While We're Young: NZFF Review

While We're Young: NZFF Review

Achieving the broadest of reaches and never losing sight of being entertaining, Noah Baumbach's While We're Young delivers a pitch perfect comedy to alleviate the soul as the New Zealand International Film Festival continues.

Ben Stiller plays Josh. a documentary maker stuck in his latest project; his wife is Cornelia (Naomi Watts, channeling some warm comedic schtick) a fellow producer. Worries over whether the pair is in a rut are pushed to one side, when Josh meets Adam Driver's Jamie, a 25-year-old version of himself, but more in touch with his hipper side.

Energised by Jamie's interest (along with his wife, played by Amanda Seyfried), Josh sets out to complete his documentary and re-discover his, and his wife's joie de vivre.

While We're Young is wistful, wry, warmly comic fare as it lays down some realities about how we truly are in life and what steps we take when we get older.

Brilliantly juxtaposing the attitudes of Josh and Cornelia ("We have the freedom to do what we want; what we do with it is not important" being one of their earlier bon mots) to their younger counterparts proves to be the film's masterstroke as a light script is breezily delivered by the cast.

But there's a grain of truth that will be entirely resonant with others in this drily laconic movie; it's a film where the younger embrace vinyl and reading, but the older struggle with digital technology all around them; where retro is cool, but the future is baffling.

And yet, in among the light banter, is a man on the edge of a crisis,a relationship on a brink and a smart savvy take on how priorities and viewpoints change as life goes on. It's humour mixed with life's experiences, good and bad - and Baumbach delivers it in spades.

Granted, there will be some who will find the film's themes trite, but there will be an equal - if not larger - amount who will find it cutting a little close to the bone. If you let it, While We're Young emerges as something touching and sensitive to time's passing - it doesn't harm it in the slightest that it's well-performed, well-written and deeply engaging as it doles out its message about life.

The Guest: Film Review

The Guest: Film Review

Cast: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer, Lance Reddick
Director: Adam Wingard

From the director of the brilliant You're Next comes a thriller that for some will cast a new light on cousin Matthew from Downton Abbey.

Dan Stevens stars as David, a former soldier who one day shows up on the doorstep of the Peterson family, claiming to have been a friend of their son who was killed in action. Not wanting to appear unkind, the family invites him to stay while he gets settled.

However, as David spends more time with the family, there are a series of deaths, leading daughter Anna (It Follows star Maika Monroe) to suspect him.

Lurid and trashy, revelling in its 80s attitude and soundtrack, The Guest is a hyper-stylish thriller that works on many levels, inveigling its way into your consciousness.

Stevens drops the Downton charm and impresses with his nonchalant and detached exterior belying the menace within his character, but continues to drop hints thanks to underplayed looks and momentary glances. And Monroe, who was so impressive in It Follows, cements her credentials as an up and comer as Anna, who balances paranoia and growing up in equal measure.

Wingard's latest is a genre piece in many ways with the retro feel seeping its way through but without soaking it in past glories. A synth soundtrack sets the tone for the ultra-violence, but there's more than just the music to admire; while the explanations as to what's going on may be a little lacking (there's no doubt you may feel a little cheesed at never getting the full picture), the film's ambiguous and mysterious tone works as it heads to its conclusion.

The Guest is a thriller that works on many levels, a powerful blast of retro fused with the modern and cements Wingard's place as a genre master.

Rating:

The Assassin: NZFF Review

The Assassin: NZFF Review

An exercise in patience, albeit a not entirely successful one, The Assassin, from director Hou Hsiao-hsien, is likely to polarise audiences.

Set in 7th Century China at the decline of the Tang dynasty, it's the story of Yinniang (Shu Qi) a general's daughter who was taken away by a nun when young and who returns to carry out an assassination mission that could have far-reaching consequences for the political future of the Weibo region.-
The fact that it takes 1 hour 20 minutes before the lead actually speaks gives you an insight into the slow, ponderous pace of The Assassin. It's a film that favours visual aesthetics over any kind of semblance of plot and long-sweeping character development. In fact, one story line involving a pregnancy of a character and her faking to avoid detection is thrown in with such weight that it's clearly important to the film's arc but is introduced so randomly and executed so poorly that it fails to provide any narrative heft whatsoever.

