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rain of the children

2008 comes to an end

By Cinema

Compelled once again by Christmas dead­lines to sum up the year in cinema, I have been think­ing a lot about how some movies stay with you and some don’t, how some movies have got aver­age reviews from me this year but have grown in my affec­tions, and how there are some films you want to see again and some you’re not so bothered about – even when you admire them.

So I’m going to divide my year up in to the fol­low­ing cat­egor­ies: Keepers are films I want to own and live with. Films I can expect to watch once a year – or force upon guests when I dis­cov­er they haven’t already been seen. Repeats are films I would­n’t mind see­ing again – rent­ing or bor­row­ing or stum­bling across on tv. Enjoyed are films I enjoyed (obvi­ously) and respec­ted but am in no hurry to watch again.

No Country for Old Men posterThe “keep­ers” won’t come as any great sur­prise: The Coen’s No Country for Old Men and PT Anderson’s There Will Be Blood were both stone-cold American mas­ter­pieces. NCFOM just about shades it as film of the year but only because I haven’t yet watched TWBB a second time. Vincent Ward’s Rain of the Children was the best New Zealand film for a very long time, an emo­tion­al epic. Apollo doco In the Shadow of the Moon moved and inspired me and I want to give it a chance to con­tin­ue to do so by keep­ing it in my house. Finally, two supremely sat­is­fy­ing music films: I could listen to Todd Haynes’ Dylan biop­ic I’m Not There. again and again, and watch­ing it was was much fun­ni­er than I expec­ted. Not mind­ing the music of U2, I did­n’t have a big hump to get over watch­ing their 3D con­cert movie, but what a blast it was! Immersive and involving, it was the first truly great digit­al 3D exper­i­ence. For the time being you can­’t recre­ate the 3D exper­i­ence at home so I hold out for a giant cinema screen of my own to watch it on.

Next lay­er down are the films I would­n’t mind watch­ing again, either because I sus­pect there are hid­den pleas­ures to be revealed or because a second view­ing will con­firm or deny sus­pec­ted great­ness. Gritty Romanian mas­ter­piece 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days has stayed with me since I saw it in March. Be Kind Rewind was rich enough (and good-hearted enough) to deserve anoth­er look. Martin McDonagh’s bizarre hit­man fantasy In Bruges rocked along at such a decent clip I need to see it again to make sure I did­n’t miss any of it’s eccent­ric pleas­ures. I liked and respec­ted the Coen’s oth­er 2008 entry Burn After Reading more than every oth­er crit­ic so a second view­ing would be use­ful, if only to con­firm that I appre­ci­ated it bet­ter than every­one else did… Or not.

Tropic Thunder posterIf I could just clip the Robert Downey Jr. bits from Tropic Thunder it would be a keep­er, instead I look for­ward to see­ing it again over Christmas. The same goes for the entire first act of WALL•E which I could watch over and over again. Sadly the film lost some of that magic when it got in to space (though it remains a stun­ning achieve­ment all the same).

Into the “Enjoy” cat­egory: Of the doc­u­ment­ar­ies released to cinemas this year, three stood out. The affec­tion­ate por­trait of Auckland theatre-maker Warwick Broadhead, Rubbings From a Live Man, was mov­ing and its strange­ness was per­fectly appro­pri­ate. Up the Yangtze showed us a China we could­n’t see via the Olympics jug­ger­naut and Young at Heart is still play­ing and should­n’t be missed.

The Edge of Heaven posterI made plenty of suc­cess­ful vis­its to the art­house this year. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was awe­some; The Edge of Heaven quietly enthralling; Irina Palm was sur­pris­ing. My review says I liked After the Wedding but I hardly remem­ber a thing about it. Also get­ting the art­house tick from me: The Counterfeiters, The Band’s Visit, the delight­ful hymn to tol­er­ance Grow Your Own and the glossy romance The Painted Veil.

Worthy indies that gave me faith in the future of US cinema included Ben Affleck’s Boston-thriller Gone Baby Gone; Ryan Gosling in love with a sex toy (Lars and the Real Girl); twee little Juno; nasty (in a good way) Choke; heart­warm­ing The Visitor and Frozen River (which was the best of the lot).

Space Chimps posterMainstream Hollywood was­n’t a com­plete waste of space this year (although the ghastly cyn­ic­al rom-coms 27 Dresses and Made of Honour would have you believe oth­er­wise). Ghost Town was the best romantic com­edy of the year; The Dark Knight and Iron Man were enter­tain­ing enough; I got car­ried away by Mamma Mia and the showstop­ping per­form­ance by Meryl Streep; Taken was ener­get­ic Euro-pulp; Horton Hears a Who! and Madagascar 2 held up the kid-friendly end of the deal (plus a shout-out for the under-appreciated Space Chimps) and, of course, Babylon A.D. (just kid­ding, but I did enjoy it’s campy insanity).

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 31 December, 2008.

Note that I delib­er­ately avoid choos­ing Festival-only films as dir­ect­ing people towards films they can­’t eas­ily see is just cruel.

Review: Rain of the Children, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and several more ...

