The Following: Season 2: DVD Review

The Following: Season 2: DVD Review

Rating: R18
Released by Warner Home Video and Roadshow Home Ent

If the first season of The Following was guilty of anything, it was of betraying its premise and falling into a James Bond style presentation of its bad guy.

The premise of Scream scribe Kevin Williamson's psychological thriller pitted Kevin Bacon's flawed FBI agent Ryan Hardy against supposedly interned serial killer and cult leader Joe Carroll (played with delicious relish by James Purefoy) - its first season concluded with Carroll apparently blown to kingdom come.

This second takes up with an uneasy calm before the killing storm erupts and the once thought dead return to put Hardy's life in misery yet again.

That's half the problem with The Following. While the first half of the first season worked brilliantly as the cat and mouse game and betrayals played out, it was too long, a mini-series event spun into 15 episodes of predictably dark TV.

The second season falls into a similar trap with darkness and plentiful stabbings on hand to leave you feeling unsettled. But the drama this time feels more like melodrama than anything truly gripping and the fact you're prepared for not everyone to be who they seem proving to be more of a narrative hindrance this time around.

Bacon and Carroll work well, but really The Following would have worked much better as a short run event - it lacks the tension this time out and really makes you feel that the true blood of the series is lacking the bite it needs.

Extras: Featurettes, comic con footage, deleted scenes - a plethora of solid material

Embrace of The Serpent and City of Gold - NZFF Review

Embrace of The Serpent and City of Gold - NZFF Review

Madness, obsession and a drive to document link these two titles from the New Zealand International Film Festival.

Ciro Guerra's Embrace of The Serpent, shot lusciously in black and white, centres around two timelines and two explorers and a shaman as they make their way through the Amazonian jungle. The first sees the young Shaman Karmakate alone in the jungle, the last of his race approached by a European explorer and his local charge. Imploring them to help locate the mythical yakruna plant to cure the ailing explorer Karmakate agrees to go with them in their search.

So, deep into the jungle the trio goes, and at the same time Guerra employs a narrative trick that sees us flitting to later in Karmakate's life where he's searching for the plant with another traveller. To reveal more would be to spoil the film, but even that implies there's some major twists and plot shockers ahead - there's simply not, more that revealing deeper information about Guerra's film is to rob it of its richness which transpires on the screen.

Occasional humour pervades the piece and watching one of the Europeans plead with a tribe leader to return his compass flips normal reasoning on its head, a solid reminder that cultures and customs remain wiped clean by history.

Based on actual trips by ethnographers Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, the film serves as a document to the times, to tribes lost to history and stands as a testament to the brutality man wroughts under the umbrella of civilisation.

Rubber plantations scatter the Amazon; the scars within the trees remind us that civilisation cuts deep and also hints at the terror the natives must have felt under the rubber barons. Equally, the Christian centre the trio stumble on presents a religion that terrorises as its MO rather than helping propagate a world of love. Both show the outside world to be nothing more than a curse on the Amazon and you'd be hard-pressed to leave with thoughts to the contrary.

Beautifully and evocatively shot, Embrace of the Serpent is a haunting film, a reminder that the festival can serve up a treat under the most auspicious of disguises.

Serving up is certainly high on City of Gold's agenda.

This gentle doco from director Laura Gabbert tantalises us with the notion of a piece about food critic Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer prize winning writer who's more at home among the street food than the swanky restaurants.

But what actually transpires is a long love letter to Los Angeles throughout the years, where Gold live, and to the people who give the food their love and serve to the man who loves their food.

With a few details about Gold scattered throughout, this piece keeps on the right side of hagiography with various colleagues and compadres of the scene espousing the virtues of Gold, who comes replete with long shaggy white hair. One even laments the fact they had discovered an eaterie which they were determined to keep secret but that ambition was foiled by Gold's review pinned up in the corner.

