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Jobs poster

Review: Jobs, The Weight of Elephants, Red 2, White House Down, Salinger & In the House

By Cinema, Reviews

Demos Murphy in Daniel Borgman's The Weight of Elephants (2013)Jobs posterThe best way I can think of to sum up Jobs, the hastily-prepared not-quite adapt­a­tion of Walter Isaacson’s hastily-published bio­graphy of the Apple co-founder, is that its sub­ject would have hated it. After all, Steve had taste and – fam­ously – exer­cised it. He also did­n’t release products until they were ready where­as Joshua Michael Stern’s film feels like the win­ner of a race to be first rather than best.

Ashton Kutcher imper­son­ates Mr. Jobs effect­ively enough, to the extent of mim­ick­ing the man’s strange lope, but nev­er gets fur­ther under his skin than a blog post or tabloid head­line might. I sus­pect that is not a com­ment on Mr. Kutcher’s tal­ent but on the epis­od­ic script by first-timer Matt Whiteley. Josh Gad’s Woz provides com­ic relief only and the amount of fake facial hair on offer sug­gests the film might bet­ter have been titled iBeard.

The Weight of Elephants posterOperating on a much deep­er level is Daniel Borgman’s The Weight of Elephants, a film that pri­or­it­ises what goes on under the sur­face almost to the com­plete exclu­sion of plot. Gorgeous Demos Murphy plays 10-year-old Adrian, liv­ing with his depressed Uncle Rory (great Matthew Sunderland) and Gran (Catherine Wilkin) in sub­urb­an Invercargill. The strange dis­ap­pear­ance of three loc­al chil­dren has an upset­ting effect on a boy who is strug­gling to fit in to the world around him anyway.

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Review: Reel Brazil festival, Win Win, Shark Night 3D, The Help, The Holy Roller, Friends With Benefits & Upside Down- the Creation Records Story

By Cinema, Reviews

To really under­stand a coun­try you have to go and live there – embed your­self with the people, soak up the cul­ture. If you don’t have the time or inclin­a­tion for that then the next best thing to is to get stuck in to their com­mer­cial cinema. Not the stuff that makes it into major inter­na­tion­al film fest­ivals like Berlin and Venice, not the stuff that gets nom­in­ated for for­eign lan­guage Academy Awards, but the films that are made to excite and please a loc­al audi­ence. That’s what fest­ivals like Reel Brazil are all about – a week-long por­trait of a coun­try via its cinema.

In the late 60s Brazil had a kind of Brazilian Idol tele­vi­sion pop com­pet­i­tion where brave young artists per­formed their top song in front of a live audi­ence bay­ing for blood as if they were watch­ing Christians versus lions. But in A Night in 67 we see that year’s com­pet­i­tion rise above the boos and jeers to open a new chapter in Brazilian pop music – legendary names like Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso com­pete to win over the tough crowd and in the pro­cess launch massive inter­na­tion­al careers.

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Review: 127 Hours, Gnomeo & Juliet, No Strings Attached and Fair Game

By Cinema, Reviews

Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire was my film of the year for 2009 – a potent and punchy roller-coaster ride of a film that made everything for months after­wards seem quaintly old-fashioned. His new film, 127 Hours, doesn’t break the mould to quite the same degree but does fea­ture sim­il­ar styl­ist­ic effects: mess­ing with time and struc­ture, split-screens, dom­in­eer­ing soundtrack, etc.

The new film is also an adapt­a­tion of pre­vi­ously exist­ing mater­i­al, Aron Ralston’s mem­oir “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”, and once again Boyle has col­lab­or­ated with screen­writer Simon Beaufoy (notori­ous in New Zealand for The Full Monty). Ralston (played by James Franco) was an engin­eer by trade but an out­doors­man by inclin­a­tion and he loved to roam the Utah canyons on bike and on foot. In 2003 he fall into a nar­row rav­ine and his right arm was trapped by a boulder. He was there for five days before real­ising that the only way he was going to walk out was if he left the arm behind.

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Review: Soul Kitchen, Step Up 3, Killers and a couple more ...

By Cinema, Reviews

Soul Kitchen posterTurkish-German dir­ect­or Fatih Akin has long been an art­house favour­ite around these parts. Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007) were Festival suc­cesses so it was odd to see his new film Soul Kitchen skip this year’s event and go straight to gen­er­al release. On view­ing it’s easy to see why. Akin has gone com­mer­cial and Soul Kitchen is as broad a com­edy as you’ll find out­side the big chains – sadly I have to report that Akin’s film doesn’t sit com­fort­ably in that territory.