An impassive, emotionless lead of Yinniang doesn't help matters either; if you're expecting a film chock full of fight sequences that are long and extended, you'll also be disappointed in what transpires. Short bursts of fight scenes happen but with little or no consequence; in fact, director Hou Hsiao-hsien has left it for you to do the work, to engage with the film and provide the emotional heft that's needed - and unfortunately, that's not always a trade-off that works to his advantage I'm afraid to say, as not once did I care about anyone involved in this.

The Assassin though succeeds in its visuals; perhaps, a little too much so. Conversations are snatched from a distance and shot with veils floating in front of the camera, as if we are spying in on them like Yinniang; a couple of sequences flit by until you realise that she is lurking in the background as well. It's masterful, if not involving, stuff.

But ultimately The Assassin feels muddled; its slow languid, almost stultifying pace is crippling and its narrative and back-story is lacking; whether it's the subtitles that didn't convey everything they needed to or the script was muddled at an earlier stage, this Assassin is a killer of a film - but for all the wrong reasons.

Prophet's Prey: NZFF Review

Prophet's Prey: NZFF Review

"Evil flourishes when good men do nothing."

Director Amy Berg's last foray into the New Zealand International Film Festival was something of a triumphant affair, as the screenings of West of Memphis clearly demonstrated.

Her latest, a doco into the behaviour of the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, Warren Jeffs is anything but uplifiting, another demonstration of how America chooses to let its zealots flourish under the guise of religion.

Deeply unsettling and utterly terrifying, this brilliantly taut doco pulls together the portrait of a man whose drive to serve his skewed take on the word of God has ravaged lives, abused children and torn his family apart - and yet, he serves time currently in jail, but depressingly, his power continues to grow.

Using testimony from Jeffs' victims, his family and a series of investigators aiming to get to the truth, Berg uses the desolation of mid-Western countryside shots where Jeffs and his community thrive, mixed in with floatingly haunting voiceovers of Jeffs' indoctrination to paint a picture on a horrifying canvas.

Every victim of the church (and thankfully, few are used sparingly throughout) help build a portrait of a man who any sensible outsider could see is abusing his power and brainwashing. But to those inside his thrall, it's equally easy to see why Jeffs would be able to manipulate the women through polygamy, overthrow his church-leading father by crafting a series of insidious lies and create a presence that got him on the America's Top 10 most wanted list.

But it's Berg who deserves the praise here, not a man whose perversion of life continues to trouble long after the film has finished.

Crafting together a doco that's distinctly balanced and meticulously down the line, she once again demonstrates, like West of Memphis, how the American legal system is failing. Despite testimony from Jeffs' victims and a careful building of a case against Jeffs, it's the ineptitude of their prey that helps him fall foul. With the spectre of Waco carefully evoked and the reverberations of that showdown still lingering, Berg uses education and prompts a natural reaction to achieve her goal. It's clear she wishes to enlighten us to the horrors within, but a final coda depresses greatly and proves to be a rallying cry to arms once again for the American justice system to come to the party.

Prophet's Prey will hold you in its sway throughout - it's deeply troubling, completely unsettling and thanks to Berg's eye for story-telling, it's sickeningly riveting.

Goodnight Mommy: NZFF Review

Goodnight Mommy: NZFF Review

A creepy chamber piece in extremis, Goodnight Mommy will unsettle you more than perhaps you are willing to admit.

Writer-directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala tell the story of Lukas and Elias, two young twin brothers, who feel their mother is not who they believe her to be when she returns from hospital.

Seemingly uncharacteristically short with one and ignoring the other, this isn't the mother they remember - and the more time passes in their ultra-modern clinical house, the boys suspect things have taken a turn for the worst.

Even if you guess what exactly is going on in Goodnight Mommy (as I did within the first 10 minutes thanks to one piece of dialogue), it makes not a jot of difference. This ultra-suspenseful claustrophobic flick has a way of inveigling itself under your skin as the unsettling and foreboding atmosphere ratchets up the tension, leaving you feeling unfathomably sick in your stomach.

Lukas and Elias Schwarz play the twins as a little something akin to the twins out of The Shining; they're always together, always natural and in the film's final act, incredible. To say more about the film is to spoil the ride (which is a shame given how much there is to talk about after) but needless to say the slow panning shots, quietly rumbling dread and the brilliant use of location (the house alone is like a third character of the film, its ultra-modern edges and interiors shorn of clutter perhaps providing some psychological insight, lurking away in the corners of your mind.

