David R. Walker

Archive for March, 2019

The South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTA’S) were held on Saturday 2nd March 2019 at Suncity Resort and Casino in the North West Province, South Africa

Best Film: Sew the Winter to my Skin

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Best Director: Daryne Joshua – Ellen, The Ellen Pakkies Story

Best Actress: Jill Levenberg – Ellen, The Ellen Pakkies Story

Best Actor: Jarrid Geduld – Ellen, The Ellen Pakkies Story

Best Supporting Actor: Zoliswa Xaluva – Sew the Winter to my Skin

Best Supporting Actress: Ilse Klink – Stroomop

Director: Hans Petter Moland

Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Micheal Richardson Michael Eklund, Emmy Rossum, John Doman, Julia Jones, Gus Halper

The originality of Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s thriller Cold Pursuit cannot be ignored.

The revenge action film set in Colorado is an American remake of a Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance which artfully combines deadpan humour with witty one liners featuring an array of strange drug dealing gangsters in Denver, Colorado who Nels Coxman systematically takes revenge on after his son is supposedly killed by a heroin overdose.

Coxman is played by action man Liam Neeson who has reignited his career after the success of the Taken franchise and followed with such films as Non-Stop and The Commuter. 

Nels’s son Kyle is played by Liam Neeson and the late Natasha Richardson’s son Micheal Richardson and his wife Grace is played by Oscar nominee Laura Dern (Rambling Rose) although Dern’s scenes in Cold Pursuit are extremely minimal.

Emmy Rossum (Poseidon, The Day After Tomorrow, The Phantom of the Opera) stars as the down to earth Kehoe cop Kim Dash as she witnesses the turf war heat up between the drug gangs of the local Colorado Red Indians and a ruthless group of Denver based gangsters headed up by the psychotic Viking wonderfully played with just the right amount of nefarious imbalance by British rising star Tom Bateman (Murder on the Orient Express).

As the bodies pile up and the vengeful Coxman slowly starts circling in on the lethal Viking, a final showdown occurs in the ski resort town of Kehoe, Colorado, where nothing really happens except wealthy Americans come and ski and get high. Until now that is.

Cold Pursuit is a deadpan revenge thriller with a Nordic twist, featuring a fascinating supporting cast of thugs and middlemen with names like Speedo, Dante and Limbo including a brief cameo by True Crime: The Menendez Murders star Gus Halper as the sex crazed Bone, who has a penchant for seducing motel maids.

Audiences that enjoyed such dark crime films as Fargo and Things To Do in Denver When You are Dead, will love Cold Pursuit, a snow covered revenge thriller with a body count to rival Taken.

Action fans who love Liam Neeson’s style of cinema, will enjoy Cold Pursuit, which gets a film rating of 7 out of 10.

Deep End

Durban based film director Eubulus Timothy makes superb use of Durban Beachfront in his cross cultural surf drama Deep End starring Carishma Basday and Greg Kriek (The Recce).

Deep End centres on the story of an independently minded South African Indian young woman who is desperate to escape the clutches of her father played by TV personality turned actor Mahendra Raghunath as she embraces the surf culture of Durban which historically was only made up of young white people.

The competitive surfing world clashes with the arranged marriages family orientated world of a Hindi South African family as the main character Sunitha Patel takes to the waves in a bid to surf where she meets disgraced American surfer Corey Taylor who is lying low in South Africa. Corey is ironically played by South African actor Greg Kriek who was so brilliant in the South African Afrikaans war drama The Recce which has just won Best Foreign Feature Drama at the Idyllwild indie film festival in California – http://www.idyllwildcinemafest.com/awards-iifc-2019/

But back to Durban and what better way to show off the city’s miles of beautiful beaches and warm Indian Ocean, by making a surf film set in a city synonymous with some of the best surfing in the world.

Deep End is by no means a brilliant film and at times the storyline and script is slightly contrived but director Eubulus Timothy does the best he can with a film that not only shows off Durban’s delightful coastline but focuses on two very fascinating subcultures – the surfing community in Durban as well as Durban’s unique Indian cultural dynamic which is exemplified in the forbidden cross-cultural romance between Corey Taylor and Sunitha Patel.

There is also some comic moments thrown in to Deep End and the middle section of the film could have been edited more efficiently. Overall if you want to support South African cinema then Deep End is a fun filled cross cultural surfing movie which fantastically showcasing Durban as a surfing city with beautiful beaches and a superb vibe especially showcasing urban locations including North Beach and the hip Florida Road precinct in Morningside.

Deep End is a fun filled surf film and gets a film rating of 6.5 out of 10. Recommended viewing for some light home grown entertainment.

