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CINEMA Film round-up: April 9, 2020

MARIA DUARTE and ALAN FRANK review Storm Boy, Who You Think I Am, The Battle of Long Tan and The Iron Mask

Storm Boy (PG)
Directed by Shawn Seet
★★★★★

REMAKES, like sequels, are filmmaking staples. Unusually, here’s one that’s unmissable.

The classic 1976 film following lonely young Australian boy Michael who grows up on the largely uninhabited coastline of southern Australia and finds unexpected happiness bonding with three orphan pelicans he rescues is charmingly remade by director Shawn Seet.

Drawing on Justin Monjo’s genuinely touching screen adaptation of Colin Thiele’s classic novel and perfect casting, he’d delivered a delightful family film.

The story, told in flashback by the elderly Michael (Geoffrey Rush), follows his younger self's moving childhood and unexpected liaison with his feathered friends.

He’s flawlessly played by newcomer Finn Little and equally memorably as an adult by Rush and they create a character whose adult redemption is both credible and moving in a story uninfected by a Disney-style saccharine-saturated narrative.

Alan Frank

Who You Think I Am (15)
Directed by Safy Nebbou
★★★

IN WHO You Think I Am, the superlative Juliette Binoche stars as Claire, a 50-year-old old divorced teacher who plays a dangerous game by creating a fake profile on social media pretending to be a stunning 24-year-old in order to spy on her lover.

A middle-aged mother of two, she embarks on an online friendship with her ex’s flatmate Alex (Francois Civil) as the fictional Clare, who is everything she’s not — young and beautiful.

But it’s a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Claire finds that she and Alex are falling for each other and she is forced to compound one lie with another. And they are about to come back and bite her.

This is a very Gallic love triangle, in which Claire admits to her shrink that: “there is no greater love rival than one that does not exist.”

Driven by a nuanced performance from Binoche, there is more to this psychological romantic drama than meets the eye.

Maria Duarte

Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan (15)
Directed by Kriv Stenders
★★★★

THIS hair-raising war epic is based on the 1966 Battle Of Long Tan during the Vietnam war in which 108 Australian and New Zealand soldiers, outgunned and outmanned, took on the might of a 2,500-strong North Vietnamese force.

The film captures the sweat, terror and panic of an inexperienced unit of conscripts and volunteers with an average age of 20, most of whom had never seen combat until then.

Under the solid direction of Kriv Stenders, Danger Close packs a surprising emotional punch.

It stars Travis Fimmel as Major Harry Smith, the maverick commander of this platoon made up of the archetypal cocky second lieutenant (Mojean Aria), a wisecracking private (Daniel Webber) and his sweet and soulful colleague and best friend (Nicholas Hamilton), among others.

A hard-hitting drama, it puts you there on the ground, experiencing the fear and tension as they are encircled and hemmed in as they fight for their lives. Despite the risks, they were determined not to leave a man behind.

It’s a typical Western narrative of the Vietnam war, unusual in that the protagonists are not US troops.

MD

The Iron Mask (12A)
Directed by Oleg Stepchenko
★★

FEAR not. This isn’t another remake of Alexandre Dumas’s The Man in the Iron Mask but a sequel to 2014’s Forbidden Kingdom starring Jason Flemyng that apparently went straight to DVD.

It has Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charles Dance alongside Flemyng, who returns as cartographer Jonathan Green. He is commissioned to map the Russian Far East but ends up in China fighting dragons, black-magic wizardry and the Dragon King.

Although visually impressive its plot is a nonsensical mess, despite the recap at the beginning. But Chan and Schwarzenegger — as the warden of the Tower of London (!) — in action together are some compensation.

The problem is, they barely feature in this two-hour long extravaganza. By the end, you might be wishing that it was yet another remake of The Man in the Iron Mask.

MD

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