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

Virunga

Virunga National Park is Africa's first - created by King Albert of Belgium in 1925 to protect habitat of the mountain gorilla.This documentary about Virunga has two main thrusts - meeting the park's staff who give the phrase "passionate about my job" new meaning, and examining the threats posed to the park. These threats include the oil exploration concessions given to British Company SOCO by the Congolese Government, poachers, and the various rebel factions still fighting in the Congo.

The park staff are all armed - they need to protect themselves from wild animals, but also themselves and the animals from poachers and rebel fighters. They are literally prepared to give their lives for the animals and the preservation of the park, and many rangers have been killed in recent years. During the course of the film we see rebel fighters and tanks arrive in the park and fighting taking place, which feels a bit like seeing armed conflict at a kindergarten. It was heartening to see that once the fighting was over, the first thing the staff did was head up to the hills to check on the gorillas. Men who had been shooting at people the day before were now sitting in the grass and smiling.

Andre with one of his charges

The softer side of the job is shown by the carers for the four captive orphaned gorillas that live in a special house in the park. Mountain gorillas are particularly furry and photogenic, and their chief minder, Andre, is equally charming.Taking the gorillas outside to play in the trees looks like tremendous fun.

It's hard to know whether you'll be more impressed or depressed by this documentary. Virunga is staggeringly beautiful and diverse but there are so many things going wrong in the Congo. I was somewhat cheered to see on  that SOCO appears to have agreed not to drill for oil in Virunga unless UNESCO agrees.

So get acquainted with deepest Africa by watching the film, or at least the trailer, or perhaps this piece from Al Jazeera's Earthrise. I hope that one day going to Virunga might be less hazardous than it is now.

Welcome to New York

The first 20 minutes or so of Welcome to New York is semi-pornographic and 2 men sitting on my left walked out just before the scene that made Dominique Strauss-Kahn infamous and ruined his career as managing director of the IMF and potential future President of France.

Welcome to New York is a film based around the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, with the characters names changed and a fictional version of events that are not public record. It is a caricature of Strauss-Kahn rather than a sympathetic portrayal. Gérard Depardieu plays George Devereaux (the Strauss-Kahn like character) and Jacqueline Bisset plays his wife.

George Devereaux is an elderly French playboy bureaucrat, which looks as odd as it sounds. He surrounds himself with call girls at work and at night. Life appears to be a series of sex parties. This is all brought to a halt and we get an intimate look at the US criminal process. In the final act Simone Devereaux flies in from Paris to bail out her husband and rent an apartment in New York for his home detention. They spend their time arguing with each other. There are a couple of surprise flashbacks to a hard to believe seduction of a law student at an art gallery and molestation / attempted rape of a journalist.

While George Devereaux seems over the top at the start of the film, at the end of the film he is a more believable character (if not one to sympathise with). George Devereaux at the end sees himself as the victim of society's norms and his wife's ambition. Despite many interactions between Devereaux and women during the film, there are only 2 or 3 where he comes across as charming and seductive.

The first and third acts of Welcome to New York are slow and it is not an easy watch. I don't think I know Strauss-Kahn (or Devereaux) any better by the end, but Gérard Depardieu certainly throws himself into the role.

Ian's rating 2/5

The Babadook

An alternative title for The Babadook could be " a mother's worst nightmare." So what do mothers worry about, particularly if they're tired and stressed? Do they worry they might have a car accident if they're really tired? Do they worry that they might actually harm someone or something they care about if they're really angry? Do they worry about getting sacked if they have to take time off work to look after their kids? Do they feel inferior in the company of better-dressed other mothers with better-behaved children?  Are they embarrassed when their child pushes his cousin out of the treehouse? Do they worry that the neighbours hear them shouting at their children and judge them? Do they think they'll scream if their child says "Mum-mee!" one more time?

