Dismayed to learn membership numbers were down from previous years, The Lumière Reader knows what Film Societies are up against: the disillusionment of movie-going, the convenience of DVD, the instantaneity of the internet. As another season’s programme is unveiled, the tendency is, invariably, to check off the films that can be accessed by other means. We implore you to join anyway. Long-time members will vouch for the pleasures of communal viewing, and there’s nothing quite like indulging in big screen cinema – whether it be classic, marginal, or grossly underseen – in the company of a regular, appreciative, mobilized audience. If music fans can extol the virtues of witnessing a band live over listening to their albums, cinephiles should argue that watching a film at home on a television screen (or worse, on a computer monitor) cannot compare to absorbing it in a theatre alongside other people. Film Society 2008 offers plenty of opportunities to experience this: its annual silent cinema presentation always a highlight (Harold Lloyd’s immortal Safety Last! screens), forgotten festival fixtures are afforded a second life (this year, German features Requiem and Longing), while films you won’t have heard of or seen make for discoveries to look forward too (Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels, or the Charles Burnett retrospective instances that are especially hard to come by in this country).

Though individual Societies vary in screenings between regions, the overarching New Zealand Film Society promises an excellent nationwide programme. TIM WONG (with additional words from Brannavan Gnanalingam) appraises the five films you should at least consider joining for.

Flight of the Conchords: not quite world famous, but much more than New Zealand’s 4th most popular folk parody duo. Tailing Bret and Jemaine to a secret in-store signing and performance at Wellington’s Aro Video (to coincide with the local release of FOTC on DVD), BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM witnessed their escalating cult firsthand.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

BHARATH GOPI (1937-2008), who died a few weeks ago, was a brilliant Malayalam actor, who owes his screen career to Adoor Gopalakrishnan. He discovered him in his first film, Swayamvaram (One’s Own Choice, 1972). Many people may not remember him as the clerk in a timber shop who loses his job, and later confronts the new employee, played by Madhu. It was in Adoor’s second movie, Kodiyettam (The Ascent, 1977), that Gopi burst into prominence. As the protagonist, a drifter, he was the hero without looking an inch of it. The role fetched him his first National Award, and Gopi went on to become one of finest actors the world has ever known. His intense role in G. Aravindan’s Chidambaram, opposite no less an actress like Smita Patil, will go down the annals of cinema history as something magnificent. As a loving father, a passionate lover or a village simpleton, he broke the stereotype image of a hero with his dark complexion and almost bald head. It is tragic that Gopi always had a bad health. Some years ago, a stroke at the peak of his career left him handicapped, but after a long gap of eight years, he came back to the screen, taking up parts that suited his physical condition. And he was as great as before.

Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

AFTER stunning documentaries The White Diamond and Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog returns to feature film with Rescue Dawn. Rescue Dawn fictionalises the story of pilot Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), whose real-life story Herzog previously documented in Little Dieter Needs to Fly.

A roundup/recap of the current best and rest in film. In this installment: Michael Clayton, 30 Days of Night, Cloverfield, I Am Legend, Rescue Dawn, Red Road, Death at a Funeral.

Introducing Louis Malle and the smouldering Jeanne Moreau is this heavyset French thriller of best-laid plans. Presented on its 50th anniversary, it’s one of 17 features at the French Film Festival 2008, a digestible and easy on the eye celebration of Gallic cinema, now into its sophomore year. An outsider established within a canon consisting mostly of American film noir, the plotting of Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) differs little from the doomed exit strategies of Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and so on, yet as an unravelling of infidelity and murder is distinguished less as a lurid crime of passion, than it is a deliberation on cold hard consequence and fate. On the fringes of the nouvelle vague, Malle’s entrée, if not the radical debut of Godard and Truffaut, manages to pre-empt some of Breathless’ delinquent cool by introducing a pair of youths (prototypes for Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg) who get to steal a car, attack the petit bourgeoisie, and end up fugitives from the law. More central to the story are the desperate measures of Maurice Ronet; playing Moreau’s lover, his attempts to fabricate the suicide of her husband come unstuck when he gets trapped in an elevator overnight, giving rise to some perilous moments inside a lift shaft. Meanwhile, Moreau is sidelined for the majority of the film, though having her wander the streets of Paris in isolation has its own unique appeal – the dense black and white cinematography clothing the iconic actress in sultry, nocturnal midtones. The formidable Lino Ventura appears briefly as a tough-nosed inspector, while Miles Davis provides the memorable score; the trumpeter’s smoky jazz passages the ideal partner in crime for noir. The festival covers Wellington (Embassy Theatre, Feb 13-21), Auckland (Rialto Newmarket, Feb 20-28), and Christchurch (Rialto, Feb 26-Mar 2), with the full programme available online at frenchfilmfestival.co.nz.—Tim Wong

Reviewed by Tim Wong

JAVIER BARDEM is a Mexican sent from the future in this vicious, tactile masterpiece of the Southwest, a film about doomed opportunism and its ceaseless hunter whose only conception of mercy is the flip of a coin. Bardem’s breezy Hispanic locks frame eyes of unforgivable blackness, and there hasn’t been an assassin this callous or unrelenting since The Terminator. Like a cyborg programmed to kill, his circuitry is exacting, near-infallible, and ruthlessly precise. Similarly, Joel and Ethan Coen direct with seasoned accuracy and efficiency, their filmmaking marksmanship now a sight to behold after so many good, but never quite great collaborations. Shot with devastating rhythm and uncharacteristic simplicity, the film is formally, a marvel, yet also the Brothers’ least showy and most nihilistic feature to date – humourless as a counterpart to Bardem’s grim reaper, unremittingly bleak as an itinerary of death’s pursuit.