Film Review of the Week

Documentary

Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard And Soft - The Tour Live In 3D (12A)

Review: Towards the end of this exuberant documentary and concert film, presented in eye-popping 3D, the Grammy and Oscar-winning singer muses on the close bond she shares with legions of adoring fans, some of whom appear on camera and credit their idol with providing them with a safe space to express their authentic selves. “I want to be the artist that I would want to be a fan of,” casually reflects Eilish. Through the lens, we discover Eilish is a thoughtful, resourceful and occasionally tearful star in constant physical pain as she tours to promote her third studio album, Hit Me Hard And Soft.

With Avatar and its sequels, director James Cameron has pushed the boundaries of 3D on the big screen and he applies those same technological advances to this collaboration with Eilish. She gets a co-director’s credit for the sequences she shot on a handheld camera during the concert as she bounds about a giant LED video floor stage in the centre of the arena, which allows her to perform in-the-round.

The film begins with the concert’s thunderous opening song, Chihiro, performed atop a giant luminescent cube. Once a first wave of cacophonous applause ebbs, Cameron rewinds 11 minutes to venture backstage to show preparations from Eilish’s perspective. She is her own hair and make-up artist and an engaging narrator of events unfolding around her throughout the day. Electrifying concert footage is intercut with sporadic behind-the-scenes material that chronicles the evolution of the tour. We see Eilish discussing colour palettes with her team of lighting designers, billing the concert as “almost the best kind of sensory overload you can get”.

She draws attention to scrapes on her hands from fans, who claw at her, and express a desire for a palpable connection to the crowd. “I want to feel like it’s me and them,” she suggests. Cameron as omnipresent observer behind the camera offers his own analogy: “You’re like a tuning fork and they’re feeling the same beats.” Two sunken band pits in the stage house her travelling companions. In one sequence, they join Eilish backstage for a visit from four-legged friends from a local animal rescue centre. It’s a ritual and Eilish believes physical contact provides a natural endorphin rush. “Everyone needs some dog love,” she grins. “I’m doing this on my next movie,” quips Cameron from behind the camera.

Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard And Soft – The Tour Live In 3D delivers a steady drip feed of dopamine and enough morsels of carefully stage-managed confessional to spotlight the sensitive and vulnerable soul, who continues to question contemporary perceptions of femininity. This is what she was made for.

Action

Mortal Kombat II (15)

Review: Playing a videogame has always been more satisfying for me than watching livestreams of top players demonstrating their mastery, which might explain why the 2021 reboot of Mortal Kombat – a slow-motion symphony of exploding heads, severed limbs and scorched skin directed by Simon McQuoid – left me cold. A muscular sequel suffers the same fate, unleashing a blitzkrieg of frenetic and impressively choreographed on-screen carnage that is unedifying as a big screen spectacle.

Masked Outworld tyrant Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) extends his dark rule by vanquishing 10 champions from the fertile and lush realm of Edenia including its valiant ruler, King Jerrod (Desmond Chiam). Queen Sindel (Ana Thu Nguyen) reluctantly bows down to her new ruler to spare the lives of loyal subjects and her daughter, Kitana (Adeline Rudolph). Many years later, Shao Kahn’s hunger for power is unabated and he dispatches scheming sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han) and necromancer Quan Chi (Damon Herriman) to locate a fabled amulet that will grant him immortality as he prepares to take on Earthrealm’s most fearsome warriors led by thunder god Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano).

Washed up Hollywood action movie star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) is chosen as one of Earthrealm’s protectors. He initially rejects the deadly assignment alongside Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Cole Young (Lewis Tan) on the basis that he has no urge to be part of “some Squid Game murder party”. However, the gods have selected Johnny for a reason and he cannot outrun his destiny to represent more than 8 billion souls. Meanwhile, Kitana navigates a complex relationship with her best friend Jade (Tati Gabrielle), both of whom are selected to fight.

Mortal Kombat II pulverised me into wearied submission with one breathless and bruising skirmish after another, most of which conclude with digitally rendered dismemberment or Shao Kahn squishing a cranium beneath his mighty hammer. If there is a sharp blade visible on screen, chances are someone’s arteries will be severed in gleeful close-up. A poster for Citizen Cage teased Johnny’s introduction at the end of the 2021 film and Urban grizzles with obvious relish as the world-weary actor, whose only superpower is that he’s “just incredibly handsome”.

Competing for laughs, Josh Lawson reprises his role as profanity-spewing Australian arms dealer Kano and screenwriter Jeremy Slater delights in arming him with some of the saltiest one-liners like when he pithily likens the ashen-faced appearance of necromancer Quan Chi to a pendulus part of Voldemort’s genitalia. Like the original film, Mortal Kombat II is ‘game over’ for subtlety and layered characterisation, although Rudolph’s performance comes closest to a discernible tug of a heartstring. Everyone else prefers to claw out a heart and other vital organs with bare hands.

Comedy

The Sheep Detectives (PG)

Review: What do you call a sheep without legs? A cloud. That groansome dad joke has a Lion King-esque lump-in-throat payoff in this rambunctious murder mystery based on Leonie Swann’s novel Three Bags Full. In director Kyle Balda’s effervescent yarn, a wise ram (voiced by Bryan Cranston) notes that humans frequently take a sheep’s name in vain to reference someone lacking independent thought, who blindly follows the crowd. Clever ruminants in The Sheep Detectives have something to bleat about that.

Kind shepherd George (Hugh Jackman) lives in a caravan on the edge of the sleepy village of Denbrook, where the high point of the annual cultural festival organised by busybody Beth Pennock (Hong Chau) is a stall laden with locally produced cheese sweating in the sun. George’s flock of sheep graze and play in sweet harmony and every night, he reads detective novels to his four-legged friends, assuming they can’t possibly understand. However, Lily (voiced Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Mopple (Chris O’Dowd) and the other animals comprehend everything and excitedly attempt to solve the literary mysteries before George reaches the final chapter.

When tragedy strikes, Lily and co resolve to test their finely tuned powers of deduction in the real world and help bumbling human police officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) catch a killer. “We shall solve the crime!” boldly declares Lily. Prime suspects include George’s daughter Rebecca Hampstead (Molly Gordon), local butcher Ham (Conleth Hill), who could make a fortune from the flock, rival shepherd Conrad (Tosin Cole) and visiting lawyer Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson). Thankfully, inquisitive junior newspaper reporter Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine) is also determined to crack the case to earn himself a promotion.

The Sheep Detectives knits together Babe and Midsomer Murders to produce an appealingly woolly caper that leaves the fate of the police investigation resting comfortable in the hooves of digitally rendered sleuths. Slick computer wizardry seamlessly melds a clue-hunting flock with actors, physical sets and props. Animator turned director Balda, who previously helmed those mischievous Minions on the big screen, orchestrates sequences of broad slapstick with aplomb: two sheep nervously crossing their first road is a snort-inducing interlude. His human cast bear-hug their larger-than-life roles with eyebrow-arching fervour. Braun’s village copper enjoys a winning narrative arc from sweetly clueless suit to bona fide crime-stopper.

Craig Mazin’s abundantly warm-hearted script engineers interspecies tomfoolery with a spring in its step but still elicits a few dewy eyes when death comes a-gambolling across the meadows. Louis-Dreyfus’s sincere vocal performance is the film’s emotional lynchpin and timing are impeccable when her resourceful ewe fends off self-doubt with words of encouragement from her greatest supporter. The whodunnit element is drawn out sufficiently to earn an overblown big reveal of the culprit a la Poirot. A simple, shear delight.