Battle of the Sexes: DVD Review

Battle of the Sexes: DVD Review

From the directors of Little Miss Sunshine and the writer of The Full Monty, Battle of the Sexes is the story behind the 1973 tennis match between tennis aces Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

It's hard to imagine the Battle of the Sexes having a more pertinent release time than right now, with the war for equality raging stronger than ever, the message of acceptance and coming out, and with the war against sexist buffoons taking on those in power. In truth, that's possibly the best thing Battle of the Sexes has going for it, because, in truth, it's predominantly the kind of film you've seen before - well presented and acted, but slightly lacking a little depth of character.

Stone is Billie Jean, whose anger at the lack of pay equity when offered a part in a tournament that pays an eighth of what the men receive sees her launch a women's league of her own. Alienated from the boys' club and determined to build credibility for the women's lib front and the the sport, the apparently happily married Billie Jean is also struggling with an attraction to a chance meeting with Marilyn, a hairdresser played with subtlety and warmth by Andrea Riseborough.

At the same time, former Wimbledon ace and compulsive gambler and hustler Bobby Riggs (a wonderfully spot-on likeness from Steve Carell) is looking for his next challenge. Chasing a bet, and with his family life in ruins because of it, the self-styled male chauvinist pig challenges Billie Jean to a game to demonstrate once and for all that men are better than women.

With two storylines that flow and ebb before colliding, Battle of the Sexes manages to mix the hazy 70s cinematography and some firecracker performances from the likes of Silverman as King's agent into a crowd-pleasing affair that lobs and serves as well as those on the field.

But in truth, Carell's Riggs never feels like his sexist bluster is anything other than a push for PR on the pitch, and despite a good solid turn that mixes both comedy and warmth, consequently feels like he's the Austin Powers of the tennis world. (Though it is good to see him reunite with his Crazy, Stupid, Love counterpart again.)

While Stone's King is a bit more of a rounded character, with Stone personifying the internal struggle with non-showy chutzpah, Battle of the Sexes' strength and weakness lies in the fact that it chooses not to vilify any side of the debate. Both portrayals are flattering, neither are damning and the overall result is one of a fairly generic movie whose parts occasionally help it excel and achieve a timely poignancy in the global scale of events.

Decidedly light and breezy, yet never too lightweight not to resonate, Battle of the Sexes is a game of a film that serves, lobs, ducks and weaves like a true sportsperson. It's here to entertain and keep you focussed on the action (such as it is) and it does so with aplomb, thanks to its trio of leads.

The Post: Film Review

The Post: Film Review

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Bruce Greenwood
Director: Steven Spielberg

With hot button topics like a President angered by the press doing their job, potential censorship of news and a woman making her place in the patriarchy, it's easy to see why The Post is proving to be such a cinematic firecracker.

But in truth, director Steven Spielberg's take on All the President's Men and to a degree, Spotlight, seems more Mr Hanks Goes To Washington and genial than savage as you'd hope.

Apparently rushed into urgent production to tackle the current US climate and the reaction to President Trump, fake news et al, The Post looks into the cover-up of the Pentagon Papers back in the early 1970s.

When The New York Times took papers from the US government that purported to show the truth of the Vietnam war, they found themselves in the cross hairs not just of the authorities, but also of the provincial new-kid-on-the-block newspaper, The Washington Post.

With an injunction slapped on the Times, The Post, under its editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks, in a dogged and ruthless everyman turn) decides to step in to try and make a name for itself - but battle lines are drawn morally and financially with Meryl Streep's Kay Graham under pressure as she tries to helm the newspaper empire and get it floated to ensure its future success.

The Post is the kind of worthy Oscar-bait drama that thrives on its contemporary themes present in a story from yesteryear as it riffs on All The President's Men and feels bizarrely, like a prequel..

There's never been a more pertinent time to present a film such as this, and even if it does use its ensemble cast to maximum effect, it still can't but help to allow Spielberg to proffer up his trademark over-sentimentalising moments as well.

From a speech of Streep's character decrying the Post is "my company now" after bemoaning the fact it was her father's, her husband's to the reveal of the Court verdict which blatantly emphasises the message that freedom of the press is vital in this day and age, there's a touch of heavy-handedness with which the Post indulges itself.

