In an ongoing series, The Lumière Reader scouts for new and elusive films that have either fallen off the radar, or are yet to see the light of day in New Zealand.

MIRED BY a handful of boutique screenings (in Wellington, at least) that reduced its outreach to a select minority of festival goers last year, Steven Soderbergh’s DIY revelation Bubble deserved an audience, even if its contentious release history suggested otherwise. Unleashed simultaneously in theatres, on DVD and Cable TV in America last January, the film under-performed financially despite the promise of its experimental distribution. More alarmingly, it felt the wrath of theatre-owners already struggling with declining attendances; some dismayed enough by the film’s upheaval of traditional release windows to boycott its exhibition altogether. While readily accessible stateside, its availability here is undetermined, with a limited theatrical run unlikely, and its migration to Region 4 DVD format an uncertainty. A shame, given Bubble’s modest, immersive rhythms of small town disquiet and true crime intrigue place it among the best films of 2006.

As closer inspection will confirm, there are crevices in the world in which extraordinary people do extraordinary things while the rest of us carelessly, obliviously, carry on unaware. Wordplay dives into one such crevice – the world of Crossword puzzles – and in flitting between conversations with crossword creators, modest fans, ardent decipherers, Tournament champions, and Tournament contenders, and in its gripping, elegantly paced build-up to the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle face-off, it delivers an unabashedly glee-inducing 94 minutes. I guess the thing is that in the devising and the decoding of these tiny, teasing, little grids – such a shamelessly self-absorbing endeavour, such a glorious and exhilarating and unapologising waste of time – we get glimpses of the minds total awesomeness. I was amazed at how serious aficionados can train their intellect to grapple with the most ‘what the!?’ clues so effortlessly, and it occurs to me that the only thing I can do as fast as these guys rip through the puzzles is sneeze.

“As closer inspection will confirm, there are crevices in the world in which extraordinary people do extraordinary things while the rest of us carelessly, obliviously, carry on unaware. Wordplay dives into one such crevice – the world of Crossword puzzles – and in flitting between conversations with crossword creators, modest fans, ardent decipherers, Tournament champions, and Tournament contenders, and in its gripping, elegantly paced build-up to the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle face-off, it delivers an unabashedly glee-inducing 94 minutes,” writes MYTHILY MEHER....[Read More]

Also reviewed: BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM sizes up the oxymoronic curiosity of ‘German Jewish comedy’ Go For Zucker. Coverage continues under The Festival Reader with forthcoming impressions on The African Queen, Time to Leave and more.

Jewish jokes have been so successful for many comedians that you’d think the situations would be exhausted. However, the thought of Germans doing a Jewish comedy sounds like an intriguing prospect. The reputed fact that Dani Levy is planning next to do a comedy on Hitler, makes this doubly intriguing. This was an unlikely smash hit in Germany, seemingly overcoming its TV sitcom feel and rather clichéd narrative.

As it is, Go For Zucker is a pretty standard fish out of water/heartwarming cross-cultural clash story. Jaeckie Zucker (Harry Hubchen) is a former East-German sports presenter, whose life is on the slow slide to oblivion. His wife has just left him, he’s deep in debt, and his children barely want him around. He however hears his mother has died, and has left behind a will that can only be fulfilled if he reconciles with his brother, a strongly Orthodox Jew and Western German. Jaeckie is a cheery Jew of the lapsed kind, but is forced to strictly observe Jewish practices to comic effect. To make matters worse, his brother arrives with his entire (dysfunctional) family in tow, including a son who’s as Orthodox as they come.

On the heels of the World Cinema Showcase comes two more offerings in the our ever burgeoging film festival season: in April, Latin American Film Festival returns, promising typically vibrant cinematic fare from the South Americas; and in May, the Human Rights Film Festival marks its third appearance with films which dare to challenge and provoke via a hard dose of contemporary relevance. While the Corona will flow liberally at the Latin end of the spectrum, the Human Rights Network encourages dialogue with speakers’ forums accompanying each screening, all under this year’s thematic banner of ‘Identity’.

