Friday reviews for 4 August 2023

Talk to Me, Meg 2: The Trench, Chevalier and The Miracle Club are all in theatres and The Beanie Bubble is streaming on AppleTV+

A com­bin­a­tion of the film fest­iv­al and Fifa foot­ball meant I couldn’t find a screen­ing of Talk to Me in time for last week’s Friday news­let­ter. The latest in a strong run of hot Aussie hor­ror pic­tures, this is a film that is likely to launch big careers for co-directors (and twins) Danny and Michael Philippou.

A group of Adelaide teens have come into pos­ses­sion of a por­cel­ain hand and dis­covered that by hold­ing that hand you can open a chan­nel to tor­men­ted souls trapped in pain­ful limbo. Heaps of fun! The catch is that if you hold the hand longer than 90 seconds, the per­son you are com­mun­ing with won’t go back from whence they came, lead­ing to all sorts of very bad things.

The co-directors have gen­er­ated lar­rikin film­mak­ing per­so­nas from their days mak­ing wild YouTube videos under the RackaRacka shingle but Talk to Me shows that there is some ser­i­ous intent under­neath all the glee­ful jump scares. In fact, I was prob­ably more dis­turbed by the themes of bul­ly­ing, grief and men­tal dis­tress than I was by the effect­ive and plen­ti­ful gore. I know these sorts of films are sup­posed to be enter­tain­ing but this was not an enjoy­able exper­i­ence for me, espe­cially as I have been think­ing about it a lot over the last few days.

There’s no ser­i­ous sub­text going on with Meg 2: The Trench, sequel to the 2018 hit which was shot in Auckland. The British stu­dio Leavesden is the bene­fi­ciary of all the Chinese pro­duc­tion money this time around and a British dir­ect­or – some­time indie darling Ben Wheatley – is at the helm.

Jason Statham returns as eco-warrior Jonas Taylor – “the green James Bond” as he is described early on – and this time around there are plenty of giant pre­his­tor­ic proto-sharks to con­tend with, but there are also rapa­cious cor­por­ates secretly min­ing the sea floor and stir­ring up trouble while they are at it.

You have to admire a film that just keeps on adding more and I want to make spe­cial men­tion of the pro­duc­tion design by Chris Lowe – all the tech­ie stuff like the con­trol room, the subs and the diving gear look really cool.

Statham plays very much on one gruff note, unfor­tu­nately, so it’s left to a relaxed Cliff Curtis to add some warmth to the ensemble.

A film as cyn­ic­al as this has no right to be so much fun.

Chevalier opens with an on-stage viol­in battle between our hero, Joseph Bologne, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which ends in humi­li­ation for the lat­ter. Thus, the film lays out its thes­is – that Bologne’s achieve­ments as musi­cian and com­poser were sup­pressed because of his eth­ni­city and that his repu­ta­tion should be restored so he can right­fully take his place among the greats.

By most accounts, Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) was prodi­giously tal­en­ted at many things (includ­ing fen­cing which was how he won the title of Chevalier) but the film also embel­lishes the story a bit for dra­mat­ic pur­poses. The son of a French plant­a­tion own­er and one of his enslaved work­ers, Bologne was a favour­ite of Marie Antoinette but the chan­ging polit­ic­al cur­rents (and his own extremely high opin­ion of him­self) put his career – and indeed his life – at risk.

The pro­duc­tion is hand­some – Prague once again stand­ing in for pre-revolutionary Paris – but nev­er quite lifts off des­pite, or per­haps because of, its pas­sion to cor­rect a his­tor­ic wrong.

Almost totally unmem­or­able, The Miracle Club fol­lows a group of Dublin women in 1967 on a pil­grim­age to the holy shrine at Lourdes. Three of the women, Eileen (Kathy Bates), Lily (Maggie Smith) and young Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) have won their trip in a tal­ent con­test. To everyone’s great sur­prise they are joined at the last minute by Chrissie (Laura Linney) who is back in town after many years away.

The incid­ent that saw Chrissie ban­ished still eats away at all of them and per­haps this is the jour­ney that will see those wounds finally healed.

All the real drama happened dec­ades before the film com­mences but there’s a modic­um of ten­sion to be mined from the res­ol­u­tion – and some gentle com­edy as the men who are left behind fend for themselves.

Maggie Smith per­fec­ted this iras­cible per­form­ance years ago but who am I to com­plain at how well she does it. In fact, every­one is fine. I do wish that Edmund Butt’s score wasn’t so insist­ent about telling every­one what they should be feeling.

As ami­able an even­ing in front of the telly as you are likely to find, The Beanie Bubble is a new entry in the recent fad for 80s and 90s cor­por­ate nos­tal­gia that gave us Air and Tetris earli­er this year.

Beanie Babies must have been in so much demand in the Northern Hemisphere that I don’t recall ever see­ing them here. In fact, when I heard the premise of this film I imme­di­ately con­fused them with Cabbage Patch Kids which were a dif­fer­ent kind of stuffed col­lect­ible nightmare.

The film is the story of the inven­tion, mar­ket­ing, boom and then implo­sion of the toy phe­nomen­on whose met­eor­ic rise was enabled by this new thing called the Internet. (“It’s so fast!” says Zach Galifianakis as plush­ie entre­pren­eur Ty Warner watch­ing a dial-up demo of a new site called eBay.)

Bouncing around dif­fer­ent time peri­ods, there is much fun to be had at the expense of the fash­ion and the cul­ture as well as the cor­por­ate excess that often fol­lows when the mar­ket­ing of cheap Chinese-made plastic tat makes you a billionaire.

Special men­tion must go to Galifianakis who man­ages to wring some sym­pathy out of the buf­foon­ish Warner, a kind of stuffed toy sav­ant obli­vi­ous to the vital con­tri­bu­tions being made by the women in his life (played by Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook and Geraldine Viswanathan).

Apologies for any con­fu­sion caused by yesterday’s news­let­ter entitled “Something to watch tonight: Friday 3 August”. It was, of course, only Thursday but I clearly had Friday on my mind.