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Aug 25 2011
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Review- Billy T: Te Movie, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Incendies, Of Gods and Men, How I Ended This Summer, Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Something Borrowed

By Cinema and Reviews

Billy T: Te Movie posterProspective new migrants to New Zealand should be shown Ian Mune’s movie Billy T: Te Movie in order to weed out the uncom­mit­ted. Of course, we needn’t tell them that the coun­try has changed bey­ond all recog­ni­tion in the the last 25 years – that would spoil the fun. We could stick a hid­den cam­era on them and giggle (I think I know what the giggle should sound like too) as the full hor­ror of New Zealand’s unsoph­ist­ic­a­tion in the 70s and 80s is revealed.

Billy’s suc­cess was symp­to­mat­ic of that strange imma­ture cling­ing to over­seas ideas that riddled New Zealand cul­ture at the time – he was inspired by awful Northern com­ics like Bernard Manning and Les Dawson – but he was also a cata­lyst for the change and Mune’s doco tells his story well. My only com­plaint – for a change – is that it isn’t long enough – some of the most inter­est­ing aspects of Billy’s life are skir­ted over pretty lightly. I could have done with more from Jim Moriarty, for example, about what it was like as an act­iv­ist to watch the only Maori on tv per­petu­at­ing ugly ste­reo­types. In fact, they could have swapped more ana­lys­is for some of Billy’s lamer jokes and I wouldn’t have minded.

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Nov 18 2009
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Review: Two Lovers, My Sister’s Keeper, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus and A Christmas Carol

By Cinema and Reviews

Two Lovers posterAt what point in a man’s life does he decide to become a dry clean­er? For Joaquin Phoenix’s char­ac­ter, Leonard Kraditor, in Two Lovers that day is nev­er and yet he still finds him­self to be one. He’s a sens­it­ive soul whose men­tal health issues have res­ul­ted in sev­er­al sui­cide attempts, a per­man­ent rela­tion­ship with med­ic­a­tion and a need to start again with his lov­ing par­ents in their small apart­ment in Brooklyn.

His fath­er intro­duces him to the daugh­ter of a busi­ness asso­ci­ate (Vinessa Shaw) in the hopes that a pos­it­ive rela­tion­ship might heal his son and also be a prof­it­able devel­op­ment for the dry clean­ing busi­ness. At the same time, Leonard meets and falls for the beau­ti­ful and mys­ter­i­ous upstairs neigh­bour, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, whose own rela­tion­ship with a wealthy mar­ried man is doing her no good.

Two Lovers is writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by James Gray, the icon­o­clast­ic and uncom­prom­ising inde­pend­ent film­maker respons­ible for the gritty New York dra­mas Little Odessa and last year’s We Own the Night , which also starred Phoenix. It’s a care­ful and sens­it­ive pic­ture about how so often love is about want­ing to heal and pro­tect someone – Shaw wants to heal Phoenix and he wants to heal Paltrow and none of them real­ise the extent to which they have to heal them­selves first.

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Jan 19 2009
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Review: Holiday Cinema Summary

By Cinema and Reviews

Australia (Evidently, mod­ern Australia was built on racism, bigotry, cor­rup­tion and alco­hol). Not the débâcle that some media would have you believe, Straya is an old-fashioned epic that looks right at home on the big Embassy screen. If only Baz Luhrman the dir­ect­or had more con­fid­ence in Luhrman the writer, he might have avoided some of the more OTT moments by let­ting a good story tell itself. The film also suf­fers from a lack of Russell Crowe (not some­thing you can say all that often). A rough­er, nas­ti­er per­form­ance would have suited the char­ac­ter of the Drover bet­ter but might also pro­voked some­thing a little less sim­per­ing from Nicole Kidman. Hugh Jackman is a fine enough act­or (and is neces­sar­ily Australian), he’s just tra­gic­ally miscast.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt is born old and grows phys­ic­ally young­er all the while touch­ing the lives of the people around him). Other com­ment­at­ors have already made the obvi­ous com­par­is­ons between Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump, but the dis­ap­point­ment I felt on leav­ing the theatre was palp­able. Despite the evid­ent tech­nic­al mas­tery on dis­play and a win­ning per­form­ance by Brad Pitt, the film falls well short of its own expect­a­tions, in fact I would argue that Yes Man is actu­ally more profound.

