Births, Deaths & Marriages

Dean doesn't show up for his own wedding leaving Sinead pissed off but this is overshadowed by grandma dying later the same day meanwhile, Katherine has had a contraction. Set over 2 days in 1994, Births, Deaths & Marriages is about a mostly female Upper Hutt family coping with these situations. These goings-on are recorded on a home-video camera by Aidan who was originally supposed to film the wedding.

Births, Deaths & Marriages is a bunch of humourous short set-pieces often set in claustrophobic locations such as the bathroom. We also see recognisable Kiwi attitudes and reactions, familiar from our friends, relatives and possibly ourselves. The quality of the humour is highly variable, with some of the exchanges much better than others. The exchanges between the very pregnant Katherine and her husband Ari over Irish wakes versus Maori tangi and a lecture on stages of grief are the standouts. On the other hand, there were a number of scenes and minor characters that could have been eliminated to improve the film. The way the scenes were linked by a blank screen and out of focus bits while the soundtrack continued also got irritating. And it seemed odd that on day 2 the bride was still in the bath.

If I had been trapped in that house with that family, I would have grabbed some of the wedding food, climbed out of the window and headed for Wellington.

Stuff had a more positive review.

🎥

Ian's rating 2/5 Anne's rating 2/5

Mega Time Squad

Mega Time Squad is a slightly fanciful tale set in Thames. Antony Tennet plays John, the feckless employee of local crime boss Shelton. John is prevailed upon to stage a heist against the local triad, and he agrees in order to impress Shelton's sister. A Chinese bracelet stolen along with a tyre-full of money gives John the ability to duplicate himself and travel backwards in time, and this leads to many a comic moment and general silliness. There are car chases, guns, violence and swearing but this film  comes across as benign and life-affirming.

Mega Time Squad was sequestered in the incredibly strange section of the film festival programme, which seems like a potentially audience-limiting decision. While not as main-stream or high budget as, say, Sione's Wedding, it was at least on par with How To Meet Girls From a Distance and shared many qualities with both those films - especially how the characters talk, behave and interact. A more accurate description than incredibly strange would be fast-paced , off-beat comedy. Despite the film festival's categorization, it's coming out on general release later in the year.

Director/Writer Tim van Dammen says "Mega Time Squad celebrates Kiwi-ness, particularly the way Kiwis speak" and that was a very enjoyable aspect of the film. The scenario of the self-confident obnoxious individual who surrounds himself with  self-effacing conflict-averse characters is one we're all familiar with  and Jonny Brugh does an excellent job playing the obnoxious Shelton.  I liked the escapist element and the recognisable setting. We've spent a lot of time in Thames and it's always fun to see somewhere you're familiar with on screen.

It's fair to say I loved Mega Time Squad. I really can't think about it without smiling

Anne's rating 4.5/5. Ian's rating 3/5

Human Traces

I was a bit concerned about Human Traces being a throwback to the twentieth century's long tradition of dark and depressing New Zealand films. A thriller filmed on a sub-antarctic island didn't really hold much promise for breaking out of that mold,  and the first section of the film didn't seem to either. On the other hand the acting talent was good - Sophie Henderson did an amazing job in Fantail and Mark Mitchinson was a practised and convincing bad guy in both Nothing Trivial and Bloodlines.

The story centres around husband and wife Sarah (Sophie Henderson) and Glenn (Mark Mitchinson) who are two-thirds of a team of three monitoring the eco-system of an un-named island south of New Zealand.  Sarah is young and blonde and pretty, and Glenn is a somewhat morose character who is at least twenty-fives years her senior. They met when he was one of Sarah's lecturers at university.The film begins as the other team member leaves and her replacement (Pete) arrives. Pete is also young and beautiful and doesn't have much of a science background

The narrative is told three times, each time from a different member of the team's perspective. Salient events are the realisation that their attempts at pest control are failing and Glenn not wanting to relay this information back to New Zealand and the failure of the radio and its transmission mast (preventing further communication with New Zealand).

