'Anaconda' directed by Luis Llosa.

Produced by: Verna Harrah, Carole Little, and Leonard Rabinowitz.

Written by: Hans Bauer, Jim Cash, and Jack Epps Jr.

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Kari Wuhrer, and Owen Wilson.

Year of release: 1997.

Run time: 89 Minutes.

Budget: $45 Million.

Gross revenue: $136,885,767.

Have you ever re-watched a movie ten years after you saw it as a kid? It's a fun experiment to do, especially if you really enjoyed the film in question all those years ago. When I saw Anaconda at the impressionable age of ten, I thought it was a pretty fucking awesome movie. It had everything a boy yearning for adventure could want: A boat trip along the dark Amazonian jungle, a scary old snake-hunter played by Jon Voight, and of course, a giant fucking snake that was going to suffocate all the minor characters on the boat before eating them not once, but twice. I'm serious. The opening text scroll for Anaconda contains the following line: “Unique among snakes, [Anacondas] are not satisfied after eating a victim. They will regurgitate their prey in order to kill and eat again.” Take that Steven Spielberg! Your lame shark only ever ate mother-fuckers once!

Of course, at the age of ten I was only just being permitted to go and see moderately violent movies, and so Anaconda was probably one of the first horror movies I ever saw. The horror of the creature feature genre was new and fresh, probably because a lot of it actually came from my imagination as opposed to what was shown on screen. When I saw Anaconda, I felt frightened during the first half of the movie because I could just imagine the snake slithering around under the surface of the river, plotting with its reptile brain to devour Jennifer Lopez. Now fourteen years and a hundred or so creature features later, I'm much more demanding when it comes to quality.

It should therefore come as no surprise that upon my second viewing, I can now safely say that I regard Anaconda as such a piece of fucking shit that I'm simply flabbergasted at its box office performance. There is not really one redeeming feature in this feature. All we get for our trouble is some shitty CGI, Jon Voight doing a very bad Spanish accent, and Ice Cube looking completely out of place amongst the mostly caucasian cast. I know a lot of people enjoy watching bad movies because they are so bad, but Anaconda isn't even good-bad. It's just plain bad-bad. The snake, whether it is rendered using CGI or in giant puppet form, sucks arse. It doesn't look vaguely threatening in any aspect. Indeed, whenever we get a close-up of the snake this is what we get to see:

"Hiiisssssssss mother-fucker!"

See how stupid it looks?

Apart from the snake, there is no real tension in the film. Certain scenarios occur, but you never really give a damn how they might turn out. It would even be enjoyable if it was the case that the characters were so badly written that you wanted them to die, but they aren't bad; just bland. To say that Anaconda fizzles would be insulting to inexpensive fireworks.

I did find one shot that I thought was pretty interesting from a gross-out standpoint. It occurs near the end of the film when the giant snake finally devours Jon Voight. For a split second, the camera cuts to inside the snake's mouth looking out. It's a pretty cool shot, and you definitely get the sense that Voight is headed toward some slimey, unknowable place, but it doesn't last for long enough, cutting back to a bad CGI depiction of Jon Voight getting eaten.

"No Angelina! Don't eat me! I'm your father!"

I can't get over how many people liked this movie. To put some perspective on the whole mess; Rabbit Hole, the recent drama which earned Nicole Kidman an academy award nomination for Best Actress, only took $2.9 million at the box office, against this piece of shit which took close to $137 million. The 90s were strange times, my friends.

One star:

'Monster' directed by Patty Jenkins.

Produced by: Charlize Theron, Mark Damon, Clark Peterson, Donald Kushner, and Brad Wyman.

Written by: Patty Jenkins.

Starring: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, and Annie Corley.

Year of release: 2003.

Run time: 109 minutes.

Country: United States.

Budget: $8 Million.

Gross revenue: $60, 378, 584.