The answer to all those questions is probably yes. And all those scenarios crop up in the Babadook. I was unsurprised to find out that the Babadook  was written, produced and directed by women. It seemed
 like a very woman-centric nightmare scenario. The

story centres around solo mother Amelia and her seven-year-old son Samuel. Amelia's husband died on the trip to hospital for Samuel's birth so we're talking solo parenthood with extra pathos. Samuel has "behavioral issues"  and a vivid imagination. One of the story books in the house features a bogeyman- in- the-wardrobe type creature which Samuel is convinced is real. He builds an assortment of weaponry to deal with it and of course he can't sleep because he's frightened. His behaviour gets worse and he's suspended from school. Amelia gets (more) exhausted and she starts to see the Babadook too. She rear-ends a car. She makes soup with broken glass in it. She strangles the family dog. And so on.

The trouble with The Babadook is that it's tedious rather than terrifying. There are some scary moments, an atmospheric score and there's quite a lot of screaming but mostly you want it to stop because of the tediousness. I think a good horror film should have the kind of frightening thing that you can't do anything about, and you never know when it's coming. It should get under your skin at least a bit. I felt that most of the terror in the Babadook was eminently addressable. Try painting the rooms in your house is a more cheerful colour than dark gray. Get a flatmate or a boarder or live with your mum so you don't have to deal with your child completely alone. Get psychological help sooner rather than later.  Watching the trailer again I can see that part of the nightmare is Amelia seeking help and not getting it, but perhaps waiting seven years wasn't the wisest idea.

I didn't feel the Babadook got under my skin. I didn't go home and feel any urge to look under the bed or check the wardrobe for bogeymen. All I felt was a bit relieved I wasn't a solo mother and a bit cheated in the adrenaline department.

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

The Noble Family

Javi, Cha and Bárbara

A super rich father realises that his live-at-home adult kids are spoiled. To teach them a lesson he stages financial ruin and convinces them to join him on the run from angry creditors. The Noble Family (also known by the direct translation We Are The Nobles) is a Mexican farce that makes fun of the super rich with broad humour. The premise is not particularly fresh (based on a 1949 Mexican film The Great Madcap). Off the top of my head I can't think of what film it reminds me of most closely, but many movies such as The Valet and Welcome to the Sticks involve ridiculous conspiracies. It pays not to think about such plots too closely and go with the flow. Fortunately film is fast paced and the characters in particular Germán the father and Bárbara his daughter are engaging.

Germán takes the kids to his father's derelict house in the sort of Mexico City suburb they would normally be too frightened to go near. He wants them to find jobs while he gets on with the DIY. The film has a soft heart and the kids find ways of coping with life on the other side of the tracks. Living in such close proximity to his kids for the first time in years leads Germán to learn surprising things about them.

As this is a comedy everything gets nicely wrapped up at the end. But I felt all through the film that problems got solved rather too quickly and neatly, as if the director was always in too much of a hurry to get on with the next scene.

If you are a native Spanish speaker there is a running gag about Spanish versus Mexican accents that gets lost in translation.

Watch through the credits for the final scene.

Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

The Wonders

A film about a poor, idiosyncratic bee keeping German-Italian family in rural Italy that centres on the eldest daughter and an odd Italian reality TV show that comes to town; sounds promising. Plenty opportunity for humour and possibly satire of urban life or commercialism (as represented by the TV show) but that is not what we get with The Wonders. Certainly the relationship between 12-year-old Gelsomina and her irascible father Wolfgang is well represented and the three younger sisters attempt to steal the show at times.

But where The Wonders fails is that it has too many plot lines and characters and doesn't do them all justice. For instance Angelica the mother is pretty much a bystander. On the other hand Cocò would not be missed and the mystery of her role within the family is a distraction. The reality TV show plot line doesn't really deliver on any level and is just confusing. The plot line about Martin, the foster child, adds tension to the relationship between Gelsomina and her father, but it is begging to go further.

On the whole this is a film with promise that ends up being a muddle.

