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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Burning Man (Film)

by Joshua Blackman | November 14, 2011 13:37 | Edited November 17, 2011 14:40

Director Jonathan Teplitzky fails to pull off the audacious structure he employs, but the film scores a knockout with Matthew Goode’s stunning lead performance.

Burning Man features an audacious structure that makes it seem more interesting than it is. The hodgepodge of non-linear timelines - an apparent effort by Aussie director Jonathan Teplitzky to reflect his main character's rage and grief - does little more than muddle an otherwise straightforward dramatic story overloaded with hysterical, naked flourishes (you want breasts? You got ‘em!). It doesn't help that Matthew Goode's Tom is a mean-spirited jerk, even before a tragic event throws his already fragile ego into turmoil.

 

The problem in the first half is that the character relations are so ill defined that it's difficult to care for the drama. We can discern that Tom is an ex-pat English chef who's set up shop in Sydney. He works at a classy Bondi restaurant and is dismissive of his customers. He's involved in a potentially fatal car accident. He has (had?) a wife (Bojana Novakovic) and eight-year old son, and seems to be shagging half a dozen women, including his therapist (Rachel Griffiths). An angry man, our perspective on him slowly becomes plain in the second hour, when the pace slows and the dramatic stakes become clear: his wife is seriously ill, and Tom has no clue about how to deal with it.

 

Grief is a difficult subject to tackle, especially when it turns to anger. That Burning Man works at all, which it does eventually, is entirely due to the actors. Goode (Ozymandias from Watchmen) is so good here that it's a wonder that he's not already a bigger star. Unfortunately, he's undone somewhat by the film itself, which is over directed, too proud of itself, and utterly enamoured with its main character's destructive personality. It redeems itself a little towards the end with intensely acted scenes and an affecting catharsis, but overall it's an interesting but failed experiment.