racist landscape. America is in a state of flux, and we see the contrast of progressive New York City, where Shirley lives in opulence above Carnegie Hall, sitting in a literal throne, to the likes of North Carolina, where he can’t use the same bathroom as whites people. But Green Book never wallows in the barbarism that African Americans experienced during that time – it’s not that kind of film. This isn’t Django Unchained or 12 Years a Slave. Green Book has a gentle approach, instead focusing on the personal indignation experienced through Shirley’s character. Humiliating scenarios are woven into an ultimately heart-warming story about two people who find common ground.

Green Book is ostensibly a story that’s been told many times before, its tropes steeped in the “buddy movie” tradition. Two characters from different worlds, with different outlooks and methods of social interaction, are brought together through circumstance. Of course they’ll end up the closest of friends. But, more vitally, they will learn from one another through their shared experience.

Green Book is a decided change in tone for director Peter Farrelly, of the Farrelly brothers, whose run of sweet yet gross-out comedies yielded the hits Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary. It’s a sincere and wildly enjoyable film, gently paced, very funny and written with a literary sensibility. It’s a story about two people first, and a story about racism second. Its political ideology doesn’t bludgeon the audience, nor is it pushed to the edges. Farrelly and his co-writers – one of which is the real life son of the Tony Lip character – locate grim humour in the ludicrousness of the Jim Crow laws, and the Doc’s various humiliations play out in a dualistic nature, devastating and absurd in equal measure. These moments are intended to sicken us and that’s precisely where they land. And Green Book is, unavoidably, a sad reminder that the vileness of segregation is not only recent history, but still echoes today.

While beautifully made by Farrelly, the success of Green Book is carried by the brilliance of its two central performances. Outside of his work with David Cronenberg, Mortensen rarely gets the chance to showcase both his precise comedic timing and blunt force physicality. Ali plays Shirley with startling nuance – dignity, melancholy, pain and fearlessness. One would think he is assured his second Academy Award.

Green Book has been criticised in some corners for dumbing down its depiction of the Jim Crow laws, and Shirley’s family have accused the writers of fabricating the depth of Tony Lip and the Doc’s friendship. If these things matter to you – this odd requirement of accuracy – then perhaps they’ll mar your enjoyment of the movie. Which would be a great shame.

But fiction and truth remain strange bedfellows and films, depending on their underlying sentiment, should remain immune to such scrutiny. The search for truth in any film is ultimately futile. “Facts” are not necessarily beneficial to a piece of art and it is true that ideology is often detrimental to storytelling. In regard to Green Book, this need for “truth” has blinded some to the filmmakers’ ultimate achievement, a long series of memorable moments that together form a modern classic.

[image error]

By Nick Milligan

2018 was an even better year for movies than the last, though cinephiles had to once again wade through waist-deep dross and tread into indie territory.

Welcome to the land of micro-budgets, where a younger generation of filmmakers are making their mark. Names like Jeremy Saulnier, S. Craig Zahler and Panos Cosmatos are on the brink of wider recognition – a level that might even see their films widely released in Australian cinemas.

In compiling this annual list for 2018 I sadly note the lack of female directors, which is not deliberate on my behalf. It’s a symptom of the industry. I don’t seek movies based on the gender of the director, simply stories whose elevator pitch tickles my fancy. So, in that sense, I’m indiscriminate. But it’s something I will examine in 2019 (Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer is top of my to-watch list for the new year).

However, there are key films here that tell women’s stories and have largely female casts. Annihilation, The Favourite and Suspiria deserved wider recognition (one was released straight to Netflix, one received a brief cinema release and the other had a very limited release in Sydney). There’s work to be done and we all have our say every time we buy a movie ticket – so vote wisely. Support someone other than Marvel and DC, if that’s what you so desire.

Politics aside, I present you with my top 20 films of 2018 – based on Australian cinematic release dates. They’re all recommended. So dive in. Treat yourself.

[image error]Top 20 Movies of 2017.

[image error]

Christian Bale transforms into former US vice president Dick Cheney

Man or monster? Vice struggles to find the former

By Nick Milligan

Adam McKay’s biopic about former US vice president Dick Cheney opens with a joke concession, in which he admits the inherent difficulty in tackling one of the most secretive leaders in history. “We did our fucking best.”

It is certainly a prescient statement, and a strange jumping point, as the ensuing 132-minutes of finely acted tragicomedy struggles to peel back the veneer of one of American politics’ true monsters.

McKay wrestles with the contradictions of Cheney, played here with real calorie-induced bulk by a chameleonic and intense Christian Bale. On one hand, Cheney was simple: a Yale dropout who returned to his Wyoming hometown and drowned himself in whiskey, putting up utility lines to earn a crust and getting booked twice for DUI. A stern dressing down from his sweetheart, Lynette Vincent (a typically committed Amy Adams), sees him get his life back on track. He becomes a Republican intern for a young, irreverent Donald Rumsfeld (a typically comical Steve Carrell), and gets a taste of the potential power of political life. He marries Lynette, starts a family and becomes a quiet, scheming and upwardly mobile American male archetype.

