The best films of 2016

The best films of 2016

In no particular order, here are my favourite films from 2016

Arrival

La La Land


Hunt For the Wilderpeople


Hell or High Water



10 Cloverfield Lane


Tickled


Kubo and the Two Strings


I, Daniel Blake

Suburra


Zootopia

The Witch

Swiss Army Man

Under The Shadow

Moana

Sing Street

Train To Busan

Personal Shopper

Paterson

Poi E

Weiner

Ben-Hur: DVD Review

Ben-Hur: DVD Review

Already a critical and commercial flop abroad, the 2016 remake of Ben Hur arrives on these shores with more a whimper than a roar.

For those not au fait with the 1959 11 Oscar winning original which starred Charlton Heston, it’s the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince played by a Rufus Sewell like Jack Huston and Roman Messala, his adopted brother, played by Toby Kebbell.

When Ben-Hur takes the fall when accused of sedition and his brother does nothing to save him, Ben-Hur’s thrown on a slave ship and shipped off. But events conspire to return Ben-Hur back to the lands of Jerusalem and into a conflict and quest for revenge.

The 2016 version of Ben-Hur is already headed for a $100 million US flop at the box office and for the large part, it’s easy to understand why.

With its lack of a major star in the lead to bring some kind of presence (Freeman appears only as a dread-locked supporting player), it’s down to Huston to carry the piece, and unfortunately, he lacks any of the star presence required. His Judah is so saintly and well-intentioned, that he lacks anything other than blandness on the screen and it’s hard to care for a character whose lack of emotional range is his sole defining characteristic.

Mind you, Kebbell’s barely much better as Messala, looking for the most part like he’s simply seen the script moments before and then thrust in front of a camera. It’s no help the film spends an inordinate amount of time setting up the conflict between the two using clunky dialogue and heavy exposition as well as flashbacks to try and build the rift between the pair. 

But neither hold the dramatic heft necessary to shift away from their default Smell the Fart Friends acting philosophy setting pioneered by Joey Tribbiani. 

And matters aren’t much improved by Rodrigo Santoro as Jesus, who appears when the film needs an even more saintly presence than Judah. His first, which sees him doing carpentry in the market, slows proceedings and even veers dangerously toward guffaw-provoking territory. It’s here the film heads towards preaching a forgiveness ideology that becomes its raison d’etre as the denouement rumbles around.

If the script had spent a little more time building in some of the more moral areas needed, such as fleshing out Messala’s conflict over the family, it may have been more successful.

Instead it relies on an impressive below decks ship conflict and the inevitable chariot race to save the day. While the ships’ fracas is simply executed (though overly dark), the chariot race is a thundering creation that lacks any real emotional heft with the inclusion of other competitors who you ultimately don’t care about. Symbolism is overt with Messala riding black horses and Judah riding pure whites just in case you’re not sure who you want to win.

It’s perhaps sad the director of the excellent Night Watch film Timur Bekmambetov is attached to this – there’s little sign of any directorial flair here and the workmanlike pace coupled with undercooked script proves relatively fatal in the final wash.

The 2016 version of Ben-Hur lacks any emotional connection and while it tries for epic in places, it’s not a catastrophic mess of Biblical proportions but more of an epic fail, a chariots of dire. 

Dec 14th

Newstalk ZB Review - Moana, Rogue One - A Star Wars Story and La La Land

Newstalk ZB Review - Moana, Rogue One - A Star Wars Story and La La Land

This week, it was Jack Tame's final show and I decided to ruin his Christmas by dropping in to see him face to face.

It was also a chance to talk Rogue One - A Star Wars Story and look at the upcoming Boxing Day Releases, Moana from Disney and Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone's 7 Golden Globe nominated film La La Land.

Take a listen to the final Jack Tame review of the year below.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-rogue-one-moana/

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-rogue-one-moana/

Bad Santa 2: Film Review

Bad Santa 2: Film Review

Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Christina Hendricks, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly
Director: Mark Waters

Christmas comes every year.

And with it, there's a large portion of the world who are cynical and unimpressed as the commercial holiday kicks into gear, with its enforced jollity and OTT happiness.

The original 2003 outing of Bad Santa was the perfect antidote to the festive cheer - a crude, crass and comical caper that pitted a foul-mouthed thief and his dwarf friend against the festive season. Coupled with Terry Zwigoff's writing and Thornton's not giving a sh*t Santa, Bad Santa was near perfect holiday fodder, destined to take the shine off the saccharine season.

Unfortunately, Bad Santa 2 is the complete opposite; a piece of trashy cinema that plumbs the depths of depravity and somehow manages to mine deeper in its attempts to garner some jollies.

