MIFF Day 10

Officially past the midpoint now, and the last of the crazy five film days. I'm getting old...

TATSUMI

Based on Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Eisner award winning autobiographical graphic novel, A Drifting Life, as well as a number of his other works, Tatsumi is a beautifully animated introduction to a side of manga and anime we don't often see. Gekiga, a more adult form of manga, is what this is, and Tatsumi is credited with inventing it. Rumour even has it that Osamu Tezuka was so jealous of its success he fell down the stairs of his house. The stories told are mature, thoughtful and disturbing. Adult here doesn't mean pornographic, it means for adults. There's a photographer who documents the aftermath of Hiroshima, taking an iconic photo only to discover its meaning to be far sinister than he thought. There's a sexually repressed manga artist who becomes obsessed with the crudely drawn pornography on a toilet wall. A retiring salaryman longs for one fling before he finds himself trapped at home in his loveless marriage. Most disturbing is the story of a girl who sleeps with American GI's, and is hassled by her father. The stories are all grim, but full of the beauty of fallen humanity. I was lamenting the lack of animation at this year's festival, but Tatsumi makes up for it. I loved it.

PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES

Print journalism is fighting for its life, everyone can see this, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. This insightful documentary examines life behind the scenes at the New York Times as it struggles with maintaining a high standard of journalism in the face of diminishing revenue. It covers their involvement with Wikileaks, as well as their failures with two serious scandals as journalists turn out to be faking stories or neglecting their investigative duty. You see how serious these people are about quality journalism, and their fears about what it would mean for print journalism to go away. One of the most pointed moments occurs in a debate between Michael Wolff, the founder of Newser.com, and David Carr, the NYT media reporter. Wolff disparages "old media", but is silenced when Carr shows him what the front page of his website would look like without all the articles culled from newspapers... An almost empty page. It's a striking image that shows how dependent (or is that parasitic?) "new media" news sites are on print journalists for their content. It's a thoughtful documentary that leaves you wondering what the future holds for actual, quality journalism. As they say in the film, 1000 bloggers quoting each other isn't the same as someone actually going into a warzone to report on what's going on. Go see this when it his mainstream release, if only to watch David Carr lay the smackdown on half a dozen blogging punks. It really is glorious to watch.

POSITION AMONG THE STARS

The third in a trilogy of documentaries (which I haven't seen), I'm not entirely convinced this is documentary in the traditional sense of the word. There's too much editing between shots, standard angle/reverse angle stuff as well as establishing shots, etc. It feels a bit staged. But at the same time, I don't doubt the truth of what we see. Some of it might be re-enactments of events, but I think it's mostly telling the truth of life in the slums of Jakarta. It's a slice of life story, a bit bleak, a bit hopeful, a bit funny. There's no narrative running through it, it's just stuff happening, but it's engaging and the subjects are all interesting people.

BEGINNERS

Christopher Plummer plays Hal, who at 75 comes out to his son Oliver, played by Ewen McGregor. He's known he's been gay his whole life, and so did his wife, but she didn't care and proposed to him anyway. It's a light and airy story about finding yourself, breaking free of the restrictive ways of your past and embracing life. Though with the amount of lo-fi visual gimmickry used, it feels to me too much like a whimsical 90's American indie film. Director Mike Mills gets away with it, and it really is a very lovely film, but the style feels like a throwback. Halfway through MIFF, I'm starting to wonder if there are still filmmakers out there interested in advancing the medium.

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

Having just bemoaned the mimicry of older film fads, there's this fun little number that glories in seedy grindhouse style. Though truthfully, while this film, like Machete, was first born as a trailer for the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse project, grindhouse isn't quite where this film finds its DNA. It's more a Troma film with good actors and a budget. Rutger Hauer is the titular Hobo, and it's not long before he's found himself a hooker with a heart of gold to be his sidekick. The cliches come thick and fast, as do the grotesque one-liners and splat-tacular gore and violence. It's a genuinely unhinged film, complete with armoured demon bounty hunters with a pet tentacle beast. An audience film for sure, you'll want to be laughing and cheering with others as it gets more and more absurd and over-the-top. Good silly fun.

MIFF Day 9

I skipped Day 8. I didn't want to, but it was MIFF or Pulp. Pulp won (and was bloody awesome).

