It’s been a good few days to see the our tax dollars hard at work on international feature films – Wicker, Klara and the Sun, Wildwood – and we are also going through something of a Josh Hartnett-aissance AND it is almost Halloween, so I thought I would try and find something that reflects all of those things at the same time.

30 Days of Night was shot in Auckland in 2007, the days when internationals would only fill the main roles and there was plenty of opportunity for the likes of Joel Tobeck, Elizabeth Hawthorn, Peter Feeney and my at-the-time Downstage colleague Ben Fransham¹ to show their talent.

Josh Hartnett plays another small town sheriff, out-gunned and out-matched, in 30 Days of Night. He runs Barrow, the northern-most town in Alaska, so far north that one month of the year is spent in darkness. This is the perfect setup for a smart vampire to take advantage of: 30 days of feeding with no enforced hibernation and a bunch of unsavoury characters (well-led by Danny Huston) certainly go to town. Entertaining and stylish, 30 Days goes about its work (within its genre limitations) respectably enough.

Also in that February 2008 Capital Times review: No Country for Old Men, George Clooney in Michael Clayton², Don Cheadle as a 60s radio DJ in Talk to Me and Leonardo DiCaprio environmental documentary The 11th Hour.

Where to watch 30 Days of Night

Aotearoa: Streaming on LionsGate’s Amazon channel or a digital rental

Australia: Not currently available online

Canada: Streaming on Hollywood Suite

Ireland: Streaming on HBO Max

India: Not currently available online

USA: Streaming on Xumo

UK: Streaming on Prime Video or HBO Max

Further listening

My regular Thursday night chat with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights was even more jam-packed than usual as we covered Wildwood and its Portland connections, three films from the British and Irish Film Festival which has just gotten underway, the 30th anniversary of Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners and new Aussie comedy-horror series Gnomes.

1. And many, many others. ︎
2. I was not a fan and I keep thinking I should go ahead and revisit that. ︎

The post Something to watch tonight: 30 Days of Night appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

Rooting around Kanopy the other day – looking for something free to watch that I could feature in my weekly RNZ Nights segment – I discovered that one of my favourite shows of the past few years had made it there¹.

Monsieur Spade is a six-part series about the great detective Sam Spade – originally created by Dashiell Hamett and portrayed memorably by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon – inventing a peaceful retirement for him on a French vineyard. Except that peace is about to be disturbed.

I liked the show very much so allow me to direct your attention to my original review from March 2025 from the old Substack version of this newsletter:

Co-created and directed by Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit), Monsieur Spade is only six episodes – the perfect length – and structured to satisfy. A cliffhanger at the end of each episode, a flashback at the beginning, and plenty of twists, turns and double-crossing in between.

The production design is exceptional. Every room is full of vintage nicknacks to provide lived-in details, especially gramophones and radios which are given loving close-ups to go with the French pop of the era on the soundtrack.

And the cars, my word, the cars. So many beautiful vintage European automobiles, including a stunning 1930s aubergine Rolls-Royce which is another thing that Spade inherited along with the big house and the swimming pool.

Does this Spade live up to Dashiel Hammett’s original vision? Owen certainly looks like he’s been in a scrap or two and has a wisecrack for every occasion, even if he doesn’t have the energy to always maintain the accent. It’s a summer noir – Owen’s collar is always open as a concession to the heat – but occasionally we see that he has the raincoat and famous fedora still in his wardrobe, like Batman’s cape.

It’s one of my favourite recent reviews and I hope you like it.

Where to watch Monsieur Spade

Aotearoa: Streaming on Kanopy (free with a participating library membership) or Rialto²

Australia: Not currently available

Canada: Streaming on AMC+ or Acorn

UK & Ireland: Streaming on SkyGo or Channel 4

India: Streaming on the BBC iPlayer Amazon channel

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, Philo, AMC+ or Spectrum On Demand

1. At least the Upper Hutt library incarnation. ︎
2. The Rialto streaming channel from Amazon. ︎

The post Something to watch tonight: Monsieur Spade appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

Going through 20-year-old pages for the birthday celebration last week, I realised there is still plenty of gold to be mined – as long as those films are actually available somewhere.

I’m pleased to report that – for local audiences at least – Jindabyne is on an accessible streamer. I reviewed it in December 2006.

Raymond Carver’s 1981 short story “So Much Water, So Close To Home” has already been adapted for two near-masterpieces: a segment of Altman’s awesome Short Cuts in 1993 and Paul Kelly’s 1989 song “Everything’s Turning To White”. Now we can add the third (and best) item to the list, Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne.

The story is deceptively simple. Four guys go on a fishing trip and discover the body of a murdered girl. Instead of reporting it they decide to carry on fishing. The community is horrified and one of the wives (Laura Linney) realises that she can never see her husband (Gabriel Byrne) in the same way again.

Screenwriter Beatrix Christian takes the already highly-charged story to another level by making the dead girl a “blackfella” and Byrne and Linney’s central couple outsiders, immigrants from Ireland and America respectively.

But the film isn’t so much about politics or “issues” as it is about character, and there is a richness and depth to every portrait that we don’t get blessed with too often in the cinema. Jindabyne isn’t an easy watch but it is certainly rewarding.

Also in that Capital Times column: one of my favourite Stathams, Crank; Keisha Castle-Hughes brings forth the Messiah in The Nativity Story; Unaccompanied Minors is a funny Christmas film; and Deck the Halls is not.

Where to watch Jindabyne

Aotearoa: Streaming on Prime Video

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video or HBO Max

Canada: Digital purchase

Ireland: Not currently available online

India: Not currently available online

USA: Digital rental

UK: Digital rental

The post Something to watch tonight: Jindabyne appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

After the amiable DC rebound that was James Gunn’s Superman it was disappointing to discover that the immediate big screen follow-up, Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl, was such a stumble. While Gunn’s film was upbeat and colourful – a conscious throwback to the unimpeachable goodness of Christopher Reeve’s version – Supergirl was back to the conflicted reluctance to take on the responsibility that has characterised so many superhero characterisations.

Australian Milly Alcock (who first came to my attention in the excellent Tim Minchin comedy series Upright) plays Kara Zor-El, cousin of David Corenswet’s Kal-El, inexplicable fellow survivor of the destruction of the planet Krypton. While he was dispatched as a baby, Kara travelled to us as a teenager (I guess, who knows how many actual Krypton years she had lived through) and she maintains some of that teenage rebelliousness and alienation.

She’s also old enough to be able to booze on some planets, a fact she takes advantage of on long off-Earth benders feeling sorry for herself.

Against her will – it always seems to be against their will, doesn’t it? – she becomes involved in a people-trafficking (alien trafficking?) plot when she meets Eve Ridley’s Ruthye whose parents have been murdered by a gang of ruth(ye)less outlaws called Brigands whose dress sense seems to have been inspired by old VHS tapes of Mad Max.

Into a neon-lit Blade Runner-esque city, they go. Kara is looking for an antidote to the poison the Brigands have given her dog Krypto and Ruthye wants revenge. Everything about the picture seems to have been inspired by some older, better film and producer Gunn has tried to sprinkle some of his trademark humorous pixie dust in order to lighten things up a bit making for some tonal confusion. Especially horrific moments are just passed over by a film that’s reluctant to engage properly with any of the ideas it has had.

Celebrated Irish director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot among many others) has been obsessed by the notorious case of the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier for years but he’s far from alone in that. His five-part documentary series, Murder at the Cottage, is just one of a dozen examinations (and re-examinations) of the case that have been filmed, written and recorded since Sophie’s body was discovered outside her Cork holiday home nearly 30 years ago.

In Re-creation, Sheridan angrily returns to the subject and his frustration about it has prompted a fascinating approach. Prime suspect in the murder, Ian Bailey, was never tried for the crime in Ireland and was eventually found guilty in absentia by French authorities in 2019 – that’s a thing they can do, apparently. Sheridan’s film imagines how an Irish jury – including a juror played by himself – might have argued about the case had it ever come to that.

The provocations go back and forth with one female juror in particular (Vicky Krieps) holding out against the prevailing wind. It’s a fascinating exercise made all the more fascinating by not knowing the first thing about the case. I imagine that Irish viewers, drawn once more to the Toscan true crime well, might be less enthralled.

The Robin Hood legend gets a dark twist from Pig director Michael Sarnovski with the help of a haunted-looking Hugh Jackman. Badly injured fighting a battle he was reluctant to get roped in on¹, Robin recuperates anonymously in an island priory run by Jodie Comer.