“…in the face of all this bloodshed McKay, through Bale, attempts to humanise Cheney – to unveil the dichotomy that apparently makes this bespectacled master manipulator more than the loathsome and malevolent being his acts might suggest.”

The contradiction, which Vice attempts to explore, is Cheney’s cold-blooded ruthlessness. This is easy to depict in all of its stark barbarity, thanks to innumerable hours of real footage: bombs over Baghdad and prisoners being humiliated and tortured by US soldiers. It all unfolds under Cheney’s detached stare, as he sets himself up as the puppet master behind POTUS George W. Bush (played by a note-perfect Sam Rockwell). Bush Jr. and Cheney make something of a Faustian pact, allowing Cheney to become the architect of a fabricated war in which an estimated 655,000 people died.

But in the face of all this bloodshed McKay, through Bale, attempts to humanise Cheney – to unveil the dichotomy that apparently makes this bespectacled master manipulator more than the loathsome and malevolent being his acts might suggest.

Did he love his wife? Check. Was he accepting of his gay daughter? Check. Did he tell dad jokes around the family lunch table? Check. Did he like fishing? Check. Did he like hunting? Famously.

But to what does all that amount? Talk to FBI profilers and they’ll tell you serial killers are likely to be quiet, Caucasian family men. So McKay doesn’t have a lot to work with – he grasps at straws, somewhat, in his efforts to humanise Cheney. It all feels unsatisfying – and doomed from the outset. As that jokey opening concession states, McKay doesn’t have the answers that would make this biopic compelling or revelatory.

[image error]

The director doesn’t shy away from the glaring facts either – this is, as a post credits sequence jokes, a Liberally slanted view of a conservative politician. So in McKay’s direction, and Bale’s performance, we see Cheney’s thirst for power in all its reptilian glory. Bale stares down the camera, via video link, during his secret meetings over the pursuit of Saddam Hussein on very spurious intelligence. That same stare is bundled into a montage of families blown to smithereens, waterboarding and solitary confinement. We even see it, in an early flashback, as young Cheney gazes dispassionately at a co-worker who’s fallen from a telecommunications pole and suffered a compound leg fracture.

So McKay is searching for the answer to the question: “Did Cheney have a heart?” This is a gift for a storyteller, given that Cheney had an ongoing heart condition that plagued him in later life. His heart, literally and metaphorically, is very much under the microscope in Vice, but the metaphorical incarnation remains elusive.

Ultimately Vice doesn’t offer any fresh insight into Cheney that might not otherwise be known to a layman. His attraction to unequivocal power, his connection to big oil and loyalty to financial interests, saw his political decisions end hundreds of thousands of lives, the ripple effects still felt today through the rise of ISIS and ongoing Middle East instability. Cheney surely had, in every definition of the term, a God complex.

McKay’s best work is rooted in lowbrow American comedy and his success with creative partner Will Ferrell is immense. He’s directed Ferrell in a list of rewatchable hits: Anchorman and its sequel, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights and The Other Guys, not to mention the pair’s hit website Funny or Die and their classic HBO show Eastbound & Down. McKay and Ferrell have brought much joy to the world.

But McKay clearly has aspirations beyond the loveable bastards Ron Burgundy and Kenny Powers, and in Dick Cheney he might have the greatest bastard of them all. Indiscriminate murder and torture were likely beyond our favourite anchorman and fading baseballer.

This ambition was evident in his 2015 comedic exploration of the global financial crisis, The Big Short, in which a group of investors predicted impending catastrophe. It earned him an Academy Award for Best Director. In The Big Short, McKay employed many of the tricks he uses in Vice: visual gags, meta breakdowns – bells and whistles – to liven what he clearly perceives as important but potentially very dry material for a mainstream audience. As subject matter, there’s little more sedative than economics, so in The Big Short McKay had Margot Robbie bathe naked in a bathtub to explain… well, this reviewer can’t recall. She was naked, though.

McKay seems to have a similar view of politics so in Vice he crafts a similar comedic rhythm, the film’s tricks occasionally mirroring those employed by William Shakespeare (one bedroom conversation between Lynette and Dick is actually written by McKay in a deliberately Shakespearian style). The narrator breaks the fourth wall, a device often used by The Bard, alongside many other moments that dip in and out of reality. But if you have a rudimentary interest in American politics – enough so to buy a ticket to watch a movie about Dick Cheney – then you might find these interludes distracting and superfluous. McKay is essentially dumbing down the material, breaking it into bite-sized pieces and assuming absolutely no knowledge on the part of the audience.

And, hey, maybe his assessment of the American public is totally accurate. Maybe most Americans can’t really tell you about Dick Cheney and the impact he had on their lives. He was, by all accounts, the ghost who walked. A covert operator.