HANEZU

At the end of Hanezu there's a title card letting you know the film is dedicated to the spirits of an ancient Japanese capital that's currently being excavated. When I read that, all I wanted to know was what those spirits had done to the filmmaker to make her hate them so much. Walkouts used to be a common thing at MIFF, but less so in recent years. This film brought those memories flooding back as people kept getting up to leave. I stuck it out, but there was nothing redeeming about the experience. It's a ponderously arty story about a woman seeing two men, and screwing them both over while professing to love them. But it's so boring you just don't care. How you take a love triangle and make it boring I don't know, but I saw it happen. Awful awful film.

DREILEBEN - DON'T FOLLOW ME AROUND

The second of three supposedly standalone films set in a town where a killer is hiding in the woods. Either this one was poorly written, or else it's not really a standalone film. There was a lot going on that I knew obviously referred to other events, even though the characters were clearly only part of this episode of the series. I'm thinking of it as the German Red Riding trilogy, but it felt less successful. That said, it wasn't a bad film. The main plot concerns two friends who discover they dated the same guy at the same time before they met each other. There's some pretty serious leaps of logic in character motivation, and the grand reveal is obvious from the beginning, but it was enjoyable enough. I wish I'd booked myself in for the trilogy now, because I'm intrigued. On its own though, not a great film, but it passed the time pleasantly enough.

ANIMATION SHORTS

If I have one major complaint about MIFF this year, it's the lack of an animation sidebar. It's not like there isn't a whole bunch of astonishingly good feature animations out there at the moment, and I was dying to see them. But no such luck, there's very little this year. And there was very little on show here too, sadly. Out of the 10 short films shown, only 3 really stood out. The Mechanism of Spring was a little charmer from Japan, no plot to speak of, just a stream of consciousness with an infectious joy to it. Specky Four Eyes was a French black and white work about a boy who prefers to see the world without his glasses, a world where the blurred images form another world. It was a brilliant little piece about childhood imagination, and the things we lose when we grow up. Miss Remarkable & Her Career was a Swedish film about a young woman struggling with the weight of parental expectation on her life. Smartly using the medium to advance the storytelling, it surreally depicts her struggles with depression and inadequacy, showing her unique perspective on life. A really great piece.

POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS: THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD

Morgan Spurlock is back, and in fine form. After the debacle that was Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden, he's back tackling a subject his gonzo approach is well suited to: product placement. A film about product placement in film, fully financed by corporate partners advertising their wares in the film, Spurlock flies Jet Blue, stays at Hyatt hotels, and drinks a lot of Pom. It's a brilliant example of having your cake and eating it too. While he's very respectful to the brands he's promoting in the film, he also gets to make you aware of how much effort goes into getting brands attached to films, and the science that's behind it. Knowing that there are people showing people ads while they're in an MRI machine so they can better structure movie trailers is both absurdly funny and disturbing. And that's pretty much what this film is, funny and disturbing. Another great and unusual doco from a great and unusual filmmaker.

Captain America: The First Avenger

The subtitle is stupid, and obviously just a marketing gimmick for next year's The Avengers, but ignore the marketing and enjoy the film, it's great fun. Review here.

MIFF Day 7

Is it the absence of daylight that attracts strange mutant creatures to MIFF?

OKI'S MOVIE

There was a very strange man sitting next to me during this movie. He had breathing problems, laughed maniacally for about a minute at the beginning and then talked at the screen every now and again. He looked like an overweight Michael Rymer (who has a film at MIFF this year). Strange.

And then there was the film. For the love of God, would filmmakers stop thinking that films about filmmaking are interesting! It's narcissism of epic proportions. And bloody lazy writing. That said, while Hong Sang Soo is on my shitlist for severe cinematic wankery, I kinda liked Oki's Movie a bit too. There's plenty to hate, and hate it I do, but there's also some great scenes. Overall it's kinda like Littlerock. I didn't mind it at an emotional level, but I despise much of it on a formal level. Total wank, but not unpleasant to watch in parts.