By Cinema and Reviews

Rain of the Children posterArguably, the most import­ant film of the year so far opens this week: Rain of the Children restores Vincent Ward’s repu­ta­tion as a sin­gu­lar cinema artist, after the des­per­ate trav­ails of River Queen, and uses the essen­tial New Zealand story of Rua Kenana and the Tuhoe res­ist­ance as vivid back­ground to a uni­ver­sal story of par­ent­hood and loss.

In this film Ward returns to the sub­ject of his first doc­u­ment­ary, In Spring One Plants Alone, a film he made as a naïve 21 year old back in 1979. In that film we watched as 80 year old Puhi attemp­ted to care for her last child, the men­tally ill Niki. In Rain, Ward tells Puhi’s whole story – from her Urewera child­hood, mar­riage to the proph­et Rua’s son, and then the tra­gedies that bore down upon her until she (and the rest of her com­munity) con­sidered her­self cursed.

The full emo­tion­al impact took a while to register with me – long enough that the tears didn’t start until half way through the cred­its. I’d need to see it again before mak­ing the call about “mas­ter­piece” or not, but it cer­tainly felt like that, stand­ing numb in the Wellington rain after the Film Festival screening.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor posterI don’t know what I did to deserve the dubi­ous pleas­ure of two Brendan Fraser action flicks in two days, but I can’t say I’m all that grate­ful. Journey to the Centre of the Earth will get it’s review next week but as for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor the less said the bet­ter. The dis­cov­ery of an aban­doned tomb full of rel­ics in west­ern China brings Fraser and Maria Bello (sub­bing for Rachel Weisz) out of retire­ment just in time for the magic­al Eye of Shangri-La to bring evil Emperor Han (Jet Li) back to life. Li has nev­er been the most express­ive of act­ors and, luck­ily for him, he spends most of the film under a computer-generated mask of stone. It’s what we used to call a romp and is so stuffed with ‘stuff’ that it’s hard to argue that you don’t get your money’s worth, even if it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Taken posterTaken is highly effect­ive, first-rate pulp star­ring Liam Neeson in the kind of role that Charles Bronson or Lee Marvin might have played back in the day. Neeson isn’t as cool as Marvin, but that’s ok as, by choos­ing to play his char­ac­ters faults as well as his strengths, he gives the audi­ence some­thing to con­nect with (amidst all the viol­ence and may­hem). He plays a retired spy, try­ing to recon­nect with his fam­ily who have star­ted over without him. A bit like De Niro in the Fockers films, he’s over-protective, cyn­ic­al and para­noid but when his daugh­ter is kid­napped by white slavers about an hour after arriv­ing in Paris all his fears come true and only he can do the required rescuing.

Son of Rambow posterSon of Rambow pushes plenty of my 80s English nostalgia-buttons (”Screen Test”, cinemas split into smoking and non-smoking sec­tions, Space Dust & Coke cock­tails) but, des­pite that, I nev­er quite man­aged to fall in love with it. 10 year old Plymouth Brethren-ite, Will (Bill Milner) dis­cov­ers Stallone’s First Blood via pir­ate video and is per­suaded by school ter­ror Lee Carter (Will Poulter) to be the stunt­man in his VHS-cam trib­ute. Too reli­ant on the fatherless-child cliché for its drama, and car­toon whimsy for its com­edy, Son of Rambow nev­er quite reaches the heights prom­ised by its cent­ral idea.

Un Secret posterThere’s plenty of excel­lent drama still to be mined from the Holocaust, as Un Secret (from France) and Austrian Oscar win­ner The Counterfeiters prove. In the first film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s Mathieu Amalric searches Paris for his fath­er, while in flash­back, he searches his fam­ily his­tory for some­thing to explain his own life. There are plenty of secrets to choose from, and one of the pleas­ures of the film is try­ing to work out which one is the secret of the title.

The Counterfeiters posterWhile Un Secret focuses on a family’s attempts to stay out of the camps, The Counterfeiters locks us inside with the inmates of Sachsenhausen and it’s a hell of a thing. Karl Markovics plays pro­fes­sion­al for­ger Sally Sorowitsch, enlis­ted by the Nazis to provide expert assist­ance for their attempts to flood the Allied eco­nomy with fake bank­notes. Sally sees it as his oppor­tun­ity to avoid the gas cham­bers but not every­one on the team shares his single-minded devo­tion to sur­viv­al and he is forced to engage with his own lack of idealism.

Markovics’ remark­able cheekbones provide excel­lent archi­tec­ture to inspire Benedict Neuenfels’ superb high con­trast cine­ma­to­graphy and The Counterfeiters is grip­ping, mov­ing and pro­voc­at­ive throughout.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 17 September, 2008.

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: For once, little to com­plain about. Rain of the Children as intim­ated in the body copy, was at a packed Film Festival mat­inée at the Embassy; The Mummy was also at the Embassy, although more recently, Taken was at Readings 2, cour­tesy of a pass from Fox, Son of Rambow (which was the cause of some con­sterna­tion last week) was a tor­rent; Un Secret was screened from a pre­view DVD from Hoyts Distribution (due to the already alluded to Penthouse prob­lems) and The Counterfeiters was in the big room at the Paramount where it was a little too quiet (not the end of the world with sub­titles) and the print had def­in­itely been around the block a few times.