Along the journey, and in among the tantalising dishes served up by various smaller restaurants, Gold himself emerges as a critic of yore. There's very brief discussion of the place of the critic in this internet age and the value of opinion when it's blessed with experience (a thread I'm always, understandably, interested in) but this is really a piece about Los Angeles and the rich melting pot that lies within.

City of Gold is a document and snapshot of culinary history guaranteed to titillate and salivate, but it also throws into the mix a meshing and dollop of LA lifestyle throughout the years. Culturally it may enlighten, but what it will also do for LA, as well as the debate over the place of food critic, is to put plenty of eateries and treasures on the map that hitherto have remained hidden.

And at the end of the day, isn't that the job of the critic?

Sunshine Superman: NZFF Review

Sunshine Superman: NZFF Review

It's a double of jumping with Sunshine Superman, which comes with the Kiwi short Pelorus.

Director Alex Sutherland's redemption-at-the-end-of-a-rope tale clearly has more legs in it and may be expanded to a fuller feature, but for now this 70s filled short shines. It's the story of Chris Sigglekow who preceded AJ Hackett and potentially pioneered the bungy jump back in 1979 in Marlborough.

Pelorus

Expanded upon from doco The Jump, and rich in period detail (tins of beer, clothing and a calculator) Sutherland's concisely put together short is very much the embodiment of Kiwi No 8 wire - and explored his connection to the story. With its surfer shaggy haired lead exuding a welcoming warmth, Pelorus hints at a wider story (split with wife, failed attempts etc) that could readily be examined further - and that it could be time to tell the untold story thanks to this confident and heartfelt short.

So, it's no surprise that Pelorus is paired with doco Sunshine Superman, the story of Carl Boenish, the eternally smiling and energetic founder of BASE jumping aka throwing yourself off tall objects and soaring through the skies for the hell of it. The reason being simply, cos it's there...

But Boenish was also passionate about film-making too and ensured the jumps were always caught in camera so this really is not a film for those worried about heights in the slightest. Slow mo shots of the jumpers really tower off the screen and get you right into the action of the piece, while archive footage and interviews with those who knew Boenish best give good talking head. Interviews with Carl's wife Jean give some more insight into Carl's enthusiasm for the jumping as well as their relationship.

Bizarrely the film-makers have made some reconstructions of moments during Carl's life, such as taking phone calls and a few bits like that, which seem surplus to requirements. There are problems though, with more about Carl's life really going not much further than his passion for jumping; I never entirely felt I got to know the man (having viewed Being Evel 24 hours earlier, I feel that was a more rounded picture of what makes a daredevil tick). Outside of his jumping footage, which is beautifully captured and screams to be seen on the big screen, despite the effects of vertigo haunting your every move.

Boenish is described as having "an aura of life" but I'd suggest that this isn't fully conveyed in this film that makes great fist of jumping footage and conveying the thrill-seeking element of it all - I get how wondrous it is to jump off rocks and into the sky, but a deeper dive into Boenish's mentality and life would have seen this movie soar a little more than it does.

Girlhood: NZFF Review

Girlhood: NZFF Review

Bande de Filles has a star-in-ascendance in its lead actress the young Karidja Toure.

She plays troubled teen Marieme, who's facing an uncertain future thanks to suffering grades, a bullying brother and no chance to break out from looking after her younger sister and brother. Wrapped up on the outskirts of Paris in a council area, things are looking extremely dead-end - until she falls in with a trio of other girls around her age, headed up by the sassy and determined Lady.

However, one incident later and Lady's star is in the descent, thanks to the savage nature of the streets. This gives Marieme the chance she potentially needs to make something of her life.

This coming of age flick is utterly mesmerising, as mentioned, thanks to the lead Toure, who at once is fragile then turns ferocious at the drop of a hat. Yet, she never once loses her vulnerability as she broaches the opportunities womanhood is bringing her and that life is throwing her way.

But that's half the power of this subtly underplayed piece; it's a lament to the loss of youth, a paean to the negotiations we all make with ourselves as we try to forge our own identity and take our own steps to the next stage of life.