Captain Marvel

Directors: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Cast: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Annette Bening, Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch, Lee Pace, Clark Gregg, Gemma Chan, Djimon Hounson, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Rune Temte

Just before Avengers: Endgame hits theatres, Marvel had to introduce one more superhero to the galaxy of stars. It’s the Retro intergalactic Captain Marvel wonderfully played by Oscar winner Brie Larson also known as Airforce Pilot Carol Danvers who gets whisked into space to become indoctrinated by the Kree Civilization, an advanced alien race headed up by the mysterious Supreme Being icily played by Annette Bening in her Marvel Comics debut.

Audiences can be forgiven for thinking that they had bought cinema tickets to a Star Trek reboot as the first twenty minutes of Captain Marvel is entirely set in space. Until Captain Marvel miraculously escapes an intergalactic feud between the Kree and the Skrull tribes and lands up in Los Angeles in 1995 in a blockbuster video store of all places, the film effortlessly shifts its location from outer space to a particular time and place.

In California, Captain Marvel teams up with a youthful Nick Fury wonderfully played by Samuel L. Jackson whose screen chemistry with Brie Larson is electrifying.   

Like all the other Marvel films and particularly those that loved Avengers: Infinity War, then Captain Marvel is a fun mixture of superhero and Guardians of the Galaxy and fits right in with the current trajectory the Marvel films are going. More significantly it is the first entirely female centred superhero film, with Brie Larson doing a sterling job, although admittedly the film does not quite match up to DC Comics’s brilliant Wonder Woman directed by Patty Jenkins.

There is sufficient plot twists, location changes as Captain Marvel and Nick Fury travel to Louisiana to discover her real human identity as Airforce Pilot Carol Danvers as they team up with fellow co-pilot Maria Rambeau played by rising British star Lashana Lynch.

Oscar nominee Jude Law (The Talented Mr Ripley) plays the arrogant Kree commander Yon Rogg who proves to be a worthy adversary to Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel is a fun filled retro intergalactic romp of a film engagingly written and populated with some witty one liners. Brie Larson pulls off the role of the latest female action superhero with credibility and nuance as she struggles to discover her real identity and where her role as Captain Marvel fits in to the larger Avengers scheme of things.

Flashy visual effects and some great onscreen chemistry save Captain Marvel from being just another superhero film and this gets a film rating of 7 out of 10.

Audiences should definitely see Captain Marvel before watching Avengers: Endgame. Recommended Viewing for Marvel fans only and regular attendees of Comicon.

3 Days to Go

Director: Bianca Isaac

Cast: Leeanda Reddy, Kajal Bagwandeen, Lilette Dubey, Jonathan Boynton-Lee, Jailoshini Naidoo, Rahul Brijnath, Tumi Morake, Kiara Govender

In my 2019 bid to support South African cinema, I went to see a local film 3 Days to Go directed by Bianca Isaac. 3 Days to Go is basically a Durban Family reunion film focusing on a slightly dysfunctional South African Indian family whose father passes away unexpectedly.

As the mother and now grieving widow of the family brilliantly played by Lillette Dubey last seen in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel calls her children together for a Hindi burial, the siblings are forced to confront the strained relations between them as well as the twisted rivalries which have developed of the years.

Local stars Leeanda Reddy, Kajal Bagwandeen and Jailoshini Naidoo (Keeping up the Kandasamy’s) play the three sisters Janet, Melissa and Amy while there is naturally an irresponsible gambling brother Riki played by 31 Million Reasons star Rahul Brijnath, who unknowingly puts the family in danger.  Top Billing TV presenter turned actor Jonathan Boynton-Lee stars as Reddy’s love interest.

The best scenes in the film are between Reddy and Boynton-Lee whose natural screen presence holds the film together. Lilette Dubey does a reasonably good job portraying the matriarch Laksmi Isaac considering that she has acted opposite Dev Patel, Dame Judi Dench and Richard Gere in the Marigold Hotel films.

Director Bianca Isaac could have done with some editing as the middle of 3 Days to Go, as the plot seemed slightly directionless and melodramatic, however, I did like the ending of the film especially with the entire family on Durban beachfront overlooking the warm Indian Ocean.

On that note, Bianca Isaac could have showed off more locations in Durban in 3 Days to Go, but perhaps it was due to budgetary constraints or lack of directorial imagination.

3 Days to Go is not a brilliant film, but it is a good attempt at a South African family drama with a uniquely Durban twist. However it does point out that the South African film industry is miles behind the international films being released. But as with all burgeoning industries, this unique and multi-faceted film industry does have lots of potential and is a step in the right direction.

3 Days to Go get a film rating of 6.5 out of 10 and will have a distinctly local South African appeal.

The films translation beyond the borders of South Africa will be severely limited, due to the insular and mostly provincial cultural references. Recommended viewing for those that love South African melodrama.