When the radio fails and Glenn refuses to fix it, I thought we were into a hostage situation like the one in the Berlin Syndrome. But as we moved into hearing and seeing the story from Pete and Sarah's perspective we found it's not a straightforward as that and the power doesn't rest solely with Glenn. Human Traces is a nuanced and interesting story about three flawed human beings in an isolated and scenic environment. The acting is excellent, particularly from newbie Vinnie Bennett, and the location contributes to the tension in the film.

Anne's rating 3.5/5 Ian's Rating 3/5

New Zealand’s Best 2017

New Zealand’s Best 2017 are the 6 short films shortlisted for prizes in NZIFF 2017. Audience members get to vote for the people's choice award (25% of the box office for showings in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin). This year the 6 films differed hugely in quality. I've ordered them from best to worst as I voted on them:

Do No Harm

A surgeon protects her patient during an operating theater invasion. Who needs more than 12 minutes for a kick-ass action thriller? Director Roseanne Liang is better known for My Wedding and Other Secrets.

Laundry

Mum wants to have sex, but...
Predictable but funny, with good timing and acting. Though the title might set you thinking of a different ending. (Funding story)

The Dregs

A period film on the formation of an Auckland high school punk band. Basically a view of high school from a misfit boy's perspective. Dreams, bullying, and girls that are too cool to talk to.

Untitled Groping Revenge Fairytale

This film could have done with a better title, even leaving the first word off would have been better. The concept was good, though the selection of men seemed like untargeted revenge.

Thicket

From the elliptical style of storytelling, exacerbated by the fact that the characters barely talk to one another, we see a boy standing up to his dairy farmer father. A very long 16 minutes.

Waiting

Two boys wait outside a suburban dairy for a phone call. How to make 12 minutes feel like 12 hours.

The first two films are straight forward audience pleasers by directors who obviously know what works.
The second two are reasonably well made. One with a slightly tame story, the other slightly flawed.

The last two would only appeal to other film makers.

Announcement

Waiting won the Madman Jury Prize.

Thicket won the Wallace Friends of the Civic Award.

Do No Harm won the Audience Award.
What can I say?

Chronesthesia

The urge to support the underdog and the home product can lend a rose tint to reviewing a Wellington zero budget film. Hayden Weal worked with a small cast (taking the lead role himself) and smaller crew; and makes his audience work a little harder than most directors to follow half a dozen story threads and some time travelling. But it is worth the effort as he brings all the story threads together and binds them into a satisfactory conclusion.

Initially the story feels like a directionless mess, rather like its slacker protagonist's life. But gradually the various story elements come together as Dan starts to take control. The supporting cast is divided into those that act like they exist to further the plot and those that act like bystanders that Dan has some how irritated. This adds a degree of realism often missing from other films.

Dan lives a quiet life. He works making coffee in a cafe and spends the rest of the day alone at home or running the streets of Wellington while listening to music on his headphones. Then one morning he wakes to find a confusing message written on the inside of his bedroom window. This leads him out of the rut his life has become and he discovers other people who are living lives that resemble his in one way or another. He sets out on a mission of sorts and he learns that messing with other people's lives has good and bad consequences.

Chronesthesia is, more or less, the idea that some people can remember the future (a sort of mental time travel).

Compared with other Wellington made films this one is well acted, tells a slightly unusual but simple story in an interesting way with (mostly) believable characters.  Wellingtonians can try to identify all the locations in this almost entirely outdoor film.  I hope to see it come back after the Film Festival as it deserves a similar audience to What We Do In the Shadows.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 4/5

Housebound

Housebound was one of the festival films I was really looking forward to and it didn't disappoint  - all the elements of a classic horror film, with large dollops of comedy thrown in.

 Housebound's main character, the recalcitrant Kylie, is sentenced to home detention for her part in robbing and destroying an ATM. It's not her current home, it's her childhood home, where her mum and step-dad  live. It's not an ordinary suburban home, it's a big old two-storey wooden house that's a bit isolated.What's more, the house has a history - it used to be a residential home for teenage girls with mental problems, and Kylie's mum thinks it's haunted. For a horror film to be authentically nightmarish, there should be no escape, and the home detention scenario fits the bill perfectly.

