What have been the best - and worst - New Zealand movies ever? Critics Peter Calder and Russell Baillie list their picks.
The people who make New Zealand films right now would likely be feeling very good about themselves. After all, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? is going great guns at the box office. Another five Kiwi features are down for local release before the end of the year, following the three which have already made it to local screens.
Peter Jackson is bringing Hollywood to town again for his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Meanwhile, Queenstown is regularly being used by American studios as a snowy soundstage.
And tonight is the night for the Nokia New Zealand Film Awards, a reconstituted prizegiving which now stands alone from the annual television honours.
It's in this spirit of self-congratulation, combined with some pre-millennial reflection, we thought it high time to ponder New Zealand's big screen triumphs - and disasters.
The actual drawing up of the lists - ten of the best, five of the worst - was mercifully short. Great films and awful films alike have a tendency to stay in the memory, especially when they speak your language.
But what do our lists themselves say?
Well, while movies were being made here in the first half of this century, our collective memories of seeing New Zealand stories in celluloid really date from the mid-70s.
While looking down at the directors names behind the top ten, the thought occurs that of those who have gone on to international connections and bigger things, arguably many haven't made better movies than the early ones they did here with relatively paltry budgets.
And as our hall of shame (below) attests, any attempt at comedy with animal connections - unless animated - is just asking for it, really.
In no particular order our top ten ...
AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990, Jane Campion): Originally intended as a television three-parter, this biopic of Janet Frame based on her autobiographies was superbly realised, managing a fine balance between showing the historic details of the writer's life while evoking the spirit of her work. While shot for the small screen, it was visually striking and the three actors playing Frame as child, teenager and adult - with then newcomer Kerry Fox as the latter - carried off their portrayals perfectly
FOOTROT FLATS: THE DOG'S TALE (1986, Murray Ball): We'd already had quite a love affair with Dog, Wal and co by the time Murray Ball's backblocks cartoon strip went from newsprint to celluloid. But with its richly-rendered animation, Dave Dobbyn's supporting songs, its vernacular humour and an exciting story, this became a Kiwi popcorn classic, cartoon or not.
GOODBYE PORK PIE (1980, Geoff Murphy): Murphy might have delivered better-written, better-made films in his later works Utu and The Quiet Earth, but we still like this one, the first New Zealand movie that local audiences took to in droves. Why this film about a couple of dope-smoking car thieves driving a yellow mini from Kaitaia to Invercargill? We say its sheer rebel-yell energy and, as Murphy once said: "The heroes behaved and spoke in a manner that suggested New Zealand was the only place on earth." (It's on TV tonight, too.)
HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994, Peter Jackson): The rapturous study of the obsessive relationship between two Christchurch schoolgirls which led inexorably to matricide took an utterly specific incident in our history and made of it a dizzyingly impressive movie in which form and content married perfectly. Adventurous, yet controlled, it signalled a talent of precocious mastery and lays claim to being the best-realised fully New Zealand film.
NGATI (1987, Barry Barclay): The first feature made by Maori, this story of an isolated community in change managed to be at once polemical and engaging. It may have had a stereotype or two of its own, but for the first time Maori characters and perspectives were unselfconsciously and unpatronisingly presented - and pakeha prejudices were exposed to almost affectionate derision. Washed by Dalvanius' hummable Haere Mai, it was a memorable summery gem.
ONCE WERE WARRIORS (1994, Lee Tamahori): Still the big one - the first film to gross more than $6 million at the NZ box office also acted as a national social wake-up call. Its harrowing, violent but ultimately hopeful story was made all the more powerful by the performances of Rena Owen as Beth and Temuera Morrison as her brute of a husband while director Tamahori rendered it all in grim, grand style.
THE PIANO (1993, Jane Campion): Campion's 19th-century tale of sexual repression, colonialism and music lessons was part gothic melodrama, part frontier epic set in a very strange New World of brooding landscapes and very long beaches. It impressed the world enough to win a Palme d'Or at Cannes, and Oscars for best original screenplay and best actress and best supporting actress. Nice music too.
RUBY AND RATA (1990, Gaylene Preston): Good-natured comedy about a battle of wills between a starched widow and a benefit cheat. Driven by two splendid performances in the title roles, particularly that of Yvonne Lawley who died just last month, and lightened by fabulous cameos, it managed to make us adore and detest just about everybody all at the same time.
SMASH PALACE (1981, Roger Donaldson): His first feature, Sleeping Dogs, deserves special mention for its makeshift brilliance and because it kickstarted modern local filmmaking, but in the story of a man fighting to keep the daughter he adores, Donaldson made a film of honesty and assurance which was the high point in the late Bruno Lawrence's distinguished career. It also exploited, better than any other film, the hostile magnificence of the volcanic plateau.
VIGIL (1984, Vincent Ward): The first New Zealand film to be invited into competition at Cannes, Vincent Ward's brooding monochromatic expressionistic tone poem set on a windswept sheep farm was often stilted and mannered but it was the fledgling masterpiece of an extraordinary talent which has, frustratingly, never completely taken flight. Visually stunning, wonderfully scored, it's a must-see in a survey of our cinema history.
THE HALL OF SHAME
BRIDGE TO NOWHERE (1986, Ian Mune): This apparent local spin on Deliverance - five city teenagers go bush and find a reclusive psychopath - was overacted and cringingly implausible.
CHICKEN (1996, Grant Lahood): A has-been 60s pop singer reduced to fast-food jingles fakes his own death while being chased by a spontaneously combusting eco-terrorist. Tried to be black comedy, turned out black hole.
MEET THE FEEBLES (1990, Peter Jackson): Between the hilariously distasteful Bad Taste and Braindead, Jackson figured a tale of muppets from the dark side - complete with bodily fluids and strange sexual urges - was needed. How wrong he was.
SEND A GORILLA (1988, Melanie Read): A bad day at the office for a bunch of women who deliver Gorillagrams tried to be offbeat and a sort of feminist slapstick. It ended up an extremely long-winded joke at the audience's expense.
USER FRIENDLY (1990, Gregor Nicholas): A messy jumble of sight-gags which had unlikable heroes and implausible villains romping through a surrealistically improbable story about a magical dog goddess which assisted the manufacture of an elixir of life. Its strong sexual subplot with spacesuit bondage scenes completed the disaster.
Home movies - the best and the worst
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