I really enjoyed Alexander Payne’s The Descendants — at least while I was watching it. Some films will do that to you, though. They push all sorts of groovy buttons while you are in the room but they diminish as you re-examine them. Connections that you thought were there turn out to be illusory, a […]
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The first Sione’s movie arrived in cinemas in 2006 — before I commenced this weekly catalogue of hits and misses — so I have to plead ignorance about the Duck Rockers and their earlier hijinks. I didn’t even try and download it. How lame! So, Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business has to stand on its own …
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Time to clear the summer holiday backlog so that the next time it rains you’ll have an idea of what you should go and see. There’s plenty to choose from — for all ages — and there’s a bunch more to come too. Best thing on at the moment is Martin Scorsese’s first “kids” film, Hugo, […]
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For years now I’ve been fighting a single-handed defence of the later career of Robert De Niro (no defence, of course, being necessary for the early career which featured Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter). This defence has several arguments. Firstly, his decline hasn’t been nearly as pronounced — or as strange — […]
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Every so often a film comes along that fits so squarely and neatly inside one’s own personal set of interests and enthusiasms that it is impossible to be objective about it. I try and keep my work here disinterested and arms’ length — clinical, if you will — but, y’know, I’m only human. Just so …
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There are now four films in the Twilight “saga” which means I’ve spent 493 minutes in the Twilight universe, at least 492 of them wishing I was somewhere else. The latest episode, Breaking Dawn Part 1 follows the Harry Potter strategy of not separating uncomplaining fools from their money once when you can do so …
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Dan Slevin is a New Zealand-based writer, broadcaster and consultant. He has reviewed cinema for the Capital Times weekly newspaper since September 2006, seeing and reviewing every film commercially released in Wellington in that time (except, for some reason, Flicka or Beverly Hills Chihuahua).
Dan is a regular contributor to Radio New Zealand National’s Nine to Noon programme and produces and co-hosts the weekly movie podcast, Cinematica.
In addition to being the finest swordsman in all France, he is also the meanest hombre west of the Pecos. He tweets here.
Why Funerals & Snakes? In Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (Le Mépris; 1963), Fritz Lang said of CinemaScope: “It’s only good for funerals and snakes.”