We watched two videos in Franz Josef. The first was The Recruit starring the ubiquitous Colin Farrel and also Al Pacino. The video box said that there were so many twists you never knew who to trust. That just makes me think the whole way through, "I bet he's a baddie" whenever someone looks not to be the baddie. Inevitably one of the guesses is right. And it's not that clever a film. It is entertaining though and just what we needed when we were exhausted from glacier hiking. Three stars.
The second movie was The Gangs of New York, Martin Scorcese's overblown "epic". I'm giving it two and a half stars, though it could easily have been three and half stars if it had been 40 minutes shorter. The best thing about this was the simpleton American lady we watched it with. She came in 30 minutes into the film and kept commenting all the way through the film. I don't like this, but this harmless lady made me laugh.
"Ooh, is he gonna kill him?"
"Does he want him to join their gang?"
"Isn't it violent! Yuck!"
"Was America really like this?"
"Is he a tittle-tattle?" (I am not making this up.)
In Wanaka, the lovely hostel had an equally lovely video room, so we took advantage of it. We first watched Once Were Warriors, a Kiwi film about a Maori family with an abusive father (Jango Fett). It wasn't an amazing film, but was good enough and it was good to see a Kiwi film while we're here. Three stars.
The following day we watched the German film, Run Lola Run. We'd both missed this at the flicks, and I'm glad we finally saw it because it was really good. Quite short, but very funny, flash and simple. Lots of good music, twists and touches. Four and a half stars.
We went to a cool cinema in Wanaka. Our guide book told us to check it out whether it was showing a good film or not. The chairs were sofas and arm chairs, and there was an old Morris Minor in there you could sit in. The film was projected onto a sheet, and they served good home-made ice-cream. Fortunately the film was good to. It won the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year. It was another German film: Nowhere in Africa. It's about a family of German Jews who escape Germany before the war (the Second World one) and go to live in Kenya. Very interesting. Four stars.
It's Anne's birthday on Monday, and she's decided we're going to see Love Actually tonight. We've not read any reviews or heard anything about it, which is probably best as it might be awful!