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.
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.
posted by Andrew Lee at 4:19 PM
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