Yes Man (Jim Carrey finds love and ful­fil­ment by not say­ing “no”). Proves that achiev­ing mod­est aims is often more sat­is­fy­ing than fall­ing short with more ambi­tious pro­jects. The pres­ence of Rhys Darby adds half a star and the won­der­ful Zooey Deschanel adds a whole extra one. Great indie soundtrack too.

Bolt (TV hero dog dis­cov­ers he does­n’t actu­ally have super powers). The most fun of the hol­i­days can be found by slip­ping on the Readings’ polar­ized 3D glasses and enjoy­ing the Disney car­toon romp Bolt. Unlike the lead-footed Desperaux, Bolt zips along with plenty of visu­al and verbal pan­ache. The 3D isn’t too gim­micky and does the job of bring­ing you into the film (or if you prefer, mak­ing every­one else in the theatre disappear).

The Tale of Despereaux (big-eared mouse res­cues Princess, saves king­dom). On Sunday the morn­ing, of those queued at the Empire in Island Bay 100% of the kids chose Bolt, 100% of the review­ers chose The Tale of Despereaux and the kids got the bet­ter part of the deal. Alone in the cinema I killed time by try­ing to work out which act­or’s voice I was listen­ing to: any­one know what William H. Macy sounds like?

Waltz with Bashir (war vet­er­an inter­views old bud­dies to try and remem­ber a sup­pressed past). The best film of the hol­i­days actu­ally opened before the break but after my last dead­line of the old year. An anim­ated explor­a­tion of one of the many Israeli wars against their neigh­bours and the tricks played by memory, WWB has many images that linger in the mind, ready to re-emerge whenev­er I see a news­pa­per head­line about the cur­rent situ­ation in Gaza.

The Spirit (rook­ie cop is brought back to life with an eye for the ladies). You won’t have seen a film quite like The Spirit before, not one that was any good at least. A cross between the stark, CGI-noir of Sin City with the corny humour of the 60s Batman, if you’ve ever wanted to see Samuel L. Jackson camp­ing it up in full Nazi regalia this is the film for you. For the rest of us, not so much.

Bedtime Stories (Hotel handy­man’s stor­ies for his neph­ew and niece come true the next day). The need for a PG rat­ing cramps Adam Sandler’s style some­what and the money the pro­du­cers obvi­ously saved on cine­ma­to­graphy went on some class Brit-actors includ­ing Richard Griffiths and Jonathan Pryce.

Twilight (Tale of a teen­age girl arriv­ing in a new town, befriended by, and then fall­ing in love with, the loc­al vam­pire). Evidently the Twilight young-adult nov­els are some kind of phe­nomen­on but I was more than mildly diver­ted by the cine­mat­ic ver­sion. I liked the sense of place (the cold and rainy Pacific North West) and the lack of urgency about the story-telling – tak­ing its own sweet time. The fact that the primary rela­tion­ship is between an adoles­cent girl and a 100-year-old man (no mat­ter how beau­ti­ful and young-looking) did man­age to creep me out though, more so than the ‘cradle-snatching’ in Benjamin Button.

Frost/Nixon (Famous inter­view saves Frost’s career and fin­ishes Nixon’s). A film of primary interest to 70s con­spir­acy the­ory buffs and act­ors look­ing for a mas­ter­class. Frank Langella does Richard M. Nixon per­fectly des­pite bear­ing little resemb­lance to the real per­son and Michael Sheen and Rebecca Hall add to their grow­ing repu­ta­tions. The Frost/Nixon inter­views had plenty of drama of their own but this film pads it all out with events and con­ver­sa­tions that did­n’t happen.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Gap year American girls find love in Catalonia). There was a time when the name Woody Allen was a guar­an­tee of high-brow qual­ity and it’s a sign of the times that the excel­lent Vicky Cristina Barcelona is being sold to the pub­lic with no men­tion of his name at all. As it turns out VCB is pretty damn fine – a witty and intel­li­gent script that plays out like a deftly dram­at­ised New Yorker short story.