Ian's rating 2.5/5 Anne's rating 1/5

The Congress

The Congress is a savagely funny and surprisingly moving commentary on our increasing reliance on screens and a meta-textual Hollywood satire - according to the Vancouver International Film Festival. Perhaps I saw a different film. Actually I didn't read the small print carefully. In particular the bit where it said "dazzlingly surreal animation". I have a bad history with surreal films. They almost always sound more interesting than they turn out to be.

Scanning Robin Wright

The Congress opens with an interesting concept. Robin Wright (The Princess Bride) is 44 and too old for Hollywood. Her home life is odd, living in a converted hanger at the end of a busy runway with two teenager kids. One of whom has behavioural problems and  is also gradually losing sight and hearing. Miramount Studio has one last contract. They want to scan her and buy the rights to her (in effect a CGI version of her) for ever. She is told that live actors are a thing of the past. Films from now on will be completely computer generated.

So far so good, then the film leaps forward 20 years and almost immediately jumps into dazzlingly surreal animation territory. The CGI version of Robin Wright is staring in her own franchise of sci-fi action films. We are told that now Miramount has moved in to pharmaceuticals and you can eat or drink your favourite actors! While some of the animated crowd love the idea others start a war against Miramount. A new guy turns up to save Robin. I began to lose the plot at this point.

Animated Robin Wright

Obviously a massive amount of effort has gone into the animation and it is certainly dazzling. I wish rather more effort had gone into the script writing, and into making the images on the screen match the story that the exposition sections of the dialogue tell us is happening. Despite Robin Wright being the star of the film she is barely a character. Harvey Keitel as her agent and Danny Huston as a Miramount executive have much better parts.

I surprised afterwards to learn that the film was 2 hours long. It felt much longer.

Ian's rating 2/5

Club Sándwich

Club Sándwich is a Mexican homage to the indolence and inarticulateness of teenagers. Chubby 15 year old Hector and his 30 something solo mum Paloma are having a cheap off season holiday at an otherwise empty holiday resort. They are both completely comfortable in each others company and Hector is only slightly bored with lying about. Director Fernando Eimbcke gives us more than a taste of Hector's boredom before introducing the almost equally well padded Jazmín.

Hector is just old enough to lust without knowing what to do next. Jazmín turns out to be Hector's equal as a conversationalist but has a sly line in glacially slow seduction moves. Meanwhile Paloma is figuring out how to deal with this new development in the life of her "honey bun". While Paloma blunders a little bit she admirably figures out when to withdraw from the battle for her son's affection, hence maintaining the balance between protection of the innocent (or is it her preservation of a little boy who no longer is?) and loosening the apron strings without loosing her place as mother and best friend.

The pacing is slow, the non-panning camera keeps us distant (even in close up). The humour is mostly observational and more than balances out the sad spot or two. Club Sándwich is definitely a nostalgic film for adults rather than a teen movie.

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Land Ho!

Two ex-brothers-in-law take a trip to Iceland. A road trip with spectacular scenery and ...

I was expecting a little bit more from Land Ho! perhaps some comedy or romance, catharsis or bereavement, mystery or drama; but all we got was a crass rich bloke eventually confiding a secret that was already known and a sad, lonely bloke accepting a tiny dose of affection.

Mitch is a surgeon, one of those extrovert, won't-take-no-for-an-answer, life-of-the-party blokes that turn timid people to thinking of an exit strategy. Colin is one of those timid people who didn't think of one in time and ended up on this holiday in Iceland. To be fair Land Ho! has a few laughs and a bit getting old angst but not enough to justify the ticket price.

Nice geyser though.

Ian's rating 1.5/5 Anne's rating 2/5

Art and Craft

Mark Landis is good at copying things, a habit he developed as a only child. He also has a great knowledge of art which started when visiting European art galleries with his father (a US naval officer). The advertising for Art and Craft promises to explore the 30 year 'career' of one of the most prolific art forgers in US history. This is somewhat misleading as it only covers Mark's childhood and perhaps the last 5 years of his 'career'. Despite that, Art and Craft is an engrossing film about an old man with an unusual obsession.

