Give 'em the ol Razzle Dazzle...
The Last Showgirl comes to town
Pamela Anderson. Jamie Lee Curtis. Gia Coppola. Happy International Women’s Day/Weekend! I review The Last Showgirl below, it opens March 20. Meantime let’s celebrate by doing TWO things:
High five every single powerhouse woman in your personal orbit
Buy tickets to go see Tinā - either for the first time, or the second time, or to gift tickets to someone you know who needs to see this Box Office smash hit.
Kiwi’s have embraced this gorgeous film and taken it straight into the record books:
“Tinā has taken the country by storm, surpassing $1 million in its opening weekend. The film is currently No. 1 on the box office charts, earning $1,324,529 to date with nearly 84,000 ticket sales.
Tinā also set a new record for the widest release of a New Zealand film, screening across 128 locations in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Samoa. It now ranks as the third-biggest NZ opening week of all time, behind Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Sione's 2: Unfinished Business”
Source: New Zealand Film Commission
Since that media release and as I write on this gorgeous Saturday morning, I can confirm it’s cracked 1.5 million NZD! Tu meke!! Love you guys - let's support our local stories, we need them and they’re worth every cent we pay to go see them.
NEW RELEASE
The Last Showgirl
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Honestly, when I see the level of vulnerability, delivered with the amount of collective talent, tenderness and tenaciousness it takes to make a micro-budget indie film through a female lens it fills me with F**K YEAHS!
Filmmaker Gia Coppola (yep of Clan Coppola - Hollywood royalty) shot this film in 18 days for $2 million USD with a story and a lead role that fits Pamela Anderson like a sequin glove. Anderson plays Shelly, a 57 year old Las Vegas showgirl dancing in the last of the ol razzle dazzles on the strip. Alongside her showgirl family, all in myriad stages of their own journey, and her estranged daughter Hannah circling in the shadows (Billie Lourd), Shelly is a heady, ethereal kaleidoscope of good intentions, bad decisions and a lifetime of living out her dreams on the stage doing what she loves doing more than anything - dancing.
The irrepressible Jamie Lee Curtis is her best friend Annette, no longer a dancer, her gambling addiction in a gambler’s paradise crippling any chance she’s ever had. Curtis balances her every nuance against Anderson and it’s like watching them in a slow-dance, so incredibly ill-suited but bonded by a shared pain reflected in the cards their lives have dealt them. It’s beautiful to watch.
On the flip-side of the storytelling coin the story itself here is a tad too slender to be a full feature home-run, hinting at bigger things rather than fully driving them home, and this may end up in a less nourishing experience for more mainstream audiences. But if you like to match a melancholic mood with your movies, you’ll certainly find it here.
THE FEELS: I felt awash in a soft colour-washed palette which made the cinematic experience feel like a dreamscape punctuated by stabs of intense pain as we watch our heroine face the ghastly superficiality of a world dismissing her talent and worth, seeing only her drained fountain of youth.
THE HOOK: Pamela, Jamie Lee, and you know what? Also see this for Dave Bautista in a career-shifting role bursting with a simple love and soaked in warmth and sadness.
(Opens March 20)
MY LUDICROUSLY CAPACIOUS BAG OF BINGE-A-BILITY
Paradise: Disney+. Did you watch the series finale??? I Bloody LOVED this show, bring on S2. Please tell me you share the love?!
Stranger Things Season One: Netflix
Yeah I know, Season One?? Really? But yes - Mr 12 and I have started again from scratch with the grand finale season in our 2025 sights. We don’t know when exactly it lands but Netflix had this to say late December:
“Friends don’t lie … filming has wrapped on the final season”
More details here and we cannot WAIT - I love these kids so so much and it’s been such a treat to watch them grow up with this show.
GUEST STARRING…
She’s here, she’s there, she’s every f**king where KATE RODGER!
LOVED hanging with Team Oscars RNZ to watch the show live and wax lyrical on rnz.co.nz as the 97th Academy Awards rolled out what FUN! Shocked Demi didn’t take it home but stoked for Mikey Madison (basically the plot of the Substance but hey ;)). Adrian Brody took home the Oscar for The Brutalist and the Guinness World record for Longest Oscar Speech In Recorded History. Off-setting that indulgence was Daniel Blumberg for Best Score for The Brutalist with his gorgeous, simple and entirely authentic thank you. Chef’s kiss.
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But taking the Oscars Crown?? Indie filmmaker now OSCAR HISTORY-MAKER Sean Baker. Four individual Oscars for writing, editing, directing and producing Best Picture winner Anora which he made for under 7 million USD. His podium shout-outs to storytellers everywhere and his plea to audiences globally to support cinema and go to the movies: LEGEND.
What he said - off to the movies with you all!
Dive into the comments below or into the Chat to share your favs..
Farewell for now FilmFam and remember….
When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'
Quentin Tarantino
KRxx
Is Anora having a re-screening anywhere? Lido maybe?