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Reviews

Red Rocket | Regional News

Red Rocket

(R16)

130 Mins

(4 out of 5)

Reviewed by: Sam Hollis

Like his previous films, particularly the acclaimed The Florida Project, Sean Baker zeroes in on outcasts and misfits in Red Rocket. A slice-of-life picture that candidly centres on an amoral character, its liberating attitude towards sex and bad behaviour makes it exhilarating beyond belief.

Following a 17-year stint in Los Angeles, washed-up porn star Mikey (Simon Rex) returns to his hometown in Texas to shelter with his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mother Lil (Brenda Deiss). Unable to find work due to his previous career, he spends his time moving weed for an old acquaintance and frequenting the local donut shop, where he meets 17-year-old Strawberry (Suzanna Son).

For all intents and purposes, Mikey is a scumbag. He uses his deceptive charm and relentless fun-loving energy to manipulate those around him: convincing the ex he abandoned to let him crash, befriending his star-struck neighbour to score free rides, hitting on a highschooler with the objective of finding a way back into the porn industry. It’s been too long since a mainstream flick dared to set its sights on a dude this pathetic, and thankfully, Baker doesn’t waste time spelling it out. He simply lets Mikey’s decisions unfold while we play judge, jury, and executioner – a telltale sign of a filmmaker who trusts the intelligence of his audience.

Baker again showcases an uncanny ability to make a community feel existent – the people, locations, and experiences in Red Rocket appear lived-in, an achievement aided by the gorgeously grainy 16-millimetre photography. His films are the screen equivalents of lo-fi Soundcloud mixtapes, those ones that go on to be rereleased by major labels and heralded as classics. This tangibility also flows through the writing (Baker and Chris Bergoch) and performances. Rex delights in playing a man this downtrodden and gives his all to the role. It’s safe to say I won’t soon forget the image of him running down the street butt naked to NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye.

While a touch bloated at 130 minutes, Red Rocket is a cinematic experience unlike any other you’re likely to have in 2022.

No! I’m Not Australian!  | Regional News

No! I’m Not Australian!

Written and performed by Ocean Denham

The Fringe Bar, 18th Feb 2022

Reviewed by: Sam Hollis

Part stand-up, part musical odyssey, comedian Ocean Denham fought a tough opening-night crowd for her New Zealand Fringe Festival show No! I’m Not Australian! to score well-earned laughs. After settling in, our audience comes to appreciate her candid and open approach to storytelling, not to mention her stellar singing voice, the combination of which make her stand out as a unique talent.

Over the course of an hour, Denham reminisces on her weird, wild, and occasionally gross OE. Her trip to the UK was full of hilarious stitch-ups and stories too bizarre to make up. We all know what it’s like to be a fish out of water, and in No! I’m Not Australian!, Denham mines that feeling for comedy gold.

Billing this show as a cabaret is somewhat misleading, as Denham’s strongest asset is her natural talent for stand-up. She knows how to pull an audience into a bit and make it relatable, even if she’s sharing experiences that we can only pray we never have to endure first-hand. What would you do if you showed up to a fancy-pants dinner party only to discover it was a drug-fuelled madhouse? Or how about if your IBS flared up moments before you were to meet your new flatmates in a foreign country? She makes every story feel visceral and presents them in the most high-octane way possible, wringing out laughs all the way.

While her material may have been too honest for some in the crowd, a slow start turns into a big finish as the audience becomes accustomed to the fact that this is a performer expressing herself unapologetically. The same goes for her songs. Lyrically, they’re just as graphic as her bits, but when delivered via Denham’s powerhouse vocal chops, the contradiction makes many of them the highlights of the hour.

Some minor technical difficulties on the part of The Fringe Bar are the only thing that halt an otherwise flowing performance on Friday night. Delivered with confidence and gusto, Denham is clearly a comedic talent to keep your eye on.