What makes Mark Landis's forging unusual is that he doesn't do it for profit. He doesn't sell his art work. He donates it to art galleries (known as Art Museums in American English). He also doesn't claim the tax rebates that are available under the US tax system. Many of his works have hung in art museums undetected as forgeries for years. His activities have been brought to attention of the FBI, which doesn't see them as criminal. Some of the duped curators are strongly of the opposite opinion but Landis has never been charged or sued. Matthew Leininger in particular is obsessed with stopping Landis to the extent that it probably cost him his job. Other curators and art museums are just plain embarrassed that they have been duped.

Mark Landis is a reclusive man who also likes some of the aspects of fame. Remarkably the film makers gained access to his home, where he entertains them with quotes from movies, descriptions of his methods and memories of his mother. Indirectly and slowly the film does a good job at getting into the motivations behind his obsession. The film makers also got access to Matthew Leininger and the comparison of their obsessions is instructive.

My only complaint about the film is the hole in Mark's life between attending art collage in 1974 and his mother's death in 2010.

Ian's rating 3/5

Diplomacy

How was Paris liberated in 1944 with so little damage? It is something I have never thought about long enough to research. So I watched Diplomacy from a position of ignorance. Since I watched it I have done some research and realised that depending on which version of events you believe, this film may make you angry. Though if you are in that camp, the advertising for the film would be warning to stay away.

Diplomacy is based on a play and compresses the events of August 1944 into one day for dramatic effect. The Germans are in retreat in France after the D-day landing in June that year, and the Allies on the outskirts of Paris. General Dietrich von Choltitz is under orders from Hitler that:

"The city must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris."

The engineers have prepared demolition charges on the bridges and major buildings and are awaiting orders to blow the place up. As we know this didn't happen we are confronted with: how were the Germans stopped?

Before dawn while General Choltitz is giving orders for the final preparations at his HQ in the Hotel Meurice he gets an unannounced visitor, Raoul Nordling, the Swedish Consul. The neutral diplomat has come to talk the general into disobeying Hitler and saving the city (and its inhabitants). Nordling's only weapon is his powers of persuasion. Not just to talk the general out of blowing up the city but also to avoid being thrown out into the street by a busy general preparing for the approaching Allied forces.

The conversations between the two men are punctuated by events outside (reports from subordinates, phone calls to Berlin, breakfast served by a maid). This film could have been subtitled "Two old men in a hotel room", but this is a hang over from the play it is based on and not a criticism. Each man brings out arguments and counter arguments as preparations for the demolition reach completion and the Allies get closer. The battle inside the hotel room seems more vital than the fighting in the streets.

Whether or not you believe that Choltitz or Nordling (or neither) was the saviour of Paris this is a great illustration of the power of argument and how to use persuasion from multiple angles. Both lead actors are eloquent advocates for their point of view and while polite to each other, use their rhetorical powers to the full.

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

It Follows

Sex and horror go hand-in-hand in movies. But rarely is sex part of the chain of horror. It Follows addresses this with a sexually transmitted curse. An infected person is followed by something that will kill them if it catches them. If they have sex before it catches them, then their sex partner becomes the target instead. But if the target person is caught and killed then the previous person in the chain becomes the target again. An idea that puts a certain amount of responsibility on the current victim of the curse.

While It Follows is punctuated by well timed jump scares, once we realize that Jay is the heroine then it becomes an exercise in rising tension as we try to figure out how she is going to survive, even with the help of her friends and sisters. While perhaps a little short on laughs, it also avoids some of the typical silly life shortening behaviours that are stock in trade in other horror films. It Follows keeps the gore level down and has a refreshingly different idea on horror to normal run of zombies, vampires, super resourceful crazy serial killers, ghosts or swarms of mutated creatures. Combining fear of sexually transmitted diseases with a thing that behaves like something from a bad dream makes It Follows feel like something you are more likely to experience, albeit from the safety of your own bed.

While almost every other American horror is set among the middle or upper middle class It Follows has a working class setting. Oddly the décor and technology screams 1980s - except for an ebook reader in the shape of scallop shells.