This time around, Billy Bob Thornton's beer-soaked Willie Soke is contacted once again by Marcus Skidmore (Cox) to help him crack open a safe with millions within. The kicker this time is that the safe is housed in a Chicago charity organisation, run by Christine Hendricks' Diane, a former alcoholic turned good. Ditching the innocent Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly, once again providing the naive simpleton approach), Sokes sets out to crack the safe and start again after being suicidal. But the kicker is that the con-job is being pioneered by his white trash estranged mother Sunny (Bates)....

Released 13 years almost to the day of the first film, Bad Santa 2 is distinctly difficult to love.

Much like its main star, who spends a disproportionate amount of time soaked in the booze, it's hard to see how anyone will get any laughs from this if they're sober. Every single punchline mines low hanging fruit and somehow manages to dig even deeper, ensuring the final outcome is a cloyingly annoying mix of depravity and puerile stupidity.

To be fair to the cast, they embrace this wholeheartedly, with Thornton once again proving to the antithesis to the normal dwellers of the red Santa suit. His deplorable and despicable antics prove fertile ground for some base jokes, but there's a real hint of tragedy about this man who can't get off unless he's called Santa and who starts the film by literally pissing on the past and trying to hang himself.

Equally prone to some kind of depression allegory is Kelly's Thurman Merman, a man-child whose outlook on life is clearly disconnected from the real world and whose eternal jollity comes naturally and provokes nervous laughter when anyone else would be calling for mental intervention.

The original wore its toxic despising of the enforced holiday period like a badge, a kind of honest heart on sleeve truth seldom acknowledged about the holiday period. This sequel, with its irritating desire to annoy with vulgar humour feels like a real let down for an attempt to follow a much-loved anti Christmas classic tradition.

Bad Santa 2 is one present under the Christmas tree that nobody cinematically will want; sure, some may get a perverse kick out of moments in its 90 minute run time, but others will want to run away as fast as their little elf legs can carry them.

Elle: Film Review

Elle: Film Review

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Virginie Efira
Director: Paul Verhoeven

Like some kind of balancing act between bleak darkness and dark humour, Paul Verhoeven’s ELLE walks a singular tightrope through the audience, caring not for the view below as it drops its extraordinary bombs.

A simply stellar Isabelle Huppert stars as Michele the head of a video game company whose life is targeted when she’s viciously sexually assaulted in her home. (A fact that Verhoeven doesn’t shy away from as he instigates the film by unleashing it right at the very beginning.)

But rather than head to the police to report the rape, Michele shockingly shuns the legal avenue (for reasons that become clearer as the film unfurls, just one of Verhoeven's strength as he concocts the cinematic web) for a bath and to simply get on with life. Verhoeven’s use of blood in bubble bath before it’s casually swept to one side by Michele is one of the film’s over-riding stark and shocking images.

With a cold laissez faire approach, Michele casually announces over dinner with some friends that she’s been assaulted; the response from one friend is to ask the waiter to hold the champagne being opened – yep, it’s Verhoeven through and through using the pristine veneer of the French language and attitude to prod and provoke his audience from the get go.

As the story progresses in Elle, you’re better off not knowing what’s due to happen, as part of the devilish delight in the film comes from the gradual teasing of details in this psychological thriller that picks at you like a cinematic scab, daring you to pull it off and delighting in the equal waves of pleasure and pain as you do so.

In this adaptation of Philippe Djian’s 2012 novel “Oh…”,  78 year old provocateur  Paul Verhoeven certainly knows how to press the buttons of those watching, and how to give the whole thing a kind of amoral sheen that’s steeped in both complexity and a twisted veneer.

Huppert helps in large parts too, making Michele a character which it’s hard to get a grip on.

On the one hand, her ordeal implies elicit sympathy for her plight, but on the other, her immediate behaviour post-event sees you unsure of where your allegiances and sympathies should lie. It helps that she’s incredibly commanding from go to woah as this disturbed journey plays out. One character tells her, “You never give anything truly of yourself” and perhaps this is the best summation of the character, thanks to a subtly nuanced turn from Huppert as the shocks and the twisted, yet empowering, scenario plays out.

Ultimately, Elle is one hell of a firecracker of a film - a cinematic amoral powderkeg that's due to explode under the weight of such provocation but whose explosion ends up in the safe hands of Paul Verhoeven. There'll be debate aplenty about what you've seen on the screen, but there'll be no debate about the performance of Isabelle Huppert and the bravura of Verhoeven.

The BFG: DVD Review

The BFG: DVD Review

Back in 1982, Roald Dahl changed the landscape of kids' books with the release of The BFG.

Along with Quentin Blake's distinctive drawings, the 208 page book went on to sell 37 million copies and seal itself into the world's collective psyche.

