Posts Tagged ‘Greg Kriek’

Fly Me to the Moon

Director: Greg Berlanti

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, Jim Rash, Greg Kriek, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Nick Dillenburg

Running Time: 2 hours and 12 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Love Simon director Greg Berlanti delivers a delightful romantic comedy Fly Me to the Moon about the weeks leading up to NASA successful Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 which successfully culminated with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren landing on the moon.

With a catchy title Fly Me to the Moon, this summer romantic comedy focuses on the love and working relationship between marketing maverick Kelly Jones superbly played with gorgeous panache by the sassy Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story, Jo Jo Rabbit) and the dashing pilot Cole Davis played by Channing Tatum (The Lost City, Magic Mike XXL, Foxcatcher)  at Cape Canaveral in Florida, the launch site for Apollo 11 as they both prepare in different ways for the historic mission to the moon.

Kelly is all New York marketing and advertising and is hired by a mysterious government man Moe Berkus, a stand out performance by triple Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson (The People vs Larry Flynt, The Messenger, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) who is supposedly working for President Nixon whose government needs a propaganda coup to galvanize the American public into supporting the mission to the moon, while discreetly distracting them from the horrific war in Vietnam.

Cole Davis is a straight laced pilot whose sole concern is the safety of his astronauts and their successful but tense mission to the moon. Davis is distracted by Kelly’s charm and unconventional approach to public relations.

NASA needs some good PR and Kelly and Berkus devise a secret plan to film a deep fake landing on the moon culminating in a film production lavishly directed by Lance Vespertine played with gay abandon by Jim Rash.

Fly Me to the Moon has some great comic moments including many scenes involving a slinky black cat, but the gem of the story is the onscreen chemistry between Tatum and Johansson bolstered by some stunning visual effects of the actual Apollo 11 taking off to the moon.

As Kelly Jones comes clean about her past to Cole Davis, their partnership both professionally and romantically blossoms in the beautiful setting of Cape Canaveral, Florida as Kelly secret directs Project Artemis at the request of the shady Berkus until a feline unseats the deep fake.

Delightful, superbly written and brilliantly conceived down to the late 1960’s production design, Fly Me to the Moon gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is recommended viewing as a thoroughly enjoyable romantic comedy.

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.

The Recce

Director: Johannes Ferdinand van Zyl

Cast: Greg Kriek, Christia Visser, Marius Weyers, Grant Swanby, Albert Maritz, Elsabe Daneel, Maurice Carpede

Set in 1981 in Angola and Apartheid South Africa, The Recce seen at the film’s premiere at the Durban International Film Festival (insert website) DIFF 2018, director Johannes Ferdinand van Zyl combines some stylistic flourishes to create a vivid and tense depiction of the experiences of the films main hero Henk Viljoen a Recce who is caught behind enemy lines and presumed Killed In Action.

South African star Greg Kriek brilliantly plays Henk who leaves his pregnant wife Nicola played by Christia Visser behind as he ventures forth deep within enemy territory, behind the Angolan border in a treacherous guerrilla war which claimed many lives and was a clandestine Southern African war of attrition fought by the Apartheid South African government far north in the then Soviet infiltrated Angola, just above Namibia which was then known as South West Africa.

With the dialogue mainly in Afrikaans, The Recce is a brave portrayal of a soldier’s desire to survive in an increasingly cruel and hostile landscape where no one can be trusted.

Grant Swanby (Beyond the River) plays Henk’s English speaking corporal Corporal Le Roux, who realizes that they are all fighting a pointless war in brutal terrain. Also featured in the cast are well known South African stage and screen actor Marius Weyers (Blood Diamond, Gandhi) as the hard-drinking General Piet Visagie and Maurice Carpede as Impi Buthelezi.

Watching The Recce is like watching the Afrikaans version of Peter Berg’s nail biting military drama Lone Survivor and those that enjoy a well-orchestrated war film should see this South African film depicting a distinct period in this country’s history which left an indelible mark on the South African older white male psyche particularly those that were military active in the early 1980’s prior to the transition to democracy in 1994.

Despite some tangential scenes in the film’s first half, director Johannes Ferdinand van Zyl’s The Recce is as engrossing as it is terrifying and has a particularly brilliant ending, one which will shock audiences and leave them questioning the futility of warfare.

Due to its very specific subject matter, The Recce will obviously have more resonance in South Africa than internationally as the film refers to the 1980’s, a turbulent decade in this country’s fascinating and multi-dimensional history.

Strictly for fans of decent war films, The Recce gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10.