MIFF 2012 - Day 17

Another festival over. As always, it's a bit sad and I'm wondering where the past two weeks went. This was the first solid festival in years, with very few duds and a lot of really good films. Nothing was knock your socks off amazing, but those films come rarely. In thinking on this year, I think the worst film I saw was Shock, Head, Soul, and the best was Ernest and Celestine. I know there were other better made films, but I was completely charmed by it. Robot and Frank comes a close second. But the final film of the festival was also a definite highlight, so I'd better get on to talking about my final day...

Into The Abyss

Ok, so the two episodes I saw last time weren't actually the film. There was a mix up and the wrong thing got sent to the festival. So they booked a special screening today of the proper documentary, and geez it's sad. Herzog calmly dives into a whole mess of difficult and contradictory elements to show the deep complexity of capital punishment through the prism of one horrible and senseless murder case. Two young guys murder a woman to steal her car, they murder her son and his friend because they didn't have the remote control to get into the gated community where she lived. One of the boys got a life sentence, the other got the death penalty. The evidence against them is pretty overwhelming, but the boy sentenced to death continues to protest his innocence. Frankly he comes off as dodgy. But the tragedy of the situation is compounded as you learn more about the people impacted by the case. The death row chaplin who struggles to be there for the inmates, the former head of the death row unit who quit because he couldn't handle killing two people a week for the government. But there's also the woman who is the sister and daughter of two of the victims. And being a witness to the execution lifted a weight from her, and she knows how horrible that sounds and comments on it. While the film is clearly against the death penalty, it doesn't limit itself completely to one side of the argument, and the result is a thought provoking film that will leave you wrestling.

Ai Weiwei - Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei is one of the most prominent artists in China. He's also one of the most vocal critics of the government. We get to watch him combine art and activism, and the risks he takes to speak up for those who cannot do so themselves. As one friend comments, the state behaves like a hooligan, but Weiwei is a bit of a hooligan himself. He's proud to make symbolic gestures, even if he knows their futility. And for a while it seems like he's getting away with it, and then they come down hard on him. But his followers give him great support, to the extent of helping him pay the fine levied on him by the state for alleged tax fraud. It's a great story of people power, and gives you a bit of hope that China may change for the better one day. Even if that is clearly not currently the case.

Make Hummus Not War

Google "Hummus War". Lebanon claims it's theirs. Israel claims it's theirs. Though apparently the best hummus in Israel is made by Palestinians, who say it's theirs. The origin of hummus is hotly disputed and this is used as a way to explore the middle-eastern conflict in a new and original way. It's a highly entertaining film that will leave you very very hungry afterwards.

God Bless America

God bless Bobcat Goldthwaite. This was a great way to end the festival, with a brilliant and hysterical wish-fulfilment killing spree of inane reality tv stars, arsehole tv pundits and best of all, people who talk on their phones during movies. It's a cry for civility and intelligent discussion, with lashings of ultra-violence. Best of all, we got a great Q&A afterwards, with the depressing revelation that the clips of reality TV shows in the film weren't actually parodies. They were re-staged scenes from existing tv programs or news shows. Sad, but thanks to the wonder of cinema every one of those inane morons was shot in the head. A cathartic film for anyone frustrated with the state of our culture.

MIFF 2012 - Day 16

Only one day left now. Where did the time go?

ParaNorman

Norman is a young kid who talks to the dead. And as a result he's bullied and ostracised from school. But then he's told he's the only person in the town of Blithe Hollow that can save them all from a witch's curse, so he has to go and save the day, with a number of hiccups along the way. This is a ripper little film that cleverly turns a lot of horror conventions on their head. Stop motion animated and with a great voice cast, I won't say much more about it coz I don't want to spoil your fun. Go and see it when it releases, it's awesome.

Berberian Sound Studio

Ever wondered if you could make a horror film just using sound effects? Someone did apparently, and we're introduced to the nebbish Gilderoy, a British sound engineer hired by an Italian producer to mix the sound on a ridiculous but incredibly gruesome horror film. We never see a single frame of the action he's mixing, but as they produce the sounds in the foley studio we get a good picture of what's going on. And poor Gilderoy is disturbed and visibly upset by a job that was not as advertised. But then they pull a psychotic break in the third act and it just departs from the horror of his situation into weirdass crap. It's a solid mood piece, but it never really comes together.

The Sound Of My Voice

Brit Marling of Another Earth fame once again writes and stars in this film about a couple attempting to infiltrate a cult led by Maggie (Marling) who claims to be from the future. She's aided by a Steve Jobs lookalike who is devoted to her. (Seriously, it's creepy how much the guy looks like him.) When one of the couple has an emotional breakthrough in one of the group sessions, their resolve in exposing her starts to unravel. It's a well-written and solidly acted film, but the finale is ruined by the end credits music intruding on a scene where you're left to decide if Maggie is on the level or not, killing the mood.

