Rolling Stone Australia — June 2017

Lion

DevPatel,NicoleKidman
Directed by Garth Davis
★★★★½

if there was an academy
Award for Best Austra-
lian Accent it would have
been comprehensively lost
over the years by some of
the greats: Meryl Streep,
Robert Downey Jr, Quentin
Tarantino.WhichmakesDevPatel’sflaw-
less voice inLionall the more remarkable

• and helps convince us he’s grown-up In-
  dian waif Saroo, lost to his poor family 25
  years earlier and adopted by loving Tas-
  manian couple Nicole Kidman and David
  Wenham.Thingis:now,hauntedbysnap-
  shot memories and propelled by new tech
  Google Earth, Saroo is compelled find his
  birth mother and brother.
  Directed by Aussie Garth Davis (known
  for NZ head-tripTo p O f t h e L a k e)ona
  comparatively small budget,Lionsuc-
  cessfully transforms Saroo Brierley’s in-
  credible true story into an artfully nail-

biting and emotionally devastating piece

of commercial filmmaking. The perfor-

mances are uniformly excellent, though

special praise has to be reserved for Sunny

Pawar, who plays young Saroo in the ex-

traordinary first half of the film, which

issetinKolkotaandunfoldsasthemost

pure piece of action cinema sinceMad

Max: Fury Road.

Lion’s payoff as a tearjerker (you will

almost certainly shed tears) outdoes any-

thing else in recent movie memory, but it

feels earned rather than contrived – and

is testament to Davis’s beautiful atten-

tion to casting, costuming and scripting

by Luke Davies.

Really, in a different year,Lionwould

have won Best Picture.

La La Land
Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling
Directed by Damien Chazelle
★★★½

after the overpraised
Whiplash,directorDamien
Chazelle hits the right balance
of reality, fantasy and musical in
La La Land,acinematiclozenge
about beautiful dreamers trying
tomakelife,loveandartintinsel
town. Emma Stone amazes with
her split-second comic and dra-
matic skills, and Ryan Gosling’s
also mightily appealing. The
songs are sweet if forgettable,
accompaniedbydancingthat
feels natural rather than over-
choreographed. But it’s their
chemistry and Chazelle’s un-
derstanding that great romanc-
esdon’tgiveusourheart’sde-
sire that makeLa La Landwork.

Ju ne, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 87

DVDs

By Michael Adams

OscarsHittheSmallScreen

Sunny Pawar

deserves

special praise

for his work

inLion

Moonlight

Mahershala Ali

Directed by Barry Jenkins

★★★★

it was terrific to see

Moonlight take out Best Pic-

ture for the message it sent to

Trump’s America that black lives

• in particular gay black lives –
  matter. In telling the story of
  Chiron during three parts of his
  life, Barry Jenkins’ fi lm whis-
  pers where Lion roars and La La
  sings. The performances seam-
  lessly integrate for an under-
  standing of Chiron’s evolution
  as a person. That said, just as La
  La Land left itself open to ac-
  cusations of white saviourism,
  Moonlight loses points for rely-
  ing on some tiresome African-
  American cinema clichés in its
  supporting characters.

Allied

Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

★★★

landing brad pitt as your

leading man has to be every

blockbuster director’s dream.

But Robert Zemeckis surely re-

gretted it when making Casa-

blanca-tribute Allied because

the A-lister has never looked so

d i s t r a c t e d a s he do e s du r i ng t h i s

romantic WWII thriller. Pitt is

an American spy who falls in

with Marion Cotillard’s French

agent – but is she a secret Nazi?

It’s ludicrous but gorgeously re-

alised, with Cotillard giving her

all and Zemeckis staging some

boffo action sequences. Pitt-y

then about Brad, who always

looks like he’s worried Ange is

watching from the wings.

Split

James Mc Avoy

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

★½

after spending the best

part of a decade as a punchline,

M. Night Shyamalan made a

welcome comeback with low-

budget hit The Visit. But he’s al-

ready overstayed his welcome

with Split, which has James

Mc Av oy a s a mu lt iple p e r s on a l-

ity disorder cliché who kidnaps

a trio of girls. Aside from being

offensive in its depiction of

mental illness, Split simply isn’t

a good thriller. After a promis-

ing start, Shyamalan smothers

his movie in ho-hum horror and

mishandles big homicidal mo-

ments. That it’s all revealed as

a tie-in to a previous fi lm just

adds insult to injury.