Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 24 June
War Witch aka Rebelle (Nguyen, 2012)
The constant struggle to find something not completely obvious to recommend – that is also actually available to most readers – continues.
I’ve wanted to feature War Witch here since we started but it there has been nowhere to stream it until now.
I wrote about it for the Capital Times in May 2013:
War Witch is a remarkable magical realist portrayal of the tragedy of child soldiering in one of Africa’s many civil wars. The phenomenal Rachel Mwanza plays Komona, kidnapped from her village by the rebel army and forced to murder her own parents. She is the only one to survive the new company’s first action and superstitious commanders start to believe that she is a lucky charm, hence “War Witch”.
Hypnotic, beautiful, upsetting – War Witch is an extraordinary achievement, totally deserving of an Academy Award nomination against Amour and No earlier this year. By any definition, this isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea but I’m going to highly recommend it anyway.
Also in that CT column: 76-year-old Robert Redford teams up with Shia LaBoeuf for the thriller The Company You Keep, Haute Cuisine in which Catherine Frot cooks for President Mitterand, “intelligent low-budget horror” Antiviral by Brandon Cronenberg, and the 3D conversion of the original Jurassic Park.
Comments
Reader SD of Onehunga responded to my review of Kōkā in yesterday’s new releases newsletter:
That's a very thoughtful and generous reading of Kōkā. While I agree there will be aspects of te ao Māori that may not resonate with all Pākehā viewers, it's also very on-the-nose in script and performance, which I found extremely difficult to connect to and lose myself in.
SD is not wrong that a lot of the supposedly contemporary scenes in Kōkā are pretty hard to accept at face value but I have chosen to believe that they are down to conscious choices – that I might not have made – rather than competence.
Editor’s note
Yesterday, I signed a one-year contract to do three days a week of communications advising for a Wellington-based organisation. It’s pleasing to be asked and it’s stabilising for the finances. They want me full-time Wednesday to Friday which means I may need to drop the regular Friday newsletter. Apologies in advance if that turns out to be necessary. My regular Friday RNZ Nights arrangement continues – indeed it now airs an hour earlier, at approximately 8.40pm.
Where to watch War Witch
Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on Beamafilm (free from participating libraries or a digital rental1)
Canada: Streaming on Crave or Starz
Ireland: Not currently available online
India: Not currently available online
USA: Streaming on Fawesome
UK: Not currently available online
Beamafilm offers three ways in. Free if your local public library supports it, a monthly streaming fee or à la carte digital rentals. Confusingly, not every title is available vie every method. If you spot any errors here, please let me know.