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Feb 16 2011
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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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Nov 24 2010
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Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Monsters and Lebanon

By Cinema, Reviews

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is the sev­enth film in the series but only the third that I’ve had to review in these pages. Sadly, my con­clu­sions are almost always the same – and almost always irrel­ev­ant. These films are increas­ingly made for Potter fans only and there are so many of them that box office suc­cess is guar­an­teed regard­less of churls like me.

And, of course, the Potter films are as import­ant to the British film industry as The Hobbit is to ours – hence why the final book in the saga has been, in a breath­tak­ing act of com­mer­cial cyn­icism, been split in to two block­buster films. If you were expect­ing any kind of con­clu­sion (sat­is­fact­ory or not) then you’ll have to wait until June. Maybe.

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Nov 17 2010
Love0

Review: The Social Network, The Ghost Writer, Matariki & Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones

By Cinema, Reviews

The Social Network posterFrom the tour de force of A Few Good Men in 1992 (“You can’t handle the truth!”) to the win­ning Charlie Wilson’s War in 2007, Aaron Sorkin’s spark­ling dia­logue and intel­li­gent char­ac­ters provide (all too rare) beacons of bril­liance among the parade of dross that is most com­mer­cial cinema.

And that doesn’t count his con­tri­bu­tion to tele­vi­sion. I’m one of those people who love “The West Wing” so much that I wish I could simply main­line it dir­ect into a vein, so a new Sorkin script of any descrip­tion is an event.

Torn from the blogs (and a best-selling book by Ben Mezrich), The Social Network is the heav­ily myth­o­lo­gised story of the inven­tion of Facebook and the leg­al tussles over the plen­ti­ful spoils. Sorkin is in his ele­ment, here: He doesn’t write action or gun-battles, he writes smart, lit­er­ate people arguing over ideas and it’s an unend­ing pleasure.

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