STACK #137 Mar 2016

CINEMA REVIEWS

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DEADPOOL

SON OF SAUL

RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Tim Miller CAST: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller RATING: MA15+

RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: László Nemes CAST: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn RATING: M

Deadpool isn’t your ordinary superhero (if there can be such a thing?). Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a terminal cancer patient who’s transformed into an indestructible mutant through torture and elevated stress. He’s also a comic book character who’s fully aware that he is a comic book character, and that’s where Deadpool has fun. This is meta-Marvel, playing on the same self-reflexive wavelength as The Last Action Hero and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare , while simultaneously existing as part of the X-Men universe. The character’s shtick involves a relentless barrage of smartarse dialogue, one-liners and dick jokes, and your enjoyment will depend on how much of this you can take for two hours. But also bear in mind that’s entirely the point: Deadpool never shuts up! Reynolds gives fans the ultimate ‘Merc with the Mouth’, and reminds us he’s still that funny guy from Van Wilder . With so much going on visually and verbally, the plot is kept simple: Deadpool must rescue his girl from the bad guy, with his origin story interwoven via flashbacks. This berserk action-comedy is the perfect antidote for superhero fatigue, gleefully and crassly subverting genre conventions while still remaining faithful to them. As a superhero satire, Deadpool doesn’t bite the hand that feeds it – it chews it off and grows a new one. Scott Hocking

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars (and certain to win), Hungarian Holocaust drama Saul Fia is the closest you'll get – and ever want to get – to the horrors inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau death factory. It's also the closest thing to a found-footage Holocaust film. Son of Saul isn't Schindler's List ; shot in a claustrophobic 1.37:1 screen ratio, the camera follows the protagonist throughout, with the atrocities that surround him kept in shallow focus on the periphery. With a soundscape to match the tight visuals, it's a sensory experience – an intimate, over-the-shoulder descent into hell. Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig) is a Hungarian-Jewish prisoner who's also a Sonderkommando, tasked with the removal of bodies and possessions from the gas chambers. When he happens upon the corpse of a young boy, Saul is given a purpose beyond his hellish duties; finding a rabbi who can preside over a proper burial for the child. Needless to say it's relentlessly grim and unforgettable, but Saul's resolve in his mission – conveyed through Röhrig's subtle performance and fixed expression – and the risks involved bring a humane perspective to an inhumane world that would be impossible to imagine, had it not actually existed. Highly recommended. Scott Hocking

CONCUSSION

HAIL, CAESAR!

CINEMA

RATING KEY: Wow! Good Not bad Meh Woof!

The NFL, as an organisation, must have an extraordinary degree of influence on the collective consciousness of the United States of America. In Peter Landesman’s Concussion , that powerful organisation is threatened by the findings of forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu (Will Smith); findings that indicate the strong threat of mental damage as a result of playing football. Omalu is tasked with performing an autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steelers centre Mike Webster (David Morse), who was found dead in his pickup truck after months of behaving erratically. Despite CAT scans indicating no signs of brain trauma, a deeper investigation uncovers significant damage to Webster’s cognitive function – a new condition that Omalu subsequently dubs ‘chronic traumatic encephalopathy’. This threat to the NFL’s convoluted infrastructure proves problematic for an industry that generates ten billion dollars every season. There’s also the issue that Omalu’s findings have the potential to cause the drastic re-evaluation of a national pastime. It’s not so easy to encourage a child to engage in a sport with a startling capacity to engender brain damage. The subject at hand in Concussion is compelling, and yet Landesman’s handle on it is not. Fascinating material is poorly served by the film’s eagerness for melodrama, and it’s likely that important information was diluted for the sake of sentimentality. John Roebuck RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Peter Landesman CAST: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Albert Brooks RATING: M

For all that’s going on in the Coen Brothers’ new film, there’s not all that much going on. Some of the best Coen Bros.’ films amount to nothing when it comes to narrative: Burn After Reading acknowledged the insignificance of its own plot, and The Big Lebowski found a great deal of inspiration in the Howard Hawks film The Big Sleep . But those films were so superficially entertaining, the fact that they were more about the sum of the parts than the whole never really seemed to matter so much. Hail, Caesar 's narrative is a series of vignettes, all relating to the industry of Hollywood during the 1950s and barely connected by the involvement of studio executive Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). But for all the glamour of Hollywood and all the talent of the Coen Bros., it's a stale and empty experience. There appears to be something on Joel and Ethan's mind regarding the shaky union between art and commerce in Hollywood. If there’s a joke, they’re not letting anyone in on it. If there’s a message, it gets buried beneath the layers of ostensibly meaningless sketch. There are a handful of nearly accurate recreations of vintage cinema in Hail, Caesar! that will appeal to film buffs, but not a great deal in between. John Roebuck RELEASED: Now Showing DIRECTOR: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen CAST: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich RATING: PG

MARCH 2016

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