Something to watch tonight: Friday 1 November

Balibo (Connolly, 2009)

Firstly, wel­come to all the new sub­scribers brought here by a recom­mend­a­tion from Miranda Harcourt’s Substack, Notes for Actors. Miranda is one of New Zealand’s nation­al treas­ures and argu­ably one of the finest act­ing coaches in the world. If act­ing is a thing that you are inter­ested in, that news­let­ter is worth your time.

Secondly, tonight in Wellington F&S sub­scriber DD of Onehunga has the world première of his new film, Gut Instinct, as part of the annu­al Terror-Fi film fest­iv­al. If you are free, I recom­mend a trip to the Roxy in Miramar at 6.15pm to have your mind blown. We were lucky enough to get a pre­view on Tuesday night and I can safely say that you have seen (and heard) noth­ing like this film. It plays Auckland’s Terror-Fi next Friday and Christchurch on the fol­low­ing Thursday,

Back to our reg­u­larly sched­uled pro­gram­ming, I reviewed Balibo for Capital Times back in March 2010:

In October 1975, the obscure little Portuguese colony of East Timor was giv­en inde­pend­ence after 400 years of European rule. A mixed Melanesian/Polynesian pop­u­la­tion was sit­ting on rich min­er­al and fossil fuel poten­tial and sur­roun­ded on three sides by the region’s power­house, Indonesia (with Australia to the south). After only nine days of inde­pend­ence, Indonesia invaded in one of the most cyn­ic­al and bru­tal land grabs in mod­ern history.

The Indonesian armed forces, know­ing that an inva­sion was a gross breach of inter­na­tion­al law, wore plain clothes and did everything they could to extin­guish evid­ence and wit­nesses. The most cel­eb­rated vic­tims of the atro­city were the Balibo 5, young Australian tele­vi­sion journ­al­ists who were stran­ded in the bor­der town of Balibo as the inva­sion began. Without the bene­fit of modern-day com­mu­nic­a­tions, they simply dis­ap­peared and the Australian gov­ern­ment, who (along with the US) gave tacit approv­al to the entire hor­rible exercise.

Balibo, the fea­ture film, is the story of the Balibo 5 told through the eyes of former cru­sad­ing journ­al­ist (now on the skids) Roger East, played by Anthony LaPaglia. East arrives in Dili just before the inva­sion (the Balibo 5 dis­ap­peared while the Indonesians were still indul­ging in ter­ri­fy­ing bor­der skir­mishes) and, with the help of Timorese lead­er (now President) José Ramos-Horta he searches for the truth until the Indonesians stop him, too, from telling the world what happened.

The Balibo atro­city, and the Indonesian inva­sion of Timor, gets a suit­ably power­ful cine­mat­ic por­tray­al in Robert Connolly’s excel­lent film and heavy­weight LaPaglia has nev­er been bet­ter as the conscience-stricken hack who becomes the only link to the out­side world. If I had any tiny cri­ti­cism it might be that the film skates around the com­pli­city of the Australian gov­ern­ment in the deaths of the journ­al­ists (there is one brief sug­ges­tion that Australia actu­ally aler­ted the Indonesians to their pres­ence), but for the most part Balibo is essen­tial view­ing – pas­sion­ate and moving.

Ramos-Horta is played by Guatemalan Oscar Isaac and this was my first expos­ure to a won­der­ful act­or who has gone on to a richly var­ied career, includ­ing both kinds of 21^st cen­tury movies – Marvel and Star Wars.

Also reviewed that week: Norwegian com­edy Gone With the Woman, Romanian com­edy Silent Wedding and one of my favour­ite pans, From Paris With Love.

Luc Besson has made a good liv­ing churn­ing out high energy European B movies (mostly dumb, like The Transporter, occa­sion­ally excel­lent, like Taken) but he must have run out of nap­kins to write From Paris with Love on because it is really very thin indeed. Simpering Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a US dip­lo­mat in Paris, moon­light­ing for the CIA. He gets a sud­den pro­mo­tion when wild­card secret agent John Travolta comes to town and needs a mind­er. Travolta chews any and all scenery he can get his hands on and is com­pletely out of the con­trol of dir­ect­or Pierre Morel who had bet­ter luck with dis­cip­lined Liam Neeson in Taken last year.

Due to a ward­robe mal­func­tion on my part I had to watch this film through my (pre­scrip­tion) sunglasses. Frankly, I would have pre­ferred some­thing even more opaque, like a shower cur­tain or the wall of the cinema next door while it played a com­pletely dif­fer­ent film.

Where to watch Balibo

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on Netflix

Canada: Not cur­rently available

Ireland: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Streaming on Fubo

UK: Streaming on Freevee

Further listening

Tonight on RNZ Nights with Emile Donovan, I’ll be cel­eb­rat­ing the 70^th birth­day of Godzilla. There are a cel­eb­rat­ory screen­ings around the place this week­end and I’ll be on air around 9.40pm.

Further reading

NZ On Screen asked me to write a pro­file of New Zealand tele­vi­sion legend Andrea Lamb and I was delighted to do so. Lamb was there or there­abouts for the amaz­ing 1990s and early 2000s Aotearoa real­ity tele­vi­sion boom and pro­duced smash hits like Changing Rooms, Ground Force, The Zoo and Highway Patrol. It was a never-to-be-repeated era, sad to say.