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mark ruffalo

RN 2/16: Universal

By Audio, Cinema, Rancho Notorious, Reviews

Dan and Kailey are joined by Andy James, one of the world’s fore­most experts on the MCU (or Marvel Cinematic Universe) to dis­cuss Avengers: Age of Ultron and how all the pieces are sup­posed to fit togeth­er. Also reviewed, the much more ser­i­ous Age of Adaline and Testament of Youth.

RN 1/7: Cliff-top

By Audio, Cinema, Rancho Notorious

Fairfax group film review­er Graeme Tuckett joins Dan and Kailey for a Dark Horse spe­cial – we review one of the best Kiwi films of all time and Dan inter­views the stars, Cliff Curtis and James Rolleston. Also, new film with music Begin Again star­ring Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffalo.

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Beyond the Edge poster

Review: Beyond the Edge, Thor- The Dark World, Inch’Allah, Valley of Saints, Thanks for Sharing and The Counselor

By Cinema, Reviews

Tim Robbins and Mark Ruffalo in Thanks for Sharing (2013)

It’s one of those rare sunny Saturday after­noons in Wellington and I have work to do. But I’m not going to do that work because it does­n’t look like much fun and – for once – writ­ing tiny film reviews seems like the bet­ter option.

Beyond the Edge posterLeanne Pooley made New Zealand’s most suc­cess­ful doc­u­ment­ary ever in 2009 – The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls – and now turns her eye towards a mountain-sized Kiwi icon, Sir Ed Hillary and his ascent of Everest in 1953. Beyond the Edge is a limp title for the greatest adven­ture ever under­taken by a New Zealander and the film some­times seems a bit blood­less too. The 3D recre­ations of Himalayan scenes – filling in the gaps in the archive of avail­able still and mov­ing pic­ture ele­ments – are thrill­ing though, espe­cially if heights get your heart racing faster as they do I.

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Review: TRON- Legacy and The Kids Are All Right

By Cinema, Reviews

TRON: Legacy posterIndulge me for a minute – it’s Christmas. Back when I was a little nip­per, me and some mates took a rare trip into the City (“Up London” we called it) to see what we thought was going to be the biggest movie event of our lives so far. At the Odeon Marble Arch (sup­posedly the biggest screen in Europe!) we sat ourselves in the middle of the front row and pre­pared to be blown away. By TRON.

It was the first film to con­tain com­puter gen­er­ated effects and graph­ics and the first to make a dir­ect appeal to the nas­cent home com­puter gen­er­a­tion who would go on to define our future. The idea of being sucked inside a com­puter to play the games for real didn’t do much for me but the meta­phor­ic idea of los­ing one­self in the Grid (or the Net as we came to call it)? That had a lot more appeal.

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Review: Shutter Island, Bright Star, Did You Hear About the Morgans?, Masquerades, Toy Story 3D and Crazy Heart

By Cinema, Reviews, Screenwriting

There’s some­thing very odd about the open­ing scenes in Shutter Island and it takes the entire film for you to put your fin­ger on it. Shots don’t match between cuts, there’s a stil­ted qual­ity to the dia­logue (too much expos­i­tion for a Martin Scorsese movie) and the pacing is off. For a while I found myself won­der­ing wheth­er Marty had lost the immense influ­ence of his great edit­or Thelma Schoonmaker, but there she is, still in the cred­its, as she has been for Scorsese since Raging Bull.

Several years ago, Scorsese played a prac­tic­al joke on me (per­son­ally, it felt like at the time) when an entire reel of The Aviator was treated to look like faded 1930s Technicolor – I went to the Embassy counter to com­plain and felt very sheep­ish to be told by Oscar, the pro­jec­tion­ist, that the dir­ect­or meant it that way. So, this time around I decided to trust the maes­tro and roll with the strange­ness and was rewar­ded with one of the best (and cleverest) psy­cho­lo­gic­al thrillers in many a year.

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Review: Zodiac, Scoop and Reno 911!- Miami

By Cinema, Reviews

If, like David Fincher, you were grow­ing up in Northern California dur­ing the early 70’s you, too, might have become fas­cin­ated and obsessed by the mys­ter­i­ous publicity-troll seri­al killer known as Zodiac. Now Fincher has turned that fas­cin­a­tion in to a solidly con­struc­ted but over­long his­tory of the failed efforts to identi­fy Zodiac and bring him to justice called, with typ­ic­al ima­gin­a­tion, Zodiac.

The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith, car­toon­ist for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the first murders in 1969, whose obses­sion about the case led to a book identi­fy­ing the most likely sus­pect (and a failed marriage).

One of the prob­lems that law enforce­ment had in deal­ing with the Zodiac was his propensity for tak­ing cred­it for murders that wer­en’t his and the fact that his real murders occurred in three dif­fer­ent jur­is­dic­tions, mean­ing that there was little or no co-ordination and import­ant evid­ence was­n’t shared. It took Graysmith’s dec­ade long per­sever­ance to at least shine a light on a case that offi­cially still remains open.

There are good per­form­ances from many reli­able faces includ­ing Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Brian Cox. Chloe Sevigny is crim­in­ally under-used (as she often seems to be) as Graysmith’s wife (but that’s a fault with the true-life story rather than the film­makers). In fact, this is one of those true stor­ies you wish had been jazzed up a bit rather than treated with so much respect. The prob­lem here is that Zodiac does­n’t do a heck of a lot so there’s no way to ratchet the ten­sion up except with spooky blind alleys.

If you were a Zodiac-obsessed kid like Fincher, you’ll get a big kick out of the detailed recre­ations of the era. If you are a nor­mal cit­izen like myself, by the time the film goes in to Decade (and Hour) Three, you’ll won­der what all the fuss is about.

Altogether more suc­cess­ful serial-killer sleuths are on dis­play in Woody Allen’s new UK-based pro­duc­tion Scoop. Scarlet Johansson plays Sondra Pransky, journ­al­ism stu­dent on hol­i­day in London. At a magic show (Allen him­self is The Great Splendini) she is vis­ited by the ghost of gruff old Fleet Street hack Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) who gives her a tip: Eligible rich boy Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman) is the infam­ous Tarot Card Killer and she has to reveal the truth and get the scoop of the decade.

With Splendini’s help Pransky goes under­cov­er but finds her­self fall­ing for Lyman/Jackman’s charms and drop­ping the scent. This is minor Allen (aren’t they all these days?) but not without charms and sev­er­al jokes made me laugh out loud (one of which I am steal­ing for myself). It seems to have been thrown togeth­er a little haphaz­ardly and a cast of English not­ables gets very little to do except stand around at garden parties – former Bond and Indiana Jones vil­lain Julian Glover gets only one line as Lyman’s father.

The beau­ti­ful Romola Garai (I Capture The Castle) plays best-friend Vivian and she will be here in September to play Cordelia to Ian McKellen’s Lear at the St James. Looking for­ward to it.

Finally, in a quiet week, late night tv spin-off Reno 911!: Miami is about as funny as someone stand­ing on your corn (an image drawn dir­ectly from life, ladies and gentlemen).

Printed in the Capital Times, Wednesday 23 May, 2007.