MIFF Day 17

Long Weekend

Pretty ordinary nature-bites-back film. A yuppie couple in relationship breakdown due to infidelity, abortion and a whole bunch of other things go bush camping for the long weekend. Their destructive approach to the wild spawns eagle attacks, falling trees, a zombie dugong and other assorted weirdness that is unfortunately laughable rather than unnerving. The interpersonal drama is actually pretty compelling, but the surrounding storyline of their environment conspiring to destroy them isn't very well handled. Apparently it's being remade, one can only hope the new director handles the material better.

Ashes of Time Redux

Ashes of Time is a work of strange genius, so for Wong Kar Wai to revisit his masterpiece was a risky endeavour. It's not as good as the original version, but this still holds up as a great piece of cinema. A thoughtful meditation on love, grief and memory it's also got one of the best one-man-against-an-army swordfights in cinema, and fortunately the rousing score of the original is left intact for the scene. Other bits have been reworked, some footage removed and scenes originally cut have been restored. Overall it's a more coherent film, though in saying that it also loses some of the magic of the original. It's a story now, rather than an impressionstic jumble of memories that leaves you trying to order everything in your mind. Still great, but no longer brilliant.

MIFF Day 16

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson

An interesting documentary sketching out the life of the good doctor. Some great bits about his development of "Gonzo" writing, and the way he covered politics and sport. The bit about his run for election as Sheriff of Aspen is a highlight, with campaign ads and whatnot shown. Like a lot of the documentaries this year about seminal people and events, it leaves you wanting a lot more, but still it's good.

Terror's Advocate

Doco about Jacques Verges, a lawyer who defended a woman who bombed a milk bar during the Algerian fight for independence, and subsequently went on to defend Palestinian terrorists, Carlos the Jackal and other famous violent figures. Not really a very enlightening film about it's subject, since while Verges participates he most refuses to answer questions, but a good primer in 20th century terrorism in Europe.

Martin

George Romero's vampire film. It's a great film, with Martin the vampire staying with relatives, one of whom knows him for what he is and continually tries various supersitions on him to release the demon from him. But none of it works, because maybe he's not a vampire. Maybe he just believes he is one because the family keeps talking about its curse, and how Martin bears the curse. A really interesting story about a maladjusted kid who finds his life unravelling once he stops being a monster and starts letting a little humanity in. Kinda reminds me of Dexter for some reason, though not as deft in its observations. Great and tense scenes of him on his kills too.

Jesus Christ Saviour

Klaus Kinski wrote and delivered this piece on stage, only to be constantly heckled and disrupted. Kinski loses it with the audience, starts altering his delivery of Christ's words to become an attack on the unruly audience. It becomes apparent that some are there purely to heckle, and Kinski cracks more than once. Finally he walks off stage in disgust. Then he comes back, continues, goes off again. More than once he makes comparisons of his trials to those of Christ, and the parallels are so apparent you wonder if the whole thing were intended to go that way purely to highlight the challenging nature of Christ's message. The performance becomes a debate with the hecklers about hypocrisy and fidelity to the message of Christ. More people disrupt and finally Kinski abandons the performance. The audience files out, disappointed. But then, maybe 100 people remain and Kinski comes out, steps down among them and delivers the entire one and a half hour monologue to a listening and appreciative audience. Sadly the film only really covers the heckling during his official performance, and skips through his final and complete performance. I would have loved to have heard it all, because the power you feel in his delivery as he finishes is amazing. Even so, it's a document of a remarkable evening that leaves you very thoughtful on the nature of the message.

MIFF Day 15

Brando

Over two and a half hours of the life and times of Marlon Brando. And it's awesome. You really come to understand how important he was to the craft of acting, how he changed the landscape of how actors approach performance. And you get to see him across the full span of his career, his activism, his family life, it's a big portrait. And even so, you get the distinct feeling it could have been a lot longer, and looked at a lot more. It's a great film about an important actor.

One Night in a City

This was a really cool stop-motion animation. A series of vignettes telling the stories of a bunch of different people. My favourite bit was the story of a tree and a fish who are neighbours with adjoining apartments. There needs to be more stories about the close friendship shared by trees and fish. It was bizarre, and completely sweet and wonderful. I had such a grin on my face, I loved it.

It's Tough Being Loved By Jerks

Interesting, though extremely one-sided documentary about a court case in France against a magazine sued by the French Islamic Council for publishing caricatures of Muhammad. Interestingly, in this case the objection was not the actual depiction of the prophet, but specifically two cartoons they believed made a causal link between Islam and terrorism. Passions get raised, and the politics of it all is very interesting, especially once it becomes clear that a lot of Muslims would prefer the council didn't sue. But overall, it's just a bunch of French people narrating a court case and talking about the freedom of the press. An insight into French society that we rarely get to see.

