REWIND REVIEW: City Of God (2002)

(R18+) ★★★★★

Director: Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund.

Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Phellipe Haagensen, Alice Braga, Seu Jorge, Matheus Nachtergaele, Daniel Zettel, Graziella Moretto.

It was "discount guns for kids" day at the gun shop.

It's easy to forget the noise City Of God (Cidade de Deus in Portuguese) made back at the turn of the millennium. Here was a Brazilian film enjoying a worldwide cinema release (how many times has that happened in the past 20 years?) and being lapped up by the critics. It was one of the best reviewed films of the year, and received four Oscar nominations (although, bizarrely, not a best foreign language award nod).

At the time of writing, it still sits at #20 on the IDMb top 250 - that's right between Seven Samurai and Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. It's a regular on 'best of' lists. Empire called it the seventh best world cinema film of all time. Paste called it the greatest film of the '00s.

Seeing it a decade and a half on, removed from all its hype and critical goodwill, three things are striking: 1) it still stands up as a tour de force, 2) it hasn't aged at all and feels strangely timeless, and 3) despite all its accolades, it was, if anything, under-hyped and under-appreciated.

City Of God is a story of violence, and how violence begets violence. It follows the interconnected stories of two young men from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; in particular a crime-soaked, poverty-stricken area known as the Cidade de Deus. The two youngsters are Rocket (played by Luis Otávio as a child and Alexandre Rodrigues as an adult) and L'il Dice, later L'il Ze (Douglas Silva as a child, Leandro Firmino da Hora as an adult). They represent, respectively, the desperate hope and pervasive nihilism of those in the favelas. 

Rocket is desperate to leave the slums and find a new existence beyond as a photographer. While those around him either get killed or become killers, he refuses to buy into the ever-growing mythology surrounding the crime lords or get involved in their machinations. It's a difficult thing to get away from though - just about everyone he knows is involved in crime in some way, plus he's partial to a bit of weed every now and then, which brings him into contact with the wrong elements of the favelas.

As for L'il Ze, he embarks on a life of crime from a disturbingly young age, his sociopathic and homicidal tendencies helping his meteoric rise through the underworld.

Unlike many other noughties and nineties crime dramas, the violence in City Of God is never glamourised. It's brutal, horrifying, and savage, and it leaves no one untouched. Kids are such a major part of this story, and one of the film's most horrifically intense scenes pulls no punches in showing what happens when you attempt to idolise the perpetrators of these bloody crimes, and fail to realise the reality of it all.

"Reality" is the key word here. Long before the term "gritty" became de rigeur, and handheld cinematography, improvised takes, and using amateur actors became gimmicky and annoying, City Of God utilised these techniques to bring Rio's slums to life in breath-taking fashion. The near-documentary style is used to perfection, not only to help realise the characters and their situations, but to help make the setting an important part of the film. The directors Meirelles and Lund never let the style dominate the many tales they're telling - it only ever works to serve the story.

This "docufiction" approaches helps you forget these are actors on screen. Although, really, they weren't even actors, which makes the stunning performances in this all the more remarkable. The bulk of the cast were young people recruited from the favelas themselves and placed into acting workshops for a couple of months to prepare them for the shoot. Among the cast were Alice Braga (Predators, I Am Legend, Elysium) and Seu Jorge (whose Portuguese covers of Bowie songs were a highlight of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou). It's Jorge's character who is perhaps the peak of the film's thematic depth and ability to get under your skin. As Knockout Ned, he becomes a rebellious champion in the blood-soaked reality of the favelas, but becomes a character you pity as his own descent into violence takes hold.

But he's just one interesting thread in a tapestry of incredible colours. Even bit players, such as drug dealer Carrot (Nachtergaele), the junkie Tiago (Daniel Zettel), and the wannabe kid gangster Steak With Fries (Darlan Cunha) have fascinating mini-arcs amid the maelstrom of Rocket, L'il Ze and Benny (Haagensen).

Ferociously edited, beautifully shot, and stunningly told, City Of God regularly gut-punches you, lifts you up, and then gut-punches you again. It's a modern classic of crime cinema, far removed from American or British tales of violence. It tells a tale that could only have sprung from the favelas it inadvertently created a tourism buzz around.

Maybe that's why it's never been remade - this is perhaps that rare example of a film that could have only been made at that particular time, in that particular place, with that particular bunch of people. City Of God is the very definition of cinematic lightning in a bottle.