Following a Gala Opening at the Embassy Theatre on April 18, the Latin American Film Festival, piggybacking on Rialto Cinemas, visits Wellington (19-25), Auckland (26-May 2), Hamilton (3-9, a new addition to the circuit this year) and Christchurch (10-16). Human Rights Film Festival has dates with Auckland (May 2-9, Academy Cinema), Wellington (9-16, Paramount), and Christchurch (16-20, Regent). Full programme details at miracle-pictures.com/6laff (yet to be updated) and humanrightsfilmfest.net.nz. HRFF highlights continue below:

“A family-friendly and uniquely Japanese take on The Full Monty story, Hula Girls is a film teeming with odds defying heroism, mine accident tearjerkers and ass-shaking enthusiasm. Sure, it’s as cheesy as a Hello Kitty doll, and as predictable as an episode of Pokémon, but it’s undeniably fun.” writes CALEB STARRENBURG....[Read More]

Also reviewed: ELISA GASPERINI gorges on another rich Italian drama, Cristina Comencini’s adaptation of her own best-selling novel, The Beast in the Heart. The World Cinema Showcase continues in Auckland through to April 4, moving to Wellington on March 29. More reviews under The Festival Reader.

At the World Cinema Showcase, ELISA GASPERINI gorges on another rich Italian drama, Cristina Comencini’s adaptation of her own best-selling novel, The Beast in the Heart.

A family-friendly and uniquely Japanese take on The Full Monty story, Hula Girls is a film teeming with odds defying heroism, mine accident tearjerkers and ass-shaking enthusiasm. Sure, it’s as cheesy as a Hello Kitty doll, and as predictable as an episode of Pokémon, but it’s undeniably fun. Lee Sang-il’s fifth feature-film, based loosely on a true story, transports us to Joban – a bleak coal mining town in Northeast Japan – circa 1965. With the mine facing heavy job losses and eventual closure, the coal company’s unlikely solution is to build a Hawaiian-themed tourist centre, complete with hot springs, giant palms and a troupe of hula dancers. Of course, Joban’s hardened mining community is resistant to the idea. This doesn’t deter a couple of teenagers (including rising Japanese star Yû Aoi), a bored-house wife and a girl who might possibly be a boy, from volunteering to join the dance troupe. Naturally, the girls are hopeless at the hula – until a former big shot Tokyo dancer is drafted in to work her magic. When dance instructor Madoka (played by Yasuko Matsuyuki) first arrives, her heart is as cold the mining town (her bitter past is curiously never explained), but she soon warms to the girl’s never-say-die attitude. Cue the training montage and you know before too long these hula girls will win the town the over – but not without a bucket full of shed tears along the way. That you can see the film’s climax from a mile-off doesn’t make it any less satisfying when it finally explodes off the screen in a blaze of swinging grass skirts.—Caleb Starrenburg

Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

AH, THOSE cheekbones. Scrupulously lit and elegantly shot in dappled chiaroscuro, Lena Brandt’s face appeals. Brandt (Cate Blanchett) is a complicated, comely Berlin prostitute. Cynical war correspondent Jake Geismar (George Clooney), the Humphrey Bogart to Blanchett’s Ingrid Bergman, comes back to Berlin ostensibly to cover World War Two’s climactic Potsdam Conference. It’s the girl he’s after. She’s fallen on hard times since he’s been gone, and is now tied up with a young louse Tully (Toby Maguire). Among Berlin’s rubble, various American and Russian (“Why not? They took all the bullets”) factions are carving up the action. Nazi rocket scientists like Lena’s husband are up the top of the list. Scriptwriter Paul Attanasio (Donnie Brasco) works from Joseph Kanon’s novel. The pacing’s pokey, but Attanasio crafts a dose of snappy, cynical one-liners, finessed by Clooney’s delivery. “Millions of people didn’t disappear because the elves came out at night.”

“The Namesake is gorgeously shot and told. There is not a moment of exoticism or self-conscious ‘us-traditional-but-modern-Indians’ Bollywoodisms. No virgin Indian girls and testosterone-peaked Indian men. No India calling. No stereotypes or rigid tradition bound parents,” writes SAPNA SAMANT....[Read More]

The Namesake opens the World Cinema Showcase in Auckland this Thursday, March 15, and Wellington the following fortnight on March 29. Also reviewed: CALEB STARRENBURG looks at Like Minds, “a tale of grim teen hegemony, murder, secret societies and historical fervor... a sort of emo-kid utopia inhabiting a Da Vinci Code world,” one of five Australian films featured in this year’s programme.

More World Cinema Showcase reviews under The Festival Reader.

