DVD OF THE WEEK

BOY *****
Dir: Taika Waititi.
Starring: James Rolleston, Taika Waititi, Te Aho Eketone-Whitu

Every so often it's worth being reminded that a great film has nothing to do with a big budget or epic scope. Boy is the smallest of films and I think is the best New Zealand film I've ever seen.
Now officially the biggest-grossing New Zealand movie of all time, Boy is a little miracle of a film, because it just gets everything so right. It is charming, funny, surprising and sad, and wears its Kiwi credentials with an unselfconscious and unforced pride.
Boy centres round the titular 11 year-old living in Waihau Bay in 1984 with his Nan, various cousins and his younger brother (who rather delightfully imagines he has magical powers). When she abandons the kids to attend a Tangi life is thrown into chaos by the surprise arrival of their jailbird father Alamein (the characters have great names, with good reasons), and Boy's adulation of his absent dad runs up against the reality of a feckless no-hoper.
In the central role Rolleston is simply wonderful - charming and naturalistic and heartbreakingly believable. Director Waititi puts in a finely-nuanced performance as his ratbag father, keeping it real and never straying too far into parody. In fact all the cast are exemplary. The eighties setting is also perfect with a host of period detail: Michael Jackson worship, space invaders, songs from the era and more. And, although set very specifically in a small Maori community, the story and emotions are completely universal. Fingers crossed that it gets the attention it deserves worldwide.
That the film manages to be a heartfelt and very funny comedy at the same time as offering an understated yet devastating social critique is a balancing act of the finest order throughout, and the final moon-walking haka is a thing of pure genius. Everyone – everyone – should see this film.

Robin Williams films have been – for the last few years at least – things to be avoided. However, with World's Greatest Dad (****) he has made something quite special and certainly unique. From, surprisingly, crazy comedian now turned director Bobcat Goldthwait, this is taboo-breaking comedy as pitch black as they get. Some will struggle to see it even as comedy. In it William's frustrated poetry teacher is the solo parent of a shockingly unpleasant teenage son (who has a taste for – amongst other things – auto-erotic asphyxiation). The school is full of creeps and weirdoes, and that's just the teachers. I can't say much more as it would ruin the many surprises. Suffice to say it's Williams best turn in years and a story unlike almost anything else out there.

Sadly Repo Men (**) isn't a sequel to Alex Cox's punk cult classic. Instead it posits a future where human organs can be replaced at will but only at a high price. And if you can't pay the monthly instalments then Jude Law and Forrest Whittaker come and repossess the body part (without anaesthetic). The problem here is the tone of the film, which doesn't know whether to play it as a straight thriller or a black comedy and falls somewhere in between, making for an unpleasant and frustrating experience.

A T-Rex, giant octopus and fire-breathing dragon! That's what the cover promises for this new Sherlock Holmes (*) (not to be confused with the recent Guy Ritchie one), a potential classic in the so-bad-it's-good stakes. And it doesn't take long to realise that while Gareth David-Lloyd (Torchwood) makes a competent Dr Watson, Ben Syder is possible the worst Holmes in cinema history, often struggling to even get his lines out coherently. The plot includes a rampant dinosaur stealing copper wire, Sherlock's mad scientist brother, and fun names such as Hell's Mouth and Mrs Pinchcock. Meanwhile the utterly unconvincing 'special” effects will delight lovers of the bizarrely bad.