Category: Film

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Fol­low­ing the flur­ry of Christ­mas and New Year releas­es (all of which are still play­ing), there are only two new titles to report this week. First­ly, The Tale of Des­per­aux an ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of a sup­pos­ed­ly beloved chil­dren’s book. Matthew Brod­er­ick plays a noble lit­tle mouse with enor­mous ears who teams up with a kitchen-lov­ing rat (Dustin Hoff­man) to res­cue a lone­ly Princess (Emma Wat­son) — sounds a bit like Dum­bo meets Rata­touille. The rest of the voice cast is sim­i­lar­ly pres­ti­gious includ­ing two gen­tle­men prob­a­bly on the the Acad­e­my long-list for Best Actor this year: Frank Lan­gel­la (Frost/Nixon) and Richard Jenk­ins (The Vis­i­tor). Play­ing at the Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners, Read­ings Courte­nay and Sky City Queens­gate (does any­one go there?).

Frank Miller is a hero to com­ic book afi­ciona­dos every­where. He cre­at­ed The Dark Knight Returns, 300 and Sin City (and co-direct­ed the Sin City movie along with Robert Rodriguez). Now he has both hands on the wheel of anoth­er com­ic book adap­ta­tion, Will Eis­ner’s The Spir­it and the pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al makes it look like a long-lost cousin of Sin City. US reviews have not been kind but you can check it out at either Read­ings or Sky City.

The Para­mount’s Sum­mer “Best of” series con­tin­ues: Adam’s Apples, The Edge of Heav­en, I’m Not There. and Lars and the Real Girl get a sec­ond chance and they’re also raid­ing the vault with rare oppor­tu­ni­ties to see West Side Sto­ry, The Con­ver­sa­tion, Elvis: That’s The Way It Is and North by North­west.

Along with a run­down of all the Christ­mas releas­es, Des­per­aux and The Spir­it will be reviewed next week at Funer­als & Snakes (and in the Cap­i­tal Times on Wednes­day).

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Too late to be of any use for Fri­day night enter­tain­ment, here’s a sum­ma­ry of the films open­ing this week across the city.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate and Empire). That’s it. The calm before the inevitable Box­ing Day storm.

But if Keanu Reeves play­ing a dead­pan alien isn’t enough there’s always the annu­al ‘V’ Movie Marathon at the Para­mount, kick­ing off at 4.00pm on Sat­ur­day. Organ­is­er Ant Timp­son has been some­what scathing of Welling­ton’s abil­i­ty (or inabil­i­ty) to hack the Marathon and is offer­ing a spe­cial mini-Marathon tick­et valid for 12 hours. Only prob­lem, is you have a wear a nap­py for the whole 12 hours ’cause you’d be a big baby.

On a dif­fer­ent kind of kick, this week­end sees the first Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val in Welling­ton — (only) three screen­ings of recent Kore­an movies, all at the Light­house in Petone on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.

The Day the Earth Stood Still will get a review in the Cap­i­tal Times on Weds (and online at Funer­als & Snakes soon after).

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

If you are con­sid­er­ing going to the cin­e­ma this week­end, and you’ve already seen Bond and the oth­er 21 films cur­rent­ly play­ing in Welling­ton, here’s a quick guide to the new releas­es.

Cin­e­ma own­ers all over the city are breath­ing a lit­tle eas­i­er now that two of the biggest box office releas­es from the States have opened at the same time. High School Musi­cal 3: Senior Year is the third in the tril­o­gy and the first to get a full cin­e­ma release: Read­ings, Empire, Sky City Queens­gate. I saw it tonight at the Empire and my eyes and ears are still hurt­ing.

Knock­ing Bond off his perch last week­end in the US was the Christ­mas rom-com Four Hol­i­days star­ring  Vince Vaugh­an and Reese With­er­spoon. I believe I am out of step with most crit­ics but I actu­al­ly quite enjoyed it — and so did US$31m worth of oth­er peo­ple. Read­ings, Empire, Sky City Queens­gate.

Quar­an­tine is a very quick-out-of-the-blocks Hol­ly­wood remake of the Span­ish hor­ror film [REC] that Ant Timp­son was pro­mot­ing ear­li­er this year. It’s a Read­ings exclu­sive. Might be worth a look if, like me, you found it hard to read the sub­ti­tles in the orig­i­nal with your hands over your eyes.

The Vis­i­tor is going to be pop­u­lar, mark my words. From Thomas McCarthy, writer-direc­tor of The Sta­tion Agent (which did more busi­ness per capi­ta here than any­where else in the world), this one is about a depressed mid­dle-aged eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor who redis­cov­ers life when he meets an ille­gal immi­grant cou­ple in New York City. Oh man, it is so much bet­ter than I just made it sound. Pent­house, Para­mount, Light­house Petone.

