Piranha 3D

Gleefully silly, and hysterically funny, it's very honest about what it is and dives in with wild abandon. Cheesy, entertaining 3D makes a comeback. Read the review here.

UPDATE: The film is THIS good. Fair sentiment really, especially for Elizabeth Shue.

Four Lions

Chris Morris's blackest moment since Paedogeddon, and also incredibly funny. Well worth checking out. Read the review here.

The Clinic

A genuinely twisted idea set inside a relatively conventional horror/thriller, a bit more inventiveness could have seen this one really make a mark, but it's still alright. Not one for expectant mothers. Read the review here.

The Expendables

Go get your action fix and lament how anaemic most action films seem by comparison. Review here.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Go see it. NOW!

Splice

An appropriate title, there's a bit of Cronenberg DNA hiding in this fun little film. Well worth it. Read the review here.

MIFF Day 17

The last day of the festival, sniff...

SUMMER WARS

Wow, I had no idea what to expect with this one. It was anime, and that was enough. But I've seen enough bad anime to be ready for disappointment. This is a ripper story. Expertly blending teen romance, hacker fantasy, family drama, apocalyptic disaster and a generous heaping of comedy, Summer Wars is highly original both in storytelling and in visuals. The bare ingredients are nothing new, but the way they've been assembled makes for a very satisfying story, and an incredible visual experience. It's not perfect, there's a slight lag towards the end of the second act, but it picks up again quick enough not to matter too much. I believe it will be showing at the Nova in early September as part of the Reel Anime festival, go see it.

WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY

The strength and the failure of this doco is that it's an insider account of the period when Disney Animation went from being a joke headed for the scrapheap (The Black Cauldron) to a major force once again (The Lion King). 1984 to 1994 effectively. The level of access is great, as it's all the guys who worked there telling their own history, and rarely pulling punches in how they disliked their new management, how overworked they became, and how egos at the top ended up ruining everything. But because it's an insider story, there's a level of presumed knowledge that isn't going to be present in every audience member. It's not a brilliantly made doco, rather it's a collage of old footage dubbed with the reminiscences of some of the key players, either recorded from the time, or sometimes specially for the doco. The way the studio turned itself around isn't really explained or explored in any depth, it just happened with some new management apparently. Again, perhaps if you were there you wouldn't think that needed to be explained, but to the viewing public a bit more information would have helped. Interesting, but frustrating as it gives us just enough to want to know more, then pulls back.

CATERPILLAR

Early on, I thought this was going to turn into a horror film. The basic story is this, a Japanese soldier, injured in WWII, is returned home. He's lost all four of his limbs and is deaf and half-dumb. It turns out he used to be quite abusive to his wife, who is now tasked with caring for him. Apparently this involves a lot of moderately graphic amputee sex, and feeding him. Slowly, she becomes more abusive to him as he becomes more and more demanding. But this isn't the story, as the film only has these moments in fragments. The real story is that war is awful, making heroes of its victims to continue its cycle. And Caterpillar bludgeons you over the head with this fact repeatedly. So much so that what felt like the end of the film turns out to be the end of the second act. There's a whole (and totally pointless) third act to restate this over and over again. It doesn't amount to a whole lot in the end, diluting a potentially powerful story of two people, both victims of violence, struggling to cope with the effects. Instead, we get a fairly tepid anti-war propaganda piece. And it's really badly shot too, an ugly video to film transfer. Such a missed opportunity.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD

Oh hell yeah! Edgar Wright is a DJ, remixing the awesomeness that is the Scott Pilgrim comic series, blending in his own rhythms and beats and transforming it into something different yet familiar and still totally awesome. I'll be doing a full review for this on Cinephilia for its release this Thursday, but don't wait to read it, just go. It's great.

MIFF Day 16

One sleep to go until Scott Pilgrim!!!