This movie gained a lot of attention in gossip magazines before it was released because of the physical transformation that Charlize Theron underwent to become Aileen Wuornos, the real life serial killer that stunned America back in the late 80s. It's sort of ironic in a sense, because the underlying thematic concerns of Monster are fundamentally opposed to the shallowness of American popular culture, in which a movie is considered notable solely because a pretty actress is willing to make herself look 'ugly' for it. Monster is far more interesting than that.

Charlize Theron certainly obtains some bravery points for being willing to blunt her natural beauty for the role, however she gains the most points in her sympathetic portrayal of a character as contentious as Wuornos. Sure, Theron may look 'uglier', but she has also adopted the mannerisms, language and-- dare I say it?-- emotions of Aileen Wuornos. Watching Theron is witnessing a simulacrum of the highest order, the kind that is only matched by Daniel-Day Lewis in his best roles. It is Theron's performance that enables writer/director Patty Jenkins to deliver her message so well.

As for the message? Well, the film exposes the strange kind of apathy that humans seem to carry towards the plight of other humans. I mean, of course there are people out there that help other people undergoing terrible hardship, but how many of us are truly willing to ensure that the right thing is done by people that do bad things? When Aileen Wournos was executed, there were a lot of people out there that actively wanted her dead. Others (the vast majority) were largely indifferent to her execution, and a small minority actively campaigned to get her a stay of execution. The whole point of the movie seems to be to truly demonstrate that a grave injustice was done the day that she was executed.

Popular culture has a large impact on the definition of the morality of the masses. In other words: There are a lot of dumb mother-fuckers out there that believe that the cops are the good guys, and the people that go to prison are the real bad eggs, based solely on what they've seen in flippant fucking shows like Law and Order: SVU. Monster is probably one of the most powerful films to challenge such an attitude (I can think of two more: Dead Man Walking, and to a lesser, more whimsical, extent, The Green Mile.) Theron's performance forces us to empathise with Wournos on a purely emotional level, and effectively abolishes any debate regarding a justification for the death penalty.

The opening of the film depicts Wournos in voice-over likening herself to Marilyn Monroe: “I always wanted to be in the movies. When I was little I thought, for sure, one day I could be a big, big star. Or maybe just beautiful. Beautiful and rich, like the women on TV.” And on being noticed by males: “But even if they couldn't take me all the way like Marilyn, they would somehow believe in me just enough. They would see me for what I could be, and think I was beautiful.” The inherit sweetness of this voice-over juxtaposed with the upsetting images of Wournos performing her first acts of prostitution at the age of thirteen, is enough of a hook to become completely invested in the character. By the time Wournos shares her first kiss with her love interest, Selby (played flawlessly by Christina Ricci), to Don't Stop Believin' at a roller-rink, you know that you are in for a very different, very special kind of movie.

Wournos had a long history of abuse (she was raped for the first time at eight years old), and Theron captures this damage and frailty outstandingly. The scene where Wournos and Selby first make-out is filled with a potent mixture of warmth and anxiety. Warmth because Wournos has been so unloved throughout her life that you are happy to see her gain some happiness, and anxiety because you know-- given the synopsis of the film-- that it's all going to turn to shit incredibly fast.

Then the murders happen. In order to provide money for her and Selby, Wournos is forced to prostitute herself. In one encounter, she is knocked unconscious, tied up and raped by a man, only to free herself and shoot him multiple times. It is a kill in self-defense to be sure, but it is this moment that triggers her major mental breakdown. After this, she automatically accuses her other 'clients' of attempting to rape her and shoots them, even if the threat of rape isn't clearly established. Wournos is clearly undergoing some form of paranoid psychosis (justifiably so), and not thinking rationally. You do, however, get the sense that her behaviour seems rational within her own battered mind. Documentarian Nick Broomfield, who directed two documentaries on Wournos, articulates it a bit better than me:

“I think this anger developed inside her. And she was working as a prostitute. I think she had a lot of awful encounters on the roads. And I think this anger just spilled out from inside her. And finally exploded. Into incredible violence. That was her way of surviving. I think Aileen really believed that she had killed in self-defense. I think someone who's deeply psychotic can't really tell the difference between something that is life threatening and something that is a minor disagreement, that you could say something that she didn't agree with. She would get into a screaming black temper about it. And I think that's what had caused these things to happen. And at the same time, when she wasn't in those extreme moods, there was an incredible humanity to her.”

