Category: Film

Cinephilia: Italian Film Festival

The Itali­an Film Fest­iv­al once again sur­veys the best of recent Itali­an com­mer­cial cinema. Based at their entirely appro­pri­ate new home of the Embassy Theatre, the Fest­iv­al screens 16 dif­fer­ent fea­ture films over the next two weeks and the range means that there will (almost cer­tainly) be some­thing for every­one.

High­lights include The Girl By the Lake, a grip­ping psy­cho­lo­gic­al who­dunit that won sev­er­al Dona­tello Awards (the Itali­an Oscars) in 2008 as well as two prizes at the 2007 Venice Film Fest­iv­al. Set dis­tinct­ively in the north­ern Itali­an Dolemite region, the film fol­lows the police invest­ig­a­tion of a young girl’s death. Inscrut­able detect­ive Toni Servillo dis­cov­ers sev­er­al sus­pects, mean­while his per­son­al own life isn’t going so well.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

As that old war film quote goes, “it’s quiet, too quiet”: only three films open­ing this week­end as the mad rush of the last few weeks works its way through the sys­tem.

Back from the Fest­iv­al (and haven’t I had to say that a lot recently?) is An Edu­ca­tion, adap­ted by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber­’s mem­oir of grow­ing up in 1960s Eng­land “before it became the 60s”. Wise bods are pick­ing new­comer Carey Mul­ligan for an Oscar nom­in­a­tion next year as the lead, and she’s very sol­id sup­port from the likes of Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson and Peter Saarsgard (whose Eng­lish accent is very good judging by the trail­er). The dir­ect­or is Lone Scher­fig who came out of the Dogme move­ment in the late 90s but also made the dark com­edy Wil­bur Wants to Kill Him­self. Empire, Pent­house and Light­house.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Freakin’ school hol­i­days. 9 – count ’em – new films are open­ing this week and most of them are designed to keep rest­less young people out of the hair of their eld­ers and bet­ters. Time is short so I’m just going to list them here:

• G‑Force. Talk­ing cute rodents audi­tion to be spe­cial agents by tak­ing down super-vil­lain Bill Nighy. Read­ings (3D), Empire (2D), Sky City Queens­gate (3D).
• Fame. The re-hash­ing of beloved 80s pop­u­lar trash con­tin­ues (Footloose is next). Read­ings, Empire, Embassy, Sky City Queens­gate
• Shorts. Robert Rodrig­uez puts togeth­er anoth­er vir­tu­ally homemade digit­al fantasy for kids – in the spir­it of Shark Boy and Lava Girl and we all know how much we loved them. Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate
• The Secret of Moon­acre. Former anim­at­or Gabor Csupo made the smart Bridge to Ter­abith­ia the year before last and this is aimed at a sim­il­ar age group. Read­ings, Para­mount.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Still, they are return­ing from the Fest­iv­al: Moon by Bowie’s boy Duncan Jones is a Para­mount exclus­ive which should do quite nicely for them as they pre­pare for new own­er­ship (dis­cuss rumours you might have heard in the com­ments). After three years alone min­ing the moon Sam Rock­well might be going slightly nuts and ima­gin­ing that he’s got com­pany. Or is he?

The Pent­house and the Light­house both share Steph­en Frears’ Chéri and the doc­u­ment­ary that launched the Fest­iv­al back in June, The Septem­ber Issue. Chéri is based on two nov­els by Colette and is a cher­ished pro­ject by acclaimed screen­writer Chris­toph­er Hamp­ton (Dan­ger­ous Liais­ons, The Diving Bell and the But­ter­fly).

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

I think the high­light of the Wel­ling­tonista cinema-going week is likely to be a toss-up between the won­der­ful Van­guard ret­ro­spect­ive at the Film Archive or the restored print of Cas­ab­lanca. The Para­mount has been bring­ing back the ven­er­able old favour­ite reg­u­larly for the last 20 years (always with new­er prints it should be said) and it’s still a big draw. Do you need to know the plot? Read Tom G’s sum­mary here at Ornery World. Two shows a day until Sunday.

Fresh­er fare is on offer else­where but noth­ing is likely to be as sat­is­fy­ing. Atone­ment dir­ect­or Joe Wright returns to the screen with a mod­ern day drama (and more Oscar-bait), The Soloist. Jam­ie Foxx plays a gif­ted cel­list, blighted with men­tal ill­ness and Robert Downey Jr is the hack who befriends him. Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

I have to keep this brief as time is short. There are anoth­er six films open­ing at Wel­ling­ton cinemas this week, three return­ing from the Film Fest­iv­al and three more. First up Ang Lee’s return to Eng­lish-lan­guage film­mak­ing (after the atmo­spher­ic Chinese thrill­er Lust, Cau­tion in 2007) Tak­ing Wood­stock. Released world­wide to coin­cide with the 40th anniversary of the Wood­stock Music and Arts Fest­iv­al, the legendary three day mud and music event, the film tells the behind-the-scenes story of how it all happened. Read­ings, Empire and Pent­house.

