Reviewed by Tim Wong

POTTED with cut-price shock tactics and gratuitous prosthetic violence, The Hills Have Eyes couldn’t be anymore robotic in its assembly of the 21st century horror film. This, an update of Wes Craven’s seventies roadtrip ordeal, is itself a retread of genre snuff trailblazers Hostel and Saw: it is not quite the torture fantasy of those films, but is pretty much as violent, senseless, and mind-numbing on all fronts.

Media Release
Reel Queer, the organisers of Out Takes 2006: A Reel Queer Film Festival, is delighted to unveil a knockout programme for 2006 – a showcase of the best recent queer cinema from local and international shores.

My favourite movie magazine, Film Comment dredged up a pleasantly surprising shout-out to Paul Amlehn recently – an ambitious local filmmaker we've featured online many times before – in the Opening Shots news column of its March/April issue. The fact that Amlehn is a New Zealander makes this newsworthy – particularly when international exploits in the film arena are more or less monolpolised by Peter Jackson – and the film-in-progress, The Tears of Eros, promises to be unlike anything produced by a Kiwi in recent memory. While there's no word on who's to star in the film just yet (although Isabelle Huppert and Beatrice Dalle's names have been loosely bandied about), Amlehn's current calling card (as reported last year) is the wickedly talented Benoît Debie, cinematographer on such visually unhinged projects as Irréversible (we wonder if he too, suffered from motion sickness), Dario Argento's The Card Player, French lost-in-the-woods trauma The Ordeal (ordinary, but looked amazing), and one of my favourites so far this year, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's serenely weird Innocence. See the full clipping below:

Sidney Lumet/USA/1975; R4 (2-disc SE)
Warner Bros, NZ$19.95 | Reviewed by Jacob Powell

A BRILLIANT piece of cinema, Dog Day Afternoon finds Al Pacino at his passionate best in this “based on a true story” account of a bank heist gone astray in 1970s New York. Would-be bank robber, Sonny, enters a bank with two accomplices on a stifling New York day. Early into the stickup you get the gist that things are not going to be straightforward when one of the guys backs out after guns are pulled – and even that piece of action is as sadly amusing as it would be scary.

Alan J. Pakula/USA/1976; R4 (2-disc SE)
Warner Bros, NZ$19.95 | Reviewed by Jacob Powell

WATERGATE is a ubiquitous term in our socio-political vocabulary. Take New Zealand’s “Corngate” scandal as one example of the influence it has had on the western world. Despite this I suspect many, including me, have no idea about the details of the story to which the term relates. Sure, I knew it had something to do with President Nixon getting impeached – the first American President in this situation – but I really had no idea why.

Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

CHARLIE BURNS (Guy Pearce) is an outlaw given the film’s titular proposition; Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) releases him while holding his baby brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) prisoner. The deal? Charlie must kill the leader of the Burns’ gang, brother Arthur (Danny Huston) or else Mikey will hang on Christmas Day. The setting is the Outback of Queensland, 1880s, but it could be America around the time of the confederates. The screenplay comes from Nick Cave, who, along with Bad Seed (and Dirty Three member) Warren Ellis also supplies the music.

Reviewed by Caleb Starrenburg

FOLLOWING on from the popularity of the first two X-Men films, X-Men: The Last Stand certainly had lofty expectations placed upon it (particularly by the Marvel community). But with a wealth of source material to draw upon, it also had the potential to be the greatest of the three installments.

Post-World Cinema Showcase blues needn't get you down: as the year's forthcoming Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals steadily approach (which Lumière will be covering emphatically in depth again), several speciality festivals provide ample relief in the interim. The socially responsible Human Rights Film Festival hits Christchurch on May 17th after finishing up in Auckland (where it's currently in release). Also next week, the Lufthansa Anpfiff Football Film Festival, in association with the Goethe-Institut, preaches the beautiful game to Wellingtonians at the Paramount from May 18th, just in time for Germany 2006. (My aversion to sport actually ends with football; amongst obvious affair such as The Cup and Bend it Like Beckham, the George Best homage Football as Never Before sounds particularly inspiring in wake of the drunken master's death. Notable absentee from the festival's roster: The Game of Their Lives, Daniel Gordon's pre-A State of Mind infiltration into North Korea that resulted in a plucky underdog documentary about the 1966 World Cup team – quarterfinalists and giant killers of Italy, no less). The following week sees the beginning of OutTakes' annual fare, before it's markers and dog-eared programmes at standby for another winter splurge. The TNZIFF06 programme launches officially in June, but can already be previewed in a gradually filtered state online at nzff.telecom.co.nz.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

AN UNEXPECTED thrill, Woody Allen takes a chance with Match Point. It’s his most daring, reinvigorating film in years – a flight of passage across the Atlantic, where you imagine he’ll plant Kubrickian roots given the renewed critical success. His once-unshakable New York cult now seems a world away, having firmly made way for London by way of the cosseted English upper class sphere: polo, duck hunting, tea parties, lawn tennis. Such newfound leisure pursuits fall in the lap of Chris Wilton – former tennis pro turned sweetie-darling of the adorable (and exceedingly rich) Chloe. The safe, pragmatic choice, she’s his Martina Hingis; Nola, a struggling actress and one-in-a-million bombshell, is his Kournikova.

Having screened at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Veialu Aila-Unsworth’s short animation Blue Willow is stirring interest around the world, writes RON HANSON.

Media Release | May 1st, 2006
Andrew Adamson, Peter Jackson, Martin Campbell, Roger Donaldson, Niki Caro, Andrew Niccol – six New Zealand directors with films currently raking in over US1.5 Billion worldwide. But everyone has to start somewhere, and where better than the Wellington Fringe Film Festival, currently calling for entries for this year's event to be held from 12-15 July.