Click bait: Leo Woodall in ‘Tuner’.
TUNER **** (107 minutes) MA
A first-class, old-school caper jaunt that sees a piano tuner with super-sensitive hearing working as a safe cracker for a gaggle of gangsters who rob the uber rich.
The chief motivation for Niki (Leo Woodall, excellent) is that his mentor and father figure Harry (Dustin Hoffman) is laid up in hospital after a heart attack with mounting medical bills.
Entwined in the suspenseful plot is a dash of romance with Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a talented pianist who is enjoying the type of musical career Niki has been denied by his condition.
Though he’s not on screen much, Hoffman (88 and sparky as ever) brings some signature snark to the proceedings, exceedingly well-directed by Daniel Roher (co-writing with Robert Ramsey), who made the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny.
A very tight, tense, enjoyable crime lark neatly topped off by a terrific ending, Tuner deserves its berth in the pantheon of olde tyme crime classics such as Topkapi, The Hot Rock, Le Cercle Rouge (wow), The Score and, of course, Rififi.
PRIMAVERA ***1/2 (111 minutes; subtitled) M
Set in the early 1700s in the most pristinely preserved heritage-listed precincts of Florence, this ravishing, delicately directed Italian film tells of the artistic relationship between famous, and famously ill composer Vivaldi and his protege, an inmate at an orphanage.
Blessed with sumptuous cinematography replete with splendid use of natural lighting, the story follows the travails of Cecilia (Tecla Insolia), an uncommonly beautiful ingenue whose musical talents when playing the violin spikes the attention of Vivaldi (Michele Riondino), the orphanage’s music teacher.
It’s a beautiful thing and provides liberating respite to young Cecilia from the restrictions and drudgery imposed upon her. What a future she has. Or might have had.
Alas, she is promised to Sanfermo (Stefano Accorsi), a gent many years her senior to whom she will be married once he returns from war.
With moments of tenderness and cruelty – brace for one moment that is positively tear-inducing – this marvellous, delicate, painterly period piece is deftly directed by Damiano Michieletto, whose reputation as a renown opera director one could probably have deduced from the film’s lyrical blending of images and music.
Stupendo.
DISCLOSURE DAY **1/2 (145 minutes) M
Oh, dear.
No need to go on and on about the disappointments of Disclosure Day, save to say that Steven Spielberg’s latest “event” film, sadly, arrives with a bit of a thud. well, more than a bit.
Thing is, in Spielberg’s fifth film about aliens – following Close Encounters, ET, War of the Worlds and, try though you strain to forget it, Indiana Jones and the Kngdom of the Crystal Skull – a lot actually works. Just not enough.
In a nutshell, we have conscience-stricken troublemaker Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) nicking off with super-top secret info about what is really going on with aliens on Earth, his intention being to share it with everyone on Earth.
Not-too-happy about this is his boss Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), who runs corporate megalith Wardex and has deployed his hi-tech team to track him down so as to retrieve the incriminating data sticks.
Parallel to all this is under-achieving weather girl Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, very good here) whose bubbly personality is interrupted by a sudden jump in IQ, language skills and telepathy. (Is it illegal to make a film about aliens without involving telepathy? Only asking.)
Now, the thriller and mystery elements click nicely as we join the characters in getting to the bottom of what’s happening.
Spielberg, again working with long-hauling Jurassic Park writer David Koepp, can’t resist the occasional line of corn as characters make their Big Statements, but we forgive this because, well, it’s Spielberg.
What we can’t forgive are all the silly alien movie tropes and cliches that bleed into the film, its scale and sense of self-importance totally undercut by a grand lack of originality.
There is simply way too much here that we’ve seen before, with signs, as distressing as they are clear, of Spielberg cannibalizing his own work.
To wit: in the final crawl is the credit “Alien Costume Development”, which raises the pointed question: “Huh? In this film? Where?”
The film also boasts some pretty sizeable story holes.
Most of these involve typically idiotic security people, who, sticking with tradition, have a bad habit of leaving their expensive, bullet-proof vehicles with the doors open and the keys in.
We also witness in Disclosure Day the latest example of Techno Plotticus Convenienco, that being the movie syndrome where the effectiveness of super-duper technology wavers wildly depending on plot requirements.
While in one scene the you-beaut tech can locate someone with pin-point accuracy anywhere in the country, that same gee-wizzery somehow remains totally incapable of alerting anyone about the guy sneaking around behind a fence a few feet away. Very sloppy.
There are other big story lapses, including one that arguably negates the film’s central plot point. It’s glaring and South Park fans might recall a classic episode featuring the same issue.
Action-wise, there is a very cool centrepiece car sequence involving a train and lots of practical effects, always good to see. It helps make up for an earlier multi-vehicle chase that reeks of laziness.
All up, it’s a passable ride, though Spielberg can’t – to invoke an overused phrase – stick the landing, something he’s usually great at.
And he is great. Just not here.
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