The Dinner Guest (Simple couple turn posh to impress the new Boss). The French movies we get here seem to be more obsessed with class than any­thing from England and The Dinner Guest is no excep­tion. The twist in this case is that our her­oes are so uncul­tured they could be, I don’t know, English. Betrays its stage ori­gins so much so I might have been watch­ing it at Circa.

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

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: I am pleased to report that everything was well presen­ted (the print for Vicky Cristina Barcelona might have been a little too rough for the big Embassy screen). The digit­al 3D Bolt had some strange mask­ing issues which nobody at Readings could explain to me, and I only noticed dur­ing the clos­ing cred­its so no de-merit points apply.

Dec 13 2008
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Review: Four Holidays, Quarantine, High School Musical- Senior Year and Suddenly

By Cinema and Reviews

Four Holidays posterDollar for dol­lar (if not lb for lb) Vince Vaughan is the biggest star in Hollywood. For every dol­lar inves­ted in a Vaughan film he returns four­teen mak­ing him a bet­ter bet than Cruise, Pitt, Clooney or Roberts. It’s easy to see why he’s so pop­u­lar – his easy-going every­man qual­ity annoys few­er people than Carrey and choices like Dodgeball and Wedding Crashers are pretty safe. Even last year’s Fred Claus was a rare watch­able Christmas film and this year he repeats the dose with Four Holidays (aka Four Christmases).

Vaughan, and co-star Reese Witherspoon, are DINKs (double-income-no-kids) who main­tain their cool life­style by avoid­ing their respect­ive fam­il­ies like the plague. When an unex­pec­ted air­port clos­ure reveals their plans to party in Fiji instead of feed­ing the third world, they are obliged to make four dif­fer­ent vis­its on Christmas Day, for­cing them to con­front the weirdos, sad­sacks and ding­bats that make up their respect­ive families.

I think I’m out of step with most oth­er crit­ics (not unusu­al and not a bad thing) but I enjoyed myself watch­ing Four Holidays – Vaughan and Witherspoon actu­ally make a believ­able couple and the sup­port­ing cast (includ­ing fine act­ors like Robert Duvall and Kristin Chenoweth along with coun­try stars Dwight Yoakam and Tim McGraw) has plenty of energy.

Quarantine posterTen years ago, before he became the darling of the Hollywood Hedge Fund set, Vaughan’s career nearly stalled when he played Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant’s ill-advised frame-for-frame remake of Psycho. After the see­ing the trail­er for Quarantine, I was half expect­ing it to give a sim­il­ar treat­ment to the Spanish shock­er [REC] (which promp­ted messy evac­u­ations earli­er in the year) but hap­pily it diverges enough to mer­it its own review.

A tv crew is fol­low­ing an LA fire depart­ment for the night when they are sent to an apart­ment build­ing where mys­ter­i­ous screams are eman­at­ing from one of the flats. Soon after they arrive, the author­it­ies shut the build­ing down to pre­vent the rabies-like infec­tion from spread­ing, leav­ing the res­id­ents, fire-fighters and the media to their own devices.

Stronger in char­ac­ter devel­op­ment but slightly weak­er in shock value, Quarantine will be worth a look if you found you couldn’t read the sub­titles in [REC] because you had your hands over your eyes.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year posterHigh School Musical 3: Senior Year is the first of the legendary Disney fran­chise to make it to the big screen but the for­mula hasn’t changed one bit. Well scrubbed High School kids in Albuquerque put on a show which might send one of them to Julliard. The music runs the full gamut of cur­rent pop music styles from Britney to the Backstreet Boys (without the spark of either) and the kids dis­play a full range of emo­tions from A to B. HSM is betrayed by a lack of ambi­tion mar­ried to relent­less, obsess­ive, com­mit­ment to com­pet­ence but, at almost two hours, I sus­pect it will be too long for most tween blad­ders to hold out.

