Category: Movies

An offbeat dysmantic (good word, eh?) comedy about a loser jerk (he’s a bit thick, and he’s a jerk because he’s been badly damaged by the loss of his brother, and possibly by his father’s favoritism of his bro before he died) played by Flight of the Conchords guy Jemaine Clement and the sweet simple girl (Loren Horsly) that loves him – and wins him over through her use of MAD GAMER SKILLZ – as they meet, fall in… whatever it is they fall in… and then take a trip to his hometown to take down his high school nemesis Eric the Samoan.

Heaps of faces you know (and probably an equal number of other faces you’d know if only you were a Wellingtonist), putting in some great performances.

I’m pretty sure that you don’t need to be a raving parochial loon like me to enjoy this movie. Sure, so some of it isn’t funny, it’s not all meant to be funny, there’s lots of actual story in there too, but the bits that are meant to be funny? They’re high-larious.

Director Taika Waititi introduced the movie and did a Q&A afterwards, dude has some mad charisma going on. He’s seriously charming. I now officially have the hots for him (now I just have to knock off his long term partner – and star of the movie – Loren Horsely).

Actually I called Loren the star, but the real star (if you count the tracksuits out of the running) had to be sweet little child actress Morag Hills – that dance sequence? That was awesome. Talk about your complicated choreography. (teehee)

Listen, just go and see it, you’ll laugh your big fat arse off. And when you come out you’ll want a human sized hamster wheel. (Oh yes you WILL!)

A great little doco about American Evangelical Christians, as represented by half a handful of their little fundy kids. The kids are charming, lovely and passionate. But of course they’ve been lied to their entire lives, so what they’re passionate about is complete bullshit.

I already had some idea about most of what they showed in this movie, all the speaking in tongues, indoctrinating children when they’re young (even home schooling them, one of the stats presented in the movie is that 75% of home schooled kids in the states are children of evangelical christians), and so on… What I didn’t know was that in addition to being a huge hypocrite Ted Haggard is also a gigantic arsehole.

They do show the kids being creepy, and they show them crying and babbling in tongues and lying shaking on the floor, but they don’t actually make fun of them. They seem to be quite even handed – the opposing view point (that these people are creepy, that they’ve taken over the entire US, and they’re incredibly dangerous) is presented by a moderate (read: sane) Christian radio host. He does a great job. But these people don’t care about their bible, so of course when he quotes scripture at them they just huff and puff and talk some more.

A very funny moment was when they were having children in a youth ministry come forward, take a microphone, and talk about whatever subject they wanted to. A lovely little blonde boy walks up with his bible, and talks about how hard it is to believe in a God that he can’t feel and that doesn’t speak to him, and that basically he doesn’t believe. The reaction shots from the other kids are AWESOME. (He’s going to be a cool guy when he’s older, I bet.)

Wonderful movie, I hope you get a chance to see it. (Moderate Christians won’t be offended, and I don’t give two strokes if fundys are offended through the scales on their eyes or not.)

.

What the hell just happened? Did you hear that?

Coming in at about 75 odd minutes – they claim 80 minutes, but 5 minutes of titles don’t get counted unless you pay for your movies by the foot, and I certainly don’t – is another one of those ‘car breaks down at night in Nowhereville, USA, expected/unexpected hilarity ensues‘ thrillers.

It was just all so very obvious. Everything is telegraphed from a mile away. “Oh, you mean the car broke down? At night in the dark? But that nice creepy man in the closed gas station said he’d fixed the engine, how could this be?”

And let me just add, he’s behind the door. Yes, the door, look behind it. No the door. The only door in the room, don’t you see how conveniently it’s opened against the wall there? He’s behind it! Yeah, the door! No, not the shower curtain, the door!! Look behind the doooooooooor!!! KILL THE PROTAGONIST NOW PLZ. THX.

Did I say was? Well, then the whole damn movie turns into a –

[fade to black and roll credits]

I must admit that I hadn’t really planned on seeing this one, but it turns out that Russian vampire flicks have a sort of magnetic pull. I simply could not resist.

Even though it was at the Civic – which has the nastiest seating in the city (yes, it’s even worse than the seating in the Skycity Theatre). Speaking of the seating, I had fabulous luck considering I was a walk up – dead centre, 7 rows back. Just about perfect, all things considered. It didn’t hurt that the girl sitting next to me smelled fabulous, either.

Day watch is the second part of a trilogy – though I haven’t actually seen the first.

Now, one thing to point out, the imdb plot keywords are: Chalk / Shower Scene / Fight / Severed Foot / Falsely Accused. I hope this tells you something.

Which are strangely accurate. But there’s also more to it than you might think… You see, the shower scene isn’t just any old shower stall sexytime. No no, this is a steamy lesbian romp done in fine Russian style. Not only are they not really lesbian – one of the chicks involved is actually a man who has had his body switched, you see – but they find themselves magically transported from the bathroom to a spot beneath a secluded tropical waterfall. (I wish my bathroom did that.)

Oh, also the chalk is the chalk of fate.

This movie is… Let me get a run up at this…

AWESOME.

Not only do we get mongol hordes somersaulting out of… ravens… just in time to… be hacked apart. Or movie posters being used as teleporters, or even vampires (or something) flitting around as mosquitoes, but we also get a hot red Toyota being driven awesomely fast along the wall of a building, but we also get… Well, lots of fighting. And the aforementioned steamy showertime fun. And a fleet of big rusty yellow soviet era trucks fitted out with nitrous and the power to … well I don’t want to give out any spoilers here. But let’s just say that I didn’t quite expect the truck to do that. Too bad they didn’t put airbags in though, huh?

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the plot, it’s light versus dark, dark guy trying to frame light guy and start a war to end all wars, all muddled up with family drama and a fair bit of snow soccer. So let’s just skip all that and I’ll just say: this movie is weird, and fabulous, and messy, and full of surprisingly good CG.

Oh, and the best use of subtitles EVAR. (Watch it and you’ll understand. They do what they say. I think the last time I saw anything like this – though less so – was maybe in Smokin’ Aces?) Captioning folk will be sure to like it. (I know there are at least couple of you reading my stuff! Fess up!)

If you don’t mind reading your movies, go see it. If you do mind reading your movies you’re a complete tool and should go drown yourself now, you God damned cretin.

If you’re wondering how it’s possible to make an entire documentary about one typeface, you’ve obviously either never done any graphic design or typography, or you just haven’t noticed how incredibly pervasive Helvetica is. But you will after you watch this doco.

Featuring interviews with numerous design & typography luminaries, intermixed with street scenes from the US & Europe showing store fronts, billboards, buses & so forth, all covered with Helvetica.

It may have been overlong, or that may have just been another symptom of how AWFUL the seating is up at the Skycity Theatre. It’s completely unacceptably bad. They simply must do something about this before they continue to make such heavy use of that theatre (but you know they won’t, and they will).

Bonus festival points came in the form of doco director Gary Hustwit introing before the screening, and doing a Q&A afterwards.

I’m not a big DVD buyer, but it sounds like the DVD might have some cool extras (particular more complete recordings of some of the interviews, which were quite entertaining).

It’s very good, but could have done with a little more editing I think.

If you didn’t see it at the festival it’ll probably be available at Rialto later in the year – which has the added bonus of comfortable seating.