Life of Pi

Ang Lee - Starring: Suraj Sharma, Ifran Khan, Adil Hussain

OK, I realise that despite it's Oscar nominations this could be a hard sell. It's a story largely set on a small boat at sea which contains a shipwrecked boy and a tiger. And it doesn't star anyone you've ever heard of (unless you're Indian). And it's brilliant.
When my friends started going to see this at the movies, and raving about it, I was still a little sceptical, despite the fact that I think Ang Lee is as good a director as is working today. How can you possibly make a film about a boy and a tiger in a boat?
Fear not. This is one of those films where from the first thirty seconds, the start of the beautifully-filmed title sequence, you just relax and know you are in safe hands and in for something special. Something magical.
It is a film so rich in humour and humanity and so vibrant with strange and exciting images that it remains mesmerising throughout. The almost Coen-brothers-like wit of the early story; the astonishing shipwreck; the extraordinary scenes at sea; the tiger!; the subtle sadness of the tragedy behind the storytelling; it's pitch-perfect stuff – if you have any reservations, abandon them and watch this wonderful film.

So there's this Hobbit, never been outside The Shire, and a grey wizard comes and asks him to go on a quest. He leaves the Shire along with some other small folk for a long journey. Along the way they visit the elves (Elrond, Galadriel, etc) and there's a white wizard who's a bit disagreeable. And the Hobbit gets a special sword and a magic ring. They're being followed by nasty orcs (led by a particularly big mean one) and, after fleeing from hundreds of enemies through giant caves under a mountain, they have a battle with the orcs but get away. But the big one's still chasing them. Fellowship of the Rings anyone? No, The Hobbit. Peter Jackson does a bang-up job, despite certain familiar story elements.
The Man With The Iron Fists is a homage to grindhouse period kung fu flicks, featuring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu. It is the baby of Quentin Tarantino's musical collaborator RZA, who wrote and directed with help from another QT alumnus Eli Roth (Hostel). He also stars and does the mumbling voice-over. It's a story of revenge and hijacked gold, assassins, clans and people called Silver Lion, Lady Silk and Madam Blossom. Expect inventive retro fighting, blood and cheesiness. Note: I watched the extended version (oddly unmentioned on the blu-ray cover) which has an extra 12 minutes.
I'm a little confused by Woody Allen's recent releases in New Zealand. He makes (and has for forty years) one film a year. 2011's was the very successful Midnight in Paris. His 2012 film To Rome With Love is here on DVD. Yet his 2010 film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger has just been released at cinemas. Who knows? Anyway, this Italian romp continues the Woody Tour of Europe and is pretty light and frothy, a little magical realism outing that sees a man singing on stage in a shower and various people falling in love. Sweet, but not his best by any stretch.
In The Dinosaur Project. a team of cryptozoologists head to the darkest Congo in search of the 'African Loch Ness monster”. They find more than they bargained for from the git-go, their plane downed almost immediately by pterodactyls. The entire film is 'found footage” - with all its frustrating irritants – but mainly told from the perspective of 15-year-old Luke, son of the expedition leader, who stows away on board. As that suggests, this is pretty vanilla stuff and, oddly, a little short of dino variety as events focus more on the bickering team members.