Category: Film

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Our annu­al oppor­tun­ity to wor­ship at the feet of Pix­ar arrives this week in the shape of Rata­touille (I’m a fan, can you tell?). Writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Brad Bird, who made The Incred­ibles and Iron Giant, Rata­touille is about a rat named Remy with a tal­ent for fine cuisine but who, obvi­ously, isn’t wel­come in the kit­chen. Voices include Peter O’Toole, Ian Holm and the lovely Janeane Garo­falo. Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners, Light­house Petone, Sky City Queens­gate.

Writer and dir­ect­or of Wait­ress (Empire, Light­house Petone, Pent­house), Adrienne Shelly (alumni of the once-great Hal Hartley), was sadly murdered soon after fin­ish­ing the film – as point­less and ran­dom an act as you can ima­gine. There aren’t enough women film dir­ect­ors in the world as it is without los­ing them like that.

[The rest of this week’s new releases after the jump.]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

A fairly insane week for new releases is headed by NZ hor­ror-fea­ture The Tat­too­ist, about Sam­oan tat­toos that take on a life of their own and turn their own­ers into blood-thirsty zom­bies – or some­thing like that: Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate only.

Also Read­ings and Queens­gate is Sandra Bul­lock­’s new mys­tery Pre­mon­i­tion about a woman who may have fore­seen her hus­band’s death in a car acci­dent. I get to see this one tomor­row but the 8% rat­ing on the Tomat­o­met­er does­n’t fill me with enthu­si­asm.

[Remain­ing new releases lis­ted after the jump.]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The biggest movie in the world last week­end was The Bourne Ulti­mat­um (US$47m on Thursday, Fri­day and Sat­urday alone) and it opens here tomor­row. The last of the big tent-pole fran­chise attrac­tions of the (north­ern) sum­mer, this Bourne brings Jason back home to New York (with a detour in Blighty). Play­ing at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Sky City Queens­gate and (prob­ably the ulti­mate Bourne exper­i­ence) the Embassy

Also open­ing tomor­row is Rus­si­an art-house weepy The Itali­an (dir­ect from the Fest­iv­al): Rialto and Light­house Petone only. The Sing­er (Quand j’étais chanteur) places one of France’s all-time greats (Gérard Depardieu) along­side one of her freshest new faces Cécile De France (Orches­tra Seats) for some May-Decem­ber romance. Depardieu plays a fad­ing nightclub sing­er who woos De France’s single moth­er real estate agent. Also at Rialto and (unsur­pris­ingly) the Pent­house.

Finally, The War With­in opens at the Para­mount: it’s a drama about a Pakistani ter­ror­ist in New York and it was made for dot­com bil­lion­aire Mark Cuban’s HDNet, the cable chan­nel devoted to break­ing down the estab­lished studio/distributor/exhibitor strangle­hold. Oth­er titles pro­duced by Cuban include Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, Bubble and Good Night, and Good Luck.

The Itali­an and The War With­in are reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes; reviews of the oth­er two will appear there next Wed­nes­day.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The industry is in an inter­est­ing state when a rel­at­ively small film like Breach can get a release at Read­ings and the Para­mount across the road – and also at the sub­urb­an Empire and Light­house. Made and dis­trib­uted in the US by major stu­dio Uni­ver­sal, here it is being dis­trib­uted by inde­pend­ent Rialto (no longer con­nec­ted to the cinema chain), hence all the indie exhib­it­ors. My under­stand­ing is that Read­ings, how­ever, want everything and will simply hoover up any and all avail­able titles and no one can afford to turn them down.

Breach is based on the true story of a CIA double-agent played by Chris Cooper and his ulti­mate expos­ure by ex-Mr With­er­spoon Ryan Phil­lippe and one Imdb con­trib­ut­or calls it “the best of the year to date” although the com­ment was made in Feb­ru­ary…

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Once described by Terry Gil­li­am as “a monu­ment to cra­ni­al archi­tec­ture”, Bruce Wil­lis’ shiny bonce is on full dis­play in Die Hard 4.0 (known in US-cent­ric ter­rit­or­ies as Live Free or Die Hard), play­ing at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Empire, Sky City Queens­gate and the Embassy where it looked kind of murky this even­ing.

Adam Sand­ler does his bit to fill the gap left by Ing­mar Berg­man with I Now Pro­nounce You Chuck & Larry: he and the guy from “The King of Queens” play two fire­fight­ers who pre­tend to be gay to get the mar­riage bene­fits (any rela­tion­ship to the limp Aus­trali­an com­edy Strange Bed­fel­lows star­ring Paul Hogan is entirely coin­cid­ent­al): Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate. Aside: I saw a film in one of the two Gold Lounges at Queens­gate on Tues­day night and an ush­er stopped by my seat to ask me if I wanted pop­corn or a soft drink which was nice except THE FEATURE HAD JUST STARTED! And for health and safety reas­ons they don’t dim the lights fully so it was an exper­i­ence I can’t recom­mend. The film was good though (more on that in anoth­er post).

The rest of the new releases after the jump, includ­ing Black Snake Moan and Ten Canoes.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Strange things are afoot con­cern­ing the release of the film License to Wed (the trail­er for which has been tor­tur­ing audi­ences for weeks). The radio pre­view was at Read­ings tonight, they have been trail­er­ing it heav­ily and it’s got a start date of Thursday on their web site. But they don’t have any ses­sions lis­ted for Cour­tenay Cent­ral.

It would­n’t be the first time that Read­ings have dropped a film at the last minute as a bar­gain­ing pos­i­tion (they have been known to throw their weight around with dis­trib­ut­ors) or maybe they just wanted to give The Simpsons Movie triple the usu­al num­ber of ses­sions (which they have done).

Then again, they might have seen the film and exer­cised some crit­ic­al judge­ment. No, of course not, how stu­pid of me.

License to Wed is there­fore only play­ing at the Empire in Island Bay so to exper­i­ence it at the mul­ti­plex you’ll have to trek out to the air­craft hangar at Queens­gate.

[Because I Said So and Catch a Fire after the jump.]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The high­lights of the North­ern Hemi­sphere block­buster sum­mer keep on arriv­ing, led this week by the long-awaited Simpsons Movie. I pre­viewed it today and I recom­mend that you stay through all the cred­its. Play­ing Read­ings, Empire Island Bay, Sky City Queens­gate and Regent-on-Man­ners which des­pite the best efforts of some enthu­si­ast­ic staff is com­plete pants.

Lind­say Lohan teams up with Jane Fonda and Feli­city Huff­man for the inter-gen­er­a­tion­al com­edy-drama Geor­gia Rule. Love interest is provided by Dermot Mul­roney and Gar­rett Hed­lund (Eragon). Again all over town: Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners and Sky City Queens­gate.

More after the jump