Film review: Documentary executive produced by Macklemore 'a gripping account of speaking truth to power'
Dangerous Animals
★★★☆☆
Humans are the most rapacious predators on the planet, of course, but what if a human was to double down on his lethal potential by teaming up with a shark?
That's the basic idea behind Dangerous Animals (16s), which stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, an American surfer bumming around Australia chasing the next big wave.
Enter Tucker (Jai Courtney), a bluff and good-natured captain of a charter boat that allows tourists to swim with sharks from the safety of an iron cage.
In his downtime, alas, Tucker has a nasty habit of abducting young women and spiriting them off to sea before feeding them to the sharks and recording the ensuing carnage.
But when he kidnaps Zephyr off a quiet beach in the early hours before dawn, Tucker has no idea that he has bitten off more than even his beloved sharks can chew…
Written by Nick Lepard and directed by Sean Byrne, Dangerous Animals offers a nautical variation on Australia's fascination with the lunatic Outback killer.
Hassie Harrison in Dangerous Animals (2025)
As always, we are given very little by way of the killer's motivation – Tucker, we learn early, is a shark attack survivor, although that hardly explains his misogynistic obsession with cold-bloodedly murdering young women in such a grisly fashion.
And grisly it most definitely is: the scene in which Zephyr's fellow captive Heather (Ella Newton) dies in the midst of a feeding frenzy is deeply disturbing, and not least because it's being filmed for the purpose of entertainment.
Nick Lepard and Sean Byrne may well be making a point here about the wholesale slaughter of young women in exploitative horror flicks; if they are, it's clumsily made and gratuitously gruesome.
That said, Jai Courtney is charmingly avuncular (at least initially) as the psychopathic Tucker, although Hassie Harrison makes a much more impressive splash as the smart, tough and brilliantly resourceful Zephyr.
(theatrical release)
The Encampments
★★★★★
The Encampments (12A) is a documentary by Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman that opens in April 2024 with students on the lawn of Columbia University protesting the slaughter in Gaza, declaring their solidarity with Palestine, and demanding that the university divest the portion of its endowments that is invested in US and Israeli weapons companies.
The protest goes viral, resulting in encampments springing up in universities all over America and further afield, but the majority of the film plays out at Columbia, where the students quickly find themselves besieged by the university administration, the NYPD and those in the media who allege antisemitism and terrorism.
Linking the events to similar, anti-Vietnam War protests at Columbia in 1968, Pritsker and Workman provide context with a potted history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948, and also include heart-breaking footage from the war in Gaza.
It can be argued that the filmmakers, who make no secret of the fact that they were embedded with the protestors, are offering only one side of this particular story; nevertheless, The Encampments is a gripping account of speaking truth to power.
(theatrical release)
Juliet and Romeo
★★☆☆☆
Juliet and Romeo (12A) stars Clara Rugaard and Jamie Ward as the star-crossed lovers, although writer-director Timothy Scott Bogart substitutes contemporary speech for Shakespeare's poetry, inserts a number of rousing (if rather bland) pop anthems into the story, and provides a backdrop of imminent invasion to add spice to Verona's long-running civil war between Capulet and Montague.
Juliet & Romeo, the pop musical, stars Clara Rugaard as Juliet and Jamie Ward as Romeo.
It's a bold attempt at a modern makeover, and there's some interesting character actors in the supporting roles: Rupert Everett delivers an arch Lord Capulet, Derek Jacobi hams it up unmercifully as Friar Lawrence, while Jason Isaacs mooches around in the background muttering Lord Montague's premonitions of impending doom.
The leads, alas, lack chemistry. Clara Rugaard shines as the irreverent Juliet, but Jamie Ward is vacuous as Romeo, and overall the timeless tragedy of fair Verona is largely reduced to an extended '80s pop video.
(theatrical release)
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