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December 2010

Dec 31 2010
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Review: The Blind Side, The Book of Eli, Antichrist & Letters to Juliet

By Cinema, Reviews

God is in the house this week. He turns up in the val­ues of a wealthy Tennessee fam­ily who adopt a poor black kid and turn him into a cham­pi­on, He fea­tures in a big leath­er book car­ried across a post-apocalyptic America by enig­mat­ic Denzel Washington, and He is not­able for His absence in a Lars von Trier shock­er that is unlike any­thing you will have seen before or see since.

First, the good ver­sion. Based on a best selling book by Michael Lewis, The Blind Side would not have made it New Zealand screens if it wasn’t for Sandra Bullock’s sur­prise Oscar win earli­er this year and it’s easy to see why dis­trib­ut­ors might have left it on the shelf. Personally, I’m glad they didn’t. My com­pan­ion had no know­ledge of, or affin­ity for, American Football or the com­plex and baff­ling col­lege sports struc­ture and was, there­fore, a bit left out of a story that man­aged to push all my but­tons fairly effortlessly.

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Dec 30 2010
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Review: Robin Hood, The Secret in Their Eyes & four more ...

By Cinema, Reviews

Robin Hood posterWhen my usu­al movie-going part­ner was offered the chance to see the new Robin Hood her first ques­tion was “Who is play­ing Robin?” When I told her that it was Strathmore’s finest son, Russell “Rusty” Crowe, she declined sug­gest­ing some­what unchar­it­ably that he was prob­ably bet­ter suited to play­ing Friar Tuck (or at a pinch Little John). Her favour­ite Robin is the 80s be-mulletted Michael Praed from the tele­vi­sion. Mine is a toss-up between the “fant­ast­ic” sly fox in the 1973 Disney ver­sion, John Cleese in Time Bandits and Sean Connery in Robin and Marian, so Rusty and dir­ect­or Ridley Scott had a moun­tain to climb before the open­ing cred­its even rolled.

This new Robin Hood is a pre­quel (or an ori­gin story in the com­ic book par­lance). On his way back from the Crusades with Richard the Lionheart, Robin Longstocking (sorry, Longstride) heads to Nottingham to return a sword. In Richard’s absence, England has fallen in to fin­an­cial and polit­ic­al ruin and the French are plot­ting to fill the void with an army mass­ing off the coast and spies in the court.

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Dec 30 2010
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Review: Sex and the City 2, Coco & Igor and StreetDance 3D

By Cinema, Reviews

It’s been a week­end made for movie watch­ing with cinemas across the city groan­ing under the weight of pat­rons escap­ing the filthy weath­er. It’s been so busy, in fact, that I failed to get in to either screen­ing of The Last Station that I tried to attend – sold out at the Lighthouse and the Penthouse. Obviously, I should know bet­ter than to not book in advance on a hol­i­day week­end but it means that I’m one down on the reviews I planned to offer you this week.

Sex and the City 2 posterInstead of Tolstoy and his Russian cul­tur­al leg­acy, then, we kick-off with Sex and the City 2, a film that already has had some notori­ously vicious reviews, and it deserves every single bit of vit­ri­ol the world can throw at it. SATC2 is an arti­fact of pure evil, a hate crime dis­guised as a puppy. I thought that the first film was point­less and dumb, but didn’t real­ise how offens­ive and per­ni­cious the val­ues on dis­play actu­ally are. There’s not a char­ac­ter in this film that isn’t a nar­ciss­ist­ic whiner, stuck in their priv­ileged little bubble, will­fully ignor­ant of any­thing oth­er than them­selves and the fantasy world they live in.

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Dec 30 2010
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Review: Toy Story 3, The Twilight Saga- Eclipse, Marmaduke & Me and Orson Welles

By Cinema, Reviews

For those read­ers tuned into these things, clear evid­ence emerged this week of the ‘end of days’ and our impend­ing anni­hil­a­tion – cul­tur­ally at least.

Simply put, Twilight: Eclipse is play­ing around three times as many ses­sions in Wellington cinemas this school hol­i­days as Toy Story 3, des­pite the lat­ter being demon­strably super­i­or fare in every con­ceiv­able way. It was pretty depress­ing to check the papers last week to see that TS3 was only get­ting one Embassy ses­sion (in the mat­inée ghetto) as opposed to Eclipse’s four. It’s enough to make one wish for a friendly wall to bang one’s head upon.

Toy Story 3 posterIs Toy Story 3 that good? Yes, it is. In fact, I would ven­ture the slightly dan­ger­ous opin­ion that if there’s a film in the Film Festival this year as good as Toy Story 3 then I will be very, very surprised.

The last couple of Pixar films reviewed in these pages have been gently chided for fall­ing away in the third act – fail­ing to main­tain their geni­us right through to the end. No such prob­lems occur with TS3. It stays on course, con­tinu­ing to illu­min­ate char­ac­ter and action with deft, sur­pris­ing and eer­ily appro­pri­ate plot turns.

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Dec 30 2010
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Review: The Karate Kid, Predators, My One and Only & Knight and Day

By Cinema, Reviews

The Karate Kid posterThe first thing to know about The Karate Kid is that there is no kar­ate in it. This remake of the eighties favour­ite sends twelve-year-old hero Jaden Smith to China where they hurt people with kung fu instead. It was ori­gin­ally going to be called The Kung Fu Kid until someone in mar­ket­ing real­ised cer­tain syn­er­gist­ic oppor­tun­it­ies might be missed by the less cred­u­lous tar­get mar­ket. So there we are.

I have mixed feel­ings about this film. I have no great love for the ori­gin­al (des­pite ador­ing my occa­sion­al nick­name “Daniel-san”) so am not much bothered about the updat­ing. Director Harald Zwart man­aged to get my pulse going a bit faster than nor­mal, which doesn’t hap­pen very often these days, and there are some nice scenes that take advant­age of some inter­est­ing Chinese loc­a­tions. But this is basic­ally a pre-teen Rocky with some pretty real­ist­ic smacks and I’m a little uncom­fort­able about that.

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Dec 30 2010
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Review: The Losers, Every Jack Has a Jill and A Single Man

By Cinema, Reviews

This week’s review comes to you from sunny/rainy Auckland where your cor­res­pond­ent is catch­ing up with old friends and enjoy­ing the Auckland cinema scene. The first thing to report is that audi­ence beha­viour in the 09 is as selfish and imma­ture as it is at home. Texting and talk­ing is as pre­val­ent at com­mer­cial films like The Losers (screen­ing at the oth­er­wise well-appointed Sky City St Lukes) as in Wellington.

The Losers posterThe Losers itself would be an easy film to avoid if it wasn’t the only not­able Hollywood release of the week. A crack com­mando squad are hung out to dry by mys­ter­i­ous forces back in Washington. Somehow they have to get back stateside, clear their names and take their revenge on the shad­owy mas­ter­mind who tries to des­troy them. Sound famil­i­ar? Yes, it’s The A‑Team and a remake of that comes out in a week or two so you can safely bypass this low-rent ver­sion fea­tur­ing some B‑list stars like Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen ), Chris Evans (Fantastic 4) and the bland­est super vil­lain in his­tory, Jason Patric (Speed 2).

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