SEPTEMBER 5 : Tuesday 11th February 2025.

I saw the M Rated 'SEPTEMBER 5' at my local independent movie theatre this week and this historical drama thriller is Co-Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Tim Fehlbaum in only his third feature film Directorial outing following 'Hell' in 2011, and 'Tides' (aka 'The Colony') in 2021. This film saw its World Premiere screening at the Venice International Film Festival in late August last year, went on wide release in the US in mid-January and was released here in Australia last week. It has so far grossed US$4.5M, has received generally favourable critical reviews and has garnered eleven award wins and another twenty-six nominations from around the awards and festivals circuit. 

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, the ABC Television Sports crew presides over the coverage of the relatively uneventful Games. When Mark Spitz wins his record breaking seventh gold medal in the swimming event over a West German competitor, ABC President Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) dramatises the win by cutting to his competitor's reaction and planning to introduce the subject of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany during a live interview with Spitz. Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), the Head of ABC Operations, questions the decision, with Arledge reminding him of the importance of emphasising emotions over politics to create an effective broadcast.

Later that night, gunshots are heard in the distance. The crew listens in on Police broadcasts, aided by Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), the crew's local translator, and gradually learn that a terrorist attack is unfolding in the Olympic Village no more that 200 metres away from the ABC studio. It is reported that militant group Black September has broken into the apartment housing the Israeli team and taken eleven athletes hostage, demanding the release of some two hundred Palestinian prisoners. 

Seeing an opportunity for a compelling story, Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), the head of the control room, quickly mobilises the crew to switch the coverage of the unfolding hostage crisis instead. Along with Arledge, he takes practical steps to turn the story into a gripping news sensation, negotiating more advantageous time slots and even forging an identification badge so that a crewmember can access the now-restricted Olympic village. The crew are mostly enthusiastic and confident that the whole situation will be resolved quickly and efficiently, but a dismayed Bader reminds Mason and Arledge that the lives of real people are at stake and warns them of the impact they might have on the terrorists' actions.

The crisis deepens due to failed negotiations and mistakes from a largely unprepared and under resourced local Police force. Countless global news stations vie for the latest news and brief images of the standoff, prompting Mason to become more competitive with covering the story. At one point, the crew realises that the terrorists are watching their programme beamed live to every TV in the Olympic Village and around the world, which leads to an attempted rescue failing. Local law enforcement officers storm the control room and threaten the crew at gunpoint to turn off the broadcast, but Mason ultimately refuses and Arledge tells them in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of his studio. The terrorists are eventually transported by helicopter and bus with their hostages to the military airport of Furstenfeldbruck, located some thirty kilometres from Munich, and Mason sends Marianne there for coverage, cynically including a sound technician in the event a shootout occurs.

Marianne, at the airport with other news crews, reports to Mason that the hostages are said to be free, which is apparently confirmed by a German public service television broadcaster. Bader urges Mason to hold off on reporting until the information is confirmed by another source, but Mason is unwilling to lose the scoop and has the news announced, albeit with the caveat that reports remain ongoing. Bader is furious but is pacified when Mason receives an official facsimile soon afterwards claiming confirmation from the German Chancellor. As the crew celebrates with cold beers all round, Mason pivots to planning interviews with the survivors, and Bader celebrates with Arledge in his office. As he watches a live, televised ABC interview with Conrad Ahlers, acting as a spokesperson for the German government, Ahlers speaks of the resolution to the crisis in an optimistic future tense. Realising that the reports the studio received were all incorrect, a horrified Arledge contacts an inside source and learns that the rescue attempt failed and all the hostages were in fact shot and killed.

Mason has ABC Sports Anchor Jim McKay correct the live broadcast, and state the real outcome. Arledge nevertheless praises him for an excellent job, while Marianne mourns that even more innocent lives were lost on German soil, and she and countless other reporters had been at the airport, intent only on getting a scoop while lives were being lost. The crew heads home, and after shutting down all the equipment and closing up, Mason ponders over the studio's bulletin board featuring photos of the eleven victims.

In a closing epilogue, we learn that eleven Israeli athletes and coaches, one German Police Officer and five Black September members were killed on that fateful day. Further text reveals that the event was the first time a terrorist attack had been broadcast on live television around the world and was viewed by a global audience of approximately 900 million, more than the 1969 moon landing, making it one of the most viewed broadcasts in history.

