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Michael Winterbottom brings us a tragic and eye-opening tale in Trishna. Starring Freida Pinto(Slumdog Millionaire), Trishna brings us the tale of girl unsure of her place or purpose in life and the steps she takes to find it.

It is based on the book, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and set in Rajasthan. Trishna is a devoted daughter however she is bound to duty when her father is put out of work by a car accident. By chance she meets a visiting british businessman, Jay, and the two are quickly engulfed by passion with consequences that are quickly dealt with because of her culture. Not wanting to lose him she accepts the job he offers her at his hotels, so unaware of what sort of contract she is really signing herself up for or the effects it will have on both their lives.  Read the rest of this entry »

For me, Tim Burton has always been a bit hit and miss, though there is one thing you can guarantee, when he teams up with Johnny Depp (and more often than not, Helena Bonham Carter) you know you’re in for a quirky visual feast. The problem with Hollywood however, is that the giant publicity machine generally doesn’t quite know what to do with quirky and the films are oft promoted as if they are family fare, which Dark Shadows certainly is not.

Based loosely on a camp-gothic soap opera of the same name, which ran from 1966 to 1971, Dark Shadows is a perfect vehicle for some Depp fun, and Depp certainly seems to be having fun, and one cant fault his performance. Sadly however, unless you’re a die hard fan of Depp, you probably won’t have much fun.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage taken by people the world over for religious and non-religious reasons alike. Stretching over 800 km from the edge of France and across the Spanish coastline, the Camino path ends at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where it is said the remains of St. James the Apostle is buried.

Such is the background for The Way, a story of Tom (Martin Sheen) a Doctor who has locked himself into his practice to avoid having to deal with his dead wife or their very much alive son, who would rather experience the world rather than hide from it. Tom’s son, Daniel, played by Writer/Director Emilio Estevez, has decided to partake of the spiritual journey, but is killed when he is caught out in a storm on the first day of his pilgrimage. Tom has to travel to France to collect his body.

It’s an inconvenience, but it’s something that he has to do, if for nothing else than the practicality of getting the body home. It’s not like Tom really wants to take time away from his predictable routine.

After identifying the body, Tom is given Daniel’s things and told that they can cremate the body to make it easier to transport back to the States. Tom decides to sleep on it, but before going to bed, takes a look through Daniel’s things, finding a photo album that changes his mind.

Tom decides to honor Daniel’s memory by completing the pilgrimage with him – albeit his cremated self. Along the way, Tom discovers what Daniel had told him before heading off for his last trip; “You don’t choose a life Dad. You live one”. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes I know – yet another vampire film. Didn’t this genre die out at about the same time that Edward Cullen became a vampire? Despite vowing never to watch another vampire film after Bella’s horrific birthing scene, the whole Johnny Depp/Tim Burton combo suckered me in. Surely they wouldn’t defile Interview with a Vampire and Blade’s genre the way that it has been in recent years.

To add to the Depp/Burton combo, Dark Shadows also includes regulars Helena Bonham Carter and Michelle Pfeiffer, as well as Chloë Grace Moretz (Hugo) and Bella Heathcote (Neighbours). Dark Shadows is a based on the 70s gothic drama with the same name. The film starts with Barnabas Collins (Depp) explaining how his family settled in America from Liverpool, England. They are involved in fishing, are ridiculously rich and even have the town of Collingwood named after them. Barnabas grows into a playboy and breaks the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), who also happens to be a witch that turns him into a vampire and buries him alive when her love is unrequited. 200 years later, he is accidentally set free and returns to the Collins’ manor, only to find it rundown, with a new generations of dysfunctional Collins’ living in it. The film continues with Barnabas trying to return his house, family, town and love-life to it’s former glory.  Read the rest of this entry »

Liam Neeson plays the role of an Irish marksman, John Ottway, employed to protect oil workers from roving wolves in the remote Alaskan wilderness. He’s lived a varied life, but now, up in this hostile wilderness, he’s running away from his life, from his pain. We get the sense that something has come between his wife and himself, something that he can’t bridge, and as such, he’s lost himself in the far north, and he intends never to come home. It’s in these opening scenes of The Grey that you get the sense that it’s going to be an amazing film, but not in the way the marketers have lead you to believe.

