BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Ken Loach.

DESPITE his films being of quite eclectic subject matter, Ken Loach is primarily known for his kitchen-sink, social realism. He made his name with the controversial 60s TV movie Cathy Come Home, and since then has shown an empathy and understanding of everyday people’s struggles. His politics aren’t hard to decipher, and while the politics in The Navigators are obvious, the film’s success comes his almost exclusive focus on his protagonists and their increasing desperation with the way times have changed.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: good cop, bad cop.

Infernal Affairs will forever suffer comparisons to its Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning remake The Departed. Scorsese’s film was bloated, weighed down by its star power, and revelled in the moral ambiguity of the premise. Infernal Affairs in contrast is buffed down to a sheen, the moral ambiguity of the narrative a thin (but important) film around its seeming glossy fashion shoot. But that doesn’t make Infernal Affairs a bad film. Anything but – it’s one of the most enjoyable action films of the last decade. The narrative is so tightly coiled, the tension arises simply from waiting for the script’s muscles to flex.

ALEXANDER BISLEY reports from the Wellington Film Society. Coming up: Sembene’s swansong.

Moolaade was the last film from Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese father of African cinema. The rebel with a cause went out in style. Expelled from a conservative school, Sembene forged a saw-toothed, egalitarian consciousness as an immigrant Marseille dockworker. He damn near perfected art as politics with Moolaade, a rousing film that recommends itself also on purely aesthetic grounds.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: dangerous liasons.

PIERRE Choderlos de Laclos’s novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses has had a number of glossy, attractive re-workings. This Korean adaptation has similarities to its other more famous siblings (Dangerous Liaisons, Valmont, Cruel Intentions) – essentially it’s beautiful people doing despicable things to each other. And while it’s hard to really care about the awfulness on display at times, Untold Scandal is an immaculately shot, rather sexy version of a society in freefall and moral decay.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Korean anarchy.

I’VE SEEN the brilliant Attack the Gas Station! twice in large crowds now, and have seen totally divergent reactions. Half the crowd walked out during the Film Society screening, perhaps put off the dubbed American accents which sounded positively Brechtian. The other time was in a class studying Korean cinema, and the audience were hooting and clapping along with the film – and perhaps to fully appreciate how pointed the film really is, an understanding of its targets, like the latter audience would have had, might assist.

GREGOR CAMERON reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: five Kiwi shorts.

THERE’s something very powerful about seeing a generation grow up in front of you. Parents know this. At the Film Society on Monday evening members were treated to a programme that seemed to do this right in front of them.

The evening belonged to Donogh Rees as each short film featured her performances. Our first meeting occurs through Pheno Was Here (Richard Riddiford, 1982) which also stars Kelly Johnson fresh from filming Goodbye Pork Pie the year before. Significantly this is a film made post-Springbok and there is, along with their familiar joyous play, a darker pitch, and a world less worthy. Rees and Johnson are the young people trying to evolve, on the run, armed with spray cans yet seem somewhat lost. In this world justice seems divorced from right and wrong, no better underpinned than when Duncan Smith’s cop catches up with Pheno (Rees) at the airport and instead of arresting her buys another ticket and leaves New Zealand with her. The film serves as a pocket reminder to those of us that lived through it of how ambiguous we felt about our country back then.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Wong Kar-wai style.

WONG KAR-WAI makes films that are so sexy, you kinda forget his are all about thwarted love, the failure of communication, and the end of the world. In time to come, his films may end up being the visual representation of the 1990s, a decade which may go down as one of the most transformative decades politically, socially, and technologically in human history. Wong’s films are all about the senses, and of time passing, and his hit-man thriller/romance Fallen Angels fits in nicely with the feel of Wong’s best work.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round three of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

IT’S ALMOST misleading to call Sergei Parajanov’s extraordinary film a Soviet one. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more political statement made in the history of cinema, and given the personal consequences on Parajanov, let alone the film’s political intent, the film is as anti-Soviet as you can get. But then The Colour of Pomegranates couldn’t have been made anywhere but in the Soviet Union, where Parajanov channelled unashamedly nationalistic and Christian motifs in direct opposition to those championed by the Soviet authorities. In other words, this film couldn’t have been made without the repressive conditions Parajanov was screaming against. The film’s almost sealed Armenian nationalism has led to its marginalisation by film critics however. As it requires an intimate knowledge of its subjects, any reviewer not in-tune with the symbolic significance of its tableaux cannot do much beyond give a loose overview of its themes or talk about its aesthetic qualities – but that shouldn’t put off viewers. It’s undeniably one of the greatest films ever made.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM chats to Stephanie Cook, subject of a new documentary by Vanguard Films’ Russell Campbell.

