At the movies with Dan Slevin
WHEN I first visited this country back in 1982 we flew across the Pacific Ocean in daylight and from my window seat I got a bird’s eye view of … not very much.
Once I got here I understood that there was a lot going on down there on many tiny speckled islands and atolls - and the richness of the Pacific and its relationship to New Zealand was just one of the reasons why I’m still here all these years later - but now the creeping spectre of global warming is transforming the Pacific.
This process is already well under way as Briar March’s astounding documentary There Once was an Island illustrates. In 2006 Ms. March and a tiny crew spent several months on Takuu, a remote atoll overseen by the Bougainville, serviced and supported by a rare and irregular shipping service and short wave radio. Even then the waves were lapping at the edge of peoples’ homes and the offer of a haven among the mainland sugar plantations effectively meant asking 4000 people to say goodbye to their entire way of life.
March and her crew returned two years later with scientists who could explain the peril (and perhaps offer some protection strategies) but by then it was already too late. High tides were destroying buildings and there wasn’t any higher ground to move to.
And while we are on the lookout for signs of the coming apocalypse, Exhibit B is surely the new Cameron Diaz film Bad Teacher. I was deeply offended by this film and the contempt that it showed for its audience and for humanity generally. The only conceivable way Bad Teacher could be worse would be if Gerard Butler was in it.
You can count on Pixar to provide some balance to the desperately depressing fare usually on offer but something isn’t quite right with Cars 2. I mean it’s perfect, obviously, but something is missing this time around. There’s a lot of plot in Cars 2 and the detail has to be seen to be believed - car puns are literally everywhere - but it seems a little too constructed rather than born if that makes any sense.
It’s still better than 99% of films that will come out this year though and don’t be late as there is a very funny Toy Story short at the beginning.
Capturing something of the spirit of (the genius) Four Lions without any of the brilliant execution, The Reluctant Infidel tells the potentially amusing story of Mahmud (stand-up comic Omid Djalili), a slightly lapsed London Muslim who discovers he is actually adopted and that his birth parents were jews named Shimshimowitz. It’s a promising premise and there are some good scenes but the final resolution falls terribly flat when we should be sliding off our seats with laughter.
In My Afternoons With Margueritte the enormous Gérard Depardieu plays against type as a modest little character, suppressed and depressed by a domineering and abusive mother and mates who scorn his lack of education.
Dripping with sentimentality, My Afternoons With Margueritte will prove satisfying to undemanding audiences, largely due to a light touch in the directing department from Jean Becker (Conversations With My Gardener) and an efficient 82 minute running time.