Suddenly posterDepression is a chal­len­ging top­ic for film (the symp­toms are un-cinematic and recov­ery often takes the form of baby steps which are dif­fi­cult to dram­at­ise) but Swedish drama Suddenly makes a decent fist of it. Nine months after the car he was driv­ing crashed, tak­ing the lives of his wife and young­est son, eye doc­tor Lasse (Michael Nyqvist) is fall­ing apart. After what looks like a failed sui­cide attempt, his par­ents advise him to take his remain­ing son (sens­it­ive 15 year old Jonas played by Anastasios Soulis) to his hol­i­day house for the Summer to see if he can take one last chance to heal him­self and the family.

Lasse throws him­self into repair­ing the beaten up old row­boat while Jonas falls for the (entirely Swedish look­ing blonde) loc­al black sheep Helena (Moa Gammel). Despite the appar­ent energy of the title, Suddenly takes its time get­ting any­where but rewards perseverance.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 10 December, 2008.

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: I’m stoked to report that Suddenly was the first film I’d seen in the Vogue Lounge at the Penthouse since my dis­ap­point­ing exper­i­ence with Smart People back in August and, des­pite some print wear, the present­a­tion was per­fect. Well done Penthouse.

Apr 16 2008
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Review: Semi-Pro, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Horton Hears a Who!, The War on Democracy, Across the Universe, How She Move and Rambo

By Cinema and Reviews

200804161055.jpgWhen the cur­rent Writer-in-Residence at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters sug­ges­ted I take anoth­er look at my neg­at­ive review of Blades of Glory, I made a prom­ise that (while I could­n’t bring myself to watch that tur­key again) I would approach the next Will Ferrell with a con­sciously open mind. Sadly, with Semi-Pro (a cross between Anchorman and Talladega Nights fea­tur­ing the strengths of neither and the rampant self-indulgence of both), I heard no laughter, only the sound of the bot­tom of the bar­rel being scraped. Recently New Line Cinema ended it’s life as an inde­pend­ent pro­du­cer and I’d like to think Semi-Pro was respons­ible. It’s no less than it deserves.

The Spiderwick Chronicles posterAnd, at risk of sound­ing like a total film-wanker I’m going to alloc­ate what strengths The Spiderwick Chronicles has to the pres­ence of the great John Sayles as co-writer. Sayles’ inde­pend­ent work includes clas­sics like The Brother From Another Planet and Passion Fish but makes a liv­ing doing (mostly uncred­ited) punch-up jobs on big budget screen­plays. I was grow­ing increas­ingly frus­trated with the plod­ding story-telling, and the over-reliance on the well-designed digi-creatures, before a great moment at the cli­max restored my faith that a prop­er screen­writer was on board after all.

Three chil­dren have to leave New York when their par­ents split up and live in the big, old, aban­doned house in the coun­try that their crazy Aunt lived in. Freddie Highmore, so ubi­quit­ous in these sorts of films that he even does double-duty in this one, plays bad-boy Jared who dis­cov­ers an old book in the attic, reads the note warn­ing him not to open it, ignores it, and unleashes a world of gob­lins, fair­ies and ogres that are invis­ible to nor­mal people. Nothing new to report there, then, but every gen­er­a­tion seems to need a new ver­sion just for them.

