New-ish at the Movies: Kick-Ass 2, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Much Ado About Nothing & Frances Ha

There has been much dis­cus­sion in the circles in which I move about the quant­ity of films released to loc­al cinemas. Not only are there too many films com­ing out every week – too many for each one to gen­er­ate much heat at any rate – but the ones that are com­ing out aren’t always the right ones. Smal­ler dis­trib­ut­ors are push­ing everything they have into the sys­tem regard­less of their poten­tial and some of the majors – with big­ger mar­ket­ing budgets and over­heads to worry about – are ditch­ing their art­house and mid-range titles and push­ing them straight to home video.

[pullquote]Who says Amer­ic­ans can­’t do Shakespeare? Nonsense.[/pullquote]At the same time, mul­ti­plex screens are full of big budget com­mer­cial gambles, with box office estim­ates based on loc­al his­tory and the hope that Twi­light-like light­ning might strike twice. See which ones in the list below fit into which cat­egory. (Clue: if your film has no hi-res Eng­lish lan­guage poster avail­able online  and your only offi­cial web­site is in Japan­ese, maybe you can­’t really sup­port it in NZ cinemas.)

Ben­oît Jac­quot’s Farewell, My Queen goes behind the scenes of Louis XVI and – more spe­cific­ally – Mar­ie Ant­oinette’s court dur­ing the dark days of the revolu­tion as the regime tottered and fell. We see these events from the point of view of Her Majesty’s book read­er, a young ser­vant played by Léa Sey­doux. Ini­tially besot­ted by the Queen (Diane Kruger), her faith is shaken by the rev­el­a­tions of cor­rup­tion, waste and – intriguingly – Ant­oinette’s rela­tion­ship with the duch­esse de Polig­nac (Vir­ginie Ledoy­en).

A well-acted his­tory les­son with glor­i­ous pro­duc­tion design – much of the film was shot on loc­a­tion at the Palace of Ver­sailles and sur­round­ing chat­eaux – this is a film that responds well to a big screen as intim­ate rela­tion­ships are played out on a grand stage. Based on Chant­al Thomas’s best-selling nov­el, Farewell, My Queen is rather more sym­path­et­ic to Ant­oinette than the mob were in 1793.

Kristin Scott Thomas’s suc­cess­ful French-speak­ing career con­tin­ues with Look­ing for Hortense in which she plays a thank­less sup­port­ing role as wife to Jean-Pierre Bac­ri’s ori­ent­al spe­cial­ist. When he fails to do a favour for a friend of his wife’s sis­ter who is threatened with deport­a­tion – and then tries to cov­er his tracks – the res­ult­ing domest­ic ten­sion threatens to break up his imme­di­ate fam­ily as well as wreck what remains of his rela­tion­ship with his fath­er (Claude Rich).

Who is Hortense? That’s the mod­est mys­tery at the heart of a nice little mid-life crisis story that is rather more sym­path­et­ic to its lost lead than to any of the oth­er char­ac­ters.

I took a dis­like to the first Kick-Ass back in 2010 which seemed to me to wear its mis­an­thrope and crypto-fas­cism rather too eas­ily but the sequel (ori­gin­ally named Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall) sat a little bet­ter. Firstly, Chloë Moretz has grown up a bit and the viol­ence she gives and receives seems less yucky. Secondly, she has come into her own as the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter in the fran­chise. Thirdly, she’s a become a bet­ter act­or than Aaron Taylor-John­son (Kick-Ass) whose per­form­ance is as aim­less as his char­ac­ter. This Kick-Ass at least seems to know why it hates the world and also man­ages to thread a nice little sub­text about belong­ing, com­munit­ies and cliques amongst all the may­hem.

The Mor­tal Instru­ments: City of Bones is a pathet­ic attempt to cash in on the super­nat­ur­al teen romance genre that has been open­ing purses for the last five years. Con­struc­ted from a check­list rather than a script – and cast more on price than on tal­ent – this is a crappy mess that sells out teen audi­ences who aren’t yet old enough to know that they deserve more.

I was also dis­ap­poin­ted in Tast­ing Menu – so much so that I walked out before the end which I nev­er do. A fea­ture set on the last day of one of those fam­ous top end res­taur­ants like El Bulli, where dozens of courses flow inex­or­ably out of the kit­chen and each dish is a mar­vel of chem­istry and well as gast­ro­nomy. Well, put that saliva away, Tast­ing Menu isn’t about food. It’s simply an excuse to get a bunch of dis­par­ate char­ac­ters (often lazy ste­reo­types) togeth­er in a room and indulge in the kind of romantic mis­taken iden­tity mis­ad­ven­tures that would­n’t be out of place in an Eng­lish draw­ing room com­edy of the 1950s.

Thank heav­en, then, for Joss Whe­don and for a tiny little pro­ject he threw togeth­er in his spare time whole he was in the edit­ing room for The Avengers. Shot in only 12 days, at his own Los Angeles house, Much Ado About Noth­ing is so full of life and fun that it simply floated past me. I once appeared in a stu­dent pro­duc­tion of the play so I am very fond of it, a fond­ness which has been rekindled into a full-blown love affair thanks to this ver­sion. Who says Amer­ic­ans can­’t do Shakespeare? Non­sense. And who says a bunch of not-so-well-known Amer­ic­an tele­vi­sion act­ors can­’t do really act? Even more non­sense. One of the high­lights of my year, this.

Whe­don has said that he chose to shoot Much Ado in black and white for budget reas­ons – it’s easi­er to hide the fact that there was­n’t much in the way of pro­duc­tion or cos­tume design when col­ours don’t have to match – and I won­der wheth­er that con­trib­uted to the sim­il­ar choice made for Noah Baum­bach and Greta Ger­wig’s Frances Ha. Maybe, maybe not. The black and white can­’t help but remind you of anoth­er great New York story, Allen’s Man­hat­tan, but it – and the choice of Deler­ue’s music – also harks back to the French New Wave and the film tries to be sim­il­arly light on its feet.

Ger­wig plays Frances, 20-some­thing Man­hat­tan­ite, still upbeat about her pro­spects as a dan­cer and cit­izen of the city that nev­er sleeps des­pite the grow­ing evid­ence that she does­n’t actu­ally have what it takes. If you can make it there, you can make it any­where, the song tells us, but what do you do if you can­’t?

I’m not sure how gen­er­ally applic­able her story is – I’ve heard any­thing in a range from “quite” to “very” – but it cer­tainly works spe­cific­ally and Ger­wig (co-writer) simply owns one of the great New York char­ac­ters. It’s over a year since I saw Frances Ha, con­sidered it a bit dis­pos­able at first, but moments keep com­ing back to me – there’s not many films I can say that about.