A daft but surprisingly good Knight
(M, 149 mins) Directed by Michael Bay
I’ve been cat-sitting the last few weeks. And the cat lives in a pretty nice place with more mod-cons than I’m used to.
She even has Sky and Netflix on her enormous TV. Which for me, more used to being hunched over a laptop in a noisy bar with my Sennheisers on, feels like an almost indecent amount of luxury.
So as some sort of prep for writing this review, I decided to revisit Transformers, the film that kicked off this money-printing franchise in 2007. It’s aged well too. There’s some truly funny lines and a wholehearted embrace of its own ludicrousness that’s always endeared me to that first film.
But after that promising opening, the Transformers franchise went off a cliff. Episodes 2, 3 and 4 were progressively more lurid, noisy and over-inflated, with director Michael Bay losing the humour and the human touch along the way.
It’s no easy feat to make a series of movies about animated kids’ toys into something this humourless and grim, but Bay could rack you up a bodycount and an R rating if you put him in charge of My Little Pony.
So, I walked into Transformers: The Last Knight expecting Bay- business as usual; product placement, plenty of set-piece bombast, but nothing much connecting the film to the heart and the funny bone.
But somehow, maybe because my standards fall even faster than my expectations, The Last Knight actually kind of delivers.
If I tell you that The Last Knight opens with a lengthy prologue featuring King Arthur, Merlin, a battle ripped off from Gladiator and a whacking great dragon, then you’ll at least understand that this is not a film to be prejudged. For the first few minutes at least I truly thought I was watching the trailer for another film.
The story has the Transformers’ home planet under the control of some sort of multilimbed cosmic witch and on a collision course with Earth. Standing between us and doom are Mark Wahlberg, joined by poloplaying professor of history Laura Haddock and a cravat-wearing Anthony Hopkins as a castledwelling aristocrat with the secrets of the ages in his libraries.
John Turturro and Stanley Tucci return from previous instalments. And Bay finally gives Wahlberg something to do except look angsty and get beaten up. Wahlberg is too often cast as some sort of cut-rate Matt Damon substitute, but he has superb comic timing when it’s called for and he drops a couple of lines that bring the house down here, usually directed against pint-sized and gleefully sociopathic robot butler Cogman, voiced – hilariously – by Downton Abbey‘ s Jim Carter.
The Last Knight is an unashamedly daft film. It chucks in plot points from Independence Day, The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure, takes design cues – acknowledged – from Star Wars and Robocop, while referencing True Romance, Blade Runner and Scarface among countless others. I’m pretty sure there’s a sly dig at Ridley Scott’s overblown and zero-fun Prometheus in there as well.
Maybe The Last Knight got me at the right time. On another day that numbing running time and Bay’s legendary inability to show any woman without objectifying her, or any non-white character without making them a caricature, might have been enough to make me dislike this film quite a lot.
But tonight it seems to me that with The Last Knight, Bay has relocated the franchise’s mojo. It’s a fun watch. And right now, that’ll do. – Graeme Tuckett
The Rocket 8.35pm, Saturday, Maori TV
Kind of a cross between Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Gods Must Be Crazy and The Cup, Australian writer-director Kim Mordaunt’s engaging 2013 tale (written with the help of New Zealand’s own Miro Bilbrough) mixes mordant humour with knockabout comedy to sometimes jarring effect.
Whale Rider 8.30pm, Sunday, Maori TV
Winner of the audience prize at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival, Niki Caro’s adaptation of Witi Ihimaera’s 1987 novel follows a young Maori girl’s fight to fulfil a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognise. The film made a star out of Keisha Castle-Hughes. ‘‘The genius of the movie is the way it sidesteps all of the obvious cliches of the underlying story and makes itself fresh, observant, tough and genuinely moving,’’ wrote Chicago Sun-Times‘ Roger Ebert.
Trainspotting 8.30pm, Sunday, Rialto
Danny Boyle’s 1996 Edinburgh-set drama not only helped launch the careers of the likes of Jonny LeeMiller and Ewan McGregor, it also captured the era of Cool Britannia perfectly. It’s about one man’s attempts to clean up and get out, despite the allure of drugs and influence of friends. ‘‘Supercharged with sulphurous humour and brutal recklessness,’’ wrote The Guardian‘ s Peter Bradshaw.
The Demolition Teams 8.35pm, Wednesday, Prime
KiwI documentary that takes viewers behind the security fences and into the hidden world of demolition at 10 different sites across Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland. Many of the buildings they have to demolish have been damaged by quakes and need to come down in a hurry. The cameras, including drones and gopros, capture never-before-seen footage from inside Christchurch’s red zone, with behind-the-scenes access to the country’s two biggest controlled implosions at Christchurch’s Newstalk ZB building and Central Police Station. However, demolition isn’t just about taking buildings apart, but also what needs to be salvaged from within.
The Kennedys: After Camelot 8.30pm, Thursday, Prime
Katie Holmes stars in this US drama which portrays the life of the former First Lady of the United States, Jacqueline Kennedy, in the aftermath of the assassination of her husband – President John F Kennedy. ‘‘Holmes made a startlingly good double for Jackie Kennedy, and if Matthew Perry wasn’t a dead ringer for Senator Teddy, his tubby, panicky, weakwilled performance certainly magicked up the essence of him,’’ wrote The Daily Express‘ Matt Baylis.
Conviction 9.30pm, Thursday, Prime
Agent Carter‘ s Hayley Atwell stars in this new US drama series about a brilliant attorney and former First Daughter who is blackmailed into heading a unit that investigates cases of wrongful conviction. ‘‘Not just compelling and topical, it’s a master class in TV-series construction,’’ wrote Wall St Journal‘ s John Anderson.