AS WE KNOW IT

Stars: Taylor Blackwell, Mike Castle, Oliver Cooper, Danny Mondello, Chris Parnell and Pam Grier.
Writers: Brandon DePaolo, Christopher Francis, Josh Monkarsh.
Director: Josh Monkarsh

Rating: ★ ★ ★

The well-manicured rock gardens of L.A.’s suburban hills are flowing red thanks to Agnes oat milk, a dairy substitute that’s turning Los Angelinos into ravenous zombies in Josh Monkarsh’s As We Know It. This giggly throwback to the teen buddy comedies of the late 90s subs in Mike Castle, as struggling novelist James, and Oliver Cooper, the film’s MVP as oafish stoner Bruce, for ‘Jason Biggs and Seann William Scott’ types; mismatched mates facing off against the undead uprising in a low-key but winningly likable rom-zom-com.

Monkarsh and his co-writing posse of Brandon DePaolo and Christopher Francis don’t leave the connection to chance, setting their story in the late 1990s and riffing on such decade-specific artefacts as Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, brick-like portable home phones, pre-smart TV TVs and those bastions of smallscreen journalism, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Donahue. Also of the period is the Pixie Dream Girl archetype, embodied here by Taylor Blackwell’s doe-eyed and endearingly sassy Emily.

James is in a deep funk, having recently split with Emily; so distracted is he from real life, not only has his writing stalled but he has also failed to cotton-on that his hometown is in the grip of an extinction event. It takes Bruce banging on his front door to bring him into the present; they make to hightail it out of town, but a syphoned gas tank means they have to bunker down in James’ pad (beautifully set decorated by Asiah Thomas-Mandlman and production designed by Lorus Allen).

The ‘rom’ revs up when Emily drops by to say a final goodbye before driving to Seattle with her girlfriends. When the girls meet an ugly demise, Emily is left to survive alongside her ex and his bestie, with whom she also shares an awkward past. In the mix are a food delivery guy on the turn (Danny Mondello), a sexy neighbour (the iconic Pam Grier, clearly having some fun) and SNL alumni Chris Parnell cameoing as an LA affiliate newshound.  

The bittersweet conclusion gels ideally with that particularly late-90s sense of foreboding that the impending new millennium held. Between the lad’s comic chemistry and the occasional teeth-on-flesh ickiness, Monkarsh focuses on the missed opportunity for a soulmate pairing that James and Emily let slip. True love doesn’t quite conquer all in As We Know It, but it is at the centre of this warmly funny spin on the old “better to have loved and lost, than never…” refrain. 

AMBULANCE

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell. Jackson White, Olivia Stambouliah, Moses Ingram, Colin Woodell and A Martinez.
Writers: Chris Fedak, Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen
Director: Michael Bay

Rating: ★ ★ ½

Compared to the action monoliths for which he’s famous, in-your-face noisemakers like Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and the Transformers film, Michael Bay’s Ambulance is his version of an arthouse chamber drama. At its core is the story of three people, confined and needing to understand each other in order to survive.

And that is how he establishes his narrative over the course of a terrific first hour. Returned soldier and dedicated family man Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is in dire financial need; his wife, balancing a newborn son on her hip the whole film, has an uninsurable disease and Will can’t secure steady work. As a last resort, he reaches out to his adopted brother, Daniel (Jake Gyllenhaal), who promises to help out if Will also does him a favour - be the fourth man in a bank robbery crew that promises a $32million payday.

These early scenes smartly establish character traits, motivations, personalities. The heist goes off the rails in a spectacular sequence that rivals Michael Mann’s downtown LA shoot-out in Heat for visual immersion and sound design. In a final act of desperation, Danny commands an EMT vehicle as a getaway car, complete with tough-gal paramedic Cam (Eisa Gonzalez, the film’s biggest plus) and bleeding-out cop Zac (Jackson White).