The acclaimed doc­u­men­tary The Sur­vivors (about the final year of the Holo­caust) gets two screen­ings at the Film Archive on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day respec­tive­ly as part of their Human Rights series and final­ly, a Pent­house exclu­sive: Sud­den­ly, a Swedish dra­ma about a man and his son recov­er­ing from the death of the moth­er and broth­er. “A qui­et and beau­ti­ful film,” says IMDb.

The Vis­i­tor has already been reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes, with the oth­ers fol­low­ing next week (and in the Cap­i­tal Times next Wednes­day).

UPDATE: My inter­view with The Vis­i­tor star Richard Jenk­ins is up at F&S

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

So, this is the week I come out of hiber­na­tion to resume post­ing and what do I have to report? Only the bleed­ing obvi­ous infor­ma­tion that the new Bond (Quan­tum of Solace) is every­where this week­end and that the only cin­e­ma dar­ing to go up against the behe­moth is plucky lit­tle Para­mount which is play­ing Amer­i­can Teen from today.

QoS is the mid­dle film of an expect­ed tril­o­gy so don’t expect much in the way of res­o­lu­tion. And despite being the most expen­sive Bond film in his­to­ry it’s a wel­come half an hour short­er than the pre­vi­ous Casi­no Royale: More ses­sions = more mon­ey. Play­ing at Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Regent-on-Man­ners, Embassy and Light­house Petone.

A big win­ner at Sun­dance this year, Amer­i­can Teen is a doc­u­men­tary sur­vey­ing a cross-sec­tion of cur­rent US young-adult-hood in the town of War­saw, Indi­ana. The char­ac­ters are stock (which is sort of the point): the Jock, the Nerd, The Queen and the Out­sider. You’ve got to love a film with this poster though. Para­mount exclu­sive.

Quan­tum of Solace was reviewed this week at Funer­als & Snakes and Amer­i­can Teen will join it next week (and in the Cap­i­tal Times if you pre­fer ink and paper).

Cinephilia: Film Festival preview

The Film Fes­ti­val has been a fix­ture of Welling­ton’s win­ter cal­en­dar for near­ly 40 years and for those of us who organ­ise our lives around glow­ing rec­tan­gles of one kind or anoth­er there is no bet­ter way to spend a cold and wet after­noon than in the com­fy leather chairs at the Embassy, engrossed in a work of art.

Pro­gram­ming a Fes­ti­val like Welling­ton may seem easy but I can assure you it’s get­ting tougher every year. The sheer vol­ume of inde­pen­dent film is grow­ing beyond all rea­son (I read that there were around 5,000 films sub­mit­ted to Sun­dance last year) and atten­tion must be paid to all four cor­ners of the globe nowa­days.

The glossy pro­gramme (doing dou­ble-duty this year as Fes­ti­val Guide Book and Sou­venir Pro­gramme) is 90 pages long and I direct you to it forth­with — my role here is, with the help of some pre­views from the Fes­ti­val office, to point your atten­tion towards some of the unher­ald­ed titles avail­able amongst the hun­dreds on offer. This year I only men­tion films I have seen and read­ers are asked to add their picks/hopes/reports in the com­ments.

The first thing to point out is that, unlike the old days, there is noth­ing to be gained in try­ing to guess which films will return for a com­mer­cial sea­son. With the loss of the three (oth­er­wise unla­ment­ed) Rial­to screens in June, there is even less chance of a film com­ing back than before and the gen­er­al down­turn in atten­dance this year has made dis­trib­u­tors wary. At the moment there are no plans to release The Sav­ages (a well-observed, superbly act­ed dra­ma with plen­ty of black humour star­ring Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man and Lau­ra Lin­ney) and even the Jack Black — Michel Gondry com­e­dy Be Kind Rewind is expect­ed to go straight to DVD post-Fes­ti­val (although strong local sales may pro­voke a change of mind). Rec­om­men­da­tion: if the big screen expe­ri­ence is impor­tant to you, don’t wait.

[Pre­view con­tin­ues after the jump]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The big guns still dom­i­nate pro­ceed­ings at our cin­e­mas (at least until Thurs­day when the lit­tle art-house films all gang up for the Fes­ti­val). Last week was hard­ly worth writ­ing a col­umn about as all the big dis­trib­u­tors sen­si­bly made way for Will Smith’s annu­al 4th of July block­buster, Han­cock (Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners & Embassy).

