What's the best...Aussie Comedy..?

You've probably see Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. But have you seen any other Australian comedy films. I think you might have caught a little film going by the name Crocodile Dundee, you might have caught The Dish on late-night TV, but are there any others? Rodney Twelftree of Australian film production company Fernby Films tells Top10Films the ten best Australian comedy movies right here.

Waiting For Hamlet

“Hamlet 2” is a difficult movie to discuss because it doesn’t know what it wants to be. A bit like Steve Coogan’s American accent. At times it appears to want you to care about these characters (when the brilliant Catherine Keener tells Coogan she’s leaving him for their mute lodger, for example) but since it takes hardly anything seriously you couldn’t gives two hoots. The reoccurring joke surrounding another mute character (what gripe have writers Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming got against people who just like to keep their mouth shut) getting hit in the head, knocked over, and meeting with some unsavoury accidents grates due to its pointlessness. It’s also only mildly funny the first time. Second, third, and fourth and I’m reaching for the NoDoz. So, as the name suggest, “Hamlet 2” takes everything with a pinch of salt. When it is satirising popular culture, cinema, the business of acting, it’s on to a winner. When it’s being postmodern and self-aware it’s engaging and inventive. But it doesn’t do this enough, and wavers too often on sub-plots that feel like tacked on anarchy than cohesive character progression. And, by the time the film turns into “Waiting For Guffman” you realise Christopher Guest has been here already and accomplished it so much better.

Steve Coogan is Dana Marschz (his last name becomes one of the film’s first reoccurring jokes where no one can pronounce it correctly) a drama teacher at a cash-strapped high school in Tucson, Arizona. Dana has issues. He’s become disillusioned with the acting business after a string of bit-parts and cheesy commercials. But he has an eager passion for the art and that comes out in his theatrical plays based on popular movies. When the school cuts the budget further, he finds his drama class is filled with new students wanting an easy ride. Inspired by virtue of having 20 students instead of 2, he begins preparing for his latest production – a futuristic update on the Hamlet story. When the school get wind of the script – featuring violence, sex, blasphemy, and whole heap of other ‘un-Christian’ activities, they try to shut him down. This becomes big news in the town. And, for a wannabe theatre veteran like Dana the show must go on.

There is a moment around a quarter of the way through the film when I finally felt I knew where the story was coming from. Dana is busying himself writing the new screenplay for Hamlet 2. There is an immediacy to his creative angst and you learn he has underlying regret about his relationship with his father. Coogan lets Dana’s eccentricities come out, and suddenly he’s gone from the likable one-dimensional drama teacher to someone as tragic as the titular character whose story he is updating. Suffice to say, it is Coogan who makes this film worth seeing. His faux American accent wavers at times, and mostly feels unnaturalised, but he brings the oddball, offbeat characteristic he so frequently exhibited in his British television comedies to the film with fine results.

But the film’s humour takes some getting used to. When Elizabeth Shue turns up as a nurse (and you brain says: hey, that’s Elizabeth Shue from 80s classics like “Adventures In Babysitting” and “Karate Kid”) and Dana says, “I’m sorry to be so forward, but you look a lot like my favourite actress of all time, Elisabeth Shue”, you are at once taken out of story and thrust right back into it. Its self-reflexive nature may make you feel like you’re watching a film parodying itself, but it also has a gleeful self-defeating sensibility that you rarely see in American movies.

The film falls down largely because you don’t care what happens to these characters. Despite Coogan’s spirited performance, his plight is cobbled together by sketches, mishaps, and motivation borrowed from other movies. Also it isn’t half as funny as it should be, with many skits overused or poorly conceived. If you consider the story is parts “Dangerous Minds”, parts “Footloose”, and a whole lot of “Waiting For Guffman”, but doesn’t come close the quality of any, you go a long way to summing up “Hamlet 2”. Coogan and his personification of Dana provide the film with all its highlights and there’s enough of them to give “Hamlet 2” a go, but as was exampled by its delayed and finally cancelled UK release, the film is a difficult sell.

Strange Conversation says: 5/10

Godfather Part 2 isn't one of the best sequels ever made

...well, according to Top10Films contributor Rodney Twelftree. Now as a fan of the Godfather sequel it would definitely appear on my own list of best film sequels but I love Rodney's choices because he doesn't list it. Why? Because it's different. Who wants to see another sequels top 10 with Godfather Part 2 at the top? Not I. The kids at Reddit.com do but little do they realise the whole 'Godfather Part 2 debacle' has got them talking and flocking over to Top10Films. As the editor I'm reminded to thank them for the hits and the exposure! Cheers guys! At the end of the day the top 10 list should spark debate and discussion, that's what it's there for, and this might just be the best Top 10 List on Top10Films.

Read Rodney's reasons for not listing The Godfather Part 2 here

Inception

It has become obligatory in the blogging world to post something about "Inception" so here goes - "Inception" is Christopher Nolan's new film and it will be brilliant. I say - will be - because I haven't seen it yet. I'm avoiding reading most of the reviews because I don't want to spoil it for myself but I have read one or two. Some of have been good, most have called it a masterpiece, and some (a minority) have gone against the grain and said it hasn't lived up to expectations. One thing I've found with Nolan is this: even when he's not brilliant, he's never bad. Average Nolan is ten times as entertaining as most of Hollywood's production line output. So I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing this on the big screen in the next few days.

