It's unfair to compare These Final Hours to The Rover, but it's hard not to. Two Australian films trying to portray a realistic approach to the apocalypse are inevitably going to be put side by side. It's a shame too, because these are two completely different flicks. The Rover theorised that in the face of the end of the world, people would cling to the mundanities of modern life, determined to deny the prevalent truth that they're nothing more than a genetic outcome. These Final Hours ruminates on what might happen should we all be told we have twelve hours to live. It cleverly avoids spending time discussing how or why the apocalypse looms (the opening montage is basically, "It's...uh...meteors...or, um, the...sun's crashing into the Earth...whatever"). Where The Rover put forth the notion that surviving Doomsday would leave humans even more sure that they're special, These Final Hours says that knowing everyone will be dead in less than a day would erase that certainty entirely. For 87 minutes, it takes you on a frenetic tour through humanity's absolute worst, best and, well, human traits. It works so well on paper. And regrettably, it falls over a lot in execution.
It's biggest crime is thinking so small. It opens very strong, with James (Nathan Phillips) getting ready to leave Zoe's (Jessica De Gouw) beach house for a massive party that his girlfriend waits for him at. The knowledge that he'll be dead in twelve hours is more than he can mentally process, and his gut response is to fill his body with as many substances possible to numb the searing pain he and everyone else will soon experience. Zoe tells him she's pregnant. "What the fuck does it matter?" he responds, as he paces the room and can't quite work out what to do with his hands. He leaves her, for his own selfish gains. And while this is a disgustingly selfish act, it's understandable. It's realistic. And then his first encounter with another human out on the road is a machete-wielding maniac who's put foil all over his house to stop the heat, forces James to stop the car so he can cleave a bystander to death and chases him through the neighbourhood to a bad heavy-metal score. It seems the only things that writer/director Zak Hilditch could think of humanity doing when it received a collective death clock was murderous insanity, paedophelia, group suicides and mass indulgence of hedonism.
At least, that was my first thought as the credits rolled. But then I realised how overly harsh a criticism that was. This movie has a lot of problems. Its portrayal of humanity's uglier side is often comically over the top and out to shock rather than provoke. The dialogue is laughably awful at times (someone literally says, "Life is stronger than death."). It regularly doesn't realise the audience is already two steps ahead of it. But it's also full of little moments that truly capture something real, something that cuts to the core of what makes us collectively human, on the light and the dark sides. A man attacks James with clear and total intent to kill, until James gets the upper hand. With death so close, he changes his tune in a flash and offers him a cut of the small girl he's locked in the room next door. Later, James is in his sister's house with the aforementioned and now rescued small girl, Rose (Angourie Rice). Searching for his absent sibling, he realises he's about to see something heartbreaking and tells Rose to swim in the pool. She doesn't have her bathers, and he tells her to go in her dress. Her face lights up with joy and she dashes off. Small, beautiful moments. James and Rose enter a library, and come across a cop and his wife who are planning to execute their children to save them the pain of burning alive. The cop begs James to shoot them for him. James refuses. The cop, desperate for any reprieve from the life-shattering act he is about to commit, asks then for forgiveness. As if James is God. "...You're forgiven," James says, and walks away with Rose. There's no excusing what is about to happen in this room, but with the mortality of every single human never being more apparent, what is two words if it provides comfort?
My favourite scene in These Final Hours is a conversation between James and his mother (Lynette Curran). She asks if James has seen his sister. James can't bring himself to tell his mum of the horrors he saw in that house. She assumes that because she wouldn't answer the door the day previous that she has some sort of beef with a grandmother seeing her grandkids. James, knowing that his mum's final thoughts can't be negative, tells her he did head to her house after all. And at the last second, he lies and says they'd left. Because even in the face of our deaths, we cannot truly sacrifice our compassion. James asks his mum what she intends to do with her final hours. With a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, standing in the backyard in a sundress, she casually replies, "I've still got a few puzzles laying around." It's the little moments that make These Final Hours. It has all the subtlety of a brick to the face at the worst of times, which is unfortunate. It doesn't match the quality of The Rover or The Babadook (another fantastic 2014 Australian movie). But in the end, it's an Australian film that doesn't suck. It exists in an industry that just lost its main source of funding to a government that seems to be punishing us for voting them in, and its in dire need of your money. For this flick, they deserve it. Skip Transformers: Age of a Lot of Loud Noise and Confusion and catch These Final Hours instead.
