This Town: Film Review

Cast: David White, Robyn Malcolm, Rima Te Wiata, Alice May Connolly

Director: David White

The most frustrating thing about David White's dramedy about a killer who's trying to find love in a rural town is that it never quite leans into what exactly it wants to be.

Blending goofy romance a la Eagle vs Shark while ignoring the fact it's heavily based on the David Bain story (a family's found shot dead, one sole survivor and a lot of questions dogging them through the years), This Town had some real potential to launch New Zealand cinema after the onset of Coronavirus crippled the cinematic world.

But This Town doesn't own enough of its ingredients to get it out of the country of quirky characters mire it sets itself into.

It's the tale of Sean (White, a fairly solid and deadpan when needed lead), a suspected murderer who wants to simply find the one. Signing up to a dating app on the advice of mates, Sean meets Alice May Connolly's Casey, one of the few girls who's unaware of Sean's past...

However, in smalltown New Zealand, the past is always around the corner...

Initially, This Town proffers some solid laughs, thanks to the deadpan delivery of lines and actions of a man who's clearly socially at odds with what's expected of him - and some inspired sight gags.

Yet once Robyn Malcolm's determined-to-get-her-man former police officer Pam comes in, the film loses a bit of focus and goes slightly off the rails as the weaker material starts to flail in the wind. It's not to pour scorn on Malcolm's performance, as she shows some strong comedy chops when required - her pairing with Rima Te Wiata as a local crime writer is inspired, but there's not enough of it in the film.

Hints of the comedy potential arrive towards the end with some clearly improvised dialogue poitning frustratingly to what could have been. 

This Town never quite knows what it wants to be, and none more so than when the truth comes out, and the dramatic reveal is played too quickly to have the heft it needed. 

Despite some wonderfully realised bucolic shots, and some adroit capturing of the small-town vibe, some of the issue with This Town lies with the character who should be the lead in it is frequently sidelined, gradually robbing them of the screen time that's needed and emotional arc that's necessary.

Working better for character moments, rather than a cohesive whole, This Town feels more suited to a finely honed web series, rather than a full-length film. It's certainly not a Town you want to reside in long-term.

The Girl on the Bridge: NZIFF Review

Director Leanne Pooley's sensitively handled doco about suicide is a painfully honest affair that deserves all the oxygen it can muster.

Centring around 21-year-old Jazz Thornton, who herself tried repeated suicide attempts, Pooley's piece starts a conversation about the stigmatised issue.

Jazz created the webseries Jessica's Tree in 2019 after the death of a friend she couldn't save - Pooley decided to come along to document the process of the making of the piece.

Thanks to Thornton's honesty and the camera's unswerving eye, The Girl on the Bridge almost feels insufferably intrusive. 

The resilience shines through, though and while the documentary occasionally feels like it could do with a bit more of a trim to avoid repetition, the fact it starts the conversation deserves to be applauded and supported.

In among it all is Jazz Thornton, a young woman who has put it all on the line and out in the public eye.

Heartbreaking scenes show the continual pressure she's under, with people constantly messaging her threatening to take their own lives. Pooley's camerawork uses a lot of Thornton's confessional footage, but in moments where Thornton is on the edge and breaks down at her frustration at the system, the film does feel like it's on the edge and teetering.

But it's here that Pooley shows her strength and her clever approach to the film - it's sensitively handled in its use of unflinching honesty.

The Girl On The Bridge is an important documentary to view, as it gives a window into a world that's all too common and all too rarely discussed in the wider media world. 

However, it would be nothing without Jazz Thornton - she may refute the fact her resilience is the key factor here, and that it's important to have the conversations. 

But by showing her own heart and soul, coupled with Pooley's calm and methodical approach to the material, The Girl on the Bridge is a powerful piece that demonstrates the complexities and the flaws of a system, but never loses sight of the humanity of its central subject and its painfully raw subject matter.

Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band: NZIFF Review

Those not familiar with Robbie Robertson and The Band will get a great intro with this doco from director Daniel Roher.

Unfortunately, it's somewhat one-sided given Robbie is the only surviving member of the band who chooses to engage publicly.

However, what emerges from Roher's somewhat hagiographic piece is the feeling that Robertson has grown extremely reflective later in life as he looks back over what occurred.

Using Robertson's Canadian drawl to the maximum effect and some quality archive footage of the invention of rockabilly and the dawning of rock'n'roll, the doco spools out with some high profile fans emerging.

The likes of Martin Scorsese talk of how their lives have been changed by the rockers, but that's all supplementary to proceedings as Robertson takes the floor to amuse us all with stories of The Band's rising and inevitable fall.

It may be one-sided throughout, but with a veritable swagger of a soundtrack and a series of vignettes worth engaging with, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is an amiable enough amble through the annals of a band's rise and downfall.

Ema: NZIFF Review

Director Pablo Larrain's fiery Ema is a film where bad people struggle for your support.

A bleach-blonde Mariana Di Girolamo is Ema, a dancer whose marriage to Gael Garcia Bernal's Gaston is on the rocks after a child they adopted was taken away from them.

Self-destructive in extremis, but looking for the need to become a mother, Ema decides to throw everything up into the air, and pursue her own desires and dreams...

Ema is supposed to be a film of a soul of a fiery nature burning brightly and looking out for number one, but the narcissistic Ema is a distinctly unlikeable protagonist, with a way of rankling and needling viewers rather than getting support.

