Little Fish (2006)

That was an excellent one.

Lack of good storyline.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Dustin Nguyen is one of my favorite actors, and he was a major standout in 21 Jump Street (the TV series). He features in Little Fish, along with other stars such as Cate Blanchett and Sam Neill. Little Fish explores with much honesty the effect of drugs in Sydney, and the destruction it causes amongst regular folk.One of the best scenes is the choir of school children (The Sacred Heart School Choir from Cabramatta) singing Cold Chisel's Flame Trees. Catch it on Youtube if you can. It's quite a moving piece and it represents a poke in the eye to isolationist policies of the government at the time.

There are two national traditions of a sort that are driving excellence in film today. One focuses on the nature of the long form in terms of structure that connects emotionally and through folds intellectually as well. Its Spanish filmmakers, though distributed around the world.So far as modern acting is concerned, it is the relatively small nation of Australia who so dominates it is a wonder. It must come down to a couple — or even one — influential teacher at the national acting school there, NIDA.Here we have the latter without the former, such a shame. Oh, the filmmaker is intelligent enough, let's say of the Frears type and intensity. He's put together a sad tale of tentacles into a woman's soul, that once touched is forever vulnerable.But its essentially actor-centric. The actors fill their spaces marvelously, and create a wonderful froth of interaction. But it is merely froth. Inlike the handles the actors give us, the filmmaker gives us none. There is no shape to this as a film, no engagement as a story apart from what the actors give: parts.I saw this with "Bongwater," which was a minor success in that the film was broken in the same way the heroine was. That's true here as well, the difference being heroin instead of pot, and a much higher level of skill all around. Cate played much this same role in the recent "Notes on a Scandal." Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Reading some through some of the reviews already posted, I began to wonder if my wife and I had seen an entirely different film called Little Fish. But no. Cate Blanchett was definitely in the one we saw. There she was, acting her little heart out with admirable skill and determination, but nothing could save the film from itself. It simply failed to engage.The script was unnecessarily meandering and complex and didn't move the story on at a satisfying pace. There is definitely a story to be told on this theme, but it struck us as though the director had used an early script draft by mistake. If the script did go through the usual very necessary rewrite-after-rewrite development then one can only speculate about just how awful the first couple of drafts must have been.Frankly, it is a dud that can best be summed up as "a film about losers who stay losers". And did we care? No, not one bit. Sorry guys!Andy Williams

Maybe identity theft affirms the irrelevance of who you think you are. All the world's a stage, and everyone is typecast. Apparently even someone with the reputed "range" of Cate Blanchett can't attract an audience by playing against (stereo)type, forced to measure up to acclaimed "classical" roles, like "An Ideal Husband" or "Elizabeth." Could even Brando "open" a movie? The characters in the film are stereotyped, as "risky." Even a great actress wouldn't be able to convince a loan officer to overlook a bad credit rating (even if only due to real identity theft), notwithstanding her ability to pretend to be someone else who can't pretend to be someone else. Is acting the last refuge of the identity thief? The film itself defied stereotyping, the ending revealing another genre, both good. The characters strive to rise above hard times. I wouldn't be surprised if compassion and despair could still coexist, like the Bible says, and here it still is news. Outstanding Neill.