There he discovers that a) he quite likes the idea of a quiet retirement helping out around the place and b) you can’t escape your past. The title of the film is in one sense about the exploding of the “steal from the rich and give to the poor” myth but also a giant spoiler.

The first quarter is so violent I thought I wouldn’t manage the whole thing but once it has you paying attention, it settles down to a well-acted and atmospheric drama.

I was never a huge fan of the kind of humiliating antics that the Jackass franchise specialised in but, as I said to Perlina Lau in my Culture 101 review, when I was a cinema owner I really loved the money that they made.

Jackass: Best and Last is supposedly the gang’s swan song and I was moved by the portrait of male friendship – unable to express their deeply felt love for each other without simultaneously wrapping their naked bodies in cling film and drinking a bottle of laxative.

Despite their years of big screen success, this sort of thing now belongs on the YouTubes and the TikToks where I don’t have to professionally engage with it any longer.

Remember the name Posy Sterling, folks. It’s her performance that makes the gritty social comment drama Lollipop worth watching.

Writer-director Daisy-May Hudson based the story on her own family’s experience of homelessness in East London and she wisely chooses to never let the camera stray from Sterling’s face for long.

She plays a single mother, recently incarcerated for (what we presume is) something minor. Upon release, she discovers the complex nest of rules mean that getting her children back from state care is virtually impossible. She can’t get a big enough flat from the council if she doesn’t actually have the kids and she can’t get the kids back if she doesn’t have somewhere to care for them.

I can’t recall any men in this film. Everyone is female. The landlord, the foster mum, the best friend, the social worker, the “computer says no” council housing worker and the lawyer and the judge at her hearing. This is a world where women are trying against all the odds to make a system work – a system that they had no say in the design of.

One of the things that people don’t I think really appreciate about the film reviewing gig is that it’s a creative act in itself. It’s an act of imagination and one of the great acts of imagination, the imaginative leaps that I have to make when I’m talking about something like Evil Dead Burn, is that I have to imagine that I am the kind of person that really enjoys these films. You know, to try and do it justice.

So within these self-imposed limitations, let me say that I really appreciated all the craft and commitment on display. Shot in New Zealand and post-produced in France, Evil Dead Burn shows how far our artisans and facilities have come since producer Rob Tapert came here to make Hercules and Xena in the 90s. Like Ireland subbing for New Mexico in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy earlier this year, anywhere really can be anywhere else these days.

But that’s about all I’ve got because I just couldn’t get behind the nastiness of so many aspects of this film. The first Evil Dead film (1981) was known for the combination of viscera and humour – a combination I often enjoy – but this 6th instalment has a distinct lack of laughs. Just the blood.

Another tonal conundrum can be found in the Netflix comedy Little Brother. Somewhere along the line we decided that comedies for grown-ups had to be full of innuendo, off-colour references (what comedians back in the day would call ‘blue’) and endless foul language. I know I sound like a prude about this sort of thing but in the case of Little Brother, its core actually quite good-hearted but the trappings mean I can’t give it a wide recommendation.

John Cena plays a successful real estate agent who is about to become a reality TV star hoping that this will finally earn the respect of his billionaire brother (Christopher Meloni). Into this heightened environment comes Marcus (Eric André), a loose cannon who was once in a ‘Big Brother’ programme with Cena when they were teenagers.

I once described Cena as “an inflatable Matt Damon doll that’s had a few too many kids jump on the foot-pump” but he’s now one of the more reliable stars around and – evidently – an all-around mensch. I especially like him when he’s in this mode, playing the frustrated straight man, insecure but still trying to puff himself up. A little Eric André goes a long way, though.

Even considering all of the messiness and the bad taste, the film’s fundamental decency² had me wiping away a single tear at the end.

Further listening

Here’s that Jackass Best and Last Culture 101 segment from 5 July (which also featured Lollipop and Little Brother).

I reviewed Supergirl from Sydney for RNZ Nights (along with One Hundred Years of Solitude and some British panel game shows).

Re-creation was one of the features on another Culture 101 segment (along with Disclosure Day and Scary Movie 6.)

The Death of Robin Hood was the cinema feature of my 19 June Nights segment (also featuring Aztec Batman on HBO Max and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on YouTube).

Finally, Culture 101 from 19 July (including The Invite and Islands which I need to write up here soon).

1. That’s a callback to Supergirl from earlier on, in case you hadn’t noticed. ︎
2. Or sentimentality. ︎

The post Recent releases: Supergirl, Re-Creation, The Death of Robin Hood, Jackass: Best & Last, Lollipop, Evil Dead Burn, Little Brother appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

2007: Into the Wild

Perhaps a bit of recency bias slipping in here but I did think enough of Into the Wild to own a copy and have re-watched it more than once. Fascinatingly, in the extras on the Blu-ray I learnt that the flashback structure that Penn so effectively deploys was not in the original script but discovered during the editing process. Editing is writing, as they say.

As beautiful to look at and listen to as the finest art film, but remaining down to earth, it features a star-making performance from Emile Hirsch leading an ensemble of fine screen actors and it ultimately delivers a message that is completely different to the one you expect: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

2008: No Country for Old Men

I didn’t write anything about No Country except to name it the year’s best, so here’s what I wrote in my initial review from February 2008:

… essential cinema in two senses of the word. First and foremost you must see it, probably more than once. But it is also cinema reduced to its essence.

2009: Slumdog Millionaire

Mashing together several archetypal stories with a vivid visual style and a percussive energy, Slumdog may not represent India as it actually is but instead successfully evoked what India feels like, which is arguably more important. After Slumdog everything I saw seemed, you know, old-fashioned and nothing has been anywhere nearly as thrilling since.

2010: A tie

First, the keepers: a surprise for some will be Fantastic Mr. Fox which was released after my 2009 Year in Review was submitted and the only film in the list that I already own. Animal Kingdom was the film I most recommended this year – a stunning, tense piece of work that gripped me totally.

Taika Waititi’s Boy has a lot more going on than just cheeky comedy and I look forward to revisiting it often. And Toy Story 3 completed the best family entertainment franchise in such a perfect, moving, thrilling way. It was Pixar’s finest achievement to date and yes, readers, I cried.

2011: Another tie

By this time I was deliberately not singling films out as “best” (and I have already praised The Tree of Life earlier on this week):

Keepers are the films that I loved so much I want to own them – films that make me feel better just having them in the house. The first film I adored this year was slushy Disney horse racing story Secretariat. It should have been everything I hate – manipulative, worthy, a faith-based subtext – and yet I cried like a baby – expert button-pushing from director Randall Wallace. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was my favourite blockbuster. Superb direction by Rupert Wyatt overcame the flaws (ahem, James Franco, ahem) and it carefully walked the tightrope of both respect for its predecessors and kicking off something new.

2012: This Must Be the Place

The film I fell in love with, though (and now sleep with under my pillow) is the strange and wonderful This Must Be the Place starring Sean Penn as a retired rock star who becomes a Nazi hunter. Disarming.

2016: Toni Erdmann

In 2016, my list was published at RNZ rather than here:

My favourite film of 2016 – and one that could become an annual Christmas ritual viewing  –  Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade) managed to win over everyone this year except the Cannes jury. Its bounty is not immediately apparent from a simple plot summary so ignore them when you see them and just go when the film comes out in cinemas next year.

2024: Perfect Days

In 2024 I also wrote a review of the year for RNZ but misunderstood the brief and it was rejected, so sent it out to the Substack newsletter subscribers instead:

… my favourite film of 2024 was by the almost-80 Wim Wenders. Perfect Days was about a meditative middle-aged cleaner of Tokyo public toilets and was a profound lesson in contentment. Almost the perfect film, you might say.

December 2026 is hurtling towards us so I had better start thinking about a list. Have I seen enough this year, though?

Thanks for indulging me through this anniversary week. Normal – sporadic – service will resume next week.

The post Celebrating 20 years: Picks of the years appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

In my final column I went into bat for a documentary I was very fond of and demonstrated the folly of trying to predict a future for films that I wanted to succeed.

Quietly biding it’s time and hoping for a big school holiday season is Canadian eco-doc The Whale which blew me away the other night. Perfectly pitched at families of all ages, it tells the story of a baby orca named Luna that gets lost in picturesque Nootka Sound off Vancouver Island. Killer whales are social creatures and – without a pod to call home – Luna befriends and bewitches everyone she meets. Of course, bureaucracy being what it is, this couldn’t be allowed so the full force of the Canadian fisheries protection people are enlisted to keep Luna away from the people she loves to play with.