SAPNA SAMANT relates her own migrant experience to Mira Nair’s The Namesake, the story of an Indian family who relocate to America, adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel. It opens the Auckland and Wellington legs of this year’s World Cinema Showcase.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

UNRAVELLED in bewitching states of grace and sexual disturbance, Jessica Yu’s voyage into Henry Darger’s Realms of the Unreal makes for a fascinating, though largely speculative documentary experience: a lowly janitor by trade, Darger’s extra curricular immersion in the creation of an epic illustrated novel, and its subsequent discovery upon his death in 1973, opens up a portal of mystery rich in exploration, but lacking in an epilogue or decisive final chapter. Was Darger a paedophile? A schizophrenic? Was he a lonely man, or was he his own best friend? Would he have permitted the Lerner’s to exhibit (and profit from?) his art after death? How to correctly pronounce his surname? What we do know is that he was a closet genius, an autodidact employing watercolour, collage, tracing techniques, and various degrees of appropriation in an oeuvre of 300 paintings, some over 10-feet long, and the titular magnum opus of this film, its glorious full title The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion encapsulating all that is weird and wonderful within the story’s massive 15,000 page breadth.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

AS UNAPOLOGETIC fan-service for Michel Gondry-philes, The Science of Sleep leaves little to the imagination by doing all the dreaming for you: everyday objects are made out of corrugated cardboard; clouds float with the stuffing from pillows; wallpaper becomes back projection; water ripples with all the consistency of cellophane. More than any other film in his catchment, Gondry opens up a direct channel to his right-sided brain, siphoning a torrent of ideas lubricated in the sweetest of creative juices. That’s the film there. Careening from one inspired puce moment to the next, it’s easy to forget that there’s also a neglected love story screaming for our attention: Stephane (the ubiquitous Gael Garcia Bernal), introverted boy wonder, falls for next door neighbour Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and spends the rest of the film trying to win her over – when he’s not confusing his own dreams for reality, that is.

A roundup/recap of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: Running With Scissors, Tsotsi, Maria Full of Grace, Keane, Renaissance, No. 2.

Spellbound, on the American tradition of the National Spelling Bee, is one of the great documentaries. In a 2004 New Zealand exclusive, Lumière Associate Editor ALEXANDER BISLEY interviewed the film’s director Jeff Blitz.

In association with The Lumière Reader, The Zone, a bright new local show hosted by The Silkworm Girl curating the best in art, music, film and theatre reviews, as well as interviews, special guests and the a cache of giveaways, presents a fortnightly film reviewed by the talking heads at Lumière. The Zone broadcasts every Monday from 5.30-6pm. Tune in to Access Radio on 783AM, stream live, or congregate at The Zone’s MySpace page.

THIS MONDAY (12/3): TIM WONG previews the new Wellington Film Society season, a veritable goldmine of live cinema, year long, old and brand new.

Also filling in for Simon Morris on Radio New Zealand: ALEXANDER BISLEY discusses Film Society and the Oscars in his latest segment on Arts on Sunday.

When, towards the end of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, the sight of a crying baby suddenly tempts a serpent-line of raging soldiers into dim reverence, you recall Julian’s (Julianne Moore) line to Theo (Clive Owen) earlier in the film, spoken shortly after the coffee shop he’s just left keels under bomb blast: “You hear that ringing in your ears? That ‘eeeee’? That’s your ear cells dying. You’ll never be able to hear that frequency again. Enjoy it while you can.” For over 18 years – in a world shot through with stark remiss –, the baby’s wail has also been a ‘lost’ frequency, thanks to a global infertility epidemic. Yet, for all the thrill of no more morning-after hang-ups, the existential overhang proves to be too much: With the pyrex of civilisation finally breaking, London (the futureworld capital) is impelled into a grim boil of neofascist command.

Curating movie-inspired illustration since 2003, The Lumière Reader presents three new illustrations by LYNDON BARROIS for The Good Shepherd, Letters From Iwo Jima, and The Good German. Click images to enlarge.

Big, varied, attractive, troubled and fascinating: That’s France, and also French cinema. The world’s fourth biggest filmmaking nation merits the notable festival the French Film Festival provides. After that great cherrybomb L’Haine (Hate), Le Petit Lieutenant (The Little Lieutenant) provides a sympathetic, hardwired look at the constabulary on Paris’ mean streets. New recruit Antoine (Jalil Lespert) hits Paris full of energy, joining a lively team led by redoubtable Inspector Vandieu (Nathalie Baye). Xavier Beauvois employed method directing, immersing himself in this world, capturing it sharply. There’s a brilliant scene where the cops debate whether incarcerated crims deserve carnal privileges over couscous. Antoine, who has left a comely wife in Normandy, gets consumed in a murder investigation where some roughneck Russians have thrown a Polish drunk in the Seine. The hard-edged, loaded action moves from Burgundy wine country to a Russian orthodox church to a scummy backpackers, with measured, engaging rhythms.