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Review: Gran Torino, Beauty in Trouble, Revolutionary Road, Bride Wars, Hotel for Dogs, Bustin’ Down the Door, Female Agents and Man on Wire

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

Gran Torino posterClint Eastwood has been on our screens for over 50 years and at 78 years old he has decided to call it a day and his vale­dict­ory per­form­ance in Gran Torino is com­pletely worthy of the man. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a work­ing class wid­ower liv­ing on a sub­urb­an Detroit street, one of the few ori­gin­al res­id­ents still around as the neigh­bour­hood fills up with Hmong immig­rants. In a gang ini­ti­ation his teen­age neigh­bour Thao tries to steal Walt’s beloved 1972 Gran Torino (a car he helped build on the Ford assembly line) and, as pen­ance, the kid is forced to work for Walt over the sum­mer. They get to know each oth­er – and the threat from the Hmong gang-bangers who now have an axe to grind with Walt as well as Thao and his family.

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Review: In Bruges, Death Race, Nights in Rodanthe, Traitor, The Children of the Silk Road, Rubbings from a Live Man and Choke

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

Two hit­men (Gleeson and the excel­lent Colin Farrell) have been sent to the sleepy Belgian town of Bruges to lie low after a job has gone wrong. Once there, they are sup­posed to enjoy the many his­tor­ic and cul­tur­al treats of the beau­ti­fully pre­served walled medi­ev­al city while wait­ing for fur­ther instruc­tions. This suits Gleeson (older, wiser, worldly) but Farrell, frac­tious after the ter­rible stuff-up, wants booze, birds, drugs and trouble. And even in Bruges he finds some of all of it.

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Review: The Bank Job, The Edge of Heaven, Charlie Bartlett, Apron Strings and Prague

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

One of the pit­falls you try and avoid in this gig is review­ing the film you wish you were watch­ing instead of the one that is actu­ally in front of you. It’s import­ant to judge a work on it’s own terms, as well as it’s own mer­its, and avoid impos­ing your expect­a­tions but, with the best will in the world, there are times when you sit there wish­ing that the film you were watch­ing was, y’know, better.

The Bank Job posterExhibit A is The Bank Job, a leth­ar­gic caper-movie star­ring the reli­able B‑movie action hero Jason Statham. It has all the attrib­utes of an enter­tain­ing night out – chirpy knees-up cock­ney ruf­fi­ans à la Lock Stock; painstak­ing bank heist pre­par­a­tions like Ocean’s 1x; an escape that goes ter­ribly wrong like The Italian Job. The prob­lem is all in the exe­cu­tion: mainly the edit­ing which provides no impetus to the drama until the final third which by then is too late. It’s worth watch­ing for the impec­cable early-70s, East End art dir­ec­tion though. The fla­vour of the times are per­fectly created.

The Edge of Heaven posterOnce I’d got over the fact that The Edge of Heaven was­n’t the long-awaited Wham! biop­ic I was expect­ing and instead an art­house drama set in Turkey and Germany, I settled in to enjoy myself enorm­ously. Writer-Director Fatih Akin spe­cial­ises in stor­ies about the inter­sec­tion between Turkish immig­rants liv­ing hard lives in the new Europe but he has sur­passed him­self this time. Less socio-political than his pre­vi­ous work (but with those threads still woven through­out), The Edge of Heaven tells two par­al­lel stor­ies (that inter­sect and occa­sion­ally frus­trat­ingly don’t) about the pain and heart­break of being a par­ent and child. A richly detailed screen­play sup­ports the clev­er struc­ture and the film ends on a per­fectly sat­is­fy­ing note. Recommended.

Charlie Bartlett posterCharlie Bartlett is a smug, pseudo-indie, com­edy about a gif­ted rich kid (Anton Yelchin) whose money mak­ing schemes get him kicked out of private school and into the main­stream where his attaché case and blazer mark him out for unwanted atten­tion. Charlie’s access to the fam­ily shrinks (and their pre­scrib­ing power) allows him to become unof­fi­cial school ther­ap­ist, hand­ing out Ritalin like candy, provid­ing these kids with the sens­it­ive ear that they can­’t find any­where else and him with a role that tran­scends get­ting beaten up everyday.

