Saw a couple of movies this past weekend:
It’s to The Dark Horse’s great benefit that this is the rare inspirational true-life story that doesn’t shoehorn a fountain of relentless optimism for the future into the proceedings. Based on the real-life story of the Maori speed-chess player and coach Genesis Potini, it’s a story of mental illness and manhood that manages to strike a difficult balance between sentiment and gritty honesty. Writer-director James Napier Robertson chronicles the uplifting story of Potini’s time with the Eastern Knights, an after-school chess program for at-risk youth, but The Dark Horse isn’t focused on the Eastern Knights, necessarily. It’s a film about Potini, and the private and public weight he carried.
The rest of the review
here.
This is one for the film fetishists. Shot on film and only released (to date) on 35mm film,
Too Late is a modern day hardboiled detective story "about a missing woman and a lost man". It's quite derivative, but beautifully shot in 5 20-minute long
continuous takes (each take being on a single film reel). If you can see it in a theatre with a 35mm projector you should, because neither
DCP nor HD tv technology have yet to equal the image quality found on film.