If he only had a heart.

Vice is out now in Australian cinemas.

 

[image error]

Ben Leece was in his local record store, an establishment he visits with the borderline-addict frequency of any great music tragic. The proprietor, Chris Dunn, was in his usual locale, behind the counter, losing patience with his iPhone. “No wonder the fuckin’ world’s exhausted!” roared Dunn. Leece suddenly had a title for his solo record: “From that moment this album was never going to be called anything else.”

No Wonder the World Is Exhausted is a songbook of deceptive depth and emotional scope. The former Delta Lions member spreads his wings as a deft and poetic lyricist of eagle eye and forked tongue, wry and perceptive in equal measure. It’s the work of a writer who wrote songs on his father’s Maton before he properly learned to play, an early teen in Kamilaroi country on a small farm in Quirindi, on the Liverpool Plains south of Tamworth.

Now based in the Hunter Valley, and in possession of an assured debut album, the songwriter asserts “there’s no overall theme to the record”. But there are threads one can tease should you look. Nothing is quite as it seems in these ten impressive tracks, such is their layers and nuances, and it’s the hidden details that reveal a collection of dualities and dichotomies.

Take, for example, the two meanings of the album’s title. Is the world in a state of collective weariness, or are we exhausting it of what precious little it has left to offer? Maybe both.

These are reflective songs of robust melody and literary finesse, painting the picture of a man under the lens of his own microscope. Whether it’s the study of inherited familial traits in ‘Apple Tree’, choosing the scene over songs in ‘Highway Not the Dream’, fear of not measuring up on ‘Villains’ or a dose of self-affirmation on ‘Stuck to My Guns’, Leece emerges as a soulful realist.

Evident, too, is a social conscience. The songsmith states on the honky tonk swing of ‘Sunny Side’: “I want to see this old world from your side of the road”, and the surrounding songs confirm his keenness to understand something of the people in his orbit. ‘This Is What You Get’, a Radiohead-esque cosmic slice of country that explodes into the record’s thrilling freak out, is inspired by the story of a homeless man that sleeps out near Leece’s inner Newcastle home. Here we locate another dichotomy.

“There is a homeless guy that sleeps near our apartment building,” Leece explains. “Over the last 18 months or so we’ve become friendly with him. We’ll stop and chat, walk with him and introduce him to friends that we might cross paths with. He is skilled, educated and more than willing to work should he be able to find it. It completely smashed the stereotypes that had manifested in my head. In one of our first big yarns Allan said to me, ‘Anyone can end up here where I am. I’ve been just like you, where you are.’ It stuck with me and I started to imagine what must run through your head when life finds you sleeping on the street.”

‘Nothing, Not Anymore’ is a political protest song dressed as a scorned country take down, a middle finger to Australia’s broad denial of past Indigenous dispossession and the pursuit of material wealth. “If you ain’t tellin’, then I won’t ask, about the dirt you stole to build your house of glass.” On ‘Smoke Signals’, Leece sums up the two sides of a strained relationship with a single cutting image: “Cheap cigarette still burnin’, bitch ‘bout the smoke stuck in your eye.”

[image error]

‘A Hole’, another dualistically titled tune, is the record’s irresistible power pop moment, less than two minutes of sublime fuzz that nods to the Lemonheads, Smudge and Leece’s beloved Paul Westerberg. The sunny arrangement is juxtaposed against dark lyrics. “This is about depression,” says Leece. “Stuff I have dealt with for as long as I can remember. I feel good right now so I’m ok to offer up little bits. I like the idea of hiding something so dark in a power pop structure. I feel like because it presents as an upbeat, happy kind of song it’s easy to miss, and that’s the point.”

No Wonder the World is Exhausted was engineered, produced and mixed by prominent singer-songwriter and ARIA award-winner Shane Nicholson at his prolific Central Coast studio The Sound Hole. Leece approached Nicholson in search of a fruitful collaboration. “I wanted to work with someone that could actually produce,” Leece says. “I still wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted it to sound like and I wanted someone to explore the songs and push them away from anything obvious.”

Nicholson performs extensively on the album, adding guitars, bass, piano, organs, percussion and backing vocals. Also amongst the A-list band are pedal steel guru Jason Walker, drummer Pete Drummond, renowned fiddle player Luke Moller, and vocalist Katie Brianna. The result is a classic country sound that doesn’t overplay its hand, allowing the quality of Leece’s songwriting to speak for itself.

No Wonder the World is Exhausted is bound to continue Leece’s organic rise through the ranks of Australian music, following on from the debut 7” single ‘Trace’ in 2017, which snagged him “Alt-Country Song of the Year” at the 16th annual Independent Music Awards. Leece was soon also in the Top 15 finalists in the Americana Music Prize of Australia.

Expect many more accolades to follow. Because the world may be exhausted, but it’s about to wake up to Ben Leece.

Nick Milligan