Cinephilia: Opening This Week

In 1969 John Wayne won his only Academy Award for his por­tray­al of the iras­cible one-eyed US Mar­shal Roost­er Cog­burn in True Grit, hired by young Kim Darby to avenge the murder of her fath­er. Now the ever-sur­pris­ing Coen Broth­ers have brought us their inter­pret­a­tion (back to Charles Portis’ ori­gin­al nov­el, with evid­ently no ref­er­ence made to the Wayne ver­sion). Jeff Bridges plays Cog­burn and he’s sup­por­ted by Matt Damon, Jeff Brolin, new­comer Hailee Stein­field and the under-appre­ci­ated Barry Pep­per. Already nom­in­ated for ten Oscars, it opens today at the Empire, Light­house Petone, Light­house Paua­ta­hanui, Read­ings, Pent­house, Embassy and Event Cinemas Queens­gate. Sadly, I have to point out that it’s get­ting more ses­sions in Paua­ta­hanui that at the either the Embassy or the Pent­house. Beware.

Charles Fer­guson’s doc­u­ment­ary Inside Job was one of the talk­ing points of last year’s Film Fest­iv­al and it’s back for a sea­son at the Para­mount. While we are now more than six months fur­ther on from the bank­ing and fin­ance crisis that promp­ted the film, the top­ic is no less import­ant. Inter­est­ingly, Wel­ling­ton invest­ment man­agers Mor­ris­on & Co hos­ted a spe­cial screen­ing of the film at the Embassy late last year which seemed like quite a brave thing to do. Nar­rated by the ubi­quit­ous Matt Damon, Inside Job is a Para­mount exclus­ive.

Once upon a time Eng­lish dir­ect­or Jonath­an Lynn could be cel­eb­rated as one of the cre­at­ors of “Yes Min­is­ter”. Now he’s bet­ter known as a com­edy dir­ect­or with cred­its like My Cous­in Vinny and The Whole Nine Yards. This week he’s at the helm of a Brit­ish re-make of a well-known French com­edy called Wild Tar­get. The great Bill Nighy plays an age­ing hit­man who falls for con-woman Emily Blunt even though he’s sup­posed to be rub­bing her out. Fly in the oint­ment is Harry Pot­ter­’s Rupert Grint who is giv­en yet anoth­er oppor­tun­ity to prove that he can act. Empire, Read­ings, Pent­house.

In 2008 my top film was the Coen’s No Coun­try for Old Men and we get one of theirs this week. In 2009 it was Danny Boyle’s Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire and we get sneak pre­views (at Light­house Petone and Paua­ta­hanui, Read­ings, Pent­house, Event Cinemas Queens­gate) of his new film 127 Hours. James Franco stars in the real life story of adven­turer Aron Ral­ston who found him­self alone and trapped in a Utah canyon. We know he gets out because Ral­ston is around to tell the tale. It’s how he gets out that we are inter­ested in. Also, keep an eye out for Boyle’s new stage pro­duc­tion of Franken­stein as part of the NT Live sea­son later in the year.

I draw your atten­tion to the first fest­iv­al of the year, the French Film Fest­iv­al, which kicks off at the Pent­house next Tues­day. I’ve been some­what scorn­ful of most of the French cinema that gets released com­mer­cially in Wel­ling­ton (tooth­less for the most part) but the French industry is big and diverse and we get to see the more inter­est­ing stuff at events such as these.

The organ­isers were kind enough to let me pre­view a hand­ful of their films in advance and they were all pretty inter­est­ing. Math­ieu Almar­ic won the Best Dir­ect­or prize at Cannes last year for On Tour, the story of a dis­graced TV pro­du­cer flog­ging his way around the sea­side towns of France with a New Bur­lesque show he picked up in Amer­ica. It reminded me of those great Amer­ic­an indies of the 70s (like The Last Detail or The King of Mar­vin Gar­dens) with its gritty absurdity. Ter­rif­ic.

The doc­u­ment­ary about Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Ber­gé – his part­ner in life and busi­ness – L’Amour Fou was mov­ing and fas­cin­at­ing. Fol­low­ing Saint-Laurent’s death in 2008 Ber­gé decided to auc­tion their entire col­lec­tion of objects – fur­niture, sculp­ture, art – enough beauty for sev­er­al life­times. The film uses the pre­par­a­tion for the auc­tion and dis­pers­al of the col­lec­tion as a struc­ture for Bergé’s remin­is­cences – like one of those long and linger­ing Van­ity Fair art­icles. Incid­ent­ally, the col­lec­tion sold for US$483,835,144. I’ll stop here for a moment while you take that in.

And we’re back. Multi-cul­tur­al­ism and immig­ra­tion is a vitally import­ant top­ic in mod­ern French soci­ety but their cinema has wrestled with it inef­fect­ively for the most part. I’m giv­en some hope by a couple of films in the Fest­iv­al. Hands Up fol­lows a group of kids on an estate in Par­is as they plot to save one of their num­ber from being depor­ted: Excel­lent kids-eye-view of the world as it is.

The Names of Love takes a dif­fer­ent tack. A wacky romantic com­edy with a bit of spice, it’s about a Jew­ish sci­ent­ist who meets a daffy left-wing act­iv­ist of Algeri­an extrac­tion who tries to con­vert him to the cause not real­ising he’s already the most inter­est­ing man in the room. “Only for­eign­ers really deserve to be French,” she says which is a fairly incen­di­ary thing to say in a com­edy.