Deeply textured, extremely subtle and entirely captivating, Girlhood aka Bande De Filles is definitely worth your own time. It's not a showy film by any stretch of the imagination but the subtle changes in  Marieme's character from clothing to the way she holds herself represents all that is right with this film - it does the small things brilliantly and by the end you're entirely captivated by an extremely natural Toure and her fragile big brown eyes, and rooting for her to make something out of the drab world she's come from.

Bonds of friendship ebb and grow stronger within Girlhood - one moment sees the friends tell Marieme that she's screwing up, but give her the power to be able to make that mistake and come back to them - it's a powerful message that speaks with universality. The celebration of these bonds and these friends form the central basis of the burgeoning of age and Marieme's being "strong and alone" as one character remarks only serves to reinforce that notion.

Moving, powerful, strong and bravura, Girlhood is utterly unmissable - Toure is bound for greatness, so saddle up now and thank the New Zealand International Film Festival for giving you the chance to witness the start of a stunning transcendence.

Being Evel: NZFF Review

Being Evel: NZFF Review

Evel Knievel was a presence in the 1970s, a star-spangled daredevil hero that America needed to boost its morale.

With his cane and fur-coat appearance on the Johnny Carson Show opening this doco from Johnny Knoxville, that has as much energy (and occasionally rhapsodising from uber-fan Knoxville) as you'd expect from the MTV generation, the stall is set out early on.

Knievel was a showman, a hustler in his stuntman heyday - wrapped in his white leather costume with the American flag emblazoned onto the outfit, he was the hero that America needed in the wake of Nixon and Vietnam.

But it wasn't always so - and that's where this doco gets the Knievel legend really right. By bringing us in on his past growing up in Butte Montana, (mainly via Knoxville's demonstrative and exhaustive knowledge about the man), we get an insight into the bluster that the showman concocted.

From selling the most insurance policies by working a mental hospital and constantly hustling, Rob Knievel was already on the way to creating a persona for himself and it was only his decision to jump over cougars and rattlesnakes (one of the doco's laugh-out-loud tall tales) that sent him careering off into the world of fame.

Exhaustive is perhaps the best way to describe this piece, as it concentrates on anyone who worked with or met the man and the myth of the red, white and blue suited legend. But Oscar-winning director Daniel Junge never loses sight of the man on the bike, thanks to plenty of photos, archive footage and of course scenes of Knievel performing his daredevil tasks.

Some of the footage is horrifying - in the pre-Jackass days, seeing a man hurt himself when a stunt went wrong was never as guilty a pleasure as it is now; unlike Knoxville et al, Knievel never carried out these stunts to fail or get a cheap laugh - he was embodying the real-life superhero aspirations to soar above the skies. But the shots (replayed a few times) of Knievel going head-over-the-handlebars at Caesar's Palace on December 31st 1967 are shocking as he looks like a rag doll thrown to the wind.

But it's when the braggadocio and bluster are dropped that Junge delves more into the man himself, giving us a fascinating glimpse at a man who occasionally let the show slip and let the nastier man out. Certainly the warts-and-all approach helps to demystify him without taking anything away from his achievements; these chink-in-the-armour looks are sickeningly thrilling.

While Junge propels things along as zippily as Knievel on his bike, some of Knoxville's enthusiastic fanboying and affection occasionally gets in the way as he discusses the impact on extreme sports that the legend created. But for the most part, the multitude of talking heads don't hinder this doco, thanks to Junge's steady hand, a never-ending source of material and a peek into the mind of a man who represented an ideal.

Granted, the final section is missing one key question and it's frustrating; when seeking atonement for his behaviour, it's not asked if he pleaded for forgiveness from Shelly Saltman, whom he went to prison for assaulting - it's a minor oversight that should be corrected.

All in all, Being Evel captures the thrill of this influential man, the idea and of the zeitgeist as America tried to get back on its feet - and Junge, along with Knoxville, make a great job of covering a lot of ground in this piece.

