More Oscar contenders hit our screens this weekend. Gus Van Sant’s biopic of the first openly gay elected politician in the USA, Milk opens today at Readings, Penthouse and Lighthouse Petone. Sean Penn plays San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk who was assassinated by fellow city official Dan White in 1978. Penn is supported by Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men), Emile Hirsch (Into the Willd) and James Franco (Pineapple Express).
I got to see Slumdog Millionaire last Friday at the Embassy – if it doesn’t romp home with the best picture Oscar I’ll be very surprised. Kinetic, colourful and heartfelt, it’s an object of great beauty. Slumdog is also playing Readings, Penthouse and Lighthouse Petone.
[The rest of this week’s releases – and there’s heaps – after the jump]
As Oscar night approaches another of the expected heavyweight contenders goes into cinemas: Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road reunites Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time since Titanic (still the highest grossing film of all time fact-fans) in a story of a middle-class 1950s couple dissatisfied with the American suburban dream. Based on (what I understand to be) an awesome novel by Richard Yates. Playing at Lighthouse Petone, Regent-on-Manners, Readings, Penthouse and Sky City Queensgate.
Roadshow will be hoping that Clint Eastwood lightning will strike twice at the Oscars and are using that rare tactic, the sneak preview, to launch his new film (and his last as an actor) Gran Torino. His last performance was in the multi-award-winning Million Dollar Baby in 2004. You can see Gran Torino early at Empire, Readings, Penthouse and Sky City Queensgate. (Eastwood’s other new film Changeling opens on Feb 12)
For those inclined toward the crappier end of the market there’s Bride Wars, a "comedy" starring Anne Hathaway and the woefully-managed Kate Hudson. Please note that I totally have an open mind about this film – I just don’t have any hope or faith: Empire, Regent-on-Manners, Readings, Sky City Queensgate.
The Penthouse keeps it classy with a biggish-budget French WWII movie called Female Agents about some young French women enlisted into the British Special Forces and sent on a suicide mission to rescue a British geologist. True story apparently. Meanwhile the Paramount’s eclectic run continues with a Czech comedy-drama called Beauty in Trouble. It’s by one of my favourite filmmakers, Jan Hrebejk who made the fantastic Divided We Fall from 2000. Also at the Paramount, for just a few sessions, is a surfing movie called Bustin’ Down the Door.
All of the above will be reviewed in next week’s Capital Times (and online at Funerals & Snakes), although I may draw the line at the surfing flick.
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).
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).
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
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).
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.
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]
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.
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]