THE HUNTER

This is what you call a "Festival Film". I doubt it would successfully screen anywhere else. It's too sketchy to be a crowd-pleaser and not smart enough to be an arthouse success. It does have an effective use of Radiohead's Hunting Bears (off Amnesiac) as a recurring score, the lone twang of the electric guitar working well to highlight the loneliness of our protagonist, Ali. But really that's the highlight. Rafi Pitts plays Ali, as well as writing and directing. Possibly he thought his on-screen charisma would be enough to carry the underwritten material, but like The Robber, the film never really allows us access to Ali, so sympathy is limited. The basic ideas are good, a humble man, a former prisoner, works night shifts to provide for his wife and daughter. When they're killed in the crossfire between insurgents and police, he retaliates by killing a few police officers and then gets hunted. But he's a hunter, so in theory the chase should be interesting. It's not. Instead we get a crappy third act where two corrupt officers capture him almost immediately then march him around the forest while they bicker. Maybe it was meant to be an expose of how the police are corrupt and incompetent, but it doesn't really work. Ultimately none of it connects. It's enjoyable enough while you still think there might be some intelligence about to surface, there's a sense of it bubbling below the surface. But that's why it's a "Film Festival" film. It teases with a sense of its own importance, but never delivers. Disappointing.

NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT

A beautiful and disturbing meditation on history and its importance in our lives. Beginning with some spectacular shots of a telescope in the middle of the Atacama desert in Chile, it had me thinking this would go well with Baraka. The time-lapse nightscapes are spectacular and the deep-space photography is gorgeous. But then it surprises, as an astronomer compares himself to an archaeologist, both deal in the past. The light received through the telescope is a record of something in the past. And history fills the Atacama desert, as an archaeologist discusses the rock carvings and mummified remains found there. All this serves a purpose, as the film turns its attention to the atrocities under the reign of General Pinochet, and the countless thousands of "disappeared", many of whom were put into mass graves in the same desert. Shifting to the wives and daughters of missing men who comb the desert hoping to find the bodies of their beloveds, director Patricio Guzman speaks of the need to learn from history, to examine it and to remember it. He is clearly bothered by people's desire to move on without examining the past, and contrasts the learnings from science with the refusal to learn from the nation's violent history, something he does not shy away from showing in graphic and disturbing detail. The film is not 100% successful in making the connection, but it's a visually beautiful and original take on the importance of history in our lives, and a disturbing reminder of the horrors that for some Chileans have still not been put to rest.

MIFF Day 15

Dammit, somehow I've done my neck. Hopefully it goes away before tomorrow...

MY DOG TULIP

Anyone who has ever owned a dog should see this film. Gross and disgusting in the most charming way possible, it's magical the way it takes all the little things, the annoyances and the joys of pet ownership, and transforms them into something wonderful. J.R. Ackerley's fictionalised memoir of his time with his Alsatian Tulip (in real life her name was Queenie) is brought to life with an idiosyncratic animation style, mixing fully coloured scenes with others resembling pencil tests and notebook scribblings. It all works together seamlessly to evoke the different emotions or ideas of the novel, read aloud by Christopher Plummer. All the more impressive is the fact the film is almost solely the work of a husband and wife team, Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. This really is a gem of a film, visualising one man's account of the only constant and reliable relationship he ever seemed to have, and the joy it brought him.

THE BLACKS

Genocide is awful, even for the perpetrators, so this film tells us. It's an oppressive, claustrophobic story, detailing an illegal mission to kill some Serbians after a ceasefire has been decreed. The mission fails, and we then flashback to the events leading up to it. There's the leader, who kills people in his garage and hides it from his wife, a convict who has lied that he knows how to use explosives in order to be released from prison, and sundry others who are all traumatised in their own ways. There's not much to the story, just people being miserable yet unwilling to step out of the cycle of violence. The mood is expertly handled and conveys how trapped these men are. It doesn't ask for sympathy, instead showing how ordinary people are capable of awful things. Not a nice film, and not particularly enjoyable, but it's not a bad one either.

MIFF Day 14

A sequel that's not exactly a sequel, mumblemumblemumble, a thriller...

