Night

The film festival guide says that Night is a symphony of music and images celebrating life and the world between dusk and dawn so I was expecting something like Koyaanisqatsi with fantastic footage and great music. There was some of that - a stunning moonrise over Uluru, fantastic fireworks at Sydney Harbour Bridge at New Year and sunsets with a great harp soundtrack. There was also a lot of time devoted to Australians talking about night and their attitudes to it and that ran the gamut from interesting to puerile to just plain weird. I'm not convinced that the taking heads added anything.

I wasn't taken with the fast forwarded footage either and the film maker seemed to want to fast forward everything. There was a night-time church service with lots of procession and incense waving, there were the footballers doing press-ups on the field under lights, there were ferries on Sydney harbour and there was a steel-works (or some similar industry) belching fumes, all of which were good images which didn't need speeding up.Quite a lot of the movie was a bit out of focus which is understandable for low light filming but rather annoying.

So there were flashes of brilliance but as a complete experience this movie was lacking.

Anne's rating 2.5/5

Vexille

The idea of a Japanese animation depicting a dark view of the future and negative relationship between Japan and the rest of the world (especially the USA) doesn't surprise me any more. In Vexille, Japan has dominated the world market for robots and having run foul of the UN over limits on robotic technology cuts itself off from the rest of the world. An American special forces team called SWORD gives itself the mission to penetrate the Japanese defences and find out what is going on there. Vexille, herself, is a member of the SWORD team along with her boyfriend, who was the last foreigner out of Japan 10 years before.

I expected something dark and confusing like Ghost in the Shell but in fact apart from the long opening sequence there is plenty of explanation about what is going on. It is a straightforward story with one big twist. The film is CGI style animation and has lots of explosions and wizz-bang stuff to entertain you with a thumping sound track to go along with it. Very stylish and entertaining. Who needs George Lucas?

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Son of a Lion

The amazing thing about Son of a Lion is not the cinematography or the acting but that the film was made at all. The Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan is effectively a war-zone and the Pakistani government is not keen on contacts between the local Pashtun tribes and foreigners. So it is pretty remarkable for an Australian film maker to go there and make a feature film in secret. Especially when the film maker is actually a paramedic and all the actors are local amateurs.

It is a simple story, a conflict between father and son, an illiterate gunsmith "needs" his 11 year old son to work in the family business but the boy wants to go to school. The father gets more stubborn as his brother, clan elders and other villagers advise him to send the boy to school. The story could be set anywhere in the Third World, but few places would have people casually test firing guns in the street and show a man having his armpits shaved at the barber. This film is more important as a reflection of ordinary life in a maligned part of the world than as a feature film.

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Forbidden Lie$

How easy would it be to write a piece of fiction and get reputable publishers to publish it as a non-fiction book? Apparently not difficult at all.

Norma Khouri wrote a book (Forbidden Love aka Honour Lost) about the honour killing of her best friend in Jordan and got it published by Random House as a non-fiction book. It seems that simple geographical mistakes like describing the river of Jordan flowing through the city of Amman and describing Jordan as bordering Kuwait didn't ring alarm bells, even when they were pointed out to the publishers by Jordanians. Of course such a book, published at a time when the Western World was hungry for negative stories about Muslims would be much more sensational (and profitable) as non-fiction than as fiction.

I would have thought that once the hoax was blown the publisher would back away from the author and apologised to the readers but not in this case.

In Anna Broinowski's documentary about this con job she manages to convince Norma Khouri to prove that she isn't the con artist that she now appears to be and Norma takes up the challenge with relish. Anna and Norma lead each other (and us) on an amazing dance of claim and refutation. Norma seems to have an inexhaustible supply of explanations for every refutation and for every time she changes her story. Anna and Norma follow the trail from Australia to the US and to Jordan and back. Norma is a pretty and charming, petite woman which probably helps tug our sympathies in her direction. I wouldn't blame you if you left the cinema wondering if you could believe what anyone says.

I was left with one niggling question: Broinowski went to the expense of flying her crew and Norma and Norma's body guard to Jordan, so why didn't she make things much easier for herself and take someone who could speak and read Arabic? Instead she relies mostly on Norma and her friends for translations of documents and what people are telling her.

