Let’s get the unpleasantness out of the way first: watching The Farrelly Brothers’ ugly remake of Neil Simon’s The Heartbreak Kid was a trial beyond all human endurance. After about 20 minutes I was begging for release (which came shortly afterwards as blissful unconsciousness overtook me). Sadly, no studio executive will ever get fired for green-lighting a racy Ben Stiller romantic comedy so no matter how bad this one is it won’t be the last one we are forced to endure.
Screenwriter Ronan Bennett criticises Martin Amis for his questionable positioning on present day inter-cultural relations (and other commentators for essentially giving him a free pass):
As a novelist, Amis is free to do whatever he wants with his characters, but the hijackers’ steps on the road to 9/11 repay investigation. Reducing the motivation of the enemy to bloodlust leads nowhere, as the experience of the British in Ireland proved. The result will be wrong and it will be cliché. It may be, given Amis’s spectacular powers, flamboyant, but that will only make it flamboyant cliché. Horrorism. Death cult. Thanatoid. Striking words but poor substitutes for understanding, reason and real knowledge.
I am a big fan of Amis’ writing but I confess to being uncomfortable with some of the positions he is taking at the moment.
About a third of the way through Elizabeth The Golden Age, handsome pirate Walter Raleigh arrives at Court bringing his Queen gifts from the New World: potatoes in a box of soil and tobacco (bringing to mind that wonderful Bob Newhart routine: “Then what do you do, Walt? ha! ha! ha!… You set fire to it!”) But what Raleigh (played by Clive Owen with an old-fashioned movie star cool that he hasn’t mustered before) is really offering Elizabeth is the future; a future of gunpowder, international trade, science and empire. And for another 400 years Britannia will rule the waves.
Unlike some, I can’t comment too much on the historical accuracy of the film – it seemed pretty close to how I remember studying it as an eight year old – but absolute accuracy doesn’t seem to be the point. The portrait of a woman who has to become an icon (super-human and at the same time less than human) in order to preserve her people is ripe for a melodramatic Hollywood telling and director Shekhar Kapur and star Cate Blanchett don’t let us down.
This film is a sequel, of course, to the remarkably successful Elizabeth that launched Blanchett nearly ten years ago. That success means a bigger budget this time around – hundreds more extras, flasher sets and a rip-roaring maritime set-piece – but it is the supremely controlled Blanchett that dominates. As we rejoin the story her position is still insecure: challenged from the North by half-sister Mary Queen of Scots and from the South by Philip of Spain, the tussle is between Catholic superstition (and medieval brutality) and the enlightened religious tolerance that would allow an Empire to flourish. No wonder some Catholics aren’t happy with this version of history…
Fingers crossed that this year we’ll only get one fat, jolly, red-faced Santa movie after last year’s woeful bunch: but if we have to have one I’m pleased to report that Fred Claus isn’t too embarrassing. A fine cast, including Kevin Spacey and Miranda Richardson, have been gathered to tell the story of Santa’s big brother (Vince Vaughan) who left home in a sulk many years ago and is now a cynical repo man in Chicago.
Meanwhile Santa (Paul Giamatti) is stressed out as more and more kids are asking for more and more presents (not like the old days when one present per kid was enough). When Fred needs to be bailed out of chokey, Santa sees a chance to bring the family back together and get some extra help at the North Pole. The tone of the film is pretty random and the humour is hit and miss but Giamatti’s performance as Santa is so fine that, if he rolled it out in any other film, we’d be talking about award nominations. Seriously.
Diaspora and mass dislocation is the great story of the modern age – from the Irish fleeing the potato famine to the millions in Africa displaced by war or genocide. It’s no picnic abandoning your home and everything you know for the hint of a better life – ask your taxi driver – and Emanuele Crialese’s Golden Door plays as a worthy tribute to all those who have ever taken that risk. His film follows a turn of the (last) century Sicilian family escaping the grinding poverty of their island in the hope of getting to Walter Raleigh’s New World where money grows on trees and there are rivers of milk. Once there, they exchange one island for another (Ellis) where they are prodded and tested before being found worthy of America. Crialese’s eye for an arresting image and a lovely performance from lead Vincenzo Amato make Golden Door one of the unsung art-house films of the year.
Mr. Brooks is an odd fish – the film and the character. Kevin Costner plays successful self-made businessman Earl Brooks; he’s Portland’s Man of the Year but he has a secret. Not only is he a demented serial-killer but he has an imaginary friend (William Hurt) who sits in the back seat of his car getting him in to trouble so its a bit like a grown-up version of Drop Dead Fred. Costner’s tendency to underplay everything means we never get a real sense of the torment under the button-down façade but at least he is consistently interesting, unlike the sub-plot involving the cop chasing him (Demi Moore) and her divorce.
For space reasons, only the Elizabeth segment of this review was printed in the Capital Times, Wednesday 21 November, 2007. For some reason they then printed a version of it again in the Films of the Week section at the back of the book, instead of some more of my gorgeous prose. I love them like family, and am intensely grateful for the opportunity to do this in front of an audience, but would like to point out that I don’t have anything to do with the strangely edited “Films of the Week” apart from providing the raw material.