Zinos (Adam Bousdoukos) runs a greasy spoon café called the Soul Kitchen in a run­down part of old Hamburg. He’s not much of a cook or a busi­ness­man but his loy­al cus­tom­ers seem to like it. Thrown into a tizzy by a com­bin­a­tion of his girlfriend’s move to China, a very bad back, the tax depart­ment, his dead­beat broth­er (Moritz Bleibtreu) on day release from pris­on and an old school friend with an eye on his real estate, Zinos tries to nav­ig­ate his way through a rap­idly deteri­or­at­ing situ­ation with only a geni­us new chef and some loy­al but eas­ily dis­trac­ted staff.

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Review: Second Hand Wedding and What Happens in Vegas...

By Cinema, Reviews, Wellington

Ah, the per­ils of review­ing New Zealand cinema in New Zealand – or even tough­er – Wellington cinema in Wellington. How does one approach a film that was exec­ut­ive pro­duced by a former ment­or, stars former work­mates and drink­ing bud­dies, was writ­ten by a pal, and fea­tures famil­i­ar faces in almost every scene (and that this review­er in a moment of flu-addled weak­ness even audi­tioned for)?

Luckily for me, Paul Murphy’s Second Hand Wedding makes it easy to avoid tres­passing across the sens­ib­il­it­ies of chums and col­leagues by being an ador­able con­fec­tion, easy to praise and a pleas­ure to recom­mend. The moment you see a little yel­low mini scream­ing around the Kapiti coast (dir­ect­or Paul Murphy’s fath­er Geoff was respons­ible for Goodbye Pork Pie with Exec Kerry Robins back in 1981) you know you are in good hands and so it proves.

Geraldine Brophy plays Jill Rose, Kapiti’s top gar­age sale expert. Every Saturday morn­ing you’ll find her (and best mate Muffy broadly played by Tina Regtien) trawl­ing the nick-nacks look­ing for bar­gains. Long-suffering hubby Brian (a lovely and under­stated per­form­ance by Patrick Wilson) puts up with all the new paraphernalia because he has his own col­lec­tion to main­tain: all the pieces of a Model T Ford that will one day become a com­plete car again.

Local mech­an­ic Stew (a per­form­ance by Ryan O’Kane that is, per­haps, lack­ing in detail) has pro­posed to the Rose’s daugh­ter Cheryl (Holly Shanahan) but, afraid of the bar­gain base­ment wed­ding she fears her moth­er will provide, she keeps it a secret. When the news breaks, poor Jill is dev­ast­ated but anoth­er tragedy forces the fam­ily (and the com­munity) to pull togeth­er once again. There’s lots to love about Second Hand Wedding: music by Plan 9 and some songs I would­n’t mind own­ing; classy edit­ing par­tic­u­larly in the mont­ages; per­fect, witty pro­duc­tion design by Brad Mill; but the heart and soul of the film is Brophy’s beau­ti­ful and meas­ured per­form­ance. If she’s not at the front of the queue when the act­ing awards are handed out for this year I will be very sur­prised. Indeed, in this review­er­’s opin­ion it may be one the five best New Zealand screen per­form­ances ever.

It’s slightly depress­ing to report that a no-budget kiwi com­edy con­tains more sub­tlety and sub­text in any giv­en scene than a multi-million dol­lar Hollywood block­buster wrangles in its entirety but it’s true. In What Happens in Vegas… Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz play a couple who meet in Las Vegas on their own indi­vidu­al rebound tours, get hope­lessly drunk and hope­lessly mar­ried on the same night, win $3m on the slots and then try and (with the help of schem­ing best friends Rob Corddry and Lake Bell) cheat the oth­er out of the booty. Forced by grim Judge Whopper (Dennis Miller) to co-habit for 6 months to prove their mar­riage is real before he will grant them a divorce, our couple do everything in their power to make each oth­er miser­able and much (poten­tial but for the most part unreal­ised) hil­ar­ity ensues.

The prob­lem isn’t with the fit­fully amus­ing leads (though Kutcher in par­tic­u­lar appears incap­able of play­ing the deep­er notes that fath­er Treat Williams’ paternal dis­ap­prov­al offers him), the film suf­fers hugely because the script insists on treat­ing us like retards and loudly declaim­ing everything that it has to say. At one point Kutcher spikes Diaz’s smoothy with ecstacy to the sound of “I Want a New Drug”. Oh, please. Everything is just so flip­pin’ obvi­ous. Characters say exactly what is in their heads, or exactly what they need to say to move the plot for­ward, usu­ally both at the same time.

And finally, What Happens in Vegas… should be cursed for indul­ging in yet anoth­er example of Hollywood racism: the only char­ac­ter of col­our in the film is a ter­rible, tight-ass Asian ste­reo­type who is ridiculed relent­lessly and mean-ly.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 14 May, 2008.

Update: I have added a link to The Cattlestops web site. They were respons­ible for the songs I would­n’t mind owning.