Ian's rating 4/5

Redacted

Films done in a documentary style are fairly common these days and Redacted fits in the serious and political end of the spectrum of such films. There are interviews and bits of amature looking film and bits that looks like they have been taken from a French documentary about US forces in Iraq. But all this is just away of telling a story that is based on a real story of US soldiers who raped a 14 year old girl and killed her family.

It is pretty powerful technique as it makes the story look less like a feature film and more real.

The soldiers here are not cardboard cutout Bushites, but a bunch of people put together from different walks of US life and who have as many issues with each other as some of them have with the Iraqi civilians they deal with at the check points they man.

Ian's rating 4/5

Beauty in Trouble

Do beautiful women attract trouble? This is probably not a question you'd find as the theme of an English language film. But the Czech are not so politically correct. Marcela is a sexy mother-of-two whose beauty attracts trouble and provides escapes from trouble in equal measure. She is surrounded by a great cast of characters: an extremely pious mother-in-law, a sleazy, insufferable stepfather, an adoring hansom Tuscan-villa owning sugar-daddy, a sneeky priest and her unreliable husband.

This is a comedy about people taking advantage of situations in all sorts of (often illict) ways. From a battle of wills over biscuits between Marcela's kids and her stepfather, to taking advantage of a rich man's attentions to escape her husband, to taking advantage of dodgy bit of surveying to try and blackmail a land owner.

Oh, and Ana Geislerová looks very good in a bikini.

Ian's rating 4/5

In the Shadow of the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon (ITSOTM) is a documentary and I'm not the world's greatest documentary fan. This lack of enthusiasm could be something to do with the facts often getting in the way of a good story but this could not be said about this film, perhaps because the story and the facts are so good. ITSOTM documents the Apollo missions to the moon, and is narrated by 10 of the astronauts who were on those flights.

The astronauts themselves are hugely entertaining. For guys who are mostly in their mid-seventies they appear in remarkable shape and are articulate, interesting and funny. The footage of the launches, the moon landings and the views from space and in space is all spectacular and apparently much of it hasn't been publicly screened previously. Other people may be deeply familiar with the events and the material but having grown up in a house with no TV I certainly didn't watch the events at the time they occurred (despite being just old enough) and haven't spent time watching the documentary channel since, so it was all very fresh for me. And despite having seen it before, I find the earth viewed from space particularly beautiful and I hadn't appreciated until watching this film that lunar landing modules and their little gold feet were so pretty. Men walking on the moon is just fascinating, even if you've already seen it and watching Buzz Aldrin descending the ladder to the moon's surface is now just that bit more interesting because he revealed he was having a pee just before he stepped off the ladder. I really liked the footage of the crowds at Cape Canaveral watching the launch of Apollo 11 - they look so different from crowds now. It was July in Florida and all the men are wearing shirts and ties, which I find incredible.

At the time space exploration was cutting edge, exciting and just plain cool. Men landing on the moon was an incredible feat and the fact that it was broadcast live on TV meant that large numbers of humankind got to watch, and celebrate. Almost forty years later In the Shadow of the Moon lets you share or maybe relive the sense of excitement that the Apollo missions engendered.

Anne's rating 4/5, Ian's rating 3/5

Outsourced

Outsourced is about a young manager from Seattle whose call-centre is outsourced to India and how he has to go to India to train the new staff. The call centre sells American patriotic kitsch (such as plastic model bald eagles made in China, and hamburger branding irons) to Americans so among the many challenges of getting the new call centre up to speed is making the customers think they're calling within America, or at least making them happy to be calling India.

Outsourced was our first outing to this year's International Cinema Showcase at the Paramount, and its a very nice movie - life affirming, even. You could probably take your grandmother, unless she finds the thought of unmarried sex or cross-cultural relationships disturbing.

I'm probably making it sound a bit sickly, which it isn't. One of its roles is to contrast life in India with life in America without taking sides, and another is to challenge some our assumptions about India. And then there's poking fun at both America and India and their inhabitants - there's even some toilet humour, which is rare for an American movie. It's a comedy and a romance, and although its not earth-shattering its well worth seeing, especially if you're in need of a movie to cheer you up.

