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Review: The Master, Gangster Squad, Whole Lotta Sole, ParaNorman and To Rome With Love

By Cinema, Reviews

Between its her­al­ded US release in September last year and its arrival in a (very) lim­ited num­ber of New Zealand cinemas this week­end, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master seems to have been trans­formed from mas­ter­piece and annoin­ted Best Picture con­tender to also-ran, dis­ap­point­ing scores of loc­al PTA fans in the pro­cess, many of whom were crushed that we weren’t going to see the film in the director’s pre­ferred 70mm format. Turns out it was touch and go wheth­er we were going to see it on the big screen at all.

Anderson’s pre­vi­ous film, There Will Be Blood, was a close-run second to No Country For Old Men in my 2007 pick of the year, and his back cata­logue is as rich as any­one else of his gen­er­a­tion – Boogie Nights, Magnolia and even Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. Like Blood, The Master is painted on a big can­vas. Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, an alco­hol­ic and self-hating WWII vet­er­an, stum­bling between mis­ad­ven­tures when he stows away on the San Francisco yacht com­manded by aca­dem­ic, author and mys­tic Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dodd com­bines rudi­ment­ary psy­cho­ther­apy with hyp­nosis to per­suade gull­ible fol­low­ers that their past lives can be used to trans­form their dis­ap­point­ing present.

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Review: Arrietty, Taken 2, On the Road, Life in Movement, Searching for Sugar Man, The Last Dogs of Winter and The Words

By Cinema, Reviews

After an intense week­end run­ning from pic­ture theatre to pic­ture theatre between – and some­times dur­ing – rain showers, I have now caught up on everything in cur­rent loc­al release. Except Tinker Bell and the Secret of the Wings but a Twitter cor­res­pond­ent assures me: “Just FYI my 5 year old great niece loved it so much she stood up at the end clap­ping & dancing…you should go you’ll love it ;)” and that review might just have to do for now.

Arrietty posterA little harder to track down than Tinker Bell, Madagascar 3 or Hotel Transylvania – but well worth the effort – is Arrietty, a Studio Ghibli anim­ated adapt­a­tion of The Borrowers, Mary Norton’s fam­ous children’s book about tiny people liv­ing under a house who are dis­covered by a frail young boy who needs a friend. Beautifully anim­ated – as always – and told with emo­tion and sim­pli­city, Arrietty is a fine altern­at­ive to those over-hyped Hollywood con­fec­tions. The ver­sion play­ing in Wellington is the English voiced one fea­tur­ing Saoirse Ronan, Olivia Colman and Mark Strong – much easi­er on the ears than the American voices and much easi­er to fol­low for the lit­tlies than the ori­gin­al Japanese.

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Review: The Sapphires, Dredd 3D, Hotel Transylvania, Diary of a Wimpy Kid- Dog Days, Ruby Sparks and Resident Evil- Retribution

By Cinema, Reviews

Can I have a quick word with you about for­give­ness? Not for me, you under­stand – I’ve noth­ing to apo­lo­gise for – but the for­give­ness we show to films we love, for­give­ness for cine­mat­ic trans­gres­sions that would kill our enjoy­ment for less­er works. Let’s take as an example Wayne Blair’s The Sapphires. The storytelling is occa­sion­ally clunky – import­ant plot points are delivered by tele­phone or mes­sen­ger like a help­ful deus ex mach­ina – and some of the sup­port­ing cast don’t appear to know what movie they are in. Its ambi­tions push hard at the seams of the budget con­straints and occa­sion­ally burst them reveal­ing the thin lin­ing inside. But the film has such a big heart and so much love for its char­ac­ters that those flaws are easy to over­look and get­ting swept along on seems like the easi­est and best option.

It’s 1968 and war is raging in Southeast Asia while the American civil rights battle is tear­ing America apart. Meanwhile in sleepy Cummeragunga NSW, the abori­gin­al McRae sis­ters sing coun­try and west­ern stand­ards to unap­pre­ci­at­ive white pub audi­ences and dream of fame and for­tune in the big city. Discovered by failed cruise ship enter­tain­ments officer Dave Lovelace (Chris O’Dowd), they set their sights on enter­tain­ing the troops in Vietnam but to do that they have to embrace some soul roots and get over some long-suppressed fam­ily issues.

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