Not long into her detention, Kylie comes to realise her Mum could be right about the house being haunted. Light flicker, there are strange noises and sometimes food goes missing. Some of the noises come from the  basement (where would horror movies be without the basement?) where there'a bunch of paraphenalia from the house's previous owner including a statue of Jesus. The next door neighbour is a wierdo. Kylie tries to put two and two together with the help of Amos the security guard who is monitoring her detention.

There are quiet spooky bits ( the toilet scene is one of my favourites) and full on fights with lots of splatter. There's a  variety  of weaponry and I bet you've never seen a cheese grater used in anger before. Housebound  has great acting, good music and a great location  and its just such good fun. Go and enjoy.

Anne's rating 4/5 Ian's rating 4/5

notes to eternity

notes to eternity is New Zealander, Sarah Cordery's documentary explaining the Zionist-Palestinian conflict and myth-busting hasbara used to delegitimise Palestinians. It focuses on the views of 4 critics of the Israeli (and American) position: 3 American academics (Noam Chomsky, Sara Roy, Norman Finkelstein) and British journalist Robert Fisk whose career has been based in the region, calling Beirut home.

Sarah Cordery says she chose the Americans because they are also Jews. It is rare to hear Jews side with Palestinians against the Jewish State. The interviews with each of them covered their childhoods and their parents experiences. Chomsky (born in 1928) is the oldest and the only one with memories of World War II and the history of Israel / Palestine since the Nakba. This digression into their backgrounds is partly to illustrate that their backgrounds were not abnormal for Jews, partly to humanise and possibly provide context for their current views and partly to tie the Zionist-Palestinian conflict to that other important event in Jewish history - the Holocaust.

For Robert Fisk the important event is World War I (which his father fought in). It redrew borders around the world especially in Eastern Europe and the former Ottoman Empire. He squarely blames the British government for making promises during the war that it failed to keep (and couldn't keep because they were contradictory).

notes to eternity (always in lower case) is a long film, listed at 150 minutes but I'm sure it was longer (I left while the credits were rolling and it was already 25 minutes beyond the 2 hour 30 minute mark). For that reason it should probably be edited or divided, Jackson-style, into multiple films. The film is largely interviews conducted in America, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. There is also current and historic footage and some cartoons (with voice overs giving realistic, in other words pessimistic, views on the future).

To people who say "we shouldn't take sides" or "they have been fighting each other for thousands of years" or "they are both as bad as each other" or "why can't the Palestinians leave the Israelis in peace", notes to eternity will be a very useful education. To someone who takes more than a casual interest in the subject there wasn't much new information. Though I was interested in Sara Roy saying that her mother chose to go to America (rather than Israel) because she thought that to be tolerant you needed to grow up in a pluralist society.

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Hot Air

Hot Air covers the facts and the politics of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emission in the (almost) twenty-five years since  1990, which is the majority of my adult life. I remember being taught about greenhouse gases and global warming in high school and wondering why, if everyone know this stuff, aren't we doing something about it. Hot Air will give you some ideas about why, and how difficult even committed politicians have found trying to do something about it. To quote Pete Hodgson " Climate Change Politics is hard"

There were some memorable facts, which bear thinking about. NZ's greenhouse gas emissions have doubled in the last quarter century while our (human) population has only increased by 25%. A gas-fired power station was built in that time and we have chopped down a lot of pine forests to create dairy farms. These things are problems.

I enjoyed the footage - lots of it from television archives - a kind of montage of politicians and movers and shakers past and present. It reminded me that that some of those people have died since they were filmed  - Roger Kerr, Rod Donald, Parekura Horomia.. I liked the way it showed things changing - computers, glasses, hairstyles, telephones and the Wellington streetscape. Hot Air interviews lots of intelligent and articulate people, and quite a lot of articulate  people who seem less intelligent. I liked learning things - for example, I didn't realise quite how many global-warming nay-sayers the business round table has brought to New Zealand over the years, and how Nigel Lawson was one of them.

