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.
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.
posted by Andrew Lee at 1:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home