This humanity that Bloomfield talks about is expressed so well by Theron. The most powerful scene, the one that probably won Theron the Oscar, occurs about an hour and ten minutes in, after Wournos has finally confessed the murders to Selby. Selby tells Wournos that she can't just go around killing people and Wournos says:

“Says who!? I'm good with the Lord, I'm fine with him. And I know how you were raised, and I know how people think out there, and fuck it's gotta be that way, and they tell you 'Thou shalt not kill shit' and all of that, but that's not the way the world works Selby, cause I'm out there every fucking day livin' it! Who the fuck knows what God wants? People kill each other every day! And for what? For politics, for religion, and they're heroes... No! There's a lot of shit I can't do anymore, but killing's not one of them! And letting those fucking bastards go out and rape someone else isn't either!”

Though it may be warped and nonsensical, you definitely get a sense of Wournos' logic in this scene. She has been so abused and tormented in her past, that she is operating in an incredibly heightened survival mode. When you add probable drug induced paranoid schizophrenia to the mix, you certainly begin to understand that Wournos is no villian; rather, her life is a tragedy. Raped as a child, forced into the perpetual cycle of prostitution and drug use, there is no way that she could ever get out of the poverty trap on her own. Her execution certainly proves that the social machinery of western civilisation has little time for people like Wournos.

I guess the main question I was left with after viewing Monster was: If Aileen Wournos had of received some kind of help from a team of mental health professionals, would she have still killed all those men? The answer, sadly, is no. Monster is one of those rare, truly great films that force us to question the established status quo. And the soundtrack ain't too bad either.

 Five stars:

'Scream 4' directed by Wes Craven.

Spoiler Free.

Produced by: Wes Craven, and Iya Labunka. Executive: Bob Weinstein, and Harvey Weinstein.

Written by: Kevin Williamson.

Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts, and Hayden Panettiere.

Studio: Dimension Films.

Distributed by: Dimension Films.

Run time: 111 Minutes.

Budget: $40 Million.

Regardless of what Randy 'The Ram' Robinson might think, the 90s were a great time for popular culture. Musically, artists with painfully obvious lyrics and hairstyles were replaced by a much more introspective folk, who used their musical talent to actually say something. Two years after Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head, Dimension Films released Scream, directed by horror legend Wes Craven. It was a different kind of horror movie, made for an audience already savvy with the genre. While it contained all the gory murders you might expect from a typical 80s slasher film, it also featured post-modern commentary on the horror genre itself. It was hard to say whether Scream was a parody, a satire, or a genuine horror movie; because it lived on the borderline of all three. If anything, it was unique; no one had seen a movie quite like it before.

Whilst the sequels were never as good as their predecessor, they did manage to build an elaborate mythology around the protagonist, Sidney Prescott and her mother; whose dark, unseen past caused Sidney a lot of trouble. This mythology was important, because if we didn't feel for Sidney, the Scream movies would be stuck in the realm of the 'joke', and wouldn't have been as compelling. The sequels did the job well; the third one was pretty crappy, but all three worked together to provide a rounded character in Sidney Prescott. Throughout the series she evolves from the hapless victim to the survivor, and finally to the fully autonomous bringer of doom herself. I'm sure there is a Gender Studies thesis to be written about the evolution of the female character in the Scream franchise, but for now it is enough to say that there was some real meaty character development in it; the kind that makes for compelling viewing. It had heart.