KHODORKOVSKY

I remember hearing about Mikhail Khodorkovsky when he was arrested back in 2003. He was described as a political prisoner who had run afoul of Vladimir Putin. This doco delves not just into his imprisonment, but also how he came to be the richest man in Russia. What unfolds is the story of a man who isn't exactly a hero to the oppressed. He's one of the men who seized the chance to take possession of state assets, unquestionably via corrupt means, and transformed it into something great. But as his wealth grew, so apparently did his social conscience. And then he made the mistake of taking on Putin. There's little doubt that the charges against him are mostly trumped up, but what's interesting is the speculation around why he chose to return to Russia, having been warned he was going to be arrested. The idea that he has political ambitions, and that prison will give him credentials that his wealth couldn't buy is an interesting one. He's in prison for at least another six years, but it will be interesting to see what happens to him once Putin is gone and he is released.

THE REDEMPTION OF GENERAL BUTT NAKED

I'm only midway through MIFF, but I'm calling this the best documentary of the festival. Joshua Milton Blahyi was known as General Butt Naked during the Liberian civil war. He and his soldiers ran into battle naked, terrifying their enemies and committing countless atrocities on the civilian population. By his own estimate, he's responsible for at least 20,000 deaths. But something happened. A local Bishop felt called by God to tell him he needed to repent of his sins. And he did, and then he vanished. Ten years later he reappeared in the capital as an evangelist preaching the love of God and seeking the forgiveness of everyone whose lives he destroyed. I personally have the view that no repentance is genuine unless the person has a complete acceptance of the consequences of their actions. And Blahyi seems to. He was the first person to testify at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, fully aware that he might be put on trial for his crimes with his confession used as evidence against him. He sought out his former child soldiers and rescued them from the streets they were living on, got them off drugs and set up a group home to help them. But then death threats were made against him and he fled to Ghana. Some of the men he was helping ended up back on the streets, some of them didn't. And in the end, he can't take the guilt of running away and comes back. It's an extraordinary portrait of the struggles of a man who has done unspeakable things to cope with his guilt, his faith and his past. He's anything but perfect, and half the time you wonder if he might be faking the whole thing, but that idea doesn't stack up against everything he does. He knows what he did, and he knows it's never going to leave him, but he's doing his best to atone. It'll test the limits of your faith, if you have one, and make you think hard about what it takes to genuinely turn a life around. Confronting, provocative and completely brilliant filmmaking.

MIFF Day 6

Truth is stranger than fiction...

PROJECT NIM

The story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee taken from his mother at birth and raised as a human, taught sign language and then abandoned when that experiment ran its course. This all happened before ethics boards I'm assuming, since most of what took place was adhoc and ill-considered. He's first placed in a family but given no structure for learning, though he's given pot. Then he's taken away, raised by others and taught to sign properly, but they don't understand he's a wild animal until he starts assaulting them, almost killing two research assistants. The plug is pulled on the project and Nim is returned to a cage where he's miserable. From there he's sold to an animal testing lab, only to be rescued by well-meaning but completely clueless animal activists who lock him up in another cage. Finally, he lives out his final days with a few other chimps and while it's not perfect, it's pretty good. The story is crazy, and a lot of the people involved are crazy too. There's some pretty damning admissions, and disturbing footage of animal testing. And all in all it's a very sad story of the cost on an animal of the pursuit of knowledge.

BUNCE

A short film written by Stephen Fry, immortalising his debt to a boy named Bunce who once upon a yesteryear helped a young Stephen Fry indulge his love of sweets. It's funny to see the now elder Fry play a headmaster telling "himself" off, and the writing is as sharp as you'd expect from such a wit. Good fun.

THE GUARD

A showcase for how awesome Brendan Gleeson is (though The General proved that point over a decade ago), The Guard is the story of Gerry Boyle, the local cop in a small village that is suddenly the focus of a major operation to catch some drug smugglers. Gerry glides through, making inappropriate comments, sampling the wares and cleverly disguising the fact that he's a lot smarter than everyone else. Don Cheadle as the FBI agent sent across is just there to be the straight man, but he plays it very well. It's a very Irish sense of humour that pervades, dry and black, with wall to wall laughs. It's out in a week or two, so go check it out, it's a cack.

INTO ETERNITY

In Finland, it's been decided that the way to deal with their nuclear waste is to build a massive underground bunker and store it there, filling it back up with rock and sealing it for the next 100,000 years. This doco is meant to be a message to anyone who comes upon the site and imagines it's anything other than one of the most deadly places on earth and tries to excavate. I personally found the whole thing rather patronising and foolish, as it's structured and presented as if speaking to little children, telling fairytales about how deadly the place is. I was told after the screening by someone that's it's fairly normal behaviour for the Northern Europeans, no ambiguity. So it's probably just me. But still, I found it a ponderous and pretentious piece of work, though the information within was genuinely grim and thought provoking.

