One Thousand Ropes: Film Review

One Thousand Ropes: Film Review

Cast: Uelese Petaia, Frankie Adams, Beulah Koale
Director: Tusi Tamasese

Tradition, spirituality, family ties, ghosts of the past long forgotten and haunting melancholia mixes together in Samoan director Tusi Tamasese's latest film, One Thousand Ropes.

Blending together a slow-burning concoction of humanity and redemption proves to be a fertile narrative ground for this tale of Maea (Uelese Petaia, quiet and dignified, with hints of more bubbling dangerously under).

Living in a simple life in a run-down empty house in Wellington, and working daily at dawn in a bakery before providing Samoan traditional massage to pregnant women, Maea finds himself trapped in a modern world that appears to be turning its back on his old ways.

From old ways of kneading dough to old midwifery, Maea is stuck dealing with the consequences of how he's handled life - and haunted by a warrior-like spirit lurking in the corner of his house that he believes he freed during a massage session.

Things further reach breaking point, when the bakery he toils at brings in a machine to keep up the pace and Maea continues to lose business to the local church and their midwifery ways.

When his pregnant daughter (Shortland Street's Frankie Adams) returns home, beaten and battered by her partner, Maea finds his quest for redemption inadvertently renewed - but will the sins of his past ruin what's left of his future?

One Thousand Ropes is gloomy, bleak and slow-moving - and all the more powerful because of it.

It also has something of a commanding presence in among the darkness as Tamasese weaves intricately and carefully laid out details into the fabric of this Samoan story that the audience will have to work with to get the most out of. He did something similar with 2011's The Orator, which delivered an emotional punch of some considerable heft.

While One Thousand Ropes occasionally teeters on leading a little too slowly towards its denouement, its stripped back paucity and ominous foreboding build a terrifically-laced atmosphere that washes over those willing to spend a little patience in the cinema. It's already had good reviews out of Sundance and also the Berlinale Film Festival, and it's easy to see why.

Themes of redemption and reconciliation co-exist and coagulate in the mix, as the a-lot-said-but-little-spoken forlorn film plays out. The pay-off is tangible too, and while Tamasese leaves a lot for the audience to connect the dots, the selective way the emotional moments land and the truths are revealed deliver maximum impact as well.

Predominantly, this is due to Petaia's dignified turn, one which is understated and subtle. Etched on his face, the man once known as The Lion and who's encouraged to smash the perpetrator of his wife's beating lumbers with the guilt of the past and teeters with fragility on the brink of giving in. This is a turn that delivers so much by doing so little.

There's some terrific imagery too - from the succubus-like Seipua haunting Maea and strangling him to Maea's incessant kneading of the dough demonstrating his volcano-like emotions bubbling under, Tamasese does a lot with lingering slow shots, filling the frames of the film and providing more than screeds of dialogue ever could.

If you succumb to the rhythms and the slow-creeping power pace of One Thousand Ropes, the end result is quite unsettling and powerful. Weaving together both myth and personal tragedy are a potent mix for Tamasese, and despite the sedentary pace potentially putting some people off, it actually works in ways you could never expect.

Evocative, haunting and hard to shake, One Thousand Ropes is a timely reminder, once again, that small-scale intimacy works infinitely better than big screen bluster.

The Innocents: Film Review

The Innocents: Film Review

Cast: Lou de Laage, Agata Buzek
Director: Anne Fontaine

The fact The Innocents (Les Innocentes) is based on a true story makes its harrowing nature, at times, a little harder to bear.

Set in post World War II Poland, the film concerns itself with the jaw-dropping horrifying events at a convent. Our heroine is young female French doctor Mathilde (de Laage), who's working with the Red Cross.

Asked to enter a nearby convent, she finds a young girl in labour - and from there, the situation starts to unfold in as much gripping as terrifying ways as it plays out.

With some striking imagery, the director of Coco avant Chanel, hides some of the horrific darkness on offer here; scenes of white crisp snow at the convent mask the true nature of what lies within. And from dawn prayers and hymns, the sound of a woman's cries is utterly shocking.

The sound in The Innocents is utterly mesmerising; from the sound of cloister bells ringing clearly out, to quiet moments within, the atmospherics are completely entrancing.

It's fair to say that what unspools in Les Innocentes is not the easiest of watches, but Fontaine sensitively handles the mix of sexual violence and unspeakable horrors in such a way, that what actually transpires is as powerful as it is difficult to view. If many question their faith in the film, undoubtedly others will question theirs with what plays out

This tightly written and prestigely-acted piece knows never to revel in its horrors, both that men do and the life post a war inflicts on others, but it also knows that the silent power comes from within.