Himizu

A real slit-your-wrists-life-sucks film, about two 14 year old kids with awful parents. In the main it's the story of Sumida, who starts off as a kind and generous boy, but life crushes him down until he's a real bastard, rejecting everyone left who cares for him, especially Keiko, a girl at school who is obsessed with him. The film quite accurately captures the whole retreat into power fantasies of a disempowered teenager, but geez this film gets grim. The number of times the kids get beaten and slapped around, it's not exactly happy viewing. I wouldn't say that it's exactly a successful film, pulling some cheap tricks (especially at the end) and throwing up plot points that never get addressed. Eg, Keiko's parents are building a gallows for her, but then after they're nearly finished we never see it or them again. But it's extremely intelligent in describing what's going on in Sumida's head, and the confusion he feels. But it's hard going, and over-long. Sure it has a semi-positive ending, but I'm not entirely convinced the journey was worth it.

MIFF 2012 - Day 15

Well, the MIFF flu is definitely about. More screenings are full of coughs and sniffles, hopefully it doesn't come back and hit me again.

Teddy Bear

Dennis is a 38 year old professional body builder who lives with his over-protective mother in Denmark. He has no luck with women, but when his uncle marries a girl he met in Thailand, Dennis asks his uncle's advice and heads over there himself. He quickly discovers the seedy side of things, as the man who introduced his uncle to his wife runs an "introduction service" for middle-aged sex tourists. Disillusioned he wanders into a local gym where they already know him as a famous body builder, and there he meets Toi, the owner of the gym. What follows is a sweet and awkward courtship, and then the problems of dealing with his mother when he brings Toi back to Denmark. This is the sort of film you go to a festival to watch. It's unlikely to get even an arthouse release here, but it's an absolute charmer with a wonderful central performance from Kim Kold. Teddy Bear is the feature follow-on from director Mads Matthiesen's short film Dennis. It's on YouTube in two parts. A quick google also reveals he made the equally funny and sweet black comedy short Cathrine, which I saw at MIFF a few years ago. This guy is one to watch.

The Imposter

Truth is stranger than fiction. But fiction is useful to tell the truth, at least in the case of this film. Combining re-enactments and talking head interviews mixed to follow the structure of a thriller, we learn the story of the disappearance of a young boy, who resurfaces a few years later in Spain. Except it's not actually the boy, but a professional con-artist who adopts the identities of missing children to try and get looked after by foster homes. At least, that's what he says. When your main character is an inveterate liar, you're a bit stuck for what the truth of the matter is. But this is an absolute ripping yarn, full of twists and turns and some dark (though potentially dubious) revelations about the fate of the missing boy. Judging by the Madman logo on the front of the print, this one is getting a release sometime over the next year. It's an expertly crafted documentary about a case that just boggles the mind.

Room 237

I think this may qualify as outsider art. Gathering together a bunch of people obsessed with Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of The Shining, it gives full rein to their whacko theories about the film. My favourite is that it's the secret confession of Kubrick to directing the faked footage of the moon landing. Though there's other ones where it's about the colonisation of American and the massacre of the Native Americans, the obligatory "it's about the holocaust" and a few others too. This is one of the funniest documentaries I've seen in a while. These people are seriously crazy. But it's the perfect film for a festival, because throw a bunch of film obsessives in a room and people will come up with all kinds of wild theories about the meaning of a bad film. The film's technique is worth commenting on though, as it remixes imagery from all of Kubrick's films, as well as a dozen or more other films, to dramatise the narration of the various theories offered by the participants. One thing I did take away as wholly valid though, the architecture of the hotel makes no sense. There are windows where they cannot possibly exist, and other such oddities. It serves to show how intent Kubrick was on subtly messing with your sense of place. So even while I groaned at a lot of the ridiculous statements made, I did learn something. I still think The Shining is a bad film though.

MIFF 2012 - Day 14

The dreaded MIFF flu has struck. I was sneezing all morning, though fortunately it went away after the first film. I debated cutting short my viewing, but thankfully I didn't need to. Fingers crossed it's gone for good.

Alois Nebel

A strange but beautifully animated film about a railway worker named Alois Nebel who back during the war witnessed one of his neighbours, a nazi collaborator, murder someone as they were herding people onto the trains. At least, I think that's what was happening. The guy definitely killed someone though, and now runs a shop. A stranger sneaks across the border, hellbent on finding the now old man and taking revenge. That part of the story is kind of irrelevant to what seems to be the main interest of the film, life in post-war Czechoslovakia. Alois suffers from memories of the war, and ends up in a mental institution to recover. Then he discovers he's lost his job, and somehow regains it after visiting Prague and meeting a woman there. There are lots of unexplained gaps between events, but it's more of a mood piece. I suspect it would make more sense if I'd read the graphic novels on which it's based. The storytelling is very frustrating, but it's still a likeable film.

