Margaret Agnew
Today is the first day of the school holidays. It’s also a rainy day. You know what that means: kids all over the country will be flocking to the movie theaters. Because of this, I wanted to share two reviews that have appeared in our local paper (and by “local”, I mean the paper that everyone in the South Island reads. That’s what happens when you live in a country as small as New Zealand).
Margaret Agnew has been a movie reviewer for The Press for many years now, and she always writes helpful and insightful reviews on a range of different genres and styles. This weekend, The Lone Ranger and Pacific Rim opened in Christchurch. Here are experts from what she had to say about each one:
Tonto say: White man take much gold, make heap’um big crap movie.
Where to start? Despite the movie being titled The Lone Ranger, they really should have had the guts to call it Tonto. The real star is the not-so-lonely ranger’s sidekick, played by Depp as a broken-English grunting Captain Jack Sparrow dressed up as a crazy Redskin in Kiss-style facepaint with a dead crow on his head. Depp, who once made a surreal film debunking Native American stereotypes (Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man in 1995) has firmly turned his back on his arthouse past. He now claims it’s not racist to dress-up in red-face since his” great grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian”.
A bit vague on the whakapapa*, Depp plays the outcast tribesman as a comedy injun, despite Tonto being described as “full-blooded Comanche”. It’s unfortunate then that this millionaire white guy is playing a disenfranchised Native American who appears to be literally whitewashed.
* The Maori concept of being able trace your identity back through your ancestors.
And then:
Led by the brilliantly named Marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba, who manages to bring Shakespearean gravitas and pathos to his role), these enormous knights in nuclear-powered armour are humanity’s last hope of survival , but there are only four jaegers left.
Sure, the surprisingly chaste (no kissing!) film has its cheesy moments, but it also has clever use of 3-D and is thoroughly enjoyable. You may even find yourself feeling for the kaiju. At times there’s a quirky sense of humour on display, including a Newton’s cradle desk-toy joke and even a spot of toilet humour, but the main focus is making a monumental monster versus massive mecha mash-up.
Pacific Rim easily surpasses the Transformers movies, displaying far more emotional depth. It has impressive yet easy to follow action scenes and its well suited to school holiday viewing, especially if you have hoards of boys to entertain. Pacific Rim is original, very well constructed and pretty darn classy for a big bombastic blockbuster. Trust Guillermo del Toro to turn monsters and robots into movie magic.
She gave Pacific Rim four stars (out of four) and The Lone Ranger one. So presuming that people take her advice, guess what film people will be going to see these holidays? I think Margaret Agnew became my new favourite person.
Margaret Agnew has been a movie reviewer for The Press for many years now, and she always writes helpful and insightful reviews on a range of different genres and styles. This weekend, The Lone Ranger and Pacific Rim opened in Christchurch. Here are experts from what she had to say about each one:
Tonto say: White man take much gold, make heap’um big crap movie.
Where to start? Despite the movie being titled The Lone Ranger, they really should have had the guts to call it Tonto. The real star is the not-so-lonely ranger’s sidekick, played by Depp as a broken-English grunting Captain Jack Sparrow dressed up as a crazy Redskin in Kiss-style facepaint with a dead crow on his head. Depp, who once made a surreal film debunking Native American stereotypes (Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man in 1995) has firmly turned his back on his arthouse past. He now claims it’s not racist to dress-up in red-face since his” great grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian”.
A bit vague on the whakapapa*, Depp plays the outcast tribesman as a comedy injun, despite Tonto being described as “full-blooded Comanche”. It’s unfortunate then that this millionaire white guy is playing a disenfranchised Native American who appears to be literally whitewashed.
* The Maori concept of being able trace your identity back through your ancestors.
And then:
Led by the brilliantly named Marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba, who manages to bring Shakespearean gravitas and pathos to his role), these enormous knights in nuclear-powered armour are humanity’s last hope of survival , but there are only four jaegers left.
Sure, the surprisingly chaste (no kissing!) film has its cheesy moments, but it also has clever use of 3-D and is thoroughly enjoyable. You may even find yourself feeling for the kaiju. At times there’s a quirky sense of humour on display, including a Newton’s cradle desk-toy joke and even a spot of toilet humour, but the main focus is making a monumental monster versus massive mecha mash-up.
Pacific Rim easily surpasses the Transformers movies, displaying far more emotional depth. It has impressive yet easy to follow action scenes and its well suited to school holiday viewing, especially if you have hoards of boys to entertain. Pacific Rim is original, very well constructed and pretty darn classy for a big bombastic blockbuster. Trust Guillermo del Toro to turn monsters and robots into movie magic.
She gave Pacific Rim four stars (out of four) and The Lone Ranger one. So presuming that people take her advice, guess what film people will be going to see these holidays? I think Margaret Agnew became my new favourite person.