Home Video Guide – October 2014

A bunch of strong candidates for your eyeballs’ attention arrive on home video this month. Among them are many familiar entries from the NZ International Film Festival programme – including the film our writers named the festival’s best. Read on to check out the month’s home video highlights that never really troubled the multiplex…

52 Tuesdays

In a nutshell: Shot over 52 consecutive Tuesdays, this bittersweet Aussie indie drama scored wins at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival this year. Tells the tale of 16-year-old Billie (newcomer Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who comes of age at an accelerated rate when her mother reveals plans to change gender.

The buzz: 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. Variety reckons the film “demonstrates a willingness to experiment that bodes well for future endeavors”. Urban Cinefile says 52 Tuesdays is “certainly unique and that carries much creative weight; it also contains dramatic tension, but that is rationed and uneven”; while We Got This Covered hit a little harder – “Ambition should never be chided, but 52 Tuesdays spends most of its runtime trying to shout before it can speak.”

Reason to watch: As much as the film aims for emotional heft, its the gimmick of weekly chapters that has piqued our interest.

Child’s Pose

In a nutshell: Berlin Film Festival-winning, Romanian black comedy starring Luminita Gheorghiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days) as the tyrannical mother of a 32-year-old man responsible for a car crash that killed a young boy. In a show of monstrous motherly love, and refusing to believe he’s a grown adult capable of independence, she takes this grim opportunity to seize control over her son’s life.

The buzz: 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critical praise such as “A tour-de-force performance from Gheorghiu” (Chicago Reader); “Sure-footed scripting and a stand-out performance by Luminita Gheorghiu” (Hollywood Reporter); “creates its own tightening vice grip” (New York Daily News).

Reason to watch: One for those days when you just need to kick back and enjoy Romanian class and family struggles.

The Double

In a nutshell: Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska star in this comedy and existential nightmare, based on the Dostoevsky novella, about a man who finds his life being usurped by his doppelganger… From actor/writer/director Richard Ayoade (star of TV’s The IT Crowd), his second feature after 2010’s Submarine.

The buzz: 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. Slate praises Ayoade for creating “a uniquely stylized dystopia, lit in dusty tones of olive and ochre and scored, mysteriously but somehow perfectly, to vintage Japanese pop”; NPR notes “the story’s based on Dostoevsky, plays like Kafka, and looks like an Orwellian nightmare”; and AV Club states “there’s not a whole lot to this version of The Double, but its visual comedy and offhand surrealism make it a mild pleasure”.

Reason to watch: Submarine was a goodie, and anyone who’s followed Ayoade’s UK TV career knows he has a penchant for the delightfully weird (Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace anyone?).

Frank

In a nutshell: Michael Fassbender plays eccentric bandleader Frank, never seen without an enormous papier-mâché head, and constantly striving to push the limits of musical creativity with his band. Filled with aspirations, a young musician (Domhnall Gleeson) joins the band only to discover that he may have bitten off more than he can chew – not least of which is dealing with Frank’s terrifying sidekick Clara (Maggie Gyllenhall).

The buzz: 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. “Has its own kind of charm as well as some pointed, poignant things to say about the mysterious nature of creativity, where it comes from and where it might all go” says the Los Angeles Times. “A genuine original in a summer sea of sameness, and a darkly comedic manifesto against the cultural status quo” reckons the Wall Street Journal; and someone else said “you’re pretty much guaranteed to have seen nothing else like it” – oh, that was us!

Reason to watch: This bizarre tale inspired by Frank Sidebottom revels in its weirdness, but what really holds it all together is Fassbender’s kinetic performance that renders facial expressions largely redundant.

Joe

In a nutshell: Nicolas Cage leads this Southern gothic drama as the titular ex-con who becomes friend and protector for a hard-luck teen (Tye Sheridan, Mud). When Joe catches wind of the boy’s violent father, he slowly edges closer to bringing out old, dangerous habits.

The buzz: 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. Hollywood Reporter reckons “Where it really works is in Cage’s bone-deep characterization of a man at war with himself, as tightly leashed as the badass bulldog that guards his house”; Village Voice thinks Joe is “a miserably perfect portrait of a culture on the brink of collapse”; and Entertainment Weekly praises Cage – “they may be all too rare these days, but there are still occasions when Nicolas Cage can surprise us, flashing hints of his old acting-without-a-net self”.

Reason to watch: Man, if Nicolas Cage is doing some actual acting, sign us up. Man can not live on the insanity of the Outcast trailer alone.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

In a nutshell: Melbourne director Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood) continues his documentary disinterment of down-market movie detritus with this chronicle of the rise and fall of 1980s action-exploitation juggernaut Cannon Films – whose output included American Ninja, The Delta Force, Death Wish II and Masters of the Universe.

The buzz: 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Hollywood Reporter says it is “consistently entertaining, if somewhat one-note”; while Variety gets their knickers in a twist, observing the film “doesn’t tell its story from A to Z, but rather in a digressive, choral fashion that privileges outrageous personal anecdotes over dry historical chronologies”.

Reason to watch: That quote from Variety? We’re ok with that… The craziness of Cannon and its heads Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus is exactly what we’re after.

Life After Beth

In a nutshell: Horror-comedy following Zach (Dane DeHaan), understandably cut up about the death of his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza). When Beth makes an unexpected reappearance, Zach doesn’t waste time questioning her reanimation, but instead seizes the opportunity to make up for all the things they didn’t do the first time around as a couple.

The buzz: 46% on Rotten Tomatoes. Variety dug it, calling the film “charming, thoughtful and laugh-out-loud funny”; while Hollywood Reporter says “sometimes tender, sometimes frantic, and always funny, the film’s surprising coherence is exemplified in a climactic scene that pairs credible heartbreak with pure slapstick”. But a lot of critics really loathed it – for example, Richard Roeper, who puts the boot in, saying “The movie is DOA from scene one and is never resuscitated.”

Reason to watch: Stacked with funny people – Plaza, John C. Reilly, Cheryl Hines, Anna Kendrick, Molly Shannon, Paul Reiser – we find it hard to imagine how you wouldn’t find Life After Beth amusing. Saw it at the NZ International Film Festival, and looking forward to seeing it again!

Under the Skin

In a nutshell: Flicks writers’ favourite film of the NZ International Film Festival this year, Jonathan Glazer’s surreal sci-fi has conjured Kubrickian comparisons. Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers) stars as a mysterious seductress, targeting lone men on remote highways, in this loose adaptation of Michel Faber’s novel.

The buzz: 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. “raises far more questions than it answers, yet that enigmatic quality is central to its appeal” says Chicago Reader; “seems both to drift and to gather to a point of almost painful intensity” opines the New Yorker; and we said “The extraordinary imagery and sound design are haunting, and the end result is both ugly and heartbreakingly beautiful. A masterpiece.”

Reason to watch: Brave, inventive, mysterious and captivating, Under the Skin is a contender for best film of 2014.

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