Escape via the screen
So Covid-19 crushed our chances of watching Mulan this weekend, and has delayed production on everything from Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings to the Avatar sequels and Jane CAMPION’S LATEST movie.
But don’t despair, although the world has become significantly smaller for all Kiwis this week, it also provides an opportunity to explore film and television of Aotearoa in the past.
A good starting point is NZ Film on Demand, which has around 70 homegrown movies available to buy or rent.
There’s everything from classics like A Quiet Earth, Once Were Warriors and Sleeping Dogs to more recent tales such as animated World War I drama 25 April, rural rugby documentary The
Ground We Won, and Taika Waititi’s box-office smash The Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
One title that may be of particular interest in the current climate is Campion’s An Angel at My Table. Her 1990 biopic of Janet Frame includes a depiction of when New Zealand shut all the schools in the 1930s to try to stop the spread of polio.
If you’re after something for free, TVNZ OnDemand boasts a similar, albeit smaller collection of New Zealand movies that has the likes of Whale Rider and Sione’s Wedding, alongside TV movies Runaway Millionaires, Kiwi and Jean.
Missing Milford Sound? Check out Mission: Impossible – Fallout or Alien: Covenant on iTunes or Google Play. Longing for Lyttelton? There’s always Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners
on the same providers. How about Auckland’s west coast beaches? Look no further than Netflix’s cheesy rom-com Falling Inn Love. And the King Kong of streaming services is also home to one of two new Kiwi-shot slices of mass entertainment that debuted on our screens this week (the other being the Dunedin-shot horror remake
Black Christmas, which arrived on Lightbox, Google Play and iTunes just a couple of days ago).
Filmed here and in the Czech Republic, Netflix’s The Letter for the King is a kind of young-adult version of Game of Thrones. The six-part series is the story of an unlikely hero. The adopted son of Sir Tiuri the Valiant (a suitably sneery David Wenham), Tiuri (Amir Wilson) is a young squire struggling in his quest to become a knight.
Smaller, leaner and weaker than his rivals, he seems hopelessly outmatched, saved only by his quick thinking, agility, and his papa’s ability to pay off his opponents.
However, he’s the right young man in the right place when destiny comes calling. As the ambitious, conquering war hero Prince Viridian (Gijs Blom) prepares an all-out assault on all the neighbouring lands, an ailing knight cries out for help. Breaking an overnight vigil, something that will surely destroy his own prospects, Tiuri rushes to his aid. That’s when he becomes charged with delivering a message to the monarch.
‘‘The future of our kingdom depends on it,’’ the knight croaks before he croaks, adding that he should ‘‘tell no-one’’ about his mission, ‘‘because no-one can be trusted’’. To make matters worse, Tiuri has less than 14 days to travel the 1000 miles needed to reach his target.
Based on Dutch author Tonke Dragt’s critically acclaimed, crowdpleasing 1962 book of the same name, which gained a new lease of life after it was translated into English in 2013) The Letter for the King might lack the lavish attention to detail of GoT or The Witcher, but it offers knockabout fun, engaging characters and welcome escapism.
It does drag out the good old prophecy plot, but at least it doesn’t get bogged down in too much mysticism and ropey special-effects, preferring to focus on set-pieces of daring and derring-do.
Plus, the time investment required is a little less than many other fantasy series.