Sadly, only the great Robert Downey Jr. (as the alco­hol­ic prin­cip­al) makes the lines sound, not only, like he’d actu­ally thought of them him­self but that they had occurred to him right then and there. Everyone else holds their char­ac­ters at arms length and the whole film wears it’s irony rather too con­sciously on its sleeve.

Apron Strings posterA recent art­icle in The Australian tries to define what ails cur­rent news­pa­per cinema review­ing and one of the examples is “boost­ing unworthy loc­al mater­i­al”. No danger of that with Apron Strings, the first fea­ture by Toi Whakaari gradu­ate and award-winning short film maker Sima Urale. A kitchen-sink drama set in the multi-cultural bad­lands of South Auckland that uses cook­ing as a meta­phor as well as a plot mech­an­ism. In a Curry House on a sub­urb­an street corner, Leela Patel makes her kormas and her sweets while long-lost sis­ter Laila Rouass has become a top tv chef using those same recipes. Meanwhile, Jennifer Ludlam’s big­oted cake dec­or­at­or a few doors down has to deal with her own dis­ap­point­ing chil­dren and a chan­ging world she isn’t very keen on. (Perhaps too) lov­ingly and (too) care­fully dir­ec­ted Apron Strings’ flaws are on the page rather than on the screen. Screenwriters Shuchi Kothari and Dianne Taylor squeeze so much in that the film col­lapses under the weight of all that coin­cid­ence and so many ‘points’. They also prove that it is very dif­fi­cult to write a decent, three-dimensional, white racist char­ac­ter these days without fall­ing back on cliché.

Prague posterAnother example of film review­er irrel­ev­ance from The Australian is the concept of quote-whoring – writ­ing spe­cific­ally to get quoted in an ad. Well, here’s my one for this week: “I was woken by the sound of my own snor­ing”. Probably not the fault of Prague, the new Danish drama star­ring ubi­quit­ous Mads Mikkelsen, as I did man­age to stir before the half way point and quite enjoyed myself after that, but it takes a long time to get going. I’m sure there is a lot in there to reward a patient and attent­ive view­er but, apart from watch­ing one of the great mod­ern screen act­ors at work, I could­n’t find it.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 13 August, 2008.

Nature of con­flict: Well, that gag about fall­ing asleep ended up giv­ing me plenty of grief after I repeated it on Nine to Noon. Prague is dis­trib­uted in New Zealand by Arkles Entertainment, who I do some work for every now and then, and Managing Director (and all round par­agon des­pite some dubi­ous polit­ic­al alle­gi­ances) John Davies was not well-pleased. The threat to fire me faded some­what when the 4 star Herald review appeared. Which just goes to show that, des­pite any appear­ances of a con­flict of interest, the opin­ions offered here are always inde­pend­ent and free of influence.

Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Closing the Ring, Smart People, Married Life, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and Journey From the Fall

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

Forgetting Sarah Marshall posterForgetting Sarah Marshall is an ideal post-Festival pal­ate cleanser: a saucy com­edy fresh off the Judd Apatow pro­duc­tion line (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up). Here he gives the spot­light to one of his sup­port­ing play­ers: Jason Segal (Knocked Up) plays tv com­poser Peter who with­in two minutes of the start of the film is dumped by tv star Sarah M. (Kristen Bell from “Veronica Mars”). He goes to Hawaii to recov­er only to dis­cov­er that his ex is also there – with her new English rock star boy­friend. Very funny in parts, sur­pris­ingly mov­ing at times thanks to a heart­felt per­form­ance from big lump Segal, FSM gets an extra half a star for fea­tur­ing pro­fes­sion­al West Ham fan Russell Brand, play­ing a ver­sion of his sex-addicted stage persona.

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Review: The Painted Veil, Superhero Movie, Sydney White and Four Minutes

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest, Reviews and Wellington

The Painted Veil posterW. Somerset Maugham’s 1925 nov­el The Painted Veil has been giv­en a hand­some new adapt­a­tion by Australian dir­ect­or John Curran (We Don’t Live Here Anymore). Naomi Watts takes on the role of naïve young Kitty Fane (once por­trayed by legendary Greta Garbo) who mar­ries dour Scottish sci­ent­ist Walter (Edward Norton) and travels to China to escape her over­bear­ing par­ents. But she indulges in a fool­ish affair with hand­some Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber) and Walter insists that she accom­pany him to the cholera-ridden interi­or as pun­ish­ment. While Walter tries to save the lives of the loc­als by clean­ing up their water sup­ply, Kitty dis­cov­ers her­self via the loc­al con­vent and an unlikely Diana Rigg. A fine film (with an award-winning score butchered by a faulty digit­al soundtrack at the screen­ing I saw), the images are rav­ish­ing, the per­form­ances are uni­formly excel­lent and you could do a lot worse on a wet weekend.