And there are moments where the film chooses to explain proceedings, rather than present them, that feels a little like it's pandering to the masses.

Yet, despite these moments, it's a superior piece of film-making.

Hanks and Streep deliver strong and solid performances which smack of potential peer recognition, and certainly there's a lit touch paper quality to the stories they deliver.
Despite it all though, their stories are universal and both Hanks and Streep rise to what's needed of them and deliver with panache and verve.

It may be that Spielberg's done his version of Capra and Mr Smith Goes To Washington and hits a few familiar tropes throughout (a typical montage of actual journalism being done being one of them), but he does so engagingly and for the most part, enticingly.

If ever a film about journalism were more pertinent, more timely and more urgent, then it would be a surprise.

Expect to see The Post's jabs rewarded come Oscar season - and even if it had been better had it been a little more subtle, this film, with its love of news, the old school printing presses and the fight for truth and justice, manages to be as compelling as it should.

The Lost City of Z: Blu Ray Review

The Lost City of Z: Blu Ray Review

More a contemplative adventure than a full-on swash-buckling colonial romp, The Lost City of Z sees a quietly soft-spoken Charlie Hunnan taking on the mantle of Brit explorer Percy Fawcett.

Unadorned of medals, and with a father who squandered the familial name, Fawcett is struggling to make his place at the turn of the century in military postings. So, when called up to the Royal Geographical Society in lieu of his mapping skills, and surrounded by fellow explorers making their own names, Fawcett feels the pull of the opportunity to provide a better life and reputation for his wife (Sienna Miller) and young family.

Posted to the Amazonian jungle and teamed with Robert Pattinson's Henry Costin, Fawcett finds his journey is blighted and simultaneously enlivened by the possibility a new civilisation lives deep within. But on returning, his claims are scoffed out, and sensing once again the chance to rid his name of ridicule, he sets out again on a quest that will consume his life.

Director James Gray isn't interested in making The Lost City of Z a thumping adventure of derring-do. In fact, it brings to mind elements of Embrace of The Serpent from a few years back at the festival - which is no bad thing.

In the wash, it's the complete opposite, a slow-moving exploration of what makes the explorer tick and the demons that consume those who've been thwarted for generations.

Frustrations among the fronds of the jungle and realistic problems mark out The Lost City Of Z as something both grand and equally languorous. Hunnam's quiet approach to Fawcett makes his hero feel infinitely more human, and when he's tackling the mores of society and the hypocrisies of belief, Fawcett emerges as a more rounded and infinitely more plausible character. Plus Hunnam's flawed Fawcett as he rails against inequality but forbids his wife from joining them on the trail speaks well to the internal conflict of narrow-minded convictions.

There's a melancholy to this adventure and it seeps through every frame as the journey to capture the feeling or re-capture the belief of what lies unexplored is laid out. Gray consumes his screen with closeness within the jungle, which doesn't lead to claustrophobia but promotes a very real sense of belonging within.

Ultimately, there's a sprawl to The Lost City of Z which seeps through your eyes as you view. Its slow pace may put some off, but its realistic view of the adventure genre is a welcome touch in what could easily have been an overblown post-modern take on colonialism and distant beliefs. 

The Girl With All The Gifts: Blu Ray Review

The Girl With All The Gifts: Blu Ray Review

Released by Universal Home Ent


Mixing the vibe of The Road, 28 Days Later, Schwarzenegger's zombie film and PlayStation game The Last of Us, The Girl With all the gifts is a contemplative piece that perhaps goes a little too long.

In a post-apocalyptic Britain,Gemma Arterton's scientist Helen Justineau is desperately trying to help save children from being experimented on as the search for a cure continues to a plague that's reduced mankind to hordes of hungry cannibalistic masses.

When Justineau goes on the run with Sennia Nanua's Melanie, with the army in tow, all hell breaks loose.

Trading largely on atmospherics and mood, The Girl With All The Gifts is, at times, a veritable ripper of a film that does nearly outstay its welcome.

It riffs on contemplation as well as peeling into some of the horror tropes as well, and with some very assured performances - including Nanua - and a desire to underplay, it works terrifically well.

