Film Review of the Week

Romance

Materialists (15)

Review: In 2023, playwright Celine Song transitioned with consummate ease from stage to screen with her stunning directorial debut Past Lives, which earned her Academy Award nominations for best picture and best original screenplay. Drawing inspiration from her personal history with screenwriter husband Justin Kuritzkes, Song conjured a masterful meditation on romantic opportunities – missed and seized – and the ripple effect, many years later. She remains fixated on matters of the heart with an emotionally charged menage a trois featuring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, which toys with a traditional rom-com premise – a professional matchmaker who cannot find her own soulmate – and charts a storytelling course that is disappointingly evident from the outset.

Song’s ear for pithy dialogue is almost as acute as her first film (“You’re not ugly, you just don’t have money”) and she elicits winning performances from the central trio in New York locations that could almost be one block across from the wistful navel-gazing of Past Lives. Except in Materialists, the stakes don’t feel as high when a successful single woman’s greatest anxiety is deciding between two handsome suitors vying for her fickle affections. A meaty subplot involving a matchmaking client (Zoe Winters) who is cruelly robbed of her rose-tinted glasses adds timely social commentary to the elegant mix.

Failed actress Lucy Mason (Johnson) is one of the star employees of the Adore matchmaking agency in New York City. She has eight weddings attributed to her masterful meddling and another client, Charlotte (Louisa Jacobson), is poised to walk down the aisle with perfect match Peter (Fernando Belo). By her own admission, Lucy is “voluntarily celibate”, preferring the life of a singleton after her previous long-term relationship with actor boyfriend John (Evans) imploded because of his precarious finances.

At Charlotte and Peter’s wedding, Lucy meets the groom’s brother Harry (Pascal). She politely rebuffs his amorous advances, suggesting he should enrol with Adore. Harry persists and Lucy agrees to go on one date on condition that he signs up with the agency after their lunchtime liaison. On paper, in terms of looks, financial acumen and height, Harry is an elusive “unicorn” so why does Lucy continue to chew on her unresolved feelings for John?

Sly, charming and elegantly constructed, Materialists gently addresses contemporary concerns about loneliness and commitment in an age of right-swipe selection of the fittest. Johnson, Evans and Pascal are well-matched and generate on-screen heat in their respective couplings but the resolution to Lucy’s dilemma is preordained. Next to the deep-rooted yearning of Past Lives, Song’s second picture feels lightweight but does provoke animated debate about whether independent modern women can afford to marry for love. Happiness has a price tag.

Action

Nobody 2 (15)

Review: Released in 2021, Nobody was a surprisingly entertaining and gratuitously violent caper from John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad, which reinvented Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk as a mild-mannered family man with a killer past. Indonesian filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto slides into the director’s chair for a bone-crushing sequel co-written by Kolstad and Aaron Rabin. Assassin for hire Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) is working himself into the ground to repay a $30 million debt owed to the criminal organisation.

On the verge of burnout, he travels to Wild Bill’s Majestic Midway and Waterpark with wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), children Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath) and his father David (Christopher Lloyd). A minor skirmish with town bullies puts Hutch in the cross hairs of corrupt theme-park operator Henry (John Ortiz) and duplicitous sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks). Despite his best effort to lay low and embrace a quieter life, Hutch returns to bad habits and doles out rough justice to protect what little remains of his vacation.

Reviews of Nobody 2 are embargoed until Wednesday afternoon. Check back later in the week for our full review.

Horror

Together (15)

Review: Mid-1990s girl power balladry provides a disconcertingly cheerful yet creepily effective soundtrack to stomach-churning body horror in Together. Starring real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco, who also take producer credits, writer-director Michael Shanks’ trippy debut feature heads into the woods for an increasingly nasty surprise involving a subterranean pool of water that, when drunk, irresistibly pulls two people towards each other until their bodies physically fuse into one hideously gnarled organism.

The nauseating practical and digital effects begin tamely with the couple’s legs sticking together, as if they have been accidentally superglued at the calves, and quickly escalate in wince-inducing intensity with an impromptu bout of intimacy in a toilet cubicle that visualises, in excruciating detail, how love can tear us apart. The script’s emotionally and physically vulnerable scenarios, laced with morbid humour, require repeated on-screen nudity and are a testament to Brie and Franco’s unflinching trust in each other and their audacious first-time filmmaker. A glorious set piece with a handheld saw-toothed blade almost tipped me over the edge (I had to watch through interlaced fingers) but Shanks goes further, orchestrating a final grand flourish that feels like a reverential nod to some of David Cronenberg’s early work.

Elementary school English teacher Millie (Brie) and musician boyfriend Tim (Franco) prepare to take the next step in their long-term relationship by moving to the countryside so she can pursue an exciting job opportunity and Tim can process the traumatic recent deaths of his parents (Nancy Finn, Mark Robinson). Best friend Cath (Mia Morrissey) openly voices her reservations about Tim but Millie is committed to the relationship and she stages an awkward marriage proposal at their going away party.

Tension is evident in the couple’s new home, exacerbated by a visit from overly friendly neighbour Jamie (Damon Herriman), who is a teacher at Millie’s new school and appears to be flirting with her in from of Tim. To regroup, Tim and Millie hike down a trail near their new home and fall into sink hole. “It feels… crowded,” he observes about the oppressive, subterranean hollow where a mysterious and unnatural force exerts insidious influence over the couple and tests how far Millie and Tim are willing to go in the name of love.

Together is a twisted tale of co-dependency that loses its way in the final stretch as the grotesquerie reaches an inevitable climax. Brie and Franco fling themselves wholeheartedly into the abyss, delivering unerringly committed performances that gleefully smudge the lines between their real-life connection and gory fantasy. Herriman offers tantalising support. Opening up to someone takes on a satisfyingly disgusting new meaning through Shanks’ blood-smeared lens.