22 Jump Street
This may come as a surprise, but I'm not the biggest fan of Hollywood. A business that has well and truly become the old ominous joke of being a factory that churns out nothing but sequels and remakes, I can't help but feel a bit tired of it. Look no further than this week's reviews: only one of them is a completely original film, it was made in Australia and isn't considered one of this year's blockbusters like the other four. But I can't talk much: I'm as much a part of the problem as anybody else. Hollywood continues to vomit out reboots because we continue to flock to them; partly due to nostalgia, partly due to curiosity, mostly due to safety. We know what we're going to get, because we already got it twenty years ago, or in another language. 21 Jump Street established its premise with a scene that subtly poked fun at this compulsion, itself being a reboot of an old TV show from the 80s. It was a film that acknowledged that Hollywood is essentially just rebooting everything now in the hope that it brings in the people who vaguely remember the old product, and that everyone else doesn't smell the bullshit, while also fully adopting the model for itself. It worked though, based on the fact that it was really funny, held up in large part by the incredible chemistry between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.
So in the same way that 21 Jump Street was a movie about reboots, 22 Jump Street is a movie about sequels, and in fully embracing Hollywood's tendency to take any ingredient that worked in a first installment and recycle it into excess until that strength becomes a weakness, 22 Jump Street is proudly a shitty sequel. Where the "original" (because it isn't, really) was subtle and unassuming with its meta jokes, the sequel beats you over the head mercilessly with it's knowing nods until it ceases to be funny. The police chief advises that the Jump Street program has been relaunched because of its surprise success and has been injected with way more money in the hope that that alone will result in a superior operation. Any attempts to conduct an investigation that deviates from the plot of the first film (read: previous case) is swiftly met with a directive to, "Just do the same fucking thing and everyone's happy." These jokes are repeated until they're well into tedium. But that's probably the point. Halfway through the film, the two detectives' supervisor informs them that they spent too much money in the first half of the investigation and have to resort to cheaper measures for the second half. This is soon followed by a car chase in which Channing and Jonah attempt to avoid expensive-looking obstacles so as to save money only to have the villains crash right on through.
The end result is a movie that's a little too smart for its own good. The jokes are clever, but they're ultimately also alienating, and all of it is intentional. By so steadfastly adopting the tropes of a Hollywood sequel, they happily become an inferior installment. Is it worth watching? Of course. The comic timing of J & C is arguably even more on point this time around, and there's some genuinely sharp satire at play. It's nice to see something that's been generated for mass appeal poke a bit of fun at its intentions, but in the end, it continues to play right into them. Because you and I are getting exactly what we want. We can complain forever that it's all a bit familiar, but until we stop buying tickets, they're going to keep feeding it to us.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Like its predecessor, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes shouldn't work, at least from a commercial standpoint. We're being told a story we already know the end to, and the story itself is horrific and depressing. Its main theme is one of animal cruelty as well, something most people find universally repellent. This isn't to say that a movie like this couldn't work, or be good, but the idea that it would be a financial success is one I struggle with. The fact that it does, has and will is an even bigger mystery. Dawn of the Rise of the Beginning of the Age of the Planet of the Apes 2: The End...? opens with a haunting piano piece that accompanies the end of the world, as we watch the virus introduced in the previous film, visually represented by a glowing red rash, spread across the globe until there's nothing left. It closes with Caesar acknowledging the conflict with humans - past, present and future - was as much his fault as theirs, but that it cannot end until one side is completely wiped out. The film is deathly quiet the whole way through: everything from the ape's day to day life to a climactic shootout is treated with a quiet grace. In this universe, the world truly has ended with a whimper. There are many extended sequences in which dialogue is eschewed in favour of sign language, subtitles and facial expressions between the primates. It's basically a foreign film. There aren't even any villains: the two that you could identify as antagonists have motivations that are entirely understandable, especially when their end goal is just the protection and survival of their species. Caesar himself becomes a bad guy of sorts by film's end. It's such a strange list of ingredients for a mass-appeal Hollywood blockbuster. How the fuck does this work?
