SUPER power TO THE PEOPLE
Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt fire up a pocket blockbuster
Project Power (Netflix, 15)
Verdict: Smashing small-screen superhero adventure
Babyteeth (in cinemas, 15)
Verdict: Wacky, weepy family drama
Pinocchio (in cinemas, PG)
Verdict: Art house puppetry
WHAT if you had a superpower lasting for five minutes — but didn’t know what it would be until after you popped the magic superpower pill?
That’s the premise of Project Power, a smart mash-up of superheroes, crime and sci-fi starring Jamie Foxx, Joseph GordonLevitt and Dominique Fishback in a breakout role as a rapping teenage drug-dealer.
Set in the skanky streets of New Orleans, this Netflix original film throws money at the small screen, with special effects to rival a studio blockbuster. It’s a pocketsized Avengers Assemble with a lighter touch and a stronger emotional core.
With his usual wiry energy, GordonLevitt plays a cop, Frank, who is working undercover with Robin (Fishback), a schoolgirl selling the Power pills that temporarily give people bodies of fire, bulletproof skin or breath of ice. ‘Just like Frozen!’ somebody says.
One of the most entertaining mutations is a camouflage man who runs butt-naked through the streets, matching the background like a human chameleon. Ridiculously, Frank gives chase on a blue rent-a-bike.
Frank is trying to find the source of the chaos-causing pills and so is Art, an ex-Army major played by Foxx, who has lost his daughter to the mysterious cartel.
THe key to the connection is Robin, whose own (natural) superpower is rapping to order, pumping out poetry that melts Art’s antagonism. Fishback brings a sassy confidence as she grows in the part. It’s not surprising she has been snapped up to act opposite Daniel Kaluuya in the forthcoming story of the Black Panther movement. While the battles between temporarily super-powered beings and their ordinary counterparts are more intimate than epic, the human story — ultimately one of lost and found fatherhood — anchors the film.
This really deserves a cinema screening. I watched it at home on a projector screen, big enough to appreciate the great cinematography: the cobalt blue and rust of New Orleans by night and the artfully graffitied slums.
While occasionally the film descended into CGI smithereens, it never failed to surprise. I was just disappointed that no one had a comedy superpower — turning to jelly, say, or becoming the Stay Puft
Marshmallow Man out of Ghostbusters. But the film was given a rave review by my 15-year-old cocritic for the evening, who felt I should up my star rating to four — proof that Project Power is great multi-generational entertainment.
THe theme of addiction continues in Babyteeth, an oddball
Australian family drama which manages to be heartbreaking and hilarious at once.
There is cracking acting from Ben Mendelsohn and essie Davis as Henry and Anna, the long-suffering, right-on parents of 15-yearold Milla (eliza Scanlen), a schoolgirl rebelling against the world and a cancer diagnosis, who meets her imperfect man Moses (Toby Wallace), a charming, tattooed drug addict. The family’s Sydney home looks like the Made.com furniture showroom and their perfect lives — the dad is a psychiatrist, the mum a homemaker and musician — become a complete car crash as Milla gets sick.
In many ways, the sanest person in the room is Moses. At least he admits his addiction, while Anna knocks back antidepressants by the handful and Henry gets his serotonin hit from sneaky sex.
ORIGINALLy a play by Rita Kalnejais, the film has dialogue that zings and plenty of moments where the unsaid is equally powerful. This is the debut feature from Shannon Murphy (who also directed episodes of Killing eve) and she is fearless about letting the camera just rest on a face until the truth emerges.
Babyteeth opens with a soundtrack of The Stranglers’ druggy song Golden Brown, played on classical instruments. That perfectly reflects the film’s punky attitude and orchestral emotional reach.
A NeW live-action version of Pinocchio is out — but be warned: this is a perversely creepy creation, made by Italian director Matteo Garrone, whose dark genius is better suited to Mafia movies.
Pinocchio himself is weird and unappealing, and the other wooden puppets look like overweight failed politicians. The carpenter Geppetto is played by Roberto Benigni, giving a masterclass in overacting.