LIFE DURING WARTIME

Todd Solondz has his shtick down perfectly these days, awkward and blackly funny character interactions full of horrific people being mundanely awful to each other. It's what he does, and he does it well. But where do you go when everyone knows what to expect? Apparently he makes a sequel to his most famous film, Happiness, with an entirely new cast playing the character. Philip Seymour Hoffman's phone pervert Allen is played by a thin black man (Michael Kenneth Williams), now married to Joy (Shirley Henderson, and originally played by Jane Adams). She's "taking a break" from the marriage after discovering he's still secretly menacing women over the phone, his shame and fear both funny and deeply touching. She's also menaced by the ghost of her ex-boyfriend Andy, while her sister Trish (Allison Janney) is trying to move on with her life after her husband went to prison for child molesting, she's met a new man she intends to marry. Her son Timmy, now about the age of Billy back in Happiness, discovers his dad isn't dead like he was told, and learns he's the son of a convicted paedophile. The confusion and fear that all the characters experience as they struggle with ideas of forgiveness and reconciliation is fully exploited for humour as abrasive as paint stripper, but damn if it isn't funny. But Solondz is still stuck with his problem, he's doing what people expect of him. How do you shock your audience when they know all your tricks? He pulls off a brilliant move, which initially annoyed me but now I'm starting to admire it. He stops being nasty, and ends with a sad and genuine moment of lostness and grief. The end is abrupt, giving no closure, leaving your with nothing but the overwhelming sadness of the characters and not a single laugh to let out the tension. From exploiting the evils of the world for pitch black comedy, Solondz suddenly renders it starkly as the awful human tragedy that it is. It's new territory for Solondz, and I'm impressed.

BEESWAX

Why the hell did I book this film? I hate mumblecore films. I really really really really hate them. Why did I book it? Because I saw Funny Ha Ha a few years ago by accident when it was a last-minute replacement for another film I'd planned to see. Andrew Bujalski impressed me then, because for its many flaws, I really enjoyed it. This film isn't as good, though it has its moments. Mostly it just wears on you however, as the um/uh/hmm/yeah/iknow dialogue delivery method has long since worn out its welcome. Mumblecore is the new Dogma, a way of pretending crap filmmaking has merit. Though I'll be fair, Beeswax has some good moments, engaging characters, and a semblance of a plot. But it runs too long, and the end is crap. I'm disappointed, Bujalski has done better in the past.

BLAME

A fun little aussie thriller, as a bunch of school friends attempt to murder their dead friend's piano teacher. Apparently he'd had an affair with her when she was sixteen, and three years later she's suicided, and they're out for revenge. The plan is simple, attack him, fake a suicide and then be on their way. But what starts out looking fairly straightforward becomes more and more complex as the truth of the situation is teased out, and the poor bastard just won't die. The real villain is easy to pick from the get go, but the tension is whether the other characters will work this out. It's not gonna rock your world, but it's the best made aussie entry to the festival I've seen, and beats the more hyped Red Hill and The Tree for solid craftsmanship and genuinely good storytelling.

MIFF Day 13

Thirteen is my lucky number...

SWEETGRASS

Into Great Silence for sheep farmers. This is a gentle and contemplative film that evocatively shows a way of life that has now passed into history. Between 2001 and 2003, the filmmakers recorded the ritual of farmers herding sheep high up into the Montana Rockies to graze over summer. A practice no longer allowed. Watching the men and women ride their horses up into the mountains, their sheep a giant cloud of white moving across the green hills, the tents that become home, the nightly watch guarding against bears or worse, all these things are filmed with delicate beauty. There is a sense of awe in the landscape they inhabit, leavened by the cowboys swearing their heads off at the intractable sheep refusing to stay where they want them. It's a slow film, but a wonderful one.

