Double act: Nell Fisher and Elijah Wood in ‘Bookworm’.
BOOKWORM ***1/2 (103 minutes) PG
The soul-healing power of the wilderness proves itself once again in Bookworm, a terrific, character-propelled adventure comedy in which an estranged father strives to bond with his tween daughter in New Zealand’s famously scenic wilds.
After her mum is rendered comatose by a malfunctioning toaster, studious, fast-talking nerd Mildred (Nell Fisher) gets a visit from her long-absent American dad Shawn Wise (Elijah Wood, forever Frodo from The Lord of the Rings), a struggling Las Vegas illusionist.
Mildred needs money to get her and her mother out of trouble and there’s a $50,000 reward going for anyone who can produce evidence of a mythical panther prowling the environs.
So off she goes with dad in tow on a trek across the landscape as they awkwardly try to connect, with Shawn trying hard to break through Mildred’s wall of well-founded resentments.
She slowly softens but an unexpected danger thrusts them into a dilemma where they have no choice but to rely on each other.
With a constant stream of snappy dialogue and a convincing performance from Fisher (cast from a pool of 300) it’s a very cluey, well-crafted father/daughter story nicely wrapped in a wily survival tale about how the tranquility of nature and the intimacy of isolation can be overwhelmed by unpredictable, and well-disguised peril.
MIDAS MAN *** (112 minutes) M
As much as there is of it, it’s hard to resist yet another serving of Beatles nostalgia, especially when it’s as attractively packaged as Midas Man, a breezy biopic that takes us through the group’s formative years and rise to fame from the perspective of Brian Epstein (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), the visionary manager who curated the band’s look and, with young producer George Martin (nicely played Charley Palmer Rothwell) shaped their planet-conquering sound.
With some remarkable lookalike casting for the young Beatles, the film admirably covers a lot of ground, with Epstein often speaking directly to camera and compressing chains of events – such as their volcanic tour of America and conquest of the teen population – in cleverly conceived montages.
A solid biopic laced with the Beatles’ snarky signature humour, the film wisely (if fleetingly) acknowledges Epstein’s other triumphs with Cilla Black (Darcy Shaw) and Gerry and the Pacemakers, a group so big at the time an alternate version of Midas Man could easily be made with them as the focus.
The film does well recreating the energy of the early 1960s when pop music was still finding its feet, and hardcore Beatles fans will no doubt swoon at the recreation of Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club.
The sadness of Epstein’s death at 32 is signalled by his drinking and drug taking; his homosexuality, outlawed at the time, making him a prime target for petty crimes and blackmailers.
THE CROW ** (97 minutes) MA
Darkly lit and full of digitally enhanced blood spurts, The Crow is a completely uninspired and unnecessary remake of the 1994 film (which you can see on Stan).
Rehab inmate Eric (Bill Skarsgard) escapes with girlfriend Shelley (FKA Twigs) and get in on several times before being murdered at the behest of Netherworld nasty Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), an evil figure whose immortality depends on the regular dispatching of innocent souls to Hell.
Eric finds himself stuck halfway to Hell in a place that resembles an abandoned industrial site where he is casually informed by another Netherworld figure, this one called Kronos (Sami Bouajila), that he is immortal.
However, Eric cares only about his girl whom he learns he can bring back to life by killing everyone who killed them. So, away he goes on a killing spree in which he does a lot of killing, mostly of henchpersons who had nothing to do with his killing – they’re all men, by the way, so where’s the gender equity policy here? – and whose bullets often penetrate his body producing fountains of blood but fail to kill him.
To be fair, there is sufficient visual style, cartoonish ultra-violence and gloomy, super-serious acting to satisfy Goth fiends (how many of them are left?) and those looking to pass the time, but the blood-soaked soiree does get a tad repetitive.
I SAW THE TV GLOW ** (100 minutes) M
Straight from the cinéma extérieur school comes this head scratcher about the addictive nature of TV as two nerds in the 1990s, Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith), share their addiction to a supernatural series called The Pink Opaque.
Things get off to an enticing start, but matters go from beguiling to baffling as their friendship and love for the show skips forward in time to the present day and beyond.
One senses a bit of a Donnie Darko vibe throughout and lovers of left-field cinema might enjoy the glossily mounted, disjointed narrative as much as writer/director Jane Schoenbrun clearly does, but others will doubtless clock it as meandering waffle.