Film
Veronica Lee
Yasmina Reza first came to theatregoers' attention with her 1994 play Art, a very funny three-hander about friendship and intellectual pretension. God of Carnage, this time a four-hander but an equally astute comedy of manners peopled by another bunch of bourgeois characters, debuted in 2007 - and now Roman Polanski has adapted it for the screen, co-writing the screenplay with Reza and moving the action from Paris to New York City.God of Carnage is a real-time, one-room drama and Polanski has made little effort to widen it out in Carnage, but this works very much in the film's favour, as we Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Is it a voice coach Sam Worthington needs? He plays nothing but Americans – even in the mythological mash-up Clash of the Titans - but come those moments of what passes for heightened emotion in his performances, the Kiwi vowels will out. There is a lot of heightened emotion in Man on a Ledge, or at least height, being set on a ledge from which a man is threatening to jump. Close your eyes and you could be in Kaikoura or Wanganui, or Invercargill.In fact we are in Midtown New York on the flank of the Roosevelt Hotel, which intriguingly seems to assume some commercial benefit derives Read more ...
mark.kidel
Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, originally released in 1970, is without doubt his masterpiece and marks the Italian director’s move from experimental art-house movies to larger scale-studio production. The film is stunningly beautiful, each frame carefully composed in terms of colour and form, and every camera movement contributing to mood and story rather than being used for effect. Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography broke new ground and inspired many other great film makers, not least Coppola who hired him for Apocalypse Now.In a series of seamlessly handled flashbacks, the film tells Read more ...