Anne's rating: 4/5 , Ian's rating 3.5/5

Juno

I'll put my cards on the table now - I loved this film. So if you just wanted a quick recommendation, you could just head off to the movies now. The less trusting could read on.

Juno is a teenager who discovers she's pregnant, contemplates an abortion, decides on adoption, goes hunting for adoptive parents and then discovers that the best laid plans go awry when they involve human beings.

Human beings and how they're flawed is partly what this film is about. It's also about love and the strength of relationships. It's definitely life affirming, but don't start reaching for the sick bag. The dialogue is one of the films many strengths, and is witty and understated. There's no screaming or shouting - Paulie (the father of the baby)tells Juno that she broke his heart while managing only to sound mildly aggrieved. Juno's stepmother has some particularly good lines, and we both thought the pharmacist at the beginning of the film was a great character who could have been utilised more.

I liked the soundtrack (folksy) and I liked the fact that Juno and Paulie seemed genuinely young. The contrast between Juno's level of knowledge about pregnancy and that of Vanessa the adoptive mother-to-be was cleverly drawn. I liked how life at high school went on, and how Juno's parents were matter-of-fact. The flowering of Juno and Paulie's relationship was a joy to watch and the not-too-predictable ending made made me cry.

Anne's rating 5/5

I can't help comparing this with last year's Knocked Up -- another American comedy about unplanned pregnancy. Both are comedies about a young woman coping with an unexpected pregnancy. Juno is focused on a laid back, gentle comedy style while Knocked Up has a wide variety of comedy styles. Juno steered closer to the abortion option than Knocked Up (where the A-word wasn't mentioned), but still dealt with the option quite glibly.

Overall Juno is more realistic and a more gentle comedy than Knocked Up.

Ian's rating 4/5

No Country for Old Men

The Coen Brothers have a reputation for making unconventional films. But No Country for Old Men starts in a conventional fashion. It opens with voice-over a monologue by Tommy Lee Jones as a Texas country sheriff and a man out deer hunting who comes across the aftermath of a gun-fight. There are dead bodies of men and dogs, abandoned pick-up trucks (one packed with packets of drugs) and a heavy black bag of $100 bills. We don't need any dramatic chords to know that taking home the money is the bad idea that will give us our plot.

Of course there are people on both sides of the drug deal who weren't at the gun fight and in particular Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) who will kill anyone to get his hands on the money. The Chigurh character is the lynch pin of this movie. His soft voice, his blank expression, his weapon of choice and his relentlessness are compelling and repelling in equal parts. His counterpart is Llewelyn Moss, the deer hunter - played by Josh Brolin, a resourceful, independent and stubborn man and the one we are rooting for in this thriller. Sheriff Bell is on the trail of these two and provides us with the sort of laconic commentary that is second nature to Tommy Lee Jones.

This is a thriller and therefore we know where we are going, and for the most part the Coen Brothers are happy to oblige. There is plenty of violence, close escapes, black humour, taunting and even a "fairy godmother" (Woody Harrelson is a white cowboy hat). But I am happy to say that there is also a musical turn and a very untraditional ending that I won't say any more about.

To sum up: No Country for Old Men is an extremely violent and somewhat unconventional thriller set in west Texas that will leave a lasting impression.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Lust, Caution

It is the second world war and a pretty young woman uses her sexual attraction to get close to a senior enemy official in order to aid the resistance. This synopsis will be familiar to those who saw Black Book.

In Ang Lee's film the setting is Shanghai under Japanese occupation and being run by the Nanjing regime. The resistance are the Chinese Nationalists -- who later became the government of Taiwan (Ang Lee's homeland). Unlike Black Book, this film explores the delicate process of seducing a highly suspicious, aloof and dangerous married man. To this end the pace of the film is very slow and somewhat non-chronological. The heroine, Chia Chi, is initially a university student and member of a drama club which decides en mass to join the resistance. Their strategy is suitably dramatic, use Chai Chi to infiltrate the Yee household and lure Mr Yee to a place where he can be assassinated.