A brilliant story, superbly and powerfully told with wonderful pictures and a perfect voiceover from executive producer and Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds². I would be surprised if any viewer remained uncaptivated by one of the best nature documentaries in years. Those last two sentences have been especially crafted to go into newspaper ads – that’s how much I recommend The Whale.

The Whale sank without trace³ and is not currently available online in Aotearoa (although you can rent the DVD from Aro Street).

Also in that final column: Danny Boyle’s Trance starring James McAvoy (“minor Boyle”); self-funded Wellington science fiction Eternity (“Impossible to recommend to anyone except friends and family (just not my friends and family))”; and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

1. Our paths would cross again when I was editor of Fishhead and they were running tour competitor in the Wellington lifestyle magazine market, Capital. ︎
2. Reynolds executive produced the film along with his ex-wife, Scarlett Johansson. ︎
3. It is, of course, not the film that most people think of when you mention The Whale. ︎

The post Celebrating 20 years: The Whale appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

One of the awards they gave out was for the “Best Capital Times Writer”, a prize that I won three years in a row. I mention this precisely so I can skite about it (and have it included in the inevitable AI-generated biography that people will use instead of primary research).

Five years into my run at the CT, I was hitting my straps. This is from the fifth anniversary column:

It’s the fifth anniversary of my first column for this paper – my, how time flies. Five years of searching – usually in vain – for some transcendence among the many flickering images in dozens of darkened rooms. And then, as if by magic, transcendence appears.

It has taken a few weeks – and a second viewing – to properly process Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Often baffling, frustrating, unhelpful, yet emotional and evocative in ways I couldn’t put my finger on, I wrestled with it throughout the two and a half hour running time – searching for answers and meaning among the beautiful images, floating, soaring camerawork and weird diversions into cosmology and vulcanology.

Near the end I realised that I was doing it wrong. The Tree of Life isn’t a puzzle to be worked out – it’s a deeply personal hymn to the universe and to our unique place within it. It took a second viewing – one where I allowed myself to feel rather than think my way through it – before I could truly appreciate the wonder of Malick’s vision: grace and nature, the sacred and profane, the glorious and the banal are all equally cosmic and all equally precious. The Tree of Life will reward you more the less effort you put in.

The Tree of Life is available as a digital rental in Aotearoa but if you wanted to watch it on Blu-ray, ask me cicely and I will lend you mine.

Also in that Capital Times column: Caribbean cricket documentary Fire in Babylon; drama about reckless South African photojournalists, The Bang Bang Club; Cary Fukunaga’s “quite gripping and, yes, terribly romantic” version of Jane Eyre starring Mia Wasikowska and Michel Fassbender; moving Finnish documentary Steam of Life; and Ryan Reynolds perfecting his Ryan Reynolds persona in The Change-up. Fifteen years of that smirk and we still can’t get enough.

The post Celebrating 20 years: The Tree of Life appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

In the 20 years that I have been in this racket, I have produced two podcasts.

Cinematica was the first and was produced on contract to the Light House cinema chain who wanted a local equivalent to Kermode & Mayo. That ran every week from 2011 to 2014 and featured reviews, interviews and recordings of Q&A sessions from live events in the cinema. We even did a couple of live shows in front of audiences at the New Zealand International Film Festival. It was a bunch of fun to do (especially getting paid for it each week).

When that came to an end, co-host Kailey C and I went indie and started a similar weekly show called Rancho Notorious. That was recorded in my spare room in Newtown, Wellington, and featured guest reviewers each week who would be bribed to appear with a slap-up dinner cooked by the editor-in chief (with sous chef support from Kailey’s partner Ian and the EIC’s son Sebastian).

I’ve always been ambitious for these things so when December 2014 came around, I suggested that we sum up the end of the movie year with a special edition of the show. Thus was A Very Rancho Christmas was born. Invited guests joined us for a full turkey Christmas dinner with crackers and bubbly and we recorded the whole thing as we ate. Guests at the first one were Stuff critic Graeme Tuckett, actor John Leigh, Rancho science correspondent Mike Dickison, as well as Sebastian, Ian and Kaarin Macaulay¹.

It sounds a bit rough because we only had three mics (and I am not an audio engineer despite what I do for a living) but it was a lot of fun. So much fun that the next year we did it again. By this time, I was on staff at RNZ and Rancho Notorious had joined the stable of podcasts published by the state broadcaster². Again, too ambitious for my own good, I wanted to do something new and stream it live to the world. That wasn’t really a thing back then but the RNZ culture at the time was to ask for forgiveness rather than permission so we tried our luck.

At that time RNZ streamed the NZ Parliament on a dedicated URL, but by December the House was no longer in session and the stream was silent. So, we found out who could give us access to it and, with the help of RNZ engineer Marc Chesterman (who also recorded us) we broke new ground once again.

I sometimes imagine a poor North Korean intelligence official tasked with monitoring the NZ Parliament for global security reasons being shaken from his slumber by our raucous yuletide shindig – glasses clinking, crackers being popped, celebrity impersonations, etc. Perhaps there was some secret code embedded in the merriment.

By 2016, Kaarin and I were married and we had moved out here to Silverstream. Marc Chesterman brought a bunch of RNZ gear once more and Sarah McMullan, John Leigh and Mike Dickison told us about their year at the movies. We also had a pre-recorded appearance by Australian ABC Radio National critic Jason Di Rosso talking the year in Aussie film.

By this time, RNZ was starting to take its podcast products more seriously (and keeping a closer eye on the bright ideas that were being had by contributors) and in a few short months I would be made redundant when the bean counters realised that having two salaried film critics was something of a luxury when they could barely fund their newsroom.

It was also proving challenging to get guests to travel all the way out to Upper Hutt, no matter what the culinary offerings were, so Rancho went on hiatus for a while³. There has been talk that the time (and technology) is right to bring it back, so watch this space.

1. Before she became Kaarin Slevin in 2016. ︎
2. That final season of Rancho can still – amazingly – be found on the RNZ website although the feed has been deleted. ︎
3. I slipped a couple of extra episodes in to the feed when I was offered interviews that RNZ radio didn’t have room for. ︎

The post Celebrating 20 years: A Very Rancho Christmas appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

In the past few weeks I have spent more time than I probably should on design tweaks (and hopefully performance enhancements) and I’m going to kid myself that I have been doing it all for this celebration week.

On 4 October 2006, my first film review column was printed in Wellington’s Capital Times making this week the 20th anniversary of me becoming a professional critic. The CT didn’t have a website and I knew I was going to want these thoughts to be available for as long as possible, so I fired up this website as a repository or archive (or legacy).

During my Capital Times tenure, I made it my mission to watch and critique every film released theatrically in Wellington and I’ve never counted how many films that means but it’s a lot. The CT gig led to me joining the RNZ whānau and from 2015 their website got first dibs in exchange for small amounts of money. Then, in 2023, I thought I would try and make my fortune with Substack and we know how that turned out.

But my heart has always been here. There are 20 years worth of digital scars hidden all over this website and every time I come across a page that hasn’t had a haircut for a while, I have to get in there and give it a good tidy-up. Websites aren’t monuments, they are gardens to be tended. Even last week, when the latest design tweak was introduced, I realised that every page was somehow going to have be checked and updated (and in many cases, replacement images found). It won’t happen all at once, but there’s plenty to keep me going.

The first film reviewed in that first column was Danis Tanovic’s version of an unproduced Kieslowski script, L’enfer:

Three sisters are estranged from each other and, seemingly, from life itself. Sophie (Emmanuelle Béart¹) discovers her husband is having an affair; Anne (Marie Gillain), the youngest, has just been dumped by her University professor lover and Céline (Karin Viard) seems doomed to a lonely existence running errands for her neighbours and visiting their mute mother (Carole Bouquet) until a handsome stranger reads some philosophy to her in a bar. The three women’s stories run parallel to each other until the truth is revealed about the family tragedy that traumatised them all.

The acting is first rate. The often icy Béart digs very deep for a change and Viard has one heartbreaking scene where she finally opens up to someone and then soon wishes she hasn’t. Oscar-winner Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land) directs with a sympathetic eye on Kieslowski’s legacy, though the fact that every image seems to have to carry significant metaphoric weight can get a little wearing.

I’d like to point you at an online location where you can stream L’enfer but – like all of Tanovic’s work including the Oscar-winning No Man’s Land – it is MIA. If you are in Wellington, Aro Street Video still has it on DVD.

