Colonized people see the world from inside a mirror. From outside, you’re oblivious (because: what changed?) But if you’re colonized – on the side that lost – life itself loses meaning. Imagine: the country you call home vanishes, you are invaded, and the invaders never leave. Even your name for your country is unwritten on a map. Aotearoa (“the land of the long white cloud”) is the Maori name for New Zealand. The name New Zealand comes from Europe (“old” Zeeland is a region in the southwest of Holland). Vincent Ward’s new documentary, Rain of the Children, is an attempt to get the view from inside the mirror. It’s the story of a Maori woman, looking back.
Rain of the Children – A Review
February 14, 2010
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Film Reviews, International Film | Tagged: New Zealand, Rua Kenana, The Navigator, Vincent Ward | 
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Posted by jtatham
Bright Star – A Review
November 8, 2009Jane Campion says she made a movie about John Keats because she “was terrified of poetry”. A tricky poem was like a spider in a high corner of her brain; making meaning hard to reach; staining her enjoyment. But Keats proved a good teacher. As he says in the movie: “A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.” Bright Star is about a love of verse.
1 Comment | Film Reviews, International Film | Tagged: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Jane Campion, John Keats | Permalink
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Julia – A Review
August 14, 2009Film noir is built on things that go wrong; plans are scuppered, the gun jams, love goes up in smoke. Anti-heroes don’t even have good intentions to fall back on. They’re ravenously selfish, so it’s tough arguing they don’t deserve their fate. Luckily, people don’t watch noirs to empathize with the protagonists (unless they’ve just ripped off a bank); people watch noirs to feel better about their mistakes. Take Julia, a new noir with a drunk as its heroine. She has all the control over her life that a hand-grenade has. Even as her crime sets in motion, you picture her face on the evening news. She’s alluringly doomed, like every girl in this no-luck genre.
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Mesrine: Killer Instinct – A Review
August 9, 2009Crime movies work on a that-looks-like-fun principle. Bank robberies look exhilarating, so they’re ok. Ditto driving a stolen car, or taking consequence-free drugs. Not having to pay taxes is obviously a big middle-class turn-on. Chain smoking without fear of opprobrium is hot stuff. We all want the veneer of being a criminal, in essence. That’s what good crime movies give us. Mesrine: Killer Instinct works because Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) only commits sexy crimes. He’s what we want in a criminal: passionate, well-dressed, electric in bed. Even when he’s shooting up a prison, he does it with élan.
3 Comments | Film Reviews, International Film | Tagged: Gerard Depardieu, Jacques Mesrine, vincent cassel | Permalink
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Let the Right One In – A Review
April 12, 2009This one’s about childhood, so it’s weird and bloody. When most adults think of childhood they’re thinking of some kid on TV. But TV kids always act as though someone’s watching. There’s a big difference between Ashley and Mary-Kate and who you were when you were a kid. Real kids tend to view the world from a submarine; they bob up now and again to check on the adult world, but most of the time they’re alone and their radio signals are faulty. Let the Right One In is about a boy who meets a vampire. He doesn’t tell anyone about it. But then, would any adult want to hear?
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The Class – A Review
March 1, 2009A class’s thoughts are always elsewhere. The lesson (whatever the lesson) is an albatross around every student’s neck. That’s why teaching is difficult. How to spark interest in reading and writing when teenage life is rioting at the margins? Even for adults (even for teachers) sex is more interesting than grammar. At fifteen, sex takes precedence over oxygen. Not to mention Beebo; one’s MySpace profile; who said what on MSN last night. It’s a miracle that anyone listens to anything teachers’ say. But occasionally they do, and we call this: an education. In The Class, the class listen quite often. The question is: what do they learn?
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My Winnipeg – A Review
December 7, 2008If every movie is a message in a bottle, what’s most surprising isn’t the volume of bottles, but how many people fish out each message. Think of the number of Jim Jarmusch fans out there. Or how many people seem to connect with Joel and Ethan Coen. Recently, I saw my first Guy Maddin movie and felt a sense of kinship. Maddin is a Canadian lunatic (I realise that may be a tautology) who makes movies inspired by “early film melodramas, Weimar Republic German silent films, and 1920s Soviet agit-prop”. Where do I connect with that? Is it because Maddin is also funny? Should I start seeing other bottles?
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Irreversible – A Review
October 5, 2008Who are the bourgeoisie? Is it you and I? – slouched, respectively, reading/writing this review. Blogging seems like a pretty bourgeois pastime. I can’t picture true aristocrats writing blogs (shooting peasants, yes; catching syphilis; maybe). Do heroes of the working class blog? Is it a proletariat thing? I guess the aristos would say so, but I dunno… you can’t ween the masses off their opiates properly if you’re sat your bedroom. So bloggers, accept it: you’re bourgeois. French director Gaspar Noé has it in for you something rotten, I’m afraid. His movie, Irreversible, is a one and half hour assault on all your petty bourgeois sensibilities, and if you pee yourself in bourgeois terror at the result, he’ll be a very happy bunny.
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Persepolis – A Review
April 27, 2008A lot of arthouse movies are boring. Some are boring because they’re pretentious. Some are boring because they’re too long. Some seem to lack any point in favour of existing altogether. No one talks about this, of course. It’s like Nicole Kidman’s use of botox; the single-expression elephant in the room. Take Persepolis. It’s boring. The comics were good. The movie… Not so much. Is any notable critic going to say this? Did any notable critic admit Blackboards (iterant teachers, Iran/Iraq border, SUFFERING) made them lose the will to live? No. Only a philistine would say an arthouse movie was boring… Well, bugger it. I’m a philistine. Persepolis sucks.
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Exiled – A Review
March 27, 2008Ever since John Woo realised two guns were better than one, Hong Kong has been the Sorbonne of action movies. Exiled, the latest offering from relative neophyte Johnny To, is a fine and bloody addition to a pantheon that includes: A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head and, of course, the incomparable Hard Boiled (or Boiled Egg, to borrow a friend’s malapropism). Whether Hong Kong movies are any good is almost a moot point (look at Wong Kar Wai; he’s been cranking out nonsense for years). Hong Kong gave movies adrenaline, a try-anything infusion. Gangsters need two guns in Hong Kong, almost because (in Hong Kong) there’s more to shoot.
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