No.332 : Winter of Our Dreams (1981)

 

Winter of Our Dreams at the IMDb

In the pretentious title stakes this one fall short of current incumbent Winter of Frozen Dreams but given it is all set in Sydney, Australia they couldn’t go with the ’frozen’ bit I assume. Bryan Brown stars as a renaissance man who runs a book shop and plays chess against his computer. He does of course drink beer and womanise so as not to turn off the bloke demographic. I doubt this would have been an easy sell to the average Ozzer so plenty of topless ladies are thrown into the mix, including some random topless sunbathers lying on a bit of grass.

Bryan is busy playing chess and selling books when he hears about a dead woman, who had been pulled from the harbour a week ago, being identified as a women he knew ten years ago. He used to be a political agitator but has now married and settled down with Gretel. The two have an open marriage which sees Gretel spend time with her young and hunky boyfriend. Not to be outdone Bryan wanders about with his shirt off most of the film but he doesn’t see much action between the sheets.

Anyway he goes to the girl’s funeral and later meets up with fellow attendee, prostitute Lou (Judy Davis). Bryan’s dead girlfriend had been on the game after they broke up and he is keen to learn about her decline and his involvement in her eventual demise. There is no murder angle as it is established early on it was suicide, but Bryan has to dig about his past to try and get some answers.

Some of these come from Lou who has the dead girl’s diaries, and unfortunately, her guitar. The focus alternates between the two leads with scenes of Bryan’s relationship interplayed with Judy struggling to get drugs and to understand her own life and prospects. She reads through the dead girl’s diaries and plays her maudlin music on some tapes.

Lou and Bryan spend a long weekend together where she gets off the junk and he rebukes her advances. Can these troubled souls find the answers they need to move on with their lives?

This was a decent slice of life but I didn’t learn anything or become invested in the characters. Judy Davis, who we know from Lewis Collins starrer Who Dares Wins, was good as Lou but I couldn’t get used to her tight ginger perm. She was pretty skuzzy as the drug addled whore, although I struggled to have sympathy for her character. Bryan did his usual serviceable performance but I got no emotional resonance from him and he seemed to be the same character he usually plays, chugging beer and being blokey.

It was fun to see Baz Luhrmann as Judy’s occasional flat mate who couldn’t get it on with the lady of the night. As an actor he makes a great director.

All in all this was an essay in damaged people trying to move on and therefore hardly what you’d consider to be classed as entertainment. There were decent performances, and sunny Australia looked nice, but overall you won’t learn much or invest in the largely one note characters.

Best Bit : Lou tries to pay her rent   13/23

No.305 : Wyrmwood : Road of the Dead (2014)

Wyrmwood : Road of the Dead at the IMDb

‘Wormwood’ comes from the book of revelations in The Bible and is a star or an angel. I don’t know why they have the spelling ‘Wyrmwood’ here or even what it has to do with anything. I guess it’s just an ‘end of days’ type of thing.

This is an Australian effort that tries to add a few new twists to the zombie movie - ridiculous twists that don’t make a lick of sense, but twists all the same.

The film opens with three men in leftover costumes from Mad Max 2 running from a garage and taking on a horde of zombies. They attach chains to a truck and wheel it back indoors as they dispatch a lot of zombies in a fashion that says ‘we’ve paid for this head exploding software and we’re going to use it’!

We don’t really know what’s going on but don’t worry - it’s one of those films that start in the middle and then go back to the start. The three men, now without their helmets, discuss how they got to be where they are. The first chap who is an Aborigine, tells of seeing loads of shooting stars before his brother turned flesh eater. He shoots his legs off but he keeps on coming so he finishes him off.

Another chaps says he doesn’t have a story as he had just killed his wife and child with a nail gun. We then get a long flashback with him trying to escape the madness with his wife and child before he, you’ve guessed, kills them with a nail gun.

The guys go full ‘Scrapheap Challenge’ on the truck and soon it’s a vehicular death mobile, complete with a harpoon gun that was just lying around.

Elsewhere three ladies are having a photo shoot which involves one wearing skeleton makeup - how prophetic of them! Two go full zombie and the other has to take refuge before being rescued by the military. It’s not much of a rescue however, as they turn her over to a bad actor mad scientist who injects her with zombie blood. The science, as it is, has determined that only people with O negative blood are immune to the zombie virus. It’s not made overly clear but I think the injections are to see where the tipping point is. I could tell them that - 3pm on ITV, weekdays.

Our original heroes set off to save the girl, who is one of their sisters. What follows are endless zombie kills and the deaths of most of our heroes. Who will survive and will the zombie plague be halted?

