MIFF 2013 - Day 5

A bit of a religious experience today...

IN BOB WE TRUST

Chronicling Melbourne icon Father Bob's struggle to remain as parish priest of South Melbourne, this is both damning and celebratory. Opening with a potted history of the Catholic church, narrated at rapidfire speed by Father Bob and illuminated by cutting together moments from just about every celebrated film about faith (and quite a few not so celebrated) we come to the present day, where the daily work of the parish priest involves caring for the sick and needy, working with the homeless and the drug addicted, and generally doing all sorts of things that seem to piss off the Catholic heirarchy. Things like working with the homeless and caring for the sick and needy. You'll learn a lot about Bob watching this, more than enough to make you wonder what the hell the heirarchy was thinking when they decided to try and get rid of him. The Catholic church needs more priests like him, especially these days.

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY

This isn't as good as The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. But it's two and a half hours of Slavoj Zizek using cinema to talk about ideology and how it works upon us. And it's really fun to listen to him talk and comment on film. By far the best bits are centered around his dissection of Titanic, and the more noxious ideas it embodies. Second best are his thoughts around The Last Temptation of Christ, Job, and the meaninglessness of suffering. By far the most entertaining philosophy lecture I've attended in years.

MIFF 2013 - Day 4

STOKER

It would be cheap to say Park Chan Wook decided to pick this as his first English language feature because of the undercurrent of incest that worms its way through the story, but since he made his name on an incest themed thriller, well... Dripping in southern gothic eroticism, this is a striking film about young India Stoker. Her father died on her 18th birthday, and her rather intense uncle Charlie turns up at the funeral and decides to stick around. He's fascinated by India, and she is puzzled and intrigued by him. It's one of those films you're better off seeing without knowing too much, as there's some very bold choices made that are best left unspoilt. It's not that it's surprising exactly, but how they reveal the "surprises" is provocative. It's a surprisingly focused effort from a director whose past few features have been little more than indulgences in trick shots and sloppy storytelling. Definitely a spectacular return to form.

THE END OF TIME

You can spot them a mile off. The writeup in the MIFF program tries a bit too hard to convince you this will be great. You know it's going to suck, but you go anyway, because they promise to show you inside the Large Hadron Collider. For about five minutes at the start of a two hour ordeal. The director's intent is to explore the nature of time, but with only one good interview with a couple of scientists he pads it out by asking a bunch of dull hippies to spout empty cant and pretend that it's insight. The time lapse photography is beautiful, and footage of lava flows make for arresting viewing. But you can't help but wish they'd interviewed more intelligent people to theorise on the nature of time. It needed more discipline, more thought and more meditation. It also has the distinction of being the first film this year where I've seen walkouts enter the double digits. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

MIFF 2013 - Day 3

Murder seems to be the theme of the day.

THE ACT OF KILLING

Imagine going to a group of mass murderers, war criminals, and instead of finding them in hiding, they're proudly telling you of the atrocities they committed. That's the surreal and disturbing world you find yourself in when watching this remarkable documentary about the mass killings that occurred in the wake of the 1965-66 "Communist Uprising" in Indonesia. Local gangsters and paramilitaries murdered somewhere between 100,000 and 2.5 million people. Nobody knows the actual number, no records were kept. And the men who perpetrated some of these acts have agreed to make a film about what they did, with themselves as the actors, while the documentarians film them. It's actually very funny, sometimes genuinely funny, sometimes horrifically so. But that's their way of depicting their actions. And thankfully we get to see how it begins to disturb at least some of them. It shines a light on something rotten at the core of Indonesian civil society, and hopefully now that it's exposed it can wither and die. This is remarkable and confronting viewing.

BLACKFISH

And onto murders of a different kind. Tilikum, an orca kept at Seaworld, has killed or maimed several of its trainers. And it's not the only killer whale in captivity to have done so. This film would make an excellent double feature with The Cove, highlighting the many issues with holding these animals in captivity and making them perform tricks for the audience. Systematically identifying the issues, we're shown how water parks mislead the public on the known facts of orca biology to preserve the image that what they're doing is beneficial to the animal. The money involved is huge, so the lies are fairly hefty too. But the misery inflicted on the orcas is undeniable, and the risk to the trainers is equally confronting. With what's now known about both dolphins and orcas, it's hard to see how these kinds of theme parks can continue to operate much longer.

MIFF 2013 - Day 2

FATAL ASSISTANCE

A depressing doco about the state of humanitarian aid in Haiti. Not the best doco I've seen though, and it too often chooses cheap shots over analysis to beat you over the head with its message. That being that money is power, and aid is used to bully the people it's intended to help. Still, you get some interesting insights into the difference between the idealism of aid and the practical realities of helping people recover from a major disaster.

I DECLARE WAR

A bunch of kids are out in the woods playing capture the flag, but it all goes a bit ugly. There's a coup in the opposing camp, a kidnapping, torture, a femme fatale and a betrayed lover (of sorts). The relational complexity of the story is what takes a cute idea, using real weapons to illustrate the kids imaginations, and turns it into a solid film.

PATRICK

I haven't seen the original, is it any good? I'm not sure this was. The cinematography annoyed me and the first act bored me. Once it gets going it's fun, but it's too uneven to be held up as a good example of the genre.

DOWNLOADED

I feel old. I remember Napster when it first hit. I remember hating Metallica for suing them. And Alex Winter has done a really good job of gathering together all the people involved and telling the story of the birth of Napster, and how it got smothered in the crib. It's interesting to see the state of things now, versus then. And it's especially interesting to hear from Shawn Fanning, the generally quiet creator of the software who had no idea what he was in for.

MIFF 2013 - Day 1

Aaaaand we're back. Same as it ever was it seems.

MOOD INDIGO

French existentialism written in crayon? I think that's what this most Gondry of Gondry films is. Seriously, you've never seen Michel Gondry as visually unhinged as this, and it's spectacular. Overwhelming actually, at least early on. But then it settles into what I think is a satire of French intellectuals and new wave cinema. It might be a homage though, I'm not sure. It's great either way.