There's two answers to this, I believe. The first is that almost the entire film's construction is designed to be the aforementioned mass-appeal Hollywood blockbuster. The environments are clearly and obviously film sets, but not in a bad way. There's a level of detail here that signifies love of the craft, and of its history. CGI is only used when it has to be - for backgrounds or, obviously, for the apes. But even then, most of it is the pinnacle of motion capture, a practice that is rooted in practicality. The story too, adheres to an old and classic formula, playing on familiar tropes and twists to keep you feeling comfortable. There are many scenes that, when interpreted literally, add to the overwhelming sense of despair inherent to this tale. But they are presented in a context that lightens the load, or allows audience members who are less willing to get involved emotionally to still enjoy the product. There's a scene where one of the apes is investigating an armory when a human sneaks up on him. The ape begins to play, laughing and blowing raspberries and doing flips, and the music adapts to his unexpected behaviour, and the audience is permitted to laugh. But the reality of the situation is that he's acting goofy to not get shot in the head. Later in the film, this same ape jumps through a fire, on the back of a horse, wielding a machine gun. You can think it's totally fucking awesome if you want. You can feel utterly disturbed at what not just human nature, but the nature of life has wrought. The choice is yours.
The second answer is Pixar. There's a hypothesis called the "uncanny valley", which theorises that when something is almost, but not entirely, human, it causes those that view it to experience an intense uneasiness. Pixar, though regularly animating humans, have never had this problem. Robert Zemeckis, director of The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, has. The difference between them is that Zemeckis strives to make realism. Pixar strive to make stylised realism. A good example to try is to watch The Polar Express and note how dead Tom Hanks' eyes look, and then follow that up with Carl in Up. Carl's eyes aren't in any way a realistic comparison to a human's, but every emotion is still relatable. It's just exaggerated. Whether or not they intended to, a scene in DOTPOTA (ugh) reinforces this. The man with the gun thinks the ape is amazing when he's pretending to be an exaggerated cool dude who wants to drink alcohol. But when he exploits this weakness, steals a gun and points the barrel at the man, an act far more human in theory and execution, it's scary. It's wrong. Because we only want to see the animals behave how we perceive ourselves to be, not how we really are. Conversely, we have a limited understanding of how animals move and behave, allowing Andy Serkis and Weta Digital to animate the apes in the way we want them to move, not how they necessarily would, and in doing so, are able to tell a story in which the apes seem far more human than the humans themselves. The film finishes with an extreme close up of Caesar's eyes. As I mentioned, the uncanny valley occurs first and foremost at the eyes. Weta are making a very cocky statement. Without dialogue, we rely almost exclusively on Caesar's eyes and facial expressions to emotionally connect with the film. And, damn them, we finally do. Damn them all to Hell. Heh heh.
How to Train Your Dragon 2
How to Train Your Dragon really surprised me. I was never the biggest fan of Dreamworks, bar the first Shrek. I didn't see them as much more than a company trying to be a louder and edgier Pixar, something Pixar already had them beat on. How to Train Your Dragon was a different beast entirely. The idea of humans taming dragons in someone else's hands could have easily resulted in a balls-to-the-wall action flick with the humans riding on the backs of dragons to fight something bigger and badder. Dreamworks on the other hand, recognised the inherent grace of these creatures and the landscape their legends were born from, and that in taming such a monster, a genuinely affectionate relationship between the two could be born. The result was a movie that was as much about dragons as it was about beauty. Sure, there was a central villain to worry about, but it was largely overshadowed by more prevalent and relevant themes of humanity being blindly scared of that which seems scary. So does How to Train Your Dragon 2 match or exceed the standard set by its predecessor and avoid all of the pitfalls common with sequels? Nah.