'September 5' tells the story purely and squarely from the perspective of the ABC Sports coverage team and for the most part from the claustrophobic confines of the temporary studio from which they broadcast to the world. It's a tight, tense and taut telling of a day marked in infamy as a group of television journalists and those working behind the scenes in the studio, laid the very foundations of televised media coverage that we have come to take for granted today. It is a well crafted film, a compelling story, well acted (particularly by Magaro and Benesch), and with spot on production values that do justice to the time and place, but still I was left wanting a little more meat on them bones. For instance, more perspective on the eleven Israeli hostages turned victims, or the political shenanigans going on behind closed doors, or the failings of the local Police on the ground . . . you get the picture. That said, the films brisk running time of just 94 minutes, and the authenticity of combining actual archival footage into the films narrative all add up to a film worthy of your cinema ticket price, but it won't be for everyone.

'September 5' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

OVERLORD : Tuesday 18th December 2018.

I saw 'OVERLORD' this week, and here we have an American WWII horror offering that spins a new slant on the historical D-Day Landings. Directed by Western Australian Julius Avery, whose only other feature so far has been 'Son of a Gun' in 2014, this film is Co-Produced by J.J. Abrams and is set on the eve of D-Day. Initially thought to be the fourth instalment in the 'Cloverfield' series, this rumour was subsequently denied by Abrams earlier in 2018. The film was released in the US on 9th November, cost US$38M to make, has so far grossed US$42M and has generated mixed or average Reviews so far.

On the eve of D-Day in early June 1944, American paratroopers are preparing to drop in behind enemy lines to penetrate the walls of a fortified church and destroy a radio transmitter. When their plane is shot down the five remaining soldiers Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell), Private Boyce (Jovan Adepo), sniper Tibbet (John Magaro), photographer Chase (Iain De Caestecker) and Dawson (Jacob Anderson) must continue on foot.

When Dawson inadvertently steps on a landmine and is killed, the remaining four must continue steadfastly onward. In doing so they encounter French woman Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) who agrees to escort the group to their ultimate destination. They learn en route that Chloe lives with her younger brother Paul (Gianny Taufer) and her aunt who was the subject of Nazi experiments in the vicinity of the church and has consequently been horribly disfigured and is in serious ill health. The group arrive at Chloe's home in the village where the church is located, and take time to take stock of their munitions and rest up, agreeing to start their mission at 3:00am, and have the church destroyed to rubble by 6:00am - the planned time of the commencement of the allied forces landings on the coast of Normandy.

Corporal Ford orders Tibbet and Chase to check on the planned rendezvous site in the event that any of the other soldiers from their downed aircraft survived and made it. Meanwhile, Ford and Boyce hang back while a routine inspection is conduced on the household by a Nazi patrol, led by SS Hauptsturmführer Wafner (Pilou Asbaek). The two soldiers remain motionless upstairs in the attic looking down on the unfolding events below through cracks in the floorboards. When Wafner attempts to rape Chloe, Boyce intervenes and they take him prisoner, with Ford rendering the Nazi Officer unconscious with a swift headbutt.

Boyce goes off in search of Tibbet and Chase to the rendezvous point, but en route comes close to the perimeter fence of the church. There he sees a cart load of naked disfigured bodies all lined up and torched several time with two flamethrowers, overseen by some official looking doctor type wearing spectacles and a white coat. Boyce is chased down by a very angry dog, and hot on his heels he manages to evade attack by jumping into the back of a truck containing the dead bodies of several of his paratrooper colleagues. The truck passes through the heavily fortified gates of the church, and the bodies are unloaded by two German soldiers. Boyce escapes the truck and begins to snoop around. He comes across a lab where seemingly bizarre experiments are being undertaken on humans.

Boyce is shocked and horrified by what he has witnessed and notices a black tar like substance that is rising up from under ground that seems to be distilled into some kind of serum, which is being injected into the less than willing patients. Boyce takes a sample of the serum already prepped up in a syringe, and rescues Rosenfeld (Dominic Applewhite) a fellow paratrooper being prepped up for experimentation, who was captured by the Nazis. The pair escape the church building through a waste tunnel.

Boyce and Rosenfeld make it back to Chloe's house, where Rosenfeld has his wounds attended to. Wafner refuses to explain what the serum is when questioned and as a result is strung up and gets a serious beating at the hands of Ford. As the squad prepare their assault on the church, Wafner attempts to escape, shooting and killing Chase in the process. Boyce is distraught by his death, and seeing the syringe close to hand injects Chase with the serum. Within minutes the serum brings Chase back to life, but he immediately begins to mutate, showing inhuman strength, a resistance to rapid close quarter gunfire, and turns hostile, forcing Boyce to pulverise his head with his rifle butt to stop him. In the ensuing chaos, Wafner escapes taking Paul as hostage, although he sustains a serious gunshot wound to his face by Ford in the subsequent shootout.