Anyone could and should find this documentary's subject matter interesting, but if you lived in New Zealand between 1990 and now you'll particularly appreciate it as a social and political history.

Anne's rating 3.5/5

REALITi

Déjà vu is the recurring theme in low budget, Kiwi, sci-fi, thriller REALITi. The unsettling feeling one gets when all the evidence denies something you recently saw hits Vic repeatedly after his recent promotion. Then things start to get really weird for him. Around him his wife Meg, his lawyer Mandrake and George the security guard try to keep him grounded in reality, whereas Mandrake's wife Selma and doppelgänger of someone else (Michelle Langstone with her best feral smile) freaks him out. As does a bunch of activists with a strange tale of media manipulation.

This is not a film to let wash over you. Its a film for intense concentration. Yet I feel, even that would not allow the viewer to fully untangle the folds in time and separate hallucinations from reality. It is not a wizz-bang special effects sci-fi film, rather a cerebral one with a single idea that separates it ever so slightly from today's world.

It is a great advertisement for what can be done on a low budget (Doug Dillaman interviewed director Jonathan King about making REAILi).

I felt sorry for the film maker that his world premier only half filled the Paramount!

Ian's rating 3/5

Everything We Loved

I don't want to harp on about New Zealand film makers and their propensity for making gloomy films, but I can't help it.  Everything We Loved just adds another gloomy film to an already cluttered landscape. After Rain and After the Waterfall I no longer want to see films that involve children dying and  had I known that this film's plot hinged on the death of a child I wouldn't have gone. Perhaps I didn't read the programme carefully enough and I definitely should have watched the trailer.

I thought I was going to watch a kind of family mystery with a cleverly unfolding plot. Sadly, it wasn't very far into the movie that I realised that Charlie has abducted a child  to "replace" his own child who died recently. And once I knew that, I knew things could only turn out badly, and they did. The journey wasn't much fun, either.

It's well acted and stylishly shot, and Tommy is a particularly cute child but unless you really like this kind of thing don't put yourself through it

Anne's rating 3/5.

The Dark Horse

New Zealand movies have a deserved reputation for being dark but I think they're mellowing a little. Or if not mellowing, at least not wallowing in the dark as much.  The Dark Horse shows New Zealand's poorer and rougher side but its raison d'etre is to celebrate someone who cast some light in the gloom. Sharon, who came with us to The Dark Horse, described  it as Once were Warriors meets Little Miss Sunshine.

The Dark Horse is a fictionalised account of part of the life of Genesis Potini, a speed chess champion from Gisborne who had bipolar disorder. It seems chess was instrumental in helping manage his disease and he taught many young people to play. At the opening of the Dark Horse, Gen is released from hospital and moves in with his brother Ariki  (a gang member) and fourteen-year-old nephew Mana. This arrangement is short-lived, since Ariki senses Gen's influence may have a bad effect on the likelihood of Mana joining the gang  Ariki gives Gen some money to find somewhere else to live. Meanwhile Gen  has tracked down a chess club for disadvantaged kids, held in the garage of an old friend. He leaps in with both feet, and undertakes to take the children to the junior chess championship in Auckland. He spends some of the money he's been given on multiple chess sets  (since the club only appeared to have one or two) and gets stuck in to teaching them properly.

This is all sounds rather tidier than the actuality. Gen sleeps rough because he has nowhere to go. One of the kid's mother's objects to her son being taught chess by a vagrant just released from a mental hospital, Mana wants to play chess but his father won't let him. His fifteenth birthday and being patched as a gang member is looming. Ariki is dying and wants his son to be taken care of.

This is a movie, so it all comes together. The chess championship is one of the highlights of the film - a van load of Maori kids (Mana included)  from the East Coast descend on a room full of mostly white kids in suburban Auckland and play chess with verve and enthusiasm. Gen is a vocal spectator and has to leave the hall to contain his outbursts. Once it's all over, it's back to Gisborne to cope with the fallout.