And then things get stupid. Instead of tightening the screws on his three leads, Bay goes big and broad in his pursuit of his Bay-hem brand. The movie spins off into idiotic Fast-&-Furious terrain when Danny calls in his Mexican Gang caricature mates, who happen to have a muscle-car with a gattling gun they’re willing to part with. All these empty action calories and Bay’s tendency to double- then-triple down on the faintest whiff of anything emotional blows the run time out to over 2 hours, which proves grotesquely self-indulgent.

The cracking first hour will be enough to carry most action heads through to the end, but Bay’s fleeting interest in his human scenery is dispiriting. After 30 years making empty-vessel spectacles, the tiresome, shallow grind that Ambulance becomes suggests Bay’s detractors - those that claim he’s never been particularly interested in his characters unless they’re holding a gun or a steering wheel - are probably spot-on. 

BEREAVE

Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Jane Seymour, Keith Carradine, Mike Starr, Vinessa Shaw, Ethan Embrey and Mike Doyle.
Writers/directors: Evangelos and George Giovanis.

Rating: 4/5

The small but fervent festival following that George and Evangelos Giovanis have developed will grow in enthusiastic numbers with their latest, Bereave. Those who backed the expertly executed crowd-funding drive to the tune of US$100,000 can be rest assured that every cent is well spent by the Greek sibling auteurs; everyone involved in this moving, acutely realised drama maximises the worthy material and is at the top of their game.

Only their fourth film in a decade and six years since their last work, the highly-honoured Run It, The Giovanis’ lyrical script opens with a gripping sequence in which waning patriarch Garvey (Malcolm McDowell) contemplates another day of directionless existence. Denied a messy self-inflicted end by the call of his wife Evelyn (Jane Seymour), Garvey is revealed as both a brash crank (“Today, you almost look beautiful,” he tells the still-stunning Seymour) and struggling with an increasingly fractured memory.

As the day unfolds, Evelyn’s patience with her boorish, troubled husband begins to unravel inexorably until her own attempts at a final booze-and-pill cocktail send her into the unfriendly Los Angeles night. Struggling to cope with their parents strained marriage and shrinking mortality are daughter Penelope (Vinessa Shaw), a single mother fearful that she is losing grip of her own pre-teen daughter, Cleo (Rachel Eggleston); and, son Steve (Mike Doyle), a decent man whose West Coast charms ensnare the lithesome Natalie (Hannah Cowley) but barely register with his distracted, flighty mother.

Some third act melodrama involving petty thugs and the occasional over-indulgence in florid dialogue (“I only speak violin”) can’t derail the strength of character-driven central narrative established masterfully in the films first half. Powerful scenes of potent drama set largely in the protagonist’s slick, sleek chrome-and-glass apartment allow McDowell and, in particular, Seymour some of their best on-screen moments in many years. The British acting pair find a deep, dark complexity to the marital dynamic, the filmmakers affording their stars the time and space to delve deep into the damaged psyches of Garvey and Evelyn.

A terrific Keith Carradine rounds out the acting honours as Garvey’s longtime confidant, the alpha-male Victor, his presence crucial to a subplot that thematically reinforces the emotional pain of receding memory. An extended sequence early in the film, in which Garvey reveals for Victor the desperation of his existence, provides McDowell and Carradine the kind of dramatic beats only the finest of thespians could pull off; both are mesmerising in the scene.

Recalling Michael Haneke’s Amour in its exploration of fading memory, mature-age love and dwindling life force but played against the broader backdrop of the noir-ish LA sprawl, Bereave is an achingly insightful, darkly humorous, richly rewarding work by two important creative forces. It must certainly be the last time the Brothers Giovanis have to rely on passionate fans and their own sales skill to secure feature film funding. The coffers of those that oversee the top tier of international film production should be open to these mature, masterful, unique storytellers immediately.

Screening at the Byron Bay International Film Festival. Session details and tickets available here.