So, with a respectful score, and a lack of overbearing bluster to push home its message, The Innocents emerges as something quite unusual - a film about a rare set of horrors that ends up being more moving than you'd expect given its deeply troubling and real subject matter.

The Tickle King: Film Review

The Tickle King: Film Review

Funded as a Kickstarter in 2014, and released to equal parts critical acclaim and "WTF??" reactions, David Farrier and Dylan Reeve's Tickled, about the darker side of the internet, has now got a short film follow up.

With the original documentary ending with a few threads dangling and clearly implications of more to come, The Tickle King goes some way to giving both some closure for those with further questions, and Farrier and Reeve whose lives have already been swept up in the fall-out of the film.

With law-suits threatening them and screenings invaded by people trying to sabotage the film (and as a result, inadvertently giving more credence to the doco-makers), it's fair to perhaps suggest that Tickled was a film which would dog both Farrier and Reeve in future.

But the 20 minute short film / companion piece, The Tickle King doesn't seek to kick the hornet's nest any further - merely is a record of what exactly happened next.
And it's equally as fascinating and as bizarre as the original film that took New Zealand shores by storm in 2016, and the rest of the world shortly after.

Premiering after a screening of Tickled on the Rialto Channel on March 29th at about 8.05pm, The Tickle King brings more footage to light of what happened next.
From capturing the initial thrill of being at Sundance and getting the buzz the doco so rightly deserves to showing Farrier genuinely unsettled when it's revealed people in the audience appear to be taking notes or, in a move worthy of the first film itself, taping it from equipment inside a coffee cup, this bite-size extra travels further down the hole of weirdness for our enjoyment.

With the accolades come the legal threats and the shadowy tail-gating of Farrier as he goes about his business of promoting the film and dealing with the fall-out.
All expertly captured on film (and beautifully done so once again), The Tickle King simply shows the maelstrom hitting both Farrier and Reeve as they deal with the implications of coming across David D'Amato.

Essentially, it falls into 2 parts - one taking place in Sundance, and the other taking place at a now infamous screening in Los Angeles.

From the fake sites and attempts to discredit the pair by Kevin Clarke who appeared in the first film, the doco sheds more light on the incident where D'Amato confronted Reeve at the LA Screening of the movie at Nuart Theatre on June 18, 2016.

With extra footage from inside the Q&A where Reeve rationally tries to ask D'Amato to take part in the Q&A and even hushes the audience from booing him, this is once again an implicit representation of the duo's rationality and smarts in the face of what appears to be extremely irrational behaviour. The ability to step away from the situation and let it play out rather than prod at it is a credit to the duo. And there won't be anyone who silently seethes at D'Amato's implicit, yet somehow veiled, threats to Reeve about his being "a family man".

Certainly, these moments with D'Amato were missing from the first film, and not due to anything the duo had done, but simply because of the shadowy and slippery nature of their subject.
There's a truly fascinating and disturbing feeling here as it plays out, yet you can't help but admire Reeve for his calm, sensible composure in the face of it all.

It may look like the publicity's given the film an extra longevity after its initial release, but what the Tickle King shows about everyone's state of mind in the aftermath, is quite revealing.

And that's the thing with The Tickle King - it may give the fans more of D'Amato, but it still worryingly shows the story shows no sign of dying away as the film's released - and the madness and mania of the subjects exposed once again. With a subsequent screening on HBO, it's to be hoped all is quiet on that front, but when the extra ends, there's definitely a chill down your spine, thanks to the revelations of the credits.

Ultimately, if you've followed a lot of the post-Tickled fallout and subsequent media coverage, much of this will not be new to you. (Though it's still truly gob-smacking to see it all unfold on film).

But given there's a new audience who've come to the film, and there was a general desire to hear from the man involved, Farrier and Reeve are once again smart enough to know in the edit to step away from the camera and let the subjects do the talking.

This detachment serves them well, and gives a general feeling they're not pushing an agenda; once again, The Tickle King is simultaneously smart documentary-making and yet somehow, at its most ghoulish.


The Tickle King will premiere on the Rialto Channel on March 29th at 8.05pm after Tickled airs at 6.30pm.

Under The Shadow: DVD Review

Under The Shadow: DVD Review

Released by Rialto

Tapping into both childhood fears and mining a rich social setting proves to be fertile ground inBabak Anvari's psychological terror Under the Shadow.