Mul­ti­plex-only releases this week are anoth­er demon-child hor­ror, Orphan, and anoth­er Kath­er­ine Heigl rom-com, The Ugly Truth. I saw both this even­ing and can only say that new lows have been struck for both genres. Read­ings and Sky City Cinemas.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Righto, back again with a quick run down of what’s new in cinemas this week­end. First up, a spe­cial treat for film fans who want to some free enter­tain­ment tomor­row lunch­time – Read­ings are host­ing a spe­cial fif­teen minute pre­view of James Camer­on’s Avatar in their digit­al 3D Cinema 5. Three ses­sions (11.45am, 12.30pm & 1.15pm) are run­ning and tick­ets are avail­able on a first-come first-served. If you can­’t sneak out for these you’ll have to wait until the whole film opens world­wide on 17th Decem­ber.

Quentin Tarant­ino’s Inglouri­ous Bas­terds is only play­ing at Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate but don’t let that put you off. I saw it this even­ing and enjoyed myself tre­mend­ously – there really is a lot of enter­tain­ment to be had at the pic­tures at the moment. Brad Pitt plays the lead­er of a Dirty Dozen type squad of jew­ish sol­diers, para­chuted behind enemy lines in WWII to extract extreme ven­geance on the Nazis. Fea­tur­ing impec­cable cast­ing (even the non-act­ors are some­how right) and his usu­al eclect­ic soundtrack, Tarant­ino is in fine form.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The big noise this week is being made by Neill Blomkamp’s Dis­trict 9 which you can see at Read­ings, Empire, Embassy and Sky City Queens­gate. Blomkamp had been tapped by Peter Jack­son to dir­ect the Halo movie that he was co-pro­du­cing along with Microsoft. When that fell over Jack­son offered Blomkamp the chance to expand and revis­it his short Alive in Joburg from 2005. And the almost instant rush of acclaim for Dis­trict 9 has been intox­ic­at­ing. I don’t get to see it until the week­end but I know a lot of people who have and all are rav­ing. What is it about? A bunch of ali­ens are segreg­ated and ghetto-ised in mod­ern South Africa. After nearly 30 years as second class cit­izens ten­sions are reach­ing boil­ing point.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

I thought I’d come out of hid­ing for a moment to trum­pet the first Wel­ling­ton fea­ture film to get a decent release in ages, Sep­ar­a­tion City. Even though you have to go a long way down the cast list on IMDb to find a Wel­ling­ton act­or (Grant Roa com­ing in at num­ber 12) the trail­er con­tains enough glimpses of Wel­ling­ton land­marks to set audi­ence tongues wag­ging and get some early trac­tion at the box office. Writ­ten by Wel­ling­ton fix­ture (Dom-Post car­toon­ist, former Press Gal­lery journ­al­ist, play­wright) Tom Scott it’s a “pain­ful les­son about how unre­quited love lasts forever and while requited love comes with a use-by date” accord­ing to the press mater­i­al.

Two of the over­seas leads have worked in New Zea­l­and before: Rhona Mitra was a leath­er-clad vam­pire in the mis­be­got­ten Under­world Rise of the Lycans earli­er this year and Ger­man Thomas Kretschmann played the cap­tain of The Ven­ture in Peter Jack­son’s King Kong. Sep­ar­a­tion City can be found just about any­where from today: Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Embassy, Light­house Petone.

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

Cinephilia: Film Festival Preview

The Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al (sorry, New Zea­l­and Inter­na­tion­al Film Fest­iv­al, Wel­ling­ton Branch) is a huge under­tak­ing for the com­mit­ted cinema-goer. Every year we devour the pro­gramme for weeks in advance, schedul­ing annu­al leave and long “lunch breaks”, try­ing to work out what is essen­tial and what isn’t. After 20 years of this, I’ve only just begun to real­ise that in the search for the essen­tial many oth­er pleas­ures have been passing me by. This year, before I even looked at the pro­gramme, I asked the Fest­iv­al to choose a stack of DVDs for me, with the emphas­is on the unher­al­ded and the unex­pec­ted. Thus, of the 13 films I’ve been watch­ing over the last three or so weeks, all but one of them were from the back half of the book (and prob­ably would not have been on my per­son­al short­l­ist) but all of them had some­thing spe­cial to offer. So, is my advice for the Fest­iv­al to not book in advance but instead choose films at ran­dom depend­ing on your own avail­ab­il­ity and prox­im­ity to a ven­ue? Maybe it is.

[Read the rest of the Wel­ling­tonista Film Fest­iv­al Pre­view after the jump]