Tag: review

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The school hol­i­days get under way on Mon­day and the major movie dis­trib­u­tors are mak­ing sure you have plen­ty of choice about where to drop the sprogs while you head off to play the pok­ies. First up British fan­ta­sy film Star­dust, based on a Neil Gaiman nov­el and fea­tur­ing a cat­a­logue of famous names, from Robert De Niro and Ricky Ger­vais to Sien­na Miller and Michelle Pfeif­fer. In the tra­di­tion of The Princess Bride (as the say­ing goes), Star­dust is direct­ed by Matthew Vaugh­an who pro­duced Lock, Stock and Two Smok­ing Bar­rels and Snatch and direct­ed Lay­er Cake so expect plen­ty of swear­ing and gun­fights (per­haps not). Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners, Queens­gate.

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

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

After a dis­ap­point­ing week of un-sus­pense­ful sus­pense films we wel­come a cou­ple of poten­tial­ly comedic come­dies this week. First­ly, from Judd Apa­tow, cre­ator of The 40 Year Old Vir­gin and Knocked Up, comes Super Bad. Co-writ­ten by Knocked Up star (and fun­ny guy) Seth Rogen with child­hood friend Evan Gold­berg when they were about 14, it fol­lows two High School kids (who at one point were going to be called Seth and Evan) on a search for booze and girls so they can lose their vir­gin­i­ty before they go to col­lege. Play­ing at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Sky City Queens­gate.

The 40 Year Old Vir­gin him­self, Steve Carell, stars in an un-antic­i­pat­ed sequel to Jim Carrey’s Bruce Almighty: Evan Almighty. Carell returns as Evan Bax­ter: ego­tis­ti­cal news­cast­er in the orig­i­nal; ego­tis­ti­cal Con­gress­man in this one and Mor­gan Free­man is also back as God. Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Sky City Queens­gate.

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

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.]