Film Review of the Week

Horror

M3GAN (15)

Review: For decades, toy companies have jostled for supremacy on Christmas wish lists with must-have hi-tech companions such as Tickle Me Elmo, Tamagotchi, Furby, Teksta the Robotic Puppy, Robosapien and Go Go Pet Hamsters. Innovation is expensive but if a toy can spark the imaginations of the most powerful consumers – children – then an eye-watering price tag is largely irrelevant as demand outstrips supply and desperate parents initiate bidding wars on auction websites. M3GAN is a campy horror thriller from the twisted minds of Saw creator James Wan and screenwriter Akela Cooper, which pits an artificially intelligent, life-like doll costing 10,000 US dollars against its human creator and the toy company that intends to monetise the mind-blowing invention.

Director Gerard Johnstone’s blood-soaked battle of wits borrows circuitry from Child’s Play, Westworld, Jurassic Park and The Terminator to caution against a modern society that allows touchscreens and sleek technology to impinge on meaningful face-to-face interactions. The eponymous android is deadly serious about carrying out its primary directive – to protect a biometrically paired child from harm – and Cooper’s script introduces thinly sketched supporting characters that are ripe for slaughter, including a bullying boy (Jack Cassidy) and an inconsiderate neighbour (Lori Dungey). Violence ping pongs between dizzying extremes.

The murder of a household pet happens off screen while gratuitous torture sequences demand icky make-up effects that leave nothing to the imagination. The witless architect of this stomach-churning carnage is Gemma (Allison Williams), who is working on the latest iteration of PurrPetual Petz for toy company Funki in Seattle when she learns that her sister Ava (Kira Josephson) and brother-in-law Ryan (Arlo Green) have been killed in a car accident. The couple’s nine-year-old daughter Cady (Violet McGraw) is sole survivor of a head-on collision with a snowplough and Gemma applies for temporary protective custody of her grief-stricken niece.

With a design deadline looming that demands her attention, Gemma entrusts Cady to a high-tech doll called M3GAN (Model 3 Generative ANdroid), which has malfunctioned in development and needs to win the approval of her profit-hungry boss David (Ronny Chieng). Gemma’s co-worker Tess (Jen Van Epps) and child therapist Lydia (Amy Usherwood) express their concerns about Cady forming a strong emotional attachment to M3GAN but wise words fall on deaf ears.

M3GAN dispatches clearly signposted victims with gurgles of macabre humour and sufficient gore to warrant a 15 certificate. Screenwriter Cooper adds lines of sassy coding to the doll’s core data as the body count rises, climaxing with an inevitable showdown between inventor and malevolent creation. It’s game over for originality from the snow-laden opening sequence but Johnstone’s picture meets the demand for thrills and spills with a steady supply of ghoulish giggles.

Drama

Tar (15)

Review: When we first encounter celebrated orchestra conductor Lydia Tar, played with Oscar-worthy gusto and a panoply of nervous micro-tics by Cate Blanchett, she is eye-masked in the calfskin seat of a private jet, blissfully unaware that her awkward, hunched slumber is being livestreamed on a smartphone over the plane’s wifi. A snarky text exchange between two unnamed people during this unauthorised handheld recording tells us everything we need to know about Tar and the people in her orbit, gossiping about the maestro’s fitful bouts of sleep. “You mean she has a conscience,” jibes the recipient of the video. “Maybe,” curtly counters the sender.

Perception and reality clash like angry cymbals throughout writer-director Todd Field’s masterful and discordant symphony to shifting power dynamics, silent abuses of privilege and cancel culture. Every scene is exquisitely calibrated to set nerves on edge: a woman’s anguished screams piercing the air during a morning run through Lietzensee Park in Berlin, the ticking of a metronome that mysteriously comes to life in a study cupboard, the hum of a fridge insisting to be opened.

Blanchett is ferocious, commanding the same unwavering attention as her morally flawed character, who breathes deeply an air of self-importance but is just as covetous and hypocritical as anyone else on screen. In one breath, she scolds an aspiring conductor (Mark Strong) for wanting to copy her notations for Mahler’s Symphony No 3 (“There is no glory for a robot. Do your own thing”) and in the next, she purchases the same striking red handbag that she has just admired on the arm of a sycophantic fan.

We are neatly introduced to the formidable achievements of Lydia Tar (Blanchett) via an onstage interview with celebrated writer Adam Gopnik (playing himself): Harvard graduate, one of only 15 people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony competitively, and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Lydia is about to begin rehearsals of Mahler’s Symphony No 5 with the players, led by her wife Sharon (Nina Hoss), and intends to replace assistant conductor Sebastian Brix (Allan Corduner) with fresh blood. When disturbing accusations surface about the maestro and a troubled graduate of her academy (Sylvia Flote), every aspect of her life comes under intense scrutiny.

Tar is a visually arresting study of creative genius in flux, emboldened by Blanchett’s tour-de-force portrayal of a woman who must fall hard and far to acknowledge any bruises. Director Field and cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister duet on elegantly framed vignettes that ebb and flow like movements of a symphony, reaching unexpected yet thrilling crescendos sometimes when we least expect them. “God watches all of us,” Lydia warns a little girl, who is bullying Sharon’s six-year-old adopted daughter (Mila Bogojevic). When His gaze falls on Lydia, she will be harshly judged.