KAJILLIONAIRE : Tuesday 3rd November 2020.

'KAJILLIONAIRE' which I saw at my local independent cinema earlier this week, is an M-Rated American crime comedy drama film Directed and Written by Miranda July in only her third film making outing following 2005's 'Me and You and Everyone We Know' and 2011's 'The Future'. This film saw its World Premier screening at the Sundance Film Festival back in late January this year, was released Stateside in late September before going on VoD in the US from mid-October, having taken US$973K so far and garnered generally favourable Reviews. 

Two con artists, Robert Dyne (Richard Jenkins) and his wife Theresa (Debra Winger) have spent 26 years training their only daughter Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) to swindle, scam and steal at every turn in Los Angeles. The parents treat their daughter more as an accomplice to their petty thefts and scams rather than as a daughter with the family taking pride on being skimmers and scammers and living on the bare minimum income, unlike other people who worship money and try to be 'kajillionaires'. Whatever money they do scam gets split evenly three ways, and that's the way it's always been for as long as Old Dolio can remember. 

After a spate of bad luck, the family owe three months of back rent on their US$500 a month apartment, which is actually an abandoned and dilapidated office space attached to a soap factory. Fortunately, for them the owner of the soap factory, Stovik Mann (Mark Ivanir) and the adjacent office space seems fairly understanding and amenable to the family coming up with the back payments by this Friday, which then becomes Friday in two weeks time. 

This seems to be largely because the office space is in such a state of disrepair and because every day soap bubbles leak from the ceiling down the walls, which the family of three have to mop up with buckets and a tarp covering the floor. However, as time passes the family are unable to come up with rent money owing, so Old Dolio hatches a scam where they will travel to New York City, using tickets they won in a contest, and her parents will take her luggage, allowing Old Dolio to claim the airline has lost it, and so receive a US$1,575 insurance claim payout, which in turn will cover the rent. 

Following a fairly uneventful trip, Old Dolio and her parents return home on their scheduled flight. She is surprised to find them chatting and laughing with Melanie Whitacre (Gina Rodriguez), a young woman sat in the seat next to them, and even more surprised when they reveal their scam to her. At the baggage claims desk Old Dolio completes the necessary formalities for making a claim for her lost luggage, only to be told that it could take up to six weeks to process. She returns home and finds Melanie there too. 

Melanie proves to be more than accepting to their way of life and tells the family that she is an opticians assistant. She introduces them to her elderly and seemingly trusting clients, whom they rip off for small sums of cash in the form of cheques on which Old Dolio is adept at forging signatures. This goes awry when a dying man asks the family to pretend to be his family as he passes away alone at home. Old Dolio is shaken up by this experience, and is hurt when her parents immediately rush to comfort Melanie while ignoring Old Dolio herself. Using the money they have scammed from two of Melanie's aged clients, Robert decides to purchase a US$9,000 hot tub with all the bells and whistles for just a US$100 down payment. Back home, realising that Melanie has served her purpose as a partner in their schemes, the parents decide to initiate a threesome with Melanie in the hot tub (which is not plumbed in) which she reacts badly to. They are interrupted by Old Dolio, who is heartbroken to hear her mother call Melanie 'hun', which Theresa has never called her daughter by that term of endearment, and offers her the entire travel insurance money (which has subsequently come through in the form of a cheque from the insurance company) to do the same to her. Theresa refuses, but Melanie offers to call Old Dolio various terms of endearment in exchange for the US$1,575 which is accepted and so off the pair go to Melanie's apartment.

