Friday new releases: 19 January 2024

Nine of the summer new releases summarised

While I’ve been making my daily recommendations here I’ve also been reviewing the new cinema releases over at RNZ. It’s been a busy time but down below are extracts and links to the first nine that I’ve managed to get online (there are several more in the pipeline and I’ve also got an At the Movies radio gig booked for next Wednesday).

Wish

“As I say, something designed to meet all the corporate requirements for a birthday present to itself shouldn’t be as much fun as it is but that, too, also says something about Disney’s legacy and how well-drilled the machine now is.”

…

Wish doesn’t tug the heart strings like recent Disney or Pixar productions such as Coco or Encanto, or soar like Moana, and I suspect that’s not going to be good enough for a company with so much to celebrate.

Rebel Moon - Part One - A Child of Fire

According to Wikipedia, this first instalment of Rebel Moon had a budget of US$166m which, by my rough calculations, would be equivalent about 200 metres of Auckland light rail. When a viewer’s mind turns to fantasy local urban transport solutions instead of your fantasy galaxy adventure you should really think about getting into a different business.

Migration

Mike White (School of Rock and The White Lotus) is the credited screenwriter on Migration and I hope that he is getting a cut of every ticket sold because the cash might make up for all the groans he will hear from adults at every lame joke. Kids, however, will lap it up.

One Life

Despite the strong work done by everyone else, the film belongs to Hopkins who can generate so much emotion by doing so little. When he dabs his eye in the TV studio during the programme that made him famous, I feel certain I wasn’t the only one in the cinema who was doing the same.

Anyone But You

Powell is a sandy haired and beady eyed beefcake who also has some acting chops – he played astronaut John Glenn in the movie Hidden Figures. Between them they work hard to generate some chemistry and manage to achieve a little bit, but it’s their physiques that are doing most of the work here. It’s as if they both looked at the ticking clock and thought, I really need to immortalise this body before I get any older.

The film is actually better the more it hews to the source material. Chapter headings are quotes from the play and the feeble attempts by the couple’s friends and family (including Aussie legend Bryan Brown) to fool them into thinking they should be together are very Shakespearean and very funny.

Poor Things

I’ve seen the question asked, is Poor Things feminist empowerment fantasy or male wish-fulfilment fantasy and I’m afraid the answer has to be, “Yes”.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Anyway, what of the actual Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: a story about sibling rivalry; not really feeling it when your destiny is to be King of Atlantis; being more motivated to save the world when you have a child who is going to live in it; that Atlanteans aren’t better humans for living under the sea, just different; that Game of Thrones is still an influential text all these years later; and that the villain you spent the first movie building up will be sidelined despite being more interesting in this film than the last.

Ah, it was alright, I suppose.

Ferrari

For quite a while I found watching Ferrari quite frustrating. There is an opening sequence of Enzo racing his own car in the 1920s and it mixes genuine archive footage of the time – some clearly converted to YouTube quality video rather than the original film elements – and closeups of Driver as Enzo in the cockpit, treated to look like archive film. But that makes no sense as there’s no way that an actual camera would or could ever be mounted there! And don’t start me on the Italian accents and how sometimes the voices on the radio would be speaking Italian and sometimes not.

If a film is losing me to that extent early on, it takes a heroic effort to bring it back, but Ferrari does, and it’s largely due to Cruz simmering away in her grief and her rage, still loving Enzo but being driven mad by his disregard for her.

Dream Scenario

On one level, Dream Scenario is an opportunity to create some outlandish and amusing visuals featuring Cage’s incredulous everyman in increasingly surreal scenarios, but as the darker side of Paul’s personality take over – the envious side, the humiliated side – we realise that subconsciously he is controlling this situation. Has he, in fact, discovered a superpower? Or is it something even more profound?

The film is shot in a grainy, indie style – the dreams are often indistinguishable from reality until an alligator or something turns up – and the performances are played straight despite the fantastical nature of the premise. It’s grounded and floating away from you at the same time.