There will be those who prefer the contemplative prose of the book, but for those looking at what's already an over-busy genre, The Girl With All The Gifts proves to be a shot in the undead arm that film occasionally needs.

The Free Man: DVD Review

The Free Man: DVD Review

Director: Toa Fraser

Starting with a Sartre quote that "Man is condemned to be free", director Toa Fraser's latest doco is perhaps incorrectly being sold as a look at Jossi Wells, the NZ free-skier and his interest in the sport.

But what it actually is, is more of a meditation on what inspires people to be involved in extreme sports, and is more of a look at the Flying Frenchies, a pair of French guys who started a company of base-jumping and high-lining. Added into the mix is the inclusion of Jossi Wells, who starts training with the Frenchies to be able to cross a zipline in the French Alps.

Fraser creates a typical documentary set up in the start, detailing a bit more about Jossi and how he got into sport before switching the film's focus away from this and more into the psychology of extreme sports and whether it's man's desire to push the edges and visit the void.

That's potentially some of the problem with The Free Man, in that it doesn't quite seem to know what exactly it wants to be as it unspools. Loaded with slightly po-faced questioning and voiceover that equates the director to those walking a high-wire, The Free Man's philosophical edges may be enough to put some people off.

However, what helps it, is the incredible footage of extreme sports and also the camaraderies that emerge from between the Frenchies and Wells.

Using a locked off camera and some truly vertigo-inducing shots, Fraser manages to spin out some magnificently existential moments as you end up questioning why people are doing this. It doesn't quite get into the psyche as well as perhaps it intends to do, but The Free Man reminds once again of the adrenaline thrill that people get from being involved in such pursuits.

Perhaps if The Free Man had had a slightly tighter focus on perhaps just one angle and one group, it may have been a more precisely delivered documentary; as it is currently, its thoughtful edges and desire to create metaphors mean it feels a little tonally jerky, almost as if it's caught on its own high wire of being.  

Dunkirk: Blu Ray Review

Dunkirk: Blu Ray Review

An apparent triptych of war stories that conclude and collide in surprising and spoilery ways, the breathtakingly intense Dunkirk is nothing without its thundering score from Hans Zimmer.

Its screeching, pulsing, pounding sonic blast powers the movie all the way and distracts from the relatively thinly drawn and relatively stereotyped characters.

Be it Tom Hardy in a mask and bomber jacket in the cockpit of a Spitfire above patrolling the skies and trying to keep others safe, or the avuncular Mark Rylance, helmsman of a fishing boat commandeered to head to Dunkirk or the desperate to get-out-of-hell squaddie played by Fionn Whitehead, the propulsion of the plot is knotted in its ticking score, which ratchets up the stress levels and tension to near unbearable.

Sketched out across the canvas of the evacuation of Dunkirk and blown big upon the IMAX screen, perhaps some of the heart is initially lost, ripped asunder in the tapestry of what Nolan is weaving.






But this is not what Dunkirk is setting out to do, nor is it what Nolan clearly has envisioned from his take on the conflict. 

In among the smaller moments and the muddied, desperate faces of nameless soldiers seeking evacuation and cowering in fear as Stukas and their death-dealing payloads edge ever closer, there are times when Dunkirk's delivery of spectacle and its one smart trick excel, hitting you emotionally where you feel you should have been guarded.

It begins and unfolds over a moment in 1940 with a soldier running through the French streets in a troop, desperately scrabbling to avoid bullets and get to the evacuation, and ends with Churchill's words echoing in your ears. But in between that, Nolan's Dunkirk is a sickeningly gripping film that reworks its timelines in ways that make you feel like you're in an enclosed room with the walls closing in against you, struggling for fear of where your next breath will come from, and wishing desperately that Nolan would loosen the vice-like grip you've found yourself in against the odds.

Pressure and tension are tangible throughout, with no direct heroes coming to the fore and just the apparently disparate actions of various men fuelling the fire that burns up this dramatic pot. Less a story, more a thunderingly visceral experience that evolves from what appears to simply be a plume of smoke in the sky in the distance, Dunkirk drops you in the centre of proceedings of one day at various points in it - from its very beginning the scope of this (bloodless) battle is evident. 