The Breaker Upperers

(M) ★★★½

Director: Madeleine Sami & Jackie van Beek.

Cast: Madeleine Sami, Jackie van Beek, James Rolleston, Celia Pacquola, Ana Scotney, Cohen Holloway, Rima Te Wiata.

"Alright, so we kick off first, and first team to 20 points wins."

The Kiwi sense of humour is truly something to treasure. From Fred Dagg and Footrot Flats, through to the early films of Peter Jackson, and beyond to Flight Of The Conchords and the work of Taika Waititi, there is something distinctly NZ - and wonderfully, hilariously droll - about the way filmmakers and writers in The Country Across The Ditch craft a comedy.

The Breaker Upperers is a worthy follower in the footsteps of its funny forebears. Writers/directors/stars Sami and van Beek stir up plenty of laughs in this deeply cynical tale about relationships, friendships, and womanhood. It's not perfect - in fact, it very nearly completely derails itself two-thirds of the way through - but for the most part, it's hilarious.

The pair play Mel (Sami) and Jen (van Beek), the titular "breaker upperers" - that is, they're professional uncouplers. Pay them, and they will help end your relation for you. Their techniques range from playing the other woman to pretending to be cops who deliver the sad news a person's partner has disappeared while bushwalking. Sure; it's nasty, but it's effective.

It all goes well until Mel takes a liking to 17-year-old client Jordan (Rolleston) and befriends another client Anna (Pacquola), all of which causes a schism in her relationship with Jen, who is struggling with her own anger and disappointment with the world.

For the most part, The Breaker Upperers is hilarious. Sami and van Beek are great and their chemistry is top notch. Sami's so good she even sells Mel's relationship with slightly dim teen Jordan and makes it believable. Rolleston and Scotney are also excellent, as is Te Wiata (who was previously wonderful in Hunt For The Wilderpeople) as Jen's mother, even though Te Wiata doesn't look old enough for the role.

Special mention goes to Pacquola, who is an under-rated comedic talent. Her performance as the lovelorn and lonely Anna is pitch perfect, although credit also goes to Sami and van Beek for such a wonderfully written role. Much like the leads, Anna is a well-rounded character who feels real in the scope of this black comedy, and who serves as a moral compass for the film.

Sami and van Beek have generally done a good job with the script and its characters, but there are some weak points. Weakest of all is a scene that tips this black comedy too far into the black. For the most part, the film rides that difficult line of cringe and comedy really well, but there is a moment that dips too bleak and really shakes the foundations of the film. From there it's a tough climb back, but it's to Sami and van Beek's credit that they claw their way up to find the laughs again. In fact any time the film goes in the wrong direction - an awkward, too-long stripper sequence and an unnecessary karaoke diversion stand out like the proverbial - the subsequent laughs come thick and fast, winning you back.

It's a shame the film digs itself into such a horrible hole about an hour in, because this is, by-and-large, an hilarious movie. The bad scenes are overwhelmed by the good, and the laughs far outweigh the mis-steps. The characters are great, and Sami and van Beek do an excellent job in all three of their job titles.

Those Kiwis sure know how to make a comedy, and this is the latest.

Skyscraper

(M) ★★★½

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Roland Møller, Pablo Schreiber, Noah Taylor, Hannah Quinlivan, Byron Mann, Adrian Holmes.

Stairs were for wimps.

Let's get the obvious out of the way - yes, this is basically Die Hard, turned up to 11. The building is taller, the stakes are higher, the danger is greater, and even the hero is bigger. I mean, no one's bigger than Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, right? He's effectively a normal human turned up to 11.

If Die Hard is the benchmark we're measuring Skyscraper up against, then the latter comes up many storeys short. But that's to be expected. What's unexpected is that Skyscraper is more fun and more effective than it has any right to be as a very big and somewhat dumb blockbuster.

Johnson stars as Will Sawyer, an ex-FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader who lost his leg in a hostage situation that went wrong, resulting in a number of deaths. Ten years on, Sawyer is married to army nurse Sarah (Campbell), with whom he has twins Georgia and Henry (Roberts and Cottrell). He's also working as a private security expert and has been brought in by his old FBI buddy Ben (Schreiber) to assess the safety of the Pearl - the world's tallest building. Located in Hong Kong, the Pearl is an engineering marvel. It's also about to become a battleground, as a team of baddies set out to steal something located on the top floor.