...oh, and while you're here I might mention a little Tom Hanks movie poll that is going on at the moment - head on over to Top10Films and cast your vote here for your favourite Tom Hanks film.

You're a nice guy but I'm going to trash your lights

Nice guy Christian Bale is recorded laying into Terminator Salvation's director of photography for apparently dancing into the background of one of his scenes.

Eastwood’s dumbest character – The Gauntlet

If I was to give any credit to Clint Eastwood’s action-thriller “The Gauntlet” it would be for its poster. One of those cartoon-like depictions of a very un-cartoon-like film. Designed by the late artist Frank Fazetta, the poster depicts heroic alpha male Clint Eastwood protecting pretty blonde prostitute Sandra Locke from a haze of bullets. Fazetta’s artistry is amongst my favourite film artwork along with famed poster designer Drew Struzan.


But other than the poster there isn’t a lot to recommend about Eastwood’s 1977 film. He’s not yet the accomplished director of “Unforgiven”, or later “Million Dollar Baby” and “Gran Torino”, and he’s lumbered with Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack’s imbecilic script that beggars belief with every gun shot – and there’s A LOT of gun shots!

It’s a fun movie – fast-paced, humorous here and there; Sandra Locke is fittingly vivacious, Clint Eastwood is assuredly macho. But it all feels like a collection of ideas without a ‘whole’ to bring it all together. And it’s decidedly stupid.

For starters, the first half of the film has Locke hiding facts from Eastwood even though there is absolutely no reason to. Even more stoopidly Eastwood keeps ringing his boss to tell him his exact whereabouts even though he knows he’s being set-up. And, for some reason, even though everyone else knows it, Eastwood can’t work out it’s his boss that’s stabbing him in the back until someone explains it to him. Could this be Eastwood’s dumbest character ever?

When the two main characters are on the run, Eastwood hands Locke his gun. She looks at it for a second. She looks at the handle, the gun barrel, the hole at the end where bullets come out and says: “What’s that?” Yes, she really asks Clint Eastwood, while staring at the gun he’s handing to her: “What’s that?” With no hint of irony, Eastwood explains: “It’s a gun.” He is explaining this to a woman who later calls him a “.45 calibre fruit”, a telling remark that alludes to the fact she not only has knowledge of what a gun is, but also recognises the different types of ammunition they use. Hey there screenwriters Butler and Shryack – you’ve got a plot hole…and it’s not the only one!

Within seconds of this moment with the gun, a car trailing the pair shoots at them, cracking the rear window. Guess what Locke says? You got it! “What’s that,” she asks, like she’s just exited the womb. A bullet has just left a BULLET HOLE in the rear window. She is holding a gun. She knows they are being pursued by very bad guys – she posed naked for one of them for goodness sake! Yet, she can’t comprehend a gun shot in anger. Blimey!

Can it get worse?

…of course it can!

Eastwood and Locke run the gauntlet in a bus they have attached steel plates to in order to protect them from bullets. The steel is cocooned around the driver’s seat where they are situated. I wondered why they hadn’t also covered the tyres since these would be easy prey for a wily cop. Then I realised why they hadn’t bothered. It’s because the stupid cops in this stupid movie don’t shoot at tyres to stop a vehicle. They shoot every other part of a bus, apart from the tyres. They also shoot the middle and back of the bus where they can plainly see no one resides.

What’s even worse is how the cops are situated at either side of the road, presumably to offer an impenetrable defensive line. It doesn’t work but yet what is more disturbing is how these ‘intelligent’ officers of the law will fire bullets into a bus without a thought about the bullets either missing or shooting straight through the bus and hitting their fellow police officers on the other side. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

…and that’s not going into the whole helicopter-sniper-motorbike escape fiasco. How our intrepid protagonists survive this little encounter is beyond me. There’s a moment when Eastwood goes off-road to escape the helicopter when doing so will undoubtedly slow the bike down on uneven and unpredictable desert land But never mind – it’s only a movie (with no concept of plot logic).

The film is literally littered with improbable plot points, a complete lack of logic, and holes the size of the Grand Canyon. But I can’t say I disliked it. If trashy B-movies won Oscars, this would be a Best Film contender. With scenes like the silly but suitably overplayed stealing of the chopper from the wild hogs and Locke’s brilliantly sadistic retort to being hounded by a cop about being a prostitute, the film has enough moments of simple delight to merit a viewing…or even two.

Strange Conversation says: 5/10

Is Sideways the best film of the last ten years...?

...yes!

After much deliberation and many arguments (which took place in my head between my alternate personalities and my imaginary friend) I can finally reveal my top 50 films of the last decade.

It was difficult to leave some films off the list, and even harder to order the films into what I think are placings that they deserve.

Please head on over to Top10Films and check out the Top 50. Don't leave without a comment - let me know what your favourite film of the decade was.