This was an alright film which has little to set it apart from its many contemporaries. As often happens a few unique properties to the plague are added to differentiate the film from the rest. Here it is that the zombie blood is flammable, so much so that you can use it to power your car, which is handy given that petrol is now inert. There was no science behind this and I’m glad they didn’t try. It did allow for a couple of gory deaths including one chap who was left with a delicious looking tandoori face.

I wasn’t invested in any of the characters and the non-linear narrative jumped around so much that I stopped bothering to keep up. The zombies were the white faced with bloody clothes type and, to be fair, the make up was good as were the many splattery kills. The tone seemed to shift regularly with pain and anguish followed by slapstick and comedy. At one point a bitten chap asks for the medical box and opens it to reveal two bottles of beer. Oh those Aussies!

There wasn’t much of a story to speak of and the majority of the film was spent putting our characters in place and then bringing them together. The end revelations were extra daft and no attempt was made to explain the crisis or solutions offered to halt it. I guess if you sign up for all of the standard zombie tropes and some above average kills you won’t go away disappointed.

Best Bit : Family Day Out  ‘W’ Rating : 14/23

No.274 : Winchester (2018)

Winchester at the IMDb

Helen Mirren is always good value for fully immersing herself in a part and for doing what is necessary to show that she is free spirited and invested in the role. She doesn’t often let the lads go home empty handed, so to speak, This isn’t one of those films however, and I doubt she has ever been more buttoned up in her illustrious career.

She plays the title character, Sarah Winchester, who wears mourning clothes throughout this film which is set at the beginning of the 20th century. I was familiar with the premise of the story from my ‘Big Book of Weirdos’, but it’s fair to say that the writer of this effort took a few liberties with the plot and characters, hence the ‘Inspired by actual events’ title card.

The film is Australian but set in San Jose, California. I thought it was all sets and models but I see from the IMDb page that some scenes were filmed in the actual Winchester house which is now a tourist attraction. Most of the cast are Aussies however and the locations look a lot more Oz than L.A.

The real Sarah Winchester inherited the Winchester firearms fortune on the death of her husband. Her child died soon after and, feeling cursed, she set about trying to appease the spirits of those killed by her company’s products, whom she blames for her misfortunes. Rather than get in a good exorcist she chose to expand her home to allow the ghosts somewhere to stay. To keep them happy the building work continues around the clock and did so for more than 30 years before her death.

I can accept that this in itself may not be that an exciting film so the writer has chosen to imagine a lot of stuff including zombies and possession.

The story unfolds through the eyes of  Dr Eric Price, a boozed up psychiatrist who has grief issues of his own. The board at the Winchester Company are worried about the mad widow spending all their cash and hire Eric to check her out and to see if they can get her ruled incompetent. Owing to large debts Price agrees but we get the sense that despite the boozing he has retained his integrity and he won’t just rubber stamp her ticket to the Nut House, as the board require.

Price is at first sceptical, but over the course of a few days he sees things that start to challenge his pre-conceived notions. Is the house truly haunted or is he suffering the effects of coming off the booze and drugs? Sarah starts off a bit standoffish with him but after a few experiences involving her possessed nephew, some common ground is found.

Can the possessed boy Henry be saved? - get rid of those milky contact lenses for a start! - and will Sarah be removed from her sprawling home and the company’s board? Will Eric find his own redemption or is he destined to haunt some old house himself?

I quite liked this film but it was, like the house, a bit of a mess with too much stuff tacked on and other bits going nowhere. It was good that they used the original house and the bits they recreated were well realised with stairs going nowhere and doors opening onto sheer drops. The sense that work was always ongoing was well done, although there was a lot of pointless hammering and painting onto bits that had already been completed - that’s tradesmen for you I guess!

Jason Clarke as Eric was good - you’ll recognise him as John Connor from ‘Terminator : Genysis’ - or maybe not; I can’t remember it either! His dishevelled haunted drunk act was decent but he was undone by lots of cheap scares as a zombie faces poked out every time he looked through a window or keyhole. Mirren looked like she was going thorough the motions, dealing with a script that was mostly complete bollocks. They left any pretence of dealing with a woman with mental health issues to having it a full on haunted house with bogey men in every room.

I guess they’d call it a re-imagining of the story but it’s a disservice to a troubled widow to have the cast of ‘The Walking Dead’ wandering through the house at all hours. There is an element of ‘is she mad?’ Is Eric mad? Is everyone mental, especially those who stick it out to the end?

Given a true life story was used here it seemed a bit off to have such extreme elements added - why not just do an original story without making a real one seem ridiculous? It was passable entertainment with nice sets and decent straight faced performances, but overall you came out knowing less about the story, with the facts lost amid a lot of supernatural gubbins and jump scares.