Instead of simply calling Old Dolio 'hun', Melanie offers the 'full-service' treatment to fulfil the emotional requirements which Old Dolio's parents had failed to meet down through the years. Some time later there is a knock on the door, and Old Dolio's parents have left her seventeen birthday presents outside the door to Melanie's apartment, with a note promising the eighteenth one at dinner the next evening. Old Dolio and Melanie attend dinner in an upmarket restaurant where Old Dolio's parents present her with a gold necklace and pendant and Robert stands up and gives an impassioned tearful speech and swears they will change their uncaring unloving hurtful ways

After their dinner, they return to Melanie's apartment and tuck Old Dolio into bed. Melanie, who has hidden the US$1,575 cash from the insurance money in her fuse box, remarks to Old Dolio that if her parents have stolen the money they must be monsters, while Old Dolio says if the money is still there, it is proof her parents have changed. She also comes up with a third possibility in that her parents will have left behind US$525, her third of the cash, signifying that this is the only way they can demonstrate their love for her. To Melanie and Old Dolio's surprise, the cash is all there.

The next day, Old Dolio wakes and goes into the lounge room to discover that Melanie has been completely robbed, with the entire furnishings of the apartment gone, except for the possessions in the bedroom. The only things remaining are Old Dolio's seventeen presents spread out on the floor where they were left, and, the US$1,575 is gone too. Realising the gifts are refundable because they all came from the same shop and all of the gifts still have the price tags intact with the barcode, Old Dolio and Melanie take them to the store to be returned. The total price of the items is US$485.05, until Melanie notices the gold chain and pendant hanging around Old Dolio's neck. She removes it and hands it over too for a refund, bringing the total to US$525, Old Dolio's share of the insurance money. Old Dolio and Melanie kiss as the film fades to black.

'Kajillionaire' is a quirky, whacky, unconventional and at times quite bizarre coming of age petty crime comedy film that poses more questions than it answers. For example, why did they choose to raise their only daughter without any connection, emotional attachment or endearment other than the purely transactional; why did a nice girl like Melanie stoop down to the depths of this family of no-hope grifters; why do the family live in a run down office building kipping in sleeping bags on the floor between the partitions and with soap suds running down the walls every day, and why give you only child a moniker like Old Dolio FFS???? I was frustrated by this film that goes round and round in circles until the emotional payoff at the end which felt undercooked and fails to deliver any real sense of closure. And, the film is short on laughs too. Wood is on top form here and is barely recognisable as the slant shouldered, track suit wearing, long haired and mumbling Old Dolio, and both Jenkins and Rodriguez more than hold their own in their supporting roles, but Winger is lost in the mix and for the most part sits on the periphery with little by way of contribution. One couple sat in the theatre with me at the time of my viewing walked out within the first twenty minutes never to return, which is something you don't see very often and I guess tells me that this film isn't for everyone, a fact also reinforced by the chatter I overheard as I was walking out from a group who had also sat through the film. 

'Kajillionaire' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

ANNIHILATION : Friday 16th March 2018.

I saw Alex Garland's latest Directorial and Screenwriting offering 'ANNIHILATION' from the comfort of my own sofa at home on Netflix late last week having been released on this streaming service only earlier that same week. Based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer this Sci-Fi horror film cost US$50M to make and has so far grossed US$30M in the US, Canada, UK and China where it had a theatrical release - in all other territories the film is released to subscribers of Netflix. Alex Garland is the writer of that acclaimed 1996 novel 'The Beach' made into a movie by Danny Boyle and starring Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000. He has since gone onto write the Screenplays for '28 Days Later', 'Sunshine', 'Never Let Me Go', 'Dredd' and 'Ex Machina' which was also his first Directing gig in 2015 and which received much Critical praise.

And so the film opens up with former US Army soldier Lena (Natalie Portman) and now a biologist specialising 'in the genetically programmed life cycle of a cell', being interviewed in a quarantined room surrounded by numerous hazmat suited wearing onlookers. She has recently returned from an expedition in to a constantly moving rainbow like atmospheric anomaly known as 'The Shimmer' from which she and her husband are the only survivors.

In flashback, we see Lena's Army Special Forces husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) return home without notice having been reported missing, presumed dead, on a top secret mission for a year now. He has no memory of that time during or since, and suddenly becomes very ill coughing up blood. In an ambulance together en route to hospital, government security agents intercept the ambulance and take them forcibly to 'Area X'. When Lena comes round she starts asking questions of Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) a psychologist, who explains that they are in a facility bordering 'The Shimmer' an electromagnetic field that has encompassed a swamp area on the southern US coast that has been steadily growing since its emergence three years previously. The area in question has been evacuated completely.