FOLLOWING on immediately from the Vanguard Films retrospective at the Film Archive, Sisters from Siberia is the latest addition to the Kiwi collective’s stable. Directed by distinguished documentary-maker and academic Russell Campbell, the touching documentary follows Wellington City Councillor Stephanie Cook and her quest to adopt two girls (Katya and Nadya, aged nine and four respectively) from Siberia. The documentary moves to look at the two girls’ struggles/triumphs in trying to adapt to New Zealand life. Campbell frequently digresses from the main narrative, and adds interviews with former Russian citizens – and reveals the diversity, energy and colourful nature of the vibrant Russian community in the city. The documentary has its world premiere on Sunday September 20 at the Paramount Theatre in Wellington.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round three of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

AGNÈS VARDA’s good friend and co-film revolutionary Chris Marker once made one of the most astonishing pieces of cinema with La Jetée – a film composed of static, two-dimensional photographs (bar one moment in the film). The photographs replicated memory, because for Marker our memories are only played back to us in 2-D. These images are inherently unreliable, but they are the best we’ve got. This treatment of the static image appears to be the philosophical underpinning of the three wonderful short films which closed the Film Society’s Varda programme.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM argues for the transgressive comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Brüno’.

I AM CONVINCED that if Brüno (and Borat) hadn’t crossed over to mainstream multiplexes, it would have been proclaimed an avant-garde masterpiece. Perhaps this will occur in twenty or so years time. The film isn’t even notable for its comedy (and by the way, it is rip-roaringly funny). It’s the intellectual rigour with which Sacha Baron Cohen uses his creations to confront bigotry and intolerance. Creator Cohen is essentially carrying on a tradition created by the likes of the Marquis De Sade, Georges Bataille, and the Situationists. Or you could point to a film tradition of John Waters, Russ Meyer, the Cinema of Transgression movement, Catherine Breillat, Baise-Moi etc. By challenging society over what it considers offensive or disgusting, these artists have examined the construction of taboos and the repressive nature of particular societal norms. Whereas Borat wrapped this exploration up in the cuddly, roguish titular character, Brüno pushes the boundaries even further by directly confronting the audience’s expectations with the character’s shenanigans. And the film is being given warnings all over the show by reviewers for its apparent offensiveness – a clear statement which merely confirms what Cohen is in fact challenging.

ALEXANDER BISLEY reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Kim Ki-duk’s four seasons.

SIMPLE in its means yet cosmic in its scope, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring is transcendent. The lovely film, seasonally structured, meditates on a cute child’s way to nirvana, instructed by a wise old Buddhist monk. They live on a floating temple in the middle of an isolated, bucolic lake. As with his wrenching The Isle, Kim Ki-duk’s visual rhythms are innovative and beautifully hypnotic.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round two of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

THE FILM SOCIETY’s jaunt through the rarely seen but blazingly important world of Agnes Varda continues with a collection of her ‘Parisian’ short films. While many in this collection are not as idiosyncratically endearing as some of her best work (though, there is of course her adoration of cats), there are some brilliant and philosophically rigorous moments throughout.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: a comedy of depression.

FOR A FILM that’s remarkably depressing, You, the Living is rather funny. A dark, colourless vision of modern life, its idiosyncratic touches mean the film never feels as alienating as its subject matter. With its rich, intricate shots and understated deadpan symbolism, the film manages to elevate its subject matter into a deeply moving howl. And while it’s a little too loose in terms of its narrative, there’s no denying its idiosyncratic touch is quite something.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round one of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

AGNÈS VARDA’s films are so disarming because they are at once playful and philosophical without the two strands frustrating the other. Following on from screenings of The Beaches of Agnès and Cléo 5 to 7 at the New Zealand International Film Festival, Monday’s Film Society programme played a collection of her shorts where the two elements of her films were again evident. Even if some of her political films have dated somewhat, her love of her characters and her idiosyncratic approach to filming ‘reality’ remain as compelling as her best feature-length work.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Goethe Institut selects, round four.

