Kailey and Dan are joined by former Sight & Sound scribe Tom Webb, now resident in Wellington, to discuss Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Woody Allen’s Irrational Man and Tom’s picks for this year’s NZIFF.
Warning! This features the most inept plot summary of a blockbuster movie this – or any – year.
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Recorded before Sony’s decision to cancel the release of The Interview (hence no discussion of it), we interview Eddie Izzard about his forthcoming Force Majeure tour, and his plans for what’s to come after, and Alex Sheremet about his epic survey of the career of Woody Allen. Sonal Patel joins us to epically review the final film in two trilogies – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – as well as John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as elderly New York lovers in Love Is Strange.
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Apologies for the late update. Glandular fever flare up kept me out of action for a day and a half.
When did “late-period: Woody Allen start? Was it with Match Point (when he finally left New York for some new scenery)? Or should we consider these last ten, globe-trotting, years as late‑r Woody? The last ten years have certainly been up and down in terms of quality. Scoop was all-but diabolical. Vicky Cristina Barcelona was robust and surprising. Midnight in Paris was genial but disposable (despite being a massive hit) and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was barely even a film.
Now, Blue Jasmine, in which Mr. Allen uses the notorious Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi crimes as inspiration for a story about the fraud’s victims as well as the collateral damage inflicted on a woman oblivious of her own complicity. As the eponymous Jasmine, Cate Blanchett plays the wife of Alec Baldwin’s shonky NY businessman, their relationship told in flashback while she tries to rebuild her life in her adopted half-sister’s (or something – the relationship seems unnecessarily complicated for something that has no material impact on the story) apartment in an unfashionable area of San Francisco.
The new Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine, What Maisie Knew, White House Down and François Ozon’s In the House. Plus, a clip from our special Q&A with the women behind Gardening with Soul.
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The former East Germany is the setting for Christian Petzold’s Barbara; Tom Cruise tempts fate with the daringly titled Oblivion; zombies are brought back to life by love in Warm Bodies and we preview our i/v with Espen Sandberg, co-director of Kon-Tiki.
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Last time we saw Tom Cruise he was known as Jack Reacher. Now, in Oblivion, his name is Jack Harper. What range! What diversity! You’d hardly recognise him. Harper is a maintenance guy, repairing the drones that protect giant machines that suck Earth’s oceans up to an enormous space station orbiting above us, a space station that is going to take the few remaining survivors of our pyrrhic victory over invading aliens on a final journey away from a devastated planet to a new life on Titan.
Assisting Mr. Cruise with his mechanical defence duties is Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), life and work partner, keeping him in contact with the supervisors floating above them and keeping an eye on the straggling remnants of the aliens who tried to conquer us. Traditional gender roles are very much still intact in the future – even though the Moon isn’t – and Ms. Riseborough’s character seems content to never leave the spotless modern kitchen while Cruise gets his hands dirty on the surface. Neither of them seem too bothered by the fact that they had their memories wiped six years previously, although he has been having some strange dreams recently.
