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Oct 04 2009
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Review: The Strength of Water, Séraphine, The Cove, Taking Woodstock, Orphan and The Ugly Truth

By Cinema, Reviews

Festival titles are return­ing to cinemas at such a rate that it seems like pre-Festival cinem­a­goer cyn­icism was well-placed. 50% of this week’s new releases were screen­ing loc­ally only a month ago but as they are eas­ily the best half of the arrange­ment I’m inclined to be forgiving.

Armagan Ballantyne’s debut NZ fea­ture The Strength of Water is a strik­ingly mature piece of work and one of the most affect­ing films I’ve seen this year. In a remote Hokianga vil­lage a pair of twins (excel­lent first-timers Melanie Mayall-Nahi and Hato Paparoa) share a spe­cial bond that tragedy can’t eas­ily break. A mys­ter­i­ous young stranger (Isaac Barber) arrives on the scene, escap­ing from troubles of his own and… and then I really can’t say any more.

Full of sur­prises from the very first frame The Strength of Water shows that qual­ity devel­op­ment time (includ­ing the sup­port of the Sundance Institute) really can make a good script great. Ballantyne and writer Briar Grace-Smith offer us lay­ers of fas­cin­a­tion along with deep psy­cho­lo­gic­al truth and gritty Loach-ian real­ism. The mix is com­pel­ling and the end product is tremendous.

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Sep 22 2009
Love0

Review: Separation City, G.I. Joe- The Rise of Cobra, Coco Avant Chanel, Flashbacks of a Fool and Earth Whisperers/Papatuanuku

By Cinema, Reviews

Separation City posterBecause priv­ileged white males haven’t had a fair suck of the sav in recent times when it comes to arts fund­ing it seems only fair that the Film Commission should try and redress that injustice with the new Tom Scott-scripted com­edy Separation City.

Aussie Joel Edgerton plays Simon, a nor­mal kiwi bloke who has a gor­geous intel­li­gent wife, a beau­ti­ful house on the beach in Eastbourne, a job steer­ing affairs of state for a cab­in­et min­is­ter and a mid-life crisis caused by noth­ing more dra­mat­ic than a lack of action in the bed­room. He falls for beau­ti­ful cel­list Katrien who may or may not be Dutch or German but has the cut glass English accent of London-born Rhona Mitra (last seen in skin-tight leath­er as a vam­pire in Underworld 3).

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Aug 24 2009
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Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Birdsong

By Cinema, Reviews

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince posterWhat is there left to say about Harry Potter films? It seems like only yes­ter­day that I wrote of The Order of the Phoenix: “this Harry Potter is not a hugely enjoy­able exper­i­ence. The young act­ors, des­pite lots of prac­tice by now, haven’t got any bet­ter (poor Rupert Grint as Harry gets found out every time they point the cam­era at him). Daniel Radcliffe as Harry doesn’t seem to be able to carry the weight of the emo­tion or the action and Harry him­self still seems like a bit of a wimp.” And noth­ing much has changed this time around.

In the latest film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry is under pres­sure from head­mas­ter Dumbledore (Michael Gambon)to find out the truth about return­ing potions pro­fess­or Slughorne (Jim Broadbent) who knows the secret of Dark Lord Valdemort’s where­abouts. But Dumbledore’s motiv­a­tions are murky and the loy­alty of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) is called in to ques­tion. There is also a humour­less and tedi­ous diver­sion into the romantic lives of our her­oes that does noth­ing but con­firm the absence of act­ing tal­ent on offer.

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Jul 11 2009
Love0

Review: Terminator Salvation, Love the Beast, Fugitive Pieces, JCVD and In Search of a Midnight Kiss

By Cinema, Reviews

Terminator Salvation poster’Tis the sea­son to reboot tired fran­chises and this week we get an explos­ive new look at James Cameron’s beloved Terminator. Set only nine years in the future (when open-air bat­tle­field heart trans­plants will be de rigeur dur­ing la guerre), the Judgement Day of T2 has des­troyed most of the West Coast of the USA and only a hardy band of ill-equipped rebels are keep­ing the mon­strous Skynet at bay.

John Connor, proph­esied future saviour of the human race, is a only a sol­dier in the rebel army but his reg­u­lar radio broad­casts bring hope to the scattered, ragtag freedom-fighters. In a battle to res­cue some human pris­on­ers his entire squad is killed – but he does man­age to release the mys­ter­i­ous Marcus Wright (Aussie boof­head Sam Worthington) who may hold the key to the defeat of the machines.

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Apr 08 2009
Love0

Preview: World Cinema Showcase

By Cinema, Wellington

Too late to be more than 50% use­ful to any­one, here’s my World Cinema Showcase preview:

As sum­mer gives way to autumn, and Daylight Saving Time gently releases its grip on our pri­or­it­ies, the first sig­ni­fic­ant film fest­iv­al of the year returns to take up res­id­ence at the Paramount. The World Cinema Showcase is two very tidy weeks of great filmgo­ing, almost as if the grand, winter, Festival has been dis­tilled down to a man­age­able essence.

Within, 33 fea­tures (and one omni­bus col­lec­tion of shorts) com­pete for your atten­tion and, luck­ily, the long Easter week­end allows you take full advant­age. A few of the titles were made avail­able to crit­ics as pre­views, but many more are on my list of films I simply must see on the big screen and, depend­ing on your tastes and interests, noth­ing is un-recommendable.

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Mar 04 2009
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FilmSoc: Another year of great value film watching

By Cinema, Wellington

Film Society logo eyeThose of us that try and take cinema ser­i­ously have very few for­ums where we can truly express our pas­sion and the Monday even­ing screen­ings at the Wellington Film Society are the alter at which we worship.

For over 60 years Wellingtonians have been gath­er­ing to watch flick­er­ing images from all over the world. In the days before the words nerd or geek we were called buffs (and were proud of it) and we still gath­er in our hun­dreds at the Paramount pic­ture theatre to bathe in the glory of a rect­an­gu­lar image on a sil­ver screen – shad­ows cast by films from exot­ic places (and some from less far afield).

This year’s Feb-Nov pro­gramme kicks-off on Monday with a real treat – Garden of Earthly Delights is the first screen­ing in a series of films by acclaimed Polish film­maker Lech Majewski and it’s a prime example of the kind of screen­ing that only the Film Society can provide. It’s an award-winning art movie about love, loss, mor­bid­ity and cre­ation and the dir­ect­or will be present at the screen­ing to take questions.

Other high­lights in this year’s broadly cur­ated pro­gramme include a couple of early films by Gus Van Sant (Milk), recent doc­u­ment­ar­ies Manufactured Landscapes and Darwin’s Nightmare and rare 35mm present­a­tions of fest­iv­al favour­ites La Sentinelle (1992), Diva (1981) and Paradzhanov’s mas­ter­piece The Colour of Pomegranates (1979).

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 4 March, 2009.

While filling in for Graeme Tuckett on Nine to Noon this morn­ing I gave the Film Society a bit of a deserved plug. It really is a treas­ure. You can listen here (or down­load):

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20090304–1148-Film-048.mp3]
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