Goodbye Christopher Robin: Film Review

Goodbye Christopher Robin: Film Review

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly MacDonald, Will Tilston
Director: Simon Curtis

Very much a warts and all portrayal of one of the world's most famous children's icons, Goodbye Christopher Robin is a cautionary tale about the damage done to others by fame and neglect.

With a strong anti-war message, Goodbye Christopher Robin is the story of the playwright A A Milne (Gleeson, sombre and at times, drawn) whose London arty life is irrevocably changed when he returns from the first Great War.

Shell-shocked and sleep-walking through life, Milne, along with his flapper wife Daphne (Robbie in chocks away mode) relocate to the English countryside after their first child is born.

Milne believes the countryside will inspire his anti-war writing, but Daphne, disappointed at birthing a boy rather than a girl and fearing he will be conscripted, stays in London to party and forget the perils.

Left alone with Christopher Robin and forced to take on the kid when nanny Olive (Macdonald, the film's heart and vocal conscience) has to look after her ill mother, the pair bond as young Christopher helps him through post-war life and yearns for a father.

As the duo spend more time together, the whimsical world of Winnie The Pooh is born - and despite AA Milne saying the story would be for his son, it soon becomes a worldwide phenomenon, leading to an even stronger sense of estrangement in the Milne family.

Served with a large degree of as much sugariness as Pooh's beloved honey, Goodbye Christopher Robin comes dangerously close to over-egging the pudding at times, with the mawkish manipulation being piled on to occasionally over-bearing moments.

With the saccharine overdose being largely confined to the dimple-faced moppet playing young Christopher Robin and his fatherly interactions, there's little insight into what fully led to the bear's creation other than some downpat broad brush strokes applied to the stiffly-starched English accents and rather withdrawn adult acting.

And yet, bizarrely and equally so, the sense of detachment and the underlying sadness of lives wrecked within (Milne's PTSD haunts him at every turn, wife Daphne's denial pushes her to seek solace in London away from the boy she could lose and son Christopher's growing resentment over the fame he's handed and the lack of familial attachment) really hint at the dark story underneath it all.

This is perhaps Goodbye Christopher Robin's strength - it's not a film that celebrates an icon in many ways.

If anything, it shows a deeply tragic personal correlation between fame and its cost.

Pre-reality shows and post war with England aching for a return to more optimistic times, this is a harrowing introspective look at the trappings and perils of the creative world.

It puts a uniquely human spin (albeit occasionally laden with a spoon rather than a dollop) on proceedings and deserves to be saluted so.

Perhaps if some of the sentiment hadn't been ladelled on with such heft, this immensely thoughtful biopic could have been intensely more emotionally satisfying.

Professor Marston and The Wonder Women: Film Review

Professor Marston and The Wonder Women: Film Review

Cast: Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, Connie Britton
Director: Angela Wilson

Feeling more like an episode of Masters Of Sex, with some kinkiness thrown in as well, it's no surprise that Professor Marston and The Wonder Women releases the same week as Justice League.

Centring on Evans' Professor William Marston aka the man who created the Wonder Woman comic and his wife Elizabeth (Hall), Professor Marston and The Wonder Women details how the renowned psychologist developed the feminist comic in the 1940s.

While lecturing at Harvard, Bella Heathcote's Olive Byrne catches the eye of William and his wife, and she's invited to join them in an intellectual three-way as he looks to develop the lie detector.

Frustrated at his lack of breakthrough, and with his wife unable to secure a PHD from anywhere, the two find their energy centred and re-focused with the introduction of Olive - not to mention, an attraction as well.

Professor Marston and The Wonder Women is a curious film, one which takes the time to build up the central relationship and dynamic of the trio, but falters at anything else outside of it.

Beginning with Marston facing a 1940s panel chaired by Connie Britton's Josette Frank who's unhappy about the content of the Wonder Woman comic, the film flashes back to the development of the relationship and as a result, the film's raison d'etre seems to slightly suffer in the process.