Also reviewed in that first Capital Times column: Will Ferrell vehicle, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, “girl-power gymnastics fantasy” Stick It (starring Missy Peregrym and “a decrepit looking Jeff Bridges”), and an early entry in what I call “unwatchable films about unlistenable music”, American Hardcore.

Each day this week, I’m going to pick a piece from the archive that I am fond of, whether it is available to stream or not. Forgive the indulgence but this feels like my life’s work in these pages and I’m really proud of it.

1. This is not the only film called L’enfer that Emmanuelle Béart has appeared in. ︎

The post Celebrating 20 years: Day one appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

Just in time for Christmas, The Sopranos is getting the collectors’ item treatment with a complete box set with all 86 episodes remastered in 4K – plus an extensive bunch of extras.

All of which reminds me of a review I wrote a couple of years ago for the Substack newsletter:

I’ve only seen a couple of episodes of The Sopranos, and not likely to persevere beyond that, but I am extremely interested in its place in the pantheon of prestige series television and the growth of HBO over the past 25 years, so I was glad to watch Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos, a new two-part documentary by Alex Gibney.

The first thing it taught me was that for years I have thought that David Chase (The Sopranos) and David Milch (Deadwood) were the same person and I’m glad to be able to make that distinction finally.

The second was the realisation that in 1999, when The Sopranos first aired, HBO was mainly known for movies and boxing and that the executives who greenlit the show didn’t really know what they were doing either, giving Chase plenty of leeway to basically invent 21^st century television as he went along.

Gibney’s film is built around an extended – and somewhat reluctant – interview with Chase and the abundant behind-the-scenes material that HBO have made available. Fans will love the insights into favourite characters and moments but I enjoyed the insight into the mysteries of storytelling and how important casting is. And what a gamble it is.

The prolific Alex Gibney has a new film in festivals at the moment – an incendiary four-hour documentary called Musk. Three guesses who it is about (and how he feels about it).

That September 2024 newsletter also featured reviews of Blumhouse horror Speak No Evil with James McAvoy, Kiwi body-horror Grafted, French drama Marguerite’s Theorem and excellent Aussie sports documentary The Blind Sea.

Where to watch Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos

Aotearoa: Streaming on HBO Max

Australia: Streaming on Binge, FoxtelNow and HBO Max

Canada: Streaming on Crave

Ireland: Streaming on Sky

India: Streaming on Hotstar

USA: Streaming on HBO Max

UK: Streaming on Sky

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I wasn’t planning on posting anything to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11¹ but the other night I watched the handsome new 4K disc of Phil Joanou’s 1990 neo-noir State of Grace which features the twin towers in almost every exterior shot.

It feels like it was some kind of Manhattan bylaw that filmmakers couldn’t go more than five minutes before including another angle of the World Trade Center. It’s still haunting and probably will be for the rest of my days.

Joanou had come to prominence directing the1988 U2 documentary Rattle & Hum (dismissed by many because it was about U2 but it’s a good film) and State of
Grace was his entry into the big time world of feature films. Set among the Irish criminal gangs of Hell’s Kitchen, it starred three hot young actors: Sean Penn as the undercover cop asked to rat out his best friends; Gary Oldman as the hot head, Jackie, and Robin Wright as Kathy, Jackie’s sister who is trying to escape the criminal life that her family leads.

Maturity comes in the form of Ed Harris as Jackie and Kathy’s older brother, Frankie. He recognises that the Westies (as the film was originally going to be called) are small potatoes in the New York organised crime scene and tries to forge an alliance with one of the Italian families, a choice that will lead to tragedy².

It’s interesting to note that baby Sean Penn looks more like his brother Chris in this picture than he does Sean, and Oldman is in the same ‘letting it all hang out’ mode that he showed us in Sid & Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears. Wright also climbs the walls in a couple of scenes mainly because there’s not enough on the page for her to latch on to. And they all get handed a lesson when veteran Burgess Meredith turns up for one scene as a frightened old man with a debt to the gang and important plot information to impart.

This was a touchstone film for me when it came out – I’ve been carrying around the VHS copy I recorded off Sky for years – but I remember it being much more atmospheric than this. It degenerates into repetitive sweary screaming matches too often for its own good.

Apparently, coming out the same week as Goodfellas did the picture no favours at the box office (and a comparison between the two does it no favours at all) but the new 4K transfer looks beautiful in the wide exteriors and a bit soft in the close-ups and Joanou’s music selections are as choice today as they were then – Lyle Lovett!

Jordan Cronenweth’s cinematography gets a really good showcase here: the rain soaked streets lit by fluorescent streetlights and neon signs and the swirling smoke from the ever-present cigarettes that Penn himself remains addicted to³.

Incidentally, Frankie’s right hand man, Nicholson, is played veteran character actor R.D. Call. Call got his first pro gig on an episode of the TV show Barnaby Jones that was directed by Sean Penn’s father, Leo Penn, and he seems to have been something of a good luck charm for Sean, appearing in about half a dozen pictures with him⁴.

Where to watch State of Grace

Physical media: Imprint 4K UHD limited edition from ViaVision. The UHD format is region-free by design.

Aotearoa: Streaming on Prime Video

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video or Tubi (free with ads)

Ireland: Not currently available online

India: Not currently available online

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, Fubo, MGM+, Philo or Roku (free with ads)

UK: Streaming on Prime Video

1. I’ve covered that a few times here. ︎
2. The story of the Irish mob in Hell’s Kitchen is being told once again in the new series The Westies, starring J.K. Simmons. Streaming on Neon in Aotearoa. ︎
3. He was asked to stop smoking three times at this year’s Golden Globes, apparently. ︎
4. And one that Penn directed – Into the Wild. ︎

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After two well-received feature films in cinemas, Goodbye Pork Pie and Utu, Geoff Murphy clearly felt that he’d earned enough respect to credit himself as Geoffrey Murphy¹ on his next film, the adaptation of Craig Harrison’s acclaimed local science fiction novel, The Quiet Earth. This was a prestige production, a serious piece of cinema, after all.

Scientist Zack Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) wakes one morning to find the global experiment he has been working on has caused all life on Earth to instantly vaporise. As he searches Auckland for signs of any other survivors, he gets more and more unhinged, eventually proclaiming himself President of the World from the balcony of a local mansion.

It’s a typically bravura performance by Lawrence, rendered all the more impressive by how he dials it back when he finally comes across a couple of other people – young feminist Joanne (Alison Routledge) and Māori hunter² Api (Peter Smith).

Hobson’s observations suggest that “the Effect” that caused the annihilation is ramping up to the finish the job unless they pack the New Zealand Army’s entire stocks of gelignite on to the back of a truck and destroy the facility that’s key to the global network, but before that he has to reckon with the twisting relationships between the unlikely allies.

In the mid-80s, we were all painfully aware of how close we were to global nuclear catastrophe but there was also the fear of the “Neutron Bomb”, an American invention intended to wipe out humans while leaving irradiated infrastructure intact. Cities emptied of life but still functioning – at the time that seemed like the worst kind of war crime.

Watching Murphy’s film for the first time last night (it screened at the Wellington Film Society but wild weather kept us home so we simultaneously watched Umbrella’s superbly restored Blu-ray), I was taken by how mid-80s it was – so much a product of its time. For a while our protagonists hold up in an 80s modernist white concrete mansion overlooking the Hauraki Gulf, a house that would be seen as deeply aspirational not long after in TV shows like Gloss.

Murphy (and writers Bill Baer, Sam Pillsbury and Lawrence himself) weren’t to know this at the time but what they were making was a metaphor for New Zealand itself in 1985. One country – the conservative one led by the authoritarian Rob Muldoon – was rapidly disappearing to be replaced by something else. But what?

Perhaps they did sense it. You can read the film as a prediction that the stale white middle-class males would become extinct and the future would be led by groups that old New Zealand had consciously marginalised – women and Māori³.

That wasn’t entirely misplaced – David Lange’s fourth Labour government made genuine attempts to open things up socially, for example with the expansion of the Waitangi Tribunal’s remit and homosexual law reform – but the real winners from the seismic shifts in New Zealand in the mid-80s were the same people who always seem to win.

Where to watch The Quiet Earth

Aotearoa: Digital rental from AroVision

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video

Canada: Streaming on Tubi or Cineverse (both free with ads) or Midnight Pulp

Ireland: Digital rental

India: Not currently available

USA: Streaming on The Roku Channel, Cineverse (free with ads) or Midnight Pulp

UK: Streaming on Arrow Video

Further listening

It’s been a busy old time for radio gigs recently, hence why sitting and typing here hasn’t been a priority.