Best Bit : Room full of loaded rifles? Bound to end well.
W Rating 13/23

No.231 : Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)

Where the Green Ants Dream at the IMDb

 This was German director Werner Herzog’s first film in English although the copy I saw was dubbed in German and had English subtitles - long way for a short cut!

The film is all filmed on location in Australia and deals with the cultural clash between some native Aborigines and a mining conglomerate who want to extract uranium from land the Aborigines see as sacred. Although an environmental warning, the film is also a parable of sorts and although the subject matter may seem a bit dry it was interesting enough to keep me engaged.

From the off you get a fair idea of where the film’s sympathies lie with a long tracking shot of piles of debris left over from previous excavations. It’s clear that a mess has been made of large swathes of the country and to reinforce this there is stock footage of extreme weather which either indicates climate change or an angry God - I’m going with the latter!

Mining engineer Bruce Spence (Gyro Captain out of the ‘Mad Max’ films) is in his office dealing with an old lady who seems somewhat out of place in the middle of the Outback. She has lost her dog in the mines and asks if it can be found. Bruce fobs her off, but she is a persistent old bird and her quest continues throughout the film, running parallel with the main narrative. I’m pretty sure the lost dog is a metaphor for something, lost innocence maybe, but it’s not made clear and as regular readers will attest, nuance isn’t my strongest suit.

Anyway, the new mine needs some bore holes and progress is halted when some Aborigines show up and block the bulldozers. The workers are keen to shove them off but Bruce, perhaps fearing bad publicity, engages with them to see what it would take to move them on. He has all the right permits but the Aborigines claim ancient title to the lands where, they claim, the green ants dream. In their folklore if the green ants are awoken the world will end. Frankly I was hoping this would happen but seemingly the budget wouldn’t stretch to it.

The mining bosses come in with a raft of offers but all are turned down. Bruce starts to see what he’s up against when he encounters another group in a supermarket huddled round the spot where a favoured tree once grew that was cut down for the store. The bosses decide to seduce the tribal leaders with a trip to the big city and shower them in tat such as a digital watch that no one can turn off - another metaphor?

On the trip home the Aborigines are impressed with a large aeroplane and a goodwill offer is made to supply such a machine to the Aborigines despite them having no airport or conceivable use for it. With this sweetener in place the action transfers to the court room where ancient claims are weighed against the law of the land. Will the miners be sent on their way and the Aborigines left with their land’s mineral wealth intact? What to do you think?!

I quite enjoyed this film but it was too indistinct in what it was trying to be. A factual drama? Part documentary? Social commentary? Fantasy parable? I’ve no idea. Lots of stuff was laid on thick with the evil suits clearly trying to screw with the local heroes. There were a lot of metaphors such as a lift that kept breaking down, perhaps suggesting that progress wasn’t all it was meant to be. I never figured out the relevance of the lost dog although the big green plane was a bit more obvious.

Bruce Spence was the only actor I knew in the film and he did a decent job of holding it together. Most of the Aboriginal cast were not actors but they all had great faces and presences. Things like their drinking problems were touched on but for the most part they were the innocents being treated badly by corporate interests and progress in general.

The film was pretty clear where its sympathies lay and this was shown via Bruce’s character who starts off seeing the Aborigines as a nuisance before gradually going more and more native himself. The politics were not of the subtle variety and there was a lot of mystical stuff going on, such as a key artefact being presented to the court that we, the viewer, weren’t allowed to see but overall there was enough to like to justify a recommendation - just.

Best Bit : Pit vigil with Pal
‘W’ Score 14/23

No.229 : Wake in Fright (1971)

Wake in Fright at the IMDb

Also known by the less ‘W’ friendly name ‘Outback’ this Australian film from 1971 (same as me!) is an unsettling experience which is hard to recommend but equally an affecting and memorable experience.

The film opens with a young teacher dismissing his class for the Christmas holidays. He’s clearly keen to get away but manages to grab one beer before catching the train to the nearest city, ‘The Yabba’. Our hero, John, has one night to spend in The Yabba before catching a flight to Sydney to meet up with his girlfriend, whom we only ever see in an idealised beach flashback.

John checks into cheap lodgings and pays his $4 rent in advance as well as a $1 deposit on the key - he’ll be grateful for that later! As the internet has yet to be invented John ventures out to a local bar where he meets several of the colourful locals, all of whom are suspicious of anyone who doesn’t like a drink. A tentative connection to the local police chief earns him several beers and soon he is as roaring drunk as the rest of the patrons.

He gets shown the local gambling den which involves hoards of men betting on how two spun coins will fall. Reluctant at first John enjoys some early luck and has soon made a fat pile of cash which he takes back to his room in triumph. As all gamblers know however, it’s never enough and he ponders over how one more successful bet could buy him out his hated teaching job in the outback.