TABLOID

I had no idea what to expect from this one. All I knew was it was Errol Morris. The man has a talent for finding odd subjects, and this one is out there. Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen, falls in love with a mormon who promptly vanishes on her. She hires detectives to find him, and discovers he's in England. He didn't vanish, he just went on mission. So she goes over there, kidnaps him, straps him to a bed and they have sex for three days. At least, that's what's alleged. Her version is that he left willingly, then had guilt over the sex, convinced he would be excommunicated from the church, and thus lied to cover himself. The British tabloids got a hold of the story and ran with it. The whole thing is so fantastical you couldn't make it up, especially once more and more of Joyce's past catches up with her. Allegations fly back and forth, with both sides claiming their evidence has in the subsequent years been lost. The film falters as it shifts into Joyce's second run with notoriety, when she has her dead dog cloned in Korea, but it recovers. The whole thing in incredibly weird and funny, but you do feel a little dirty when you laugh. There's a level of exploitation going on here that makes the film's title very appropriate.

OPERATION 8

New Zealand has a reputation as being one of the most progressive and sensible countries around. This solidly constructed documentary annihilates that image. In 2007 the police raided and arrested an eclectic group of activists. Everyone from anarchists to indigenous rights activists were charged with terrorism offenses and locked up. But the evidence didn't stack up, so the Crown refused to prosecute. That wasn't the end though, and it's still being dragged through the courts to this day. It's a depressing vision of a nation, with police informers caught inciting crime, a retired undercover police officer admitting to fabricating evidence and claiming a culture of deception in the police, as well as private security firms spying on and infiltrating activist groups to protect commercial interests. It's a sad and pathetic state of affairs, but with people are trying to justify their paychecks, it seems unlikely sanity will prevail in the near term.

MIFF Day 5

Old friends come to visit, some not so welcome...

A STOKER

Alexei Balabanov impressed me several years ago with a film called Cargo 200. It wasn't a nice film, and it had its flaws, but it was a dark and impressive film. His followup Morphia was just as dark, though not nearly as impressive. The finale was just lame, though that could have been a reaction against the MIFF guide calling the final shot the most impressive of the festival. Silly people. A Stoker is another dark skewering of Russian history, but this time it's almost a comedy, almost. You have the Major, a shellshocked former soldier who now spends his days stoking fires at a boilerhouse. Some old colleagues occasionally bring in dead bodies to burn. They tell him they're killing bad people, that they're the good guys. In truth, they're just assassins for some gangsters. It's a comedy of errors, as one of the men, Bison, is shagging the Major's daughter, as well as the daughter of his partner in crime. The two girls run a business together. Then the partner's daughter discovers Bison isn't just hers, and demands the Major's daughter be removed from the picture. And everything unravels from there. It's a black as pitch comedy about the awfulness of modern Russia, as well as touching on the historical oppression of the Yakut people. I get the feeling Balabanov really loves his country, three films seething with anger at the messed up things that go on there isn't just coincidence.

LITTLEROCK

Ah, mumblecore, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways... If I'd known this was a mumblecore flick I'd have stayed away, but I'm almost glad I didn't. The story of two Japanese tourists stuck in a dead end town for a couple of days, Atsuko and Rintaro are befriended by Cory, a complete dropkick of a human being who you want to smack upside the head. But he's optimistic, undaunted and oblivious to his many failings, and almost ends up being charming in a gormless way. Nothing much happens, as is the way with mumblecore, with a few good scenes holding your attention while others just feel like padding. But what I didn't expect was a suckerpunch of a final line, with enough emotional weight to make me almost forgive how unlikeable and dull the characters were for most of the runtime. Almost. The end is really strong, though I'm not convinced the journey was entirely worth it.