DESPITE East Germany being in its death-throes, the state was still producing films after the wall came down. The Architects is clearly reflective of the growing liberalisation in late 80s East German society, and the film is none too subtle in its critique of authority and conformity. It ultimately looks at how much an individual has to compromise him or herself in order to fit in, concluding in a rather hard-edged pessimistic manner.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Goethe Institut selects, round three.

THE FILM SOCIETY’s East German rendezvous continues with Her Third, a rom-com socialist style, which pleads for women’s rights in its own particular way. Following the travails of an ex-nun-solo-mother-potential-lesbian, with two children from two different relationships as she searches for Mr Right (who happens to work in the chemical factory with her), Her Third gently asks for equal rights in relationships. While it has certainly dated, and seems like a curious slice of 70s socialism, some of its concerns about female bonding and relationship behaviour still resonate. And even if the whole film is occasionally rather silly, it shows that despite the barriers of the Cold War, women and men the world-over have to go to great lengths for something that evolution had initially made so simple.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Goethe Institut selects, round two.

SOME OF THE most interesting films of all-time came out of the socialist countries in the late 60s. But while East Germany’s film industry lacked the sheer inventiveness of places like Czechoslovakia or even Russia, some fascinating films were still made. I Was Nineteen is some kind of masterpiece, a dark brooding depiction of the last days of World War Two. We see the film through the eyes of Gregor Hecker (Jaecki Schwarz), an ex-pat German who fought with the Soviets. He’s only nineteen, a boy who rushed into life forgetting that the door was still open behind him. He’s forced to re-engage with his German-ness, and acknowledge the fact the Germans did some rather horrific things, despite fighting on the side of the ‘good’. He mirrors the conflict of East Germany too – despite being on the ‘good’ side, it had these dark, dark roots.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Goethe Institut selects, round one.

ONE OF THE best parts of the Film Society year is when the Goethe Institut provide a few of the more obscure German films for viewing. This year, to commemorate twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Film Society is screening four East German films. Each was made by the state sponsored studio DEFA (which took over from the hugely influential UFA studios of inter-war and WWII Germany). The first film programmed, Berlin-Schonhauser Corner, is a 1950s teen melodrama set in East Berlin. The conceits of Hollywood teen movies like Rebel Without a Cause or The Wild Ones – the angst, the awkward rebellion, the acknowledgement of the adult world – are transplanted onto the Eastern German adolescents, and the result is a rather gritty and compelling film.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Van Sant on drugs.

IN MANY WAYS, Drugstore Cowboy might be Van Sant’s most satisfying film. And in terms of his ‘arty’ films, it might also be his most accessible. A downbeat film about drugs, the film seeks to neither glamorise nor heavy-handedly moralise about its protagonists. Instead, the characters just live, dreams cocooned away, knowing that a drug hit has the comfort of routine. Van Sant manages to turn a reasonably clichéd story into something fresh, raw and above all, moving.

ADDOLEY DZEGEDE reviews (and illustrates) JJ Abrams’s new Star Trek extravaganza.

AS I WRITE THIS, white petals floating on gusts of warm air swirl by the window. Birds are literally chirping, and the sun has cast an orange glow on the otherwise dull concrete of the building adjacent to my apartment. I say all this because it is nearly summer, and summer in the US, when our brains have melted into an icecream and entertainment-craving mess, is primetime for big, blockbusting action movies. It was such a day when, loosely familiar with Star Trek from a childhood spent with a sci-fi geek of a mom, but not much of a fan, I was dragged in from the sweet lethargy of a warm afternoon and thrust into the darkness of a cinema to watch the prolific JJ Abrams’s Star Trek.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Van Sant debuts.