This is basically a Chinese film, the Japanese are a foreign and menacing presence, and white people are refugees queuing in the streets. I don't know what 1940's Shanghai looked like but the interior shots in the film are often very lush. Understandably the exterior shots look more like sets, some long shots look very fake and 1970s London taxis are substituted for period cars in a couple of places. But I was willing to overlook these things in what was basically character driven film.

What is more difficult to get my head around was the love story. Was it love, lust, acting or sexual relief from the suffocating social environment of occupied Shanghai? Did they both feel the same way about each other? The slow build up of the relationship in Lust, Warning contracts with the instant love affair in Black Book, and general paranoia makes for a more realistic feel.

There is a bit of hype around the sex scenes and whether they were simulated or real. Let me burst some bubbles here: there are about 10 minutes of sex in 2.5 hours of film, it doesn't look any more real than other mainstream movies, there is one violent sex scene (which might account for the R18 rating) and there is more nudity in a British comedy like Death at Funeral than here.

Ian's rating 4.5/5

Charlie Wilson's War

When I first saw this title I wondered if this was some Dad's Army spin-off film. But I was confusing Arthur Wilson, the suave, diffident Home Guard Sergeant for Charlie Wilson the Texas Congressman I've never heard of.

Film is a straightforward telling of the story of how womanizing, hard drinking, happy-go-lucky and not particularly important Congressman, Charlie Wilson, almost single handedly boosted the CIA budget for covert war in Afghanistan from $5 million per year to over $500 million a year ($630 million per year according to Wikipedia) and hence brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The eponymous war (I've never heard anyone actually say that word) refers to both the war Charlie Wilson fought in Washington DC to get funding for Operation Cyclone and also to the proxy US-Soviet war that the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-89) evolved into due to operation Cyclone.

Tom Hanks plays Charlie Wilson as an all-american politician, charming, pleasure seeking, naïve on the surface yet smart enough to smell trouble before it happens and to trade his vote on issues that are not important to himself and his constituents for support for the issues he is keen on. The ultimately important issue is killing Russians.

This is not an action movie.

The war in Afghanistan is presented as linking scenes between the main action in Washington. There are shaky and grainy anonymous Afghans or Soviets firing out of shot. There are reconstructions of Soviet attacks on Afghan villages and later Afghans downing Soviet planes and helicopters in slow motion. There are visits to (less than authentic) refugee camps by some of the characters. But all of this seems to be interludes to punctuate the story.

This is not a romantic movie.

There are plenty of pretty women in the supporting cast led by the queen of pretty women, Julia Roberts, but there is no love match or sex. Just plenty of tight skirts and cleavage leading the eye from one scene to the next and Julia Roberts in a bikini that matches her flowerbeds as background to a phone call -- all eye candy.

This is a political movie.

So it is mostly talk-talk. The visuals are there to provide mes-en scene and keep you interested. The film doesn't try to drive home any political points directly but presents us with a bunch of explicit and implicit contrasts and lets us make our own mind up. I expect that this will tend to re-enforce our existing beliefs rather than change our minds about anything.

For instance the Soviets are shown as evil killers who's main war aim is to kill Afghan civilians. There is an implicit contrast with 2008 where the main killer of Afghan civilians is the US military. If you are a believer in the evilness of communism and the implicit goodness of America then you will be happy that the difference is because the evil Taliban are hiding behind the civilians who are killed by accident and that most of the "civilian" dead are really Taliban anyway. If you are less partisan you will see that the USSR was supporting a regime in Kabul and fighting an asymmetric war against an insurgency funded by enemies of the Soviets with the consequent civilian casualties and today the USA is supporting a regime in Kabul and fighting an asymmetric war against an insurgency funded by enemies of America with the consequent civilian casualties.

If you are too young to remember the politics of the 1980s and are interested in an straightforward American view of that time then go and see the movie. Tom Hanks is at the top of his game. The humour is understated, the politics are un-preachy and everyone is honourable -- pity about the battle scenes.

Ian's rating 3/5

We're Here To Help

While not exactly a Love Actually or even a Finding Nemo, We're Here to Help is definitely a feel-good movie and it's nice to know New Zealand can make them. It does have black undertones (you couldn't call it a New Zealand movie without them!) but it's good-humoured and funny and the little guy wins in the end. The style is almost documentary and the humour is deadpan, and the story unfolding creates its own understated drama. The plot is uninspiring on paper (man battles tax department) but you shouldn't let this fool you or keep you away.

