By Kate Rodger, Daniel Rutledge and Steve Austin
There’s only a few days left of Auckland's leg of the 2011 NZ Film Festival and the Film3 team has been cramming in as many sessions as possible.
Here are our latest reviews:
Pom Wonderful's The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
Morgan Spurlock’s films aren’t really documentaries as they don’t inform us of anything new, but rather hammer home a particular point for 90 minutes or so in an entertaining way. This latest is a comedy based on the subject of product placement in movies. There’s no new information on the subject or many interesting insights, despite featuring snippets of ideal interview subjects like Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and some Hollywood directors most guilty of product placing. Whether or not you’ll enjoy this film basically depends on whether or not you like Spurlock’s character and sense of humour. The film tracks his attempts at funding a feature length film through sponsorship alone, but can not be considered a serious look inside the world of product placement, because the nature of the film he is making is so atypical of the blockbusters that brands normally advertise in. I enjoyed The Greatest Film Ever Sold for what it was – a few laughs. Finding a better comedy or documentary at the festival is a very easy task, although the Q & A session with Spurlock in person was very entertaining and made this worth buying a ticket to. (Daniel Rutledge)
Melancholia
Lars Von Trier’s Nazi-Gate Cannes press conference aside, his film Melancholia connected with me on an intensely moving level and I loved it. The opening eight minutes or so may be one of the most enrapturing I’ve encountered, set to Wagner and setting the scene for an ‘is the world about to end’ cinematic experience which rivals anything Hollywood has ever attempted for its intimacy, its intensity and its impact. I also loved the career-best from Kirsten Dunst, resulting in her well-deserved Best Actress at Cannes. This, like Tree of Life, is a must-see-on-the-big-screen movie. (Kate Rodger)
Gantz: Perfect Answer
Tying up the end of the Gantz narrative was always going to be very difficult to do for this, the second of two live-action features adapted from the manga and anime series. You can read my review to part 1 in this article. The manga series has not yet concluded itself, and interestingly, the movie went for a different ending to the anime series, one much more rooted in typical Japanese overly melodramatic material about sacrifice and honour. But despite the end being a little unsatisfactory, the journey there is at times particularly food fun. There's a spectacular battle in Gantz: Perfect Answer that takes place on a moving subway train. The mix of gun and sword fighting makes for the best set piece of either of Gantz film and one of the coolest action scenes I’ve enjoyed in a cinema all year. Watching both of these movies one day apart in cinema was the perfect way to see them and I’m very grateful I got to see them that way. (Daniel Rutledge)
The Future
Miranda July’s first feature Me & You & Everyone We Know was a sleeper hit with audiences for its quirky, lighthearted rendering of family attitudes in the modern age. With this new film, The Future, she keeps the decidedly off-beat style bubbling along, but with a somewhat stronger surrealist tone. The story involves a couple who quit their jobs while they await the responsibility of adopting a new cat. However things do not go smoothly in the time and she falls into a random affair with a married man, affecting the relationship and changing the future for them both (and the cat as well). Its all narrated by the cat, who sounds like Zelda Rubenstein from Poltergeist, and the ability to stop, slow down and play with time creates some strange moments in the narrative. I’m sure many would find this sort of thing quite cloying and a bit tepid, but to my taste July has a very unique voice within independent cinema and the film she has created here is nothing short of sparkling in its charm and wit. (Steve Austin)
Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place
Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters embarked on a bus trip across the USA in 1964 that kickstarted the nation’s love affair with psychedelic drugs. They filmed most of the journey, providing filmmakers Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney with a treasure trove of groovy archival footage to make this documentary with. Combining this with recent interviews, the filmmakers have put together a fine film. Where they really excel is with awesome psychedelic animation and effects combined with audio recordings of Ken on government LSD tests in 1959. These fantastic visuals are also used with some of the footage of the Merry Pranksters on acid trips and help put the viewer more in the right state of mind. They’re great. This is a fascinating documentary on an important part of American history that isn’t often celebrated. (Daniel Rutledge)
For session times and more information, visit the
official New Zealand
Film Festival website.
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