On Sunday 30 August, I joined Perlina Lau on RNZ Culture 101 to review Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, James Ashcroft’s Netflix thriller The Whisper Man, and the new documentary Lomu.

Then, last Thursday I was chatting to Susana Lei’ataua on RNZ Nights about the 35th anniversary of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The West Wing finally arriving on New Zealand’s version of HBO Max, and the superb kiwi gothic horror Mārama on Māori+.

And – two Sundays in a row! – last weekend, I was on Culture 101 with Perlina Lau once again to talk about some female-focused genre films: Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant!, Fall 2: Deadpoint and The Runner.

1. For a vivid portrait of the larrikin world that Murphy, Lawrence and the Blerta collective inhabited in the 1970s, I commend Nick Bollinger’s book about the New Zealand counter-culture, Jumping Sundays. In it he tells a story of Murphy, between jazz and film gigs, taking a job as a Wellington primary school relief teacher and growing 30 marijuana plants in the classroom as a science experiment. ︎
2. That’s a hunter who is Māori, not a hunter of Māori, to be clear. ︎
3. The sequence where the trio rest up in the wharenui of Api’s home marae was especially touching. ︎

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What’s that saying? “History. It’s just one bloody thing after another.”

A great film about good intentions and unintended consequences has just landed on Netflix. Charlie Wilson’s War is a great combination of writer and director (Sorkin and Nichols) and effortless star power (Hanks and Roberts). It’s brilliant¹.

I reviewed the cinema release in the Capital Times in January 2008:

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day in 1979. They remained in the country, brutally suppressing the local resistance, until they were forced to leave in 1989: almost ten years of occupation that destroyed one country and ruined another. One side of the story was told in the recent film The Kite Runner: in it we saw a vibrant and cosmopolitan culture bombed back to the stone age by the Soviets and their equally one-eyed Taliban replacements.

For peaceniks like myself, the Soviet aggression was an inconvenient fact, difficult to acknowledge during our efforts to prevent nuclear annihilation at the hands of war-mongerers like Ronald Reagan. While we were marching for peace and disarmament, playboy Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) was secretly funding the Mujahideen insurgents to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, providing them with the weapons that would bring down the Russians.

With the help of a renegade CIA-man (wonderful Philip Seymour Hoffman), a Texan socialite (Julia Roberts), an Israeli spy (Ken Stott) and President Zia, dictator of Pakistan (Om Puri), Wilson persuaded, cajoled, threatened and coerced Congress to pay for all this – without them even knowing what it was for. Aaron Sorkin’s script is razor-sharp, often very funny, and does a great job of not spelling out all the lessons we should be learning. Charlie Wilson’s War may have brought about the end of the Cold War but it also opened up Afghanistan to the brutal fundamentalism of the Taliban, increased the influence of the Saudis in the region and indirectly led to the Iraqi poo-fight we are in now. As Wilson says, it’s all about the endgame.

Also in that January 2008 Capital Times column (if you feel so inclined): Jason Reitman’s comedy Juno (which I imagine plays pretty differently since Elliot Page’s transition), found footage monster movie Cloverfield, lame parody Meet the Spartans and “well-intentioned” literary adaptation The Jane Austen Book Club.

Where to watch Charlie Wilson’s War

Aotearoa: Streaming on Netflix

Australia: Streaming on Netflix

Canada: Digital rental

Ireland:Streaming on Netflix

India: Streaming on Netflix or Hotstar

USA: Digital rental

UK: Streaming on Netflix

Further listening

I have been given the secret method of embedding RNZ audio here after a long period where I assumed it was just broken². On Sunday 16 August, I gave & Sons a pretty scathing review which you can listen to here:

In a rare occurrence, Michelle Langstone last Sunday gave me a bit of a serve by way of reply. It’s totally cool for us both to see the same things in a film and react in completely opposite ways (especially when she expresses her opinion so credibly and enthusiastically). It reminded me of the old podcasting days, when we would get in a room and spar about things. Maybe I should bring back a podcast here …³

1. I even own a copy. ︎
2. Now I have to go back through dozens of posts here and update the code. Sigh. ︎
3. Maybe I will. ︎

The post Something to watch tonight: Charlie Wilson’s War appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

This has been a holy grail for me for 20 years. I saw it at the New Zealand International Film Festival in 2006, was blown away, and then waited in vain for it to come back to cinemas or get any kind of a home release.

Imagine my surprise then, while I was digging into the deeper recesses of my local library’s Kanopy streaming service, to find it lurking there. Would it still hold up after all this time?

It’s not a promising premise: an alcoholic widower living alone with his cats in a Bucharest apartment, has a headache and then a stomach ache. Eventually a neighbour persuades the ambulance service to come and visit but it’s a Saturday night and there has been a big bus crash in the city with lots of casualties.

Across the night, he is shuttled around several different hospitals while his condition continues to deteriorate. We meet several different teams of medical professionals, none of whom are particularly committed to his welfare once they smell the alcohol on his breath.

It won the Un Certain Regard prize for best first film at Cannes in 2005¹ and it was the first big hit² in an exciting run of Romanian New Wave films that included 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Beyond the Hills, Sieranevada and Graduation.

When I realised that I was going to get another chance to see the film, I wondered how the problems that Mr. Lazarescu encounters would compare with the documented experiences that New Zealanders are having with our own health system. My memory of the film was of a scathing indictment of systemic failure and I was all primed to use it to have a go at our own.

But a second viewing suggests that I would be wrong. There is overcrowding but the patients are patient. Patronising doctors refuse to listen to other opinions but that’s more of a ‘them’ thing than something baked in to the system. What director Cristi Puiu does here is create fascinating, defined characters every step of the way, all of whom come with their own baggage, all of whom wish they were somewhere else in the middle of a stressful Saturday night. It’s a production line and Mr. Lazarescu is just another product being passed along it. (And for some reason, all of the young female doctors and nurses look like supermodels.)

But there was something else that hit even harder this time around – how close to home the story has become. Mr. Lazarescu is only 63 but looks a lot older. His neighbour calls him “Engineer” so he may have been somebody once. His living room has posters of the English 80s pop star Kim Wilde.

I was 58 last birthday and had a brief spell in our local hospital system earlier this year. The care was exemplary and the follow-up has been deeply gratifying. But I am now in the target market for stories like this. It’s no longer theoretical. I found it to be more personally confronting than I was ready for, to be honest.

Back in 2006, Bill Gosden practically begged audiences to come to the NZIFF screenings:

It’s sometimes the case that the greatest movies are the hardest ones to persuade an audience to see, and this truly great movie is surely one of them. But if you don’t believe that a Romanian drama about a 63-year-old drunk trying to obtain the medical attention he’s convinced he needs could be the year’s most mesmerising, suspenseful, darkly funny, shrewdly humane and spiritually challenging movie, then it can only be because you have not yet seen The Death of Mr Lazarescu.

…

Puiu’s spectacle of life going on is as daunting in its heedless inexorability as death itself. Magnificent.

As I said, this has been almost impossible to see here in NZ since 2006 and the version that is streaming on Kanopy seems to be of dubious origin. Looking like a badly ripped copy of a Hong Kong fleamarket pirate DVD, it’s hard to recommend spending two and a half hours with this version.

I see that Criterion Channel has it in the US so I’ll check that version and report back³.

Where to watch The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

Aotearoa: Streaming on Kanopy⁴

Australia: Digital rental (Google)

Canada: Not currently available

Ireland: Not currently available

India: Not currently available

USA: Streaming on Criterion Channel

UK: Not currently available

Further listening

Had a great time last night talking screens with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights. Made the case that the next season of Sugar on Apple TV should be more like The Rockford Files; gave a shoutout to Gavin Shoebridge for his YouTube motoring reviews; and also reviewed the Anthony Bourdain portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-dickhead movie, Tony.

1. Unlike now when Cannes titles arrive almost immediately, this one took a year to get to Wellington. ︎
2. “Big hit”. ︎
3. Yup, the Criterion Channel version is perfect. ︎
4. Available through participating public libraries. Titles may vary by library. ︎

The post Something to watch tonight: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

Holy macaroni, this has been sitting in draft for a while. So long that at least one of these titles is now on a streaming service and I don’t think any of them are still in cinemas¹. Let’s see how much of these I can remember!