ROUTE IRISH

And from a bad film elevated by a good ending, to a good film let down by a bad one. Ken Loach's return to MIFF (apparently Israel isn't paying the airfare of a filmmaker this year, so he's got nothing to complain about), Route Irish is a solid, if by the numbers, thriller about the dodgy dealings of private military contractors in Iraq. A man is killed, his friend thinks he was set up to be killed, and as he digs deeper he discovers that yes, he was set up. So then it's about revenge. Loach remains a potent and angry director, and the film is full of horror and fury at the abuses these companies carry out, but surprisingly it does go a little way to explaining how they can happen, and how it's not always as simple as black and white. Granted it's only a tiny concession in one scene, as one man begs for his life and tries to justify himself, but it struck me as interesting all the same since there was an earnestness to it. Unfortunately, despite the strong performances and everything else, it's still a hackneyed storyline with a finale so lame it beggars belief. I don't know why I expected better, possibly because it initially seemed a bit smarter than all that. I dunno. It's a good film, just let down by a weak ending.

13 ASSASSINS

Takashi Miike is responsible for some of my worst experiences at MIFF. He's also been responsible for some of my best. Prolific and highly variable, you're never quite sure what you're gonna get from him. This is his homage to Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Basically, all you need to know is that it's two hours long, spends about an hour setting up the fact that the Shogun's half-brother is a vile bastard who needs to die, and that 13 men have tasked themselves with achieving this, and then spends the next hour in an orgy of swordplay. This is a samurai action fan's wet dream. Seriously, it's crazy, funny and full of amazing setpieces. There's little characterisation beyond what's needed to get things going, so it's never going to compare with Kurosawa's best-known film, but it's still bloody awesome fun.

MIFF Day 4

No theme today, just good fun.

RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES

Across the USA and even in South America, tiles with a strange message have been appearing since the early 1980s. Are they the rantings of a madman, a prank that's still running or some colossal art project? The message itself is bizarre, but the ways in which it has affected peoples lives is even stranger. Justin Duerr, Colin Smith and Steve Weinik are obsessed with finding out the truth behind this strange message:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK'S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER

As it turns out, even David Mamet is involved in this, albeit tangentially. What's amazing about this doco is that it actually lucks out in finding some plausible answers through some amazing coincidences and pure dogged investigation. Justin, Colin and Steve are meticulous, and uncover a wealth of information. It's wonderfully told, with an appropriately strange Elfmanesque score. The things you'll learn are completely bizarre, but I don't want to spoil it. Seek this one out and discover it for yourself.

WIN WIN

Paul Giamatti is pretty much a guarantee of a good film, and this is no exception. It's a bog standard mid-budget American indie comedy with a good heart and a few flawed characters screwing up massively while remaining decent human beings. It's nothing special, but it's entertaining and really funny.

THE FUTURE WILL NOT BE CAPITALIST

A short film about the history of the headquarters of the French Communist Party. A study in architecture, it's pretty cool to see such an interestingly designed building.

DETROIT WILD CITY

Basically a vision of America eating itself alive, this is a film about the death of Detroit. Stripped of industry, the city is slowly being cannibalised for scrap while whole areas are overtaken by crime, or nature, or both. There's people who have taken over derelict spaces and turned them into farms for the local community, others are destroying crack houses and turning them into public parks, and still others are just leaving. Plenty of people still work in the city, but few actually live there. It never really comes to a point, but its varied vignettes give an insight into the death of American industry, and what that's meant for the place of its birth.

END OF ANIMAL

God bless the Koreans and their crazy cinematic ways. This little gem is small, focused and really weird. While riding in a cab on the way to stay with her mother, a strange man joins Soon Young and starts counting down the seconds. And then the world ends. The strange man is gone, but communicates with Soon Young via the only working piece of technology remaining, a walkie talkie. She meets other people who are all pretty nasty pieces of work, and ignores every piece of advice the strange man gives her, to her detriment. It's hard to like a film where everyone is either evil or just too damn willfully stupid to be sympathetic, but that's kinda the point here. For much of the runtime, I was thinking this was some kind of allegory about people refusing to listen to God, choosing their own way rather than accepting a well-intentioned direction. But while the stranger says he loves everyone, God isn't the only one who loves a sinner. It's a nifty little story with some nice ideas to chew on.

THE UNJUST

Good fun, but about half an hour too long, this is a story of a corrupt cop and a corrupt public prosecutor locked in a battle of wits. It's actually pretty cool, since the people they're taking kickbacks from are locked in a war over a property deal, so they're each trying to knock the other out to let their side win. Add in a case about a child-murderer they're both assigned to and you've got a really twisty and tense thriller. Sadly, it gets a little too twisty towards the end and starts to lose itself as what is meant to be karma biting back feels a little too contrived, especially as one corrupt cop seems fine with bribes but is suddenly not cool with executing gangsters. Great concept, and a solid film for the most part, but too long and too silly at the end. There'll probably be a Hollywood remake sometime ala Infernal Affairs. Hopefully it'll go the same way and improve on the weaknesses in the original.

