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Review: Daybreakers, Hot Tub Time Machine, Genova and The Necessities of Life

By Cinema and Reviews

I am sick of vam­pires. Sick to death. As a great philo­soph­er once said, “What is point, vam­pires?” and I have to con­cur. They’re every­where you seem to turn thses days and the most bor­ing of the lot (the Twilight mob) are back in June to bore us all to death once again.

Daybreakers posterSo, my heart sank a little when I saw the trail­ers for Daybreakers, an Aussie hor­ror about a world con­trolled by vam­pires, hunt­ing and farm­ing the remain­ing humans for their plasma. One of the pleas­ures of this gig is when the sur­prises are pleas­ant and Daybreakers def­in­itely turned into one of those. Tightly wound and (for the most part) logic­ally sound, the tyres have been well and truly kicked on the premise before the cam­er­as (and digit­al com­pos­it­ors and Weta mask makers) got involved.

Ethan Hawke plays the Chief Blood Scientist for the big cor­por­a­tion that provides most of the world’s sup­ply. Ten years earli­er, an infec­ted bat caused an epi­dem­ic which rendered most of the pop­u­la­tion undead – a few, like CEO Sam Neill went will­ingly when faced with the offer of immor­tal­ity. Hawke is work­ing on a sub­sti­tute – he’s veget­ari­an in a human blood kind of way – and sup­plies for every­one are run­ning low. When a reneg­ade bunch of humans (led by Willem Dafoe) tell him about a pos­sible cure he is forced to choose between his boss, his human-hunter broth­er and what’s left of his humanity.

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Review: 2012, The Vintner’s Luck, Away We Go and [REC]2

By Cinema and Reviews

After nearly three and a half years of pro­du­cing this cinem­a­goers’ con­sumer guide, per­haps its time for a state­ment of intent. A mani­festo, if you will. Something to place these mus­ings in per­spect­ive as you skim through them over Morning Tea.

I try and find some­thing good and inter­est­ing in everything I see, and I see pretty much everything. Most films have an audi­ence of some descrip­tion wait­ing for them some­where, and that audi­ence may be you, so I try and out­line what might appeal (along with what might not) so that you can make an informed choice.

Plus, I have some sym­pathy for the little bat­tler and will often try and draw your atten­tion in that dir­ec­tion (Don’t for­get Two Lovers, folks) and I try and watch films not meant for me (kids flicks, etc) with half an eye on how the rest of the audi­ence is reacting.

It is extremely rare, as reg­u­lar read­ers will know, for me to warn you off a film entirely, or indeed (in the case of our first film this week) sug­gest that its cre­at­ors should be harshly pun­ished for its per­pet­ra­tion. The films that are really sand under my fore­skin are those that only exist to pad a resumé and a bank bal­ance, cyn­ic­al attempts to sep­ar­ate us from our money, mar­ket­ing cam­paigns crudely dis­guised as art.

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Review: We’re Here To Help, Control, The Last Trapper, 1408, Lions for Lambs and Death Proof

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

In 1993 Christchurch prop­erty developer Dave Henderson tried to get a GST refund on a pro­ject he was work­ing on in Lower Hutt. When the IRD officer sexu­ally har­assed his part­ner, Dave threatened to kick him “half way down Cashel Street”, it turned out the IRD were the wrong people to threaten and the hell unleashed is entirely in the oth­er dir­ec­tion. After years of audits, pro­sec­u­tions and bank­ruptcies it took inter­ven­tion from the hero­ic Rodney Hide to finally put a stop to the abuse.

We’re Here to Help will look right at home on tele­vi­sion when it even­tu­ally appears (the IRD recep­tion area looks like the old Shortland Street set) but if you go now you’ll have plenty to talk about at your sum­mer barbecues.

There’s a lot to like about We’re Here to Help, par­tic­u­larly see­ing exper­i­enced New Zealand act­ors like John Leigh and Stephen Papps giv­en some free­dom to play (and lead Erik Thomson is an effort­less every­man) but the film gets ter­ribly strange when Michael Hurst turns up dressed in a a fat suit to play Hide. He’s totally mis­cast and it becomes a com­pletely dif­fer­ent film (some­thing by Jim Henson per­haps) when he is onscreen.

Have the IRD changed their ways? It has been argued that the unpleas­ant­ness served up to Henderson had its roots in an insu­lar Christchurch busi­ness com­munity but I know that sev­er­al people con­nec­ted to the pro­duc­tion were very wary of poten­tial IRD retali­ation over the film and the fact that Producer John Barnett is cur­rently being audited may not be an inno­cent coincidence.

Ian Curtis, Macclesfield’s match­less pur­vey­or of un-listenable dirges, gets the big screen biop­ic treat­ment in Control. It’s a hand­some pro­duc­tion with some fine per­form­ances (not least from new­comer Sam Riley as Curtis); the act­ors play­ing Joy Division recre­ate the music with dis­tress­ing accur­acy and dir­ect­or Anton Corbijn employs the most effect­ive use of black and white pho­to­graphy since Raging Bull.

Dog-sledding seems like a des­per­ately uncer­tain meth­od of trans­port­a­tion in The Last Trapper. Canadian hunter and wil­der­ness vet­er­an Norman Winther seems to spend most of his time tip­ping over, fall­ing into frozen lakes, down rav­ines and tangling him­self up with the dogs. Winther plays him­self but it isn’t a doc­u­ment­ary (although I’m sure there are grains of truth in each recre­ation). My recom­mend­a­tion would be to stick your fin­gers in your ears to ignore the clunky dia­logue and poor dub­bing and con­cen­trate on the beau­ti­ful Yukonic visuals.

Back in 1983 Stephen King gave us a haunted car in Christine. Now, 24 years later he has come up with a haunted hotel room in 1408. Rumours that his next pro­ject will be about a haunted shop­ping trol­ley are pure spec­u­la­tion on my part. As for 1408, there are few sur­prises on offer and, apart from the always watch­able John Cusack, it really did noth­ing for me.

Here in New Zealand Robert Redford’s pat­ron­ising polit­ic­al sci­ence exer­cise Lions for Lambs seems so much like preach­ing to the choir but it would inter­est­ing to see it with a dif­fer­ent audi­ence, one for whom the simplist­ic his­tory and eth­ics les­sons on offer are fresh and inspir­ing. On second thoughts I don’t think that audi­ence exists. Tom Cruise plays ambi­tious Republican sen­at­or Jasper Irving, try­ing to manip­u­late cred­u­lous report­er Meryl Streep into pro­mot­ing the latest ran­dom mil­it­ary surge in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan the surge itself has star­ted badly and in California Pol-Sci pro­fess­or Redford is try­ing to con­vince one last stu­dent to devote him­self to self­less pub­lic ser­vice instead of easy money and a quiet life.

Finally, Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is pure cine­mat­ic enter­tain­ment – an expertly con­struc­ted throwaway trib­ute to the cheap thrills of the 70s. Awesome Kurt Russell plays Stuntman Mike, a nasty piece of work who use his souped up “death proof” Chevy Nova to wreak hav­oc on two groups of young women. Luckily for the second bunch, they have kiwi stun­t­wo­man Zoe Bell (Kill Bill) in the team and the abil­ity to fight back. I came out of Death Proof grin­ning from ear to ear.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 14 November, 2007.

Nature of Conflict: John Leigh, Stephen Papps and sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the cast of We’re Here To Help are great mates of long stand­ing. And Erik Thomson is a cousin.