T H U R S D A Y 1 0 O C T O B E R -
W E D N E S D A Y 1 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 2 4
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The Wellington Film Society, Embassy 6.15pm on Monday 14 October:
INDIA SONG Marguerite Duras | France | 1975.
Widely considered writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras's greatest film, this is ravishingly beautiful, disturbing, and complexly unresolved by design. Draped in Cerruti 1881, Delphine Seyrig plays the stunning, statuesque Anne-Marie Stretter, the promiscuous, unhappy wife of the French ambassador of India in the 1930s. A former pianist who listlessly lies around in the tropical heat, she is bored with the diplomatic suitors who surround her. Like ghosts, they haunt the French ambassador's lavish, decaying mansion in Calcutta, a gilded cage of privilege that protects them from the poor and diseased near the Ganges... Seyrig, divine as usual and still emanating intelligence despite her mannered listlessness (think Vogue Italia), is in a sort of countershot to her character in Last Year at Marienbad - in command of the formalist orchestration while doing next to nothing.
- Andrea Picard, TIFF Cinematheque.
Members only.
Memberships available at any time on line, and pick up the membership card at a screening.
Film Festivals to note:
SHOW ME SHORTS 2024 17 - 23 October: Lighthouse Cuba. Check the website.
BRITISH AND IRISH FILM FESTIVAL 2024 23 October - 13 November: Embassy, all Lighthouse, Penthouse. Brochures out now at the venues: and the schedule can be found on the Festival website. Recent French films and some restrospective films by the Merchant Ivory tream (and a documentary about them). Also Made in England, Martin Scorsese's exploration of the films of Powell and Pressburger.
CINEMA ITALIANO FESTIVAL 2024 6 November - 5 December Roxy and Embassy. Brochures out now at the venues and on the Festival website. Recent Italian films and some classics by Nanni Moretti and Federico Fellini's first fim.
If you have a festival due to run in Wellington and it's not listed here, contact the Cinemaster.
This site relies on the various cinemas having their own websites up to date to access their screening times.
The paragraphs describing the films starting this week are in most cases adapted from the linked reviews.
For comments and movie news, contact the Cinemaster at
filmster@gmail.com.
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s t a r t s t h i s w e e k!
MY HERO ACADEMIA: YOU'RE NEXT -
This is exactly the kind of film My Hero fans need right now, not just because it offers a break from some of the bleaker elements of the current season storyline as we brace for the long break before season eight, but because it properly reminds audiences why this series matters to us. Kuroda's script takes full advantage of the past three films and six seasons of the show to mold a story whose consequences aren't tangible but metaphorical.
Also Queensgate, Reading and Coastlands.
THE APPRENTICE -
This mildly amusing, profoundly forgettable saga about the rise of Donald Trump. Maybe it's an earned comeuppance that the former US President, the man of a million headlines, should receive such lackluster treatment in his first Hollywood biopic. The legend of his early years as a real estate mogul, so boasted about by the man himself, is here covered with a wet blanket. A weirdly grounded drama like this feels tonally off and annoyingly safe in the context of Trump's ongoing menace.
Also Roxy, Queensgate, Monterey and Shoreline.
A MISTAKE -
New Zealander director and writer Christine Jeffs adapts to the screen the 2019 medical novel by Carl Shuker. It's a medical drama about accountability that's serious, bleak and powerful. It's set in New Zealand. Elizabeth Banks gives a gripping star performance. This is a film too somber to be entertaining, but is worth seeing for its quality. From the NZIFF.
Also Lighthouse and Coastlands.
ROSALIE -
Based loosely on a true story, this handsome, inoffensively bland, French-language period drama unfolds in rural Brittany in the 1870s, a grimly conservative place where difference of any kind is treated with suspicion and revulsion. It's watchable enough, but a cursory screenplay lets the film down, and Rosalie's arc from shaven shame to hairy defiance never fully persuades. From the French Film Festival.
Also Lighthouse.
SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY -
One of the aspects that makes this documentary about the iconic movie star Christopher Reeve whose life was stalled by a tragic accident so satisfying is that for a biographical film in which tragedy and loss play such a central part, it's rich in evidence of hope and kindness, gratitude and the resilience of the human spirit. From the NZIFF.
Also Lighthouse.
HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN -
Set in 1959 and functioning as a prequel come second reboot, we are thrown straight in, with Hellboy played here by Jack Kesy. He and his rookie Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence companion Jo are on a mission to deliver a supernatural spider, a mission that goes instantly awry. Fun, and at times, genuinely frightening, the film proves that comic book movies need creativity not cash if they are going to survive another 10 years.
Also Monterey and Coastlands.
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