How lucky are we that we get to see the greatest filmmaker ever to do it still working in front of us?

Classical music? Mozart’s been dead for centuries. Painting? Rembrandt knew a thing or two but we’ve got all we are ever going to get from him. But in cinema, Steven Spielberg is still pumping them out at the age of 79, still making hugely entertaining but highly personal works that make brilliant use of all the tools that he has in his toolkit.

Disclosure Day is more overtly personal than most Spielberg films. He gets a story credit (regular collaborator David Koepp punched it up into a screenplay) and that story returns him to his endless fascination with the question, are we alone in the universe?

Whistle-blower Josh O’Connor has a backpack full of evidence that the government – and its shady corporate allies – have kept the existence of aliens secret for decades so that we can exploit their technologies and experiment on their physiology. As O’Connor tries to stay one step ahead of the Feds, TV weather presenter Emily Blunt (a career best performance) is receiving mysterious transmissions straight into her noggin, allowing her to read, understand – and most crucially – empathise with the people that she meets on her own journey to find out why she has been chosen to receive this gift.

It’s a propulsive chase movie and every episode shows off Spielberg’s talent for visual storytelling – some of the chase scenes reminded me of his debut feature, The Sugarland Express back in 1974 – and it builds to an emotional climax where Mr. Spielberg gives the big payoff to a character we have only just met – “NBC Anchor” played by Courtney Grace. A bravura climax².

You can hear my audio conversation about Disclosure Day with Perlina Lau for RNZ Culture 101 here.

Backrooms starts out unsettling and ends up unsatisfying. Prodigy Kane Parsons has expanded his web series about abandoned urban interiors and their potential for nightmare into a feature that tries to wrap a narrative around his disturbing images, but he’s a much stronger image maker than he is a storyteller. At least for the time being.

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the owner of a failing stripmall discount furniture store, disappearing into an alcohol-fuelled world of bitterness and frustration. Investigating some flickering lights, he discovers that his basement contains a portal to some mysteriously surreal rooms that eventually become populated with creatures from his own subconscious. His therapist (Renate Reinsve) finds herself being tormented by these characters, much as she was in their therapy sessions.

While Backrooms has joined Obsession as one of the breakout box office indie horrors of the year, I found myself wanting more than a 90-minute meme, no matter how visually striking it was.

I watched Backrooms on the same day as Masters of the Universe and was surprised to find the latter got more interesting the more I thought about it while the first one got less so.

Travis Knight’s reboot of the toy franchise adventure plays to the story’s weird strengths rather than trying to overcome its weaknesses and is decent campy fun as a result. I’ve heard people say that it reminded them of the animated series more than the 80s Dolph Lundgren feature but as I have seen neither of those, I can’t comment. What did come through is a respect for the wildly inappropriate imaginations of the toy designers – characters named Meckaneck and Fisto, for example – and the way that children would play with them. It reminded me a bit of the Lord Business aspects of the Lego Movies – a child’s fantasy brought to live with action figures.

Amazon contract player Nicholas Galitzine³ leads the ensemble – funnier as He-Man than as the stranded-on-Earth fish-out-of-water Prince Adam – and Jared Leto channels Terry-Thomas as arch-villain Skeletor.

Ed Solomon was a writer on one of the most inventive sitcoms of all time, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. Now, 40 years later, he’s written a screenplay that on the surface is less innovative but is precisely … precise enough to give a craftsman like Steven Soderbergh plenty to get his teeth into.

Mostly a smart two-hander showcasing the contrasting styles of Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen, The Christophers delivers scene after scene of insightful and amusing drama.

McKellen is, I suppose, a former artist. Is that an appropriate description for a painter who no longer paints? Does he remain an artist forever, even if the actual work has dried up? He makes a living trading on the notoriety of his past work, recording birthday messages for fans. His children (James Corden and Jessica Gunning) are concerned that he is frittering away whatever they might expect as an inheritance. Relatively talentless themselves, a final payout from the great man is their last best hope.

All that’s left is a final series of his most famous works. The Christophers are tender portraits of a former lover but that relationship ended in such a way that the final run of Christophers were never finished and lie unloved in the artist’s garret. If he were to finally pull his finger out and complete them, they would surely be worth millions.

But the grumpy old bugger will do no such thing. The children hatch a plan to steal them, have another artist finish them and them hide them away to be “discovered” after he dies. This is where Ms Coel comes in. A thwarted artist herself, with a talent for imitation, they ask her to become his assistant, secure the Christophers and spirit them away and finish them.

Except that McKellen’s artist is too canny and too unpredictable for that plan to go smoothly. A satisfying caper from beginning to end.

I reviewed The Christophers for RNZ Nights and you can hear my conversation with Emile Donovan here.

Parody movies like Scary Movie (aka Scary Movie 6, a name which is more accurate) are by their nature hit-or-miss. What interested me watching it was, which bits worked and why. The franchise has been returned to the Wayans Brothers⁴ who started it nearly 30 years ago

One of the notable outcomes of this reversal is that the Black humour (as opposed to the black humour) has much more bite to it than the rest which feels very tired. The film comes alive when it leans in to the topic of race. Interesting but not enough to make me think about it again for nanosecond after I click send on this review.

I reviewed Scary Movie in the same Culture 101 segment that featured Disclosure Day.

Brian Cox has been on a lot of film sets in his time but Glenrothan is the first where he has had the director’s chair to sit in. He also acts as Sandy, head of the family distillery in picture postcard west of Scotland. At first glance you think he is playing his usual curmudgeon but the arrival of his estranged brother Donal (Alan Cumming) from a multi-decade American exile reveals that there is much more to both their stories.

Donal left when their mother died, driven away by the constant bullying of their father. But it was Sandy who really needed to leave and when he’s beaten to the punch, he reluctantly stays to mind the business, despite the fact that Donal was the whisky blending genius.

Glenrothan is a neat little portrait of two brothers finding their way back to each other with the help of Shirley Henderson’s much put-upon distillery manager and Donal’s daughter (Alexandra Shipp). When this turns up on one of your streaming services, give it some of your time. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

I reviewed Glenrothan for RNZ Nights.

1. At least not in Wellington. ︎
2. “Bravura Climax” could be my drag name. ︎
3. He has been in several Prime Video movies including The Sheep Detectives, The Idea of You, Red, White & Royal Blue and Cinderella. ︎
4. Or more accurately, the Wayans family as the name Wayans is all over the credits for the picture. ︎

The post Recent releases: Disclosure Day, Masters of the Universe, Backrooms, The Christophers, Scary Movie and Glenrothan appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

Every so often an anniversary sneaks up behind you and smacks you on the arse.

Neill Blomkamp’s genius science fiction thriller District 9 was released in Australia and New Zealand this week in 2009 – 17 years ago¹. In my review at the time, I waxed lyrical about how it signalled a golden age of commercial filmmaking in Wellington – while District 9 was shot in South Africa, Blomkamp was taken under the wing of Peter Jackson and Wētā, etc. and the effects and finishing were done here:

It’s going to be a massive few months for Wellywood – District 9 seems to have come out of nowhere to take the world by storm (Currently #35 in the IMDb All Time list, just below Citizen Kane. I kid you not) and The Lovely Bones trailer is whetting everyone’s appetite at just the right time. This Friday, Wellington audiences are the first in the world to see a fifteen minute sampler of the locally shot Avatar (Readings from 11.45am, free of charge) and three more Film Commission features are due for release between now and Christmas: The Strength of Water, Under the Mountain and The Vintner’s Luck, all of which have a significant Wellington component to them.

I haven’t rewatched District 9 since I obtained the Blu-ray (probably 16 years ago) but reading my review tempts me to get it down off the shelf and give it another spin. If you don’t have a disc handy, there are other ways to watch listed below.

Aliens have arrived on earth but unlike in the 70s and 80s they aren’t here to tell us how to connect with the universe and expand our consciousness. And it isn’t like the 90s when they arrived to caramelize us with their death rays. These aliens have arrived for remarkably 21^st century reasons – their ship is crippled and with no way home they are destined to become refugees, outcasts, misunderstood second-class citizens.

So, of course, it’s only appropriate that they arrive in Johannesburg where until recently vast numbers of people were kept in sub-human conditions, living in shanty towns. The parallels are obvious but not hammered home too heavily but this is a Wingnut film first and foremost so the satire is covered in body parts and human and alien fluids of various viscosities. The heretofore unknown (but brilliant) Sharlto Copley plays the hapless Wikus Van Der Merwe, ordered to lead a forced relocation of the alien “prawns” to a new tent city, but is it slum clearance or ethnic cleansing?