Ottway joins a planeload of roughnecks on their way back to civilisation, but on route, the plane goes down in the midst of the bleak snowy wasteland. It’s here that we get a taste of director Joe Carnahan ability to force you onto the edge of your seats, as the plane crash is the most intense and unrelenting scenes of aviation carnage I’ve yet to see on the big screen. Not for the destruction of life, but for the sheer terror of focusing on one mans struggle to stay alive as his world disintegrates around him.

Carnahan mixes up intensity with moments of profound humanity as Ottway comforts a fellow passenger as he lies dying. You get the sense that Ottway has a lot of secrets but a huge amount of compassion.

And then the wolves come.

And the film kicks it up a gear.

But Carnahan never lets the film get out of control.

As graphic and genuinely terrifying as the wolves are when they attack, this is not a film that will sate any bloodlust that you may have, Rather it’s a film that takes a long, honest look at human will, the hearts of man, and to a degree, faith.  Read the rest of this entry »

I love riding bikes. I even have a blog about biking. And obviously, I like films. So a film about a bike sounded like an even better pairing than Brad and Ange or coffee and cigarettes (to be fair, I don’t drink coffee or smoke so I wouldn’t know). But somehow, The Kid with a Bike fell short of my expectations.

The film is about Cyril (Thomas Doret), a troubled child, living in a foster home. He’s desperately trying to find his father (Jérémie Renier) and is convinced everyone is lying to him when they say his father has moved from his apartment. Cyril escapes to the old apartment block, but is being chased by the building’s caretaker. He tries to hide in the doctor’s office, where he encounters Samantha (Cécile de France). As the caretaker bursts into the doctor’s, Cyril clings to Samantha’s arm. Eventually, the caretaker concedes to take the boy to his father’s empty apartment.

After hearing that Cyril was upset about losing his bike, Samantha shows up at his foster home the following day with it. She claims to have bought it, but Cyril is convinced that someone stole it, and that his father would never sell it. Nevertheless, he asks if she can look after him in the weekends, and she instantly, and surprisingly, accepts the challenge.  Read the rest of this entry »

This was a movie we should have seen released in New Zealand a lot earlier. It wasn’t that long ago that the acronym GFC was sitting alone on the shelf without meaning. Then the Global Financial Crisis hit and banks paying out executives as the ship went down became the daily headline. Suddenly GFC had found life purpose and we wondered what would happen to the family mortgage. What I don’t understand is how a movie this good with award nominations and high screen ratings gets released nearly nine months after the US launch.

The work of writer and director J. C. Chandor has class written all over it. While the script is well paced to provide the tension and drama suited to a screen filled with ‘suits’, the depth of on screen talent is superb. While cast members like Simon Baker, Zachary Quinto and Demi Moore dance well together I love the return of Paul Bettany’s sardonic wit as we first experienced it in Knight’s Tale.

Our story joins the trading floor of a large Manhattan based institution on the day that two thirds of the floor will lose their positions in a cost-cutting exercise. While the young execs run for cover the floor’s head of risk management works on a problem he sees looming. A drop of Stanley Tucci never goes amiss and his role provides the key to the jigsaw puzzle. The surprise of the day is when Tucci’s character Eric Dale is lined up and led off the premises with other staff. No questions, no right of reply and if you contest the decision the chances are you will lose the last drop of benefits the company can offer. So out the door Eric goes only at the last minute to pass a USB drive of his project into the hands of young trader Peter Sullivan. It’s Quinto’s character Peter who then turns the key and finds the mounting disaster facing the trading floor.  Read the rest of this entry »

So how does a survival movie fare with a pack of hungry wolves hunting their human prey? How do the audience feel when the humans are low on respect for life, their fellow man and themselves? Despite the feel that this movie had only one way to turn we still went along for the ride. Similar to the Titanic you feel you know what’s going to happen but you simply can’t look away and want to see it through to the end.

