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Jan 17 2015
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St. Vincent movie poster

Review: St. Vincent, Deepsea Challenge 3D, Interstellar, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and Nightcrawler

By Cinema, Reviews

In the last (non-Rancho) post I made a com­mit­ment to get back in to reg­u­lar review­ing and to end my year-long sab­bat­ic­al. (For the reas­ons behind the hiatus, it is recom­men­ded that you have a quick read. Go on, I’ll wait here.) It has come as a bit of a sur­prise to me that I’ve actu­ally seen as much as I have over the last few months. It didn’t feel like it but — thanks to Radio New Zealand, FishHead and Rancho Notorious — fully 18 of the films cur­rently screen­ing around Wellington are films I can actu­ally have an opin­ion on.

Anyway, here goes, and I might as well start with the old­est first. Which, as it turns out, is also a con­tender for the worst film in this post.

St. Vincent movie posterI’ve nev­er man­aged to hide my dis­dain for Little Miss Sunshine, a film which is beloved by many and held up as an example of qual­ity screen­writ­ing to which we all should aspire. It is, in fact, garbage. A col­lec­tion of tics mas­quer­ad­ing as char­ac­ters stuck in a contrived-cute situ­ation in which life les­sons will be learned too eas­ily and happy end­ings will be unearned. Theodore Melfi’s debut fea­ture St. Vincent also falls into all these traps only deep­er. It also relies so heav­ily on the great Bill Murray that it man­ages to even bring him into disrepute.

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Nov 08 2014
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RN 2/2: The All-Star Salute to Studio Ghibli

By Audio, Cinema, Rancho Notorious, Reviews

Dan and Kailey are joined by Sarah Watt, Liam Maguren, Tim Wong, David Larsen and Dominic Corry to cel­eb­rate the works of Ghibli, the fam­ous Japanese anim­a­tion stu­dio, and talk about their favour­ite pro­duc­tions. They also review the Bill Murray vehicle St. Vincent and intro­duce the word “edu­casham­ing” to the world.

Podcast: Play in new win­dow | Download

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Apr 04 2013
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Review: No, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Host and Hyde Park on Hudson

By Cinema, Reviews

No sounds like the kind of thing a tod­dler in the middle of a tan­trum might say, while stomp­ing around your lounge room at bed­time. At the cinema, though, the tan­trum belongs to the cor­rupt dic­tat­or­ship of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, forced through inter­na­tion­al pres­sure to let oth­ers play in his sand­pit. In 1988 he announced a ref­er­en­dum that would demon­strate – by fair means or foul – that the people loved him, weren’t inter­ested in demo­cracy and that those who thought dif­fer­ent were noth­ing but com­mun­ists and terrorists.

15 years after he and his mil­it­ary junta over­threw the legit­im­ate left-leaning gov­ern­ment of Salvador Allende, the ques­tion in the ref­er­en­dum would be a simple one: “Yes” to keep the dic­tat­or­ship and “No” for a return to free elec­tions. No, Pablo Larraín’s bril­liant movie, looks at the cam­paign from the per­spect­ive of an ad guy – a Mad Man – played by Gael García Bernal, who har­nessed the latest cor­por­ate sales tech­niques and the power of tele­vi­sion to change the dir­ec­tion of a nation.

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Sep 09 2012
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Telluride Diary part seven: The show (part four)

By Cinema, Travel

It’s now Saturday morn­ing in NYC and Telluride already seems like old news. Venice has just announced its prizewin­ners (The Master obv. – or not so obv.) and Toronto is in full flow. Still, I have one more day of my Telluride Film Festival exper­i­ence to record and I’d bet­ter get it down before I forget.

The Monday of Telluride is a catch-up day. Most of the celebrit­ies and hon­our­ees have depar­ted and a lot of the pro­gramme is announced the night before, extra screen­ings of pop­u­lar titles (or at least the films that most people were turned away from. This is an excel­lent plan and I was able to fill in quite a few of my gaps (though not all).

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Telluride Volunteer Fire Station.

The first screen­ing was the Q&A ses­sion for Sarah Polley’s new doc­u­ment­ary Stories We Tell, a film that had gen­er­ated quite a bit of buzz over the week­end. Polley – with gor­geous six-month-old daugh­ter in har­ness – briefly intro­duced a film that at first intrigues, then sur­prises and finally delights. She has done a mar­vel­lous job of mak­ing what might have been an indul­gent piece about her own per­son­al dra­mas into some­thing uni­ver­sal. I sin­cerely hope this gets a decent New Zealand release so I can review it at more length but I’m also going to hold back the details of the story so read­ers without access to Google might come to it as unsul­lied by spoil­ers as possible.

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Sep 06 2012
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Telluride Diary part six: The show (part three)

By Cinema, Travel

Firstly, I should add a vital – totally Telluride – detail to yes­ter­day’s post. By choos­ing to watch Rust & Bone and the Marion Cotillard Tribute I missed the first indoor screen­ing of Hyde Park on Hudson and there­fore a rare live appear­ance by Bill Murray at the Q&A. Regret is an emo­tion reserved for those who only look back­wards but – damn!

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Legend Leonard Maltin wait­ing to gain entry to At Any Cost.

Back to the show. Sunday was always likely to be a very full day and – with my new found con­fid­ence in the “sys­tem” I was determ­ined to take full advant­age. I once begged the New Zealand Film Festival to let me watch a screen­er of Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart, even though they had chosen not to pro­gramme it because I loved the idea so much and because Roger Ebert has been cham­pi­on­ing the tal­en­ted young dir­ect­or for years. In fact, they have only screened one of his three films to date: Goodbye Solo in 2009.

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