In 1993 Christchurch property developer Dave Henderson tried to get a GST refund on a project he was working on in Lower Hutt. When the IRD officer sexually harassed his partner, Dave threatened to kick him “half way down Cashel Street”, it turned out the IRD were the wrong people to threaten and the hell unleashed is entirely in the other direction. After years of audits, prosecutions and bankruptcies it took intervention from the heroic Rodney Hide to finally put a stop to the abuse.
We’re Here to Help will look right at home on television when it eventually appears (the IRD reception area looks like the old Shortland Street set) but if you go now you’ll have plenty to talk about at your summer barbecues.
There’s a lot to like about We’re Here to Help, particularly seeing experienced New Zealand actors like John Leigh and Stephen Papps given some freedom to play (and lead Erik Thomson is an effortless everyman) but the film gets terribly strange when Michael Hurst turns up dressed in a a fat suit to play Hide. He’s totally miscast and it becomes a completely different film (something by Jim Henson perhaps) when he is onscreen.
Have the IRD changed their ways? It has been argued that the unpleasantness served up to Henderson had its roots in an insular Christchurch business community but I know that several people connected to the production were very wary of potential IRD retaliation over the film and the fact that Producer John Barnett is currently being audited may not be an innocent coincidence.
Ian Curtis, Macclesfield’s matchless purveyor of un-listenable dirges, gets the big screen biopic treatment in Control. It’s a handsome production with some fine performances (not least from newcomer Sam Riley as Curtis); the actors playing Joy Division recreate the music with distressing accuracy and director Anton Corbijn employs the most effective use of black and white photography since Raging Bull.
Dog-sledding seems like a desperately uncertain method of transportation in The Last Trapper. Canadian hunter and wilderness veteran Norman Winther seems to spend most of his time tipping over, falling into frozen lakes, down ravines and tangling himself up with the dogs. Winther plays himself but it isn’t a documentary (although I’m sure there are grains of truth in each recreation). My recommendation would be to stick your fingers in your ears to ignore the clunky dialogue and poor dubbing and concentrate on the beautiful Yukonic visuals.
Back in 1983 Stephen King gave us a haunted car in Christine. Now, 24 years later he has come up with a haunted hotel room in 1408. Rumours that his next project will be about a haunted shopping trolley are pure speculation on my part. As for 1408, there are few surprises on offer and, apart from the always watchable John Cusack, it really did nothing for me.
Here in New Zealand Robert Redford’s patronising political science exercise Lions for Lambs seems so much like preaching to the choir but it would interesting to see it with a different audience, one for whom the simplistic history and ethics lessons on offer are fresh and inspiring. On second thoughts I don’t think that audience exists. Tom Cruise plays ambitious Republican senator Jasper Irving, trying to manipulate credulous reporter Meryl Streep into promoting the latest random military surge in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan the surge itself has started badly and in California Pol-Sci professor Redford is trying to convince one last student to devote himself to selfless public service instead of easy money and a quiet life.
Finally, Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is pure cinematic entertainment – an expertly constructed throwaway tribute to the cheap thrills of the 70s. Awesome Kurt Russell plays Stuntman Mike, a nasty piece of work who use his souped up “death proof” Chevy Nova to wreak havoc on two groups of young women. Luckily for the second bunch, they have kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Kill Bill) in the team and the ability to fight back. I came out of Death Proof grinning from ear to ear.
Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 14 November, 2007.
Nature of Conflict: John Leigh, Stephen Papps and several other members of the cast of We’re Here To Help are great mates of long standing. And Erik Thomson is a cousin.
Russell Brand on his experience at sex addiction rehab:
In that situation, however, alienated from my normal surroundings, I realised that the outer surface of what I thought was my unique, individual identity was just a set of routines. We all have an essential self, but if you spend every day chopping up meat on a slab, and selling it by the pound, soon you’ll find you’ve become a butcher. And if you don’t want to become a butcher (and why would you?), you’re going to have to cut right through to the bare bones of your own character in the hope of finding out who you really are. Which bloody hurts.
(via The Guardian)
There’s something creepy yet disarmingly human about Peter O’Toole’s ageing lothario in Venus; a once beautiful actor still working sporadically, his cadaverous features best-suited to the literal portrayal of corpses, clinging to the promise of beauty and pleasure despite the ultimate futility of the chase.
Newcomer Jodie Whittaker (in a star-making performance) becomes the object of his affection, tutelage and reverence when she arrives in London to nurse his best friend (Leslie Phillips). While Phillips is appalled at the girl’s inability to cook anything other than pot noodle while drinking his best scotch, Maurice is intoxicated by her spirit and beauty and decides to take her under his wing.
While O’Toole’s performance has won all the plaudits (and the Oscar nomination), it is the portrait of reckless, innocent and impetuous youth that has stayed with me – the best portrayal of what it means to be young I have seen in a long time. Whittaker’s Jessie has all the confidence and bravado one gets launching in to the world with the training wheels off but not enough self-knowledge to protect her from the dangers within it.