With time quickly ticking down the zero hour of 6:00am, Boyce convinces Ford that their priority must be to destroy the underground laboratories. So Tibbet and Rosenfeld are dispatched to create as much mayhem as they can at the main entrance and kill as many pesky Nazi's as the can possibly mow down between them, leaving Ford, Boyce and Chloe to enter the church through the same waste tunnel that Boyce had fled from earlier. Ford and Boyce split up to plant explosive charges - Ford to the radio control room and Boyce to the labs, while Chloe goes off in search of brother Paul.

While setting the charges, Ford is attacked by a mutated Wafner, who had previously injected himself with a potent mix of untested serums, which gave him near superhuman strength, the ability to heal his wounds while driving him increasingly insane. A fight breaks out and Wafner this time gains the upper hand. Boyce intervenes and is able to distract Wafner, so allowing the now badly injured Ford to inject himself with a sample of the serum.

They fight again, but the combination of Boyce and Ford this time forces Wafner down the pit where the compound was discovered courtesy of a gas bottle explosion. Wafner is down but he's not out, and in the ensuing minutes it takes Wafner to climb out of the pit, a badly injured Ford forces Boyce to leave him behind to finish what he started. Ford ignites a fuse to a stick of gelignite and waits for an advancing Wafner and now a number of other Nazi soldiers risen from the dead to approach, before kaboom!

Boyce successfully blows up the laboratory and with it the radio tower and the church escaping just in time for the church and radio tower to collapse behind him in a ball of flame and rubble. Following the destruction of the said target building, Boyce reports in to his commanding officer who has set up a base in the village, that is was Ford's decision to lay the explosives inside the church rather than outside to ensure its destruction, while electing to not mention the serum or the lab as Ford believed that neither side should have ownership of such a product. The officer in charge accepts Boyce's recounting of the story, and advises him that his company, what remains, will be reassigned to a new company as the war rages on.

'Overlord' starts out as any WWII actioner might, with a plane carrying its cargo of Uncle Sam's paratroopers flying over enemy lines at night with a clear cut mission in mind. As the tension mounts and the sky all around turns orange as the enemy anti-aircraft fire explodes in comic book colours of that era creating mayhem aboard and downing a squadron of airborne troop carriers wiping out too many lives in an instant, you just get a sense that this film is gonna be in yer face! And this where the normalcy of a war film of the modern era comes to an end, giving way to a horror Sci-Fi mash-up that delivers on the body horror, the gore and the nigh on immortal almost indestructible Nazi soldiers and French locals that are the subjects of clandestine underground laboratory experiments. The film is good fun, at times intense, often completely insane, the FX are well executed and it provides an alternate D-Day Landing account possibly like none you have ever seen before . . . . which is no bad thing! That said, it was not quite the horror gore fest I was imagining, and Boyce as the lead character seems as indestructible as those other antagonists all around him and manages to stumble around the old church with all its hidden secrets for the duration with nary a scrape. That said, for lovers of WWII actioners, blood and gore, wanton death and destruction underpinned by a reasonably tightly woven (alternative) story, then this is the film for you.

'Overlord' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE BIG SHORT : Saturday 6th February 2016

I saw 'THE BIG SHORT' over the weekend and loved this quirky fascinating insight into the financial crisis that rocked world economies back in late 2008 - the effects of which have only begun to subside in more recent years. This is a biographical tongue in cheek comedy drama written for the big screen and Directed by Adam McKay, and based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis about the build up of the housing market from 2006 to 2008 and the mortgage bubble wrapped around it. The film cost US$28M to make and so far has grossed US$105M since its release at Christmas time, and here in Australia on 14th January. 'The Big Short' is nominated for five Academy Awards and five BAFTA's in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Christian Bale, Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay, with decisions pending. It was nominated for four Golden Globes but failed to win any amidst stiff competition.

To the average man in the street the financial crisis and the events leading up to it eight or so years ago now will be a fading memory and a bunch of financial gobbledegook that would be almost impossible to get your head around, or understand the banking speak that goes with the territory down on Wall Street. What Director and scribe Adam McKay has done though is bring together a strong ensemble cast, witty dialogue, and almost a beginners guide to the financial crisis delivered by an overarching narration delivered by one of the central characters, Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), and several guest appearances delivered by named personalities to explain things in lay-mans terms when it all begins to get too much - Margot Robbie in a bath tub sipping Champagne, Anthony Bourdain in his kitchen cooking fish off-cuts, and Selena Gomez at a blackjack table. Cleverly done!