MIFF Day 3

If mental illness was the theme yesterday, pretension was it for today.

OUTSIDE SATAN

I think this was the story of a fallen angel who left Hell and now roams the countryside being nice to people and punishing evil. Maybe. I dunno. It's one of those films that has long, slow takes of scenery with a person in the far distance walking along, very little dialogue and occasional moments of violence. In fact, it's pretty much what this year's MIFF trailer parodies. An hour in I was getting a bit sick of it. But by the time it finished, I actually quite liked it. There's no answers, just a sense that a potentially evil being has some good in him, and has a soft spot for victims. You'd never see this outside of a film festival, but I'm glad I got the chance. I doubt I'd have the patience for this if I was watching it on SBS, and it would've been my loss.

YOU ARE HERE

A sort of story about the nature of consciousness, it's a collection of thought experiments conceptualising identity, and I think also a parody of the idea that there's an order and meaning to life. Some of it is very good, especially an over-complicated approach to a Turing test that demonstrates that right response is not the same as conscious thought. It's very light in tone, with a lot of comedy and all kinds of weirdness going on. Another film you'd never see outside a festival, but another one you're glad you had the chance to experience.

THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS

On the other hand, there are films you'd never see outside a festival that you wonder if they should even be in the festival. I assume either the book is rubbish, or something was lost in translation, but this is a very well made trainwreck. It adds up to nothing, though it seems to think it had something to say, and sections of it a truly awful. The use of snap zooms like a bad soap opera are painful in the few sections they're used, and the jumping around in time doesn't really add a lot to the proceedings. It's meant to be the anti-love story of Mattias and Alice, two people who can't be apart but can't be together for some reason either. They're both damaged by childhood traumas, now she's bulimic and he cuts himself. But you don't really care. There's some beautifully staged sequences, and the music is by Mike Patton (which is why I chanced a film with such a wanky name) so it's not all bad. But it all ends up a bit mystifying, going nowhere. I suspect people who have read the novel would get more out of it.

PRESSPAUSEPLAY

The only doco for the day, and an interesting one. Computers and the Internet have given everyone a voice, so now everyone is an artist. Does that mean we're seeing an explosion of talent or are we about to down in an ocean of mediocrity? Interviewing a wide range of artists, critics and cultural theorists, the doco give a good overview to the good and the bad of the modern communication age. From things like the loss of craft, as people rely on digital tools to fix up their mistakes, to the possibilities of collaboration and cross-promotion, it shows how messy and full of potential and horror the modern age can be. While siding firmly on the side of those who think that the ease with which people can now create is going to be a positive, it does let those who think this is leading to a cult of the amateur have a voice. Personally, I'm disappointed it didn't cover off one fairly obvious point. If everyone is creating and publishing their work themselves, with the crap drowning out of the gems, surely the next major art movement will be found in the curators. Those people who wade through the garbage to get to the good, the lasting and the genuinely great. It would be interesting to imagine a world where that in itself became legitmised as a form of artistic expression. There's a brief discussion around hype and backlash, the next big thing that quickly becomes yesterday's old news, but a bit more of that would have been good. Definitely a good starting point for a lot of arguments between friends.

MIFF Day 2

Disorders of the mind seem to be the order of the day...

OLD CATS

I loved The Maid when it showed at MIFF back in 2009, and Sebastian Silva is back with a new film, just as good. The same dark humour, the same love for his characters. This time it's the story of Isadora, who is beginning to feel the onset of dementia. Her husband Enrique does his best to look after her, but it's getting worse. Then her immature and fairly selfish daughter Rosario shows up and tries to get her to sign a power of attorney so she can take over the apartment, move Mum into a home and move in with her girlfriend Hugo. Hijinks ensue, as Enrique catches Rosario trying to trick her Mum, and it all just spirals out from there. It's a small film about people who love each other screwing each other over, and black as it gets, it's still a warm and human film. Silva is two for two now. He's a gifted filmmaker.