Before I get into what I believe Scream 4 gets wrong, I wanna talk about what it does right. Though the horror movie references are not really done with the same impact as the original-- which added such memes as 'The Rules for Surviving a Horror Movie' into the lexicon-- they are still there, and horror fans will appreciate them. Characters talk about how bad the Saw movies are and how reboots are destroying originality in the genre. It's vintage Kevin Williamson, and it's really quite funny. On top of all this is an awareness, on behalf of some of the characters, about the meta nature of the Scream franchise. This is evidenced by the existence of seven Stab movies within the Scream universe. I can't say any more without giving away the plot, but Williamson was definitely wearing his post-modern hat when he wrote it. He also gets up to some mischief by giving subtle hints as to what Scream 4 actually is; we never know until the end whether it's a sequel or a reboot.

I spoke a little bit before about how the Scream franchise had heart; well it really saddens me to say that it seems to be lacking in this instalment. I love this franchise a lot; I grew up watching it, and it's safe to say that it introduced me to the horror genre. So when I left the cinema feeling like something was missing, I was genuinely sad. I'm sure there are lots of internet reviewers that are going to shit on this film just because it's the trendy thing to do, but I really went into the movie expecting to write a glowing review. I wanted to like it, and I did, but not as much as I thought I might.

First off, the characters are largely under-developed. Gale Weathers suffers the most in this regard. Her character has always been the sharky journalist, willing to go to any lengths to get the story, but with a softness that contrasts nicely. I don't know what it was, but her two sides just didn't show up enough for me in Scream 4. I got the cut-throat journalist, but Courtney Cox just didn't sell it well enough. As for her soft side; well it didn't even cause a blip on the Geiger counter for me. Dewey fairs a bit better, though not by much. David Arquette nails his role as the cop/doofus, but we don't really get a sense of his competence or innate goodness like we did in the other movies. Sidney gets the best treatment of all because she is-- as the trailer confirms-- victim royalty. Neve Campbell brings a warmth to her role as Sidney Prescott, and the movie only enters three star territory because of her. You definitely get the sense of her loneliness; developed over years of relentless torment at the hands of Ghostface, but it would have been nice to see Sidney's character explored a little more. As for the new characters, they aren't really worth writing about.

Finally, the meta-textual theme just isn't established in Scream 4 as well as it is in the other instalments. Scream was about original horror movies, and used references to famous horror movies to frame the events of the film. Scream 2 dealt with sequels, specifically how sequels have a bad habit of sucking. This was fitting because it reflected the nervousness felt by the audience as to whether or not Scream 2 would suck. Scream 3 was about concluding chapters in trilogies and contained references to The Godfather Part III and The Return of the Jedi. Apparently Scream 4 was about rebooting a franchise, but I just don't think it pulls it off well enough. Maybe it's because the phenomenon of the reboot hasn't been around long enough to be relevant in the ironic way that Williamson may think it is.

It's not all bad though; don't think I completely hate it. Williamson and Craven have established a delightful, meta-textual universe, and it's one that I will keep on visiting for as long as they are willing to add to it.

Three and a half stars:

'Hobo with a Shotgun' by Jason Eisener.

Produced by: Rob Cotterill, Niv Fichman, Paul Gross, and Frank Siracusa.

Written by: John Davies.

Starring: Rutger Hauer, Brian Downey, and Gregory Smith.

Studio: Rhombus Media, Whizbang Films Inc., and Yer Dead Productions.

Distributed by: Alliance Films and Magnet Releasing.

Country: United States, and Canada.

Year: 2011.

Budget: $3 Million.

The story behind the development of this movie is actually pretty inspiring, so I shall attempt to tell a brief version of it before getting into the review. Back in 2007, a competition was launched to promote the release of the Robert Rodriguez/ Quentin Tarantino double-feature Grindhouse. Entrants were tasked with creating their own fake grindhouse film trailers, with the winner given the opportunity to have their trailer screened in front of Grindhouse. The winner turned out to be Jason Eisener with his two-minute trailer, Hobo with a Shotgun.

Eisener was quickly approached by producers to make a feature length version of his trailer. He was not a professional film-maker, and he shot the trailer with his friends on a budget of $150, which according to him was spent mostly on  “...videotape, pizza and smokes.” The film industry has always been the most exclusive of parties, and it’s good to see a regular guy get his name on the list.