The Worst Person in the World | Regional News

The Worst Person in the World

(R16)

128 Mins

(4 ½ out of 5)

Reviewed by: Sam Hollis

Modern day romance is anatomised without faux sentimentality in The Worst Person in the World, a dark rom-com that shows how a person can discover themselves by falling into each and every pitfall the dating game opens up. Renate Reinsve delivers one of the most impactful performances in recent memory, and Joachim Trier adds just enough directorial flourishes to make it all feel both tangible and cinematic.

Julie (Reinsve) is a promising medical student in Oslo, Norway who decides to drop it all to pursue psychology, then photography. She’s endlessly indecisive, which feeds into her love life. We watch on as she, over the course of several years, explores serious (and not so serious) relationships, struggles to find a fitting career path, and tries to forge an identity.

I am thrilled that The Worst Person in the World broke out of the International Feature category at the 94th Academy Awards and received a nomination for Original Screenplay. Trier and Eskil Vogt’s script conflates an entire youth’s worth of romance into two hours, mapping a finely tuned character arc that never feels crammed. It covers the realities of dating someone older who may be ready to settle down sooner than you, the envy that comes with having a partner who grows more successful than you, the temptation to cheat, and on and on. While I prefaced this as a rom-com, it almost feels too authentic for that label.

As its title implies, Julie, on paper at least, should not be remotely likable. This is a red herring, as she must be for the viewer to care about her journey; even if they do not agree with her decisions, they must understand them and root for her to figure it all out. Much of this falls on Reinsve’s shoulders, and she tackles it with all her might. Through heartbreak and trepidation, hunger and happiness, she makes Julie feel real, like an old friend we just haven’t caught up with in a while.

The Worst Person in the World will break your heart and feed it in one foul swoop.

Memoria | Regional News

Memoria

(PG)

136 Mins

(1 out of 5)

Reviewed by: Sam Hollis

Semblances of intrigue occasionally rear their head in Memoria, but it refuses to grab the bull by the horns. I wanted to love it, I really did, but this was a slog. A void of emptiness that while sometimes pretty, is too static, flat, and fruitless to take anything from.

Jessica (Tilda Swinton), a Scottish expat living in Colombia, is awoken one night by a large, mysterious boom. It recurs, but she is seemingly the only person who hears it. Where on Earth is this noise coming from?

Many films place experience above plot or character, leaving the audience to piece together a story as they perceive and interpret what’s in front of them. David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick mastered this effect with films like Mulholland Drive and Eyes Wide Shut. Robert Eggers is a more recent example that comes to mind with The Witch and The Lighthouse. These films demand your attention. They grip your eyeballs and sear images into your mind causing deep-rooted emotional responses, even if it takes two or three viewings for you to understand exactly where it’s brewing from. Memoria sits at the opposite end of this spectrum.

Written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, it meanders along at a snail’s pace, with tension that never rises or falls. Silent, motionless shots remain fixed for minutes on end, characters take an eternity to respond to another’s line of dialogue. No one communicates this way, and Weerasethakul doesn’t do enough to establish a world where we believe they might. He is clearly trying to examine existential concepts – dreams, memories, and what have you – but he is doing it in a way so uninteresting, so uninspiring that I don’t even care to address them.

Swinton is by no means a boring performer, quite the opposite. But until Memoria’s final moments, she gives very little, or perhaps, little was brought out of her. An actor of her calibre was not necessary for this part, though I praise her for attempting to inject passion and solemnity where she could.

Destination Mars | Regional News

Destination Mars

Written by: Kip Chapman

Directed by: Kip Chapman

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 5th Feb 2022

Reviewed by: Madelaine Empson

Conceived and created by HACKMAN (Kip Chapman and Brad Knewstubb), Destination Mars is an interactive experience perfect for young people and their whānau. Suitable for those aged six up, this Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts show puts the audience in the driver’s seat of a space mission on Mars in the year 2034. As the engineers in the control room, we’re responsible for maintaining the base’s support system, powering up the next rocket launch… and saving the day when it all goes wrong.

