Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tune a violin. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the road trip flick “Holy Days,” the time travel crime drama “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” and the epidemic drama “Alpha.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Holy Days,” a feel-good road trip flick starring Judy Davis, Miriam Margolyes and Jacki Weaver and now playing in theatres, a young boy learns about life and loss when he accompanies three nuns on a wild road trip across 1970s New Zealand.
CAST: Judy Davis, Miriam Margolyes, Elijah Tamati, Jacki Weaver. Directed by Nathalie Boltt.
REVIEW: A family friendly story of faith, support and mutual growth, “Holy Days” is a dryly humorous movie that presents big ideas about love, life and loss in a playful but heartfelt movie.
Set in 1970s New Zealand, “Holy Days” sees Brian (Elijah Tamati), a Māori boy grieving the death of his mother, befriend three elderly nuns, played by Judy Davis, Miriam Margolyes, and Jacki Weaver, at the local convent. Their company provides solace for the youngster, so when he learns that their convent is about to be shut down, he jumps at the chance to accompany the nuns on a chaotic road trip, in a “borrowed car,” to retrieve a deed that may prevent the convent from closing.
As the nuns seek out the deed to the convent, Brian is on a slightly different journey. He’s in solidarity with his car mates, but he really wants to visit Aoraki/Mount Cook, a rugged mountain so tall it appears to pierce the clouds. It’s there he hopes to spiritually connect with his late mother before she disappears forever.
A coming of age for Brian, the road trip becomes a vehicle for all to rediscover purpose and the importance of connection.
“Holy Days” is a period piece, but the film’s nostalgic gaze is tempered somewhat by themes of mortality, redemption and spirituality, and some underdeveloped notions of the importance of the church as the center of the community and the marginalization of Brian’s Māori heritage. Still, director Nathalie Boltt, who co-wrote the script with Joy Cowley, finds the right balance between humor and earnestness, approaching the heavier themes with a light touch.
She is aided by a trio of veterans who bring spark to the trio of nuns, but it is Elijah Tamati as the precocious Brian who gives the movie its heart. His sense of childlike wonder and way with a line—”Sister Agnes, you did a sin,” he says when she “borrows” a car for their trip. ”You should be prostituted.”—goes a long way to bringing real warmth to the story.
“Holy Days” is a road trip movie that’s worth the journey.
“Nitam,” a dramatization of the events leading up to the 1996 massacre at Port Arthur, Tasmania, that killed 35 people and wounded 23 others, mines the nihilism of its title character in an attempt to shed light on a senseless act.
In his telling of the story, Australian director Justin Kurzel has made a deeply unsettling film but not a violent one. He replaces the violence of the tragic real-life event with the uneasy trajectory of a killer in the making.
Known as Nitram—the movie never uses his real name—Caleb Landry Jones plays the title character as a twenty-something, impulsive, detached loner who lashes out at the slightest provocation. His mother (Judy Davis) is worn down after years of dealing with his antisocial and unpredictable behavior, but his father (Anthony LaPaglia) attempts to find a coping mechanism in compassion.
They are given a reprieve of sorts when wealthy recluse Helen (Essie Davis) hires him to cut her lawn and invites him to move in. She treats him kindly and becomes a stabilizing force in his life. When she passes away suddenly, followed by the death of his father weeks later, Nitam is cut loose with a large inheritance courtesy of Helen’s largess.
Nitram’s childhood fascination with fireworks translates into a love of firearms as an adult. In the film’s most chilling scene he purchases powerful automatic weapons from a gun shop owner only too happy to make a sale.
It is the first tangible step toward infamy.
The events of April 1996 are not portrayed in the film. In fact, there is very little violence on display. Instead, Kurzel has crafted a bleak but effective portrait of mundane evil. Jones embodies the character, playing him as a cypher with a deep well of rage. It isn’t a showy performance. It’s dark, hard to read and even harder to understand. Alienated, he is devoid of empathy or compassion, a ticking bomb ready to explode. It’s disturbing character work, so carefully rendered that, knowing how the story ends, will make your skin crawl.
There is little that is sensational or exploitive in “Nitram’s” storytelling but I had to wonder why a movie, even one that doesn’t name the killer by name, exists.
It’s one thing not to utter his name, it’s another to make a movie about a real-life man who became a monster, shattering dozens of families in the process. “Nitram” in no way glorifies him, but neither does it shed that much light on the hows and whys of his unspeakable acts. It is a well-made film that prefers to hammer home its indelible message of gun control but in its very existence provides an uncomfortable notoriety to someone best forgotten.