As a person who has grown up on movies; who spent most of his pre-teen years enacting scenes from Predator, Commando and Aliens with G.I. Joe figurines, I won’t lie and say it wouldn’t be my ultimate dream job to be a movie director (or shit, even a screenplay writer). Accordingly, I’m somewhat enamoured with Hobo with a Shotgun. This is partly because Eisener is an underdog that managed to crack the industry, but also because Hobo with a Shotgun is a very daring film. There is also a lot to like about it. The whole philosophical aim of it seems to be to outdo every other grindhouse flick in terms of profanity, gore, sexuality, and general outrageousness.

Indeed, the people behind the dreadful final chapter of the Saw franchise, which I reviewed last week, could take a few notes from Eisener. These days, it’s not enough to only feature over-the-top violence for the sake of it. If you really want to tap into the irony of exploitation theatre, you have to deliver your violence in a creative way. Hobo with a Shotgun manages to accomplish this, leaving movies like Saw behind in the dust. One of the first notable sequences we see is a decapitation, followed by a bikini girl dancing sexily in the resulting blood fountain. It takes a special kind of mind to come up with something this sick. Whilst the grindhouse movies of the 70s and 80s were always subtle in their combination of sexuality and violence, Hobo with a Shotgun combines the two in a way that is satirically obvious. Needless to say, the scene is hard to stomach; but that is just the point. The film seems to be addressing the idea that grindhouse movies exist solely to deliver on our most primitive instincts.

The dialogue also abandons the nuance and subtlety found in other grindhouse movies. When the eponymous Hobo finally snaps and opens fire on a group of thieves, he yells “I’m going to sleep in your bloody carcases tonight!” A generic pun would have been enough to get the message across, but Hobo with a Shotgun abandons subtlety in order to deliver the ultimate grindhouse experience as an ironic commentary on the nature of exploitation theatre itself. With each card out so openly on the table (violence, offensive language, and sex), it’s possible to say that Hobo with a Shotgun is the perfect grindhouse movie. It leaves me to wonder where the genre can go from this point.  I don’t think a sequel to this movie would be as good, because I don’t know if there is much left to be said.

Although it may seem like I’m blowing a lot of literary hot air into Hobo, it would be unfair to give it five stars, or even four. Like a bucket of KFC chicken that seems like a good idea at the time, it only takes a little bit of Hobo with a Shotgun to make you feel sick. By the time the cyborg ninjas roll around (I’m not joking), I had reached my Hobo with a Shotgun saturation point and was waiting for it to end. This is the nature of the grindhouse movie; they can only ever reach the level of ironic appreciation. The violence can be as creative and as brutal as it likes, but it won’t make up for that sense of awe that comes with the truly great films.

Rutger Hauer is great as the lead in the first twenty or so minutes, but with scene after scene of gratuitous violence taking the spotlight, he might as well have been an unknown. This movie is going to be a contentious one for me. On the one hand, I appreciate what it has to add to the exploitation canon, but on the other hand I suspect that the point was made well enough in the trailer. I’m sure I will view it again later and totally change my mind on the final star score, but for now its...

Three and a half stars:

'Limitless' directed by Neil Burger.

Produced by: Leslie Dixon, Ryan Kavanaugh, and Scott Kroopf.

Written by: Leslie Dixon, and Alan Glynn (based on his book, ‘The Dark Fields’.)

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, and Robert De Niro.

Studio: Relativity Media.

Distributed by: Rogue.

Year of release: 2011.

Run time: 105 Minutes.

Budget: $27 Million.

Gross revenue: $69, 904, 000.

Before I went into this movie, I thought it was going to be one of those bogus sci-fi films produced solely to appeal to a mainstream audience. When it began, such dialogue as “You know how we only use twenty percent of our brains? Well this drug allows us to use one hundred percent!”*, only confirmed my suspicions. Of course we don’t only use twenty percent of our brains; we use one hundred percent, though at different times depending on what task we are doing. But this is Hollywood friends, and such clichés can create millionaires.