GARBO: THE SPY

Joan Pujol Garcia was a Spanish-born, London-based agent for Germany during the Second World War. Or at least, that's what the German's thought. Determined to be of use during the war, he approached the British and offered his services and was refused. Undeterred, he went straight to the Germans and got a job with them. He invented fake informants, a massive network of agents of which he was the spymaster, and fed his German controllers a steady stream of information. Information he faked by reading newspapers and magazines and crossing his fingers they believed him. Then he went to the British again, and was refused again. So he tried the Americans, who contacted the British, and finally someone realised the potential of Joan and brought him to England. With his British spymaster, Garbo became pivotal in feeding the Germans as much junk information as possible, while still telling the truth enough to remain credible. So successful were his deceptions that he convinced them that the D-Day invasion of Normandy was a simple feint to distract attention from the Allies real target of Pas De Calais. The Germans held their forces back from Normandy, allowing the Allies to turn the tide of the war. Little is known about the man, but his exploits are amazing, all done without a single shot being fired. He received the Iron Cross after the war, the Germans never suspecting he had been a double agent. When the British learned this, they gave him an MBE. The film blends narration, interviews and footage from old spy films to tell the fantastic tale, which gives it a wonderful kick. Well worth a look.

LEMMY

It's a film about Lemmy, what more do you need to know? I could easily criticise the structure of the film, there's a false ending about two thirds of the way through, then a sudden re-start of more talking-heads and new revelations about the man and his way of life, but it gets away with it because it's all about Lemmy. The man is fascinating, a living legend. Check it out.

WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE: A FILM ABOUT THE DOORS

Consisting entirely of archival footage narrated by Johnny Depp (channelling the tone he used to deliver "The Great Wave" monologue in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas), this is an enlightening story of a band that only existed for 54 months. Interspersed are pieces of footage of Morrison from the 1969 film HWY: An American Pastoral, seemingly to suggest he's still roaming the American backroads, which is cute but kind of unnecessary. The total absence of any talking head interviews is an interesting choice, making it a story told entirely in narration and image. The trick works, with Depp's voice lending an authoritative tone to the film, a genuine history of a band and a singer who struggled to cope with his fame while feeding on it as well. It's astonishing that so much footage of the band exists, but it's a boon to the audience, as we see the band on stage and in recording sessions. Most music docos would kill for this kind of access, to get it so long after the fact is a minor miracle. A great document of a band whose impact is felt to this day.

MIFF Day 12

Only two films today, that's effectively a breather.

THE SECOND CIVIL WAR

Made for HBO, Joe Dante's 1997 political satire is a bit muddled but amazingly prescient. Dante himself commented in his introduction that the film doesn't seem to date, elements may be less obvious at some times than others, but it's packed with so many things that remain current issues that it's depressing. It analyses the impact of the 24 hour news network on politics, the lack of time to absorb and think on information, image politics, sex scandals, military triumphalism and national identity. The fears of a nation overrun with immigrants is played to hilarious effect, with nobody in LA speaking English, just Mexican, and Rhode Island dominated by Chinese refugees who don't want any more immigrants. The basic story is that Idaho closes its borders to a group of Pakistani refugees, which triggers a constitutional crisis ending in a second civil war. There's a lot to love, with great performances from Beau Bridges as the Governor of Idaho, and Phil Hartman as the puppet President. Unfortunately, it starts to lose its way towards the end, and becomes maudlin and sentimental as it views the horrors unleashed by political chicanery, which grates with the fairly savage tone the rest of the film maintains. This results in the final misunderstanding that causes open hostilities not being nearly as funny as it could be. Still, very entertaining and unlikely to date anytime soon, more's the shame.

COLLAPSE

Michael Ruppert has been variously described as a prophet, a conspiracy theorist, and batshit insane. This film is really just a monologue, as Ruppert explains how his understanding of Peak Oil and economic theory has led him to the conclusion that society is destined for collapse. There's nothing new in what he says, but one thing that sadly isn't explored is how he did predict, from his analysis, the economic meltdown that hit the US. He was warning about mortgage-backed derivatives long before anyone else realised they were worse than junk bonds. I would have liked to have heard more about his analytical process, but beyond him ranting that mainstream media isn't worth listening to, you don't learn anything about his information sources or research methods. Those things could have lent him a lot of credibility, but instead we just listen to him rave like a mad preacher. By the end of the film, it's hard to escape the conclusion that this is a very lonely man who is slightly unhinged. His most emotional moment comes when he speaks about the power of community to save us, and I felt it was as much a plea as a statement. Since the documentary was made, he's given up the doomsday business and writes music, while struggling to pay his rent. It doesn't tell you anything you don't know already, but it's a good character study of someone driven slightly mad by the impotence of his situation.