Looking at reviews prior to attending a movie review is considered wrong by most reviewers. I agree, the whole idea of attending the review is to judge the unobstructed impact on yourself and the audience. So what drew me to investigate “The Grey” prior to attending this review I don’t know. Possibly the topic matter of humans on the run from wolves meant I wanted to check the ‘scare’ factor to see who I would invite along for the ride. This presented me with a conundrum as the movie was rating over average but the general public who had seen it were split at the extremes. Some saw it as an existential masterpiece and scored it 9 or 10 out of 10 while others couldn’t believe the stupidity and scores ranking in the 1s and 2s followed.

The storyline takes us along with some of the roughest scum on the planet as they leave their work in the Alaskan oil fields to fly out for a break back in civilisation. After a plane crash puts them down in an artic wilderness its survival time with a the local wolf pack guarding their territory against the quibbling intruders. Liam Neeson plays Ottway, a hunter who’s been hiding from life in a job where his role has been to protect the pipeline workers from the hungry wildlife who stalk the workers. He’s a mixed up bag as he saves others but seems bent on his own destruction. After the plane crash he starts to try and bring direction and unity to the surviving band of misfits with no purpose. They are less than impressed with being told what to do and like any organisation, their disunity brings decay and decay brings death.

I’m not going to tell you the outcomes blow by blow, that’s the nature of this style of movie as one event leads to another as the ‘red-shirt’ members of the party fight to live. So why did the audiences love or hate this release. Was it the expected ending, the cast or worse the soundtrack. Director Joe Carnahan has proven himself a great director and for those who have enjoyed The A-Team and Smokin’ Aces its easy to see he’s putting out some good content as both writer and director.  Read the rest of this entry »

Marvel have certainly handled their comic book property well, spinning out a number of solid movies over the last couple of years, but those movies were only the introduction. It’s The Avengers that was the intended jewel in the comic book crown. But with so many egos on screen, could Joss Whedon hold it all together and create the epic masterpiece we all crave?

Samuel L. Jackson has typically been relegated to the after credits scenes in his role of Nick Fury in most of the preceding superhero films, but he takes his rightful place upfront as the man behind The Avengers, a top secret idea that shady black ops agency SHIELD came up with.

In a time of immense peril, the diverse characters that would make up The Avengers would be mankind’s last stand.

Of course, SHIELD had other plans up their sleeves, but in making these plans, by utilising an alien energy source, they unwittingly open up a portal to another universe that allows an alien army to invade, forcing Fury to initiate The Avengers.

With son many egos in play, the superhero super team spend the first part of the film fighting each other, but in true superhero style, they come together just in the nick of time for a battle royal.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Most Fun You Can Have Dying is a film that I would not have had the pleasure of seeing if it wasn’t for a chance tweet from @RialtoCinemas. I have to admit I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to things New Zealand, be it movies or music. I just don’t have much faith. I don’t subscribe to the mantra that we should support New Zealand whatever just because it’s New Zealand. I’d rather celebrate finding out that something I love is Kiwi made. And celebrate I will with The Most Fun You Can Have Dying.

The film is loosely based on Steven Gannaway’s novel Seraphim Blues and follows the ups and downs of the life of Michael, a good looking kiwi lad, who we meet just before he gets the news that he has only a couple of months to live. But just as there seems to be no future for Michael, his doctor calls him back in with some good news; experimental treatment from the US has become available, with a 10% chance of success and a hefty $200,000 price tag. Hope again seems dashed until the local community rallies around and raises the money for the treatment.

Michael however is acutely aware of the statistical probability and has other ideas. Instead of turning up for his first day of treatment, he flees the country with the money, determined to have the most fun he can in his remaining months. He leaves without saying goodbye to anyone, not even his dad or best mate.

In other words, Michael, the main focus of the film, and the character the director Kirstin Marcon wants us to empathise with, is a complete and utter dick. This isn’t that much of a shock in reality, after we see him stealing his flat-mates underwear in the opening scene.

But empathise with him we do. If for nothing else than the fact that we’d love to have the balls to do what Michael did if we were to ever be in the same unfortunate circumstance.  Read the rest of this entry »