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.