MIFF Day 11

A solid day of entertaining films, not a dud amongst them. Woohoo!

THE ROBBER

Based on a true story, this is the life and crimes of Johann Rettenberger, a man who won marathons and robbed banks. The film begins with him running in circles around the prison yard, then follows him as he's released and begins a new string of bank robberies. It's like a perverse form of training, as he runs to escape the police with a heart monitor strapped on. The film is entertaining, directed with confidence and an eye for an exciting chase sequence, but it never lets us inside. Why he did what he did remains enigmatic. The most likely answer is that he just wanted the thrill of winning, the sense of beating the system, but the film gives no answers and never really even tries to ask the question. It just follows a life lived on an adrenaline high, and so is unsurprisingly a great ride.

WILD TARGET

Remakes of French screwball comedies are risky business, but occasionally they come off spectacularly. True Lies is the obvious example, a film vastly superior to the clever but rather dull original. Wild Target is a similar example, at least from my movie-overloaded memory. I recall watching the original and not liking it a lot, but I'll have to revisit it after sitting through this laugh-fest. Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt are key to the enjoyment, their performances are pitch perfect, and nobody can do a sudden 180 degree turn on the spot more comically than Nighy (check out Shaun of the Dead). The plot is simple but fun, a hitman finds himself unable to kill his target, but can't explain why. He's in love, obviously, but the feeling is so new to him he can't acknowledge it. The story plays with this a little, to great comic effect, as he wonders if he's not attracted to his new (male) apprentice. Director Jonathan Lynn has had a spotty record as a director, but here he nails it with a very funny crowd pleaser.

LOVE IN A PUFF

Pang Ho Cheung is one of my favourite directors. I've long lamented I skipped the MIFF screening of his first film, You Shoot, I Shoot for a job interview. I would have loved to have experienced that in a packed out cinema. I did get the job though, so at least I got a consolation prize. We haven't seen his films at MIFF for a while now, the last I remember was Beyond our Ken, a black comedy about relationships. Love in a Puff revisits that territory, but this time tells a love story instead of destroying one. The conceit is great too; with smoking outlawed in almost all public places, smokers congregate in alleys and stairwells to share a smoke. This forced camaraderie leads to Jimmy and Cherie meeting and striking up a friendship that slowly develops into something more. All the while, they live like fugitives, hiding from police as they smoke. There's some awesome visual gags showing the lengths to which people will go to get away with a smoke, and anyone who remembers the run on corner stores when the cigarette tax went up will nod in sympathy with the third act. Incredibly funny, touching and sweet, Pang remains a director I love.

RUBBER

No Reason. That's what this film celebrates. In an opening monologue, a police officer explains that "No Reason" is a core part of life, and of all great cinema. And this is definitely great cinema, as well as being the most entertaining meta-narrative analysing the storytelling process I've seen since Jose Chung's From Outer Space, way back when The X-Files was an interesting show to watch. Rubber is unadulterated, unhinged insane genius. The story of Robert the psychotic tyre who can explode your head with his psychic powers is destined to become a cult classic, a film you keep on DVD to show anyone unlucky enough to not have seen it yet. And unlike most off-the-wall films, this one has excellent acting, awesome special effects and cinematography (by the director himself) so good that Soderbergh would be jealous. The most original film I've seen in years, and one of the funniest.

MIFF Day 10

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me... Ah, what a good birthday it was, mostly.