This is a very emotionally affecting film. The contrast between a kindly mentor who teaches a young person to think and plan by playing a game  (even if he does liken it to war) and one who is hardening them up to join a gang by taking them out burgling houses armed with a hammer couldn't be more stark. It seems particularly tragic that the subject of the film is no longer with us and that we're reflecting on his legacy rather than his ongoing work.

Anne's rating 4/5 Ian's rating 4/5

He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan

He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan is the longest film title at the film festival and I managed to forget to write a review of it. It is the story of the New Zealand Army in Afghanistan, or rather it is the story about trying to find out about the New Zealand Army in Afghanistan.

New Zealand is proud of it's tradition of sending troops overseas to fight in other peoples' wars. Starting in 1899 when Prime Minister Richard Seddon offered to send mounted riflemen to South Africa to fight Boers (aka Afrikaners), and was eager to get them to South Africa ahead of the Australians. While the New Zealand government of the day didn't have the power to declare war, it was autonomous enough to have its own armed forces and decide on their use. There was also a sense of competition to please London among what were to become the Dominions. The situation was much the same in 1914 when New Zealand invaded German Samoa as part of a pre-WWI agreement with Britain.

More celebrated is New Zealand's contribution to the Anglo-French invasion of the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli in 1915. New Zealand also contributed to the more successful invasion of the Ottoman Empire in the Palestine Campaign but mostly Kiwis died in World War I trying to repel the German army from France and Belgium. By World War II New Zealand could choose to declare war and again Kiwis mostly fought on the other side of the world, around the Mediterranean, helping Britain with another war. Since then New Zealand moved from helping Britain to helping the US, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately the New Zealand public has never been as keen on fighting America's wars as it was at fighting Britain's wars, which is the nub of this documentary.

He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan contrasts what the New Zealand government and military tell us about what the NZ Army has been doing in Afghanistan (which is what normally appears in the news here) with what journalists in Afghanistan (most notably Jon Stephenson) have found out by talking to Afghans and NZ soldiers. Generally the official story is that our soldiers are rebuilding Bamyan province, and the SAS are training Afghan special forces. Unfortunately closer investigation shows that aid projects are a minor role of New Zealand's Provincial Reconstruction Team, and the SAS is involved in night raids, with or without Afghan forces. They have killed civilians and transferred prisoners to known torturers. The film makers (and Jon Stephenson) are very careful to never criticise Kiwi soldiers, making a clear distinction between them and the top brass and politicians who decide what they do in Afghanistan.

The documentary not only highlights the difference between reality and government and army spin. It also touches on the smear campaign against Jon Stephenson for pointing out the truth. Just as importantly it asks why New Zealand has troops in Afghanistan more than 10 years after Al-Qaeda had been chased out of Afghanistan. Should New Zealand be so complicit in the scope creep of the America's invasion of Afghanistan? Is it time to re-evaluate New Zealand's love affair with other people's wars? Which, since 1899, have been fought with one eye on pleasing a larger and more powerful country on the other side of the world.

Ian's rating 4/5

Giselle

Having meant to go and see the New Zealand Ballet perform Giselle when it was staged last year and somehow missing it, an opportunity to see the performance on screen instead seemed worth seizing. And the screen being the big one at the Embassy theatre made it even better. There was definitely a sense of occasion - the opening music gave me goosebumps.

The ballet has a somewhat bizarre plot which you can read about here. Suffice to say it's a rather tragic love story with the second act taking place at night which makes it very atmospheric.  Giselle is played by Gillian Murphy (a principal with American Ballet) and Qi Huan, a Chinese-born member of the New Zealand ballet, plays Albrecht. The performance is a  particularly good one and the chemistry between the two leads is  palpable.


While this is a film of a performance with a better view than you'd get if you were in the theatre, you also get some "special features" - like watching the DVD rather than going to cinema. We see Gillian and Qi rehearsing the second act pas-de-deux in the studio in plain clothes which allows you  to see that the chemistry isn't restricted to stage performances and that the dancing is just as awesome without the costumes, the scenery and the rest of the cast. We also see them separately in New York and Shanghai, and then together in the Catskill Mountains near in New York. If you thought redheads shouldn't wear red, you should see this film! Unlike many of the special features on a DVD,  the ones in this film really add to the experience of watching the film, and make you conscious of how good a job principals do of portraying a love story.