I predicted great things for young Blomkamp but his career seems to have gone off the boil – he fell out with Jackson at a fairly early stage and, while I am very fond of Matt Damon in Elysium, Gran Turismo was not much of a return to form. The latest news stories are of Blomkamp experimenting with generative AI so I fear his actual filmmaking skills may be lost to us.

Also in that October 2009 Capital Times column: former Wellingtonian Christine Jeffs’ Sunshine Cleaning (starring Emily Blunt and Amy Adams), Wellington documentary maker Luit Bieringa’s film about the legendary art dealer Peter McLeavey, The Man in the Hat², 2001 “Ealing-style romantic comedy, The Rocket Post, and Renée Zellweger in the horror film Case 39.

Where to watch District 9

Aotearoa: Digital rental

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video

Canada: Streaming on Crave, Starz or Hollywood Suite

Ireland: Digital rental

India: Not currently available

USA: Digital rental

UK: Streaming on Sony Pictures Core³

1. I know the review I’m linking to is dated 9 October. I’m not sure why. Maybe, the 13 August release date on IMDb was for a premiere? ︎
2. Not to be confused with The Man in the Hat. ︎
3. Whatever that is. ︎

The post Something to watch tonight: District 9 appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

The arguably unnecessary¹ fourth season of Ted Lasso has just started streaming on Apple TV. I’d like to take this opportunity to have a wee skite about being the first NZ critic to spot the show and respond to it.

From September 2020:

Dan Slevin hates it when he likes things he is supposed to hate.

It’s a very odd feeling – to stumble across a TV show late on a Saturday night that in every aspect appears to be something you’ll hate but then find after about ten minutes that you love it and you binge all six currently available episodes in one go.

I don’t really do comedy. I’m more of a prestige drama man, now. 30-minute sitcoms are even less my style. I’ve watched the greats, obviously. Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers and a few episodes of Cheers, but for the most part I have found life to be too short and there are too many good actual films to get caught up in “shows about nothing” or “shows about groups of friends”.

I’m not a big fan of Jason Sudeikis, either. In fact, I have given him scathing reviews for this very website. I usually find his pseudo-likeability to be the opposite of charming – a one-joke schtick that gets old very quickly.

And don’t start me about football. Football is the blood running through my veins, a source of distress and drama. As a West Ham fan, football is tragedy played out every week². Football is not a source of comedy, especially not an easygoing, soft-centred, delightfully watchable comedy like this one.

You can read the rest here. I think I called it pretty well.

Where to watch Ted Lasso

Worldwide: Apple TV (formerly known as Apple TV+)

1. But is any television really necessary? ︎
2. This was written before West Ham became Lasso’s nemesis club and we became the butt of even more jokes. ︎

The post Something to watch tonight: Ted Lasso (seasons 1-3) appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

I’d like to thank everyone for their patience while posts and newsletters have been so sporadic recently. Since moving everything back here from Substack, I’ve had a tendency to want to fix things that are annoying me here rather than do the hard stuff which is writing. You might say that it’s a bit like washing the car every Sunday and then never taking it for a drive and you may be right, but some of the recent changes have meant that the site actually crashes every night and the server has to be restarted. Not a problem I ever had with Substack but at least I can vouch for the absence of Nazis in my bar.

I’d like to apologise especially to Auckland readers who are now seven days in to a 12-day Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival that I’m only just getting around to previewing. As I said to RNZ Culture 101’s host Anna Thomas the Sunday before last, I’m not sure that previewing about five percent of the titles in the programme allows me to comment on the quality of the whole event, but that’s never stopped me before.

Anyway, here are some capsules of the films I have managed to beg, steal or borrow before kick-off.

Every generation needs an animated movie that makes them cry and the current one is a better candidate than most. Ugo Bienvenu’s (brilliant name, by the way) Arco manages to tug on the heartstrings pretty effectively while also having a fundamentally optimistic view of the far-off future. (The near future, less so.)

Ten-year-old Arco lives in the late 30th century where people use time travel suits to visit the flora and fauna of the past and preserve it for the future. Pissed off that he is too young to go and see some dinosaurs, Arco borrows his sister’s outfit and stumbles back as far as 2075 – a recognisable future of our own that at first seems like it ain’t too bad but we soon discover the dark side of it. Arco makes friends with Iris who is being raised by a combination of a domestic robot called Mikki and holograms of her actual parents who are busy working in the city.

The film is essentially about Arco’s attempts to return home before a) his parents find that he is gone and b) civilisation collapses due to climate devastation.

Incidentally, the listing on the NZIFF website has Arco down as in French with English subtitles but the printed book says that most of the sessions are actually of the English dub featuring producer Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Will Ferrell and America Ferrera. I previewed that version and can vouch for it as suitable for most kids.

Arco’s time travelling power comes from a diamond that attaches to his forehead and coincidentally, an identically shaped piece of costume jewellery is the totem that runaway orphan Jeanne (Clara Pacini) carries with her in Lucile Hadžihalilović’s chilly mystery, The Ice Tower. Stumbling into reinvention, Jeanne becomes Bianca when she takes shelter for a night in a building that turns out to be a film studio where an unenthusiastic crew is shooting a version of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen.

The crew are unenthusiastic because the Queen is being played by a tyrannical movie star (Marion Cotillard) but also because there is a dreamlike quality to the entire exercise – as if this is fantasy, or faded memory or, you know, dreams. Cotillard’s Cristina takes a shine to Jeanne/Bianca as the pair realise how many parallels they share with each other’s life.

As chilly as it sounds, The Ice Tower also feels like a passing of the torch between Cotillard and the star-on-the-rise Pacini. Also of note, the fictional film’s director is played by Hadžihalilović’s life partner and regular collaborator, Gaspar Noé (in case you’ve ever wondered what he looked like).

Every year under the directorship of Paolo Bertolin, the NZIFF gets more up-to-date and the dinkum Aussie comedy The Fox is so new that there isn’t even a proper poster image for it yet.

A bunch of talented Australian comedians (and Jai Courtney) have been gathered together by Dario Russo for a deliciously dark romantic fable. Courtney plays boofhead Nick, who doesn’t know that his fiancé Kori (Emily Browning) is cheating on him with the local vet (Damon Herriman) who is, in the process, cheating on his wife (Claudia Doumit).

When he discovers the betrayal, Nick is persuaded by a talking fox with the voice of Olivia Colman that there is a solution – pushing Kori into a magic pit where she will re-emerge as a much more compliant participant in the relationship. The foul-mouthed magpie who is watching on (Sam Neill) isn’t so sure.

Vulgar, sexy and very, very Australian, The Fox is a grown-up crowd-pleaser and gets delightfully weirder the longer it goes on.

National Geographic bought the documentary The Tale of Silyan right out of Venice last year and it’s also going to be a crowd-pleaser (although of a very different kind). As the North Macedonian economy founders – no European Union to be an export market – farmers like Nikola struggle and the young people seek better opportunities in the West. When his children – and eventually his wife – leave for Germany, Nikola is left alone to either sell the farm and join them or slowly wither away.

In Disney fashion, he instead discovers a wounded stork – a bird that is not only symbolically important in Macedonia, their fertilising of the crops is vital to the continued health of the soil – and nurses it back to fitness, and get this, healing himself in the process.

A very pleasant 90-or-so minutes, I did find myself wondering how much manipulation there might have been behind the scenes and how much was actually organic.

Another documentary from the National Geographic family, Time and Water is a horse of a different colour. A kind of psychogeographic portrait of Iceland through the lens of poet Andri Snær Magnason and his remarkable family.

What happens when the glaciers that define the Icelandic culture and character recede at the same time as the memories of his grandparents, among the first people to unlock the remarkable secrets that those glaciers contain?

As Magnason goes back and forth between his fading grandparents and the disappearing glaciers, we get to understand the fragility of memory and of how it makes us who we are, whether we are people or a nation.

Understated but quietly devastating at the same time.

The German powerhouse Sandra Hüller reaches even greater heights as Rose, a female veteran of the Thirty Years War who has gone through life as a man. Somehow in possession of a document that entitles them to some property as an inheritance, they persuade the village elders to authorise the transfer and start her new life.

It’s not all that simple, however, as she is expected to take full part in village life, including marrying one of the local daughters and producing an heir. This is understandably challenging for Rose but before she can solve it, a child is actually born meaning that both Rose and her wife (Caro Braun) have secrets that they don’t want to have revealed.

