Dinosaurs are back on the silver screen in The End of Oak Street

From neighbourhood dinosaurs to sex hijinks, here's what's in cinemas this August Welcome to the ABC Arts August film wrap. This month has relations on the brain with the anticipated release of Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex and Icelandic drama The Love That Remains. Plus, dinosaurs are back on the big screen with The End of Oak Street, Kristen Stewart delivers her directorial debut The Chronology of Water, and the Insidious franchise continues with a locally produced scare-fest. - & Sons - The Chronology of Water - The End of Oak Street - I Want Your Sex - Insidious: Out of the Further - The Love That Remains & Sons A dying patriarch summons his estranged sons to his remote mansion and finally shares a big family secret. It's not exactly an original concept, and while & Sons at least offers a new spin on the secret, the rest of the film is too familiar, treading well-worn family drama territory with a deadly seriousness that drags for its two-hour run time. & Sons is a film with simultaneously too much and too little, each character stuffed with flaws and plot lines but no complete arcs. Renowned novelist Andrew Dyer (Bill Nighy) isn't just volatile; he's an alcoholic, agoraphobic anti-anxiety pill addict with a 20-year case of writer's block. Eldest son Richard (Johnny Flynn) isn't just living in his father's shadow, he's a failing writer roped into adapting a book his father plagiarised from his teenaged diaries. Each scene aspires to be the dramatic peak of the movie, which leaves the whole feeling flat. The first half hour of the film is particularly listless, focusing solely on Andrew and his youngest son Andy, played by Noah Jupe (Hamnet, A Quiet Place) who does an uncanny but distracting impression of a young Nighy. An overwhelmingly male focus is perhaps to be expected from a film titled & Sons, but Imelda Staunton is wasted as Andrew's steely ex-wife turned brittle by the big revelation, her electrifying performance confined to a few scenes. To say more would spoil the most interesting element of the film, but while the premise itself is intriguing and the actors are up to the challenge, & Sons doesn't make good use of either. - Tansy Gardam The Chronology of Water Ruptured, fragmentary and lyrically tactile, Kristen Stewart's directorial debut transposes Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir of the same name to the silver screen. Through a series of vignettes that date back to Lidia's troubled childhood under the thumb of an abusive father, the enormity of the trauma she suffers reveals itself through a continuum of impressions interspersed with conversational scenes and lingering voiceovers. Imogen Poots is, in turns, haunted and haunting as the broken, mercurial Lidia, bringing to life her acts of resistance, her descent into the abyss and her eventual resurfacing. The sight or sound of water is never far from the frame, for Lidia was a competitive swimmer before her budding career was derailed by substance abuse and self-destructive behaviour. Whether it's in the bathtub, swimming pool or natural wellsprings, the film is as fixated with water as it is with bodies — contorted, convulsing, pressed against other bodies. With a score often consisting of nothing more than the sound of pencil upon a paper, violent door knocks, disjointed breaths, the staccato of a violin, the unfolding action is necessarily contained to Lidia's perspective, making for a difficult, unrelenting, claustrophobic watch. But by telling this story in a more asynchronous form, Stewart's accomplished debut is also easier to stay with as Lidia comes out on the other side. - Sonia Nair The End of Oak Street A cosy 1980s suburban neighbourhood is teleported back to the prehistoric era, a family is desperate to survive, and the dinosaurs are thrilled about the new protein source that's on the menu in the new film by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows). The score and the establishing scenes make it clear The End of Oak Street is serving up a dose of nostalgia for the family-friendly adventure films of the 1980s, particularly those of Steven Spielberg, and it makes a good case for the return of that genre. At its best, Oak St has all the fun, the innocence, and the danger of those classics, and it's a reminder of why they hold an enduring place in the hearts of many viewers (and filmmakers). Anne Hathaway is a blast as the lead — a mother who might have been on the verge of leaving her family, but who will now fight to the death to keep them alive and together. Unfortunately, the other characters are sketches at best: the largely absent, but well-meaning father (Ewan McGregor), a science-minded daughter (Maisy Stella), and a son with a tendency to lead his family into danger (Christian Convery). Oak St is a tight 90 minutes, with fun set pieces, and some of the best dinosaurs since Jurassic Park. But it never feels confident about the type of movie it wants to be: the dinosaurs are threatening in a family-friendly way, right up to the point they rip a man into small pieces; the children begin taking the lead, only to end up as background to