FATHER STU
(15) 124mins
★★★☆☆
MOVIE acting is a tough job, isn’t it?
For his latest real-life role, Mark Wahlberg had to go on a diet of burgers and ice cream to put on 30lb.
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That’s a lockdown gut without the guilt. What a dream.
Wahlberg begins this drama as boxer Stuart Long in incredible shape, dancing around a ring with a six-pack and biceps bigger than a speed bump.
After quitting the ring due to a jaw injury, he gradually puts on weight, becomes a priest and, by the end of the movie, is suffering from an incurable illness that means he can’t move.
It’s an impressive transformation for which the American actor deserves credit.
Gone is the action hero and in his place is some serious acting to portray a man who is cut down in his prime by a muscle-wasting disorder similar to motor neurone disease.
FULL-ON TESTOSTERONE
The tough-guy actor shows us some vulnerability, albeit fleetingly.
For the first two thirds of this film he is the Wahlberg fans have come to know and expect.
There’s plenty of swearing, fighting, drinking and full-on testosterone as Long refuses to accept his lot in life.
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Forced to quit boxing, he comically tries out in Hollywood and while in La La Land he goes all out to woo a woman, who gives him the cold shoulder.
There is so much charm pumping through Wahlberg at this point that if you plugged him into the National Grid he’d solve the energy crisis.
Backing him up are Australian actress Jacki Weaver as Long’s straight-taking mum Kathleen and Mel Gibson playing his grizzly dad Bill.
This role isn’t a challenge of any kind for Gibson. He drinks a lot, suffers from road rage and shouts politically incorrect insults at other drivers.
The problem with this drama is that the most remarkable thing about Father Stu was the way he continued working as a priest in spite of a debilitating illness — but that’s only a brief part of the script.
Instead, the focus in the final third is on a Christian message as Long realises his true destiny is in the service of God after having a vision of the Virgin Mary.
Wahlberg opts for revealing the strength of religion over the fragility of the body.
So for me, Father Stu isn’t the revelation it could have been.
GRANT ROLLINGS
THE DROVER’S WIFE: THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON
(15) 109mins
★★★☆☆
YEE HAR! A western refreshingly reimagined through a powerful female gaze, this film has a fearless survivor and fiercely protective mother at its core.
The story starts in 1893 high in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains where heavily pregnant Molly Johnson lives in a hut with her four young children.
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Her husband Joe is often away for months on end droving sheep. But Molly holds her own in his absence.
In the opening scene she puts a bullet between the eyes of a raging bull. And by the end of the story she has killed three men. Her turbulent flashbacks allude to a life of suffering.
Aboriginal Australian TV actress Leah Purcell plays Molly and wrote and directed the film.
In her reworking of Henry Lawson’s 1892 short story we meet Louisa (Jessica De Gouw), the London-born wife of a new lawmaker Sergeant Nate Clintoff (Sam Reid); and fugitive Aboriginal, Yadaka (Rob Collins).
The film takes on the grit of a western to challenge racism, violence against women and injustice.
But the story has more holes than a pair of chaps after a shootout. It’s riveting in places but some scenes lag into daytime soap territory.
But Purcell has a mighty screen presence and her gutsy acting performance will leave you reeling.
VORTEX
(15) 142mins
★★☆☆☆
THIS film could not be more French if the scent of garlic wafted into the cinema via smell-o-vision.
It begins with an elderly couple clinking wine glasses on the terrace of their Parisian home as the man muses “life is a dream within a dream”.
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Books tumble from every nook and cranny, the man smokes and has a mistress.
All that was missing was the striped Breton top.
Director Gaspar Noe packs this arthouse epic with visual tricks that have no place in what is otherwise a gritty drama.
Throughout, an annoying split screen follows Elle (Francoise Lebrun) with dementia and her coughing husband Lui (Dario Argento) as they amble around their home, until their troubled son Stephane (Alex Lutz) appears.
His main purpose is to load a plot already overburdened with misery with even more ways to depress the audience. Underneath all the pretentious symbolism there is an impactful film fighting to get out.
Noe deserves credit for a change of material – his films are normally accused of being sex-obsessed. The cast is great. Lebrun is so believable I wanted to give her a hug.
But by the end of this slog it is the audience that needs some emotional support.
GRANT ROLLINGS
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