THE WOMAN WITH THE FIVE ELEPHANTS

Svetlana Geier is a remarkable woman. Born in the Ukraine, her father was a victim of Stalin's purges, but was one of barely 1000 who were released from prison. He died later due to his injuries sustained during torture. Things looked bad for Svetlana and her mother, but then the Germans invaded, and were hailed as liberators. Svetlana and her mother went to work for the Germans, and she translated from Russian to German and vice versa for the occupying forces while her mother kept house for the top brass. She speaks of the terrible moment when her Jewish friends were killed. Nobody believed such a thing could happen, that the rumours were simply anti-German propaganda. It did happen, but to this day she cannot connect the horror of the massacre to the officer she served. She's obviously upset, but she has her reasons for believing in the decency of her employer. With the war against Russia going badly, the Germans sent her and her mother to Freiburg, and at great personal risk got them German non-resident passports as well as a scholarship to study. The result of this was that the men who showed her and her mother kindness were sent to the Eastern Front to die fighting Russia. Svetlana says that for all the horrors she knows the German Army perpetrated, she will always remain grateful to those men for the life they allowed her to lead, free from Stalin and the victimisation she would have suffered simply for being her father's daughter. They did not have to do it, but they put themselves on the line for her, and suffered the consequences. Now a grandmother, Svetlana still lives in Germany and teaches and translates. She has translated the works of Dostoyevsky - her 5 elephants. And in this she speaks of his themes, of the need for personal freedom, and the cost of it. Of purity of action as well as of motive. And also of the need to do more than simply translate word for word, but to see the work as a whole and translate that. Her outlook on life is fascinating, and her view that language is a force for change and for understanding is a compelling one. She is a remarkable and thoughtful woman, and if you get the chance to see this doco you should take it, because some people illuminate the world and she is definitely one of them.

ANIMATION SHORTS 2

Superior in every way to yesterday's offering, there are two that stand head and shoulders above everything else. The Astronomer's Sun is a beautifully designed stop-motion, brief and powerful, you'll be in tears by the end. And Maska is the latest short by the Quay Brothers, those masters of surrealist stop-motion, based on a short story by Stanislaw Lem. It's beautiful, lurid and totally awesome. I hadn't realised we'd be getting a Quay Brother's piece, and the surprise of it just increased my enjoyment.

LIKE A DREAM

I've often made the point that the end of a film is more important than the start, since the end defines that path just taken, while the beginning is allowed to be uncertain. Often it's more interesting that way. Cut twenty minutes from this and it would be a decent film, but to quote myself again, as I said with The Tree yesterday, Magic Realism is very hard to get right. The story of a man who repeatedly dreams of a girl, then meets her in Shanghai, only to discover she is a fairly crude factory worker, not the refined girl of his dreams. As the two of them try to find the real girl from his dreams, the story takes the promising path of learning to accept reality rather than fantasy, and embrace life rather than hide from it in dreams. Sadly, it decides to go all weird, with the girl of his dreams actually being a real person who dreamed of him too, in a strange third act reveal of their psychic connection. It's rubbish, and all the worst parts of the film exist here. Add to that some truly awful acting by supporting characters, a few misjudged monologues and a sense that too many filmmakers worship Wong Kar Wai, and well, this just fails. Which is a shame, because there's a good film hiding inside it all and the two leads are really great.

SPLICE

I like Vincenzo Natali, Cube was a great little film, Cypher was a lot of fun, and you have to see Nothing, a comedy about solipsism and misanthropy that's just awesome. Splice is his latest film, and with a bigger budget than usual, he's delivered a fun little monster movie. Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley star as Clive and Elsa, biotech researchers working for NERD (gotta love the humour). They've created a new lifeform to create vaccines and medicines that can be patented and sold, but now they want to take things to the next level and include human DNA in their creations. Told no, but doing it anyhow, they create Dren (spell it backwards...) a weird creature that rapidly grows up into a strange and oddly beautiful young woman, assuming you find multi-jointed legs and a tail with a venomous stinger at the end attractive. What follows is closer to Cronenberg's The Fly than Shelley's Frankenstein, but both have clearly influenced the story. It's a clever mix of horror and family comedy, though the comedy is very black and the family is very messed up. It won't set your world on fire, but it's a really enjoyable film with some great performances, cool effects and some surprising twists in its tail.