Fortunately, in Mariana Di Girolamo, Larrain has found a mesmerising actor who transcends the darker nastier edges of the material and who elicits sympathy in less obvious circumstances.

Which is a good thing, because large swathes of Ema fight very hard to get you offside

From character motivations that are hard to fathom to narrative leaps which are utterly ludicrous and almost contemptible, Ema is a film that's stretching credibility to say the least.

However, Larrain's eye for some stunning visuals and outstanding colours ensure Ema is worth enduring - and certainly while realism takes a battering, Mariana Di Girolamo's burning star makes it just about worth sitting through.

The County: NZIFF Review

Mustering as much fire and brimstone as a story of the little people can, Rams director Grímur Hákonarson delivers a quietly empowering tale.

It's the story of Inga (a fire-in-her-belly Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) a farmer in the Nordic lands, whose life is overturned when her husband dies driving a truck. With the farm owned by the Co-operative run in the region and with outside trade stifled by the organisation, Inga starts a rebellion when she likens the group to the Mafia.

As the one-person-against-the-machine battle intensifies, Hákonarson chooses to centre the fight on the dignified but indignant Inga as she takes on the Co-op and its apparently corrupt CEO.

But this is no all-guns-blazing kind of affair.

Instead, as with Rams, Hákonarson elects to slowly build the tension and seeds the story of dissent from within long slow scenes that are character-led and predominantly revealing by their subtleties.

Egilsdóttir may be older and ravaged by time and tribulations of debt upon the farm, but not once does this timeless tale of David vs Goliath go for cliche. 

As the crusade begins against corporate bullying, Hákonarson never shifts focus away from Inga, her resolution and the plight of the smaller man within the valleys. In many ways, The County is not a new story, but with long wide shots, a simmering tension found in smaller communities and by never bedevilling any involved, Hákonarson delivers something akin to a tragedy as it plays out against the bleakness of the valleys.

It may end positively, but The County wins the festival for the bleakest happy ending delivered to the screen yet. In many ways, it could feel like a paean for the New Zealand leg of the festival itself - shorn of conventional routes, and taking on the uncertainties of Covid-19 on the cinema, Hákonarson's The County ends up being a resounding success and quietly moving salute to the common man and woman caught up in the machinations of the big corporate machine.

The Kingmaker: NZIFF Review

A chilling indictment of power and delusion, Lauren Greenfield's The Kingmaker works wonders by never turning its central character into the villain she truly is.

With a sensitive lens and a steady hand, Greenfield's gradually gobsmacking documentary places the focus squarely on Imelda Marcos and the ill-gotten gains and political powers at play in the Philippines.

With a side-focus on the rise of son Bongbong Marcos and a sudden end inclusion of President Duterte's rise to power, The Kingmaker leaves scenes of utter power and disgust to swirl in your gut.

Opening with Marcos handing out obscene amounts of money to those mobbing her, and then doing something similar in a hospital while showing little to no empathy to the suffering around her and caused by herself and her husband, Greenfield slowly damns Imelda into the pantheons of monsters.

Ego, desires to be seen on the world stage and utter contempt build in a heady concoction as the doco plays out, and while Greenfield never chooses to damn Marcos, she certainly delivers Marcos enough rope to essentially hang herself.

Hubris and arrogance rise to the fore - from Imelda Marcos' desire to bring animals from Africa to Philippines on a whim to the secret puppetry behind Bongbong's rise to the top, what emerges is a truly chilling damnation of a country unable to shake itself from inexorable corruption.

Utterly compelling, truly frightening and likely to leave your blood boiling, The Kingmaker is essential documentary-making, a terrifying mirror to a society unable to ever shake itself free - and a piece of film-making that exudes quiet power in every frame.

Carrion: Nintendo Switch Game Review

Developer: Phobia Game Studios

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Slither, slather and slaughter.

Phobia Game Studio’s delightful Carrion allows you to love the alien as you take control of an amorphous blob, hellbent on causing chaos in an underground lair.

Initially miniscule and able to slime your way around the caverns, Carrion grants you the chance to channel all your rage in what developers say is a reverse-horror.

As you cling to the walls, humans try and stop you - but using tendrils and your slimy nefarious desires, you can devour them.

Doing so and consuming them gifts you extra girth (though it does make you more of a target later on as the fight back takes shape.)

Through a series of environmental puzzles and access to minor upgrades to your eco-skeleton, Carrion grants you the chance to deliver carnage how you want.

See a human that looks troublesome? Flick a web and pin them to the wall before devouring them.

Graphically, Carrion is basic at best, looking more pixelated than crystal clear.

But given how fluid your beastie is that barely matters. 

Movement is clear and defined, but equally messy the bigger you get. Bits of you hang from the walls and Carrion grants you the feeling of the extra terrestrial and gifts you the gore.

It may lack a map, but thinking of it from the alien’s perspective as it slithers in places unknown, the world is fit for exploring and finding things anew.

The more Carrion carries on, the bolder you get - luring victims to death and ambushing them are just bonuses. The simplicity is the key to Carrion's success - games don't need to be complicated, and this one keeps to its MO and delivers it more than effectively.

All in all, Carrion may be brief, but this beastly brevity is a blast.

Keep calm and Carrion, indeed.

A review key for Carrion was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.