Perhaps it's due to an expectation of the Wonder Woman side of things garnering attention, but in truth, the germ of the idea that comes late in the piece feels a little rushed and the outrage which sees people collecting and burning the comics feels piecemeal and under-developed.

Far more successful is the examination of the trio, the introduction of bondage and the embracing of the polygamy side of things (even if questions from the children don't appear and a stereotyped neighbourhood brawl feels more perfunctory than anything) serves the film better.

Central to proceedings is Heathcote's mix of innocence and desire. Her Olive, even if she does appear to be channeling a younger Heather Graham in looks, adds much to the yearning among the learning atmosphere that writer / director Robinson seeks to build.

The societal clashes rear their head late in the piece, and as the comic house of cards begins to collapse and the relationship falters, you genuinely feel for the trio and feel the accusations sting that others hurl at them.

Ultimately, Professor Marston and The Wonder Women is beautifully shot and offers up some stellar performances from the central trio, but its lasso of truth tends to loosen when it casts itself wider and tries to latch on to anything else which isn't related to them.

Society may have the ties that bind in Professor Marston and The Wonder Women, but the way the stories loosens itself from the shackles of Hollywood's more traditional trysts and tropes gives it a sensitivity that's hard to ignore, an eroticism which is occasionally contagious and a narrative that intrigues deeply.

All Eyez on Me: Blu Ray Review

All Eyez on Me: Blu Ray Review

Tupac's legacy feels slightly squandered in this over-long formulaic biopic that seems more interested in hitting Tupac moments than going deeper.

A charismatic Shipp Jr channels the looks of the late rapper with ease as the film jumps back and forth in his timeline detailing Shakur's childhood, rise to rapper and struggle with the criticism aimed at gangsta rap.

Framed under the auspice of an interview from Clinton Correctional in 1995, Boom's film suffers from plenty of chopping and changing around early on, as the film sets out its intentions to capture the key moments of the life rather than to assemble a more coherent narrative and pertinent overview of Shakur's life.

With commentary on the injustices in Tupac's life, the mistreatment of African Americans and lots of angry outbursts from his mother (played by The Walking Dead's Michonne), the film seems to be aiming for incendiary but never fully catches fire.

In fairness, during the scenes of musical excellence, Bloom turns up the dial to 11 and the film crackles with the kind of electricity that's needed and was seen in the likes of Straight Outta Compton. But these are too few and far in between over the bum-numbing 140 minutes run time.

As the rise to Death Row Records settles in, it becomes clear that the script's less interested in providing fully fleshed out characters and is more interested in assuming characteristics and stereotypes for the likes of Sugg Knight and Snoop Dogg.

Ultimately, this slightly hollow and pedestrian approach to what really should have been a home-run means that All Eyez on Me ends up being something where you'd rather avert your eyes elsewhere. Time-hopping doesn't help generate a sense of emotional depth and ultimately when the end arrives, there's little to no feeling on the audience's behalf as it transpires on screen.

With little sense of flair, and a script that makes Tupac's life seem more disjointed (and in the case of legal arguments, more brief and simplistic than it is) All Eyez on Me fails to engender a sense of inspiration in its subject.

War for the Planet of the Apes: Blu Ray Review

War for the Planet of the Apes: Blu Ray Review

In the concluding part of the trilogy, you'd be forgiven for expecting that it would be full-on action for Caesar and his pals as the fight for the earth continued.

But, if you're anticipating being delivered apes with all guns blazing, then director Matt Reeves, the incredibly talented WETA Digital team and the ever-under-appreciated Andy Serkis have a very big surprise for you.

In the final chapter, Caesar (mo-capped Serkis) has become a legendary figure to both the apes and humans, held in both reverence and fear by both sides. On the run and in hiding, Caesar's world is shattered when an ambush from the humans (led by Harrelson's Colonel) leads to very personal losses.

Against the wishes of the rest of the apes, Caesar heads off on a quest for vengeance, endangering the apes' future and his own...

