new zealand – PopCult Reviews

Patron Pick – Eagle vs. Shark

This is a special reward available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 a month levels. Each month those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Eagle vs. Shark (2007)
Written & Directed by Taika Waititi

I do not like Taika Waititi. Let me clarify. I don’t like what Waititi’s work has become; the worst aspects of his pre-Thor: Ragnarok work have just been amplified and played up, and it has diminished for me what might have otherwise been a fairly notable filmmaking career. I think Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople are the best pieces of his work. In terms of his producing/supporting other artists, Reservation Dogs is fantastic. But that’s about it as far as I’m concerned. Eagle vs. Shark might be one of the best examples of Waititi wasting his talent, and we will certainly get into it.

Movie Review – Baby Done

Baby Done (2020)
Written by Sophie Henderson
Directed by Curtis Vowell

Baby Done is a 2020 film of a young couple who work as arborists and plans to live their lives as much as possible. Zoe (Rose Matafeo) tries to hide from her boyfriend Tim (Matthew Lewis) that she’s pregnant, but he finds out either way.

My interest in this film was the knowledge that Taika Waiti had produced it. He’s putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to presentation with Matafeo being half-Maori and hiring regulars that have been in Taika Waiti’s movies such as Rachel House.

Movie Review – The Quiet Earth

The Quiet Earth (1985)
Written by Bill Baer, Bruno Lawrence, and Sam Pillsbury
Directed by Geoff Murphy

The Last Man on Earth trope is a prevalent one in popular science fiction, being the fodder of the Twilight Zone multiple adaptations of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and even a Fox television series. There’s the old scary story “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.” This is the foundation on which The Quiet Earth is built, exploring what it would be like to exist as the last member of your species, knowing that with your end, so goes all memory of your civilizations.

Movie Review – Boy

Boy (2010)
Written & Directed by Taika Waititi

James-Rolleston-Boy

Boy lives on the eastern coast of New Zealand in 1984. He lives on a small farm with his Nan, his brother, and cousins. He loves Michael Jackson and his absentee father. He hangs out with his pals Dallas and Dynasty while swooning after Chardonnay, a girl in his class. Then one day, when his Nan is out of town, his father returns and enlists Boy in helping him discover money he buried in a field years ago. Boy will spend some weeks getting to know his father better, imagining a life away from this place, and ultimately learning the reality behind his father and the fantasies he has constructed around the man.

Continue reading “Movie Review – Boy”

Movie Review – Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016, dir. Taika Waititi)

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Ricky Baker is a young boy in New Zealand who has reached the end of the foster system. This brings him to a farm on the edge of Bush and into the lives of Bella and her husband, Hec. Bella immediately takes a shine to Ricky while Hec remains on the sides and grumpy. Events transpire that force Ricky and Hec to endure each other in the dark reaches of the Bush. The public believes Hec has kidnapped Ricky and manhunt ensues that forces the two to become family, yet not lose their respective abilities to irritate the other.

Director Taika Waititi gathered a significant amount of interest with his mockumentary What We Do In Shadows, chronicling the days of a quartet of vampire roommates in Wellington, NZ. Previously he had helmed smaller independent films Eagle vs. Shark and Boy. Throughout his work, he is a constant collaborator with Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame. And, if you are familiar with that comedy duo then the style of humor present in Waititi’s work is strongly comparable. The jokes are very silly, very dry and everything holds a sense of endearment for the oddball quirks of the characters.

Wilderpeople is a film of many techniques and themes, and it could have easily fallen apart trying to carry so much weight. Miraculously, it balances all of these elements and presents a story that is both rife with pathos but never maudlin. There are sweeping epic helicopter shots of characters traversing the wild, yet the movie maintains a very intimate, independent tone. Characters are absolutely silly and absurd, but we never lose sight of the humanity the film is in touch with. In many ways, Wilderpeople feels like a movie you would have stumbled across in the 1980s, an emotional and smart cult classic that would grow in popularity year after year.

What so many American studio comedies get wrong is the idea that improv equals funny now. This is easily seen in the dozens of comedies released that have hours of deleted scenes where actors merely riff. Wilderpeople delivers its seemingly improvised comedy so effortlessly that the craftsmanship of writer-director Watiti is an invisible hand. And that is the hallmark of not just a good, but a great director, that they recede into the film and that its voice is singular yet diverse. The film has an overall sense of style and humor, but each character speaks in a way that is true to them. The supporting cast are remarkable, and my particular favorite is Rachel House (you probably heard her as the grandmother in Moana) as Paula, the absurd social worker who seems to simultaneously love and hate Ricky.

This picture has me excited to see what Waititi does with Thor: Ragnarok. Marvel Studios made headlines when Edgar Wright dropped out of Ant-Man citing the studio’s desire to focus on the franchise connections between its movies than allowing diverse voices to emerge out of the work. From the visuals I’ve seen, it appears this next Thor movie will be very different from its predecessor’s. My greatest hope is that Waititi’s sensibilities for voice and humor are allowed to come through.