Something to watch tonight: Thursday 21 March

Uproar (Middleditch/Bennett, 2023)

Physical media releases are becom­ing quite a rare thing in New Zealand. Disney don’t both­er at all here now and the amount of shelf space devoted to DVD and Blu-ray is shrink­ing all the time in favour of all that expens­ive vinyl.

So it’s nice to report that a loc­al film is get­ting decent treatment.

Last year’s Springbok Tour-era coming-of-age film Uproar is in shops today on both formats and it is def­in­itely worth a look. I reviewed the film here when it was in cinemas back in October.

It’s 1981. Julian Dennison is Josh, a teen­age stu­dent at a pres­ti­gi­ous Dunedin boys’ school, but only because his broth­er (James Rolleston) 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.

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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.

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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.

Also reviewed that week were French ter­ror­ism thrill­er November, Reptile on Netflix (star­ring Benicio Del Toro) and John Carney’s charm­ing AppleTV+ music movie Flora & Son.

Where to watch Uproar

Aotearoa: DVD & Blu-ray from Madman Entertainment, also digit­al rent­al from AroVision

Australia: DVD & Blu-ray from Madman Entertainment, also digit­al rent­al from Apple or Amazon

Canada & USA: In lim­ited cinema release from 15 March

UK: Not cur­rently available