Monday new releases: 7 April 2025

The nice thing about the first three movies in the news­let­ter today is that you can’t really describe them by com­par­ing them to oth­er films. They are that rare thing these days, nov­el.

The first actu­ally comes from a nov­el – or at least a novella. Luca Guadagnino’s Queer is based on William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical book from 1985 and I was sur­prised at how weird it got. The trans­gres­sions that it is most inter­ested in are more the chem­ic­al rather than the sexu­al ones. It’s also more romantic than I was expect­ing it to be.

Daniel Craig, well and truly throw­ing off the shackles of Bond, plays Burroughs stand-in William Lee, a dis­sol­ute American writer in exile in Mexico where his “pro­cliv­it­ies” are more accept­able. There, he drinks a great deal, picks up men in bars and main­tains a mod­est heroin habit.

He becomes besot­ted with a hand­some young American, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a ser­vice­man on shore leave and a man whose own pro­cliv­it­ies are flex­ible. Lee is elec­tri­fied by the thrill of the chase but the con­sum­ma­tion, dis­ap­point­ingly, comes as a res­ult of over-indulgence rather cupid’s arrow.

Knowing that he is unlikely to per­suade Allerton to stay by his side for love alone – or per­haps not hav­ing the self-confidence to try – Lee cuts a deal. Take a trip with me to South America, where there may be more drug-fuelled adven­tures to have, and you’ll only have to have sex with me twice a week.

One of Lee’s prob­lems, as he him­self owns up to, is that he is inde­pend­ently wealthy which means he has no dis­cip­line and little grasp of real­ity. In Ecuador, with sup­plies of junk much harder to obtain, he hatches a plan to explore the jungle look­ing for a psy­cho­trop­ic exper­i­ence that will open up a world of tele­pathy – a way, I think, for Lee to con­nect intim­ately with people that he finds so dif­fi­cult in the real world.

Shot entirely in the Italian stu­dio won­der­land of Cinecittà, Queer is beau­ti­ful to look at, and often ter­rific­ally weird. Craig is bril­liant as the for­lorn writer, des­per­ately lonely and destined to remain so.

I tried to review Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour on RNZ last Friday night and, as I sus­pec­ted, got into a tangle try­ing to describe it. It’s a story of colo­ni­al escape in which British bur­eau­crat Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) runs away from his job in Rangoon (Burma in 1918) so that he doesn’t have to marry his fiancée who is just about to arrive from London. He then makes his way across Asia – from Singapore, through Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and China – pur­sued by the indom­it­able Molly (Crista Alfaiate).

The neat trick here is that the scenes fea­tur­ing act­ors are all shot in European stu­di­os, and these very English char­ac­ters all speak Portuguese mak­ing for some cog­nit­ive dis­son­ance on my part, and the Asian exter­i­or sequences are all shot as con­tem­por­ary doc­u­ment­ary, mean­ing that the travelogue com­pon­ent is much more a European per­spect­ive on today’s Asia but from a no-less mys­ti­fied cul­tur­al per­spect­ive as Edward and Molly’s.

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Then, half-way through, the story goes back to the begin­ning and we see all these events through the eyes of Molly, whose story becomes a much more tra­gic one.

The Orientalism feels a bit old fash­ioned but is still worth watch­ing. The reoc­cur­rence of karaōke as Edward travels seems not­able but my favour­ite sequence is the slow-motion of Vietnamese scoot­ers nav­ig­at­ing their way around an impossibly busy round­about to the sound of Strauss’s Blue Danube waltz. Kubrick would be proud.

Grand Tour is also the second film this week that fea­tures cock-fighting. 

It wasn’t easy find­ing a tick­et to A Minecraft Movie yes­ter­day as mul­ti­gen­er­a­tion­al fans of the video game came out en masse to cel­eb­rate it. If cinema is to sur­vive, it must be a habit that starts in child­hood so, on that basis, A Minecraft Movie is doing the Lord’s work.

I greatly appre­ci­ated the sil­li­ness of this film as the jokes arrive so thick and fast that the ones that don’t quite land don’t much mat­ter. Much kudos here goes to Jack Black who has nev­er been more “Jack Black” mean­ing that every­one else has to meet that energy level or risk dis­ap­pear­ing off the screen entirely.

Local view­ers will also appre­ci­ate the Huntly-ness of it all – it’s sup­posed to be Idaho but so little effort has been put into that trans­form­a­tion that it’s a run­ning joke of its own.

I was very impressed by loc­al doc­u­ment­ary Project Fiftyone, in which a Muslim couple try and make some good come out of the hor­rif­ic 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks by rais­ing money for micro­busi­nesses in Afghanistan. Microloans are a com­mon way to help get people out of poverty but Islam doesn’t do that whole ‘interest’ thing so these 51 people were gif­ted small amounts of money to start a very small business.

There’s so much that’s inter­est­ing here. The Muslim exper­i­ence in Aotearoa. A jour­ney of redemp­tion and recov­ery for someone whose faith brought him back to the right side of the tracks. What hap­pens to these busi­nesses – and the fam­ily of the film­makers – when there’s a sud­den régime change and the Taliban are returned to power in 2021. The chance to see anoth­er side of a coun­try that has been reduced to cul­tur­al cari­ca­ture over time (turns out that scarves are an all-season product that you can sell from your kara­chi or hand­cart). The way an entre­pren­eur­i­al spir­it can be unleashed in some unlikely people but that luck also plays a part in sus­tain­able busi­ness success.

I’ve decided that Broken Rage is a prac­tic­al joke played by the dead­pan dir­ect­or Takeshi Kitano at the lit­er­al expense of Amazon and Prime Video – and pos­sibly the audi­ence, too. But it’s a good one!

A little bit like Grand Tour, Broken Rage tells the same story twice. Takeshi plays an age­ing hit­man, assigned jobs by a mys­ter­i­ous loc­al mob­ster called Mr. M. Apprehended by the cops, he is giv­en a choice – go under­cov­er and bring down a loc­al drug gang or spend the rest of his life in jail.

The first half tells this story rel­at­ively straight – Takeshi’s char­ac­ter is a tal­en­ted and ded­ic­ated assas­sin and the kills are suit­ably viol­ent. Then we go back and watch the same story but with a dif­fer­ent vibe entirely – slap­stick com­edy with Takeshi play­ing a hap­less ver­sion of the killer and a bunch of yak­uza who settle their dif­fer­ences play­ing a game of Musical Chairs. If you find your­self won­der­ing what the heck is going on, don’t worry you will be joined by the rest of the audi­ence tex­ting in their bemused comments.