the parents' stories. Because Oak St can't decide whether it wants to celebrate its influences or subvert them, it ends up doing neither. - Sky Kirkham I Want Your Sex It is an incredible cosmic joke (or maybe a studio one) that August is bookended by One Night Only, a sexless "rom-com" that proselytises doing it to the point of facism, and I Want Your Sex, Gregg Araki's acid-tongued condemnation of Gen Z's inability to enjoy carnal pleasures. Twenty-three-year-old assistant Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), is about as gormless as the gum he's chewing to construct a giant, chewy vagina to the exact specifications of his new boss and eventual lover, modern art provocateur Erika Tracey (Olivia Wilde). Frequently ensconced in latex and lingerie (even in the workplace), we first see Erika naked and floating face down in the pool of her palatial mansion, much to the dismay of a bloodied Elliot. From there the 90-minute comedy screams back to the start of this whole mess via Elliot's confession to police officers Detectives Zola (Margaret Cho) and Zem (Johnny Knoxville). Araki spent most of the 90s prodding at Gen X's relationship with sex in his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy, so there's a certain comfort with I Want Your Sex. The first half of the film is so intoxicating with neon colour and evocative texture you'll completely understand why Elliot would get on his knees and pull on some frilly underwear to remain within. Araki and co-writer Karley Sciortino's dialogue crackles with (relevant!) pop culture references and pointed cutdowns of both the oversexed and the prudish. This combined with sporadic sequences of heightened, cartoonish reality pushes I Want Your Sex closer towards Araki's underloved stoner comedy Smiley Face. But after Elliot tramples over his best friend Apple's (an adorable Chase Sui Wonders) real feelings for another fix of Erika's overflowing sexuality, the illusion shatters and the rest of the movie putters out as jokey thriller, not really closing the circle on the interesting ideas presented at the start. - Velvet Winter Insidious: Out of the Further The first Insidious was an unexpected delight; initially presenting as a haunted house movie, it gradually descended into a vaporous astral plane known as "the further". The film ended up grossing nearly one hundred times its $US1.5 million budget, making a return trip inevitable. But after five sequels of varying quality and repetitive lore, the series has abandoned the initial mystique of those grinning, old-timey ghouls adrift in dry ice. It's telling that Out of the Further's most effective scene is one of its least elaborate scares. When protagonist Gemma (Amelia Eve) is hounded by forces from the beyond, the lines between waking life and her dreams are blurred, at one point trapping her in an endless pillow-fort labyrinth with barely enough space to breathe. In a year where independent Gen Z horror has dominated headlines, it's impossible for a sixth Insidious movie to feel anything but stale — particularly when it insists on returning to franchise-favourite themes of family trauma, mental health and unseen demons. Out of the Further basically succeeds at stringing together a series of carnivalesque frights, and even distinguishes itself from prior entries with the addition of some memorably revolting imagery. The return of the ever-excellent Lin Shaye is always welcome. Come for the Blumhouse thrills, stay for the novelty of Hollywood attempting to pass off Melbourne's inner suburbs as New England. - Jamie Tram The Love That Remains In our contemporary cinematic landscape — and perhaps within our broader culture — hetero-pessimism has reigned supreme. Following the grim spiritual reckoning of Godland, the latest film from Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason is a surprisingly (if bleakly) funny depiction of divorce rippling through a family over the course of a year. Its run time is less than two hours, drifting between the minutiae of work and family life against fertile mountainous backdrops — but the cumulative effect is enormous. Where time is warped, shattered, and looped back in on itself in the films of Christopher Nolan, Pálmason gently conveys its undulating form through delicate compositions and patient editing. There's a beguiling tonal balance at play as we observe the family's intimate moments, and the extant affection between parents (played by Saga Garðarsdóttir and Sverrir Guðnason), surrendering to this cold unyielding force. The Love That Remains almost plays as a targeted parody of cottagecore bliss. There are joyous montages as the family of five (with two daughters and a twin, played by the director's own children) forages for berries and mushrooms and gather within their dreamy countryside abode — and did I mention the family includes a show-stopping literally award-winning sheepdog? Yet there's a persistent decay that eventually demands to be acknowledged. This film may not have the online buzz and A-list appeal of other recent relationship dramas — but it deserves a trip to the cinema (and an in-depth post-film conversation with your significant other) all the same. - Jamie Tram