IT’S A LONG-HELD, creaky theory of mine that the 1980s were the golden age of popular music – when indie artists managed to transcend the financial limitations of recording music of previous decades and make stunning music from hip-hop to metal (no other decade was arguably as diverse). The 1980s was also the time when a number of filmmakers replicate the no-fi, lo-fi movements in music – filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee (by no means novel given figures like Charles Burnett and John Waters before them) gained huge success on low-budget, self-produced films. Gus Van Sant was another well-known auteur who started in a similar fashion. His debut film, Mala Noche, didn’t have the same resonance that his later Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho had, but it broadcast a director who has proven remarkably hard to pin down (after all, he’s made everything from Finding Forrester to the Psycho remake to Elephant). In fact, this effervescent, if slight film basically sets up Van Sant’s career – and it’s easy to see his subsequent eclecticism resulting from it.

ALEXANDER BISLEY reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: West Iceland’s Donnie.

“LAUGH or cry at the stupidity of the world; you will regret both,” Noi Albinoi’s bookshop owner quotes Kierkegaard. Like Jar City, Dagur Kari’s imaginatively composed film taps into Icelandic unease. Fusing Donnie Darko’s spirit with Aki Kaurismaki’s comic minimalism, Noi Albinoi taps into a rich vein of teen angst.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: ugly war.

ONE THING Bruno Dumont will never be accused of being is subtle. So one’s predilection for his work will be dependent on one’s tolerance for his heavy-handedness. This means he’s one of contemporary art cinema’s most polarising figures: a film like Flandres can take away the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, while also having a high walk-out rate at Film Festivals. His previous, much-maligned film Twentynine Palms featured a European couple travelling through a Theorem-like wasteland (ahem, the United States), like an Adam and Eve being kicked out of paradise to commute with the rest of the animal kingdom. Flandres, Dumont’s fourth film, continues his exploration of base humanity, our inability to rise above our evolutionary roots, our pretence that life is nothing more than nasty, brutish and short.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: eco-ploitation.

TANZANIA’s Lake Victoria is a stunning expanse of water and is the world’s largest tropical lake and Africa’s largest lake. It is also near to where humans first populated the world, lying in the Great Rift Valley between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Darwin’s Nightmare uses this ecological significance as a platform to explore how this place where humankind developed is still nasty, brutish and short. The lake, and specifically a Tanzanian city on the lake-front, Mwanza, becomes a microcosm to show the brutal toll wrecked by neo-colonialism, globalisation and human greed. This is a scathing and pointed documentary, indicting the West’s casual destruction of poorer nations in their quest for more and more resources. Sauper wrings some heart-breaking imagery (not without their own agenda), but the film’s overall ambition make this one of the more devastating pieces of filmmaking of recent years.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: a cold war tale.

THE COLD WAR has just ended and Mathias ends up with a head in his bag when he tries to go back to France to study forensic medicine. Yes, this is an oblique and frequently odd thriller, which looks at the rootlessness of a recently post-Cold War France, a kind of liminal no-man’s land where young people roam around trying to find some purpose in the world. Characters’ emotions are schizophrenic, and narrative matches the chaotic, unhinged nature of the protagonists. La Sentinelle is perhaps too oblique for its own good and whether it thrills or has any sort of emotional centre with its cast of attractive pouting French people is a moot point. But the film is like a slightly less intricate Pynchon novel, and has a fascinating mix of conspiracy theories, science, historical ruminations, ‘post-modern’ blending, and quests for identity.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: shifting nature.

IT WOULD be stating the bleeding obvious to say that humans have an impact on the environment. And given the massive economic explosion that’s occurred over the last few hundred years, it’s easy to see that there are consequences from our behaviour. While the nineteenth century literature and art was full of depictions of the sometimes traumatic shift through industrialisation, it’s been rare to see a society in flux being captured in film in contemporary times. China’s economic development has been no secret, and it’s proving a fertile ground for artists. Part of the reason it appeals for artists is the sheer scale of the development – the eight minute long tracking shot that sets up Manufactured Landscapes through a factory is just a small reminder of what is going on in China.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: cinéma du look.

