A roundup/recap of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: Running With Scissors, Tsotsi, Maria Full of Grace, Keane, Renaissance, No. 2.

Running With Scissors* (Murphy/USA/2006)
“What a family,” Tony Blair memorably exclaims in the superb biopic The Queen. Running With Scissors’ Finches make the royals’ dysfunctional tendencies look low-key. Their chaos is comparable with Almaty’s Sagdyiev’s. Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) is packed off to live with this extraordinary whanau, presided over by Brian Cox’s dubious therapist patriarch. His delusional mother Deidre (Annette Bening), Finch’s special client, can’t handle the responsibility. His alcoholic maths professor father Norman (Alec Baldwin), carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, has already shot through. Augusten’s new siblings are temptress Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) and cat molester Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow). The Finch home, a Victorian-70s dystopian fusion that doubles as the bad doctor’s clinic, has a colour scheme more lurid than Shooters. Based on Burroughs’ colourful memoirs, Scissors is a lively blend of amusing, disturbing and disturbing amusing scenes. The hilarious kicker may be the moment when Dr shows young Augusten the room adjacent to his clinic, snapping at the dozing Hope “What are you doing in my masturbatorium?” Deidre, a self-styled master poet, is also self-indulgent. “Get the rage on the page,” she encourages her creative writing sisters, banging on about oppression, oblivious to her neglect of her son. Meanwhile Augusten surrogate mother berates him “I am not a maid” when he looks less than thrilled about a dinner of lumpen fish fingers. Burroughs apparently embellishes with creative license, but in virtuous pursuit of the bigger picture. Scissors’ cupboards become barer in the last third, but powered by a very sharp cast, keeps things together. Unlike the ice-cold sarcasm of Todd Solondz (Happiness, Palindromes), Scissors’ schadenfreude is freighted by some appealing warmth and generosity. I’ve been intrigued by lively accounts of family life since reading Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals when I was a kid; Scissors joins American Beauty and The Royal Tenanbaums in the club. IN THEATRES NOW.—Alexander Bisley

Alexander Bisley also reviews Running With Scissors for RNZ [here]

Tsotsi (Roadshow, $19.95)
For most art film purists, the word “Best Foreign Film Oscar” is off-putting. It is a term full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. Aside from the fact that Oscar voters like foreign films to be made like Hollywood films. Which is fine, it’s a general sign that the film is okay, but it’s not going to rock the boat. This is exactly what Tsotsi is. Based on an Athol Fugard novel from 1980, the plot follows a young thug (who calls himself Tsotsi and is played well by Presley Chweneyagae) who roams the streets of Johannesburg with his gang thieving, killing and generally being a menace II society. He’s an orphan, and forced to live in hardship in Soweto. However, when a car-jacking goes wrong in one of Johannesburg’s exclusive suburbs, Tsotsi ends up in charge of a baby. And yes, this could easily be a gangsta’ version of Three Men and a Baby. This all said, there is much to like about this film. Gavin Hood’s direction in particular is very good, and his creates some striking imagery. This imagery is also well-integrated into the story and themes, and conveys atmosphere and emotions. The performances and the music are top-notch too, the pounding South African hip-hop evoking the mood perfectly. This is also a film about redemption, and the ability to atone for mistakes made in life. And in this respect, it’s a touching film, and Tsotsi’s journey is believable. But there is something a bit conventional about this film. It does well to steer clear of getting too melodramatic, but the character journey is nothing new nor does it have the overwhelmingly gritty realism of a Bresson or a Dardenne Brothers film for example. The plot points are predictably mapped out, as are the relationships. Despite this all, this is a film that is hard to dislike. It is touching on an emotional level and should be popular with a wide variety of audiences. No wonder it won the Oscar. Extra features include an extensive and information-packed making-of documentary, the theatrical trailer, and other Madman (an excellent, excellent source of good DVDs) films including the fantastic Moolaadé and the sobering Darwin’s Nightmare. New to DVD. (Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans w/ optional English subtitles).—Brannavan Gnanalingam

Maria Full of Grace (Roadshow, $19.95)
Maria Full of Grace tells the engrossing tale of Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a pretty 17- year- old Columbian girl turned drug mule. Maria is exploited by everyone around her: her mother, her sister, her boss and her boyfriend. After she loses her lowly paid, lousy factory job she goes to Bogota to seek her fortune and winds up, like many Columbians, in the dangerous profession. Her brief is to swallow 62 pellets of heroin and smuggle them into New York. "Still here" is how a fellow mule responds, with a mixture of fatalism and fear, when Maria asks how her first two times were. Maria is an appealing, vulnerable girl; Moreno’s performance is feisty and graceful. You can’t help but feel for her as she takes the torturous, riveting flight carrying her ticking time bombs. As her boss charmingly informs her "If just one opens you’ll die." Writer-director Joshua Marston films Maria nimbly and maintains the tension. His promising debut film is humanitarian and balanced, intelligent and thoroughly researched. The links between poverty and drug trafficking are cogently argued without being exaggerated. And, despite all the bleakness and indignities, Maria is indeed full of grace. Available on DVD. (In Spanish w/ English subtitles; Photo Gallery; Trailer).—Alexander Bisley

