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I think part of its genius is how slowly the film starts out. There I was sitting down watching Wikus, a racist, bumbling, South African pencil pusher – whose only achievement in life to date was marring the boss’s daughter – narrate the story. This film was going to suck. Big time. What on earth had everyone else seen in it? Why did we name it Film of the Year? It was going nowhere fast.

But it was all a lure, a tease, here was this classic, calculator carrying wimp, the nerdy no body that is the fodder of many a Hollywood comedy being awarded the prestigious position of leading man. Wikus was, of course, going to have to grow some balls – and he does – because this was the man who was going to affect change, who was going to drive the story and uncover exactly what was going down in District 9.

On the surface, District 9 is a new twist on the alien invasion film. Rather than Independence Day’s fleet of super flying saucers appearing over every major city in the world, we get one, hovering over Johannesburg. And not so much an invasion, rather more of a ran out of fuel and need help kind of thing.

Not knowing what to do with a million or so aliens, the South Africans did what most other countries would have done; set up a refugee camp. 20 years later it’s more of a shantytown slash slum. Most people don’t like the aliens, some of who have turned to crime, but all of who are painted with the same racist brush and referred to as prawns.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ visual effects branch announced a list of seven films on the short list for the Visual Effects Oscar.

The list includes:

Avatar
District 9
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2012

The list will be narrowed down to three films, which will be announced along with all the other Oscar nominees on February 2nd 2010.

Of course it doesn’t take a genius to realise that District 9 will loose out to Cameron’s Big Wallet.

Gomorrah is a difficult film to review, mainly due to its complexity and its desire to reflect the reality of life in the crime infested poverty of Naples. On the surface it’s an agonisingly long film with no clear-cut storyline, and as such is a movie that many will find too arduous to keep up with. Those that persevere will be faced wit the challenge of deconstructing what they have seen, and it’s here that the movie becomes either a masterpiece or a disaster.

Based on a book by Robert Saviano, Gomorrah is a realistic reflection of life under the rule of the Napoli Mafia. Such was the intensity and honesty of the book; Saviano now has permanent police protection from the various mob families mentioned in his book.

A film however can never do justice to a book, so Director Matteo Garrone has focussed on five interwoven stories that represent a common slice of life. Told in a scattered manor with no care for the normal rules of story telling, trying to keep up with everything that is going on will probably take a number of viewings.

As the neighbourhood slides into all out war we begin to get a taste of the old adage; violence begets violence, as the one striking feature seems to be the never ending – and often very graphic – reality of violence and death as one group takes revenge on the other and such forth.  Read the rest of this entry »

Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut with this feisty, female-friendly action-comedy. Ellen Page (previously seen in Juno) stars as Bliss Cavendar, a teenage girl who desperately longs to break free of the small-town she lives in and finds the perfect escape vehicle. In fact her escape vehicle has eight wheels and gets strapped to her feet.

After years of being pushed by her mother into beauty pageants, Bliss discovers the true joy of donning roller skates and skating as fast as humanly possible while trying desperately to avoid the hits of rather feisty squeals on wheels. That’s right it’s the return of the Roller derby and I have to say that it is as cool as ever. With awesome characters who just happen to have the coolest of Roller Derby names such as Smashley Simpson, Bloody Holly, Malice in Wonderland, Maggie Mayhem and Iron Maven. I won’t tell you what Bliss chooses as her Derby name as the process is one of the rather enjoyable parts of the movie.  Read the rest of this entry »

It appears James Cameron’s high budget gamble is starting to pay off. Over the New Year weekend Avatar smashed passed the previous New Year record held by “Meet the Fockers” and grossed $68.3 million USD in the States alone.

This weekend’s result now brings the global earnings for this movie to $1.02 Billion USD, making it easily well on its way to being the second highest grossing movie of all time. With public opinion on social networks and the insanity of trying to find seats to watch Avatar 3D, its hard to see just when the popularity will end.

With this news surely now James Cameron must be close to being called the Blockbuster King of all time with Titanic being #1. However when you look at the list George Lucas, Steven Spielburg and New Zealands favorite Export Peter Jackson hold some very solid ground.

So who do you think should be crowned Block Buster King (or Queen)..

Two of Hollywood’s strongest draw cards come together in this Disney Family oriented comedy about a couple of guys whose lives are completely turned on their heads when one of them finds out that he is actually the father to 6 year old twins. Despite how great the news is, it could not have come at a worse time as they are on the edge of making a huge business deal that will set up their business for life and dramatically put it up to the next level. Of course the comedy kicks in when you realize that Charlie (Travolta) and Dan (Williams) are career minded people who have not only not had children but also not even thought about. For the most part they even believe that they might not even be paternal in nature. This of course leads to crazy and sometimes outrageous scenarios as they come to grips with “Parenting” Dan’s newly found twins.  Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since Tris broke up with Nick, but nick is still holding on to the hope that they might gate back together, and he’s still making her mix tapes to sho his infinite love for her. But then he sees her at one of his gigs, with a new boyfriend, then a random girl – who turns out to not really be a random girl, but turns out to be Norah, but he won’t know the significance till later in the film, comes up to him and kisses him on the lips, passionately like.

It’s all about power plays really, and because Tris sees Nick and Norah kissing, she gets all psycho in a not quite psycho way, and gets all jealous like and wants to get nick back, but not really, cause she just wants to get Nick away from Norah, who really doesn’t realise that she likes Nick anyway, nor does Nick realise either. But they will, oh they will, because, you know it’s just that kind of film.

And if none of the above makes sense, then nor will Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, because it’s all about how complicated we make this relationship thing, and about how it’s normally us who are the last people to see the real side of the people we’re dating, because I guess love really is blind, or is that just desperation to be loved? I don’t know, it’s a long and complicated story that will at times have you tearing your hair out – unless you’re like me and don’t have any to tear out, – but ultimately ends up being very rewarding in a romantic kind of there’s hope yet for humanity kind of way, along with some very laugh out loud moments along the course of the single night journey.  Read the rest of this entry »

The saying ‘you can’t judge a book by it’s cover’ has never been more true that with Overlord, except that Overlord is a DVD, and it wasn’t so much just the cover, but one of the quotes as well. In prime position at the top of the DVD cover was a quote from the New York Times; ‘Remarkable… deserves to join the pantheon of essential World War II combat movies.’

I kind of wondered why I hadn’t heard of this new Docu-Movie about the turning point of World War II, but rather than allowing my cynical radar to kick in, I blindly ordered Overlord expecting something totally different to what arrived.

Overlord uses archival war footage combined with a fictional tale of a twenty-year-old’s journey from basic training to the D-Day landings in an attempt to bring history to life. Shot by Stanley Kubrick’s longtime cinematographer John Alcott, Overlord is an impressive feat, the only issue being that the acting and the cinematography looked to be of the same vintage of the classic BBC series, Survivors.  Read the rest of this entry »