Superhero Movie posterAfter loath­ing last year’s Meet the Spartans and curs­ing it’s pre­de­cessor Epic Movie, it was with a heavy heart that I took my seat for Superhero Movie, anoth­er par­ody pot-pourri. One name in the cred­its lif­ted my spir­its a little (no, not Pamela Anderson): David Zucker, dir­ect­or of Top Secret!, Airplane and The Naked Gun. As it turns out the few funny moments in the film are gags that could have come straight from those earli­er films (“Fruit cake?” “No, I’ve just nev­er met the right woman”) but the rest is a repet­it­ive waste of time. Why both­er par­ody­ing films that are essen­tially only par­od­ies themselves?

Sydney White posterTalking of repet­it­ive, I got an odd sense of déjà vu dur­ing Superhero Movie before I real­ised that Dragonfly’s love interest Jill Johnson was being played by someone called Sara Paxton who had also been the vil­lain in Sydney White not two hours before. It’s an odd item, Sydney White: the Snow White fairy tale re-located to College and star­ring Amanda Bynes (She’s The Man) as a work­ing class tom­boy try­ing to get into a snooty sor­or­ity. Kicked out in dis­grace, she has to shack up with the sev­en dorks next door (each dork is a re-imagining one of Disney’s ori­gin­al dwarfs – can you name them all?) and then bring the school togeth­er under an Obama-like ban­ner of inclus­ive­ness, at the same time find­ing her own Prince Charming (who even man­ages to wake her with a kiss). Strangely watchable.

Four Minutes posterSadly, I could­n’t bring myself to believe in any of Four Minutes, from the unlikely teen­age piano-prodigy / murderess combo (Hannah Herzprung) or the bit­ter old les­bi­an pris­on piano teach­er (Monica Bleibtrau), or the opera lov­ing but bru­tish pris­on guard (Sven Pippig). I wish I could have watched it with the sub­titles turned off so that I could enjoy the music and art dir­ect­or Silke Buhr’s amaz­ing sense of tex­ture and archi­tec­tur­al envir­on­ment. Every loc­a­tion has an almost tact­ile qual­ity, from the decay­ing brick pris­on to the gilt Opera House at the cli­max. I was par­tic­u­larly taken with a con­crete neo-brutalist con­cert hall remin­is­cent of Wellington’s beloved Hannah Playhouse.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday April 30, 2008.

Nature of Conflict: Four Minutes is released in New Zealand by Arkles Entertainment who pay me to work for them on occasion.

Review: The Bucket List, Jumper, Rescue Dawn, Goodbye Bafana, We Own the Night and Delirious

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

The Bucket List posterThe trail­er for The Bucket List has been play­ing for weeks now, indu­cing groans at every appear­ance. By col­lect­ing a series of Jack Nicholson’s now trade­mark Jack-isms plus Morgan Freeman’s reg­u­lar, twinkly, wise old man schtick and then sprinkled with plenty of schmaltz, the trail­er made me act­ively want to avoid a film that looked like a lame set of sac­char­ine clichés and tired ham act­ing – cyn­ic­al Hollywood at its worst.

I am pleased to report, how­ever, that The Bucket List is a much more enjoy­able film than I was expect­ing. There is some excel­lent work from Nicholson and Freeman who are well coached by dir­ect­or Rob Reiner, with the help of a script by Justin Zackham that has sev­er­al decent moments. Nicholson plays mis­an­throp­ic health tycoon Edward Cole who is dia­gnosed with brain can­cer and forced, due to his own tight-fisted policies, to share a room with car mech­an­ic and lung can­cer patient Freeman. When he dis­cov­ers Freeman has a wish-list of things to do before he dies, he takes it upon him­self to make them come true using the bil­lions he has accu­mu­lated in the cor­rupt American health care sys­tem.

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