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer

I've been waiting for this one all festival. And I deliberately kept my expectations low, since it's a low budget horror flick. Geez it's fun. Holds up with the first Evil Dead film quite easily. Jack may not be Ash, but he's a likeable guy with an intense rage problem, fuelled by seeing his sister and parents killed and eaten by a Forest Troll when he was a kid. Naturally enough, the solution to his rage issues is to slaughter monsters. And once he figures that out, well... I really want to see a sequel to this, coz while it's not all it could have been, it was bloody good fun.

MIFF Day 14

Evangelion 1.0 - You Are Not Alone

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a really awesome series. This is the first of a series of movie retreads, with lots of new animation and some old, lots of stuff cut out and new bits put in. Basically the story remains the same as the series, and the events shown follow the same order. This film covers the first three angels, with much better effects work for the angels. Fun, and it doesn't add to or detract from the series. Big screen fun without wrecking the material it's reworking.

Respect Yourself - The Stax Records Story

Cool doco telling the story of Stax Records, home of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, Booker T and (I had no idea) Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn. At a time when segregation was officially over, Memphis still had it going strong, except at Stax Records, where music ruled and black and white mixed quite happily. A really great story of the rise and fall and rise again of a company that had a massive impact on popular culture. After all, they produced Shaft and a bunch of other films as well as their soundtracks. The film skips over a lot of stuff, lightly touching on interesting things as it paints the whole history, rather than getting stuck in specific stories. You're left with the impression there are a lot more stories to tell, but this is a good overview. And I had no idea how many songs I loved came out of that one little recording studio. Really interesting.

MIFF Day 13

Everything is Fine

A story about a teenager who finds all his friends dead due to a suicide pact. Apparently the way to cope is to sleep with your dead best mate's ex in every public place you can imagine. It's a well done film, but you spend most of the film waiting for it to pay off on something you've known from the beginning if you paid attention. And it becomes an exercise in frustration as you become less and less sympathetic towards this screwed up kid. But that's probably because he gets more and more unlikeable as he gets more and more screwed up. A decent addition to the "suicide is bad" genre.

The Desert Within

A stark and devastating portrait of selfish superstition masquerading as faith. During the Mexican revolution, a priest is exiled from his town. A man, Elias, is unwilling to join the fight against this, but when faced with his wife potentially miscarrying kidnaps the priest back to bless his unborn child. The Federal Army learns of this and believes the priest is organising an uprising. They attack the town and in the massacre that follows Elias survives, but his son is killed along with the priest. Believing himself cursed he goes to the desert with his remaining children to build a new church to replace the one just destroyed by the army. He believes if this is done, God will forgive him his sins. Instead, his children die one by one as they suffer for his madness. It's a really confronting story about religious madness, one that shows that an obsession with signs and superstitions masks an emptiness that sucks everyone into its darkness. The desert is the place ancient monks went to discover God, but it's also the place that Christ faced the Devil.

MIFF Day 12

The Substitute

If I were about 20 years younger I'd probably really dig this film. As it is, it's just kinda fun but silly. An alien with no understanding of empathy comes to Earth to learn about love so her home planet, constantly at war, will stop destroying itself. Unfortunately, with no empathy she's completely unable to do anything except try and take it by force, and that results in her coming a cropper courtesy of her students. Or at least, that's kinda how it goes, it sounds more intelligent than it actually is. Great idea, poor execution. Like I said, if I was a kid I'd probably have dug it, but honestly, Grinny is a much better story.

The Drummer

The son of a Hong Kong gangster sleeps with a rival boss's mistress, and then has to go into hiding in Taiwan. There he joins a group of zen drummers and discovers inner peace, sort of. It's a fun and engaging film, with some great drumming sequences, though the whole gangster storyline wasn't all that interesting compared to the drumming stuff. Good film though, and never boring.

Surveillance

Part of me suspects David Lynch directed this film and stuck his daughter's name on it just to throw people off. Jennifer Lynch's second film is a very Lynchian film about an investigation into a series of brutal murders in backwoods USA somewhere. The twists and turns are great, some completely unexpected, and the mood is tense and violent, full of black humour and oddball characters. It's well deserving of the Lynch brand.

MIFF Day 11

Animation Shorts (No Dogs)

Sadly, the animations with dogs were a lot better than this bunch. So many weren't really up to snuff, a whole bunch of lame student efforts, but a couple of excellent ones in there. Especially a really funny one about two morticians trying to get a coffin to a grave.

Sita Sings The Blues

Thank God for happy accidents. I wasn't going to see this one, but the film I wanted to see was sold out. I'd dismissed this one when I read the guide, and now I'm gonna try and buy the DVD. A really fun deconstruction/retelling of the Ramayana. It clearly offended some Indians in the audience, but entranced others. I thought it was a beautifully animated and incredibly energetic film with a lot of intelligent discussion of the text inside the film. There's three shadow puppets telling the story and picking it apart at the same time. Their energy and enthusiasm for the subject really pulls you in, and the use of old Annette Henshaw blues songs to serve as Sita narrating her story is wonderful. It's a really fun film.