What we have here is Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale) playing a no-personality, anti-social, eccentric glass eyed hedge fund manager who is a whizz with numbers but little else and from behind his computer screens in 2005 determined that at some near future date the U.S. housing market propped up on sub-prime loans would collapse with catastrophic effects. Realising that he could potentially make big profits when that day inevitably comes, he persuades the big banks and financial institutions up & down Wall Street, to bet against the housing market when the bottom drops out of it as he predicts. He lobbies six financial institutions who all laugh and scoff at the absurdity of his proposals believing that the housing market is 'the bedrock upon which our great nation is built', and such an event has never occurred before in all of American history. Thinking that this is easy money the six firms all take his money amounting to a collective US$1.3B. All that Burry now has to do is sit back and wait for that day to come, all the while defending his actions to his Clients and his Board who have no faith at all in a housing market collapse and begin to withdraw their investments from his funds as he sees the value of his business steadily decline over the ensuing months.

In the meantime, Vennett is providing us with voice-over narrative to explain to us mere mortals what is going on here. Vennett however, has caught wind of Burry's actions one night in a bar from a banker celebrating a great win earlier that day from a client wanting to bet against the housing market . . . can you imagine the absurdity of that, and easy money as far as the Banker is concerned, so pass the Dom! Vennett, though can see that there is more to this than meets the eye and so digs further and realises that Burry is right. He then decides to take a piece of that pie too and invests for himself. As a result of a misplaced call to the offices of hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell, putting in another great turn playing is straight and serious as in 'Foxcatcher'), Vennett pitches what he knows to Baum for a potential bonus come pay day which could be huge if Baum is prepared to invest and go large. Baum does some further digging and realises too that there is something in this and jumps in with both feet having realised that groups of low level dodgy housing loans are lumped together and awarded AAA ratings because the rating agencies are dishonest fraudsters themselves who have no integrity what so ever and are also driven by greed and profits just like the banks, investors and financiers.

Meanwhile, two novice investors Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro), who operate out of their garage office at home have successfully turned US$110K four years ago into US$30M today, pick up a paper of Vennett's by coincidence when they pitch themselves to one of the Wall Street's big six and get knocked back very unceremoniously. They study Vennett's unsuccessful pitch to the bank and realise too that there is something in it, and so enlist the support of friend and mentor Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), an eccentric banker who became disillusioned with Wall Street and turned his back on that system several years earlier. Rickert can see it too, and so agrees to help the two investor friends and opens some doors on Wall Street for them, and provide the advice & guidance needed.

As 2007 comes and goes the default on the sub-prime market begins to escalate with the writing on the wall becoming more clear for our four key protagonists, although all does not going according to plan as the power brokers on Wall Street and the Ratings Agencies seem to ignore the inevitable. They begin to feel increasingly uneasy but hold their ground as more stupidity, absurdity and denial on the part of the banks is realised too. At the same time though, they all begin to realise that when the inevitable crash does come they are set to profit immensely whilst millions of others will not. And so within a few short months the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan with the demise of several long standing Wall Street financial institutions and many of its fat cat investment bankers, mortgage brokers, and hedge fund managers now joining the unemployment queue.

In the final scenes we learn that following September 2008 when the financial crash came eight million people across the U.S.lost their homes and six million lost their jobs. Burry turned a 489% profit from his investment as the market did exactly what he had predicted three years earlier. Baum made US$1B for his company and US$200M personally, Shipley and Geller made US$80M and Vennett received his US$47M bonus cheque, thanks very much. Do we applaud their efforts and their foresight in the light of such a crisis - no, we do not; and do we feel sorry for them - no, we do not. Those few that profited do not celebrate their good fortune here having seen it coming while 99.99% of others could not, or chose not to. The weight & magnitude of the crisis had such far reaching consequences that no one could have foreshadowed what a messed up, stupid, absurd and corrupt system they work in at the expense of the millions in that mortgage sector who were for the most part largely unsuspecting and ignorant of what they were buying into.

A compelling film that grabbed my attention from the opening scenes. Bale, Carell and Gosling are standouts here with sound support from others in lesser roles including Marisa Tomei and Rafe Spall. Fascinating insights into what otherwise could have been a very dry, dull documentary style film, that McKay and his strong assembled cast deliver with relatively easy to follow narrative, relateable characters who all have their flaws, sharp and witty dialogue that helps the flow of understanding, and an engaging, entertaining engrossing take on a subject that touched us all in some way in very recent memory. I wonder what lessons were really learned from it!

   

-Steve, at Odeon Online-