Infini

Aussie director Shane Abbess seeks to emulate the classic sci-fi movie Aliens with his debut. Although it does work as a good horror film, some poor writing and direction has made it slightly disappointing, despite being quite an ambitious film.

In the 23rd century, an impoverished population of Earth earn money by taking part in off world mining that they travel to via a process called Slipstreaming (time travel mixed with teleportation, it's a bit unclear). Whit Carmichael (Daniel MacPherson) is on the first day of this job, but after a crisis at the home base, he is transported to the furthest outpost in the galaxy. A search and rescue team is dispatched to bring him home. Only once they get there, the team discovers that there is an airborne virus that turns the crew against one another.

As previously stated this film is very similar to Aliens at the base level. But where this film suffers is that there is too much exposition happening throughout the entire thing, followed by patches where you are unsure of what is going on. Within the first twenty minutes we are exposed to a lot of sci-fi technology that we need to understand for later in the movie, but we don't get a clear enough explanation of how exactly they work. The movie also tries to make way too many explanations about what the virus is (spoiler: it's an alien lifeform!) and how it spreads, but instead we could have just been told that it is turns you into a space zombie, that I could have taken on board and not have been so confused about. Without going into it too much, the ending is also very confusing. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be an allegory for something because what is there seems like a bit of a cop out.

The characters are largely unsympathetic as we don't get enough time to see any development from any of them. All we know about Whit is that he has a pregnant wife and he must get back to her, as is the case with crew member Harris Menzies (Harry Pavlidis), he has a daughter. I think there was a relationship between two of the crew members, but it was so intermittent that I couldn't tell for sure. The rest of the crew isn't at all expanded on, despite that Chester Huntington (Luke Ford) is one of three characters who share in the majority of screen time. Also there is a character called Rex Mannings! (Go watch Empire Records to discover why Rex Manning Day is so important).

Despite the fact that these characters are all severely underdeveloped, the main performances are top notch. Daniel MacPherson does show an incredible amount of fear and does share a fantastic scene with Luke Ford where I am pretty sure they shared a joint beforehand. Ford is channeling Adam Baldwin in Firefly, but still makes the character his own. Harry Pavlidis gives the only endearing performance. I'm surprised that Grace Huang and Luke Hemsworth (older brother of Chris and Luke) got such high credit in the film because they are barely in it.

The film has done one thing well though. For a movie with a low budget, Abbess has made a great looking film. The shots are all expertly done and the CGI backgrounds are impressive considering most budget sci-fi flicks look pretty poor. Also Brian Cachia's score is impressive and it does give the film a sound that wouldn't be out of place in a big Hollywood blockbuster.

This debut from Aussie writer/director Abbess aims a little high to differentiate itself from other legends in the genre of sci-fi horror, but it feels a little ambitious for a first feature film. Despite settling into it's rhythm in the second act, the over the top science fiction elements and poor writing take away any enjoyment of the film.

Charlie's Country

The last time that Rolf de Heer and David Gulpilil worked together was the 2006 film Ten Canoes. Now they've reunited to make Charlie's Country, a film that draws on Gulpilil's own experiences, with him in the titular role and de Heer directing.

Charlie's Country is set in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, where Charlie, an Aborigine originally born in the bush, lives with his mates, very much under the influence of the 'white man' culture. He lives on the dole and resides in a small tenement with his large family.

Charlie longs for the old life, living off the land the way he grew up, and subsequently he is often having brushes with the law, who represent all that is wrong with society to him. Charlie decides to go it on his own, living in the bush by hunting and gathering and embracing the life of his ancestors and getting away from the influence of white society.

Gulpilil is outstanding in this, often bringing out this beautiful raw emotion which really shows just how personal this story is for him. Other fantastic performances come from Peter Djigirr as Black Pete and Peter Minygululu as Old Lulu. Unfortunately, most of the white cast members give rather flat performances, which is mainly due to the heartless nature of the white characters towards the Indigenous population. Of course that's not to say that their representation is unrealistic, unfortunately there are great prejudices present in our society, but this still makes the characters appear rather one-dimensional.

Ian Jones (Rabbit Proof Fence, The Piano) was the DP on this and he has shot some astoundingly beautiful footage that really brings this story together. The simple static shots of Charlie and his friends in the community contrast to the beautiful scenery in the bush that really lights up the screen. All of this combined with the long cuts, that seem to take inspiration from Steve McQueen/Sean Bobbit's work, really draws you into Charlie's surroundings.

Graham Tardif, who worked with de Heer on The Tracker, has composed a beautifully simple soundtrack that is largely just a single piano, which works perfectly for such an intimate film. The one real issue that I had with the film was that it does become a little bit anti-climactic, in a way. It's very circular which works quite well but it did tend to wane here and there.

This really is a beautiful film that is supported greatly by Gulpilil's performance. But if I did have to nitpick, I think there could have been better performances from the Caucasian cast and the plot could have done with a bit more of an edge at the end. I still highly recommend seeing it if you have a chance to.