Skyscraper is surprisingly efficient in its set-up, although the relationship between Ben and Will could have used some extra depth. Otherwise, it introduces its world and protagonists nicely. Yes, it's all painted in very broad simple strokes but this was always going to be more like painting a wall as opposed to a fine art masterpiece. Is the wall covered in paint and looks alright? Yep. Good - job done.

As far as big dumb fun goes, Skyscraper's got it going on. The biggest and dumbest moment is the film's now meme-worthy (and unrealistic) crane jump. This scene is the film in a nutshell - yeah, it's ridiculous, but it is edge-of-your-seat vertiginous stuff in the context of the movie. Somehow it works, if you're willing to go along for the ride.

The film is also to be applauded for having a hero who happens to be an amputee, as well as a heroine who is definitely not a damsel in distress. Campbell gets some heroic moments amid the fires, fights, and shoot-outs, in what could have been an otherwise thankless role. As for Johnson, well, he's not going to win an Oscar for this, but it again shows the commitment and depth he manages to bring to even the most potentially one-dimensional of roles. Speaking of which, I'm just going to leave this here:

Can't remember who I said this to while drunk (was it you @JonoHimself and @garethcolliton?) so let's air it on Twitter in case it comes true:

One day @TheRock will win an #AcademyAward.

(Start giving him some dramatic roles pronto.)

— Matt Neal (@DrMattNeal) July 1, 2018

(I probably should have just said "be nominated for" but oh well.)

In many ways, Skyscraper is reminiscent of White House Down, another piece of building-centric escapist silliness that hit its tropes well and had fun doing so. Maybe it's overly serious in places, and it plays some high stakes games with its ridiculous ending, but for the most part Skyscraper achieves its goals of being large-scale popcorn entertainment.

Add in Johnson's uncanny ability to elevate any movie he's in, and few films will be as the big, dumb, switch-off-you-brain guilty pleasures that this is.

What We Started

(M) ★★★★

Director: Bert Marcus & Cyrus Saidi.

Cast: Carl Cox, Martin Garrix, David Guetta, Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong, Moby.

"And then I said 'I need a bigger table'."

The documentary What We Started aims to be "the defining film of the electronic music genre" and, for now, it is. It's the radio edit of a genre, distilling the important elements down to a catchy three-and-a-half minutes, as opposed to being the sprawling 12 minute club remix it could have been.

So while it's frustrating the way this doco skims through lots of integral things, you know there's the electronic dance music (EDM) equivalent of Ken Burns' 10-part series Jazz out there, floating in the ether, just waiting to happen. This ain't it, but in the meantime it will do.

What We Started is both a potted history of EDM and a tribute to two of its shining lights - veteran party DJ Carl Cox and young uber-producer Martin Garrix. While we watch dance music emerge from the ashes of disco in the late '70s before spreading and mutating around the world, we also see Cox end his 15-year residency at Ibiza's much-lauded nightclub Space and follow Garrix's meteoric rise to the top of festival line-ups.

The twin tales of Cox and Garrix get to the heart of the movie's message. While the film's talking heads often sound overblown discussing what EDM means to a bunch of people who are clearly just pinging off their heads, there's no disputing the way this type of music manages to affect a British black kid who grew up in the '70s (Cox) and a white Dutch kid who grew up in the '00s (Garrix). Cox's tale even adds a bit of heart to proceedings - it's hard not to get caught up in his passion as he says goodbye to Space, while his sister talks about Cox's relationship with his father.

The history lesson of it all is equally fascinating, if disappointingly scant. We whirl through the likes of Larry Levan, the rise and fall of disco, Chicago house, Detroit techno, acid house, the superclubs (Hacienda, Ministry of Sound, God's Kitchen), and the genre's recent rebirth. It's all told through the talking heads of Cox, executive producer Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, Afrojack, David Guetta, Tiesto, Moby, Sasha and more, plus some shitty quality but essential archival footage.

When it deep dives into things like Paul Oakenfold opening for U2 or the 2000 arrest of club owner Donnie Disco, it's awesome. It's even better when the genre starts to eat itself and the old-school DJs/producers start railing against the new school, only to recant later, or when they start taking swipes at "press play" DJs like Deadmau5 and Steve Aoki. It's a shame the doco doesn't better illustrate what the modern non-USB DJs are doing on the stage beyond scratching some vinyl and messing with the EQ. Demystifying the art might have helped take this to the next level.

