The Beta Test
Friday, November 12th, 9.45pm - Dendy Newtown
Jim Cummings, in his third feature, as both director (co-directed and co-written with fellow actor PJ McCabe) and lead actor, tackles infidelity and the dangerous allures that power and prestige can present. It’s also about losing control, how we’re all just raisins in a giant fruit salad. And some of the fruit is rotting.
Cummings plays Jordan Hines, a shark in a leading talent agency. He’s capable of baring very sharp teeth, and his assistant bears the wounds. Jordan is engaged to Caroline (Virginia Newcomb), but it looks like there’s potholes on the surface of their road-to-matrimony. Jordan receives a purple envelope with an invitation to cheat. He can’t help himself, and into the trap he falls.
Like the TV show Entourage, The Beta Test is a satire of the entertainment industry in the US, but its belly is much darker, and its tendrils probe mercilessly into the soft fabric of deceit. While not wholly successful in the merging of its black comedy, drama, thriller elements - Thunder Road is still the best example of Cummings’ writing, directing and acting - it showcases Cummings’ charismatic presence to a fault, his acting style now verging on histrionic. Imagine Jim Carrey, in motormouth mode, but slightly less cartoonish. There’s the cringe factor, and there’s the disturbing reflection of narcissism, each ramped up, to almost farcical level.
Zola
Friday, November 12th, 8.45pm - The Ritz, Saturday, November 13th, 8.30pm - Dendy Newtown
In October of 2015 a young black woman named A’Ziah “Zola” Wells unleashed a torrent of Tweets (148 of them) detailing her eye-opening experience with a “white bitch” named Jessica, and their weekend trip from Detroit to Tampa, Florida, to strip, with Jess’s bipolar boyfriend in tow, and a Nigerian pimp leading the fray.
The Tweets went viral, and five years later a feature has been made, because you can’t write that shit! Well, turns out, you can! Director Janicza Bravo has turned the Tweetstorm into a darkly comic thriller that feels like Springbreakers as observed by QT, or thereabouts. It features two of the best performances of the year from Taylour Paige, as feisty @Zola and Riley Keough as southern trash @Stefani (read: Jessica). There’s also terrific support from Nicholas Braun as Stef’s maudlin boyfriend, and Colman Domingo as X, the pimp with serious attitude. It’s a case of unreliable, but utterly compelling narration, with Stefani even chiming in halfway through, as if to quash Zola’s narrative, but only accentuate the absurdity.
I’ve read the Tweets, and admittedly, they were hard to follow, as the vernacular is so millennial and urban it hurts, but apparently the screenplay follows the thread rather faithfully. It’s a vibrant, funny, provocative study of deceit and manipulation, a cautionary tale, a portrait of the grimy world we know is seething just under the surface of social media, and the persuasive influence of the sex industry on impoverished minds. One of my faves for the year.
Pleasure
A Swedish/Dutch/French co-production, set in the glaring lights of the City of Angels (and demons). Or, to be more specific, the torn tinsel of the the Californian porn industry, where young girls are swallowed up and spat out an an alarming rate. It’s another cautionary tale, grim, graphic, and well-made, and while it doesn’t offer anything new, there’s a curious dark charm.
19-year-old Linnéa (Sofia Kappel) has left her quiet life in Sweden to pursue that of a porn star in America. She has lofty aspirations of being the next big thing. She’s got roommates in the same boat. She’s got an agent getting her low-rung gigs, but she is eyeing up the glamour girls, and is determined to wear those bedazzled heels. She’ll even allow herself to be treated like absolute shit to get there. Does she get there?
Swedish director Ninja Thyberg has turned her 2013 short into a feature, and she uses mostly real porn players playing fictional versions of themselves. The decision actually works, and performances are solid. Kappel is especially good, pretty when made-up, very girl-next-door in the rough of the morning. Her lower register speaking voice, with a Euro-American acccent, gives her character added appeal. It’s unpleasant in many of the porn scenes (the film’s title toying definitely with irony), and the ending isn’t surprising, but the way Thyberg weaves her way, lingering with a kind of mumblecore vibe, provides the film with an edge, and a strong sense of self.
Wyrmwood: Apocalypse
The boys are back in town. Well, to be precise, they’re back in the rural wastelands of a zombie-ravaged Oz, burning rubber, pumping shotguns, blasting heads apart, generally causing havoc, and saving the world, or at least a few folk, from the clutches of the methane-spouting undead. It’s the hugely anticipated sequel to the Roache-Turner brothers Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead instant cult classic Wyrmwood. Only this time, it didn’t take them nearly four years to make the movie, and it eats the first one for breakfast (well, maybe not for breakfast, but it gives it a serious run for its money).
Rhys (Luke McKenzie) is a soldier with skills to burn. He’s holed up in his own makeshift fortress on a field, keeping a bunch of zombies trussed up, servicing his mechanical needs, whilst he keeps the chomping hordes at bay. He delivers human survivors and/or scum to the Surgeon General (Nicolas Boshier), in the hope a cure will be found. But the Surgeon is a rogue quack, and the military aid is duplicitous. It’ll take the return of infected Brooke (Bianca Bradey), warrior Barry (Jay Gallagher), and two indigenous mercenaries, Maxi (Shantae Barnes-Cowan) and Grace (Tasia Zalar), to shake up the party. And boy, it’s a hell of party. Prepare to get splattered.
There was a scrappy DIY charm about the first Wyrmwood flick, much like the early films of Peter Jackson, a kind of “fuck you” attitude, but also, a genuine, “here rip the scab of this tinnie, mate”. With director Kiah Roache-Turner’s second movie, Necrotronik, he tasted the studio picture, and so with Apocalypse, he’s back to guerrilla basics, with all the control, and an even sharper eye and teeth. This is a relentless ride, with a pounding score from Michael Lira, suitably desaturated, but striking cinematography from Tim Nagle, awesome production design from Esther Rosenberg, and fantastic special effects work from Mariel McClorey and team. Best damn Aussie flick in yonks. See it in the cinema if you can!