The costumes and scenery are both beautiful and atmospheric. The dancing is astounding at times- and not just by the two principals. As an experience it's thoroughly rewarding and if you don't feel like the whole film, do watch the trailer which gives you a bit of everything, including the red dress.

Anne's rating 4/5.

Fantail

Tania is a Maori, a blue eyed blonde Maori. She works the night shift at a South Auckland petrol station run by Rog and looks after her sick mother during the day. She and her younger brother Pi are saving money for a trip to Surfers to visit their dad and the fun parks there. While Tania has the "work ethic" Pi goes to pick kiwifruit in Te Puke but finds work too boring. Back in South Auckland a new regional manager, Dean, has shown up, and keeps showing up. Dean is a little too full of himself and provides most of the comedy moments in the film. For instance: trying to teach Tania how to smile at customers and the V drinking dare.

Fantail is a New Zealand film, so it is not all laughs on the night shift. There has to be a dark side. Even though it was well signalled in retrospect, judging from the comments during the Q & A afterwards, most of us were taken by surprise. Hats off to writer / actor Sophie Henderson and first time film director Curtis Vowell for a well executed twist.

Fantail was funded by the New Zealand Film Commission's Escalator scheme for feature films with a budget of up to $250,000. This isn't a big, flashy film, nor is it a high-brow art house film, but it makes you laugh and think and deserves to be seen by a wider audience than a single showing in each main centre.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3.5/5 Anne's rating 4.5/5

Romeo and Juliet: A Love Song

Like the time we went to the Wellington Premiere of How to Meet Girls from a Distance, last Friday  I felt like I was one of the few people in the cinema who had actually paid for their ticket. How to Meet Girls was at a packed out Paramount Theatre, whereas Romeo and Juliet was playing to a very empty Embassy. It seems very sad that in a city that prides itself on being a cultural capital hardly anyone turned out to watch a (local) new take on a Shakespeare play. Especially when Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing this coming Friday night is already sold out. I am worried that Romeo and Juliet: A Love Song may sink without trace, which would be a pity.

This film is a musical (Rock Opera) version  of Romeo and Juliet, set in the Waipu Cove camping ground  and immediate environs. The flavour is bogan/downmarket Outrageous Fortune - Juliet's Mother makes Cheryl West look positively classy. There are caravans, V8s, racing along the beach and lots of drinking.
The two leads are beautiful teenagers, as they should be. There are 2 separate casts - the people you see in the film are not the ones whose voices you hear in the soundtrack. I thought, listening to it, that there were only a very few singers - Lord Montague and Lord Capulet sounded like they were being sung by the same person - but I see from the credits that this was not the case. It's a pity that the voices didn't sound as unique as the actors looked.

This film was beautiful to look at and enjoyable to listen to. There's effort involved , of course - making sure you've heard what's being sung, processing Shakespeare's language, appreciating the rhymes, and the tune and having some attention left to look at the picture. And then there's maintaining the detachment to appreciate the humour - this is a comic take on the tragic love story.

I'd like to watch the movie again, but before I did that I'd like to listen to the soundtrack a couple of times I believe the soundtrack was where it all started - this musical version of one of the world's most famous plays was written well before the composers thought of getting a film made. From listening to the Q & A with the director after the film it seems that the composers have big dreams, and that the film is just the first step in their musical taking the world by storm.  And that's where I start to get worried. Who are the people who are going to be flocking to this movie? Is it too much like hard work to watch it? Can the world relate to a kiwi camping ground? Perhaps I'm over-thinking it - after all Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a hugely successful musical based on TS Eliot poems about cats. Romeo and Juliet: a love story is way cooler.

Anne's rating 3/5

The Deadly Ponies Gang

Zoe McIntosh does not want you to mistake The Deadly Ponies Gang for a mockumentary. I guess she'll like you to believe that parts of it are true, but you can take you pick about which parts, she isn't telling.