Also missing are some pretty big names - there's no Giorgio Moroder, Chemical Brothers or Fatboy Slim, while Moby's presence is only to talk and never be part of the story. Daft Punk are in there for literally five seconds, while the doco inadvertently indicates that electronic music didn't exist prior to the mid-'70s. It also takes 48 minutes for drugs to get mentioned, although when the drugs kick in, it helps keep things interesting.

There are some unnecessary title cards and some bad punctuation - "DJ's" is a regular mistake - but some cool visuals and good material keep this from getting overblown. What's great is that it works as an entry level look at a music genre that snuck out of the underground clubs to become a billion-dollar industry.

If you don't "get" EDM, this is probably the best attempt out there to help you understand or appreciate what it's all about. For everyone else, bring on the 10-part series.

What We Started is currently screening on Netflix.

Ant-Man & The Wasp

(PG) ★★★

Director: Peyton Reed.

Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michael Peña, Laurence Fishburne, Hannah John-Kamen, Walton Goggins, Randall Park, Michelle Pfeiffer.

"Uh-oh, it's Edgar Wright. Awkward."

Read my Ant-Man review here.

Read the Marvel Cinematic Universe - From Best To Worst here.

Oh how we laughed when they said they were making an Ant-Man movie. How could that ever work? But Marvel found a way, and lo, it was good. And funny as all get-out too.

And after Avengers: Infinity War tore the MCU a new one, we need funny. Thankfully Ant-Man & The Wasp is funny. It's also got some nice action sequences, but it's severely lacking in some other areas.

When we last saw Ant-Man AKA Scott Lang (Rudd) in he was locked up for fighting with Cap in the battle for superhero freedom otherwise known as Captain America: Civil War. Two years on, he's under house arrest and has fallen out with the original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Douglas) and Hank's daughter Hope (Lilly) AKA The Wasp.

But Hank's attempts to find his wife Janet (Pfeiffer) AKA the original Wasp have awakened something locked in Scott's mind from when he shrank too small and entered the sub-atomic quantum realm (as seen in the first film). That's where Janet went missing, which means Scott is about to be drawn back into danger to help with the search.

"Quantum" is a pretty important word in Ant-Man & The Wasp and it's one that gets bandied about way too much. It's used to paper over plotholes and find ways to connect the disparate story threads together. "Why is this happening?" "Because it's quantum" is a pretty common conversation explainer throughout this film.

It makes for some frustrating and boring stretches of scientific technobabble, equipment tweaking, frequency dialling, and experiment fine-tuning that never believably intertwine the three main plots. These plots are the search for Janet, the plight of a character called Ghost (John-Kamen), and the machinations of evil black market tech tycoon Sonny Burch (Goggins), and they sit together awkwardly. This means the characters of Ghost and Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) are underdone, while Burch is little more than an annoyance. On top of this is the distinct feeling this is a two-and-a-half-hour film trimmed to two hours in the editing suite, but which could have been made into a 100-minute film in the screenplay.

But when things are working, it's something to behold. The comedy is solid and well-placed, some of the action sequences are great fun, and the final act goes a long way towards redeeming the film. When it's playing around with the possibilities of having a bad guy that can phase through things and two good guys who can instantly shrink or grow, it's a superhero spectacle worthy of the Marvel banner. Its deep dive into the quantum realm is also visually intriguing.

There is also a good amount of heart here, although it's somewhat diluted by the wonky scripting. The connection between parent and child is a key theme, but it's not as strong as you'd expect. Again, when it works it's great, and it's reaching for some emotional depth that's not as prevalent in the MCU as you would like. Some of the subject matter in Ant-Man & The Wasp had the potential to move us to tears, but it never gets there.

Rudd is again a delight as Scott Lang, while Lilly's Hope kicks arse more than last time. Douglas, Fishburne, and Pfeiffer add some gravitas to the more ridiculous elements. In fact, the cast has no weak links (Peña is again a scene-stealer) - it's only that some of them are let down by the script (Ghost and Burch are the notable one-note characters).

Ant-Man & The Wasp is by no means bad. It's just not up to the lofty standards of the best of the MCU. It's funny and fun but a little too wrapped up and tripped up by its quantum entanglement of plots to be truly great.