New-ish at the Movies: Blue Jasmine, Riddick, What Maisie Knew, Romeo & Juliet: A Love Song and The Best Offer

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.

[pullquote]As they used to say on tele­vi­sion about kit­tens, “a child isn’t just for Christ­mas, a child is forever.”[/pullquote]Blanchett unrav­els beau­ti­ful­ly and almost main­tains our sym­pa­thy despite the repeat­ed evi­dence that she does­n’t real­ly deserve it. In sup­port, Sal­ly Hawkins as the sis­ter is more watch­able than usu­al and oth­ers — notably Andrew Dice Clay, Michael Stuhlbarg and Louis C.K. — get moments to shine even though some of those moments can seem a bit repet­i­tive. Mr. Allen’s ear for dia­logue seems to have entire­ly desert­ed him — these peo­ple talk like they’re being quot­ed in New York­er arti­cles rather than con­vers­ing like liv­ing, breath­ing humans — but the struc­ture is sat­is­fy­ing and Blanchett takes the entire project by the scruff of the neck and makes it her own.

There are some sur­pris­ing plea­sures to be had in the third attempt­ed re-work­ing of Vin Diesel’s Rid­dick fran­chise, main­ly the choice to take it back to its grit­ty Pitch Black roots. Dis­pos­ing of the overblown mythol­o­gy of The Chron­i­cles of Rid­dick (2004) in less than 90 sec­onds of awk­ward expo­si­tion fea­tur­ing Karl Urban, we soon find our­selves back on a desert­ed desert plan­et in which Mr. Diesel’s want­ed man proves him­self to be Bear Grylls in space.

A dis­tress bea­con only serves to bring two gangs of boun­ty hunters who then fight over who gets to take Rid­dick home while the approach­ing storm brings with it some ugly crea­tures who don’t much care whose side any­one is on. The oth­er chief plea­sure in the film is a per­for­mance by Aus­tralian (and for­mer League star) Matt Nable who has a great face and an encour­ag­ing still­ness.

As they used to say on tele­vi­sion about kit­tens, “a child isn’t just for Christ­mas, a child is for­ev­er.” If only the utter­ly self-absorbed par­ents in What Maisie Knew had even seen that warn­ing, let alone heed­ed it. Played with notable lack of per­son­al ego, Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan are the bat­tling par­ents of sev­en-year-old Maisie (Ona­ta Aprile).

She is a fad­ing rock star and he is an inter­na­tion­al art deal­er. Shown almost exclu­sive­ly from lit­tle Maisie’s eye lev­el, their bick­er­ing and bil­ious­ness can only end one way – the divorce court. Shut­tled between Mum’s instant new bar­tender hus­band (Alexan­der Skars­gård) and Dad’s new wife, the for­mer nan­ny played by Joan­na Van­der­ham, Maisie’s nat­ur­al robust­ness and good nature is severe­ly put to the test and audi­ences with any kind of sen­si­tiv­i­ty will be on the edge of their seat as the par­ent­ing gets worse and worse.

I imag­ined What Maisie Knew as a kind of Before Mid­night from the twin girls’ point of view. What hap­pens to kids who grow up sur­round­ed by mean­ness, aggres­sion, ver­bal vio­lence, self­ish­ness with the occa­sion­al unex­pect­ed blurt­ings of love and affec­tion in the form of spoilage. Adapt­ed and updat­ed bril­liant­ly by Nan­cy Doyne and Car­roll Cartwright from the nov­el by Hen­ry James, this is a mar­vel­lous film that only occa­sion­al­ly tip­toes into melo­dra­ma but nev­er los­es sight of who the most impor­tant char­ac­ter is. You will care even if the par­ents don’t.

Prob­a­bly already dis­ap­peared from local screens but worth keep­ing on your radar nev­er­the­less, Romeo and Juli­et: A Love Song is a rock opera ver­sion of the great tragedy, set in a Kiwi hol­i­day park and direct­ed with con­sid­er­able music video panache by Tim van Dammen. If you appre­ci­ate Michael O’Neill and Peter Van Der Fluit’s songs as wit­ty par­o­dies of mod­ern pop styles of the past 30 years you might get as much plea­sure out of the film as I did. At least, I hope they were par­o­dies.

We have men­tioned Jess Feast­’s doc­u­men­tary Gar­den­ing With Soul on a cou­ple of pre­vi­ous occa­sions in these pages so it will come as no sur­prise to find that I am offer­ing a hearty, but belat­ed, endorse­ment here now. A year in the life of wit­ty, wise and won­der­ful Sis­ter Loy­ola Galvin, the nun who runs the large gar­den for the Sis­ters of Com­pas­sion in Island Bay, this film makes a ter­rif­ic com­pan­ion piece to Christo­pher Pry­or and Miri­am Smith’s How Far Is Heav­en which looked at anoth­er side of the sis­ters’ work last year.

Sis­ter Loy­ola is a trea­sure and this is what local cin­e­ma can do so well — cel­e­brat­ing our heroes and our role mod­els because if we don’t do it nobody from over­seas is going to do it for us. A qui­et tri­umph.

When I wrote my 2013 Film Fes­ti­val Pre­view, Behind the Can­de­labra was not going to return to cin­e­mas. Now it has, so I direct you to what I wrote back then which remains true today.

Giuseppe Tor­na­tore once made Cin­e­ma Par­adiso, a film beloved of cinephiles because it some­how trans­formed how we all feel about going to the movies into pic­tures. His high points since then have both been puz­zles — in A Pure For­mal­i­ty (1994) Depar­dieu and Polan­s­ki spar dur­ing a mys­te­ri­ous police inter­ro­ga­tion and, more recent­ly, in The Unknown Woman a Ukrain­ian immi­grant in Rome dis­cov­ers the truth about her enig­mat­ic past.

His lat­est, The Best Offer, is sim­i­lar­ly con­struct­ed and char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly clas­si­cal­ly pho­tographed. Geof­frey Rush plays a kind of rock star auc­tion­eer and art/antiquities expert drawn against his instincts into an intrigue fea­tur­ing a vil­la full of old things and their own­er, an ago­ra­pho­bic author of roman­tic fic­tion. Rush has his own lit­tle psy­cho­log­i­cal idio­syn­crasies, though, but as he loosens up he fails to won­der whether he is let­ting his curios­i­ty gets the bet­ter of him. Divert­ing and attrac­tive but less than meets the eye.

[Por­tions of this review first appeared in Welling­ton’s Fish­Head mag­a­zine in Sep­tem­ber 2013.]