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Review: Star Trek Into Darkness, Song for Marion, Gambit, Spring Breakers and Maori Boy Genius

By Cinema and Reviews

The 2009 Star Trek reboot went into pro­duc­tion on the eve of the writers’ strike and there­fore had no right to be as enter­tain­ing – or to make as much sense – as it did. In fact, it was so suc­cess­ful that it has become the gold stand­ard of dormant fran­chise resus­cit­a­tion and I’m hop­ing that the les­sons – what to hon­our, what to ignore, the mix of know­ing humour and state-of-the-art action – are taken on board by the forth­com­ing Superman block­buster Man of Steel.

A re-watch of Star Trek on Wednesday night con­firmed my thoughts from the ori­gin­al review. It worked so well, on so many levels, that by the end I was eagerly anti­cip­at­ing my Friday night reunion with Christopher Pine’s Kirk, Zachary Quinto’s Hot Spock, etc. So, it is with a heavy heart then, that I have to report feel­ing let down by Star Trek Into Darkness. Everything seems a lot more self-conscious than before, as if the film­makers have just real­ised that there are a squil­lion people watch­ing and they’d bet­ter not make a mess of things. Which usu­ally means that’s exactly what happens.

Not long after the Federation has been saved in the first film, our her­oes are out explor­ing the galaxy, get­ting into trouble. As pun­ish­ment for viol­at­ing the Prime Directive (and incom­plete paper­work), Kirk is relived of the Enterprise com­mand but before he has time to prop­erly lick his wounds, a ter­ror­ist bombs Starfleet’s London office and threatens to kick off an inter­galactic (intra-galactic?) war with the Klingons.

dying is easy – com­edy is hard

It’s the exe­cu­tion that dis­ap­points this time around. The humour feels a bit heavy-handed, the attempts to incor­por­ate beloved ele­ments from the Original Series are clunky and the action is repet­it­ive – there are sev­er­al last second res­cues, for example, and at least two of them involve actu­al on-screen count­downs. I can­’t say more for fear of spoil­ers but – suf­fice to say – Star Trek Into Darkness is only a B minus while its pre­de­cessor mer­ited an A. Read More

Review: There Once Was an Island, Bad Teacher, Cars 2, The Reluctant Infidel and My Afternoons with Margueritte

By Cinema and Reviews

There Once Was an Island posterWhen I first vis­ited this coun­try back in 1982 we flew across the Pacific Ocean in day­light and from my win­dow seat I got a birds eye view of … not very much. Lots of flat blue unin­ter­rup­ted sea, not even so much a rusty tramp steam­er to break the mono­tony. No won­der they usu­ally do this leg in the dark, I thought.

Once I got here I under­stood that there was a lot going on down there on many tiny speckled islands and atolls – and the rich­ness of the Pacific and its rela­tion­ship to New Zealand was just one of the reas­ons why I’m still here all these years later – but now the creep­ing specter of glob­al warm­ing is trans­form­ing the Pacific into the pristine envir­on­ment I thought I saw all those years ago – unsul­lied by cor­al, sand, taro or people.

This pro­cess is already well under way as Briar March’s astound­ing doc­u­ment­ary There Once was an Island illus­trates. In 2006 Ms. March and a tiny crew spent sev­er­al months on Takuu, a remote atoll over­seen by the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), ser­viced and sup­por­ted by a rare and irreg­u­lar ship­ping ser­vice and short wave radio. Even then the waves were lap­ping at the edge of peoples’ homes and the ABG offer of a haven among the main­land sug­ar plant­a­tions effect­ively meant ask­ing 4000 people to say good­bye to their entire way of life.

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Review: The Karate Kid, Predators, My One and Only & Knight and Day

By Cinema and Reviews

The Karate Kid posterThe first thing to know about The Karate Kid is that there is no kar­ate in it. This remake of the eighties favour­ite sends twelve-year-old hero Jaden Smith to China where they hurt people with kung fu instead. It was ori­gin­ally going to be called The Kung Fu Kid until someone in mar­ket­ing real­ised cer­tain syn­er­gist­ic oppor­tun­it­ies might be missed by the less cred­u­lous tar­get mar­ket. So there we are.

I have mixed feel­ings about this film. I have no great love for the ori­gin­al (des­pite ador­ing my occa­sion­al nick­name “Daniel-san”) so am not much bothered about the updat­ing. Director Harald Zwart man­aged to get my pulse going a bit faster than nor­mal, which doesn’t hap­pen very often these days, and there are some nice scenes that take advant­age of some inter­est­ing Chinese loc­a­tions. But this is basic­ally a pre-teen Rocky with some pretty real­ist­ic smacks and I’m a little uncom­fort­able about that.

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Review: Shrek Forever After, Cemetery Junction & Gentlemen Broncos

By Cinema and Reviews

Shrek Forever After posterLovable ogre Shrek (Mike Myers) is hav­ing a bad day. Instead of being a ter­ri­fy­ing bring­er of fear and bad smells, he is a mild-mannered fath­er of triplets and pil­lar of the Far, Far Away com­munity and it’s get­ting him down. After one par­tic­u­larly stress­ful morn­ing involving birth­day cakes, fan requests (“Do the roar!”) and oth­er assor­ted minor niggles prompts him to sug­gest that he might’ve been bet­ter off not res­cuing the lovely Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the tower all those years ago.

This is over­heard by the most dan­ger­ous leg­al mind in the area, Rumpelstiltskin, who imme­di­ately draws up a dodgy con­tract to give Shrek exactly what he wants. Shrek’s day is about to go from being a bad one to being his last one.

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

By Cinema and 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 and Wellington

Second Hand Wedding posterAh, 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.

What Happens in Vegas... posterIt’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.