The Breaker Upperers

Seen at the Paramount Theatre, Maryborough, VIC

Cecil says: The distributors of The Breaker Upperers did a good job advertising this film. They knew how to pick the best bits for the trailer, which got us to go and see it, as – we hoped – a light entertainment film on a cold Sunday morning. I wish they hadn’t.

This was awful.

I don’t even want to waste too much time explaining what was awful about it. Dreadfully written; stilted; jokes that felt more like Benny Hill or a sixth form drama production at high school. No, I’m being nice: a fourth form production.

I can’t think of any redeeming features, really. As soon as I saw Celia Pacquola on the doorstep overdoing the tears, I realised how much I dislike her acting and ‘comic’ style (she vaguely works on Rosehaven, but only against the wooden estate agent sidekick there).

The concept might have worked if better written. But it was over-acted, cliched and painfully NOT funny. Oh, and what the dance scene towards the end was all about, I have no idea. It really made me wonder who the target audience was: if Millennials, why lead with main characters who are old enough to be their Mums? If not Millennials, wtf?

Come on, New Zealand cinema. I know you can do better than this.

*

Bea says: Yes, clearly a case of all the best jokes were in the trailer...it's rare that I don't find any redeeming features in a film, but this had very few.  There were a handful of funny lines (which we had seen before).  But otherwise, despite the concept being quite good (the Breaker-Upperers can be hired to break up with your partner on your behalf), it was so poorly written - a 6th form class could probably have done better.  In fact, I mused to Cecil afterwards, it might have been originally conceived of for TV, as it did occasionally feel like a series of episodes strung together (not particularly well).  

The comedy was infantile and heavy handed; as a result just not funny.  It needed a far lighter touch, and dare I say better delivery.  You need a very, very good comic actor to work well with poor writing, and sadly I just don't think the cast were up to it.  Shortly after seeing this however, I noticed a NZ friend posting about it on Facebook - and she loved it, describing it as quintessential NZ comedy...perhaps a cultural gap?

* for the 5-6 funny lines.

The Bookshop

Seen at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC

Cecil says: I had no idea what to expect from The Bookshop, except that I – correctly – assumed it would revolve around a book shop…

Funnily enough I realised as the voiceover began that I had been expecting a quaint American small town book shop and some story built around that. Just shows how ingrained our expectation of American culture is on our screens. But, no, The Bookshop is filmed mostly on location in Northern Ireland (we recognised some of the coastal scenes), and I was interested in how many of the credits rolling by at the end of the film seemed to be of Catalan origin (and sure enough, the film was written and directed by Isabel Coixet from Barcelona, and she involved lots of Catalan folk in the production – good for her, I say).

However, this says nothing about the film itself. The voiceover runs right through the film and I won’t do a spoiler on who the character turns out to be whose voice it is, but another surprise only a few seconds in was the appearance strolling into sight over the horizon of Bill Nighy. I had no idea he was in the film at all, but I knew Bea would be pleased, and if I was a betting man, I’d have a good chance of winnings if I bet on Bill Nighy appearing in pretty well every film we see these days.

The premise of the film: outsider comes into small village in (not totally clear what era – but since Lolita has just been published, it suggests 1950s) England with a desire to convert on old house into a bookshop. Against her is one of the local dignitaries, who has aspirations to have a local arts centre housed there; and at the first party the prospective bookshop owner attends, she gets fairly short shrift from most locals, who are either definitely in the Duchess’s camp or are clearly not interested in books.

So far it smacks a little of Vicar of Dibley. But there isn’t much humour here, and the pace is fairly slow. But the plot does develop nicely and relationship between Emily Mortimer (Florence Green) and Bill Nighy (Edmund Brundish) is rather nice to watch as it slowly develops, though never quite materialises, rather like in Remains of the Day.

Looking at the book industry today (not that I know much about it), it’s gratifying that there are still independent book shops doted around the place, and we always try to drop by on our travels. It can’t have been easy even in the 1950s to make a bookshop in a small village profitable, but it’s unimaginable now that such a bookshop – in a village that can’t have had that many inhabitants altogether – would take a gamble and order 200 copies of a new release like Lolita. Is there any book today which might sell like that?

***

Bea says: I am a life long book lover, and hence a bookshop lover, so any film that purports to be about either is onto a winner with me, and if it also has Bill Nighy in it – well even better.  You would think that would mean I would give this a 5 star rating, but actually the plot is a little slow, even for me and I am pretty tolerant of that, and I just didn’t feel I got enough inside the head of the main character to really embody the film – I watched the “action” (such as there was), rather than embodying it, so I felt a sense of distance.  I noted in the credits that it is adapted from a novel and I would now like to read the novel, to see if the sense of distance is the same.  I did like the neat ending, where we see the legacy of children being around books, bookshops and book lovers, and it did let me dream a little about running a small bookshop in a small town….

Overall recommended for book lovers everywhere, for a Sunday afternoon or cozy winters evening.

***1/2

All the Wild Hoirses

Seen at the Glasgow Film Theatre

Cecil says: We always try to get along to the GFT on visits to Glasgow and we had a free afternoon so chose this documentary about a 1,000km horserace in Mongolia as the best thing on the programme when we were free. Yes, it’s not an obvious choice and we probably wouldn’t have gone if we had lots of other options for good films at that time. But I’m glad we did.

