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Jan 17 2015
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St. Vincent movie poster

Review: St. Vincent, Deepsea Challenge 3D, Interstellar, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and Nightcrawler

By Cinema, Reviews

In the last (non-Rancho) post I made a com­mit­ment to get back in to reg­u­lar review­ing and to end my year-long sab­bat­ic­al. (For the reas­ons behind the hiatus, it is recom­men­ded that you have a quick read. Go on, I’ll wait here.) It has come as a bit of a sur­prise to me that I’ve actu­ally seen as much as I have over the last few months. It didn’t feel like it but — thanks to Radio New Zealand, FishHead and Rancho Notorious — fully 18 of the films cur­rently screen­ing around Wellington are films I can actu­ally have an opin­ion on.

Anyway, here goes, and I might as well start with the old­est first. Which, as it turns out, is also a con­tender for the worst film in this post.

St. Vincent movie posterI’ve nev­er man­aged to hide my dis­dain for Little Miss Sunshine, a film which is beloved by many and held up as an example of qual­ity screen­writ­ing to which we all should aspire. It is, in fact, garbage. A col­lec­tion of tics mas­quer­ad­ing as char­ac­ters stuck in a contrived-cute situ­ation in which life les­sons will be learned too eas­ily and happy end­ings will be unearned. Theodore Melfi’s debut fea­ture St. Vincent also falls into all these traps only deep­er. It also relies so heav­ily on the great Bill Murray that it man­ages to even bring him into disrepute.

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May 28 2013
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Shopping poster

Review: Shopping, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Hangover Part III

By Cinema, Reviews

Julian Dennison and Kevin paulo in Shopping (Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland)

Shopping (Mark Albiston & Louis Sutherland) starts with archive tele­vi­sion news foot­age of the infam­ous 1970s dawn raids, tooled-up cops break­ing down doors to track down “over­stay­ers”. As a scene-setter it’s impress­ive. It gives the film an imme­di­ate sense of men­ace but it doesn’t fol­low through – the cops nev­er arrive and the threat of deport­a­tion back to the islands (like almost everything else in the film) is nev­er dis­cussed. So, nar­rat­ively then, Shopping may dis­ap­point but as a psy­cho­lo­gic­al por­trait of ali­en­ated work­ing class teen­age life it excels.

Shopping posterNewcomer Kevin Paulo is Willie, stuck in a dead-end job dream­ing of some­thing bet­ter. His white fath­er (Alistair Browning, often threat­en­ing but with a heart in the right place) wants him to work hard and get on while his Samoan moth­er Theresa (Maureen Fepuleai) wants him to behave him­self and set a good example to young­er broth­er Solomon (Julian Dennison). He does neither of those things and falls in with a bad crowd of loc­al crims led by cha­ris­mat­ic Bennie (Jacek Koman). In their world “shop­ping” means thiev­ery and the adren­aline, the parties and beau­ti­ful Nicky (Laura Peterson) keep Willie away from his own home and a fam­ily that needs him more than he realises.

[pullquote]I won­der wheth­er the world is ready for a Pakistani James Bond.[/pullquote]Shot with style – and a budget-protecting shal­low focus – by Ginny Loane, Shopping leaves the audi­ence with plenty of work to do – filling in the gaps – until it reaches a suit­ably enig­mat­ic con­clu­sion. Strong per­form­ances from seasoned pros and new­comers alike keep the ten­sion up in indi­vidu­al scenes but I some­times felt that the through-line was no more than a slender thread.

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Oct 26 2010
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Four Lions poster

Review: Four Lions, Life as We Know It and Farewell

By Cinema, Reviews

Four Lions posterSomebody once said that com­edy is just tragedy plus time and Four Lions, a wicked, bit­ter and hil­ari­ous new com­edy by Chris Morris, tests that max­im to break­ing point (and for some of you, bey­ond it).

Back in the 90s, Morris was respons­ible for “Brass Eye”, a mock cur­rent affairs series that conned gull­ible celebrit­ies and politi­cians into (for example) appear­ing in advert­ise­ments warn­ing the nation against the new super drug ‘Cake’. Fearless and right­eous in equal meas­ure, he has made his first fea­ture film and it dares to try and make us laugh at the first world’s cur­rent bogey­man, Islamo-terrorism, spe­cific­ally the homegrown kind which led to the 2005 London bus and tube bombings.

In Sheffield, South Yorkshire, a group of wildly enthu­si­ast­ic but incom­pet­ent jihadists (played superbly by Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak, Arsher Ali, Adeel Akhtar and Nigel Lindsay) would be mak­ing a stand if only they could stop bick­er­ing. A trip to a Pakistani train­ing camp, bomb mak­ing classes, farewell videos and a trip to the London Marathon are all dis­asters but Four Lions is only 98% farce – there’s some heart in there too.

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Mar 16 2010
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Review: Precious, Edge of Darkness, Land of the Long White Cloud, Shifty & The French Kissers

By Cinema, Reviews

Precious posterAfter watch­ing so many films that are so sim­il­ar in con­tent and con­struc­tion that they are hard to tell apart, it is a real pleas­ure to come across some­thing that con­tains no famil­i­ar faces, has a dir­ect­or whose name is unknown (to me at least) and takes an approach to storytelling that con­sist­ently sur­prises and delights – even if the story itself is about as dark as it gets.

Lee Daniels’ Precious, I’m pleased to gaboure­port, is far more than just nov­elty, rising con­fid­ently (cine­mat­ic­ally) above its kitchen-sink found­a­tions to soar high above almost every drama I saw last year. Set in Harlem in the mid 1980s, it presents us with the unprom­ising fig­ure of Clareece Precious Jones (new­comer Gabourey Sidibe). She is 16 years old and over­weight, abused at home and ignored at school, dream­ing of some­thing bet­ter but not hope­ful of a way out. Her fath­er has just made her preg­nant for the second time and when the school finds out she is giv­en the option of wel­fare (which sus­tains her grot­esquely awful moth­er) or a spe­cial school for those with poten­tial gifts – she has some tal­ent for maths.

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