Ventress recruits Lena onto the next expedition project into The Shimmer and explains that several military missions have ventured into it and all have been fraught with disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma, including her husbands mission. Together with Ventress and Lena, the next mission set off into The Shimmer. Accompanying the two are Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez) a paramedic, Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson) a physicist, and Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny) a geologist and surveyor.

Once inside, their guidance systems and all telecommunications fail. Furthermore time seems to have no meaning as the team seem to forget extensive lapses in time. They reach an abandoned house partially submerged into a swamp. Josie ventures inside and is dragged below the water by an unseen force. Thrashing around in the water she is rescued by Lena. An alligator like creature emerges and confronts them all as Lena riddles it with automatic gun fire. A quick investigation by Lena seems to reveal that the alligator has been impossibly hybridised with a shark!

Moving onward with their journey deeper into The Shimmer, the Team come across an abandoned military base. In the mess hall they discover military style bedding, assault rifles and a rough map of the base with a makeshift guard duty roster. They also come across a memory card laid out on a table for those that come after. The memory card reveals evidence of Kane's expedition.

Later that night as Ventress stands guard with Lena who couldn't sleep, the perimeter fence is breached. The others wake with the commotion and venture outside to investigate. A mutated bear like creature grabs Cass in its jaws and drags her away screaming into the night. The next day the remaining four leave, and Lena breaks away to go in search of Cass. She returns later having found her dead body with her throat torn out.

The Team of four continue their journey toward the lighthouse, which was the location of where The Shimmer first manifested itself following a meteor hit. Josie and Anya want to turn back, but are reluctantly persuaded by Lena to keep going given how far they've come, the unexplained lapses in time they have experienced, and following the coastline back to Area X is their best and safest option. They come across an abandoned overgrown town filled with human shaped plants. Josie has a theory that The Shimmer is acting on all organisms like a prism refracts light. Each of the Team realise that they are changing both physically and mentally too, causing them to fear and mistrust one another.

Later that night, Anya attacks the other three and binds them all to chairs. She has discovered that Kane is Lena's husband and accuses them of conspiring to kill Cass. At that Anya hears Cass's screams for help outside the house and goes to investigate. The creature that killed Cass enters the house having mimicked Cass's final screams,  attacks and kills Anya, before turning attention on Lena still bound to a chair. Josie breaks free and fires several shots at close range into the creatures head.

Ventress leaves for the lighthouse alone having revealed that she is dying of cancer and has nothing to lose, leaving Josie and Lena to ponder turning back. Out in the gardens Josie goes walkabout out of sight of Lena. As Lena rounds a corner there is no sign of Josie - seemingly mutated into a human shaped plant. Lena continues the onward journey to the coast and the lighthouse hoping to find some answers to The Shimmer there.

Lena finds the lighthouse and enters. Inside she finds an incinerated corpse, a camcorder, and hole in the side wall of the lighthouse going below ground. She switches on the camcorder pointing at the burned out husk of a human being, to reveal footage of Kane raving on about the effects that The Shimmer has had on him and urging the viewer to find his wife before he blows himself up in ball of white flame with a phosphorus grenade. At that point a duplicate of Kane walks into view on the small screen.

Lena goes down the rabbit hole which opens up into a dark cavernous space. Inside is Ventress who looks at her blankly and exclaims that extraterrestrial forces are at work that will eventually engulf the world. At that Ventress disintegrates into a glowing orb of cosmic light that absorbs a droplet of blood from a cut on Lena's face. The entity that was Ventress forms into a humanoid being that begins to mimic every movement by Lena. She quickly scrambles back up the narrow corridor and out into the lighthouse interior to be greeted by the humanoid. It will not let her leave reproducing exactly every movement, every motion. Lena however, has an ace up her sleeve, and retrieving a phosphorus grenade from Kane's satchel places the grenade in the humanoids hands before fleeing. The creature explodes in a ball of white flame which quickly ignites the lighthouse setting it and the other alien constructs in the vicinity ablaze. At this point The Shimmer fades away.