Well, kind of. A huge chunk of the movie is as good, if not better, at igniting a sense of awe and majesty as you watch people and their dragons duck and weave through the icy mountain landscapes. The film sets up a potential plot that could allow it to be not much more than that, too. The kid with the dragon (fuck it, I'm not about to start remembering names) is sad because he doesn't have a mum, her having disappeared when he was young. Through the magic of the movies, he finds her. Or she finds him, rather. Seeming at first to be some sort of spiritual shaman in mental tune with dragons, she eventually removes her mask to reveal her true identity, and that she's been living in a private oasis underneath the ice for the last 20 years housing and providing a safe haven for any and every dragon she can find up above. She can't even begin to believe that humans and dragons get along now: the main reason she happily disappeared from the world was an inability to fathom the world's fear and hatred of creatures she saw to be so gentle at their core. Eventually, Dad shows up to rescue his son from what he believes to be certain danger, axe in hand and all bravado. His wife sees him in all of his fury and verbally assumes that nothing has changed. His jaw drops along with his axe and he approaches her slowly, as she wishes that he would say something. He says she's as beautiful as the last day he saw her. This shit is fucking emotional, folks. Pa asks Ma to come with them back to the village. At this point, I saw the central conflict of the film easily becoming a mother torn between choosing the life she once led to the one she developed in retaliation, with the opportunity for a family to become whole again hanging in the balance. But when Dad asks her to come home, guess what she says? "Yeah, okay."
Putting aside how insulting that is to her character (but holy shit, is that insulting to her character), the reason for this seems to be that Dreamworks didn't feel a movie without a literal conflict was acceptable. Fair enough, if you can come up with a central antagonist that's interesting. So, given the fact that humans and dragons are best buds now, that kind of negates the possibility for a villain there. So...if humans now tame and earn their dragons, the antagonist can just be someone who wants to enslave them, right? Yeah, whatever. He's ridiculously underdeveloped, hidden beneath a super dark and gritty veneer to try and keep you none the wiser. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if it wasn't cutting into and influencing the far more beautiful story already being told. There are game-changing events in this film that, beyond being totally unnecessary, ring truly hollow because of the context they appear in. You can say that the kids wouldn't be interested in the flick if it weren't for the action. I like to think we don't give them enough credit. The How to Train Your Dragon series is rare in that it sees a beauty in something most wouldn't. It's a pity Dreamworks didn't realise just how important that was.
The Rover
The Rover's most impressive quality is its realisation that the apocalypse would probably be just as tedious and boring as what came before it. It also recognises that, chances are, people won't change their tune or realise that simply surviving is the only thing that makes us human. They'll still desire money, even though it's worthless. They'll still desire sex, keeping the world's oldest profession alive and kicking. They'll still cling furiously to the notion that, even in the face of the end of the world, they have a purpose and they're special. When they're not. They're all, collectively, just the ones clever, cowardly or lucky enough to have not bit the bullet yet. Eric (Guy Pearce) understands this. In a rare moment of monologuing, he tells Rey (Robert Pattinson) that his continued faith in God is going to get him killed. That faith, family and more importantly, loyalty, are dead. And the only way to survive is to not get killed.
It's understandable that Eric feels this way. Though never explicitly stated, it seems that rather than the large-scale, global apocalypse we're used to, the world is ending in a much smaller, more realistic way. It's strongly hinted that Australia was the first to go, bought by China to turn the country into one giant strip mine. That's right, Australia's been privatised. Anyone left is either working for the mine, working for a foreign military, or waiting out their death in a country that doesn't exist anymore. Australian currency is refused, only American. The radio only picks up airwaves of energetic Asian DJ's playing outdated American pop hits. There's no police to speak of; the only enforcers that are around aren't there to uphold the law, but to clean up the stragglers. This absence of order is what gives Rey's posse the courage to steal Eric's car following a shootout gone bad, not knowing the lengths he was willing to go to to get it back.
"What a thing to get worked up about in this day and age," a brothel owner says when Eric holds a gun to her head and demands the location of his car. The mystery of the film is what's in the car that's left him so intent on retrieving it. To me, the more prevalent question is whether or not it even matters. Through his actions in the film, we come to learn that Eric is a man betrayed by loyalty. He speaks of his wife's infidelity, and everyone he comes into contact with says they're trustworthy while they're drawing a knife behind their back. At the core of it, even his country has let him down, turning on him in the face of industrial development. It makes sense that he keeps Rey around, in spite of his mental handicap and the fact that he doesn't really need him as a bargaining chip like he claims. Eric is a cold, ruthless companion, but he protects Rey. And when the tables are turned, and it's Eric in need of rescuing, Rey doesn't hesitate to risk his life to save him. He's loyal. When the most emotion wrought from Eric happens when he's looking at a bunch of cages full of dogs kept there to keep the people outside from eating them, the mystery of the film was pretty much solved for me. That didn't make its final shot any less haunting. Go see it.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
It fucking sucked.