EL VELADOR

My only doco of the day, and a disappointing one. In concept, it sounds brilliant, a view of the Mexican drug wars through the eyes of the nightwatchman of the cemetery where most of the drug lords are buried. Great idea, pity it didn't really do much with it. The cinematography is gorgeous, and the long takes let you appreciate how well the shots are composed. But there's little information, and no character or soul to the piece. I get the feeling it was meant to be a meditative film, musing on the bizarre celebrations of the dead and the obscenely ornate mausoleums built for them, just meters away from men living in shacks. But it missed the mark, and instead of a rhythmic view of daily life at a place for the dead, a place rapidly filling as the drug wars rage, we get a lugubrious film that says nothing we don't already know and fails to give any insight into anything much at all. Very disappointing.

SUBMARINE

Richard Ayoade has already establishing himself as a comic actor and director. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a cult (and personal) favourite. Now we finally have his feature film debut, and it's a ripper. A coming of age tale where young Oliver Tate has to wrestle with his belief that his parents marriage is on the rocks, and also navigate his own new romance, it's got a quirky tone that never actually seems all that quirky. Performances are brilliant across the board, though Paddy Considine takes the cake for being completely unrecognisable as the possible lothario threatening Oliver's parents marriage. It captures perfectly the confusion of growing up, and the strange ways people try to make sense of it all. It'll be coming to cinemas soon, no doubt, so keep an eye out.

TAKE SHELTER

This was my pick for the festival, and I wasn't disappointed. Shotgun Stories was a film I saw years ago at MIFF and it blew me away. Here director Jeff Nichols reteams with Michael Shannon for one of the greatest films about mental illness I've seen. Curtis LaForche's mother abandoned him when he was ten, left him in the car when she had a paranoid schizophrenic episode and didn't show up until a week later. He swore he would never abandon his family. But when visions of an apocalyptic storm haunt his dreams, and break into his daily life, he's torn between his belief in them, and his knowledge that he's probably losing his mind. The ways he struggles to hold it together, to quiet the demons in his head so that he can stay with his family, that's the bulk of the film. And it's a powerhouse performance. Everyone is good, but if Shannon doesn't get an Oscar nod for this there's no justice in the world. It's an incredible film that takes a highly unusual approach in dealing with its subject matter. The end will either leave you pissed off or thoughtful, and it's guaranteed to cause arguments between friends. Was it the right ending or not? I think it works, but I can see how people could disagree. Either way, it's an amazing film.

MIFF Day 1

I sat down in the cinema and it was like the last year hadn't happened. The same faces, the same seats, the same queues. Sometimes it seems like only the sponsors change. But it's a new year, a new Festival Director and a new lineup of movies. It's off to a good start too!

SENNA

Made up of racing footage, interviews and home movies taken while Ayrton Senna was still living, this is an excellent documentary for the fan or the uninitiated alike. Director Asif Kapadia charts Senna's rise from a go-cart racer to the king of Formula One, his rivalry with Alain Prost and the politics of the world he inhabited. The insight into the behind-the-scenes machinations of Formula One is fascinating, with Senna and Prost's competition providing the narrative to frame the game behind the sport. And seeing footage taken from Senna's race cam on a big screen is exhilarating, and a must for racing fans. You really appreciate the skill and reflexes involved when you're thrown into the driver's seat like that. It borders on hagiography, but it's a great doco.

POOL PARTY

What starts off feeling like a bubblegum doco about a bunch of concerts held in an abandoned public pool in Brooklyn surprises as it expands into a really thoughtful examination of gentrification and sense of community. The McCarren pool was built in the 30s, and eventually abandoned in the 70s. A group of activists campaigned for it's renewal, but were shouted down by local residents who feared a revitalised pool would draw in "undesireables" from the housing projects in nearby suburbs. So instead it was abandoned, until artists and hipsters moved into the neighbourhood seeking cheap rent and suddenly the place was trendy. Artists used the site for dance performances, etc and then live gigs began. Finally, the area became so trendy that nobody opposed the pool being re-opened. Except of course, the people who were enjoying the gigs. But since the area is being redeveloped out of their wage bracket... It doesn't take sides, but it takes a single public space and turns it into a reflection on modern man's migration patterns and the economic and social impacts it has on a community. It also has a lot of excellent artists playing live, so it really is the full package.

5 Days of War

A bit of smart and a lot of stupid, it's nonetheless an interesting if unsuccessful attempt at fusing big budget action cinema with social issue cinema. Read my conflicted thoughts on the subject here.