As Lena's questioning comes to an end, she is reunited with her husband who has made a miraculous recovery since The Shimmer disappeared. They embrace and Lena whispers in his ear if he is the real Kane, to which he responds with an 'I don't think so'. He in turn asks her is she is the real Lena, to which she does not respond.

'Annihilation' has received generally positive Reviews so far, but has also been described as too complex and too intellectual for your typical movie going audience to really grasp. Sure the film is well paced, looks good, is intelligent, thought provoking, and has all the elements of a modern horror film - body horror, monsters, unexplained phenomenon, mimicking aliens, technological disruption, societal breakdown, mistrust and of course death most foul. And the strong and convincing principle cast of five intelligent and accomplished female protagonists in this era of 'Time'sUp' and '#MeToo' should have Hollywood chomping at the bit for its stance on female equality in the mainstream movies. But, despite all of this I was a little underwhelmed by the film, and perhaps a second viewing would make me think differently. The plot is fairly predictable, the two monsters that get screen time are not that far removed from the giant croc as seen in 1999's 'Lake Placid' and the giant boar terrorising the Australian outback in 1984's 'Razorback', and the final big reveal (if you can call it that!) is open ended and ambiguous, leaving the viewer to draw their own conclusions and debate after the credits have rolled. And, I certainly didn't find this as graphic, scary and trippy as some Reviewers seem to have. Garland wrote the Screenplay for this film long before VanderMeer had completed his two follow up novels in the series known as 'The Southern Reach trilogy' where each instalment provides a varying account of a different person's journey into 'Area X' and 'The Shimmer'. Certainly worth a look and keep an open mind.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

DEEPWATER HORIZON : Wednesday 5th October 2016.

I caught at an advance screening last week of 'DEEPWATER HORIZON', which for those who don't know, was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean. Built in 2001 in South Korea the rig was leased to the British Petroleum Company (BP) from 2001 until September 2013. In September 2009, the rig drilled the deepest oil well in history at a vertical depth of 10,700m in the Tiber Oil Field at Keathley Canyon block 102, approximately 400kms southeast of Houston, in 1,300m of water. On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, an uncontrollable blowout caused an explosion on the rig that killed eleven crewmen and ignited a fireball visible from 65kms away. The fire was inextinguishable and, two days later, on 22 April, the Deepwater Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing oil at the seabed and causing the largest oil spill in U.S. waters. The oil spill that resulted continued until 15th July 2010 when it was finally capped off. Subsequently, BP have made it known that they have had to pay of US$55B in clean up costs and fines and that aside from themselves, Halliburton, the services contractor, and Transocean as the rig operator were also at fault.

This film charts that story as Directed by Peter Berg and made for US$156M that takes place in the Gulf of Mexico with the events leading up to that massive human, social, ecological and financial disaster. Starring Mark Wahlberg as chief electrician and oil rigger Mike Williams (whom Peter Berg has Directed previously in 'Lone Survivor' and the upcoming 'Patriots Day') who returning from some family time with his wife Felicia (Kate Hudson) and ten year old daughter Sydney (Stella Allen) is looking at a three week shift on the Deepwater Horizon rig. He helicopter's in from the mainland, a journey that takes about 45 minutes, and upon arrival before he has even had time to get changed out of his civvies, he is thrust into an argument about rig safety tests and all the equipment malfunctions and maintenance requirements that need urgent attention. This sets the scene for the disaster that is to come a few short hours later!

Arriving with other shift starters there is Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) as the only female on the crew, Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) as the rig's chief supervisor and a couple of corporate type executives from BP Head Office arriving for a show & tell of the rigs operations and to determine why the drilling programme is 40+ days behind schedule at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. Soon afterwards we are introduced also to Caleb Holloway (Dylan O'Brien) as the rig's youngest crew member, and Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) as the BP engineer and rig supervisor, all joining the 120 or so crew members on board the rig.

