marklear-1

This film follows a group of New Zealanders over a wide age range who are walking the approximately 800km journey along tracks, roads and even highways. They are determined, and make good company for us as viewers. You can imagine that changes in weather, and the sheer amount of walking makes us pleased that we are indeed watching them. As you would expect, various health issues come up, along with blisters and injuries, but the audience in the cinema are hopeful that all will reach the final destination. I do have one feature of the film that annoyed me. The cinematographer seemed to deliberately use shaky camerawork, in the belief that gave a more dramatic feel to the proceedings. Well, it didn't. Much of the film did not have shaky images, and those images were often very enjoyable. Pity. Overall though, a very interesting coverage, and not overlong.

I went to see this film following a strong review in Melbourne (Australia). However, I thought that it was very poorly assembled as a film. It seemed that the film's makers were keen to include absolutely everything they could find, and the choice of order for all these clips was baffling as well as non-stop. I will be the first in the queue to see another film made to cover the astonishing life of Alice Guy-Blache - she deserves better than this attempt.

This is a great film. It is a documentary assessing how we can manage the Earth in the next 20 years. He is an amiable (but committed) host, who takes us through the ways we can improve our planet and, it is structured as a "visual letter to his 4 year old daughter". He travels far and wide to gather his evidence and it is a well-structured "journey". I saw this film in a packed-out cinema in Melbourne (Australia) and we initially thought that we had come into the wrong cinema because there were so many children with their parents present. Asking the parent beside me, she said that she brought her children because they needed to know about this film. I can add that these children were indeed very interested in the unfolding story. It is not perfect, but it comes close, that's for sure. His presentation is quite innovative, and also engaging. Certainly an important documentary to see.