Movie Reviews by Jay Archer

Cairo Time

Directed by Ruba Nadds
90 mins
Now showing at selected cinemas

This movie was made under very difficult circumstances. It opens at Cairo International Airport where Juliette (Patricia Clarkson) is met by Tareq (Alexander Siddig). He is there is place of her husband Mark who works for the UN and has been called away due to urgent business in Gaza. On their journey to her hotel, Juliette finds Cairo chaotic, hot and humid. Her jet lag and the heat confuse her momentarily.

Juliette walks alone through Cairo streets where she is soon met with seductive looks from young men and openly and directly propositioned. She flies to the safety of a shop where the kindly shop owner berates the young men and insists they leave.

Juliette tracks down Tareq who now owns a coffee house since leaving the United Nations. The café is cool with fans blowing, At every table men play chess and smoke hookas, enjoy tea or coffee but now stare at her too, mainly because it’s a café for men. She confides to Tareq “I’m going crazy”. “No-one says anything” she says. Tareq explains politely that it would be rude.

We receive here what it would be like to be foreign in a place where women are completely invisible. Tareq doesn’t totally approve of Juliette’s lack of knowledge of the culture and customs but hides it behind his perfect manner and style.

He begins to show her around. She soon relaxes but maintains a discrete physical distance. She covers her head and arms with a scarf and blends in a little more. She relishes her independence from her husband, who has been delayed yet again.

There are precious few movies indeed which show American and Arab countries being shown on the same level, one movie which did was Amreaka. This shows well the American outsider in an Arabian culture.

The Director is a Syrian born Canadian and she has accomplished a major feat of producing a delicate, realistic love story.

Patricia Clarkson always gives her all. Sudan born Alexander Siddig has the charm, looks and ability of Omar Sharif.

Jay Archer

Rating 9/ 10

The Ghost Writer

Screenplay by Robert Harris and Roman Polanski
Directed by Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski makes entertaining movies such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant and Frantic.

We never know the ghost’s name (Ewan McGregor). He is selected by a large publishing company to ghost-write the memoirs of fictional British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brognan). Lang has been accused of war crimes, including handing over suspects for rendition and torture by the CIA.

The ghost writer is met at the house by his personal assistant Kim Catteral) and his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams). As soon as he settles into the house it becomes clear that all is not as it seems. His predecessor was found dead, washed up on a beach close to the house.

It’s obvious that Lang is a pencil thin disguised version of Tony Blair and his close friendship and complicity with the Bush/Cheney administration. This celluloid offering reminds me a little of Hitchcock’s North by North West and others.

There’s a harbinger early on in the film when an editor at the publishing house says to the ghost ‘There’s something not quite right about the project’.

British actor Tom Wilkinson has a pivotal role and there’s an important cameo by Eli Wallach.

Suspenseful and entertaining.

Jay Archer

Rating 9/ 10

South Solitary

Written and Directed by Shirley Barrett
Rated M
120 mins
Limited release

This is an enjoyable little Australian film set in 1927 off the coast of Victoria with plenty of gale force winds blowing from Tasmania.

We first meet Meredith Appleton (Miranda Otto) and her Uncle George Wordsworth (Barry Otto) on a boat heading for the lighthouse South Solitary. George is a fussy and particular man who likes everything just so. He likes his tea scalding hot.

When they land on the island his two assistants are waiting for him. There’s handsome Harry Stanley (Rohan Nicol), who likes the look of Meredith but has a wife Alma (Essie Davis), and Jack Fleet (Marton Csokas) a returned soldier from world war 1, who seemingly thrives on insolation and solitude.

The attention to detail is perfect, you feel drawn into life on the island in 1927.

Meredith befriends Nellie (Annie Martin) one of the Stanley children, an cautstic child whose pride and joy is a collection of scabs she keeps in an old cake tin. Alma delights in being rude to Meredith, their contrasting personalities and takes on life are miles apart. Harry pushes a flirtation with Meredith and we receive subtle hints that a relationship could be possible.

The isolation forces the islands inhabitants to confront their fears and accept what life has for them.

The characters are real and seem very contemporary for such a long time ago
Jay Archer

Rating 8/ 10

Farewell

Directed by Christian Carion
112 mins
Rated M

Farewell is a spy thriller set in the year 1981.

Sergie Gregoriev (Emir Kusturica), a Russian KGB Colonel, is dissatisfied with the Soviet system and believes it needs altering.

Pierre (Guillaume Canet) is a French engineer in Moscow. He is married to Jessica (Alexandra Maria Lara) with two children.

Sergie is a different fish to other KGB officers, he is a romantic who enjoys poetry. He knows that Pierre has ties to French intelligence. So one night he jumps into Pierre’s car and passes trade secrets. He is not particularly happy with the amateur but soon realises the benefits. They soon become confidants and discuss their personal lives.

