Launceston Film Society

 Mild course language and sexual references 

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Origin: USA 2009 
Director: Anne Fontaine 
Featuring: Benoît Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain, Emmanuelle Devos 
Language: French with subtitles 
Running Time: 108 minutes 

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There have been a number of recent films about Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel, however this offering traces the rise of the haute couture designer from humble beginnings to the glittering heights of the fashion world. Anne Fontaine’s film attempts to lifts the veil on the early years of Gabrielle Chanel. Unfortunately there remains no guarantee that we are getting fact or fiction, since, as many of Chanel’s biographers acknowledge, she was notoriously adept at remaining mysterious and unassailable, ferociously guarding details her austere beginnings. Nevertheless, there is sufficient plausibility –from her beginnings in an orphanage to an unsuccessful singer who segues into a kept woman. 

Mature Audiences, violence and coarse language 

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Kev and Chook are a couple of outlaws scamming their way through outback Australia, hitching rides, scrounging food, sleeping rough, stealing cars.  ’We’re Butch and Sundance,’ Kev says to Chook. ‘Who?’ says Chook. But then he’s only ten, and he wouldn’t have seen the movie. 

 

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Strong violence, coarse language and nudity 

(Germany, 2008) 
Director: Uli Edel 
Featuring: Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Bruno Ganz, Nadja Uhl, Jan Josef Liefers, Stipe Erceg, Niels-Bruno Schmidt, 
Language: German with subtitles 
Running time: 150 minutes 

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This film reminds us that they didn’t really stand for anything much more than anarchy, even though they – eventually – dressed it up as a desire to ‘free the oppressed’ and destroy US imperialism, as they saw it. They wanted world peace, if you like, even it meant waging war and slaughtering civilians to get it. This much is clear from Bernd Eichinger’s intricate screenplay, but even with Uli Edel’s dedicated direction, the film ends up rather episodic. It’s like watching a historical dramatisation in fast forward, where, inevitably, we miss lots of detail and can only surmise the thrust of the work. (Eichinger also wrote & produced Downfall, a masterpiece of German cinema.) 

In trying to cram a great deal into 150 minutes, the filmmakers necessarily jump scenes like puddles, and sometimes the audience gets lost. But the montage style provides the time frame, and shows how the young Baader Meinhof gang gave birth to a whole raft of terrorist clusters and organisations, each growing more violent than the last. 

Perhaps the most important function of a movie about the Baader Meinhofs of this world is to reveal their hollow morality, their arrogance and their cruelty; nothing romantic here to entice youngsters to kill innocent civilians in pursuit of peace and freedom. In this respect, the film highlights the absolute failure of politically driven terrorism as an agent of socio-political change. 

Finally, I thank the film for its information value about one of the most notorious terror groups of the recent past. 

Source: Andrew L. Urban – Urbancinefie.  Compiled by Peter Gillard

Strong coarse language 

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Director: Ken Loach 
Country: UK 2009 
Cast: Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, Stephanie Bishop, Gerard Kearns, Stefan Gumbs, Lucy-Jo Hudons, Cole Williams, Dylan Williams, Matthew McNulty, Laura Ainsworth, Max Beesley, Kelly Bowland, Julie Brown, John Henshaw, Justin Moorhouse, Des Sharples 
Running time: 116 minutes 

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His wife has gone, his stepsons are out of control and the house was chaotic even before a cement mixer appeared in the front garden. Life is crazy enough, but it is Eric’s own secret that is driving him to the brink. How can he face up to Lily, the woman of his dreams that he once loved and walked out on many years ago? Despite the comical efforts and misplaced goodwill of his mates, Eric continues to sink. 

In desperate times it takes a spliff and a special friend to help a lost postman find his way, so Eric turns to his hero: footballing genius, philosopher and poster boy, Eric Cantona. 

When it comes to portraying lives in the toilet, nobody does it better than Ken Loach. 

Since defining British social-realist cinema with excoriating early classics such as Cathy Come Home (1966), Kes (1970) and Family Life (1971), Loach has been the pre-eminent master of kitchen-sink misery, often placing at the centre of his harsh dramas some put-upon working-class cog who is compelled by economic and social forces to either break the law or violate their own moral code. Laughter and magic realism have never really had much of a look-in. 

With Looking for Eric, however, Loach appears to have been touched by the angel of good cheer. It’s an upbeat, warm, life-affirming tale that doesn’t even have a left-leaning political point to push. Loach still delivers those lashes of brutal realism that have become his signature, but his emphasis here is on optimism, hope, love and friendship. 

Source: IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes 
Compiled by: Mark Horner

Violence and coarse language 

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Australia (2009) 
Genre: Drama 
Director: Robert Connolly 
Featuring: Anthony LePaglia, Oscar Isaac, Nathan Phillips, Gyton Grantley,Damon Gameau,  Thomas Wright, Mark Winter. 
Language: English 
Running time: 111 mins 

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As Indonesia prepares to invade the tiny nation of East Timor, five Australian based journalists go missing. Four weeks later, veteran foreign correspondent Roger East  is lured to East Timor by the young and charismatic José Ramos-Horta  to tell the story of his country and investigate the fate of the missing men. As East’s determination to uncover the truth grows, the threat of invasion intensifies and an unlikely friendship develops between the last foreign correspondent in East Timor and the man who will become President. BALIBO is a political thriller that tells the true story of crimes that have been covered up for over thirty years. 

Watching the deaths of the 5 journalists is almost unbearable. In dramatic terms, we know little about these five men, accept that they died horribly. The film gives us little of their characters because it has a lot of ground to cover. Channel Seven reporter Greg Shackleton is shown as romantic, perhaps tragically so. Channel Nine’s Malcolm Rennie is game and impetuous. Cameraman Gary Cunningham  is an amiable professional, like Brian Peters. The sound-man Tony Stewart is the youngest of the five at 21. 

The director, Robert Connolly, who co-wrote the script with David Williamson, assembles the pieces with great methodical logic. It’s much more ambitious than The Bank or Three Dollars, his earlier films –

 more forensic and committed, yet freer in its willingness to let us draw our own conclusions. Connolly gives a strong sense of the tragedy and resilience of the East Timorese, as well as a clear account of one of the great crimes in our modern history. The one person not in the film, to whom it is deeply indebted, is Jill Jolliffe, the journalist who has spent 34 years trying to tell the story. The film is based on her book Cover Up. In some respects, Balibo is her vindication. 

The film is banned in Indonesia.

News.com.au, IMDB, The Sydney Morning Herald.   Compiled by Sue Aylett