This week, the ABBA musi­cal (that had a sea­son at the Civic in Auck­land a cou­ple of years ago) Mam­ma Mia! leads the pack. Jus­ti­fi­ably described as a phe­nom­e­non since the stage show launched in Lon­don in 1996, the film fea­tures Meryl Streep, Pierce Bros­nan, Stel­lan SkarsgÃ¥rd and Col­in Firth singing and danc­ing their way through the ABBA back cat­a­logue. It’s been trail­ered for months now, so aware­ness should be pret­ty high and it’s play­ing every­where: Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Embassy, Light­house Petone, Regent-on-Man­ners.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Yet anoth­er school hol­i­day looms and Dream­works’ attempt to cap­ture the ani­mat­ed audi­ence (or rather ‘the audi­ence for ani­ma­tion’) before Pixar’s WALL·E emerges in Sep­tem­ber, is Kung Fu Pan­da star­ring the voice of Jack Black. Launched on the croisette at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val only a few weeks ago, KFP has been acclaimed by crit­ics (88% at Rot­ten­Toma­toes) and looks like it will be worth check­ing out this week­end. Read­ings, Empire, Regent.

The Para­mount con­tin­ues to slip inter­est­ing, sin­gle-print, releas­es into the mar­ket­place: this week’s entry is a John Boor­man (Deliv­er­ance, Excal­ibur) moral­i­ty tale, The Tiger’s Tail, in which a self-made busi­ness­man (Bren­dan Glea­son) dis­cov­ers he has a sin­is­ter dou­ble who seems to deter­mined to bring him down.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

When times are qui­et in the cin­e­ma busi­ness (as they have been all year) own­ers respond by open­ing more and more films and hop­ing some­thing will stick. This week sees the Pent­house open yet anoth­er con­tem­po­rary British com­e­dy-dra­ma, fund­ed by the UK Film Coun­cil using Nation­al Lot­tery funds (much like Hap­py-Go-Lucky and Brick Lane which are still screen­ing), Grow Your Own. Fea­tur­ing the rapid­ly-becom­ing-ubiq­ui­tous Eddie Marsan (Vera Drake, Pier­re­point), Grow Your Own is about the inhab­i­tants of a Lon­don allot­ment (where the poor grow their veg­eta­bles and/or get away from the Mis­sus) forced to deal with the arrival of a fam­i­ly of refugees. Pent­house and Light­house Petone. [Check out the rest of this week’s new releas­es after the jump]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Back from an unsched­uled lay­off, and hope­ful­ly in time for the week­end, here’s a run-down of this week’s cin­e­mat­ic open­ings. At the top of the list is Todd Haynes’ mas­ter­piece I’m Not There. fea­tur­ing Chris­t­ian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Mar­cus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw as ver­sions of the leg­end of Bob Dylan. I wasn’t expect­ing it be as fun­ny as it is but once I recal­i­brat­ed I enjoyed myself enor­mous­ly. Para­mount, Light­house Petone and Rial­to.

Cameron Diaz and Ash­ton Kutch­er team up for roman­tic com­e­dy about two indi­vid­u­als forced to become a cou­ple in order to win a $3m slot machine prize. Domin­ion Post film review­er Graeme Tuck­ett told me by text that he was sur­prised he liked it, but then he enjoyed Maid in Man­hat­tan too. Vegas is all over the place: Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners.

Music With­in is an indie Amer­i­can dra­ma based on a true sto­ry about a deaf Viet­nam vet­er­an (Ron Liv­ingston from “Band of Broth­er­s”) who returned to the States and began a bat­tle with the author­i­ties for sup­port for all Amer­i­cans with dis­abil­i­ties. Rial­to exclu­sive (and lim­it­ed ses­sions due to the build­ing work at the site so check in advance).

Final­ly, the Pent­house and Light­house (Petone) are play­ing an Irish film, set in a retire­ment home, called How About You, based on a short sto­ry by Maeve Binchy.

I’m Not There. and How About You have already been reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes. The oth­er two will appear next week.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

First up, Lars and the Real Girl is delight­ful­ly odd indie star­ring Ryan Gosling as a lone­ly and dam­aged young man who finds love on the Inter­net. With a doll named Bian­ca. Para­mount, Pent­house.

Also at the Para­mount, just for Wahine Week is a doc­u­men­tary about the dis­as­ter called The Wahine Dis­as­ter. Anoth­er doc­u­men­tary, that I missed in my sweep last week, is John Pil­ger’s The War on Democ­ra­cy which is now play­ing at the Light­house Petone only. It was orig­i­nal­ly going to play at the Para­mount as well but was cut by the own­ers for being ‘too left wing’. Some Para­mount cus­tomers have already begun a boy­cott protest­ing this sim­ple-mind­ed attack on free speech (not to men­tion an attack on the Para­mount itself and it’s grand his­to­ry of show­ing films with a human­i­tar­i­an and anti-estab­lish­ment posi­tion). Feel free to voice your dis­plea­sure to the man­age­ment.

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