This chiller packs a punch thanks to its denouement and also the clear, almost clinical way it's been shot and structured. (Though one moment involving outsiders really does beggar belief and very nearly costs the film its credence)

Once you know the ending, it makes viewing Goodnight Mommy a different experience and gives rise to potentially playing it back again to spot the clues you missed before - but as well as being a psychologically intense film, it's also tremendously upsetting; its themes and examination of one particular emotion is deeply troubling; however those discussions are best left until daytime, when the sunlight can pierce your mind which has been clouded in fog by the murkier tones painted by Franz and Fiala's mind-games.

The Wrecking Crew: NZFF Review

The Wrecking Crew: NZFF Review

Thanks to recent Brian Wilson film Love And Mercy (well worth a look), the Wrecking Crew are somewhat at the forefront of our cinematic consciousness.

The group of session players helped the Beach Boys (as well as others) to define their sonic landscape and helped the musical sequences in the flick to really shine.

But to be honest, their time in the spotlight has been somewhat obscured and for many, their musical contribution overlooked.

However, Denny Tedesco's legacy doco will change all that - and rightly so.

Tedesco is the son of Teddy Tedesco, one of the Wrecking Crew group from the start. Along with the likes of Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer and Carol Kaye, it's probably a name you don't know - but I can guarantee you they're responsible for a sound you'll know.

From the Byrds to the Beach boys, Sonny and Cher to the Mamas and Papas, this lively doco charts the course of their influence and shows you how wide their involvement was. Gathering together some of the surviving members and placing them at what appears to be a poker table, it sets the scene for the anecdotes to fall easily from their lips. Mixing in archival footage and of course the sounds of the music, the genial The Wrecking Crew finally gives the unsung heroes the spotlight they so richly deserve.

For Tedesco himself, it's true to say that he has his personal ambitions for the piece, but to his credit, he never once loses sight of the rest of the members of the group and their valuable cultural contribution.

Occasionally, the piece feels a little long, especially in its final furlong as it gives "reprises" to some characters, but sensibly, Tedesco injects these final portions with heart and humour to get us over the line. It would have been nice to hear a little more from family members of the Crew to get more insight, but the musicians themselves aren't exactly shy about not coming forward on the effects of the long hours and the grind.

Ultimately The Wrecking Crew will appeal most to musicians, but thanks to the fact that everything they sonically touched was magic and that Tedesco's crafted something loving that gives the true stars the spotlight they so richly deserved.

Banksy Does New York: NZFF Review

Banksy Does New York: NZFF Review

Exit Through The Gift Shop gave the notorious street artist Banksy another outlet for his work a couple of years back at the New Zealand International Film Festival.

This latest has no involvement from the enigmatic Banksy or his team but instead is from a doco team wanting to focus on the one month residency that Banksy launched in New York back in October 2013.

Every day for that month, Banksy, without prompt and only via clues on his website would launch a new work every day - the resulting scavenger hunt was a social media frenzy and also sparked the very best and very worst in New Yorkers.

Director Chris Moukarbel charts the highs of the Banksy hunters and the lows of those trying to cash in on the frenzy, but he does it with such entertaining aplomb that the underlying issues in this bubblegum doco are somewhat sidelined in among the hordes of people clamouring to enjoy the art.

In some cases, the art's cleaned off before it's even been there for a few hours; in others, it's vandalised by street artists throughout NYC desperate to leave their mark; some protect the art with altruistic motives, while others charge for people to see them. It's a fascinating dichotomy of greed, debate and delirium which hits the streets all around NYC.

The most fascinating parts of this breezy and entertaining doco though are when the film raises the question of who owns the art and why others capitalise on it; is the interaction of these pieces the true reason for their success is another interesting alleyway that's wandered down, but unfortunately Moukarbel isn't really interested in fully exploring these questions, which is an occasional source of frustration.

Especially when one of those who chooses to cash in on Banksy's art is the owner of a business slated for demolition in part of the projects and for whom it could make a massive difference.

Ultimately, there are a fair few questions in Banksy Does New York and the social provocateur from Bristol in England's done it again; the issues of art ownership in the public space, the continuing art snobbery, questions over brand and the disposably breezy nature of this doco paint one hell of a compelling bubblegum picture on the big screen.