Early Summer Art Film Review

Spent the weekend in civilization.  There was an "art film" theater.  So, saw some "quality" films.  And I saw This is the End.  Don't bother on that one, though there are LOL funny bits.  Just not enough.  More of it is just stupid.  Stunningly.

I saw Wish You Were Here  (Australian) and Shadow Dancer (Irish).  Neither had subtitles.

Go ahead and laugh. I didn't for two straight movies.

Wish is about two Australian couples who go on vacation in Cambodia for a week.  And come home.  Oh, that's right, one of them doesn't come home.  And the other three do.

Could you do that? "Yeah, buddy, sorry but I gotta get that flight?"

Of course, it is Cambodia.

It's beautiful, by the way, at least along the sea coast.  Not so much in the urban shots.  As my spouse said, "Cambodian tourist bureau must not have approved of some of those shots."

Kieran Darcy-Smith directed and co-wrote with Felicity Price, who is one of the two couples.  Joel Edgerton (Revenge of the Sith) stars.  Darcy-Smith & Price wrote it in a series of flashbacks that leave you wondering.  Not much, but a bit.  It's interesting, different (Cambodia as travel destination? disappearing boyfriend?) and the time shifts make it worth seeing.   Edgerton and Price are excellent.  The weak link is Teresa Palmer as Mrs Edgerton's sister, who is the one left from couple #2.

But it's not the thriller Shadow Dancer is.  Set in the final days of "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, the movie follows an IRA operative (played convincingly by Andrea Riseborough) who is caught in the middle of the whole thing.  Clive Owen plays the English MI-5 operative who works both her and the operation she's involved in.  Scary as hell is David Wilmot (famed for a Tony in Lieutenant of Inishmore? or  Anna Karenina --  as Nikolai the decadent), who is the IRA enforcer trying to find the mole in his organization.

It's taut.  You worry for Riseborough's Collette, then worry that you've misjudged and she doesn't need your sympathy but Owen, struggling with a secretive English establishment, does...then it swings back.  She's tough.  He's not quite as tough.  Wilmot is plain bleepin' scary and after them both.  And they are on the verge of signing the peace accord.  How long will the game of cat-mouse and shooting continue?

I thought they were both good.  Shadow Dancer is the better of the two.  But the Australian movie (no subtitles, right?) will keep you wondering and guessing.  And, maybe, like me, not believing what your senses tell you.

Go Hawks.