Set in the Iran /Iraq war and using the genre conventions of a haunted house /superstitious myth, it's the story of Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). Shideh has been fighting against the patriarchal society to get back to her studies as a doctor, but losing the fight, she's forced to take control of the household when her doctor husband is posted at a facility near the front line on military service.

But as the shadow of the war creeps closer to Shideh's Tehran apartment and the bombings come closer, she refuses to move out. And things get worse when her young daughter starts to believe they're being haunted by a Djinn....

As a first foray into the horror genre, writer / director Babak Anvari's Under The Shadow both simultaneously embraces the tropes of the genre and gives them a new spin, creating something that feels fresh and exciting. The slow burn of the set up allows you to really engage with Shideh's struggle, and then when Dorsa starts to feel threatened, the atmospherics are simply ramped up another notch. (Granted the idea of a kid under threat is perhaps where the film's creepiness really begins to kick in).

Anvari's embracing of autobiographical elements has clearly enhanced the look and feel of the film, but it's Rashidi as the feminist hero and first time child actor Manshadi who really propel proceedings into the stratosphere. Their interaction and the sneaking feeling that Shideh is losing it are nicely set up and in the initial part of the film the seesawing between who is right and who is wrong veers so clearly back and forth that you're never quite sure if the Djinn concept is anything other than in both of their heads.

Mining the rich vein of paranoia and foreboding with the war in the background and the shredding of nerves works wonders for the audience participation and engagement with Under The Shadow.

This is not a CGI driven shock fest, but an introduction of a new take on the genre that feels fresh, exciting and could potentially have legs for others to take over; it feels like even by saying so little, the mythology is deeply set up in this film - and the ending offers up the potential for more. The fact its societal setting says much gives a disquiet and insight that adds much to proceedings.

Original, slow burning and psychologically deft, the unsettling Under the Shadow is a clever take on its genre and it's one not to be missed.

Hacksaw Ridge: DVD Review

Hacksaw Ridge: DVD Review

It's perhaps easy to see why Mel Gibson would be drawn to the true story of conscientious objector Desmond Doss, a man whose unconventional ways saw him save 75 of his colleagues during the battle of Okinawa in May 1945.

Once on the outside of Hollywood, director Gibson's had a bit of a comeback, with a recent starring role in B movie Blood Father and now with Oscar talk for a war film about the attack on Hacksaw Ridge during the height of the campaign.

But opting to take more of a cheesy biopic route for Hacksaw Ridge lends the film more to a feeling of Christian Forrest Gump goes to war, rather than a war film destined for the ages.

Garfield plays Doss, an almost simpleton hick of a man whose pacifism and world view was shaped by accidentally nearly bashing his brother to death in a play fight. With a fragile father suffering from PTSD from the Great War (an excellently nuanced turn from Weaving who pitches it perfectly between pathos and faltering abuse), Doss decides he wants to go to war - but to save lives rather than take them.

Despite his father's refusal to endorse this route for either of his sons, and with the army resolutely against Doss' denial of weapons, the fight between values and principles forms the large part of this film, complete with corny dialogue and cliched moments of imposed conflict with fellow trainees.

Facing a court martial, Doss is saved at the last moment unexpectedly from spending the war in prison and ships out to Okinawa to face the Japanese, swarming like locusts from underground and into direct conflict with Doss' ideologies and comrades.

It's perhaps during a ferocious 15 minute fight sequence atop Hacksaw Ridge that Gibson's film comes to life, spinning multiple brutal attacks and displaying the true horrors of war (and comes at a welcome relief from the onslaught of over-wrought and slow-mo shots of burned and battered bodies - subtlety is not Gibson's strong point here).

But in the final third of the film, Gibson's content to over-saturate proceedings with Christian elements, complete with overtly religious iconography (no worse than Doss' messianic final shot as he ascends in a stretcher from atop the Ridge with a Bible clutched in one hand and another hanging over the edge as the score rouses higher and higher) that feels as brutally obvious as some of the earlier elements of this relatively rote war film.

Doss' story is supposed to inspire and while Garfield gives good hick and earnestness to the man, he's not well served by the screenplay which wrings as much pathos as it can from an over-use and over-reliance on an unsubtle approach. Perhaps the final nail in the coffin is the inclusion of documentary footage and interviews from the real-life Doss to hammer home the point of it all - an unnecessary touch that removes any remaining power from what's already transpired.