Pink Ribbons, Inc

I really wished I'd watched this with some of my friends who work in cancer research and public health, since it's hard to get a clear perspective on this one. Clearly it's about the state of things in the USA, but I wonder if it speaks to anything beyond those borders. Essentially it's about "pinkwashing", the way corporations glom onto the cause of breast cancer in order to sell products and improve their image. Did you know you can buy handguns with pink grips to support breast cancer research? Interestingly, the whole pink ribbon thing wasn't originally pink. It was a more orange colour ribbon and it was started by a women who wanted people to lobby Congress to spend more money on research into breast cancer prevention. A company decided it liked it, but when the woman refused to let them use her symbol they changed the colour and we are where we are today. And only 15% of funds are spend of research into how to prevent breast cancer. The reast apparently goes on devising treatments, often by companies who sell things with known carcinogens. There's a lot of analysis of the culture of breast cancer, and the fairly disgraceful practices of some companies. It's a bit of information overload, but definitely a great analysis of how there's a buck to be made out of appearing charitable.

Wild Bill

So, I picked this to fill a gap in my schedule. And as if often the case, I landed on a great film. Dexter Fletcher (remember Spike from Press Gang?) writes and directs this feel-good film about a dad who has just been released from prison learning how to be a good father, and stuffing up a fair bit along the way. With a son who gets in with the local drug dealers, and his own trouble with them, there's plenty of scope for this to get very grim and dark, but it manages to keep an optimistic tone despite the material it works with. And there's a lot of love for the characters, despite their many faults. It's a really enjoyable film.

Metropia

A guy starts hearing voices in his head as he enters a subway station. There he spies a girl who looks like the girl on his shampoo bottle, and he chases after her. Then he finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy where the shampoo is being used to turn hair into antennae that lets the company monitor and mind control their customers. With a weirdly stylised animation technique that appears to take live-action footage and heavily manipulate it, it's a beautiful film to look at and a wildly crazy story to follow. Great fun.

MIFF 2012 - Day 13

Bit of a grim one today. Lies, betrayal and suicide all seem to be on the menu.

In The Fog

In Nazi occupied Russia, a man is set free while his three compatriots are executed. The partisans believe he's an informant and take him away to be executed. But they're ambushed, and the accused man saves his executioner and they walk through the forest with a third partisan. Each remembers the events that led to him being there. It's a bit of a mess, and makes most of its points about two thirds of the way in. After that, there's just the revelations of the third guy, who is far less interesting. Up until then he's just been in the background, and he should probably have stayed there. In the end everyone dies, but it takes its own sweet time getting there. A long, ponderous film that starts well and would have been far more effective with 30 minutes cut from the end.

The King of Pigs

This film would have been far more effective with a single line cut from the end. A few people in the audience burst out laughing, and the rest of us just groaned. It's a shame, because up until then it had been a tense and emotionally exhausting story of school bullying and social stratification. The ideas behind it are really well developed, and there's a payoff line at the end that really drives home the bleakness of the story being told. It also features the worst subtitling job I've seen in years, and the fact that I had to mentally rewrite lines to get the gist of some scenes would have been distracting if I wasn't so involved in the story. It does have its problems, the framing narrative shows that one of the characters has killed someone, but it never comes up again and it has no impact on the story. And there's that truly awful final line. But overall it's a really good, if grim, exploration of the darker side of Korean society.

MIFF 2012 - Day 12

Only one film today, though I did see Dead Europe (which will be screening at MIFF on Sunday night) at a separate preview. A grimy ghost story, worth a look when it comes out in November.

Carre Blanc

A very weird science fiction film about the brutalities of corporate culture and their effect on modern life. Phillipe was a troubled kid, his mother killed herself after telling him he needed to be tougher to survive in life. Then he tried to kill himself but was saved by Marie, who years later he married. But they can't have children and it drives her mad. But the elliptical story only touches on these points momentarily, focusing instead on the bizarre tests Phillipe puts his employees through. They're the sort of lateral thinking games you played in primary school, amped up and sprinkled with violence. There's always a simple way out, you just need to think outside the square. But no one ever does, because they obey rather than think, or attack rather than co-operate. Beyond a simple message that playing the game makes you complicit in its horrors, there's not a lot to take away from the film. But it's beautifully shot and the way the strange culture is presented is quite compelling.

MIFF 2012 - Day 11

No films today.

MIFF 2012 - Day 10

I spoke to a guy today that I've seen at MIFF every year for 12 years. Until this year we'd never even said hi to each other. For the life of me I can't think why we've never compared notes before. Nice bloke.

Headshot

Pen-Ek Ratanaurang has made some great films in his time, Last Life in the Universe and Invisible Waves spring to mind. And he'll always be remembered for the awesome drunken introduction to his film he and Chris Doyle gave at MIFF years ago. But his more recent films like Ploy and Nymph haven't felt quite as punchy, though they've been interesting experiences. Headshot feels like a bit of a throwback to Invisible Waves. The cinematography is gorgeous, but the plot slowly becomes more and more nonsensical and it's central conceit isn't really explored very much. The idea is that Tul, an ex-cop turned assassin for a shadowy organisation is shot in the head and now see the world upside down. The metaphor is clear, but Tul doesn't seem to have too much trouble with his new perspective. That would be because his secret power is that he fights better in the dark, when the senses of his opponents are reduced while his are heightened. It means we get some pretty cool and snappy action sequences, but overall this didn't really come together for me. It's an enjoyable ride, but while it's clearly reaching for the philosophical strength of his earlier works, it never quite grasps it.

A Monster in Paris

I have a hunch someone read Save the Cat before making this. I reckon the beats would follow pretty closely to those laid out by Blake Snyder. That's not a dig, it shows that effort went in to structuring the tale. But while it hits the beats in near perfect time, the notes themselves are a bit off here and there. But it's a kids film, and the kids in the audience ate it up. It's not up to How To Train Your Dragon levels of accomplishment, but it's a reasonably solid story with a lot of nice visual gags.

The Suicide Shop

Patrice Leconte tries his hand at animation, and the result is a musical about suicide. It's awesome. Everyone is depressed, and killing yourself in public is illegal, so a shop exists that sells everything you need to do away with yourself in the privacy of your house. They even do home deliveries. It's a family business, but it all comes unstuck when the youngest child turns out to be a happy little kid who loves to bring joy to other people and determines to put a stop to it all. Mirroring the same Hollywood structure I just mentioned above, it doesn't flinch from showing an awful lot of self-inflicted death along the way to the eventual redemption and triumph of joy. It's a dark parody of the feel good family film, and well worth a look.

Vulgaria

Pang Ho-Cheung is one of my favourite filmmakers. I've never seen a film of his I didn't like, and that hasn't changed. But gee he wasn't kidding about the title. This is a crass and vulgar film that honestly doesn't hold back from anything. When the hero of the film has to shag a mule in order to get funding for his next film, well... Kevin Smith would be proud of how far this goes to get a laugh. The end hits a bit abruptly, but the payoff is clever and the final punchline is both vile and hysterical. I don't think Pang has ever done a comedy this broad and lowbrow, which is saying a bit. And this has to be the first screening I can think of at MIFF where the jokes jumped off the screen. We were given Pop Rocks before the screening, which was puzzling, then all was revealed. Oh dear.

Big Boys Gone Bananas!*

Frederik Gertten made a film called Bananas!* about the plight of Nicaraguan workers who were poisoned by pesticides used on the banana crops they tended and the resulting lawsuit against a food company named Dole. I'd never heard of them, but I'm allergic to bananas. They're apparently one of the largest food companies in the world. When they heard about the film, they went on the offensive. This film documents all the dirty tricks and legal shenanigans they used to try and bury the film and its message. It also documents the moral cowardice of large sections of the media and the film community in the US. The good news is Gertten won in the end. But I think the bad news is that this story kind of overwhelms the actual story of the farm workers. Either way it's depressing, as you begin to see how far a company is willing to go to bury a story. And even after beating them, nothing changes.

MIFF 2012 - Day 9

Past the halfway point, I hope it's not downhill from here...

Chasing Ice

Documents James Balog's efforts to record the shrinking of a number of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere. The photography is absolutely stunning and the fact you get to see glaciers "calving" giant icebergs into the ocean makes it worth a look. It's also a pointed look at the impact of climate change, as you see these glaciers recede at a truly shocking rate. Sadly I doubt the evidence will change anyone's mind since opinions on these things seem to be less about evidence and more about spin, but this is yet another powerful demonstration that something very bad is happening to our environment.

The Transition Period

A senior official in a county province of China is getting ready to move on to bigger things and let his protege take over. Very poorly assembled, with bad editing and no sense of structure, it's nonetheless a fascinating behind the scenes look at grassroots politics and administration in the Communist Party. And extra credit has to go to the filmmaker for pretending to switch off the camera and capturing a little bit more of how things really work, with bribes, favours and dinners greasing the wheels of commerce. Gou, the subject of the doco is now under investigation for his actions. But the sense you get from the doco is that really it's for show, as it seems like standard practice.

Animation Shorts

Always a mixed bag, but always worth watching. Paperman was a sweet little CG animation. The Great Rabbit and The Pub both were a bit odd and kind of underwhelming while technically interesting. The Hunter, a sand animation was great, as was Villa Antropoff and The Country of Wolves. Less impressive was Butterflies, which despite strong technical achievements fell victim to flat line readings and a rather twee script about how hard it is to be an artist. (After over a decade of MIFF, I'm sick of that particular trope.) Captain Hu was a cute line animation, but the best film of the night was It's Such a Beautiful Day. Don Hertzfeldt delivers a beautiful and compassionate story about life, illness, memory and eternity. Seriously wonderful stuff.

Holy Motors

Umm, weird. But good. A dreamlike story of a man driven around in a stretch limo putting on makeup to become different characters. Eventually it becomes clear this is a meditation on acting, and it's a funny and enjoyable one. This would make a great double-feature with Cosmopolis, especially since it actually shows you where all the limos go at night.

MIFF 2012 - Day 8

Well, it had to happen eventually. Two duds in a row, hopefully it's just an aberration...

Chicken with Plums

Persepolis was a wonderful animated film by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud based on Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel. They've reteamed once more but the results are much less impressive. This is a tedious film with some wonderful scenes, a few great actors and a nice visual aesthetic. But the script pacing is woeful, and the logic of the character actions completely nonsensical at times. Chicken with Plums wants to be a magic realist tale of lost love and broken hearts. In theory it has the right elements, but they weren't mixed in the right proportions. A total misfire.

Faust

And speaking of tedious misfires, Aleksandr Sokurov's interpretation of the classic story by Goethe is an overlong mess. Judging by the number of walkouts I wasn't alone in thinking it was all a bit pointless. The contrived use of distorting lenses for much of the film didn't help either. Sometimes you just have to accept that despite the pedigree you're watching a bad film, and sadly this was one of those times.

Sightseers

A nasty film by Ben Wheatley, whose Kill List I sort of enjoyed last year. Nasty in the best possible way. This is the story of two chavvy morons in their mid thirties who go on a caravan tour of easily mockable landmarks through Britain. He's a bit of a serial killer, and she finds she kinda likes it too. You're laughing at everyone in the film, and everything that happens. It's a very dark comedy best watched with a crowd of like-minded individuals, it's more fun when everyone howls with laughter at the same time. Much like Kill List it doesn't really go anywhere, which I suspect is due to it being an improvisational comedy. The script credit goes to the two main actors, which is usually a giveaway for this sort of thing. But it's entertaining the whole way through, and after two dogs it was good to watch something twisted and funny.

MIFF 2012 - Day 7

At last, the film I've been excited to see since it was confirmed in the schedule!

Ace Attorney

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the game, was a complete surprise to me. I bought a secondhand Nintendo DS so I could get around to playing all the Professor Layton games (which are excellent and have film of their own). But then I heard about this Phoenix Wright game and got a hold of a copy. It's awesome (and bloody hard to find). You play as Phoenix Wright as he investigates crimes and then defends his clients in court. The game mechanics are a nice variation on the usual point and click adventure game, but the plots of each case were completely insane. Fortunately, I never finished the game, since the movie focuses on the final case (I started the case but then my DS died). There's plenty of references to the game, with some thoroughly clever work to visually communicate what was once a game mechanic. The insanity of the game's plotting is toned down a bit, but not as much as I'd expected. He still cross examines a parrot, for instance. It's a really fun film with a solidly wacky story. With so many adaptations of games ending up as bad films, it's nice to see one that retains the flavour of the game while also being a solidly crazy film in its own right.

Double or Nothing

A short film where a preppy white boy fights with his girlfriend until they're interrupted by a homeless black man (the always awesome Keith David). The white guy then plays a game with him, goading him into a game for money. The dialogue is excoriating, the reversals suprising and what starts off looking like a drama school exercise turns into something quite potent. And then the credits roll and you discover it was written by Neil LaBute. Nuff said.

Dark Horse

Todd Solondz rides again. He's a bit less in control of his material here than he was in Life During Wartime, but he maintains the shift towards genuine empathy with his characters that made the final moments of that film so powerful. Abe (Jordan Gelber) is 35 and lives at home, collecting Thundercats toys and working for his father's company. He meets a girl at a wedding, manages to score a date with her and proposes. And after initially saying no, she says yes because life has offered her nothing better. In the main, it's about Abe learning to deal with the fact that there's nobody to blame for him being a loser besides himself. And it's done with a great deal of surrealism, which mostly works. Towards the end it starts to get a bit tiresome, and the story hits its emotional end point a bit early, resulting in the final few scenes feeling redundant. But it's still compelling, funny and sad. And a bit wise too.

MIFF 2012 - Day 6

So apparently this blog isn't just read by my friends. I'd say it's flattering if it wasn't obviously a guy stalking comments on a film he's upset about. He's posted on Twitchfilm as well, though the producer's rebuttal seems pretty solid to me. Still, always nice to have visitors. As for MIFF, I'm definitely having fun this year.

Side by Side

Keanu Reeves interviews a wide variety of Hollywood luminaries about the migration of film production to digital technology. Covering an immense number of topics, it brings up a number of surprising points. The most pointed being that film achiving is being seriously threatened by the move to digital. David Fincher talks about how he can find the equipment to play back tapes he has of old music videos he made. Another cinematographer talks about how hard drives fail and you could lose entire movies. The most reliable archival material for film is, funnily enough, film. But there's the freedoms a digital camera brings, and most of the directors wax lyrical about how amazing that has been for them. And as George Lucas says, the problems they see are being worked on by really smart people. So one day soon they won't be problems anymore. Fingers crossed they do, because it would suck to see films lost due to hardware failure. I mean, they just recently uncovered extra footage for Metropolis and were able to remaster the film. It's near impossible to conceive of that occurring with a film made digitally.

Bad Brains: A Band in DC

This is a bad film about a great subject. It's a structural thing, since it bounces around and throws in details at the end that would have worked better somewhere in the middle, sapping the end of a bit of punch. Honestly, I think the little bits in American Hardcore told the story better. But what we get here are the details of one of the seminal US hardcore bands. And the details are fascinating. Especially given the lead singer appears to be highly unstable. Worth it if you're keen on that sort of music. (I am.)

Beast of the Southern Wild

Wow. Without doubt the most original film I've seen in quite a while. I don't want to say anything about it other than you really really want to go see this. It's just amazing to watch. It's not a perfect film, but it's probably the best film since Tideland to really put you inside a young child's world.

MIFF 2012 - Day 5

Doco day! And what documentaries they were. Damn this has been a good run. Though I've looked at my schedule and I fear the rot is going to set in around Friday. But I'll stay hopeful, coz it's been amazingly good so far.

The Ambassador

Mads Brugger made the impressive and ethically challenging The Red Chapel, where he took two disabled comedians to North Korea to subtly mock the regime. Now his form of reportage has taken a new twist, as he himself goes undercover to expose exactly how fucked up Africa is, and how post-colonial Europe really isn't that post-colonial. There exist brokers who can get you made a diplomat for an African government, in this case Liberia. This lets you go somewhere else, say the Central African Republic, and set up shop as a trader in blood diamonds with diplomatic immunity protecting you from certain repercussions. With enough money, you can buy your way into all kinds of things. You have to admire the guts of this guy, who documents an insane amount of illegal backroom dealing with seeming impunity. The rise of the DSLR as a video camera hasn't penetrated Africa yet, so his subjects are unaware his "Press Officer" is actually videoing the whole thing. It's incredibly funny, and seriously depressing, as you realise that foreign countries have a vested interest in ensuring that African states fail on a semi-regular basis. And they are quite active in pursuing that interest. In the international game of diplomatic soccer, Africa is the ball. The Liberian government has recently come out condemning Brugger and demanding his extradition, but since the filmmakers have the receipt for the ambassadorship they bought from the government there, it's hardly likely to eventuate. As a friend of mine recently commented, Africa is fucked. And here, you begin to understand exactly why on so many levels that's going to be hard to change.

The House I Live In

Speaking of depressing but entertaining and well-made, The House I Live In is a great analysis of "The War On Drugs" and it's several decades long impact on American life. With The Wire creator David Simon providing key narrative commentary as director Eugene Jarecki explores the many facets of the drug trade and drug enforcement, the picture of a self-sustaining system emerges. Whether intentional or not, the systems in place are destroying civil society. Police are rewarded for tackling the low hanging fruit of street dealers rather than solving murders and hunting down rapists. People in ghettos often have no prospects for earning a living outside of selling drugs. Entire towns depend on prisons to provide employment for the townsfolk. None of this really comes as a surprise, but what does surprise, however, is where the film takes this understanding of the systems at play. Jarecki begins the film with recollections of his family's history, fleeing persecution in Russia and Germany for a new life in America. And he brings those seemingly throwaway moments to a crushing conclusion as the case is made that the war on drugs is effectively a slow motion holocaust being perpetrated on the lower class of America. Written as a sentence it seems like hyperbole, but viewed through the lens of the documentary it's not so easily dismissed, and the statistics back them up. But the systems themselves are so completely woven into the fabric of society it's going to take a lot of work to unpick them. With a lot of interviews, personal testimonies and critical analysis, this is a great documentary full of humanity. It will depress you, but as with The Ambassador, it's only depressing because it shows you something very sad and very real.

MIFF 2012 - Day 4

I'm feeling pleasantly surprised by almost every film I see. Are my critical faculties failing or are these films really as solid as they seem? I'm suspicious, there must be some dogs waiting out there, surely...

Liberal Arts

Josh Radnor (the dude who hasn't met the mother in How I Met Your Mother) is yet another television actor parleying his fame into getting a personal project off the ground. And here's hoping he doesn't suffer the same fate as Zach Braff. It doesn't have the killer soundtrack that I suspect let Garden State cut through, but hopefully it still gets attention because it's a far more intelligent film. Josh plays Jesse, a guy with a liberal arts education who now works as an admissions officer for a college in New York. When his old professor announces his retirement, he heads out to say nice things about him at the farewell dinner. And while there he meets Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), the 19 year old daughter of some other friends of the professor. Zibby takes an immediate liking to Jesse, and a relationship slowly forms. But he's 35 and she's 19 and the story doesn't play out the way you think it might. This is actually a fairly wise film about different stages of life, the regrets and incompatibilities of them, and the ways it can creep up on us. It's also really funny and well written. Definitely worth a look on the highly likely arthouse release.

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists

Director Brian Knappenberger has made a really interesting doco about the birth of Anonymous, from their initial taking on of Neo Nazis and Scientology to their role in supporting Wikileaks and assisting the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, through to Lulzsec and the rifts caused as some decided to push harder the more unpleasant side to their activities. What's interesting is the willingness to engage in debate on what's fair game and what isn't, and how the chaotic nature of Anonymous means there's people there in it just to cause chaos and others who want to create chaos to make a point. There's an excellent Dungeons and Dragons reference that puts it all into context. Not everyone is articulate, and some of the people come off as jerks rather than activists, but that's true for any group. What makes this doco great is that it doesn't shy away from that fact, but discusses the complexities without damning the movement as a whole, or trying to paint them as heroes. It just tells the story and lets them argue their case. And oftentimes, it's persuasive.

MIFF 2012 - Day 3

I think this will be the best MIFF in years.

Ernest and Celestine

I hadn't heard of Gabrielle Vincent's series of books about the adventures of Ernest the bear and Celestine the mouse, but if you've got young kids go check 'em out. And cross your fingers this film shows up with a decent english dub, because kids will love it. And so will you, it's a charmer. The story of a little orphan mouse named Celestine who doesn't believe that bears are big and bad and scary, she sneaks up into the city above to scrounge bear teeth to help the mice dentists replace the all-important incisors of other mice. The incisors being the foundation of mouse civilisation. When her mission goes wrong, she meets Ernest, a down on his luck bear who almost eats her but ends up becoming her best friend. And their adventures together are wonderfully inventive and thoroughly endearing. This one is a must see.

Your Sister's Sister

Why do I keep doing this to myself? If you run through the past few years I've been blogging MIFF, you'll find me constantly deriding the whole "mumblecore" movement. So why do I keep going to watch this shite? In this case it was because there was a gap in my schedule and Emily Blunt was there to lure me into filling it with the lastest effort from the director of Humpday, another mumblecore film I didn't hate but didn't love either. And I don't hate this one, it's funny until the third act falls apart and the final moments feel like the day one read through at a script workshop. But it still works, and it's satisfying enough. Halfway through I realised why I keep watching these films though. The Dogme school of filmmaking gave us unmitigated dreck disguised as "art", but it led to the wonderful film Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself. Mumblecore is a bit more advanced than Dogme, and this is towards the upper end of the scale (what with an actual story and everything), but I think I keep hoping for a film from the movement that pushes over the line and delivers a genuinely wonderful experience. This was fun, but it's not quite there yet. And for the love of God, sack the cinematographer and get someone who knows how to light a shot.

On The Road

I thought I was going to hate this, since On The Road is not really a story so much as it's a literary experience. The way it's written is almost the entire joy of the book. But just as Cronenberg knew the limitations of film in adapting Naked Lunch and mutated his film into a wonderful fusion of fiction and biography, Walter Salles has done much the same here. If Kerouac's On The Road was the mythologising of Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty, Salles' On The Road is the deconstruction of that myth. Garrett Hedlund portrays Moriarty as a charismatic force of nature, a borderline sociopath who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Sam Riley as Sal Paradise may be the narrator, but he's often in the background as a result of Dean's personality. The film is fascinating as a critical examination of the Beats and their lifestyle, especially their treatment of women and the film doesn't flinch from examining the cost of their behaviour to the women in their lives. This isn't an adaptation of the novel, but rather a commentary on it. There's a few missteps, the Matt Damon background cameo was a distracting miscalculation, and a few other famous faces take you out of the reality created by the rest of the film, but by and large this is a success beyond what anyone had any reason to hope for. It's a genuinely good film of a novel largely viewed as unadaptable.

Flicker

I'm not entirely sure what I just saw. A comedy about a telecommunications company and the dysfunctional people who work there versus an underground terrorist cell of anti-electricity lunatics led by a man with a mechanical arm. I think that was at least part of what I saw. I'm not really sure I can describe it, it's just a joyously absurdist film about people being driven mad by technology. It'll be out on general release in a little while, I say go if you're in the mood for something weird, warm and funny.

MIFF 2012 - Day 2

And the crowd pleasers continue.

Robot and Frank

This may well be the feel good film of the festival. Frank Langella plays Frank, a retired catburglar with dementia who lives alone in a little house outside of town. His son visits once a week to clean up and make sure he's ok, but it's taking its toll on him so he gets Frank a robot to look after him. It's been designed to care for him and ensure he eats well and remains active and engaged to ward off more symptoms Frank's failing memory. When Frank realises the robot has no inhibitions programmed into it concerning larceny, he convinces it that burglary is a great way to keep his mind active. And shenanigans ensue in an incredibly sweet way. A film that deals with dementia, family, forgiveness and how to rip off a-hole hipster rich kids, it's an absolute winner.

Into the Abyss

Actually two Werner Herzog Death Row documentary episodes packaged together for the festival crowd, it's an interesting look at the people on death row. The first inmate is incredibly smart, manipulative and a guaranteed serial killer. But his defense attorney is probably the wisest man in the whole doco. He avoids worrying about the death penalty per se, but instead emphasises that process is what must be served, and the reasons for it. He saw atrocities in South America where the law had no meaning, so he freely admits that he could both defend or prosecute with equal fervour, so long as he knows that the rights of the individuals are being served. It's also noted that the death penalty is no deterrent, and the only logical reason for its continued existence can be the desire for retribution. What this says about those who support it is somewhat damning. The second doco concerns a woman who insists she did not commit the crime, though circumstantial evidence is fairly damning. But she did not receive a fair trial, her lawyer holds the world record for largest number of clients on death row. He didn't even do basic research before defending her. Where the admitted murderer gets a lawyer determined to see his client accesses all his available legal rights, she got a guy who took the money and ran. It's just another reason the death penalty is so stupid. Both cases are still on appeal, neither has had a date set for execution.

Shock Head Soul

I now want to read Daniel Paul Schreber's autobiographical account of his madness. Because this film told me nothing about it other than the fact that he wrote a book about it. There's some nice animation sequences and it looks very pretty, but given this was made in conjunction with an art installation or some such wank, well, I should have realised I was going to get arty garbage. Very disappointing.

100 Bloody Acres

I hope this doesn't suffer the same fate as The Loved Ones. That was a brilliant pisstake of the whole torture-porn horror genre, and didn't fare too well when it hit general release. 100 Bloody Acres is just as hysterical, and far more "Aussie" to boot. It's also impressively written, as it begins with a set of unlikeable characters and by the end, at least two of them are humanised and somewhat loveable. See this one with an audience, because you're gonna want people to laugh, cringe and howl with. And stay right to the end of the credits, you don't want to miss the payoff to a gag set up almost in the first scene of the film.

The Legend of Kaspar Hauser

I want to know a bit more about Kaspar Hauser, since this surrealist film is playing off elements of the story in ways I can't currently access, not knowing much about it. But I'm unlikely to watch it again, even if I do like Vincent Gallo quite a lot. The black and white cinematography is stunning, but it's just a collection of scenes that go nowhere interesting. That said, I'm definitely going to track down the soundtrack, which is awesome.

MIFF 2012 - Day 1

I settle into my seat in Greater Union cinema 6 and it's as if the past year didn't happen. It's the same feeling every year. The same faces, the same dodgy broken seats and the same applause at the end of a good film. There's something nice about finding yourself in a cinema full of people who enjoy the same thing as you, even if there's always the odd moron or two who need to narrate the film to each other. Mr and Mrs Moron, thank you for shutting up about five minutes into the film and may you both get cancer of the tongue if you do it again. So, onto the movies.

Moonrise Kingdom

Does Wes Anderson make bad movies? I don't think he has yet, and this whimsical confection isn't about to break his streak. The story of Sam and Suzy, two twelve year olds who run away together. Sam is an orphan who leaves his scout troop, Suzy hates her parents and leaves her family. The resulting search, capture and rescue of the kids blends WW2 tropes with a deft and compassionate look at childhood fantasy and the awkwardness of growing up. It's an incredibly sweet film.

Safety Not Guaranteed

Years ago there was an ad placed in a magazine seeking people to accompany the advertiser on a trip back in time, safety not guaranteed. It periodically crops up because it poses an interesting question, what would you do if you could, and why? That's the launching point for a very fun film about three journalists tracking down the writer of the ad, with two of them trying to recapture something they've lost, whether it's a dead loved one or a memory of being young. The other guy is there to be the straight man, and doesn't really get to do much. And when they find the author of the ad, naturally the girl and him fall in love, then he feels betrayed, but it all works out in the end. Much like Another Earth last year, the plotting is fairly predictable, but the performances really sell it and it's not short of snappy dialogue. It's really good fun.

Two crowd-pleasers in one night, MIFF is off to a good start this year.