Welcome Stranger

2006

Johnny's comments

Delving into the DVD collection for another couple of Australian movies I haven't gotten around to watching/capping.


Welcome Stranger is a very low budget 2006 Melbourne drama where 18 year-old Adam (Christian Poppi) gets a phone call out of the blue from Luke (Adam Scott, another one, gee it's such a common name...), who he hasn't seen since primary school and wants to him to come out for the evening. Adam accepts, not knowing what to expect. He meets him at Luke's dad's (John Brumpton) house and share a bong together with Luke's dad (!) before going over to Luke's mother Sandra's (Suzanne Barr) house where they are having a barbeque with Sandra's new partner Rodney (Andy McPhee) and Luke's sister Megan (Jo McKenzie) and her friends and boyfriend Paolo (Okan Husnu). Rodney says something unkind to Sandra and she goes off in a huff and Rodney leaves at her insistence. As day turns into night, everyone get a bit more drunk and Megan, her friend and Paolo go off to a club while Luke fights with his mum and goes off to bed, leaving Adam all by himself. Sandra and Adam have a chat which leads to them having sex although it goes badly. Megan and Paolo come home and have sex and Adam hears them outside their window, so he masturbates. In the morning, Adam enters Sandra's room and asks her to go out with him, which she is reluctant to do so and puts down their liaison to being a little drunk. Paolo hears them talking and all hell breaks loose with Adam chased out of the house. He has nothing in common with Luke and wonders why he was invited in the first place.

Slice of life drama that feels a bit odd, mainly due to why Adam was invited by Luke to hang out with his family as he looks completely out of place the entire time. It's never really explained why he was invited and when Luke sulks off to bed halfway through, it becomes more perplexing. Adam's just a horny kid and the mess he gets himself into in the end is probably the only notable thing about the movie and makes far more sense than his reason for being there. I think this confusion stops it from being a good movie but it does have some interesting things to say about aimless young men and can't be completely dismissed.

Suzanne Barr film clip (sample below)

Fatal Past

1993

Johnny's comments:

Fatal Past is a 1993 thriller, possibly erotic, where Costello (Costas Mandylor) impresses during a drug deal gone wrong and he is recommended by right hand man Fuller (Boris Brkic) to gangster David (Terence Cooper), who gives him the job to keep an eye on his personal mistress/courtesan Jennifer Lawrence (Polish actress Katarzyna Figura). Jennifer goes to college professor Helen (Gennie Nevinson) to tell her about her ongoing dream, that Jennifer believes to be very real, of being a 1700s geisha in Japan who is brutally betrayed.

David finds a new supplier for his drugs, Peter (Steven Grives), who takes a liking to Jennifer but she is off limits. Jennifer chats with Costello and she seems interested in him but Costello knows not to go there. An attempt is made on David's life and Costello once more saves the day by gunning down the assassin. Jennifer's dreams are becoming more vivid and are being mirrored in real life, leading to Jennifer and Costello having sex at David's house while he's out. David and his goons find Jennifer with Costello and beat him up and while David attempts to punish Jennifer, he is murdered by Peter who wants everything of David's including Jennifer.

Everything is mirroring Jennifer's dreams meaning that both Jennifer and Costello will die but can they break the spell before Peter kills them both?

OK, let's get it out of the way; it's never not funny that the lead female character's name is Jennifer Lawrence and they constantly say her full name throughout, so you can imagine how long that lasts. Apart from that, Fatal Past is absolute rubbish, a stock standard gangster plot mixed bafflingly with a story of Japanese love gone wrong that at best helps the movie get to 80 minutes but is completely unnecessary and only gets in the way of the main plot and vice versa. The movie tries to situate itself as a Zalman King-like erotic thriller but those movies are usually well-lit and Fatal Past looks like they forgot to pay the electricity bills, possibly not helped by a bad transfer but it's still very dark throughout. The ending is absolutely ridiculous, somehow involving the professor in the final shoot out which makes absolutely no sense other than to reverse how things were going to end if it followed the dream. Also, how did the professor find Jennifer at David's secret hideaway which is mentioned how secret it is at every opportunity? The best thing I can say is that Katarzyna Figura is well cast and a bit of a mystery how she even ended up in this movie although it probably has something to do with her turning up in Robert Altman movies at the same time and she was kind of an unsung sexpot of the period. Also, at least it's better than the writer/co-director's next movie, the career killer Offspring.

Katarzyna Figura film clip (sample below)

Kelly Hall, Bronwyn Jones and Michelle Constable film clip (sample below)