On the verge: Rose Byrne in ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’.
IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU **** (113 minutes) M
The superbly serrated performance from Rose Byrne anchors a barbed, stress-saturated portrait of a suburban mother who is being stretched in all directions.
Byrne plays Linda, a therapist whose life is in such disarray she needs counselling from the therapist in the next office.
Coping with a seriously ill daughter, an absent husband, a leaking ceiling, a cheap hotel and bouts of hallucinations Linda’s travails are equally engrossing and distressing.
While it’s not an easy sit, writer/director Mary Bronstein skilfully counterpoints a rough-edged docu-drama style with spurts of surrealism. An excellent film.
THE RUNNING MAN *1/2 (133 minutes) MA
Hot on the heels of Predator: Badlands comes another unwelcome incursion into the Arniverse as Edgar Wright attempts to reboot and upscale the 1987 action classic.
Needing money to support his slum-dwelling family, hot-headed, big-mouthed, unemployable Ben (Glen Powell in a truly awful shout’n’swear performance) enters a popular TV show where he has to run for his life for 30 days to score a big cash prize.
Wright has knocked out a few good films (Shaun of the Dead; Hot Fuzz; Baby Driver; The World’s End) but seems completely at sea here with annoying stop-start pacing and unexciting action sequences bearing the frenzied edit-per-second hallmark of the artless mulch that has been assaulting our glazzies for decades now. And why does it take so damn long for the only interesting supporting character (Emilia Jones) to enter the frame?
And there’s nothing at all in the film that justifies why – in the name of bladder tolerances – the thing runs one second over 90 minutes. The original, directed by Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky from Starsky and Hutch), clocked in at a lean 100. There ought to be a law.
NOW YOU SEE ME: NOW YOU DON’T **1/2 (113 minutes) M
Reunited for what will hopefully be a graceful final curtain, the old team is joined by some new blood as they plan to boost a diamond from a South African mining magnate (Rosamund Pike). There are spots of cleverness in this CGI-heavy caper and Jesse Eisenberg continues to be highly likeable but the formula is clearly wearing thin. Lovers of Morgan Freeman – hey, who isn’t? – need note that his presence here is rather brief.
YURLU|COUNTRY **** (79 minutes) PG
Few documentaries have chronicled the personal cost of indigenous exploitation as poignantly as this quietly powerful, sobering and – it need be said – fair-minded account of the damage asbestos mining has has on a small community.
Former park ranger and rights advocate Maitland Parker is the character focus as we witness his fight for some degree of respect from corporations that merrily mined away without bothering much with consultation.
The story unfolds in an unforced manner, with Parker’s battle with cancer accounting for a clutch of scenes that are truly heart-breaking. In one remarkable sequence the cameras are allowed into the doctor’s office where unwelcome news awaits.
Rather than overtly editorialise, director Yaara Bou Melhem (who co-wrote with Parker, a producer) wisely lets the facts, interviews and images carry the emotion and the message, which is both non-political and unambiguous.
With great aerial photography, perhaps the most infuriating sights are the noxious tailings that have poisoned the place and the people, sitting on the landscape in giant ridges subject to the elements.
A truly stirring work.
The film screened at MIFF25 when this review first appeared.