Eastwood/Anderson/Russell/USA/2004; R4
Roadshow, NZ$34/39/29.95 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

SEX. There’s plenty of explicit sexual content in Kinsey. A fair and balanced, cerebral and grandly enjoyable biopic of the liberating, flawed American sex researcher Alfred “Prok” Kinsey and American paradox. “God, what a gap between social front and reality!” Kinsey penetratingly described the era. Kinsey is more intellectually than sexually stimulating. Also stimulating this month from Roadshow: The Life Aquatic, Million Dollar Baby and I Heart Huckabees.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is held together by the great Bill Murray as Steve Zissou, a brilliant, beguiling maritime man, more Jacques Cousteau than Peter Blake. Stylistically, it’s an elaborate dollhouse of a movie. Shame about the under-charged thought, however.

Million Dollar Baby, this year’s Oscars prodigal child, should have been beaten by The Aviator. But Clint Eastwood, now 74, brims with charisma. He compels on both side of this camera in this powerful yarn about Frankie Dunn, a hardbitten boxing trainer, and one of his charges, Maggie (Hillary Swank). Eastwood shows no signs of weaker punches or hanging up the gloves. And who would want that? To subvert the diss Frankie’s priest lands on him, go “you fucking pagan”.

“We’re not in infinity, we’re in the suburbs” and “How am I not myself”? Brilliant. I Heart Huckabees is the sort of movie that asks for a critical kicking; it’s my kinda film. Like an adolescent’s wild party, it flirts with disaster but somehow keeps it together. Tommy, a terrific Mark Wahlberg, is the appealing centre of the chaos. He’s a fireman so pissed off about the dubious goings on in the name of petroleum, that he hops on a bicycle to go and put out fires.

“The everything store. Shopping, nature, together” and “Shania Twain for open spaces” (particularly ironic for Aotearoa audiences). Huckabees, a splendidly named, rapacious corporation, is smoothly perception managed by Brad (Jude Law), who proselytises such slogans. Huckabees is a key target for Tommy and his friend Albert (Jason Schwartzman). The activist roots of David O. Russell (the increasingly relevant Three Kings) and Wahlberg are clear. When he was younger, Russell learnt how to film by documenting unacceptable living conditions for local poor on video, forcing government to do something.

Add in a nihilistic self-help guru (who else but Isabelle Huppert?), pro-bono existential detectives (Dustin Hoffman, with his theory of inter-connectedness), and a priceless dinner table scene involving Steven, a Sudanese refugee, and his Christian fundamentalist host family. Insanely sane, the result puts the screwy in screwball. Challenging, audacious, quirky, woozy and energetic, I Heart Huckabees’ over-taxed heart is in the right (left) place. Sure, it asks way more questions than it answers, but this is the point of existentialism, no?