Shot in striking black and white by Gerald Kerkletz, Markus Schleinzer’s film is formally satisfying and emotionally gripping. I think we are going to be hearing a lot about it when awards are handed out next year.

After Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie rocked my world a few weeks ago, it’s good to know that the Canadian freak flag continues to be flown by the crazy gang behind Buffet Infinity, a horror-satire told entirely using the media of cheap 90s late-night local TV commercials.

The battle between competing restaurants in the Westridge, Alberta, mall soon pales into insignificance when a giant sinkhole opens up in the car park. Except, it doesn’t. The mysterious hole is soon forgotten even though evidence suggests that it may be a demonic portal of some kind, but the battle between one café’s homemade special sauces and the constantly growing all-you-can-eat offering next door spills out into the community and every small business owner who fronts their own handheld commercials is now a target. Or a perpetrator. Or a vessel for the delivery of an unspeakable evil. Or something.

It loses its commitment to the bit at the end, in favour of something more explanatory, but it’s an extra fun ride while it lasts.

The New Zealand International Film Festival has already started in Tāmaki Makarau Auckland (until 9 August) and also plays:

Ōtautahi Christchurch – 6 August to 23 August
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington – 12 August to 23 August
Ōtepoti Dunedin – 14 August to 30 August
Ahuriri Napier – 27 August to 6 September
Kirikiriroa Hamilton, Matakana, Ngāmotu New Plymouth, Tauranga-Moana Tauranga, Whakaoriori Masterton, Whatū Nelson – 27 August to 9 September

Further reading

I managed to get myself quoted in Rolling Stone Australia’s preview of the anniversary NZIFF screenings of Duncan Sarkie’s Out of the Blue. My quote comes from this appreciation I wrote for NZ On Screen back in 2024. Out of the Blue was also a recommendation here in 2023 as well as an original review when it hit cinemas in October 2006.

It has just struck me that I am coming up to the 20th anniversary of my first reviews here (and at Capital Times). Blimey.

The post NZIFF Preview: 2026 edition appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

Roughly a year ago, I was guest hosting the late and lamented At the Movies show for RNZ and was lucky enough to feature this weird little gem:

Universal Language is an absurdist comedy in the spirit of Wes Anderson, the deadpan comic stylings of Aki Kaurismaki or the visual non sequiturs of Jacques Tati.

But it’s also entirely its own. If I told you that one of the plot points turns on a prize turkey being given its own seat on a bus to the turkey retailer who’s going to love, cherish and respect it before, well, you know the natural end of that story, you might get a sense of the delightful weirdness on offer.

…

Universal Language could only have emerged from an ultra-specific location, the extraordinary noggin of Rankin, but that uniqueness is what makes it so precious.

Filmmakers around the world should take the lesson from this, that any effort you make trying to please an audience and not trying to work out what is uniquely you, is wasted effort.

I’m not going to pretend that Universal Language is for everyone – although the Audience Award at Cannes and 24 other wins around the world might suggest otherwise – and I feel sure that this isn’t the kind of film you wander into because the Superman session was sold out, but if this sort of thing sounds like you, then it will be very you. It was for me.

You can read/listen to the whole thing at the RNZ website.

Incidentally, I also featured it in the old Substack newsletter along with James Gunn’s Superman, Rebel Wilson in Bride Hard and the latest Smurfs reboot (which I didn’t mind at all).

Where to watch Universal Language

Aotearoa: Digital rental from AroVision

Australia: Digital rental

Canada: Streaming on Crave

India: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Streaming on Kanopy (from participating libraries) or My Film Friend (free with ads)

UK: Not currently available online

The post Something to watch tonight: Universal Language appeared first on Funerals & Snakes. Generative AI was not used for the writing of this post/newsletter.

The revered critic David Thomson has a new book out¹ in which he questions many of his own long-held assumptions about cinema itself. At the age of 85, Thomson is having second thoughts about whether the greatest art form of them all has actually been a net good to society or not.

I haven’t read the book yet, just this profile of Thomson by the NY Times’ A.O. Scott (gift link), so I may not have apprehended his point fully, although Scott describes it thus:

According to Thomson, movies — especially American movies — have whitewashed history, glorified violence and made role models out of thugs, narcissists and murderers. The consequences shape our public life. Donald Trump “is our movie man,” Thomson writes, meaning that Trump’s presidency, which Thomson sees as a catastrophe, was foretold and to some extent made possible by Hollywood.

Thomson’s main example is Coppola’s The Godfather, a masterpiece (obviously) but one in which the audience finds themselves being won over by the character of Michael Corleone whose moral corruption begins explicably – and tactically – but who grows into a monster. But he’s our monster, the character we are asked to engage emotionally with, and (arguably) identify with:

“You could argue that ‘The Godfather’ is the key film,” Thomson said. “It did everything the medium is meant to do. It had a gang of absolutely brilliant people. That film brought together talents of an incredible nature.” In addition to Coppola and a cast that included Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and a parade of first-rate character actors, the movie owes its place in the canon to people like Dean Tavoularis, the production designer; the cinematographer Gordon Willis; and the sound editor Walter Murch.

“It was a smash hit,” Thomson went on. “It won all the prizes, and yet what is not talked about very much is what the film is about. For me what the film is about is persuading men that they want to be in the gang and in the family, and they want to do the terrible things the guys do and they want to shut the women out of the room.”

As I say, I haven’t read Thomson’s book yet, but I wonder whether there isn’t an even better example of that pernicious way that art can find to make the utterly immoral attractive.

In Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break – celebrating its 35th birthday this week – the ambitious young FBI detective hero (played by Keanu Reeves) is corrupted by the target of his investigation, a free-spirited surfer bank robber named Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). The pseudo-spiritual libertarianism of Bodhi’s lifestyle contrasts with the tightly knotted world of law enforcement – “Guess we just have an asshole shortage,” Reeves’ Johnny Utah is told by his manic boss (John C. McGinley). Under his breath he replies, “Not so far.”

Before watching ViaVision’s handsome new collectible 4K disc, I hadn’t seen Point Break since it came out in 1991 and it had settled into my memory as one of the 90s high concept dumb action films that had also become a bit of a punchline in films like Hot Fuzz. The taut set-pieces – the foot chase through the backyards and homes around Venice Beach is a highlight – the lovingly photographed damp male bodies in the late California sun, and that phenomenal skydiving sequence, are what we recall. That and the eternal question of whether Bodhi surfs his way to freedom off the coast of Australia² at the end.

But here is where I come back to Thomson’s “what is not talked about is what the film is about.” From his very first appearance, Swayze is so magnetic and so attractive, it is as if he’s walked on to the screen from a different film entirely. All of the tribal groups presented – cops and crims – are like carnival sideshow characters but Bodhi feels real, comfortably inhabiting his own skin in a way that Utah can only dream of. What a movie star Swayze was! His presence unbalances the film in a way that I think is not accidental.

We fall for him like Utah does but then we find out what he is capable of – his psychopathic disregard for anyone but himself and his capacity for violence to get what he wants. But by then it’s too late – for Utah and for the audience. We want Utah to get his man, of course, we are not totally amoral.

Or are we? By the end, even Utah doesn’t want that and he throws away his badge in disgust. Bodhi wins. One of the worst people in the world gets what he wants and we have been entertained watching him get it. The curse of Hollywood.

Where to watch Point Break

Physical media: 4K UHD from ViaVision. Available in NZ from JB Hi-Fi.

Aotearoa: Digital rental

Australia: Streaming on SBS On Demand or digital rental

Canada: Streaming non Criterion Channel, AMC+ or Crave (free with ads)

Ireland: Digital rental

India: Digital rental

USA: Streaming on Criterion Channel, AMC+, Peacock, Philo, Roku or Kanopy (from participating libraries), Fubo (free with ads) or Shout TV (free with ads)

UK: Streaming on Prime Video

Point Break (2015)

The 2015 remake of Point Break starring Edgar Ramirez as Bodhi made it into the “Shun at all costs” section of my RNZ survey of the films of 2016.

Sam Neill

The news of the week has been dominated by the sudden passing of New Zealand actor Sam Neill. Shortly after the news broke on Monday, RNZ asked me to write an appreciation of some of Sam’s films and I came up with Sir Sam Neill: A life in ten performances.

If you want to take a look at the video that I mention in the article, here it is.

1. A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies (Simon & Schuster) ︎
2. That scene doesn’t look very much like Australia and turns out to have been shot in the Pacific North West ︎

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