Keane (MRA/Roadshow, to rent from March 14)
Think back to the time as a youngster that you turned around from your latest distraction only to find your caregiver had disappeared. Recall those moments of dread, abandonment and separation anxiety. Parents may likewise have misplaced their tot in a public place, hoping desperately that a stranger would come, leading their glassy-eyed child by the hand. This is the constant reality of our protagonist, and for 90 minutes Keane will immerse you in this nightmarish vision, forcing its audience into the same deceptive emotional labyrinth as its hopelessly alienated principal. Within a minute of the film’s opening, we form the distinct impression we’re watching a victim in the throes of a delusional mental illness as he shuffles uneasily on the spot, mutters constantly to himself, shouts at vehicles and heckles strangers with reckless desperation. However, as the film progresses we realise that we are stuck with a man gripped by something far more terrible and nameless, less distinct than a Hollywood case of schizophrenia. And stuck with William we are. The vast majority of the film is spent within a couple of metres of him focused almost exclusively on his face, which is never far from self-loathing and complete meltdown. This creates a sense of claustrophobia and also a corresponding sense of intimacy with William, and the more that we’re aware of his fragility, the more absolute our emotional involvement with him is. The beauty of Keane comes from its stark naturalism, creating an uninterrupted visceral experience, where we must enter the mind of William and endure the hostility and alienation of urban living that weakens his soul. Keane will not provide you with unambiguous redemption or catharsis, but it will provide one of the most involved, internal and suspense-filled cinematic experiences anywhere on offer, giving us insight into a sufferer of mental illness who’s not a math genius, nor a ‘seer’, but a volatile casualty of our individualistic society, gripped by loneliness, loss and alienation. New to DVD (Rental).—Tim Gray [Read More]

Renaissance (Magna Pacific, $19.95)
A French-animation sensation touted as the must-have accessory to A Scanner Darkly’s colouring book malaise, Renaissance is, rather deflatingly, a die cut of razor-edged silhouettes inked by a Frank Miller wannabe: the contrast’s blown out, the mid-tones erased, while any trace of CMYK has virtually been obliterated from its bromide sci-fi fantasy. Literally rendered in black and white, it’s a Photoshop bender of warped image levels and stencilled-in vectors with no grey area in between. Technical marvel aside, this is a film that wields its visual metaphor for dystopia a little too eagerly: stripped of colour, it’s also diluted of any real soul, where detail is lost in its opaque recesses, spectrum is nonexistent, and dimension is veiled behind curtains of stark white. Besides the animation, it’s bleak: Paris, 2054, a technocracy seduced by the pursuit of everlasting beauty, a carrot of immortality dangled by a pervading multi-national spectre. High-level conspiracy ensues as a detective (voiced by Daniel Craig) becomes embroiled in machinations concealing the elixir of youth while hunting for a kidnapping victim somehow linked to it all. Not only is it convoluted, but evidence of one too many stabs at the genre’s cautionary tale of little men fighting the oppressive powers that be. Considerably more aware, Richard Linklater’s Philip K. Dick adaptation makes for alarming viewing by comparison, given its paranoia for invasive surveillance and corporate-sponsored drug addiction isn’t as far down the timeline as we’d like to think. It’s in fact on the precipice of the here and now; its woozy but tactile rotoscope imagery grounding it in a semblance of present reality. In Renaissance, distinguishing characters from the murk of shadows is a struggle at times, while the novelty of monochrome soon wears off, proving that the sombre of black and white should be reserved strictly for funerals, the Amish, and nuns. Christian Volckman, the nuts behind it all, clearly has a fetish for noir, and unfortunately too, a comic book hang up. This is not a crisp looking film, just a flat one, better suited to paper than film. You can thank him for taking the imagination out of animation. New to DVD. (optional English subtitles; featurettes; trailers).—Tim Wong [Read More]

No. 2 (Disney/Roadshow, $34.95)
What’s more awkward than bringing your ethnically out-of-place partner home to meet the family? Getting there, having them stared at and then told to bugger off because they’re not wanted! This is exactly what happens in the first ten minutes of Toa Fraser’s memorable debut directorial outing No. 2, a deft mix of earthy comedy and drama. Adapted from Fraser’s play of the same name, it is a pleasure to watch. Set deep in the heart of Auckland suburbia (Mt Roskill – Auckland’s own bible belt), New Zealand audiences will find recognisable locales, replete with monochrome, weatherboard state housing on a 1/4 acre section with circa 1970s furnishings and fittings. The action centres around Nana Maria (Ruby Dee), the matriarch of a Fijian family, and her somewhat unreasonable, middle-of-the-night request (read: demand) to have her grandchildren organise an impromptu feast, with a whole pig and “no outsiders”. Using the excuse of wanting to choose her ‘successor’, she sets about gathering her physically and relationally scattered brood back to their Mt Roskill homestead with more in mind than just a hearty feed and some music. Nana Maria, like many of our elders, has an abiding sense of her mortality and is determined to see the frayed strands of her familial rope platted back together before she goes – or at least to start the process. She struck me as equal parts uncomprehending and lucid as she harangued, laughed, slept and cried her way through the story. I did find Dee’s performance more than a touch on the theatrical side; the remainder of the supporting cast did a more than adequate job of avoiding the wooden or tired performances that plague any number of lesser, local productions. Discordant, dysfunctional, but more deeply connected than almost any other social grouping can be, No. 2 warmly and honestly embraces the family. For Fraser, it seems a place of hope and of resentment, of sacrifice and of unreal expectation. No matter what your background, you should be able to identify with something of the relationship dynamics that abound, whilst, in true pacific fashion, enjoy your share of honest, guilt-free laughs. New to DVD. (features TBC).—Jacob Powell [Read More]