Friday reviews: 6 October 2023

Uproar, November, The Tasting and The Exorcist: Believer are all in cinemas, Reptile is on Netflix, Flora and Son is on Apple TV+

One of the chal­lenges of review­ing films in New Zealand is what to do with loc­al product that you are con­nec­ted to – which in my case is most of them. After years in around film and per­form­ing arts, the chances are that there is someone in the cred­its that I’ve worked with or are friends with.

Do you pull your punches? I once reviewed a theatre show that ended a friend­ship, and surely loc­al films need all the help they can get going up against the bug guns from Hollywood. But that’s not what you are here for.

Or do I just ignore films fea­tur­ing friends – recuse myself like a board mem­ber with a con­flict of interest? The risk is that’s seen as a judge­ment in itself. He didn’t review it, ergo he didn’t like it (but is afraid to say so).

This week’s film from Aotearoa is a case in point. I know lots of people who worked on Uproar. Indeed, some of them are sub­scribers to this very news­let­ter. What to do?

Luckily, I get to kick this can of dilemma down the road a wee while longer because Uproar is actu­ally quite good. Parts of it are very good.

It’s 1981. Julian Dennison is Josh, a teen­age stu­dent at a pres­ti­gi­ous Dunedin boys’ school, but only because his broth­er was a Junior All Black and cap­tain of the all-important first XV. His single moth­er (Minnie Driver) cleans the school – and every­where else it seems – as well as deliv­er­ing news­pa­pers and fly­ers all over the neighbourhood.

Josh is artic­u­late, funny, shy and a fish out of water at the kind of school that prides itself on … school pride. He’s taken under the wing of English teach­er Brother Madigan (Rhys Darby) who thinks he might have a future on the stage.

But not in New Zealand in 1981, obvi­ously. Ridiculous thought. No, he sug­gests audi­tion­ing for NIDA in Sydney.

Pressure starts to mount on poor old Josh as Madigan’s encour­age­ment con­flicts with Mum’s dis­cour­age­ment and the sim­ul­tan­eous grow­ing polit­ic­al aware­ness around the Springbok tour.

By try­ing to please every­one, Josh risks being torn apart him­self, much like the coun­try was at the time.

Uproar does a great job of show­ing the essen­tial homo­gen­eity of New Zealand cul­ture and the often unbear­able pres­sure to con­form. This is a con­ser­vat­ive coun­try, and we end up cel­eb­rat­ing our out­laws and mav­er­icks for over­com­ing all of the obstacles that we put in their way rather than sup­port­ing them from the start.

I’m not sure I quite buy the neat end­ing – the script has a lot of strands to tie togeth­er – but get­ting there can be a treat and Dennison is turn­ing into quite a spe­cial actor.

November was the biggest box office draw in France last year and you can see why.

Based on the urgent and pan­icky invest­ig­a­tion into the ter­ror­ist attack in Paris in November 2015 – sev­er­al of the attack­ers escaped and no one had any idea how many more there were or what they were cap­able of doing next – the film paints French law enforce­ment as noble, self­less and heroic.

There are moments where an audi­ence trau­mat­ised by those events might clap and cheer but it does end on a more down­beat and thought­ful note.

The film isn’t inter­ested in the rela­tion­ships between these cops, or their home life. It’s all about the police work and it cracks along at a tre­mend­ous pace, reflect­ing those few days when the cops would sleep at their desks and then wake up and do it again until the job is done.

A dif­fer­ent kind of cop is presen­ted to us in Reptile. Benicio Del Toro anchors this atmo­spher­ic and styl­ish murder mys­tery as Tom Nichols, a big city hom­icide detect­ive in a small town, painstak­ingly track­ing down the con­spir­acy behind the bru­tal murder of a loc­al real estate agent.

Regular film­go­ers, such as yourselves, will have a fair idea where this is going but it is the get­ting there that is the pleas­ure. Old fash­ioned film grain, rainy loc­a­tions, bursts of viol­ent energy – it’s like it could have been made in the 70s.

Del Toro co-wrote the script and has fash­ioned for him­self a char­ac­ter well-suited to his tre­mend­ous tal­ents. At times I was reminded of Robert Mitchum – not doing very much but always hold­ing your attention.

Feel-good film of the week is Flora and Son, star­ring Eve Hewson as a Dublin single moth­er strug­gling to make a rela­tion­ship with her teen­ager. She finds an old gui­tar in a skip and gives it to him in the hope that music will build some bridges between them.

This is a film by John Carney (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street) so of course it will, but not in the way that we expect.

Carney’s belief that music saves lives is built in to every atom of his body and that sin­cer­ity could be pain­ful if it wasn’t backed up by some good per­form­ances, espe­cially Orén Kinlan as teen­age Max.

Cynics might need to go some­where else for their fix this week.

In The Tasting (aka La dégust­a­tion) small town wine shop own­er Bernard Campan is advised to stop drink­ing by his doc­tor after a heart scare, tak­ing away the one pleas­ure he has left as his busi­ness slowly dissolves.

Meanwhile, too nice for words Isabelle Carré – a single mid­wife who volun­teers with the home­less and does African dance classes – takes a shine to him and encour­ages him to restart his even­ing wine tast­ing sessions.

These two are meant to be togeth­er but she struggles to over­come his depres­sion and he to break though her reserve. There’s the occa­sion­al sharp edge on dis­play here but not very often and not for very long.

Otherwise, it’s an ami­able romantic drama with two well cast lead actors.

The Exorcist: Believer has been roundly and loudly panned by most crit­ics but I can’t really see why. The sixth fea­ture in the 50-year fran­chise – and the first of a pro­posed new tri­logy from writer-director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny MacBride – I couldn’t see much wrong with it but then there isn’t much right with it either.

Maybe it’s because I don’t hold Friedkin’s first film in such rev­er­ence, and neither am I a rabid hor­ror fan, this one just floated past me without pro­vok­ing much opin­ion in either direction.

I quite liked the idea that sev­er­al dif­fer­ent denom­in­a­tions and belief sys­tems – includ­ing ancient African tra­di­tions and, sur­pris­ingly, athe­ism – have to join in on the exor­cism of the two unfor­tu­nate tween girls, it’s not all up to Catholicism.

So, it flirts with an idea or two but doesn’t really fol­low through.

Ellen Burstyn only said yes to being in this if Blumhouse and Universal fun­ded a schol­ar­ship for gif­ted stu­dents at the uni­ver­sity where she teaches which is as good an out­come from a for­get­table film as we can ask for.

Uproar, November and The Exorcist: Believer are all new in cinemas this week, The Tasting landed in theatres last week, Reptile is new on Netflix, Flora and Son is new on Apple TV+.

Also open­ing this week in New Zealand cinemas: The Expend4bles but I couldn’t find a ses­sion that would fit in with all the oth­ers (and travel time). Maybe next week?

Further listening

Back in 2016 I was lucky enough to inter­view John Carney – over a very scratchy phone line – for RNZ’s Standing Room Only show.

He was bet­ter value than I was – a real gent.