MIFF 2015 - Day 2
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me. :) The annual tradition of Yum Cha continues, and the number of attendees seems to increase as well. And this time they came around with the Char Siu Bao twice! I ate a lot. And then I binged on films...
Thank You For Playing
I've been following the game That Dragon, Cancer for years. A deeply personal game about a family processing their grief as their infant son is diagnosed with cancer, it's an insight into how a game can be more than shooting someone in the face. The interactivity can breed empathy. There's a powerful scene midway through the film as the game is shown at a convention. What follows is a montage of players rendered speechless, wiping away tears. The film is an extension of that, inviting us into a deeply personal experience of both creativity and sadness. It's a wonderful film about an awful but common experience.
Tales of the Grim Sleeper
Nick Broomfield takes his headphones and boom mike to the streets of South Central LA to document the unpleasant history of a prolific serial killer. The Grim Sleeper, as he was known, operated for roughly 25 years and is suspected of killing hundreds of prostitutes. But what starts as a bit of true crime investigation becomes something far greater, as Broomfield explores the social structures that allowed the crimes to go unsolved for so long, despite huge amounts of evidence building up. In the process he exposes police indifference, and perhaps more disturbingly, community indifference. Lonnie Franklin, the man accused of the crimes, was a man who gave people work, a minor kingpin. And so his friends and community thought of him as weird and pervy, rather than criminal. But slowly they all begin to tell their stories, admitting their doubts, and wondering how they could have missed it. Less shocking (depressingly), but just as bad, is the police indifference, with anecdotal evidence suggesting a number of police officers actually supported the killings as a way of "cleaning up the streets". At the end, you're left with a portrait of a society that has totally broken down, with nobody in authority willing to change it. It's a horror movie.
He Never Died
Henry Rollins plays Jack, a terse and guarded man who spends his days eating at a diner, playing bingo at the local church, and bribing hospital interns for "medication". Then a daughter he didn't know he had turns up, as well as some gangsters who are looking for the intern. He deals with each in a gruff and taciturn manner, and in the process we learn Jack is immortal. There's some nice pieces of misdirection before his true identity is revealed, but that's just the icing on a cake of weird, noirish humour. It's a great film with Rollins delivering an excellent central performance, and lots of decent supporting roles too. The sound mix was a bit off in the screening, but that did little to dampen my enthusiasm for the whole thing. I picked it solely on the basis of Rollins, but the whole package delivered.
99 Homes
A sad and increasingly tense story of a man who loses his home and then ends up working for the man who evicted him. Slowly, he ends up doing the same thing, making money from kicking people out of their foreclosed homes and then flipping them. In some ways, it's a post-crash version of Wall Street. Michael Shannon plays Rick Carver, the evicting realtor, and pretty much anything Shannon does is worth watching. And there's a moment where Rick gives a speech about the reason he works to evict people, and Shannon's face tells a totally different story to monologue. He's an amazing actor. Andrew Garfield as Dennis Nash gets the less showy role, and towards the end his journey feels a bit nonsensical. Some of the choices Dennis makes seem kinda stupid and out of character, but as a friend observed, that might have been the point. An exploration of the human cost of the financial crisis, and how dirty people have to be to get out from under, it's gripping viewing.
Thank You For Playing
I've been following the game That Dragon, Cancer for years. A deeply personal game about a family processing their grief as their infant son is diagnosed with cancer, it's an insight into how a game can be more than shooting someone in the face. The interactivity can breed empathy. There's a powerful scene midway through the film as the game is shown at a convention. What follows is a montage of players rendered speechless, wiping away tears. The film is an extension of that, inviting us into a deeply personal experience of both creativity and sadness. It's a wonderful film about an awful but common experience.
Tales of the Grim Sleeper
Nick Broomfield takes his headphones and boom mike to the streets of South Central LA to document the unpleasant history of a prolific serial killer. The Grim Sleeper, as he was known, operated for roughly 25 years and is suspected of killing hundreds of prostitutes. But what starts as a bit of true crime investigation becomes something far greater, as Broomfield explores the social structures that allowed the crimes to go unsolved for so long, despite huge amounts of evidence building up. In the process he exposes police indifference, and perhaps more disturbingly, community indifference. Lonnie Franklin, the man accused of the crimes, was a man who gave people work, a minor kingpin. And so his friends and community thought of him as weird and pervy, rather than criminal. But slowly they all begin to tell their stories, admitting their doubts, and wondering how they could have missed it. Less shocking (depressingly), but just as bad, is the police indifference, with anecdotal evidence suggesting a number of police officers actually supported the killings as a way of "cleaning up the streets". At the end, you're left with a portrait of a society that has totally broken down, with nobody in authority willing to change it. It's a horror movie.
He Never Died
Henry Rollins plays Jack, a terse and guarded man who spends his days eating at a diner, playing bingo at the local church, and bribing hospital interns for "medication". Then a daughter he didn't know he had turns up, as well as some gangsters who are looking for the intern. He deals with each in a gruff and taciturn manner, and in the process we learn Jack is immortal. There's some nice pieces of misdirection before his true identity is revealed, but that's just the icing on a cake of weird, noirish humour. It's a great film with Rollins delivering an excellent central performance, and lots of decent supporting roles too. The sound mix was a bit off in the screening, but that did little to dampen my enthusiasm for the whole thing. I picked it solely on the basis of Rollins, but the whole package delivered.
99 Homes
A sad and increasingly tense story of a man who loses his home and then ends up working for the man who evicted him. Slowly, he ends up doing the same thing, making money from kicking people out of their foreclosed homes and then flipping them. In some ways, it's a post-crash version of Wall Street. Michael Shannon plays Rick Carver, the evicting realtor, and pretty much anything Shannon does is worth watching. And there's a moment where Rick gives a speech about the reason he works to evict people, and Shannon's face tells a totally different story to monologue. He's an amazing actor. Andrew Garfield as Dennis Nash gets the less showy role, and towards the end his journey feels a bit nonsensical. Some of the choices Dennis makes seem kinda stupid and out of character, but as a friend observed, that might have been the point. An exploration of the human cost of the financial crisis, and how dirty people have to be to get out from under, it's gripping viewing.
posted by Andrew Lee at 2:11 AM
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