The Deadly Ponies Gang is an ultra low budget film about best mates Clint and Dwayne who ride ponies and try to pick up chicks. While Clint realises his own luck in this endeavour is low, he knows Dwayne is in an even worse position, due to his lack of teeth. The film follows Clint's quest to raise the funds to get Dwayne some false teeth, culminating in a gig staring the Rhymestone Cowboy. Along the way they give out Christmas presents to kids in the park, go to the beach, do some baking and go to the pony club to watch the girls riding their horses. There is also a cute break-dancing kid who apparently wants to join the gang.

Clint is one of the best exponents of inarticulate vernacular Noozild to grace the big screen. He makes Billy T. James look like he spent far too much time at toastmasters. Dwayne is the more bashful part of this duo. This pair are a reminder of what is lurking out there in provincial New Zealand if you can drag yourself away from your McCafe latte long enough to leave the safety of the CBD and inner suburbs. Look for the "Pony Poo $2" signs on the side of the road.

But you are better off waiting for Zoe (and Clint) to bring you this cultural gem to a film festival near you.

No animals were hurt in the making of this film but some ponies were made to look foolish.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Antarctica: A Year on Ice

Getting to Antarctica is tricky and expensive and probably most of us won't manage it. All is not lost, however,  because Anthony Powell, a New Zealander who has spent a long time working there, has become fantastically good at time-lapse photography and has kindly made a film so we can  all share in the experience. If you're thinking a documentary about Antarctica sounds worthy and dull, and that you've seen plenty of footage of this kind of thing already, you are just plain wrong. One of the best things about this film is that you get new perspectives on the icy continent.

The film features stunning  time-lapse sequences of weather, ice, sky, the passage of the sun around the sky, the stars and  the Aurora Australis. One of the new perspectives is how much more interesting the winter is than you expect. Although the sun doesn't shine for four months or so, that doesn't mean it's completely dark. There's the moon, the most stunning stars you've ever seen (light pollution being nil) and the amazing auroras.

A Year on Ice's other main facet is  life-in-Antarctica footage and quite a lot of talking heads. It's a  very personal story- Anthony and his wife reveal a lot about themselves and their lives and so do the other workers from McMurdo Base who feature. They are all personable and engaging and their enthusiasm for their location is palpable. They are the source of the new perspectives I gained which include how windy it is, how stinky a penguin colony is and how if you're going to work in the Antarctic and you're hoping to make the most of the scenery you should choose your job carefully.

If you're a fan of nature docos which are mostly just beautiful to look at there's plenty to satisfy you here - and you should be interested to know that Anthony contributed to the Frozen Planet series but saved his best footage for his own film! If you're more into human interest you'll be equally satisfied. If you'd just categorize yourself as a film enthusiast you should come and see what might be one of the few New Zealand documentaries that has wide public appeal and will do well on general release.

Anne's rating 4.5/5

Eternity

The promotional material about Eternity describes it as a sci-fi murder mystery set in the near future. The hero of the story is a policeman (detective, really)  and he and a bunch of his colleagues (all of whom have blotted their professional copybooks in some way) are being sent on a kind of crime-solving field trip with a competitive element..There's a  promotion being offered for the most successful participant. The detectives are in teams of two and each team is working on the same crime - a murder that took place in a room with one door that was in sight of all of the six possible perpetrators at the time.

Being sent on this field trip involves being translocated (a long distance version of  beaming up, Star-trek style) and being part of a computer game. As the audience we don't really know who is real and who isn't. The wooden acting and slightly clunky script could be to emphasize the fact that some of the characters are androids or game characters, or they might be a  reflection of the film's low budget.  I'm not a sci-fi aficionado but I believe the premise of  being trapped inside a game is not a new one - so that's not the reason you'd go to this film and neither are the script or the acting.

The reason to go is because Eternity is beautiful and its filmed here in New Zealand. Wellington, Napier and Auckland all feature and some of our nicest building exteriors and interiors are used. Filmmaker Alex Galvin tried very hard to make Eternity not look low budget and he certainly succeeded. Many of the buildings being Art Deco adds to the Agatha Christie feel of the mystery and the film. Expect to be wowed visually and moderately entertained by the story, and you won't be disappointed.