So, the ‘horse race’ is basically an adventure holiday with a difference, only you need to be able to ride a (wild) horse to take part. It lasts about nine days, and every day each rider gets allotted a new horse to take them on the next leg through the wilds and the heat of Mongolia.

It’s beautifully filmed, though the focus is less on the Mongolian landscape and more on the characters who take part and how the challenge is approached differently by each rider’s different personality.

We have the driven lone Texan girl whose only goal is to win; there are the two Irish jump jockeys who want to win but also rather enjoy teaming up with a couple of the women riders; there’s the black South African horse whisperer, who is surely the favourite among all the film viewers for his magical patience with the more and more difficult rides he is given; and there are the cameo roles by the unfortunate Norwegian girl, the Dutch Alexander Technique teacher and various others who figured less prominently.

There’s heatstroke, broken bones, wolf attacks to battle against; and the nightly hospitality from local Mongolian families who house the riders at the end of each day.

It’s just a captivating insight into a kind of quirky adventure holiday (and surely good for business for the team who run the race each year), but also strangely compelling viewing. Funnily enough, I didn’t really care who won, and that I think is the point also; this is really an event where it’s the taking part that counts. Just pity the poor guy who broke his collar bone about 100m into the race on the first day…

***

Bea says: My sister joined us for this excursion to the GFT and, as we often do, we saw whatever was on at the time that suited us, rather than choosing a film and then going at that time.  There was a choice between this and one other, and we plumped for this, following lunch at the Willow Tea Rooms.  

My sister was sceptical, but in fact we all really enjoyed it.  It is documentary-style, and very absorbing.  Very quickly we were caught up in the logistical issues of organising such a race, the motivations of those taking part – from seasoned horsemen and women to people who just wanted to do something completely different to their usual daily grind – and the local Mongolians who hosted participants and provided the (often) challenging horses.  Following the key participants to the finish line (or not, in some cases) was great.

I was pleased to see the attention paid to horse welfare – which actually had quite an impact on finishing time – and the growth of collegiate bonding between the participants, as they helped each other through the challenges the terrain and conditions presented.  These were important details for me, which made the documentary much more human and intimate, making me really care about what happened to the people involved.

Lots of great views and scenes of traditional tents as well – if you love travel, this one is definitely recommended!

***1/2

Adrift

Seen at the Sun Theatre in Yarraville, VIC

Cecil says: The opening scene of Adrift is so like Robert Redford’s All is Lost that you could be mistaken for thinking they nicked the idea. In fact, the whole concept of Adrift is pretty similar to the Redford survival film – boat gets holed out in the middle of the ocean; how the hell do you get out of that alive?

The Redford film is really only about survival, though; it really only has RR in it from scene 1 to the end; you feel the loneliness and marvel at his creative skills in managing to get him and his wrecked boat to safety.

Adrift is as much to do with the relationship between the two main protagonists: the couple who agree to sail the boat across the Pacific from Tahiti to San Diego. And the focus is really on the young woman who has to manage the situation once the boat has been damaged in a storm.

Well in the amazingly beautiful Sun Theatre in Yarraville, the audience was certainly largely female (maybe also to do with the matinee timing), and there was a whole row of young women in front of us who were perhaps the target audience for the makers of Adrift. I wonder how they empathised and identified with the young American (Tammy) who is trying to get the boat to a safe place and not die in the process.

The film is set in 1983 and we discover at the end that it is based on a true story (not sure why they held that back to the final credits, and I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t yet seen the film). That got me realising that I had two memories of Tahiti myself: in 1968, so only 15 years before this film was set, my boat back from Australia docked outside Tahiti, and funnily enough we then went into the most terrifying tropical storm I can ever remember being in. The ship was pitched and rolled for hours and that was a big liner, so how a small yacht survived at all, I don’t know.

Then I flew in 1986 from Sydney to LA with a stop-off in Tahiti, and I can remember a guy next to me on the plane had plans to stop off and get work as crew on a boat, so that kind of thing did happen.

As a survival film, I preferred Redford’s. But as an observation on relationships, dreams, hallucinations even, as well as survival, Adrift was a good watch.

And wow the Sun Theatre is amazing.

***

Bea says: I really enjoyed this outing to the historic Sun theatre in Yarraville.  I found the film compelling, in that "what would I have done in her situation" kind of way that survival films have (I did not see the similar Robert Redford film with Cecil).  I very, very vaguely remembered the true story this film is based on from the early eighties (my memory was triggered by the footage of magazine and weekend supplement features at the end), but because my memory was vague the twist in the plot came as a complete surprise to me.

I did very much enjoy watching a film solely about a woman, with her experiences being completely central to the plot.  We so rarely see this.  And she was portrayed as strong and capable - I hoped the row of young millennial women in front of us would have found her inspiring - I did, and I was glad to read that she still sails regularly, in the closing summary of "what happened after".  The film is quite sad, and not entirely uplifting, but very absorbing and I would recommend it.

***