The technology is a high point of Destination Mars. Each audience member is in charge of their own touch tablet, where space lingo and highly detailed systems information flash across the screen. Games of Space Tennis and Cosmo Run hide out in the entertainment tab – a great touch from the digital design team led by Pedro Klein.  

Deftly guiding our session, charismatic performers Isadora Lao and Arlo Gibson ad-lib with each other and interact beautifully with the audience, assigning tasks to many of us by name. Young faces light up when they are called upon, with a six-year-old Evan getting a round of applause as surely the youngest engineer to ever work on Mars. You go, Evan!

It’s clear the kids absolutely love this unique experience. For the grownups, there’s the slick tech and overall design (directed by Knewstubb) to appreciate, heightened by Sophie Sargent’s costume design that transforms the performers into true space explorers. I do want for more of a human element to latch onto, as I don’t know a whole lot about who or what I’m trying to save when the rocket hits the fan.

I have the young audience member sitting next to me to thank for my favourite moment of Destination Mars. Through blaring alarms, flashing alerts, and a bellowed countdown, us engineers manage to work together to avert total destruction. In the calm after the chaos, Master 10 looks across to his family and whispers, “Can we all agree that was actually quite stressful?”

The Wild Twins | Regional News

The Wild Twins

Written by: Amber and Serena Shine

HarperCollins

Reviewed by: Margaret Austin

The cover photo of this book depicts two stunning young blonde women. “Wild” is not the adjective you’d think of. But identical twins Amber and Serena Shine defy all conventional notions of stunning blondes. Their lives are dedicated to ‘unfeminine’, daring, and often dangerous exploits.

Growing up in rural Aotearoa meant hunting was par for the course. Townie that I am, I especially savoured an early chapter detailing a deer hunt – albeit with a man in tow – complete with hauling the unfortunate dead animal out of a tree halfway down a cliff and shouldering its carcass to the quad bike.

After a couple of years in the army, Amber astutely observed that they “weren’t cut out for being told what to do all the time.” No surprise then that the twins’ next move was to gate crash their way into the world’s highest marathon on Mount Everest.

As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve subsequently taken part in extreme dog sledding in Michigan (Amber), found a positive side to sustaining a serious back injury (Serena), been driven by squalls and high seas sailing from Hawai’i to San Francisco, and walked with jaguars in the Amazon.

Not to leave their native land out of their adventure calendar, in 2017 the pair attempted an ascent of Aoraki/Mount Cook, though were ultimately deterred by bad weather. As ever, theirs is a cheerful, even philosophical, response.

Although they shared some adventures, both women seemed equally willing to go it alone. They alternate in a chapter-by-chapter account of their exploits. Individual accounts are interspersed with motivational comment for us far more timid readers. We get headings such as Taking on Challenges, Don’t Hold Back, and Give Everything a Go.

“There’s no point tip toeing through life only to arrive safely at death,” observes Serena. Experiencing something vicariously by reading about it is all very well, but for the likes of Amber and Serena Shine, it would come a long way second.

Power Play: Elon Musk, Tesla and the Bet of the Century | Regional News

Power Play: Elon Musk, Tesla and the Bet of the Century

Written by: Tim Higgins

WH Allen

Reviewed by: Ayla Akin

Elon Musk is considered a polarising character – you either love him or hate him. It is fair to say, by choosing to review Powerplay: Elon Musk, Tesla and the Bet of the Century amongst a sea of fabulous options, that I was (and maybe surprisingly for some, still am) firmly in the ‘love’ camp.

Leading any new business can be a tumultuous endeavor. However, leading a business with a concept that has never been achieved due to its complexities, along with the pressure of hundreds of millions of dollars of investor cash (as is the case with Tesla), is another type of beast entirely. Before diving into the beginnings of Tesla, Tim Higgins starts by describing Musk’s early success with PayPal and other lucrative ventures. This lays the foundation of Musk’s unique character and capacity to foresee opportunities, no matter how crazy they appear to be.