When such a line is uttered in a movie; one that appeals to the vague pseudo-scientific clichés that we are all used to hearing, you can instantly see how the creative process works in a desperate writer struggling to find that idea that is going to allow them to crack an industry coated with strong carbon to carbon bonds (my attempt at scientific humour). You can just imagine how it would have went down: Alan Glynn, a struggling writer who, after having just opened his seventh rejection letter and spending the rest of the afternoon in the foetal position on his floor, finally manages to pull his shit together and think to himself “I need a new idea. Something groovy and scientific that has never been done before. What are some of the facts about the human body that you always hear on television? How about: We only ever use twenty percent of our brains? What if someone invented a pill that could unlock the other eighty percent? What if you took that pill and were able to become a super genius?” Add a notebook computer, and copious amounts of coffee and you’re onto a winning idea.

Scientific accuracy aside, the idea that we are never able to reach our true potential is a fun idea to contemplate, and it certainly seems original enough. Although Limitless is indeed one of those dreaded mainstream science fiction movies that doesn’t adequately speculate on the implications of future technology, it’s pretty entertaining. Bradley Cooper nails it as the emotionally retarded Eddie, who discovers the pill through a friend and transforms from a loser with writer’s block, to a super-intelligent, over-confident, stock-broker who turns pennies into millions in the space of a working week.

There is certainly a skeleton philosophical speculation here. I don’t know about anyone else, but I detected a hint of allegory within Limitless. The mysterious pill not only allows people to realise their full potential for intelligence, it also manages to free you from the anxiety and self-doubt which the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Illness would class as depression. Bradley Cooper might as well be downing Zoloft or Prozac in this flick because, after being on a steady dose of the magic pill, he manages to get his confidence back. He gets his hair-cut, cleans up his apartment and acquires a slick new wardrobe. Brimming with self-confidence, he is free to seduce exotic women and live the high-life of American narcissism. The film does hint at the idea that requiring a pill to be happy might not be the best thing for the human soul, but the ending of Limitless seems to undo this. Nothing is really said about the magical drug; whether it is good or bad, or even neutral. I didn’t feel a sense of closure at the end of the movie, and it only led me to reconfirm that this is a popcorn movie, pure and simple.

Robert Deniro does his best work in a long time here, and I’ll always have a soft-spot for Abbie Cornish after Candy. There is also some interesting camera trickery here, which is used to create a perpetual city street in the style of those never ending paintings that pop up on the internet from time to time.

Something leads me to believe that the book that Limitless is based on might explore the themes in greater depth—as is usually the case with Hollywood adaptations. However, as a far as popcorn movies go, you could do a lot worse than Limitless. At the beginning of the movie there was a trailer for the highly anticipated The Green Lantern, and I’m telling you right now, you couldn’t pay me to sit through that one.

Three stars:

* Incidentally, does anyone else think of Wedding Crashers whenever they hear this little nugget of ‘info.’ Whenever someone tells me that we only use twenty percent of our brains, I always think of Owen Wilson telling Rachel McAdams “...I like to think we only use twenty percent of our hearts.”

'Animal Kingdom' directed by David Michod.

Produced by: Liz Watts.

Written by: David Michod.

Starring: Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, Sullivan Stapleton, and James Frecheville.

Studio: Porchlight Films, Film Victoria, Showtime Australia.

Distributed by: Madmen Entertainment.

Year of release: 2010.

Run time: 112 Minutes.

Budget: $5 Million.

Gross Revenue: $6, 019, 846.

It appears that the Australian film industry is so dead that even when an excellent movie isn't supported by the public. A six-million dollar return on Animal Kingdom? Christ alive! Things are grim. The movie is about a family called the Codys, who all work together to earn their respective livings by robbing banks. Kind of like The Partridge Family if you replaced the bubble-gum pop with swearing and guns. Even Janine, the mother character played by Jackie Weaver, has a significant role to play, which comes out later in the film. Oddly, she looks like she would be the perfect choice for Shirley Partridge if they were to ever give The Partridge Family a gritty reboot:

 Animal Kingdom is loosely based on the Pettingill family, who were (and I think maybe still are) prominent figures in the Melbourne criminal underworld. Events in the film are inspired by events that occurred in real life, like the Walsh Street police shootings that involved the murder of two young Victorian police officers at the hands of Victor Pierce and other members of the Pettingill family in 1988. However, this movie is no biopic; instead opting to go the Wolf Creek route by using true events to ground a work of fiction.