This film was made by the director of The Myth of the American Sleepover, it is a huge improvement over that film!

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

Timbuktu

This beautiful but harrowing film is a portrait of life in and around the West African city of Timbuktu under militant Islamic control.The Islamic Police prowl the streets and the rooftop armed with machine guns and sometimes with a loud hailer, looking for anyone infringing on their particular brand of religion. Their brand is a joyless and often seemingly pointless one - no football, no music, no hanging out with the opposite sex, women must wear gloves and socks in the market place. Banning cigarettes and alcohol is also included but you can't help thinking that this is because people enjoy their consumption , rather than because they're bad for your health. Their brand is brutal, too - stoning, lashing and shooting seem all in the day's work.

The film focuses on people on both sides of the religious divide. On one side we have Kidane the Tuareg cattle herder, who lives in a tent outside town with his wife and daughter and on the other we have Islamic police themselves - Abdelkrim and his driver get the most screen time. While the police's religious doctrine isn't portrayed sympathetically ( this would be difficult, I think) they are portrayed as human . Abdelkrim's driver kindly tells him he doesn't need to go off and smoke secretly because all his fellow policemen already know he does it.

Kidane has a row with a fisherman neighbour who has killed one of Kidane's cows because it got tangled in his fishing nets. Kidane's gun goes off in the struggle and the fisherman is killed so Kidane ends up in the Islamic Court and things turn out badly.

Before you get too depressed, do remember that this is a beautiful film. Timbuktu is a world heritage site because of its amazing buildings and the surrounding desert is equally beautiful. Living in a Tuareg tent looks particularly romantic but it does make you vulnerable to unexpected visitors. The residents of Timbuktu are  physically attractive, but their  attitudes and lack of automatic acquiescence to their oppressors also make an impression. The Imam of the local mosque gently reproaching members of the police for bringing guns into the mosque while wearing shoes and criticising their theology was memorable and so was a woman explaining (via 2 translators!) that she didn't want her daughter to marry one of them because he was a complete stranger.

This isn't a film you'll forget in a hurry. One of the things I've been thinking about is what motivate religious people who are into harsh punishment regimes for (what westerners would consider) harmless pastimes. Is is because they enjoy the power, or are they motivated by concern for people's immortal souls? And on a less philosophical plane, who was the woman with the chicken and why did the police leave her alone?

Anne's rating 4.5/5    Ian's rating 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

Living is easy with eyes closed

I'm far too young to be an original Beatles fan. Hence I am ignorant of the Beatles story and have only an average familiarity with Beatles songs, but that is more than enough knowledge to enjoy Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed.

Set in Spain during Generalissimo Franco's dictatorship, Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed is a beautiful movie almost cloyingly so. It is carefully crafted and perfectly shot. The characters are unambiguously nice or nasty. It is a nostalgic and simplistic look back at 1960s Spain.

The authoritarian side of 1960s Spain is illustrated by some small set piece violence, with a very modern revulsion by bystanders. The perpetrators include a nun and a priest. This is a country where priests are the heroes of both comedies and dramas in the cinema and the radio is full of Catholic messages and no pop music.

Well meaning and single minded Antonio anchors the film. He is a 40 something bachelor, English teacher and Beatles fan, who listens to Radio Luxembourg and uses Beatles lyrics in his English classes. Hearing that John Lennon is in Almería filming Richard Lester’s How I Won the War Antonio decides to drive there to discuss song lyrics with his hero. The two hitchhikers he acquires on route fill out the film.

Juanjo has run away from home after one too many run-ins with his policeman father. Beautiful, pregnant, but still slim, Belén has run away from a home for unwed mothers. Neither has a destination and Antonio tries to help them out and keep them safe on the short road trip. Belén turns out to be more than a passive girl with a pretty face; she has hidden talents to help out the guys. Feminists might take exception to a her as a character, but the male audience will be less picky.

Ian's rating 4/5