The film version doesn't deviate too far from the original storyline, telling of 10 year old orphan Sophie (newcomer Barnhill) and her chance encounter with the Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance) after she sees him one night.

Scooping her up and taking her to Giant Country to avoid being revealed, the pair form a friendship - but Sophie's in danger with other Giants of the land sniffing her out and threatening to snuff her out. Because it turns out that a series of abductions in London are all at the hands of the Giants....

The BFG is a refreshingly wondrous and lovely piece of old school film.

Which is both its strength and bizarrely, its weakness.

Spielberg's eye for visuals is indulged in this Harry Potter-esque human beans flick, that keeps the original nonsense Jar Jar Binks style language that so perpetuated the book as it dawdles on its way to its final destination. The sequence where The BFG takes Sophie out to grab dreams is truly magical, and reminiscent of the flying lights in Close Encounters. Spielberg still has an eye for the mysterious, and shrouds part of this sequence in a mist and executes it in shadows, giving it a dream-like quality that's hard to ignore.

Equally, the execution of Rylance as Quentin Blake's BFG is nothing short of eye-popping CGI wizardry, thanks to Joe Letteri and his WETA cohorts.

A mix of Rylance's features and Blake's distinctive strokes gives the character the warmth, sadness and geniality that's so inherent within, and the expressive features and subtle touches from a heartfelt Rylance convey plenty of emotion and give life to a character which has so enraptured so many.

Perhaps a slightly weaker link though is first time actor Ruby Barnhill, who comes off as a mix of both precocious and and ever so slightly irritating. She's a few directions short of pantomime at the best of times but eventually settles down into the role - even if Spielberg's determined in the final stretch to purvey a parody of a monarchy England with pomp and ceremony that was so prevalent in the 1980s. (Though admittedly there are long swathes of just talking and bonding between the BFG and Sophie in Giant Country that the story could be accused of dawdling in its slightly overlong run-time).

It's true to the book (aside from the giant invasion) so is in keeping with Dahl's original take on it all, but in the final third of the film, the intrusions of the real world prove to be more of a distraction than anything.

The evil giants, led by Jemaine Clement's Fleshlumpeater, are a mixed bag.

While the digital execution of Fleshlumpeater looks like a cross between Austin Powers' Fat Bastard and a Warcraft Orc, Clement's Ali G style London intonations give it a comically threatening edge that feel like a gangster's taken on Dungeons and Dragons. The rest of the clan aren't so well fleshed out and ultimately never feel like a threat at all (particularly given that they're deemed to be so dangerous).

There's no real danger in The BFG; it's a genuinely lovely family film that feels very much of yesteryear and its failings as a story are predominantly led by the source material.

There's something nostalgic and familiar about The BFG and something comforting about Spielberg's execution of it - whether it proves to be box office gold though in a changed landscape remains to be seen

Paterson: Film Review

Paterson: Film Review

Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani
Director: Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch's reflective and languid approach suits Adam Driver's rhythms in Paterson, a thematic companion piece to Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake in its salutations of the common man.

Driver is Paterson, a routine bus driver in the burb of Paterson, who has a daily routine. His watch wakes him around 610am daily, he eats the same breakfast, heads to work at the bus depot and finds time to write poetry before his shift and during. Heading home every day at 6, he corrects a leaning post-box that moves daily, has dinner, walks his shared bulldog Marvin and goes to the local watering hole.

So far, so familiar as Jarmusch's patented loops play out over an 8 day period. But as the days progress, small variations crop up towards the end of the week in Paterson's life - from a girlfriend whose borderline OCD and creative obsession with black and white mean each return home is random to a cataclysmic moment involving his bus.

These are the beats of Paterson, where the ordinary is celebrated and the pace is languid to prosaic. As this ode to the mundane progresses, there are visual tics and tricks that Jarmusch throws into the mix to almost test as if you are paying attention to what's transpiring as the story's more lyrical edges wax and wane with time progressing.

Throwing in a cute scene stealing dog also helps proceedings (when the deliberate pace slows a little too much) as well with Marvin the bulldog (sadly RIP now) proving to be the juxtaposition to Paterson's life in a small way to many, but devastating to the celebration of the mundane. Driver's a relatively blank canvas throughout, with his small intrusions into life being catalogued more by the outre behaviour of others - from the bus depot boss whose life is full of dramas to the dreams of his cup-cake empire dreaming partner, his calmness gives the yin to everyone's extraordinary yang.

Blessed with dry humour and quiet reflections on life, Paterson's simplicity and gorgeousness is in its execution. Its rhythms and wry humour may not be for everyone, but for those who fall for the loops of life and the idiosyncracies within, this slow celebration of the mundanities of it all works wonders.