The quirky entrepreneur is described juggling the demands of running SpaceX and Tesla with anecdotes of firing staff on the spot and the kind of general impulsive behavior we have come to expect from someone like Musk. As much as I admire him, I certainly never wish to work for him. Higgins does a fine job of illustrating the frustrations and high-risk scenarios of the automotive industry. Supplier issues, new markets, logistics of customer repairs, charging stations, and maintaining control of direct sales were just a few of the challenges that the Tesla team were forced to navigate. Add to that the scrutiny of the world’s media and it’s no wonder Musk has been through numerous divorces.

Despite this, Musk’s ambitions never wavered. In fact, to the horror of his employees, Musk would routinely push the goalposts further away and demand that they hold their “feet to the fire” if success was to be achieved. Higgins describes one such example when Musk decided to increase Tesla’s annual sales target in 2015 to 55,000 cars, an alarming 74 percent jump from the year before.

Musk’s goal was simple really. Through the introduction of the world’s first pure electric car, the automotive industry would be changed forever. What could possibly go wrong?

Bonded | Regional News

Bonded

Written by: Ian Austin

I.A. Books

Reviewed by: Ruth Avery

Bonded is the fourth novel in a series from Ian Austin. It’s another escapade of Dan Calder who has returned from the UK with his family to reside in sunny Auckland. The storyline is loosely based on the author’s past life as a police officer and detective. Dan has a wife in a coma and a son with health issues. He can’t cope with either so buries himself in his work and luckily has a long-suffering nanny to look after his son and visit his wife.

Another reviewer said if you like John Grisham then you’ll like this. I’ve read one John Grisham and that was enough. I think Bonded is a man’s book – not that I’m into ‘chick lit’ – but I found its level of detail about a red alert event at the airport too in-depth and I skipped over it. And quite frankly it was boring. I needed more cat and mouse, not details of how airports work during emergency situations. I did learn this: flights are in five-minute increments – for example, there’s never an 11:34am flight, it’s 11:35am and it’s the same at airports around the world. Something you never think about but it makes sense.

Anyhoo, at the front of the book there’s a page with 10 definitions of the word bond, which I found interesting as who knew the word could have so many meanings? ‘Policeofficer’ is written as one word throughout the book which is weird and my proof-reader brain didn’t like it.

After far too long a wait at the boarding gate, this book suddenly picked up and we were off flying like a robber’s dog! And now I’m engaged and want to know the ending. There was a good twist that mixed things up towards the end but the last sentence I found implausible. Bonded has a happy ending of course, a bit American for me. I’m a tough nut to crack it seems.

My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night and All the Times In Between | Regional News

My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night and All the Times In Between

Written and illustrated by Mari Andrew

Penguin Random House

Reviewed by: Jo Lucre

“You can’t heal with just anyone. There are people who haven’t yet been to the same life forest as you and don’t carry the familiar scent with them.”

In My Inner Sky there are many quotes like this that will resonate with you simply for being poignant.

Its illustrations are a little whimsical, but the beauty of them is that they soften some of the serious issues author and illustrator Mari Andrew processes and shares. Through her adventures travelling alone, becoming sick when abroad, falling in love, and the life lessons and self-awareness she gathers along the way, it feels as if you are along for the journey too as she recounts her experiences on many a different soil: France, Australia, Greece, and New York City.

Andrew writes of a life configured in such a way that it’s possible to deconstruct each moment, at any given time, effortlessly. Despite the challenge and diversions around her, there exists a solace and beauty in both the everyday occurrences and the ones that immerse her in sorrow and grief. In My Inner Sky there is a sharp sense of living and losing, battling and winning. All are worthy and discernible experiences and markers of time, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Most of all, Andrew comes out of them stronger and salved.

Andrew has the ability to see each experience at its source and accept its flaws, the uncertainties that might come with it. Her words resonate because they speak of feelings and experiences common to us all: sorrow, heartbreak, searching for the unattainable. Ultimately she shares the healing that happens when the imperfect and the things out of our control are embraced and valued as they are.

My Inner Sky is the kind of book that makes you feel happy just for owning it – it’s a book you give to someone when you want to give them rainbows, or make them feel just a little bit better.