Anne's rating 3/5, Ian's rating 2/5

Song of the Kauri

 The title of this movie references the musical instruments (guitars, ukeleles and violins) that Laurie Williams makes from kauri and other native timbers at his workshop in Northland. Laurie is only one of many interesting characters you meet in the film which discusses many things to do with kauri - the history, the uses, the politics, the stewardship and the economics. We meet enthusiasts, forestry experts, musicians, authors, millers and farmers. We witness a kauri tree being felled and we see historical footage of kauri felling and milling.

Laurie Williams and Kauri

I really loved Song of the Kauri but then I really love kauri trees. (Any kind of big tree, in fact. Part of me mourns for the great forests of New Zealand that were felled long before I was born. I know it would be less convenient getting to Johnsonville if there was still a rimu forest in the Ngauranga Gorge but it would be a whole lot more scenic). I can accept that big trees may not be your cup of tea, and making musical instruments is certainly a niche interest but the economics and practicalities of growing kauri rather than pine trees might be of more general interest to the average New Zealander. I found the discussion about looking after native forest ( particularly the large trees) really interesting, as was the discussion about growing oak trees in England and France. It seems the English chopped all their oak trees down with abandon whereas the French started rationing the felling of their trees six hundred years ago which means they still have oak forests and the supply of material for wine barrels is ensured. One of the people in the film suggested that the New Zealand Wine industry could try using kauri for wine barrels if we had a ready supply, and another suggested that marginal land on New Zealand dairy farms could be used to plant native trees for commercial purposes.

Song of the Kauri held my attention for its entirety which is always a good thing, and it provided plenty of interesting stuff to think about afterwards.

I shall leave you with some quotes relevant to the topic, some of which featured in the film

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now"  Chinese Proverb

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago" Warren Buffett

(which would seem to be a variant on a Greek Proverb - " A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in" ).

"The destruction of the Kauri Forest will go down as one of the great crimes of the Anglo Saxon peoples" Sir David Hutchins.

"In the matter of forests, the Anglo Saxon  is the last man in the world that ought to be let alone" Sir John Cracroft Wilson

My rating 4/5,

How Far is Heaven?

How Far is Heaven is a slice-of-life documentary set in the tiny settlement of Jerusalem on the Whanganui river. Jerusalem is rather more well-known than you'd expect for an isolated town of its size, partly because James K Baxter (one of New Zealand's more famous poets) lived on a commune there and partly because it has a very beautiful catholic church which is cared for by the Sisters of Compassion who have been running a mission there since 1892.

The life that the film follows is that of Sister Margaret Mary who is the newest arrival and the youngest of the three sisters that live at Jerusalem. Following in the educational footsteps of Mission founder Suzanne Aubert, Margaret Mary has a close association with the local primary school and teaches religious education and music as a volunteer. The sisters seem a trusted and well-liked part of the community. We get to know some of children quite well,  too - they seem remarkably happy to talk on camera, and seem frank and natural. The contrast between ordered existence of the articulate Sister Margaret Mary and the somewhat unregulated lives of her charges is well-drawn.

I was left slightly dissatisfied with How Far is Heaven. Once you've watched the Last Dogs of Winter you could send some money to help the dogs' upkeep, or you could resolve to go to Churchill if you got the opportunity. If you were inspired by Song of the Kauri you could go and buy a musical instrument made from native timber, or look into planting some trees, but How Far is Heaven doesn't seem aimed to inspire you to do much - it just causes the viewer to admire the landscape of the Whanganui River and  to wonder whether elderly pakeha nuns are achieving anything useful in an isolated maori community. It's not that there's anything wrong with either of those things but it just seems wishy-washy. The other two films were self-funded whereas How Far is Heaven was made with Film Commission funding and this allowed the makers to potter about in Jerusalem for a whole year, and I'm not sure the subject matter justified the time spent.

My rating 2.5/5