Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

AH, THOSE cheekbones. Scrupulously lit and elegantly shot in dappled chiaroscuro, Lena Brandt’s face appeals. Brandt (Cate Blanchett) is a complicated, comely Berlin prostitute. Cynical war correspondent Jake Geismar (George Clooney), the Humphrey Bogart to Blanchett’s Ingrid Bergman, comes back to Berlin ostensibly to cover World War Two’s climactic Potsdam Conference. It’s the girl he’s after. She’s fallen on hard times since he’s been gone, and is now tied up with a young louse Tully (Toby Maguire). Among Berlin’s rubble, various American and Russian (“Why not? They took all the bullets”) factions are carving up the action. Nazi rocket scientists like Lena’s husband are up the top of the list. Scriptwriter Paul Attanasio (Donnie Brasco) works from Joseph Kanon’s novel. The pacing’s pokey, but Attanasio crafts a dose of snappy, cynical one-liners, finessed by Clooney’s delivery. “Millions of people didn’t disappear because the elves came out at night.”

Reviewed by Tim Wong

UNRAVELLED in bewitching states of grace and sexual disturbance, Jessica Yu’s voyage into Henry Darger’s Realms of the Unreal makes for a fascinating, though largely speculative documentary experience: a lowly janitor by trade, Darger’s extra curricular immersion in the creation of an epic illustrated novel, and its subsequent discovery upon his death in 1973, opens up a portal of mystery rich in exploration, but lacking in an epilogue or decisive final chapter. Was Darger a paedophile? A schizophrenic? Was he a lonely man, or was he his own best friend? Would he have permitted the Lerner’s to exhibit (and profit from?) his art after death? How to correctly pronounce his surname? What we do know is that he was a closet genius, an autodidact employing watercolour, collage, tracing techniques, and various degrees of appropriation in an oeuvre of 300 paintings, some over 10-feet long, and the titular magnum opus of this film, its glorious full title The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion encapsulating all that is weird and wonderful within the story’s massive 15,000 page breadth.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

AS UNAPOLOGETIC fan-service for Michel Gondry-philes, The Science of Sleep leaves little to the imagination by doing all the dreaming for you: everyday objects are made out of corrugated cardboard; clouds float with the stuffing from pillows; wallpaper becomes back projection; water ripples with all the consistency of cellophane. More than any other film in his catchment, Gondry opens up a direct channel to his right-sided brain, siphoning a torrent of ideas lubricated in the sweetest of creative juices. That’s the film there. Careening from one inspired puce moment to the next, it’s easy to forget that there’s also a neglected love story screaming for our attention: Stephane (the ubiquitous Gael Garcia Bernal), introverted boy wonder, falls for next door neighbour Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and spends the rest of the film trying to win her over – when he’s not confusing his own dreams for reality, that is.