Straight away it is clear that there are some hostilities between the guys on the rig employed to drill for oil and supervise the proceedings and ensure everything runs tightly and safely, and the suited and booted executives who are chasing their Profit & Loss statements, and asking questions of the financial kind. The executives don't like hearing the truth about safety concerns and inadequate testing regimes, when they have to answer to their superiors back in London. With drilling set to commence, Harrell seeks a test to check on the integrity of the cement casing of the seabed rig which the BP executives give the all clear for, but Harrell is adamant he wants the test. As so a 'negative pressure' test is conducted which initially causes concerns but Vidrine provides a scientific explanation for which Williams and Harrell find plausible. Still not satisfied that everything is as it should be, a second test is ordered which proves positive and so an order is given to commence drilling operations.

Williams and Harrell go about their business - Williams connects with his wife via a Skype call and Harrell freshens up in the shower, after being presented with a safety award and a bottle of Scotch for his exemplary safety record. By now the evening is wearing on. At 9:45pm during the last stages of drilling an exploratory well, a geyser of seawater erupted from the marine riser onto the rig, shooting over seventy metres into the air and up the rig. This was soon followed by the eruption of a slushy combination of drilling mud, methane gas, and water. The gaseous element of that slushy mixture quickly formed into a fully gaseous state and then ignited into a series of explosions that tore through the rig and its living quarters. The resultant firestorm quickly took hold ripping out vital technical, safety and communications infrastructure and killing several men in the process.

Whilst all hands seek to escape the firestorm and head for the lifeboats, Williams recovers from being blown backwards in the explosion but protected by a door that falls across him. Harrell, was showering when the explosion ripped through his quarters and he is semi-conscious, naked, covered in broken glass and shrapnel, and blinded. Williams searches him out, and together they make it to the Bridge amidst ongoing explosions all around the them and the collapse of the rigs infrastructure, where Fleytas is alerting the Coast Guard and Vidrine has just arrived looking the worse for wear too. With power fluctuating, Williams agrees to make an attempt to fire up the emergency generators with the help of a volunteering Holloway. After several attempts they succeed for long enough for Harrell to operate a kill switch so detaching the drill from the rig, and to reposition the rig itself. The final defence to prevent an oil spill, a device known as a blind shear ram, was also activated but failed to plug the well.

As moments tick away the majority make it to the life boats to be picked up by a nearby vessel that has been stationed close by to take on board all the mud sludge pumped up as a by product of the drilling process. In the end this leaves just Williams and Fleytas on the fiercely burning rig that is rapidly disintegrating all around them in balls of flame, big explosions and twisted metal. The surrounding sea is also ablaze, and so the two need to make it to the helipad to be sure of a clear jump into the sea below and so avoiding being engulfed by flame. After some hesitation on Fleytas part, Williams man handles her off the rig and into the boiling sea below - to be picked up moments later and taken to safety.

We then cut to the next day with the survivors from the rig all holed up in a hotel with a media frenzy going on around them. Williams, Harrell, Holloway, Vidrine, and Fleytas made it out alive luckily, thanks largely to the bravery of Williams, but eleven men were less fortunate. Williams breaks down emotionally in his hotel room and is comforted by Felicia and Sydney, before making his exit from the hotel. On his way out he meets Harrell, stitched and bandaged up and now visibility restored, and he exchanges knowing glances with Holloway too.

Here Wahlberg plays the grounded everyman thrust into extraordinary circumstances to help rescue some of his co-workers while his family and the world watch on as ultimately the Deepwater Horizon  disappears into the ocean into a deep fiery grave. Featuring a top cast who do not overplay the heroics, top notch effects and a story that is a believable, authentic telling of human courage in the face of adversity writ large. For a relatively short running time of under two hours, the action when it come is immersive, gripping and well executed. It takes you right into the centre of the action as though you, the viewer, are there back then on April 20th 2010. See it on the big screen - you won't be disappointed, and well worth the price of your ticket.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-