Review: Michael Jackson’s This is It, My Year Without Sex, The Limits of Control and Black Ice

Full dis­clos­ure: I wrote a play about Michael Jack­son once (“Dirty Doris”, BATS 1995) so I’ll con­fess to always being inter­ested in the real char­ac­ter behind the tabloid and music video façade so the arrival of This is It (what some have described as a cheap cash-in flick) is of more than passing interest to me.

And of all the pos­sible adject­ives avail­able to describe the film “cheap” would seem to be the least appro­pri­ate. This behind-the-scenes doc­u­ment­ary, made up of foot­age inten­ded for “Mak­ing of” extras on an even­tual DVD plus han­dicam foot­age for Jackson’s own per­sonal archive, shows a ded­ic­ated bunch of ser­i­ously tal­en­ted people pre­par­ing a huge stage show for an audi­ence of demand­ing fans. How­ever, no one involved is more demand­ing than the star of the show MJ himself.

In the film we see Jack­son and his crack team rehears­ing the massive series of 50 Lon­don shows that were sup­posedly to mark his retire­ment from live per­form­ance. Push­ing 50, with a body battered from years of ill­ness and tour­ing, suf­fer­ing from anxiety-induced insom­nia, Jack­son knew that audi­ences only wanted the moon­walk­ing King of Pop per­sona, an act that he wouldn’t be able to main­tain much longer. So, he wanted to go out with a bang, with some­thing mem­or­able, and he was evid­ently very ser­i­ous about put­ting on a truly amaz­ing show.

It wasn’t to be, of course. His­tory shows that. But let his­tory also include This is It as a test­a­ment to what should endure about the man (a real man whose life was more com­plic­ated and dif­fi­cult than most of us can ima­gine) and his desire to enter­tain. It’s a remark­able, heart­break­ing, doc­u­ment and full credit must go to director/choreographer Kenny Ortega (pre­vi­ously known to me only as the auteur of the High School Musical series) who has seam­lessly pieced together an enter­tain­ing and mov­ing test­a­ment to the finest enter­tainer of our age.

So far, nearly 20 of this year’s Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­ival titles have returned on gen­eral release (which seems to me like an accel­er­ated pace on pre­vi­ous years). This week is no excep­tion with another two hit­ting local screens barely three months after the Fest­ival fin­ished. My Year Without Sex is a dear little Aus­tralian film made by the keenly obser­v­ant Sarah Watt who made the quirky Look Both Ways in 2005. A middle-class Mel­bourne fam­ily is rocked when Mum, Nat­alie (Sacha Horler), col­lapses with an aneurysm and the film is about the way this par­tic­u­lar fam­ily copes (or fails to cope) with the near-miss.

Screen­writ­ing gurus will always tell you to get into a scene as late as you can and leave it as early as pos­sible and Watt’s style has this qual­ity with lost of short scenes adding up to a power­ful punch. In fact, it’s her abil­ity to build ten­sion this way that is one of her greatest strengths (as well her obvi­ous affec­tion for her characters).

Jim Jar­musch’s The Lim­its of Con­trol is the kind of art­house film that gives art­house films a bad name. Slow and delib­er­ate, and all the while going nowhere and tak­ing itself incred­ibly ser­i­ously while not get­ting there, I found it a pain­ful exer­cise until Jarmusch’s anaes­thetic dir­ec­tion finally knocked me out.

An unnamed African hit­man (Isaach De Bankolé) arrives in Mad­rid to do a job that requires a chain of instruc­tions from some ridicu­lous and mys­ter­i­ous char­ac­ters includ­ing John Hurt, Tilda Swin­ton and Gael Gar­cía Bernal. Jar­musch recycles some of the suc­cess­ful ele­ments of pre­vi­ous films (includ­ing a sub–Neil Young soundtrack and the self-possesed black hit­man from Ghost Dog) to no great effect. Bor­ing nonsense.

Not bor­ing but also not ter­ribly effect­ive is Black Ice, an art film that didn’t play in the Fest­ival. It’s a Finnish psy­cho­lo­gical thriller about a cuck­olded woman who becomes obsessed with her husband’s younger girl­friend to the extent that she takes on a new per­sona in order to get close to her. Full of unex­plained (yet help­ful) coin­cid­ences, Black Ice is clev­erly plot­ted but impossible to take seriously.

Prin­ted in Wellington’s Cap­ital Times on Wed­nes­day 4 Novem­ber, 2009.

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: This is It looked and soun­ded superb at the Empire in Island Bay (although I do regret not see­ing and hear­ing it at the Embassy); My Year Without Sex was in the Vogue Lounge at the Pent­house where they seem to open all their mar­ginal films these days; The Lim­its of Con­trol was in the big room at the Para­mount with all of the incon­sist­en­cies that implies and Black Ice was an aver­age (i.e. not very good) digital present­a­tion in the Berg­man room at the Paramount.

Tagged as: bats, black ice, capital times, embassy, empire cinema, gael garcia bernal, ghost dog, high school musical 3: senior year, isaach de bankolé, jim jarmusch, john hurt, kenny ortega, michael jackson, my year without sex, neil young, paramount, penthouse, sacha horler, sarah watt, the limits of control, this is it, tilda swinton, wellington film festival