A RIDICULOUS film made by a film lover can sometimes be the best hug in the world. Freewheeling through genres, visual styles, homages, narratives, Diva is an oh-so stylish paean to cinema. While Beineix became more famous for his later Betty Blue, Diva was a wonderful debut for a director who has languished in obscurity for the last couple of decades. Breaking free from the angst and experimentalism of the later Nouvelle Vague films, and capturing the anarchic spirit of the early Godard/Truffaut work, Diva helped kick-start a new era in French filmmaking (which was carried on by films such as Mauvais Sang). The so-called cinéma du look movement (if it can be called that) touched on more contemporary concerns while also pitting a punk kind of aesthetic onto its protagonists.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Lech Majewski’s footnote.

THE Film Society’s Lech Majewski programme ends with a film that Majewski didn’t end up doing a huge amount on. Majewski created the story idea, a biopic about wasted talent, but the project was driven by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Schnabel would have some idea about the successful 80s Neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat – Schnabel was a successful 80s Neo-expressionist painter himself. There are differences of opinion whether the two artists were friends, however, there is no doubt that Basquiat did urinate in Schnabel’s stairwell. But while Schabel’s personal investment might have driven the project (he sold his artwork to initially finance the film), his involvement also divests the film of its more interesting roots. Instead Basquiat is a tame, rushed portrayal of a seminal contemporary artist.

STEVE GARDEN, with a second opnion on the Film Society’s recent screening of three Lech Majewski films.

WITH TEN FILMS, five novels, various multimedia installations and stage productions, plus numerous poems, paintings and pieces of music to his credit, Lech Majewski deserves consideration for his remarkable output alone. I hadn’t heard of him prior to reading the brochure for the 2009 Film Society season, so the chance to view a small selection of the work of this little-known cine-poet was not to be missed, especially if comparisons with Pasolini and Tarkovsky could be trusted. Expectations were high.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: lovers on the run.

THE Film Society is screening a number of lesser-seen films by well-known French artists, and it’s a good chance to see where some of these arthouse favourites either came from, or went to in their work. Leos Carax gained some arthouse fame for his 90s films, the hit Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and the Melville adaptation Pola X, but also started off his film life as a critic. And the film critic background shows, as Mauvais Sang (aka The Night Is Young) frolicks in homages a-plenty.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Lech Majewski, round three.

THIS frankly marvelous film by Polish/American director Lech Majewski concerns a real-life cult of Polish working-class painters who were given three Fátima-like prophecies upon the death of their spiritual leader in the thirties – upcoming were a great war, a red plague and a death ray from Saturn that would destroy the earth. Their behaviour in response results in all sorts of shenanigans. Angelus hasn’t achieved much international coverage since its release in 2000, but it’s unclear why this hilarious, loving tribute to human folly and ambition was so ignored. A revelation that only a Film Society can dredge up, Angelus reveals Majewski’s painterly visual touch, and his wry sense of humour.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Lech Majewski, round two.

The Gospel According to Harry was the film which helped establish Lech Majewski’s art-film credentials. Produced by David Lynch’s production company, and starring a then-unknown Viggo Mortensen, the apocalyptic, sci-fi arthouse flick was an absurdist stab at social satire. The title is a reference of sorts to Pasolini’s Gospel According to St. Matthew, and Majewski seems to share Pasolini’s quest in that film for spirituality in a cruel, secular world. And while this is more humorous than resonant, The Gospel According to Harry is a solid entry point into the strange and wonderful worldview of Majewski.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Lech Majewski, round one.

The Garden of Earthly Delights takes its name from Hieronymus Bosch’s epic painting (c1503-4). That triptych painting featured Adam and Eve in paradise, alongside an earthly garden and at the far extreme, a scathing picture of Hell. The painting has provoked a wide number of reactions from art critics, from a vicious attack on humanity’s failings to a celebration of an earthly paradise (in spite of what went on in the biblical Eden). The film by Polish/American filmmaker (a former painter and poet who frequently makes films about painters and poets) Lech Majewski uses the painting as its backdrop to look at a couple, Claudine and Chris, who hide themselves in amongst Venice and Bosch while Claudine dies of throat cancer. In the process, Majewski creates an intimate, moving depiction of a mortality, and makes a plea for seeing the world as a place full of beauty and joy.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: the odd couple.

