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Gomorrah

Aug 27 2013
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Elysium poster

Review: Elysium, Stoker, We’re the Millers, The Heat, Giselle, Private Peaceful, Reality and Now You See Me

By Cinema, Reviews

Matt Damon in Neil Blomkamp's Elysium (2013).

With this year’s fest­iv­al now a rap­idly dimin­ish­ing memory – and my recov­ery from that event (plus anoth­er magazine pub­lished, some “live” pod­cast record­ings, a few Q&A’s, some dir­ect­or inter­views and a Big Screen Symposium) almost com­plete – I return to the com­mer­cial cinema and what do I find? Twenty-three new films have been released since my last set of reviews. Twenty-three! I only turned my back for a second. So, bear with me while I try and do some catch­ing up. Some of these films deserve more space than they are going to get here (and some of them don’t) but you can­’t have everything, am I right?

Elysium poster[pullquote]R‑rated these days appears to mean lots of unne­ces­sary curs­ing and com­ic male nudity.[/pullquote]Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 was a sur­prise smash-hit in 2009 and his follow-up, Elysium, is what we call ‘eagerly awaited’. Watching it I was reminded of the great strengths of that first film: a vividly cre­ated future soci­ety, dys­func­tion­al yet plaus­ible; a great plot setup with a genu­ine dilemma for the cent­ral char­ac­ter. Then I remembered the third act of District 9 – one long fight/chase/fight. And so it proves with Elysium. Wasted poten­tial as – like so many films this year – the film is resolved by who can punch harder rather than who can think bet­ter. I have lots of oth­er prob­lems with it but that’s the main one.

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Oct 12 2010
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Review: Dinner for Schmucks, The Insatiable Moon and Picture Me

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest, Reviews

Dinner for Schmucks posterAfter a week when New Zealand has been forced to con­front its own intol­er­ance and social myopia it seems fit­ting that two films that are essen­tially about under­stand­ing and accept­ing diversity should arrive in cinemas in the same week. They both take drastic­ally dif­fer­ent approaches to the top­ic, too.

In Dinner for Schmucks, ambi­tious hedge fund ana­lyst Paul Rudd has to find a guest to take to a monthly seni­or man­age­ment party in which unusu­al people are secretly held up to ridicule. When his Porsche knocks over mild mannered pub­lic ser­vant and ama­teur taxi­derm­ist Steve Carell he thinks he’s found the right man. But Carell’s char­ac­ter, Barry, latches on to him caus­ing may­hem wherever he goes.

Eventually, after Rudd’s rela­tion­ship and career are wrecked, they both reach a deep­er under­stand­ing of each oth­er and some decent human val­ues: laugh­ing with someone is ok. At someone? Not so much. And if you are any­thing like me, you will laugh.

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Aug 17 2009
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Review: Brüno and The Sicilian Girl

By Cinema, Reviews

Bruno posterSacha Baron Cohen is, in this reviewer’s opin­ion, the most gif­ted com­ic act­or of his gen­er­a­tion – a new Peter Sellers for those of us who remem­ber who Peter Sellers was. A first-rate com­edy tech­ni­cian, a vir­tu­oso impro­vis­or and vir­tu­ally fear­less, he has stolen films like Madagascar, Talladega Nights and Sweeney Todd from much big­ger names. Why then am I left so cold by his most fam­ous cre­ations, Borat and now Austrian fash­ion report­er turned gay cul­tur­al icon Brüno?

At first I thought it must just be a ques­tion of taste. After all, a rather large group of people at the Embassy on Thursday whooped and hollered and gave Brüno a round of applause. The edit­or of this paper told me it was her favour­ite film of the year. Maybe it is just me, but I didn’t laugh once – at least not at loud.

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Jul 26 2009
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Review: Gomorrah, The Proposal and A Bunch of Amateurs

By Cinema, Reviews

Gomorrah posterMartin Scorsese isn’t just a legendary dir­ect­or, he is also one of the world’s great enthu­si­asts for cinema – the defin­it­ive cine­aste if you will. By head­ing the World Cinema Foundation, he has lent his sub­stan­tial imprim­at­ur to major works of film res­tor­a­tion and he also uses his influ­ence to endorse sig­ni­fic­ant new European work, help­ing to get films like 2007’s The Golden Door wider atten­tion and dis­tri­bu­tion. Thus, “Martin Scorsese presents” Gomorrah, which opened nation­wide this week after stints at last year’s film fest­iv­al and the World Cinema Showcase in March.

Acclaimed around the world as a mod­ern mas­ter­piece, I don’t have much to add to the read­ily avail­able exist­ing plaudits. Squarely in the Italian neo-realist tra­di­tion, Gomorrah is a hand-held look at the cur­rent state of mafia affairs in Naples where a bru­tal work­ing class gang known the Camorra holds sway over the hous­ing estates and the impov­er­ished peas­ant classes. From pro­tec­tion rack­ets and drugs to the dis­pos­al of tox­ic waste, there’s not much that they aren’t into, mak­ing sure that all the gains are laundered swiftly into legit­im­ate busi­nesses that con­tin­ue to oper­ate around the world.

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Jun 23 2009
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Apologia

By meta

Once again I stop by simply to apo­lo­gise for the lack of updates and for the reviews arriv­ing so late as to be all but use­less to a Wellington cinema-goer. What can I say? Life’s been a bitch. But things are look­ing up. Today I fin­ished read­ing “Sag Harbor” by Colson Whitehead at 2am, just in time to review it for Nine to Noon later this morn­ing. In between I man­aged 650 words for the Capital Times on Gomorrah, The Proposal and A Bunch of Amateurs.

Things should be get­ting easi­er over the next few weeks, but Film Festival is almost upon us and I have a stack of pre­view DVDs to get through. By the week­end I should have got all the out­stand­ing reviews up, and the “now show­ing” to your right will make some sense too. I’m even threat­en­ing to update WordPress to 2.8 and the blog theme too.

Tonight, though, I intend to have some din­ner out of the microwave, put the feet up on the couch and watch at least one stored epis­ode of Top Gear so it feels like a night off.

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