MIFF Day 7
The Higher Force
Those Northern European countries must have something in the water. Either that or the constant daylight or darkness really gets to them. This is a very odd gangster comedy from Iceland, where David is somewhat ashamed of his life as a debt collector, mainly because he isn't very good at it. He dreams of being a martial artist, but never got past buying a bunch of instructional videos. And his brother was killed in a hit and run as a child. When his girlfriend kicks him out, he moves into a new apartment block with a landlord who might be the guy who killed his brother, might be a criminal mastermind, or might just be a racist schoolteacher going off the deep end. David starts talking up his relationship to the maybe kingpin, and suddenly his gangster superiors start to take him seriously. It's all dry wit and ridiculous situations played straight, and it goes nowhere, but the characters are charming and very likeable. Just a fun film really.
Bronson
I've never seen Nicholas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy, but I did see Fear X, a film that had an amazing mood to it. This is similar, in that it's sensibility is striking. A thoroughly operatic/theatrical telling of the story of Charles Bronson, the most notorious prisoner in Britain. Unlike Chopper, which benefited from a charismatic central character, Bronson is a charmless psychopath. An idiot savant when it comes to violence. There's plenty to like in the film, it's direction is wholly original and the storytelling is engaging, but Bronson isn't a nice guy. He doesn't know what he wants, but he'll hurt anyone for attention. Definitely brilliant, but hard to take, it's proof Winding Refn is one of the brightest directors working today.
The Yes Men Fix The World
Since the last doco I saw on these guys, I've occasionally heard about activist pranks they've pulled. The best was passing themselves off as spokesmen for Dow Chemicals, and promising restitution for the people of Bhopal, site of the Union Carbide chemical plant disaster. Interestingly, in the film they cut their speech slightly (the original can be found online). I'm assuming promising to extradite a Union Carbide official who skipped bail and fled India for Long Island wasn't something they could get past the lawyers for a cinema release. It's a story of pranks carried out to raise awareness of how corporations and governments abuse their people in pursuit of something known as the free market. And they point out that despite a global financial crisis caused by unrestrained greed, government is still keen on an unregulated market. It's kinda depressing. The pranks are funny, the trouble they get themselves into is kinda scary, but the highlight of the film has to be something they had nothing to do with. A free market thinktank, in an effort to scuttle ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, devised an ad campaign that promoted Carbon Dioxide as the source of life. It's an hysterical piece of doublethink, but it just goes to show, you can sell anything if you can find the right angle.
Those Northern European countries must have something in the water. Either that or the constant daylight or darkness really gets to them. This is a very odd gangster comedy from Iceland, where David is somewhat ashamed of his life as a debt collector, mainly because he isn't very good at it. He dreams of being a martial artist, but never got past buying a bunch of instructional videos. And his brother was killed in a hit and run as a child. When his girlfriend kicks him out, he moves into a new apartment block with a landlord who might be the guy who killed his brother, might be a criminal mastermind, or might just be a racist schoolteacher going off the deep end. David starts talking up his relationship to the maybe kingpin, and suddenly his gangster superiors start to take him seriously. It's all dry wit and ridiculous situations played straight, and it goes nowhere, but the characters are charming and very likeable. Just a fun film really.
Bronson
I've never seen Nicholas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy, but I did see Fear X, a film that had an amazing mood to it. This is similar, in that it's sensibility is striking. A thoroughly operatic/theatrical telling of the story of Charles Bronson, the most notorious prisoner in Britain. Unlike Chopper, which benefited from a charismatic central character, Bronson is a charmless psychopath. An idiot savant when it comes to violence. There's plenty to like in the film, it's direction is wholly original and the storytelling is engaging, but Bronson isn't a nice guy. He doesn't know what he wants, but he'll hurt anyone for attention. Definitely brilliant, but hard to take, it's proof Winding Refn is one of the brightest directors working today.
The Yes Men Fix The World
Since the last doco I saw on these guys, I've occasionally heard about activist pranks they've pulled. The best was passing themselves off as spokesmen for Dow Chemicals, and promising restitution for the people of Bhopal, site of the Union Carbide chemical plant disaster. Interestingly, in the film they cut their speech slightly (the original can be found online). I'm assuming promising to extradite a Union Carbide official who skipped bail and fled India for Long Island wasn't something they could get past the lawyers for a cinema release. It's a story of pranks carried out to raise awareness of how corporations and governments abuse their people in pursuit of something known as the free market. And they point out that despite a global financial crisis caused by unrestrained greed, government is still keen on an unregulated market. It's kinda depressing. The pranks are funny, the trouble they get themselves into is kinda scary, but the highlight of the film has to be something they had nothing to do with. A free market thinktank, in an effort to scuttle ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, devised an ad campaign that promoted Carbon Dioxide as the source of life. It's an hysterical piece of doublethink, but it just goes to show, you can sell anything if you can find the right angle.
posted by Andrew Lee at 11:30 PM
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