Troops line the beaches, desperately jostling and waiting in line to be evacuated, with the ever niggling threat of the German invasion nipping at their toes. Nolan doesn't need exposition to sell the scene (though Branagh's commander occasionally provides it) and uses the sparsity of the acting and the visceral edges to really place you there. 

Dunkirk's beyond tense, and there are surprises within. Death is waiting around every corner of the conflict, and the theatre of war, and the scale of Nolan's execution really makes it evident how truly horrific it would have been. 

But much like Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan where the emotional end led a level of cornball to what had gone before, Nolan finds a way to offer a bittersweet resolution for enduring this cinematic tour-de-force.  Granted, after stretching everything out over the previous 100 minutes, and leaving you with the heart-in-the-mouth feeling as you try to work out how the 400,000 trapped on the beaches could escape a potentially deadly fate, Nolan's denouement may be viewed as a little on the cheesy side, but given the spirit of hope which has been suppressed throughout this piece, it was perhaps inevitable.

Essentially re-inventing the war movie and somehow managing to provide an intimately gripping tale inside an epically structured landscape, Dunkirk is a piece of bravura film-making. There's no way you won't leave this film gasping for air and admiring the human spirit as well as admiring what Nolan has concocted. 

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Blu Ray Review

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Blu Ray Review

Imagine Star Trek on hallucinogenics, mixed in with the wonderful digital wizardry of the WETA team, and you'd be quite close to what Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets manages to achieve.

With a budget estimated to be $210 million, and helmed by the man who brought us The Fifth Element and the much under-rated Lucy, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is based on a French science fiction comic series Valerian and Laureline.

A Cure For Wellness' DeHaan plays Valerian, a major in a 28th Century space federation who trudges from mission to mission with his colleague Sergeant Laureline, played by model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne.

Following a dream of a low-tech planet that's vaporised by marauding ships, Valerian discovers his next mission is to retrieve a "converter", an animal that holds the key to reproducing resources and is highly sought on the black market.

But, it seems not only he is after the converter, and soon more nefarious groups are showing up and a major conspiracy is revealed...

It seems somewhat pointless to rail against Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets on some level.

With its wild, throw everything digitally at the world and hope some of it sticks ethos, there's no doubting the grandeur and scale of this cinematic and hyper-kinetic folly.

The film sets out its stall in its opening moments as a montage of cuts introduces us to various first contacts with races from around the galaxy, each bubbling with a life and visual flair from WETA Digital which reeks of a competition to see who can provide the most out there creatures.
But, much like Star Trek's Federation did all those years ago with Deep Space Nine, there's a continuity of critters which is pleasing. When an emergency meeting is convened later on, the various races from the opening are found to be seated around the tables; it's a touch that shows Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is committed to its universe and the internal logic of it all.

And there are some seriously trippy and gorgeous visuals at play here.

Worlds have blue and red clouds hanging in their skies, and Valerian's dream sequence certainly has a distinctly Na'vi meets Prometheus' Engineers vibe to its stretched out lanky aliens. A space market sequence later on is Mos Eisley on speed mixed with George Lucas' desire to over-populate the world within with as much as you can handle.
In fact, the digital scale and ambition of this hyper-kinetic film leap off the screen and beg you to luxuriate within.

So it's a shame to report that Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets suffers because of its human elements and the tonal mish-mash they bring.

DeHaan delivers his lines as if he's trying to impersonate Keanu Reeves' Bill and Ted outing, imbuing most of it without any touches of emotion or ambition. Delevingne doesn't fare much better either, reducing Laureline to a series of eye-rolls and carefully orchestrated bursts of childish petulance as the story goes on.

It's not fatal to the feel of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets but it does, unfortunately, stop you engaging fully with the overlong execution of what is at best, a minimal story.

All in all, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets probably would work better as a cartoon series than a fledgling franchise launch.

It feels like it's aimed at youngsters, as the more kiddy elements of the film make it feel like it's a space romp for them to revel in - there are elements of the script-writing of The Phantom Menace in some of the dialogue, and given its delivery by two relatively wooden leads, it stands out.

But yet, as a saga, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets delivers something that's distinctly Besson and his idiosyncracies; it's distinctly European in its outlook and laissez-faire attitude, but undoubtedly it can't be criticised for the breadth and depth of its truly astounding digital scope.