As you will probably guess things don’t go well and after chasing his losses John is left flat broke, without money or his airline ticket. Given his penurious state John has to rely on the charity of the local barflies and is soon drinking heavily in their remote shacks. Donald Pleasance does a great turn as a dipsomaniac doctor and the posh mum from ‘Just Good friends’ is free with her charms as one of the men’s bored and slutty daughter.

As the party progresses John gets more and more ‘native’ and is soon knee deep in blood as the drunken men go on a late night kangaroo hunt. Can John pull back from the brink or is he lost forever in a downward spiral of beer and kangaroo meat? Will his last dollar and gifted gun be his redemption or a fast track to the afterlife?

I really liked this film despite my copy being somewhat ropey. Seemingly the film was lost and only recently restored - looks like I saw a ‘before’ version! This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as the bleached out colours perfectly depicted the heat and grime in every scene.

The film is probably uncomfortable viewing for Australians as, to a man, they are seen as drunken bullies and thugs. After shooting up the local kangaroo population they then set about destroying the only pub in miles - sacrilege! I’m sure a lot of commentary is intended towards the Australian male psyche and drinking culture, but in truth they are a horrible lot and I was only sorry the kangaroos didn’t take a couple of them with them.

You will probably have heard that the kangaroo killings were brutal and indeed they were. To be fair though, the scene was only about five minutes long and in mitigation they did eat what they killed. That said the man wrestling a kangaroo to death is uncomfortable viewing in anyone’s book, despite the disclaimer at the end that all kills were carried out by professional hunters during a sanctioned cull.

The twist towards the end was well done with the finale maybe a wee bit predictable but none the worse for that. Hopefully the teacher doesn’t have to complete a ‘What I did on my holidays’ essay too!

All in all this has to be essential viewing for anyone with an interest in cinema and although not enjoyable as such, it is definitely one that will live with you long after the last kangaroo burger has been digested.

Best Bit : Donald gets a bit fresh
‘W’ Score 21/23

No.186 : Wish You Were Here (2012)

Wish You Were Here at IMDb

Not to be confused with the 1987 Emily Lloyd film (see No.117)  this ‘Wish You Were Here’ is a 2012 mystery drama with a non-linear narrative and a lot to like. The lack of a question mark in the title makes it sound more of a plaintive plea than an invitation, and as the film develops you can see that was totally the intent.

We open with a high energy holiday being enjoyed by four friends in Cambodia. There is a rocking soundtrack as they party on the beach and eat insects without a care in the world, but the cares are in the post, don’t you worry. As the credits sequence ends the bright lights and rave music are replaced with a haunted man walking through a sodden field as the sun comes up. Something has happened and what follows is the story of the night before. A bit like ‘The Hangover’ with less slapstick.

The four friends are Dave, a kind of tubby Russell Crowe who looks constantly drunk, his wife Alice and her sister Steph and Steph’s new boyfriend, Jeremy. The four head off on the bender as Alice is six months pregnant and it’s their last chance to party before their brood expands to three. We quickly learn that only three of the friends returned home, with Jeremy’s ticket going unused.

At first it looks like a straight forward missing person case but as we learn more about the past through flashbacks we know that secrets and lies abound. The family is wrenched apart when Dave admits to having sex with Steph and the police’s interest in Jeremy’s business interests mean his fate is looking bad. As the customs dog sniffs its way through the warehouse will his disappearance be down to a business deal gone bad or to something a bit closer to home?

Meanwhile Dave has spotted a sinister car tracking his movements and his wife is taking on an unhealthy taste for wine as her baby's arrival dawns. Let’s hope she remembers to buckle up!

I really enjoyed this Aussie slice of life as heavy drinking and infidelity spell all manor of trouble for our hapless bunch. Don’t get me wrong, there’s not a laugh to be had, but their headlong lunges towards oblivion leave you with your fingers over your eyes in places.

The narrative is all over the shop as we are slowly drip fed snippets of information in flashback which serve to dismiss our theories as soon as they develop. The outcome in a Glittering bar wasn’t expected but it put all the pieces neatly and satisfyingly in place.

The cast were uniformly good but for the most part it was a two man show with Dave and Alice shining as their marriage crumbled as the secrets of the holiday were exposed. The editing was excellent and there was never any confusion over where we were in the story with the Cambodia scenes that bit brighter and, helpfully, always containing Cambodian characters.

The police detection angle and the scene with the missing Jeremy’s parents were mostly padding but the sense of doom was well handled as Dave’s infidelity was as big a blow as the other stuff that threatened to engulf them all. I’m being deliberately vague as the unfolding story is really worth your investment. All in all this was an excellent and unsettling 90 minutes and well worth your time.

Best Bit “Tonight’s Special Offer Is…
‘W’ Score 19/23