There's a lot to enjoy about this film. The credits are done amusingly in the style of an IRD form and there's the soundtrack which features Dave Dobbyn. There's 1990's furniture and office decor to admire and it was good to see Erik Thomson (who plays Dave, the film's main character) working on this side of the Tasman for a change. All the IRD employees are great to watch, with actors Jason Hoyte and John Leigh doing a particularly fine job at being bastards in smarmy self-righteous and smug style. Jason Hoyte gave me much pleasure being smarmy in Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, so I'm unsurprised at him being good at it. John Leigh being smarmy was a novelty - a bit of a change from being Sparky the mad on Outrageous Fortune, but just as much fun.

Here you see Dave (Erik Thomsen) on the right berating Steve (Jason Hoyte) in their first encounter- an action which he came to regret. And you'll regret not going to this film, so stimulate the economy and the film industry and go.

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

The Lodger

Jack the Ripper is a popular subject for film makers and The Lodger (1944) is billed the Wellington Film Society as the third filming of Marie Belloc Lowndes's novel about the Ripper. The film stars the large, soft spoken Laird Cregar as "Slade" who arrives carry a small black bag and inquiring about rooms for rent on the night of the fourth murder. The audience is left in no doubt that Slade is the Ripper and the suspense surrounds how long it'll take the family of the house to figure out what we already know. And will Slade kill Kitty the showgirl or will her sympathetic personality win her a reprieve?

Apparently filmmakers of the time were squeamish about mentioning the word "prostitute" so this Ripper kills female entertainers, because some beautiful "woman of the stage" had led his artist brother astray, which in turn led to his early death.

While Laird Cregar is very watchable as the menacing but sometimes naive Ripper, the best line goes to George Sanders who plays the inspector from Scotland Yard who has invited Kitty for a private tour of the Black Museum and asks her to come to tea with his mother. Kitty ignores his question and asks a series of questions about various artifacts, when she gets to a large poker the inspector tells her a man used it beat his fiancee to death. Kitty asks why and the inspector replies "Probably because she wouldn't answer a perfectly reasonable question". Not the sort of pickup line you hear every day.

(According to Wikipedia the Black Museum was established four years after this film was made!)

Ian's rating: 3.5/5

Via Satellite

Carol Dunn is swimming for NZ at the Olympics and doing unexpectedly well. The TV is talking of her as a medal hope, and are starting to take an interest in the Dunn family. Identical twin sister Chrissy (both played by Danielle Cormack) is happy enough to be recognised as Carol's sister especially if recognition comes with a free beer, but she is embarrassed by the idea that the rest of the family will be seen on national TV in all its looser glory.

There is prissy big sister Jen (Rima Te Wiata) trying to get pregnant and jellous of pregnant, flirty, but unattached, middle sister Lyn. In the middle trying ineffectually to make her daughters play nice, is slightly ditsy Mum -- who treats the TV people like royalty, bemusing the TV host with a curtsey! Rounding out the family is Jen's severely henpecked husband Ken (Tim Balme) is an electrician whose incompetence is matched by his over confidence.

Little wonder that Chissy has got it into her head that she and Carol were adopted -- they couldn't possibly be related to this mad bunch. Set in Wellington, there is plenty of the city to see as Crissy spends half the film running away from situations she can't handle; starting with the previous night's one-night stand with a guy (Karl Urban) who turns out to be the TV cameraman.

The plot is surprisingly complicated for a comedy and comes with an excellent twist at the end that Rima Te Wiata brings off very well. In fact all the cast throw themselves into their parts with relish, while being completely believable.

In the 1990s sport and television were dear to the hearts of most Kiwis. Given how we react when we caught by a TV camera scanning a stadium crowd they still are today. But in other ways Via Satellite is blast from the past, even though 1998 was only 9 years ago, some of the suburban interiors, clothes and attitudes would be more at home in the Telethon era than the latte era. But this distance in time makes it easier for us to laugh at ourselves.

Did I mention that there is some excellent pre-1980's suburban decore? It is worth hunting this film down on DVD and renting it.

Ian's rating: 4/5