The War on Democracy posterI’ve been a John Pilger-sceptic for a while, not helped by his bom­bast­ic and unpleas­ant beha­viour to loc­al inter­view­ers, but his first inde­pend­ent doc­u­ment­ary for cinema, The War on Democracy, even­tu­ally won me over. It makes an excel­lent com­pan­ion to Helen Smyth’s Cuba-doc ¿La Verdad? as it provides the kind of encyc­lo­paed­ic back­ground to the United States’ nefar­i­ous engage­ment with Latin America that she could only hint at. Starting in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, Pilger uses the failed coup in 2002 as a spring­board to show how, for more than 50 years, the US has installed or deposed gov­ern­ments across the con­tin­ent in order to fur­ther its own polit­ic­al and fin­an­cial aims. It’s not great cinema – that’s not Pilger’s bag – but it is essen­tial viewing.

Horton Hears a Who! posterHorton Hears a Who! may well fea­ture the most pro­found moment in cinema this year. As the tiny cit­izens of Who-ville (a bust­ling and happy com­munity liv­ing on a tiny speck, itself sit­ting on a dan­deli­on being blown around by fate) real­ise that in order to be saved they first must be heard, they bang drums, blow trum­pets and chant “We are here!” Like the for­got­ten poor in Pilger’s Caracas bar­rio or the dis­placed in Darfur, the power to pro­claim our exist­ence in the face of ignor­ant or malevol­ent author­ity isn’t just a right, it’s an oblig­a­tion, and I’m cer­tain that the good Dr. Seuss would­n’t have missed the connection.

Big-hearted ele­phant Horton (Jim Carrey) res­cues the speck when his enorm­ous ears pick up the tiny voice of the Who-ville Mayor (Steve Carell) and he real­ises that he has a mis­sion. In the face of com­munity stand­ards ruth­lessly enforced by Carol Burnett’s Kangaroo, Horton is houn­ded out of the jungle but he nev­er gives up. So, not only does Horton not suck like all recent Seuss adapt­a­tions, it bristles with energy, humour and pan­ache. Choice!

Across the Universe posterLike the forth­com­ing Dylan por­trait I’m Not There, Across the Universe feels like the Baby Boomers’ last attempt to claim the 60s as, you know, import­ant, mean­ing­ful, unique. The music of The Beatles tells the story of star-crossed lov­ers Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Jude (Jim Sturgess) as they try and keep a rela­tion­ship alive across that tumul­tu­ous dec­ade. I emo­tion­ally dis­en­gaged the moment I real­ised that Sturgess soun­ded like Robbie Williams instead of John Lennon but was nev­er less than enter­tained. A trip, man.

How She Move posterHow She Move is a Canadian ver­sion of films like Step Up 2 The Streets, Stomp The Yard and count­less oth­ers. Featuring all the usu­al ele­ments of the genre: under­ground urb­an dance crews; a kid has to get out of the ghetto via a schol­ar­ship; she needs the prize money; par­ents just don’t under­stand, etc. It’s as if the pro­du­cers could­n’t decide which banal clichés to leave out and gave up, stuff­ing the fin­ished film to break­ing point. I’ve grown to really dis­like the dan­cing in these films, too.

Rambo posterFinally, a late word on behalf of Rambo (which missed the cut dur­ing the last few weeks). By mak­ing his vil­lains Burmese human-rights viol­at­ors and his vic­tims inno­cent aid work­ers, dir­ect­or Sylvester Stallone stacks the deck effect­ively and, des­pite look­ing com­pletely bizarre, he infuses his tacit­urn killing-machine with the occa­sion­al moist-eyed moment of human­ity amid the fly­ing limbs. A respect­able end to what had become a car­toon franchise.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 16 April, 2008.

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: Semi-Pro was at a sparsely atten­ded pub­lic mat­inée at Readings. The Spiderwick Chronicles was at the Empire in Island Bay and the review was in no way influ­enced by the lovely free cof­fee they made me just as the trail­ers were play­ing. The War on Democracy was a DVD screen­er provided by Hopscotch (via GT) and the film is cur­rently only play­ing at the Lighthouse in Petone. Horton Hears a Who! was also screened at the Empire where I was the only unat­ten­ded adult present. Across the Universe was screened at the Paramount’s World Cinema Showcase. How She Move was an exceed­ingly sparsely atten­ded mat­inée at Readings and Rambo was anoth­er Readings week day mat­inée, a couple of weeks ago.

