Court of Lonely Royals (2007)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Blistering performances.

Interesting concept... kind of a Star Chamber, but here the Aussie police use a bunch of Gen X-ers to do their dirty work. Written, directed, produced by Rohan Hoole, and it looks like this is the only thing he has done so far. Lots of special effects going on -- liberal use of airbrushed, soft lighting, tricks with lighting, negative film, black and white photography. Also lots of prostitution, explicit sexual activity and drug use. And that's all within the first ten minutes! Two chicks meet up in a hotel, on different errands, and they become besties, going on special "assignments". We're not always sure what's going on, but that's part of the charm, I guess. Are they friends? Lovers? Co-workers? A whole lot of cussing. Weird lighting. Lots of killing. Kind of a "Week in the Life of...." diary. Pretty entertaining, but those who need a clean, straight forward plot probably won't like this one. There are some funny lines in here, but sadly, there are so many blanks in the IMDb character list, we're not sure who said which lines. Not a bad first project for Hoole. Script is a little weak, but the acting is pretty good. Probably didn't need all the special effects, but it's entertaining enough.

You know what's more annoying than sparkly vampires? Mopey killers, as this film so amply proves.Undiscernably set in the near future, the film follows a pair of disaffected, twentyish emo contract killers who work for a cop that hangs out in a food court. In between unbearably long periods of staring off into space, our apathetic assassins kill people using their lethal powers of ennui. Well, that and a number of ridiculously staged coincidences. But even after the miserable murderers find girlfriends (as improbably as that sounds) the film still can't find a pulse and we're treated to another eternity of anguished aimlessness before the final non-conclusion puts us out of *our* misery. Stay away from this one unless your an emo teen. Or comatose. Or both.

This was one of eight Australian made and produced films I saw during last year's Adelaide Film Festival. It was easily my favorite, and I have been waiting (apparently in vain) for director/writer Rohan to release his second film ever since.I thought the way the film was cut together was both highly creative and original and the plot line was as dynamic as its characters/actors. Seeing works like these makes me feel proud to call myself Australian. The fact that Rohan Michael Hoole received such little attention either then or later on for his debut feature leaves me wanting to defect.I consider myself a discerning viewer and as a consequence have never owned a television. I was introduced to SBS and foreign films via my German-born father at an early age and I have attended the opening of almost every Australian-made film since 2001. My favorite director/writer/camera man team is Bergman/Nykvist.Why am I telling you this? Because I think that: a) if you haven't seen this film you need to and, b) if you see it and don't like it, you're suffering a case of the green-eyed monster.

Court of Lonely Royals had its world premier at the Adelaide Film Festival.Personally i have never watched nor been interested in Australian films (multiple reason, but there is some real gold). The only reason i went was due to the hype around this film and the statement that the work was similar to the works of Wong Kar Wai (one of my personal favourite directors) and authors like Bret Easton-Ellis. As well the film was touted as Australian Neo Noir. A very interesting concept. And the fact that it was made for around 500 thousand dollars was also very exciting.The plot basically resolves around 4 disaffected 20 somethings in a near future Dystopic future. The characters live in a metropolis, 2 as assassins, a prostitute and one a fixer of some sort.2 assassins Holden and Hunter work for the police and themselves assassinating people, in very interesting ways (infact this was the only original part of the whole film), using peoples weaknesses. Into this comes Camille a girl who gets things for her boss (basically a fixer)and charli a prostitute angry at the world. Ina near future Australian metropolis they intermix with themselves and the seedy underworld of corrupt police, politicians and clients.The plot could very easily work, especially when the cinematography is very good (although it is heavily borrowed from WOng Kar wai and in the last half is very bad with random changes from hyper colour and black and white)The major issue with this film and why it fails is the character development. The characters are unconvincing and very unrealistic. We don't feel for them at all. I think more emphasis should have been done on showing the loneliness and sadness in the characters, instead we get clichéd treatment of characters (i.e a clients dialog to Charli) and rather bad dialog. (Was it meant to be funny?) This film did have a lot of potential, sure it was very stylish and did succeed in somewhat displaying a dystopic and noirish city at night. But even that was sort of discarded at the end. The characters were unconvincing (and in the character of Camille very very annoying) and the plot line shouldn't have given an open ending.At the festival i asked the director if this film borrowed heavily from Wong Kar Wai's "Fallen Angels". His response was basically yes a little and that they had thanked the director in the credits. Thats okay, however, i personally believe that major sequences of cinematography and the general idea (assains,loneliness etc) were more than borrowed from Wong Kar Wai.That would be forgiven if there was more character development and a better ending.