We Steal Secrets (m)
Directed by Alex Gibney
Academy-award winning writer/director Alex Gibney has demonstrated a “wonderful mistrust in institutions” in his previous films such as ‘Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room’ and ‘Silence in the House of God’, the story of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. He was attracted to the Wikileaks story because he saw it as a David-and-Goliath story. His independent documentary looks at the creation of Julian Assange’s controversial website which facilitated the largest security breach in US history. It started out as one man against the world, but along the way he found out things that the news accounts had missed. He discovered the brilliant, troubled, openly gay soldier Bradley Manning, who for example, downloaded the classified documents that had revealed the behind the scenes workings of US international diplomacy and military strategy.
As well as covering the issues of government corruption and the power of private citizens to expose this, Gibney’s documentary looks at the idealists who “like the rest of us are a mix of nobility and corruption, yearning and vulnerability”. Neither Assange nor Manning were available to be interviewed – Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and Manning under military arrest. So Gibney interviewed government insiders as well as friends, collaborators and detractors of Assange and Manning. He even got hold of Manning’s intimate online chats with hacker and eventual betrayer Adrian Lamo. In exposing abuse in the corridors of power, Assange and Manning were instant targets, but Gibney is able to show that their own human failings also undermined them.
As we produce more information, we produce more secrets and Gibney also looks at the issue of privacy “in an age when sensitive information can be accessed and disseminated with lightning speed without regard to motive or consequence”. Interestingly, one of the people interviewed points out that if Assange is prosecuted for espionage, “for doing what The New York Times does on a daily basis”, then the future of investigative journalism is in serious jeopardy. There will be a panel discussion at Luna on SX on Thursday 4 July at 6.30pm.
Only God Forgives (MA)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Julian (Ryan Gosling) doesn’t say much in the film noire shadows of the opening of the film. He runs a Thai boxing club in Bangkok as a front for his drug business and when his mega-violent brother Billy (Tom Burke) is killed in a mega-violent way, his mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) arrives in Bangkok. Thirsty for vengeance, she demands that Julian dispose of everyone involved in her favourite son’s slaying, even though he had brought about his own demise. Any eye-for-an-eye undertaking is going to incur a domino effect, and this one does so with the maximum amount of violence, with the divine justice being meted out by mysterious policeman Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm).
Danish director Refn is known for his challenging and innovative style and admits that he was having existential dilemmas during the making of this film. I don’t know if the end product is a farce or a fable.
Refn did say that faith is based on the need for a higher answer but most of the time we don’t know what the question is. “When the answer comes, then, we must back track our lives in order to find the question. In this way, the film is conceived as an answer, with the question revealed at the end.”
In The House (MA)
Directed by Francois Ozon
Jaded high school literature teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini) dabbles with his own writing but he is suffering a mid-life creative crisis. When he asks his class of 16 year-olds to write about what they did on the weekend, Claude (Ernst Umhauer) gets his attention with his writing about infiltrating the house of classmate Rapha (Bastian Ughetto) to seduce his attractive mother Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner). Germaine encourages the provocative student to continue writing and he and his wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas), a modern art gallery owner, are kept entranced by the subsequent instalments. Since his first film ‘Sitcom’, which featured incest and bestiality, French filmmaker Francois Ozon has continued to explore sexual transgression. This seductive melodrama has a considerable amount of dark humour as the audience gets caught up as fellow voyeurs while the deceptively charismatic Claude weaves an extremely creepy tale that just might not be all that fictional.
The Look of Love (MA)
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
This biopic is about Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan), otherwise known as ‘Mr Soho’. In the swinging sixties, he opened London’s first gentleman’s nightclub where naked women were like wallpaper. Continually pushing the boundaries of promiscuity with his ‘art’, he launched several publications such as ‘Men Only’, ‘Escort’ and ‘Mayfair’. Using the actual locations, Winterbottom recreates those interesting times when there were plenty of available women who saw promiscuity as sexually liberating. We can also see how misogynistic the whole objectification process was, but Raymond made billions by exposing female flesh for the eager populous. Evidently he also pushed the boundaries in his hedonistic private life, but his excesses became tiresome for the women closest to him. The only female he doted on was his extremely spoilt daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots), whose funeral opens this film. Winterbottom captures Raymond’s whirlwind ride and Coogan oozes the creepy charm that made Raymond a legend.
The Lone Ranger (M)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Eighty years after first being broadcast on radio, ‘The Lone Ranger’ is brought to the big screen by the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ production team. Johnny Depp is brilliant as the rebellious Tonto; Armie Hammer is hilarious as the uptight, reluctant hero and outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Ficher) is truly evil. The cast do many of their own stunts and the action takes place in panoramic Wild West scenery that doesn’t need 3D effects. CGI effects are minimal as actual locations are used and two 19th century trains were constructed … along with the tracks they run on. Absurd humour and deadly serious carnage lie side by side. Greed, deceit, betrayal and some really nasty things, next to some undeniable Disney moments, even if some of them are subversive such as the feral rabbits. By the time the rousing theme music brings the rollicking final sequence to the screen, the audience was cheering and hollering.
Hi-yo Silver.
Head to the giveaways page at the OUTinPerth website for your chance to win a set of three collectable block mounted posters including images of Ryan Gosling and the teaser poster of the film, the soundtrack by Cliff Martinez and a double in-season pass to see the film. We’ve also got some double passes to give to five runners-up.
Lezley Herbert