Sergie refuses to take money from Pierre but asks for French poetry books, a walkman for his son and tapes of Freddie Mercury and Queen.

Fred Ward appears as Ronald Regan, Phillipe Magnan as Francois Mitterand and William Dafoe as a CIA agent.

The casting of actor/director Guillaume Canet and Kusturica, a Yugoslavian director, are both believable. The film shows how the big countries double cross allies and enemies alike.

An enjoyable movie.

Jay Archer

Rating 8/ 10

Inception

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan
148 mins
Rated M

I admire writer/director Nolan. He’s an intelligent, creative man, Memento, Dark Knight, Insomnia.

The film opens with Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) waking up on a beach with a spinning top in his pocket. Cobb is cad dish operative who excels in entering peoples dreams and extracting secrets and ideas with the aid of Dream Engineer Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levit). When the latest dream ends badly Cobb is blackmailed by Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe). Cobb and Arthur must do a job for Saito, planting a damaging idea into the unconscious mind of business rival Robert Fisher jr (Cillian Murphy). The process is called inception.

Cobb enlists a team of specialists, his father Miles (Michael Caine), a savvy new recruit Adrienne (Ellen Page), Forger Eames (Tom Hardy) and chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao). At the same time, unbeknown to the team, Cobb is troubled by his own subconscious. Meanwhile wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) is set on embarrassing her hubby.

Nolan’s screenplay is a brilliant achievement, up there with the extraordinary filmmakers like Ridley Scott and Orson Welles. He achieves the ultimate conception of time moving at four different speeds simultaneously. The visuals lean towards surrealist Dali, a Paris street explodes in slow motion, a fist fight that defies gravity, but we’re not avalanched with computer generated images. When Nolan does use CGI he shows us something upsetting. Sydney and Australia also have a pivotal plot point.

The costumes and cinematography are tops.

Stop whatever you’re doing and bolt to the nearest cinema. I’ll be going back a second time very soon.

A cinema masterpiece.

Jay Archer

Rating 10/ 10

I Am Love

Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Rated MA
120 mins
I Am Love aims to be a melodrama but I wasn’t convinced. The film opens at Christmas time in Milan where a right wing family is giving a birthday dinner for Edoardo snr (Gabriele Ferzetti), head of a wealthy company that employs his son Tancredi Recchi (Pippo Delbono) and grandsons Edoardo jnr (Flavio Parenti) and Gianluca (Mattia Zaccaro). The décor of the house is lavish but understated.

Edoardo snr announces his retirement at the dinner and arrogantly declares “It will take two men to replace me”. Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini) a creative and handsome friend on Edoardo jnr, arrives with a birthday cake. Antonio has an accountancy house in the hills above Sanremo but his desire is to open his own restaurant. Edoardo jnr and Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton) encourage him to join the festivities but he declines. We receive subtle messages that all is not well with Emma.
Betta (Alba Rohrwacher), Emma’s daughter, has decided her life needs to change so has dumped her boyfriend and moved in with her lesbian lover. She tells her mother, who doesn’t flinch, but asks her not to tell her father.

Edoardo jnr is hurt when Tancredi gives in to pressure to sell the company but devastated when he discovers his mother is having an affair with his friend Antonio.

The best part of the film is Emma in raptures, almost to the point of orgasm, while eating a prawn dish created by Antonio, while her friends are oblivious to her corporeal feelings.

Tilda Swinton looks a million dollars. The photography and cinematography are excellent but I couldn’t have any feeling for the characters. Guadagnino needs to look to Douglas Sirks melodramas such as ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’ with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck and ‘A Time To Have and A Time To Die’.

Beautiful landscapes but unfulfilling.
Jay Archer

Rating 6/ 10

The Most Dangerous M

The Most Dangerous Man in the World

Directed by Judith Ehlich and Rick Goldsmith
Screenplay by Judith Ehlrich and Rick Goldsmith
93 mins

I saw this wonderful, though provoking documentary recently at the Sydney Film Festival.

Daniel Ellsberg is the hero and star of this documentary in which he is working with the Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara as Defense Analyst, where he became aware of a litany of lies in top secret documents. President Johnson, itching for war circa 1969, tells US operatives in Vietnam to exaggerate the hostilities. The trouble for successive US governments goes back 40 years when President Truman paid for the French to send troups into then Indochina.

A few years later Ellsberg would meet his future wife, Patricia, who was wildly opposed to the Vietnam war. Ellsberg has a change of heart and conscience. He goes to a friends’ place of work and photocopies 7000 pages of top secret documents. Including documentation on Lyndon Johnson’s enlargement of the US presence, at odds with his public statements that he would do no such thing. Confirmation JFK lied when saying he was sending advisers while privately planning military action.

He also managed to have his children help with the photocopying which would become known as the Pentagon Papers.

There is a conversation which is jaw droppingly hideous and shows Nixon to be a sociopath – Nixon “I’d like to drop the nuclear bomb on Vietnam”, without missing a beat Kissinger replies “That ‘s not a very good idea”.