Ultimately, Hacksaw Ridge eviscerates the heart of its own story by heading down a cliched route that's well trodden by others before it; its heavy-handed direction cripples its ultimate goal and what should be an inspiring true story depicting the horrors of war and the heroism of some is ham-fisted and hackneyed.

Embrace of the Serpent: DVD Review

Embrace of the Serpent: DVD Review

Released by Madman Home Ent

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 home viewing can serve up a treat under the most auspicious of disguises.

Gary Of the Pacific: Film Review

Gary Of the Pacific: Film Review

Cast: Josh Thomson, Megan Stevenson, Matt Whelan, Dave Fane, Taofi Mose-Tuiloma
Director: Jarrod Holt, Ryan Hutchings

Gary Of the Pacific is rarely better than its opening audacious moments, where a stranded dolphin, a Pacific island beach and a subversive gag make for a shocking - albeit blackly comedic and bravura - opening.

However, the new comedy from the authors of the phenomenally popular 7 Days and the cult audience-led TV comedy Hounds, the downlow project, somehow manages to squander a large portion of the promise it proffered up for the rest of its duration.

Timaru's greatest export, Josh Thompson, plays the titular Gary, a veritable schlubby loser of a guy, who, in his younger years, was dispatched from his Pacific island by his family to go to university overseas in New Zealand and bring accolades and honour to those who'd patronized him.

With the weight of belief on his shoulders from his family and the island as a whole, Gary somehow manages to dodge expectations and ends up taking a series of dead-end jobs that propel him to no glory whatsoever.

Ending up as the chief seller at an estate agent's where the employees number both himself and his clearly-not-right-for-him girlfriend Chloe (Megan Stevenson whose American shrill simply wants a Princess Di or Monica from Friends style wedding), Gary's delusions of grandeur stretch as far as believing he will take the top award at a real estate do, held at a local curry house.

With a marriage proposal gone awry, and with debt threatening to drown him, Gary is called back to his homeland in the Pacific after the news his father and the island's chief (Laughing Samoan star Dave Fane) is dying. Reluctantly, Gary returns home, the prodigal son with promise unfulfilled, but finds that his father's bestowed the honour of chief upon him on his death.

Can Gary do what's necessary to save his sinking homeland, his failing relationship and himself?

With a weak script and not enough gags to fill the relatively short run time, Gary Of The Pacific struggles by, garnering only enough good-will, in parts, because of its lead, Josh Thomson.

Whether it's baring his saggy backside within moments or gamely sorting his junk into the most uncomfortable pair of Spanx you've ever seen, Thomson's low-key wit and deadpan and desperate delivery helps keep large swathes of Gary of the Pacific afloat, but it's slim pickings, thanks to a weakly written script, populated largely by characters who are relatively unlikeable and who remain so from start to finish.

Much like Sione's Wedding and its wretched sequel, a lot's centred on both the family angle within the Pacific community, but simply put, Gary of the Pacific does little to build on this premise.
Chief offender is Dave Fane's father figure who appears ghost-like to Gary after his demise. But rather than offering sage advice, or helping Gary along the way on his journey, Fane's father exists to simply guffaw, laugh and cackle at his charge, a move that soon becomes irritating.

Go Girls star Matt Whelan is a weak fiancee, and foil to the relatively human Lani (first timer Taofi Mose-Tuiloma). Gary's wearied sister who's ended up at home, tending to an ill father and who's become a surrogate to the sinking isle's community.

Hers is perhaps the role that feels that most under-written though, with tensions between Gary and herself manifesting purely as sibling squabbles. There was a strong vein of comedy and emotional resonance to be mined here, but what's actually happened is the writers have gone for the lowest level and stayed there, not realising that the sibling rivalry would have yielded its best results.

Much like Stallone Vaiaoga-Ioasa's Three Wise Cousins achieved massively last year, the film's got the potential to resonate with its audience but it does nothing to boost its chances in the ways the prestige of those involved would hint at.

Despite Thomson's amiability and inherent desire to debase himself as the butt of the jokes wherever possible, all in all, Gary Of The Pacific is woefully inadequate; just relying on lazyish characters, poor writing and lacklustre attempts at laughs aren't nearly enough to get it through to the finish line.

It's a downright shame, to be frank, that this script wasn't even tightened up before the cameras began rolling, as banking on a few sight gags, odd one-liners here and there and under-playing the familial elements just isn't enough to do anyone in this the justice they and their talents clearly deserve.