Mixing up a degree of a simian Band of Brothers, an end-of-times Western and a psychological rumination, War For the Planet of the Apes is not your average blockbuster thrill-ride, but an absorbing conclusion to a consistently intelligent and entertaining series.

The power of this trilogy of films has been one about the clashes of ideologies, the divisive line between human and animal, and the perilous balance between descending into madness. In War For The Planet of The Apes, it's Caesar whose journey is the most important, and who stands to lose the most after deciding on a course of revenge.

Thankfully, a wonderfully nuanced turn from Serkis imbues this outing with the requisite and expected emotional depth that we've come to expect from the series. And while the signs are on the wall (quite literally throughout) of another paean to Apocalypse Now, thanks to a Kurtz like turn from an almost messianic Harrelson, those behind the script deserve to be commended for not launching into a salvo of bullets flying and explosions (well, right away at least.)

In fact, it's the almost mournful script that elevates this from the primal mud; early parts of the movie have a Western feel to them as Caesar and his small troop move on after a tension-filled action burst of a beginning. It's just as well, because the rumination-like feel of the script and execution thereof is slightly muddied by the introduction of a comedy "Bad Ape" (voiced with requisite catchphrase glee by Steve Zahn) and the need to ram home some of the inspirations for the finale.

It's to be understood why, given the almost dirge-like feel to the proceedings (not a bad thing by any step of the imagination) and how it ends up as some kind of allegory of a fight between workers and unions, Spartacus meets Shawshank Redemption and riddled with Holocaust imagery, such as ape crucifixions as well as the obligatory Ape Escape sequences.

Harrelson deserves commendation for adding an edge to his Colonel, and a tragedy to proceedings. Rather than head into OTT territory, there's a subversion of expectations in War For The Planet of the Apes that he helps deliver.

It's not that there are not meaty concepts within this film, more a feeling that morally things are grey - and once again the digital apes deliver that in spades in their performance. Even Harrelson's Colonel wryly remarks while staring down Caesar that his eyes "look almost human."

Layering both tragedy and pathos in relatively equal measure, and despite some faltering turns in the story early on, (mainly involving a Nell-like child), War For the Planet of the Apes delivers a finale that crackles with delicious nuance as it debates whether Caesar (and by extension all of us) is right to succumb to his demons.

War For The Planet of the Apes is a sublime conclusion to the franchise, and a timely reminder that combined with intelligence and digital excellence, these Apes manage to mirror our human lives and future pre-occupations  in ways that may actually surprise cinema-goers. 

Wonder Woman: Blu Ray Review

Wonder Woman: Blu Ray Review

The internet's already exploded with outrage at a "Women only" screening of the latest entrant into the DC Extended Universe.

Equally, there have already been calls to hail the two-and-a-half-hour film one of the best of the DC big screeners, thanks to its all-woman pairing of Monster director Jenkins and Gadot's Amazonian Princess.

After Suicide Squad (one complete with leering camera lingering uncomfortably on Margot Robbie's behind as Harley Quinn overtook the screen) and the all-boys fight club of Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, complete with its pomposity and nonsensical plot, the DC Comics world had some way to go to catch up with the levity of its comrade-in-arms the Marvel films.

Particularly, given that current the social climate apparently sidelines women as leads and we live in a world populated by Women's Marches.By necessity an origins story (yet again), Wonder Woman, stripped of the campery of the original Lynda Carter's stars and stripes TV show, manages to bring to life a slice of wish fulfillment as America, by way of Chris Pine's spy and Wonder Woman's patented red, white and blue garb, manage to save the day in the dying moments of World War I. (And 2000AD fan boys will notice similarities to Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell's superhero vs Nazis Zenith stories of 1987)

Though while DC's universe and track record of films within isn't exactly great, thanks to the assured directorial eye of Patty Jenkins (whose Monster revitalised Charlize Theron), this is one comic book origins story that largely gets the bigger picture right - and also goes some way to satiating the furore that women are under-represented on film and in certain genres.

