Tag: cinephilia

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

While the Film Fest­iv­al dom­in­ates the screens at the Embassy, Para­mount, Te Papa, the Film Archive (and par­tially takes over the Pent­house) there are still main­stream releases being flung to the four winds.

As a writer, Mike White has been respons­ible for some of the weird­est (Chuck & Buck), the straight­est (The Good Girl) and the fun­ni­est (The School of Rock) films of recent times. Year of the Dog is his first film as a dir­ect­or and is about a decent, single, sec­ret­ary (played by per­en­ni­al sup­port­ing act­ress Molly Shan­non) and her quest to replace her deceased pet. It’s a romantic com­edy and the sup­port­ing cast is pretty flash: includ­ing John C. Reilly and Peter Sar­sgaard. Pent­house exclus­ive.

The uplift­ing story of Wil­li­am Wil­ber­force (Ioan Gruf­fudd) and his quest to out­law slavery (inspir­ing – or inspired by – the hymn) is told in Amaz­ing Grace. Also star­ring the won­der­ful Romola Garai who will be here in less than a month to star with Ian McK­el­len in “King Lear” and “The Seagull”. Pent­house, Read­ings, Light­house Petone and Rialto.

Knocked Up is the story of an unlikely couple who, after a one-night-stand, are forced to deal with the preg­nancy that binds them togeth­er. It’s by the team that made The 40-year-old Vir­gin and stars Seth Rogen (pro­moted from sup­port­ing act­or in the pre­vi­ous film) and Kath­er­ine Heigl. A hoot by all accounts. Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Light­house Petone, Sky City Queens­gate.

Finally, prob­ably co-incid­ing with the Dowse’s “Making of” exhib­i­tion, King Kong gets anoth­er trot out at Queens­gate at 2.30pm on Sunday.

Cinephilia: 36th Wellington Film Festival Preview

It’s Film Fest­iv­al time of year, that two and a half week peri­od when watch­ing three films a day becomes more than shame­ful self-indul­gence, its almost oblig­at­ory.

Like life itself, pre­par­ing for the Film Fest­iv­al is all about choices. You start with a vir­gin pro­gramme and then, over a peri­od of weeks, notes are scrawled, dates are checked, friends are con­sul­ted and pre­views like this are read and then dis­carded. You check the timetable won­der­ing wheth­er you can leave work to, er, post a let­ter for a couple of hours on Fri­day morn­ing; you find your­self at lunch­time check­ing how long it really does take to walk briskly between Te Papa and The Embassy, and you try and for­get those moments dur­ing past Fest­ivals when you come out of a dis­ap­point­ing but worthy Finnish drama at the Para­mount and pass hordes of happy people who saw the extraordin­ary Japan­ese anim­a­tion at The Embassy instead.

The whit­tling is relent­less as the forces of time and space require choices to be made. To add an oth­er lay­er of com­plic­a­tion to your per­son­al pro­cess here’s my list of the less obvi­ous options, some of which I’ve been lucky enough to pre­view, but mostly I’m hanging out to see them like every­one else.

The rest of the pre­view, after the jump.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

A very quiet week for open­ings, the calm before the Film Fest­iv­al storm you might say. Slip­ping out a day early under cov­er of dark­ness is Harry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix (or Harry Pot­ter 5 as it said on my tick­et this after­noon). Sneak pre­view of my Cap­it­al Times review next week: “meh”. (Empire, Read­ings, Regent, Sky City Queens­gate).

The only oth­er pic­ture open­ing this week is the unfor­tu­nately titled Bra Boys, which is a doc­u­ment­ary about the fam­ous Sydney surf gang from the sub­urb of Marou­bra. The film is dir­ec­ted by one of the Bra Boys him­self, Sunny Aber­ton, and Exec Pro­duced by Rus­sell Crowe who is under­stand­ably more inter­ested in his South Sydney roots than his South Wel­ling­ton ori­gins (doc­u­ment­ary about Strath­more any­one?). Crowe is so into this par­tic­u­lar story that he’s slated to dir­ect and star in a fic­tion­al­ised ver­sion of it in 2009. Rialto only.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

A quiet week this week for cinema releases (at least until Wed­nes­day).

Return­ing from April’s World Cinema Show­case are Word­play, well-regarded doc­u­ment­ary about the New York Times cross­word (very lim­ited ses­sions at the Light­house in Petone only) and Aus­sie mock­u­ment­ary Razzle Dazzle about the world of kids’ dance com­pet­i­tions (Light­house Petone and Pent­house).

For the school hol­i­days the Para­mount has a daily 11.00am screen­ing of anoth­er Aus­sie flick, The Silly Bil­lies Save The Cir­cus. When I was at the Para­mount we had two live vis­its from The Hooley Dooleys who I kind of con­sidered to be the Wiggles you have when you can­’t have The Wiggles. It looks like The Silly Bil­lies are what you get when you can­’t get The Hooley Dooleys.

Also at the Para­mount this week, a chil­dren’s movie of a dif­fer­ent kind, All The Invis­ible Chil­dren: an antho­logy movie sup­por­ted by Unicef fea­tur­ing sev­en short films about the plight of chil­dren around the world. Dir­ect­ors include Rid­ley Scott, Spike Lee and John Woo.

Oh, and on Wed­nes­day, pretty much every­where, the new Harry Pot­ter opens: Harry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix.