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.
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.
posted by Andrew Lee at 12:53 AM
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