Sep 19 2007
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Review: Superbad, I Do, Perfume- The Story of a Murderer, Evan Almighty and The Future is Unwritten

By Cinema and Reviews

Superbad posterWhen your cor­res­pond­ent was a nip­per back in the early 80s, two of the most prized pir­ate videos avail­able were the legendary Porky’s and some­thing called Lemon Popsicle – two films about horny teen­agers in the 1950s – and illi­cit cop­ies were pre­cious cur­rency. Now the mod­ern gen­er­a­tion gets its own fat Jewish kids try­ing to get laid in Superbad: a very funny, filthy, com­edy spawned fully-formed from the dirty minds of two horny 14 year olds (writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg pro­duced their first draft when they were, in fact, only 14).

High school kids Seth and Evan are des­per­ate to get lucky so they’ll be able to go to col­lege with “exper­i­ence” and the only way they know to achieve that is to get chicks drunk. With the help of an extremely humor­ous fake Hawaiian ID and two hil­ari­ously easy-going loc­al cops they get pretty close. As you might expect, the per­fect audi­ence for this film is about 14 years old, and con­sid­er­ing the R16 rat­ing it would only be fit­ting if they watched it on grainy VHS or wagged school to sneak into the flicks.

I Do posterI Do is that rare beast: a romantic com­edy that works bet­ter as a romance than a com­edy, largely due to dir­ec­tion from Eric Lartigau that makes a hor­rible meal of the broad com­edy moments and self-effacing per­form­ances from leads Charlotte Gainsbourg and Alain Chabat. Chabat plays hen-pecked met­ro­sexu­al per­fume design­er Luis Costa, saddled with five sis­ters, sev­en nieces and a wid­owed moth­er, all of whom are des­per­ate to see him mar­ried off. As seems to be the way of things in French cinema recently Costa hires a stranger to pre­tend to be his fiancée so she can dump him at the alter and the fam­ily will get off his back. A match­less plan I’m sure you’ll agree.

Perfume posterSurely it can­’t be a coin­cid­ence that this film is released in the same week as Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, anoth­er film about an emo­tion­ally stun­ted wonder-nose. Perfume is based on the well-loved Patrick Süsskind nov­el that many (includ­ing Stanley Kubrick) con­sidered un-filmable and so it proves. Ben Wishaw plays Jean-Baptiste Grenouille: born into poverty in pre-revolutionary Paris he has a remark­able tal­ent for dis­cern­ing scent. Unfortunately, as a char­ac­ter he’s not much more than a monkey-boy with a nose and dir­ect­or Tom Tykwer fails to find a sat­is­fact­ory cine­mat­ic rep­res­ent­a­tion for the sense of smell which defeats the point somewhat.

I won’t go as far as recom­mend­ing avoid­ance as, unlike most films, it is full of mem­or­able moments and will at least pro­voke a response – its just that mine was negative.

Evan Almighty posterThe like­able comedi­an Steve Carell takes the lead in Evan Almighty, sequel to un-likeable comedi­an Jim Carrey’s smash-hit Bruce Almighty from 2003. Carell plays politi­cian Evan Baxter who is taught a les­son in humil­ity and eth­ics by gen­i­al prac­tic­al joker God (Morgan Freeman). Soft-headed, dim-witted but warm-hearted.

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten posterPunk came along at just the right time for Joe Strummer. As “Woody” Mellor (after folkie Woody Guthrie) he was a middle-class art school drop-out chan­nel­ling his energy into women and pub rock until he heard the siren call of punk and made his mark as lead­er of The Clash. Julien Temple’s mov­ing bio­graphy, The Future is Unwritten, is an excel­lent guide to the punk peri­od but is even bet­ter on the per­son­al and artist­ic resur­rec­tion of Strummer’s final years. Highly recommended.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 19 September, 2007.

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