The Big Sick
Good rom-coms have been a rare commodity of late, so The Big Sick’s critical success at Sundance has been somewhat of a shot in the arm that the genre sorely needed. Thankfully its critical success is well-founded.
The Big Sick is an autobiographical film (with a few cinematic embellishments) that covers the unusual courtship of script writers Kumail Nanjiani and his real life wife (and co-writer), Emily Gordon. Their non-fictional account may be a spoiler for how the film ends, but thankfully its rewards are firmly planted in the journey rather than the destination.
Tracking the giddy origins of a romantic relationship always provides the biggest payoff for any successful rom-com, and Kumail (who plays himself) and Emily’s (Zoe Kazan) flirty but cautious beginnings are no different. Kumail is a standup comedian by night and an Uber driver by day. During one of his comedy routines he is heckled by a stranger in the crowd—Emily, as it turns out. A couple of post-show drinks and an amorous night kick off a burgeoning romance. However, the future is not so rosy for the couple as they negotiate the treacherous waters of cultural difference … and a coma.
What feels rewardingly fresh are the film’s characters, who are decidedly authentic, flawed and vulnerable, adding to its accessibility and appeal. The couple’s parents are thankfully not pushed into the margins, instead serving to enhance proceedings rather than distract from it. Commanding a significant amount of screen-time, Emily’s folks, Terry (Ray Romano) and Beth (Holly Hunter), offer deliciously lived-in performances, and Kumail’s parents Azmat (Anupam Kher) and Sharmeen (Zenobia Shroff) prickle with a cocktail of rigidity and humour.
Comedically it does mine the oft-used stereotypes of Indo/European cultural difference (the arranged marriages, the terrorism gag, yada yada). But thankfully Nanjiani and Gordon do so with a light touch, never losing sight of its modus operandi of telling an entertaining story ripe with rich characters. Nanjiani and Gordon’s very personal script has delivered a warm-hearted comedy full of emotional texture and pathos that reveals the absurdity of real life.
Read the review on Witchdoctor here.
The Dinner combines sophisticated cuisine with a stale burger patty in this adaptation which feels at odds with Herman Koch’s bestseller of the same name.
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk remains a giant at the international box office despite entering its fourth week of release. What better time than now to offer a belated review and perhaps offer a pearl of insight not observed by the mountain of glowing praise by other critics. Well, I’m afraid to report that I have little to add to what has already been said about Dunkirk. So … sorry if this sounds a bit like a broken record.
Like all Edgar Wright movies, Baby Driver is a kinetically charged explosion of style. A lively thrill from start to end laced with musical sensibilities. But considering his previous work (Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, to name a couple) this should come as no surprise. He is a restless director who seemingly enjoys turning simple plot-lines into hyper-jazzed feature length films … and he does it so well.
He is a man blessed with a wild imagination and great hair (his cranial embellishments second only to his kissing-cousin Jim Jarmusch). An iconic film-maker that has given us enigmatic worlds of fractured logic and narrative ambiguity hearkening back to the surrealists of the early twentieth century (Luis Buñuel, Germaine Dulac, Salvador Dali, et al.). Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet are just a few of his filmic canon that any cinephile should wax lyrical about … but less is known about David Lynch’s formative years as an artist.
Contents don’t always match what is printed on the tin. War for the Planet of the Apes’ lengthy title (let’s just call it WPA) and marketing material suggest that you’re likely to be be subjected to two and a half hours of bloodshed, courtesy of a certain Wellington digital effects company. But WPA is far more introspective than advertised. Sure, it’s not La La Land, but WPA has a lot less “war” in it than we’re led to believe. Critically, comparisons have been made with Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Famously, Ford Coppola reworked Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, by expressing its themes of colonialism, self-discovery and the meaninglessness of evil against the backdrop of the Vietnam war. In WPA the astute viewer will pick up on this comparison fairly quickly, but for those not familiar with Coppola’s film, a wall graffiti’d with “Ape-pocalypse Now” is plain for all to see.
Long Way North has finally made its long way south onto our screens. Having screened as part of last years NZIFF, its theatrical release brings about the welcome return of its low-fi animated appeal. The film is a co-production out of France and Denmark and is Rémi Chayé’s debut feature in the directors chair (or wherever directors plant their bum for an animated feature these days).
“Your success is an insult to white people. Negroes must know their place.” — It’s a blunt statement from the film Chocolat, but a brutally honest account of the entrenched racism of nineteenth century France which acts as a warning to the viewer that Chocolat isn’t just about the whimsically joyful world of clowns from yesteryear.
With the darkness of winter imminent and New Zealand gardens well into lock-down, it seems an odd time to release an optimistically colourful film about an English garden. Perhaps it was a scheduling decision by the studio to make Lions supporters feel more at home. However, all is not well in an English garden.
It looks like Universal Pictures want some of that lucrative franchise action. In the opening credits to The Mummy we are introduced to the “Dark Universe” logo — a series that is being spearheaded by The Mummy in what appears to be a new world of characters born out of classic horror; The Hunchback, Dr. Jekyll, Frankenstein, and Dracula, to name a few. Although, if The Mummy is any indication, they’re going to make a monstrous mess of the whole lot.
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