Film festival offerings not to be missed
The New Zealand International Film Festival’s Christchurch programme hits the streets tomorrow. James Croot offers up a selection of titles well worth clearing your diary for.
45 YEARS
Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay star in this fascinating British drama that asks: ‘‘How much can you ever really know someone’’? Kate and Geoff’s plans for a lavish 45th wedding anniversary among family and friends are thrown into jeopardy when news comes that the body of Geoff’s former girlfriend Katya has been recovered from the mountain where she died 50 years before. What follows is a superbly acted, finely nuanced, tautly scripted study of guilt, jealousy, longing and insensitivity, as the discovery dredges up ghosts of the past, problems for the present and fears for the future.
BEST OF ENEMIES
Documentarian Morgan Neville follows up his muchloved Twenty Feet From
Stardom with this engrossing look at the series of televised debates in 1968 between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jnr. A former democratic congress candidate, Vidal was the author of the shocking
Myra Breckinridge and known as the talker of his generation. Buckley meanwhile, was the editor of conservative journal National
Review and viewed as the great debater of his generation. What followed was compelling, groundbreaking and, at the time, truly shocking.
CARTEL LAND
Vigilantes are the focus of Matthew Heineman’s intimate, brutal look at the grassroots war on drugs on either side of the US-Mexico border. In America, a few increasingly frustrated (and decidedly racist) residents of one State have formed the Arizona Border Recon to keep the traffickers at bay, while in Mexico, the Autodefensas have helped to drive the cartels out of villages and towns. However, not allis as simple as it first seems.
DEATHGASM
Winner of the Make My Horror Movie contest in 2013, this Kiwi comedy horror has already proved to be an audience favourite at festivals around the globe. Best described as Bad Taste meets Bad News, the film sees teenage heavy metal fans Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), Zakk (James Blake) and Medina (Kimberley Crossman) battling the forces of darkness after they play the sheet music of an unrecorded song by their death metal idol.
THE WOLFPACK
Much like 2003’s Capturing the Friedmans, Crystelle Moselle’s new documentary looks at a bizarre family dynamic. Locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the six Angulo brothers and their sister have learned about the outside world through the films that they watch. Through their home movies, re-enactment of key scenes from the likes of Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight, and their eventual emergence into society, we get to see our world from a
very different perspective.
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR
Don’t miss this chance to see writer-director J C Chandor’s follow-up to Margin Call and
All is Lost on the big screen. Evoking memories of Scarface and the best of Scorsese, this is the story of heating-oil baron Abel Morales (a charismatic Oscar Isaac) as he attempts to keep his business afloat, while his competitors engage in some less-than-savoury antics. Jessica Chastain, Albert Brooks and David Oyelowo are among the seriously impressive supporting cast.
INHERENT VICE
Cruelly removed from general release just a fortnight before it was due to be shown in February, the adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel by Paul Thomas Anderson deserves to be seen on as big a screen as possible. A sort of
Shaggy Dog version of
Chinatown, this follows drugaddled Doc Sportello (a deliciously mellow Joaquin Phoenix) as he investigates the disappearance of one of his ex-girlfriends. The rich, impressive supporting cast includes Martin Short, Owen Wilson, Jena Malone, Reese Witherspoon and Josh Brolin.
BEING EVEL
Jackass’s Johnny Knoxville is one of the producers behind this warts-and-all look at the life of one of his heroes and inspirations – US icon Robert ‘‘Evel’’ Knievel. Using an impressive array of interviewees and archival footage, director Daniel Junge charts the daredevil’s rise from petty crime in Butte, Montana, to a man who held the world’s attention with an increasingly insane series of stunts. Highlights include the infamous Snake River Canyon jump, so brilliantly parodied on
The Simpsons.