Starting on the mystical island of Themyscira where nobody but teutonic athletic Amazons train in perpetual slow-mo and live, Gal Gadot's early Diana years centre on her world being uprooted when plucky spy Steve Trevor (an earnest, likeable and restrained Pine) literally falls out of the sky and onto the island.

Once Diana learns of the world beyond her shores from her dude-in-distress Trevor and believes there is the very real possibility that Amazon-banished god Ares, the god of War is at work in the wider world, she teams up with Steve to do her sworn duty and save the world from destruction.

Book-ended by two different action sequences (one a rote obligatory superhero CGI-heavy spectacle and clash of the titans that lacks the personal, the other an athletic and graceful balletic sequence that showcases the fighting skills complete with usual slow-mo), the film feels like a mesh of war-time adventure and expected conventions.

Playing up the comic naivety in the real world schtick, as made popular by Chris Hemsworth's culture -clash Thor in Marvel counterpart films, Gadot and Pine form an easy bond early on, and imbue their burgeoning relationship with a heart and earnestness that makes for easy watching.
(Though, in fairness, Diana's naivety begins to grate thanks to a continuing number of speeches on the horrors of war as she navigates the world). Demonstrating that comedy and humour are the best way to create heart makes for an easy bedfellow as the drama gets underway, and it helps that Pine underplays to a terrific degree, ensuring that his Steve Trevor is seen as a genuine good-guy in all of this.

Gal Gadot also impresses, even if so many of her close-ups seem to fall straight from the shooting of a pouting lip-gloss commercial.

Wisely eschewing the lecherous cameras that plagued Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad and any female in a Michael Bay Transformers movie, Jenkins and Gadot manage to bring to life an icon that's perhaps as empowering as she is important.

There's no denying that in a patriarchal hegemony, Diana, the Queen of the Amazons breaks through, but she manages to do it in such a way that it's hard now for future films to belittle or sideline female leads.
It helps that Gadot manages to deliver a turn that strips away some of the woodenness of her prior roles (see Keeping Up With the Joneses) and parts of the wooden script.This is a heroine for our times, and while there's a nagging feeling that Diana becomes slightly rote in the messy third act, there's no denying that Gadot's turn here is going to inspire many.

But if plenty of effort's been poured into Gadot's Diana and Pine's Trevor, it's clear that other parts of Wonder Woman are sadly left wanting.(Though these feel less significant than quibbles in films like Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman.)Danny Huston's German villain and Dr Poison (aka The Skin I Live In's Elena Anaya, once again wearing a Phantom of the Opera style facials) are bereft of anything other than a once-over villain stereotyping, a charge often laid at both Marvel and DC's door. In fact at times, the maniacal duo are reminiscent of Rocky and Bullwinkle's Natasha and Boris in their cartoon villainy and machinations.

Equally, the rest of Trevor's squad, selected for a suicide mission in France's trenches, are fairly rote, given a few scenes of enforced bonding and ultimately add little to proceedings, other than comedy.
While former The Office star Lucy Davis proffers some comedy chops as Trevor's secretary and Diana's guide to women-in-wartime, there's a distinct feeling that bit players in this piece could have been handed more.

A good 30 minutes of the 150 minute run time could have been chopped in the edit suite, and Wonder Woman would have been a testament to oestrogen-fuelled film-making.

As it is, and thanks largely to Gadot's work, and Jenkins' smart handling of re-jigged source material, there's little denying that Wonder Woman has given very real life to the DC Extended Universe.

Here's hoping the future films continue to build on this development and this beacon of superhero light is the start of better things to come within the genre. 

Human Traces: Film Review

Human Traces: Film Review

Cast: Sophie Henderson, Mark Mitchinson, Vinnie Bennett
Director: Nic Gorman

New Zealand films usually fall into one or two categories - and usually fail to offer many points of difference.

From murky history pieces lecturing on how the country wronged its indigenous settlers to some dramas that never quite make it to dizzying heights of feeling more than TV fare, the industry as a whole has shied away from mystery.