THE Wellington Film Society kicked off with a special preview screening of a film about to hit general release. And it was one helluva freakshow. It’s hard to get into plot details of this American documentary without revealing too much of its main narrative thrust. Needless to say, if you intend on watching this, frankly, headshakingly bizarre relationship play out, try and do as little research beforehand. If you haven’t heard of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss, then Crazy Love is a compelling recreation of their life-paths. However, I wouldn’t recommend this film to would-be psychopaths trying to get a girl/boy’s attention.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM looks forward to another year of earthly delights, ahead of the Film Society’s new season in March.

THE FILM SOCIETY still provides the best value for money film viewing in the country (plus, the discounts at cinemas and video stores don’t hurt either for members). While it’s easier and easier to watch good DVDs at home, there’s nothing like the communal atmosphere of enjoying cinema with an audience, and the big screen experience (even if it is frequently DVD, rather than 16mm) is still second to none. And while this year’s programme lacks anything of the calibre of Cinema Novo or the Jacques Demy retrospective, there are plenty of gems that make membership well worth it for any film fan.

SAPNA SAMANT, from an Indian perspective, considers this year’s Best Picture Oscar favourite.

WHEN I read Vikas Swarup’s Q & A some years ago I knew straight away it would be made into a film. Why? The book had every element a mainstream Hindi film could have. As they say in the industry there: the story has emotion and action. There is drama, comedy, tragedy, revenge, love, death and space for song and dance. Q & A actually read like a Bollywood film. From the name of the protagonist to the various melodramatic moments to the walks in the rain... it was an easy read about post-globalised India. So I was not surprised when I heard that a movie was being made. I thought it would be another Bollyood tale because it fit everything Bollywood does so well. Of course, I was a tad skeptical because Bollywood does not do adaptations well. Copying yes, adaptations no. (One can argue about the various adaptations of Devdas and stories from Premchand or Gulshan Nanda another time.) Even Chetan Bhagat’s One Night a Call Centre had been made a hash of – not the the book was anything to write about. I would not even compare Vikas Swarup’s prose to Chetan’s.

From stage to screen, MELODY NIXON asks if the film ‘Doubt’ lives up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

I WATCHED John Patrick Shanley’s screen version of his renowned play with much interest. I had been thoroughly captivated by the Circa rendition I’d seen performed back in February 2007, and wondered whether Shanley’s interpretation could add more depth to the script. Sadly, despite superb performances from a triumvirate of accomplished actors, Doubt the movie may fail to impress those familiar with the original script.

To reference Homer, there’s lotsa movies that can only be described as boooring coming outta ’09. Despite everything, there will be good movies. Deputy Editor ALEXANDER BISLEY previews some centrestream wheat from the chaff. Additional text by TIM WONG.

Film Society 2009: While the full line-up has yet be finalised, I’m stoked at the chance to see French master Arnaud Desplechin’s La Sentinelle. Dean Spanley: With the clunky, patchy No. 2, Toa Fraser had quite some way to go as a film director. Still, the guy has potential, and the aging, magnificent Peter O’Toole is worthy in the trailer. The Lovely Bones: He’s retreated, Randolph William Hearst-like, into Xanadu (um, the Wairarapa). The Lovely Bones has been repeatedly delayed, etc. But there’s no denying Peter Jackson’s record, particularly Heavenly Creatures. The Road: Maybe they could say sorry for Baz Luhrmann’s camp trainwreck, piling up every Downunder kitsch cliché, and rename scorching The Proposition as Australia. John Hillcoat’s follow-up, The Road, looks weighty. Cormac McCarthy’s novel enjoys an even bigger, deeper rep than No Country For Old Men.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Lang’s German, expressionist noir.

IT’S EERIE how prescient Lang’s thriller M was. One of the first great sound films, Lang freed the camera up, and utilised specific sounds, and in the process, along with other European directors, helped free sound cinema up from its early stagy or musical confines. But its subject matter was, and is still rather daring – the story of a child killer (with hints of paedophilia in there too) who drags a city to hysteria. Lang muddies up the morality – there’s a strong current of black humour throughout – right the way through to its bravura ending, and in the process implicates the viewer and those who are judging him.