MERCENARY ★★★☆ 

Nicely shot French film about a pacific islander rugby player trying to make a go of it in a minor league team in France. Had a really nice, slow pace (in a good way), and reasonable story. It kind of echoed Mahana in the sense of an iron-fisted patriarch dominating the lives of his offspring and how they managed to cope and keep going in spite of it.

GIRLFRIENDS ★★★

I read that this 1970s film inspired the HBO show ‘Girls’, and you can really tell when watching it. I almost walked out about halfway through, but stuck it through and glad that I did. The film quality was t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e. Dirty and blurry, but I guess that’s what you get with low budget 40 year+ old indie films.

MAHANA ★★★☆

I really enjoyed this New Zealand film about feuding families. Very well acted, nice shots of NZ’s beautiful countryside, and a pretty good story too. It could have easily scored a little higher if it didn’t have plot points that felt like it needed to tie everything up neatly by the end. (the shearing competition for example felt a bit jarring to me). Worth a look though. 

SUBURRA ★★

An Italian mafia film that promised to be high action. I love mafia films (Godfather, Goodfellas, etc), so I was looking forward to this. I guess it had action, but this was painful to watch. All the characters were completely unlikeable, and other than everyone just being assholes to each other, it didn’t really feel like there was a story to tell amongst the constance violence. 

GIRL ASLEEP  ★★  

Australian film that seemed to suffer an identity crisis. Couldn’t figure out it if it was a Wes Anderson film, Donnie Darko, or Muriel’s Wedding/Strictly Ballroom. Volume was way up too loud (said the old man) for this session, too. I dunno, it just seemed to be trying too hard, and relying on original techniques that had already been done to tell a story of a girl starting at a new school and the friend she makes there.

LO AND BEHOLD, REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD ★★★★

Werner Herzog has a knack for making just about anything interesting and engaging. I’m pretty interested in the Internet having worked in the industry (or associated ones) for many years, so my anticipation on this was very high. I’m pleased that the expectations were met. It offered several slices of information about the Internet ranging from interviews with people who helped create it, the future it may hold, commentary on the social impact, and some of the darker sides to it. A must see.

JULIETA ★★★★

Yep, it was a 100% great MIFF day as the second film was also one of my festival highlights. Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, (whose films I probably should have seen a lot more of than I have), the story tells of a Spanish teacher and goes into the history of how she met her daughter’s father, and follows through to show how her daughter came to ex-communicate her later in life. Really enjoyed this.