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Review: Secretariat and Gainsbourg (plus French Film Festival preview)

By Cinema, Reviews

OK, so here’s how this is sup­posed to work. I watch a whole lot of films, give you a hope­fully spoiler-free run­down of what they’re about, offer you my impres­sions and then – based on what you’ve read of me in the past – you can decide wheth­er to drop some fold­ing on a night at the pic­tures, wait for a DVD to come out or (if you are a stu­dent with no mor­als) down­load some­thing to not watch later.

Now, my taste just so hap­pens to be impec­cable so you could do a lot worse than fol­low my every recom­mend­a­tion but this week I totally sur­prised myself and I’d be fas­cin­ated to see if many of you respond in quite the same way.

Secretariat posterSecretariat was a race­horse – a very suc­cess­ful race­horse. In 1973 it was the first horse for 25 years to win the Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont) and is widely acknow­ledged to be the finest Thoroughbred that ever lived. I know next to noth­ing about racing – and could care even less – and yet I watched Randall Wallace’s biop­ic of the horse with tears in my eyes from start to fin­ish. I haven’t been milked like that since The Pursuit of Happyness back in 2007 and frankly Secretariat had no right to do that to me. I mean, it’s all been seen before and it’s cer­tainly not as if you don’t already know what’s going to hap­pen. And yet… and yet… I adored it.

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2010 Wellington Cinema Year in Review

By Cinema

So, after trawl­ing through the many thou­sands of words writ­ten about cinema in these pages this year, I sup­pose you want me to come to some con­clu­sions? Do some “sum­ming up”? Help guide you through the great video store of life? Well, alright then. Here goes.

We don’t do Top Ten lists here at the Capital Times – they are reduct­ive, facile and, frankly, you have to leave too many titles out. I have taken to divid­ing my year’s view­ing up into cat­egor­ies: keep­ers are films I want to have in my home and watch whenev­er the mood takes me; renters are the films that I could hap­pily watch again; then there are the films that I enjoyed but am in no hurry to repeat, the films I might have mis­judged first time around, the films I can’t get out of my head (for bet­ter or worse), the films I am sup­posed to love but you know, meh, and most import­ant of all – the films you should avoid as if your very life depends upon it.

First, the keep­ers: a sur­prise for some will be Fantastic Mr. Fox which was released after my 2009 Year in Review was sub­mit­ted and the only film in the list that I already own. Animal Kingdom was the film I most recom­men­ded this year – a stun­ning, tense piece of work that gripped me totally.

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