I Just Didn't Do It

I've heard a lot of depressing statistics about the legal system in Japan. A 99.9% conviction rate, stories about how it's near impossible to prove innocence, things like that. This film dramatises those statistics and brings home in a very real way how hard it is to avoid conviction, even if you're innocent. But it also tells you why, and it's a sad indictment on a society built on authoritarianism. A brave and bold film, made even more sad and depressing by the fact that Japan still has the death penalty. How a system that's so stacked against the defendent can have that as a possible sentence makes a mockery of any sense of justice.

MIFF Day 10

The Wave

I read the book back when I was in school. An experiment in fascism takes over a classroom and then a school. Brave of the Germans to adapt it into a film, given what it's about. The film is excellent, and does something the book never did: It questions the motivations of the teacher. The book was written by the teacher from memory, so it's hardly surprising he came out looking like a victim of circumstance. The beauty of the film is that in getting stuck into the teacher as well, it not only examines how people can fall into step with fascism and dictatorships, but also how people can fall into leadership and not question the darker aspects of their rise to power.

Boy A

A complete surprise to me, I had no idea this was a speculation around the lives of the boys who murdered James Bulger. The film follows "Jack" as he leaves prison and starts a new life, trying to leave behind Eric, his real name, and the murder of a little girl that he and his friend committed. He gets a job, a girlfriend, friends, and even saves a girl's life. But his past is too hard to escape, and it catches up with him. The end is unsatisfying and underdeveloped, but the body of the film is great as it deals with the very real struggles of rehabilitation and starting over.

Words of Advice: Willam S Burroughs On The Road

Nothing particularly enlightening or new here, just another doco cashing in on a fascination for Bill Burroughs. Worth it for the video of some of his live readings, and for some recollections of James Grauerholz, Burroughs secretary and companion for over 20 years.

Let The Right One In

Holy crap, who'd have thought awesome vampire films were still possible. This one is brilliant, and very very wrong. Make the vampire a 12 year old girl, and make the story a love affair between her and her 12 year old neighbour, a kid bullied at school until Eli, the vampire, starts to give him confidence in himself. It's a very weird riff on the story, haunting and beautiful and bloody. It doesn't romanticise death, Eli is vicious and the limbs go flying. But at the same time, it's a sweet and oddly innocent story of very young love. And there's an underwater shot in the final scene that had me giddy with its creativity. Bloody awesome.

The Horseman

Low budget Aussie revenge thriller. A powderkeg of raw emotion, it's the story of a father hunting down and killing all the men involved in the shooting of a porn film his daughter did just before she died of a drug overdose. Drugs she was given at the shoot. He belts his way through over a half dozen people, torturing and fighting and killing. The urgency and the painful honesty of the grief make you forget the flaws and pay attention to the action, which is incredibly well staged. Someone give this guy a real budget, I really wanna see what he's going to do next.

MIFF Day 9

Silent Light

They weren't kidding. The opening shot of this film is one of the most beautiful things you'll ever see in a cinema. A stunning shot of dawn breaking over a farm. Honestly, words can't express the beauty of it. The film itself is remarkable too. A tale of a Mennonite farmer who has an affair, and the consequences for himself, his wife and their community. It's a slow and meditative film, carefully examining the different aspects of the loves involved. Tough minded in parts, but with a tender heart, it's a warm and compassionate film about the complications in love.

Salvation

Paul Cox's latest film, shot on video due to budget constraints. Clearly not at peace with the medium, it looks like something shot years ago, rather than what video can look like these days. The story is interesting, but not entirely satisfying. A man married to an insecure but successful televangelist finds love with a prostitute. It didn't hold together entirely, but it was enjoyable.

Lionel

A great documentary about Lionel Rose, one time world champion boxer. A great film about an impressive man, warts and all.

Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden

Morgan Spurlock takes gonzo documentary filmmaking out for another spin, this time trying to find Osama Bin Laden, and talking to people across the Middle East and down into Afghanistan and Pakistan trying to understand how someone like him could gain such a following. In some ways the information is redundant to anyone who's bothered to look into the issue, but it's packaged in an entertaining and funny way. Morgan is a man with heaps of charisma, and that carries the film.

Bastardy

The story of Jack Charles, a former actor, drug user and catburgler. One of the stolen generation, his story is one of dealing with an upbringing devoid of love and good role models. But he pulls himself up, by the process of the making of the documentary itself, into a man with respect for himself and love for his community. It's a great story.

Sukiyaki Western Django

Takashi Miike does a film in english with Quentin Tarantino cameoing as a gunfighter. It's basically a riff on Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars, but with a hell of a lot more insane stylisation and blood. Good crazy violent fun.

MIFF Day 8

Asterix at the Olympic Games

It's a new actor playing Asterix (and the make a few jokes about it), truth is he's not as good. The attitude is more aggressive than mischievous, it lacks the cheekiness so characteristic of Asterix. But still, it's a good fun film. Not as good as Mission Cleopatra, but still a lot of fun. Lots of pop culture gags, drugs in sport and all that jazz. Plus it has Michael Schumacher racing a Porsche chariot. Though the Zinedine Zidane bit was really flat. A good laugh.