Step forward Nic Gorman's elegaic, intriguing and thoroughly impressive Human Traces to pick up the mantle and throw down a gauntlet.

In this moody and evocative piece set 750 kms south of New Zealand on an island (though in truth, with its universal themes, and stripped of its accents, it could be anywhere) where Mitchinson's Glenn is monitoring the eco-system. Sarah, his wife of 30 years his junior, (Henderson, achingly isolated and bristling for a return to home-life) doesn't believe Glenn's work is succeeding; her bond in him and with him is clearly fraying when we join them.

Their world is changed by the arrival of Vinnie Bennett's Pete, a DoC ranger and whose arrival, although expected, is fraught with suspicion.

To say more about Human Traces is to rip away its ingenue and its central mystery, a knotty and, for the large part, gripping tale.

Gorman's twist-and-turns script pulls and pushes his actors in ways that are challenging, but it's the central premise of the story split into three pieces and scenes played again but from different protagonist points-of-view which give Human Traces its captivating USP.

Its psychological edges completely grab you in the second act, as everything you thought you knew and suspected is pulled from in front of your eyes. Cleverly disorienting audiences is part of its Rashomon effect, and while Human Traces hints at a lack of humanity on show, what envelops the central trio is explicitly human at its core.

As the gradual layers reveal themselves, Gorman sets scenes to the crashing waves, their churning and thrashing signifying a change in the emotional tides. He makes great fist of the rugged terrain of the Otago coastline, revelling in it to help convey the script's increasing confidence.

At times, Human Traces is a sparse film, but it's also one which soars magnificently as it plays out in front of audiences. Its third act may feel weaker as a denouement, but that's simply demonstrating how much that happens previously grips in a vice.

Moody, suspenseful and expertly executed, Human Traces is perhaps one of New Zealand's finest cinematic 2017 experiences.

The Beguiled: Blu Ray Review

The Beguiled: Blu Ray Review

Gifted the best director awards at Cannes for this, Sofia Coppola returns to more ethereal portraits as is her wont in The Beguiled.

Set in 1864 Virginia, 3 years into the Civil War (though, in all honesty, time and the world outside barely trouble much of what transpires), Coppola's take on the 1971 Don Siegel Southern psychodrama, which starred Clint Eastwood, is as wispy as the mist which hangs over the woods in the opening shot.

Colin Farrell stars as a wounded Union soldier, Corporal McBurney, found cowering under a tree by one of the young charges at the local girls seminary, run by Nicole Kidman's buttoned up Martha. At first the seven of them debate what to do with McBurney, but different feelings of repression, desire and blossoming sexuality come to the fore as time passes.

Initially deciding to allow McBurney to recuperate before being sent on his way, the chaste and secluded women find themselves all-a-fluster thanks to McBurney (and by extension, Farrell) and his rogueish charm.

Soon, however, the question becomes who is beguiling who?

Coppola's eye for the female gaze is evident throughout, much like it was in The Virgin Suicides.

By turns, light, funny and sultry, The Beguiled does much to bewitch, even if its flirtations are as passing as the breeze.

What transpires is a four-way as Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, Kidman and the preternaturally youthful Elle Fanning vie for the attention. From dinners that drip with the potential of a cat fight, or the closest a finishing school will allow, to clandestine visits and impromptu liaisons, the film positively drips with sultry sensuality as it plays out.

Coppola's more interested in the female dynamic at play here and most men, bar Farrell, are framed from a distance when they appear and / or are surplus to proceedings. Sure, cannons fire and plumes of smoke appear on the horizon, but men are rarely seen at this finishing school, giving the flirtations a weight that's understandable when McBurney shows.

But as she stacks the deck with betrayal, lust and repressed desire, what she creates in The Beguiled is a similarly themed entrant as others display in her catalogue. Using a similarly ethereal lens and vision, Coppola may be making an obvious film in many ways, but its subtleties are enough to beguile the audience.

With equal amounts of humour, takes on etiquette and coquettishness, the battle of the females, and simple simmering, the film manages to cast a spell on those who view.