They get it right too; Animal Kingdom received virtually universal acclaim. I’m sure that there are wealthy Australian critics out there, who grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, who used words like ‘socio-economic status’, or ‘class struggle’ in their reviews for this movie. They probably praised it as a thrilling insight into the seedy underbelly of Australian society. However, chances are that they don’t really know what it is like to be a bogan, or surrounded by bogans.

As a male who grew up on the Central Coast of NSW I had the delightful opportunity to be surrounded by bogans, and I can tell you that a lot of Animal Kingdom is authentic. The language, the clothing and the nature of the relationships between brother and brother, and mother and son in this movie are all realistic. There is one scene where the mentally unstable Andrew Cody (played by Ben Mendelsohn) sarcastically bullies his younger brother Darren Cody about wearing a pink shirt to their brother’s funeral:

“Where’d you get that suit? What is that suit? What do you think it looks good on ya? It looks gay. You gay?... It’s a serious question; I don’t care if you’re gay or you’re not gay. It’s all right if ya are mate, I just want you to tell me about it, you know? You making yourself a drink? What is it? A bourbon and coke? Yeah, well a bourbon and coke is not a very gay drink. Look, if you’re a gay man and you wanna make yourself a gay drink, you should just go ahead and make yourself a gay drink.”

Though I am ashamed to admit it, I probably performed such sarcastic affronts to friends of mine when I was in highschool. It wasn’t really about homophobia; it was more that a culture of sarcasm and machismo does exist in Australian society. And whilst modern Australian bogans may call each other gay, the same men can routinely be found celebrating the gay and lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney amongst the fabulous queens and trannies. Such dialogue as presented above lends authenticity to the movie, and it really does provide insight into Australian culture to those interested.

Another concern in Animal Kingdom is the nature of crime and its relationship with socio-economic status. Those Northern Beaches critics wouldn't be wrong if they dropped such loaded concepts. The protagonist Joshua Cody (James Frecheville), reminds us at the beginning of the film that the reason he got involved with the family’s crime ring is because he was just there at the time: “Kids just are wherever they are, and they do whatever they’re doin. You know? This is where I was, and this is what I was doin’.” This invokes the nurture side of the ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ debate, and I think it’s largely true of the role of poverty in Australian crime. If Joshua was living in a home that was financially stable and given economic support while he attended high school, he probably wouldn’t have given the life of crime a moment's thought. As it stands however, he is growing up with Ben Mendelsohn’s Andrew Cody as a father figure.

Ben Mendelsohn is simply divine in this. I know there has been a lot of buzz about Jackie Weaver (who received an academy award nomination for her role), but for me it was Mendelsohn’s performance that was the most entrancing. He occupies the screen as a waifish ghost of a man who wavers between friendly joviality and pure psychosis. You never know what he’s gonna do, and this unpredictability provides much of the film’s tension and suspense. It’s hard to give you an idea of this without spoiling it too much, however there is one scene at the end of the movie where Mendelsohn’s character gives Joshua’s young girlfriend a hit of heroin and then pumps her for information about whether or not she has spoken to the cops. I won’t tell you what happens, except to say that it’s a brutal scene, and one that will stay with you for a long time after the credit's roll.

Animal Kingdom is probably one of the best movies made about the Australian criminal underworld. It sits right up there with Chopper. The last half of the movie stretched on a little bit, and I probably would have preferred it if they ditched such elaborate plot developments in exchange for further character development, but I would recommend Animal Kingdom to anyone who wants to know what lower class Australian culture is really like. It’s a gripping film; it’s just a pity that it didn’t make much money at the box office.

Four stars: