THIS biopic of mad-as-a-badger Brit record producer Joe Meek manages the neat trick of being as hypnotic and irritating as the titular pop hit that gave him and his house band, The Tornados, their 1962 British and American chart-topper. Adapted from
his stage play of the same name by actor-tuned-director Nick Moran, it celebrates Meek's achievements, but also lingers in often shrill and histrionic fashion on the tragic circumstances surrounding the mental breakdown that ultimately resulted in him shooting his landlady with a shotgun, swiftly followed by himself a mere five years later.
As Meek, Con O'Neill throws himself into the part with verve, capturing that intense noodling-at-the-controls mania that drove him to strive for pop perfection, but possibly masked a mental disorder that was accentuated by the rapid fall from grace he experienced when the hits dried up and the pill-popping paranoia got out of control. With royalties for Telstar frozen in a protracted plagiarism case and his sexuality under scrutiny after an arrest for cottaging, he had plenty of reasons to crack (Phil Spectre looks balanced by comparison), but Moran never quite builds to this in a dramatically enticing way. Still, there's plenty for music fans interested in Meek's work, and some Moran visual style does a good job of recreating the feeling of the era.
SUGAR (15)
****
DIRECTED BY: RYAN FLECK, ANNA BODEN
STARRING: ALGENIS PÉREZ SOTO, ELLARY PORTERFIELD, MICHAEL GASTONRYAN Fleck and Anna Boden, the young film-making team behind the Oscar-nominated Half Nelson, return with another deceptively complex, beautifully considered character-driven piece, this time built around a young baseball player from the Dominican Republic who is given an opportunity to try out for a Major League baseball team. This is 19-year-old Miguel "Sugar" Santos (newcomer Algenis Pérez Soto), a dirt-poor kid who has been groomed since childhood to be a major athlete by one of the many US baseball academies based on the island.
Weighed down by his family's hopes and dreams, he ships out to Arizona, then Iowa and later New York, where he has to contend with language, cultural and religious differences, as well as the fact that there's always going to be somebody ahead determined to prevent him achieving his goal, and somebody coming up behind him determined to take his spot.
Though this is, ostensibly, a baseball film, it's not another cliché-ridden rise-fall-redemption sports drama. Rather, it's an intelligent spin on the immigrant story, one that explores how quickly your options shut down when you realise the thing you've pinned your hopes on might not be where your heart, or your talent, actually lie.
GIGANTIC (15)
***
DIRECTED BY: MATT ASELTON
STARRING: PAUL DANO, ZOOEY DESCHANEL, JOHN GOODMANPRECIOUS and pretentious, and oddly absorbing because of it, the wilfully absurd Gigantic is the sort of film that appears to take place in a world that's recognisably real, until multiple plot quirks and idiosyncrasies make it impossible to take anything at face value.
It's about a disconnected 28-year-old called Brian (Paul Dano) who, for reasons never fully explored, has been obsessed with adopting a Chinese baby since he was a boy. On the adoption waiting list, he works as a mattress salesman, selling high-end Swedish sleeping apparatus from a trendy warehouse space to wealthy bankers and businessmen who can afford to blow $14,000 on a bed (clearly, the film was made before the recession hit).
One such customer is Al Lolly (John Goodman), a rich and boisterous eccentric with a possibly phantom back problem that requires him to be ferried around New York horizontally in the back of a Volvo.
Al also has a daughter called Happy (Zooey Deschanel), a beautiful but vague and inward-looking kook. She takes a shine to Brian, who likewise affirms his fondness for her when she matter-of-factly inquires if he has any interest in having sex with her. It's that sort of movie.
It's also the sort of movie that thinks nothing of having its protagonist stalked by a psychotic homeless man (played by The Hangover's Zach Galifianakis), who attacks him at regular intervals. Common sense suggests that these attacks are a figment of Brian's imagination, except that they leave physical scarring that everyone else can see. What's going on? Writer/director Matt Asselton doesn't seem interested in clarifying, but he fills the film with lots of good performances and offbeat details, so, even though in the end the film builds towards the standard "hey, we're all little dysfunctional" conclusion beloved of movies of this sort, it's never exactly dull getting there.