Later on, when the Vietnam war was established, Ellsberg met with journalists from the New York Times and, after they met with lawyers from the paper, they agreed to publish pages of the documents. This took a year. Naturally Nixon and the White House were incensed and issued a not to publish order. It went to court and eventually the court ruled in favour of publication. Ellsberg went to 17 other papers while the court action was going on.

Meanwhile Nixon’s department, headed by Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrists office and stole Ellesbergs file. This led to Watergate.

The whole world owes a large debt to Daniel Ellsberg
Jay Archer

Rating 9/ 10

Get Him to the Greek

Written and Directed by Nicholas Stoller

This is a fairly basic comedy. I haven’t seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall which teamed UK comic Russell Brandt and plumpish Jonah Hill. It coasts along and there are some amusing bits.

The premise here is the fight against the clock. Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) ,a record company minion in the making, has been given 72 hours to get Aldous Snow (Russell Brandt) from London to a concert at the famous Greek Theatrein LA. Nagging in the background is head honcho Sergio Roma (Sean P Diddy Combs).

There’s a lot of shenanigans along the way. Aldous is feeling dejected after pop princess Julie Q (Rose Byrne) left him.

They arrive at Vegas and Snow telephones Julie while lying in bed with Lars Ulrich from Metalica.

Some of the humour is forced, perhaps tighter writing may have produced laugh out loud comedy. Still, it’s OK. I have the feeling that Brandt is not acting entirely all the time. The surprise of the film is Sean Combs.
Jay Archer

Rating 7/ 10

Food Inc

Directed by Robert Kenner
94 mins
Screening only at the Chauvel Cinema

This documentary is a real eye opener on why you can’t trust large conglomerates to ever tell the truth and that deceptive marketing practices are rampant in the USA. It was mostly filmed with hidden cameras.

The stars of this documentary are the animals.

Firstly, in the 70’s there used to be thirteen thousand slaughterhouses in America, now there are 13 for the whole of the country.
The four large multinationals bullied and intimated the farmers to borrow at least ½ million dollars to stay in business and then they barely made more than 20 thousand dollars a year.

Early on we meet Carole Morrison who refuses to operate under these inhumane conditions. She looks after her chickens but she’s in a minority. In the majority of cases the chickens don’t see daylight and can hardly move.

Then we meet a family who are on holiday. Their 2½ year old son has three hamburgers during the holiday. On becoming ill, he is taken to hospital where his kidneys pack in and he dies from large doses of E.Coli in his body.

Then there’s a hamburger patty supplier who feels he is doing the right thing by washing the meat with ammonia. Because the poor cows, hundreds of them, are confined in a small space by wire fence, they are standing in their own faeces. Then it’s off to the slaughterhouse and the faeces gets over the meat thus contaminating it with large amounts of E.Coli.

Still in the meat world, the big four meat works go to Mexico to hire staff and bus them in. After about 18 months the Department of Immigration raids the works and arrests, charges and deports the Mexicans. Absolutely nothing is done to the meat works company bosses – zero.

Then there’s Monsanto who, through government legislation, own 95% of all soy beans. If the farmers don’t comply with Monsanto demands they are put out of business one way or another.

One older farmer has a seed cleaning machine and Monsanto absolutely forbids seed cleaning – this is the conglomerate that pushed genetically modified seeds across a lot of the world. There’s a large black list which Monsanto employs 75 stormtroopers to enforce. The older farmer stands up to the company but the billion dollar conglomerate puts him out of business.

If you’re planning to visit the USA, be very careful with their meat products. I’d be eating completely vegetarian.
Jay Archer

Rating 10/ 10

Animal Kingdom

Written and directed by David Michod

Animal Kingdom is a terrific crafted crime/drama film. The crime genre is not often explored in Australian cinema.

The movie begins with J (James Frecheville) at home with his mother, who dies of a heroin overdose. He then hops over to his aunties’ place – Smurf (Jackie Weaver). The blended mother/grandma rules the roost and keeps her four sons under control.
The first son to make an appearance is Baz (Joel Edgerton), next is highly unstable Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), then the shy and sensitive Darren (Luke Ford) and lastly, the terrifying Pope (Ben Mendelsohn). Into this crime family enters J who doesn’t have time to grieve for his mum.

All the sons have a long history of armed robbery anddealings with corrupt members of the Armed Robbery Squad. When Craig is killed by the police, the brothers want retribution and lay a trap for uniformed police officers. Into the story steps a straight Detective Leckie (Guy Pearce). The seventeen year old J now has to chose where he fits in.

This is a spellbinding portrayal of a sociopathic family with exceptional acting talent from the entire cast with standout acting from Jackie Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce and newcomer James Frecheville.

A brilliant debut and I look forward to David Michod’s next cinema offering.

Jay Archer

Rating 9/ 10

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