In fact, you could say that Being Evel is wheelie good.

Sherpa: NZFF Review

Sherpa: NZFF Review

Jennifer Peedom's documentary on the Sherpas and Nepal is inevitably infused with a bittersweet touch, and is a scathing look at the unfolding industrial dispute on Everest.

Armed with a camera crew and with the intention of giving the Sherpas the moment to shine she felt they had been missing all these years, she couldn't have foreseen the tragic events that would brutally interrupt the 2014 climbing season - and after completing editing, the earthquake that struck almost exactly one year on.

In 2013 the discord on the ground threatened to boil over with a fight brewing between the Sherpas and those climbing the mountain being the final straw. It was this in mind, and Peedom's perception that the Sherpa race has been ignored despite doing the majority of the work that set the documentary in motion.

But what emerges from Peedom's utterly thrilling and yet equally sickening piece is the bitter curelty of timing. Against a backdrop of whether the Sherpa are working too hard to capitalise on a season that grants them ten times the average wage and ensures their families have food, nature intervened on 18th April 2014, bringing an avalanche that killed 16 Sherpa and setting the debate into a chain of urgency that's as fragile as the snow hanging on the side.

Sherpa is never anything less than shocking as it exposes the widening gap between commercial venture and human life and there won't be many who don't fall squarely into the Sherpas' camp after the tragedy unfolds (that an American client claims terrorists have pushed them off the mountain when the Sherpa essentially strike fearing for their lives speaks volumes to their plight and the Western perception of entitlement).

Sherpa is formidable film-making, one whose ending will be changed in light of the 2015 Nepal Earthquake but one whose ethical and moral issues will resonate with many for years to come thanks to Peedom's unswerving eye and concise skill.

It's jaw-dropping stuff, and not always for the reason you'd expect.

Unmissable.

When Marnie Was There: NZFF Review

When Marnie Was There: NZFF Review

"It's such a sad story" are among some of the words spoken in the final run of Studio Ghibli's latest, When Marnie Was There, based on Brit writer Joan G Robinson.

It's the story of Anna, a shy girl, an outsider who moves to the country to be with her aunt and uncle to help her get better from her asthma. However, while she settles into life there, she fails to garner any new friends in the area due to her inability to socialise and overcome her outsider depression.

But that changes when she becomes enchanted with a mansion on the banks of the shores near where she's staying. There she meets the mysterious blonde girl Marnie, and the two form a secret friendship...but Anna's convinced she's been there before - what is the mystery of Marnie?

When Marnie Was There is a pretty standard Studio Ghibli fare - which is to say it's the usual mix of gorgeous animation, beautiful water-coloured painted backgrounds and amusing moments. And so, nothing to be sniffed at or dismissed.

But there's a vein of sadness that runs pretty heavy in this piece, which mixes child depression, alienation, neglect and abuse into the pot as Anna tries to work out the mystery that haunts her. And unfortunately, it doesn't quite work as well with the central intrigue feeling like it's drawn out a little too long in places, and the piece is book-ended by some seriously garbled quick exposition that tries to join the dots, fill in the blanks and conclude it nicely.

It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with When Marnie Was There in the slightest; it's more that it appears to lack the emotional heft of prior outings. Certainly, the dubbed version I attended had some bright vocal work from the likes of Hailee Steinfeld and John C Reilly. And while the visuals are as gorgeous as ever, the flow seems to be a little disjointed with viewers spending as much time confused as Anna does throughout, keeping the connection a little at bay.

While the themes of friendship and being an outsider are fully embraced and expanded upon, the issues that Anna faces are going to feel very real to some and for that universality, Ghibli is to be commended.

There's no doubt that the ultimate reveal of what's actually going on is heart-breaking to say the least, and the tragedy of it all is wonderfully conveyed thanks to a subtlety of story, but When Marnie Was There didn't quite hit the rich resonant highs I'd been expecting for Studio Ghibli's latest.