Today was a bit of a learning experience as far as packing 5 festival movies into one day goes. Things learnt include: not to buy unwieldy 12 inch vinyl records that you have to cart around to 5 movies, the importance of planning a decent sized dinner break somewhere in your schedule, and that films will always run overtime (so 30-45 minute breaks between movies end up being about 5 minutes at best.)Now to the movies:
Who's Affraid of the Wolf
Trailer:
Mood Before movie: Optimistic.
Ass-o-meter: First movie and already some ass numbing... oh no.
Comments:
The first film of the festival started off in style with me getting the only seat in the cinema with a cup holder (arthouse cinema heaven). This alone immediately put me in an optimistic mood.
Who’s Afraid of the Wolf comes from the Czech Republic, and is a film that I feel like I have to patronisingly refer to a ‘nice little film’. Small in scope, it’s a story told from the eyes of a child, Terezka, and tells of her learning her parent’s long kept secret...
Considering this film was told through a childs eyes, it really was quite well delivered. Information came mostly in watching the parent’s encounters in Terezka’s point-of-view or from conversations heard from the other room. By halfway through the film I could really see how Terezka might confuse her mother for being an alien.
Overall, this was a decent low budget film, from writer director Maria Procházková. Worth checking out if you’ve got a few hours to spare.
Rating: 3/5
The Cove
Trailer:
Mood Before movie: Slightly less optimistic
Ass-o-meter: Like floating on a velvety cushion of air.
Comments:
In a basic sense it’s a documentary about the killing and capture of dolphins around the world. In a broader sense it touches on much wider topics like the general contamination of the world’s food supply and the destruction of our oceans.
The documentary focuses on a town in Japan called Taiji where over 20,000 dolphins are being slaughtered every year, or sold to be show dolphins in captivity. This fact, until now, has been a closely guarded secret by the town and seemingly the Japanese government.
Is that legal? You might ask, well, apparently it is legal due to a loop hole in the law that some how says that dolphins are too small to be considered part of the IWC whaling agreements (which means that Japan has to pretend that they're killing whales for scientific purposes).
So what's the big deal, can't we just consider them to be the cows of the sea? Actually no, as it turns out the meat from a dolphin actually contains toxic levels of mercury that is 40 times that recommended by the world health organisation. Which in the past has lead to deformities in babies and many other medical issues in adults.
Then WTF Japan?? Exactly, W.T.F. Japan! Stop being retarded for crying out loud.
This documentary is really well made, compelling, and will make you feel like doing something about the issues that it raises. Lets just hope it does some good.
I suggest you see it, and then join the fight:
http://www.takepart.com/thecove/
Also keep an eye out for Louie Psihoyos (the director) in the future. He says his next movie will be about the five apocalypses that our planet could quite possibly face in the near future. Based on his work on the cove, it will definitely make for some interesting watching.
Rating: 4.5/5
All About Actresses
Trailer:
Mood Before movie: Feeling like becoming an activist of some description.
Ass-o-meter: Generalised ass numbing and right cheek ache.
Comments:
As the title might suggest, this movie was all about actresses. Unfortunately, it wasn’t about particularly interesting actresses, and contained no particularly compelling reason for you to want to watch it.
As far as film making is concerned, it was a total mess, featuring some kind of post modern filming of a woman filming other woman device that was never really utilised in any sort of interesting way. Not to mention, annoying Bollywood style musical interludes that seemed totally out of place, and told us little more than what the character had already been frenching on about for the last 10 minutes.
This film also was guilty of committing the cardinal sin of using the same coloured subtitles the backgrounds in half of the scene. Who makes the decision on subtitle colours??? I have no idea, but after spending presumably shitloads of francs making a movie, how about dropping couple of bucks on a black outline of your white subtitles.... Jesus...
To sum up, unless you're a bit of a cock that likes to stand in MIFF lines and pretend that you're in-the-know about french actresses don’t waste your time on this one.
Rating: 2/5
Blessed
Mood Before movie: Hungry
Ass-o-meter: Pain was centralised to my brain, no time for ass pain.
Comments:
Let me start by saying that the Australian film industry right now needs to have a bit of a look at itself. We as a collective nation seem to produce an astounding amount of films based on tragic event. In the last month alone we have seen the release of Samson & Delilah and the Last Ride. Now, hot on the heels we have another one, however, this isn’t just any tragic movie, this film is like the Perfect Storm of tragic movies...
Containing five separate story lines each comprised of some of the most horrific real life tales of woe that you would ever like to see. The first half of the movie paints a picture of children who have been forced into terrible situations, with every step making you cringe away in the hope that when you look back some kind of Christmas miracle made it all go away. The second half of the movie shows you the mothers of these children dealing with the outcomes of these events.
The strength of this movie is the performances that Ana Kokkinos was able to pull out of the largely young cast of actors. This being the World Premier of the film, I had a few of the younger cast members sitting behind me, and heard one of them say that she didn’t know if she did a good job, but Ana said it was good so she was happy with that. I can safely say that Ana was right, all of the performances in this film were spot on and really brought some serious weight to the stories being told.
This is one of those films that is hard to watch but in the end really tells important stories of people that in most other cases society turns a blind eye. So if you’re not already feeling depressed (or if are and want something to push you over the edge), check this one out.
Rating: 4/5
Thrist
Trailer:
Mood Before movie: Depressed, and something got in my eye during blessed... so they were a little stingy.
Ass-o-meter: Left cheek light ache.
Comments:
Okay, let me start by saying that I missed the first 15 minutes of this film, due to the Blessed premier running overtime. So coming into this thing I was slightly confusing for the first 10 minutes. There was a priest, and he was a bit weird, something wasn’t quite right with him, and a girl that lived with a family that was being treated like a slave and liked to run down the street with her shoes off.... Crazy Koreans...
Anyway, from there on, I never really felt like this movie quite got off the ground, it seems to be threatening to be awesome, and at a lot of stages I was ready for it to be awesome, but the awesome just didn’t quite come. There was a lot of nice little set pieces, and the whole movie was shot well, but it lacked something compelling to really sink your teeth into (*boom ching*).
For my tastes it wasn’t really a Horror movie, and it wasn’t in any way a thriller, there was some comedy moments (some of which I missed due to the setup being laid down before I got there). So i’m not really sure quite where this film sits audience wise. That being said, it did win the jury prize at Cannes this year, so maybe there was something more that maybe I missed from the emotional pounding I just took in Blessed.
If you are into Horror films, you probably should check this out, it definitely had some cool bits to it just maybe not the summing of the parts quite the way I would have liked.
Rating: 3/5
Day One out.
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