What Mark Saw

Very tired tonight so may not be as verbose

DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE
7/10
Frightening indeed. In a nutshell, Africans starve to death while working to feed the first world. Not an ‘up’ film at all. I think everyone knows the world is a bit shit, and I wonder what can be done to actually fix it. I guess if the answer were that simple, it would already be done. :-(.

OSCAR
7/10
Quick and nice. I’m amazed how this guy creates new art out of existing billboards without being arrested. Most interesting to me was watching the scenes where the advertising company wanted to chat to him, and to see his internal ethics working as to whether he would accept working with ‘the enemy’.

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW
7.89/10
A quirky rating for a quirky film. I actually really liked it, so it really should be an 8/10 I guess. It had some great scenes – The only thing that kind of raises a flag in the back of my mind is that eventually quirky films like this are going to be so run on the mill that they won’t be quirky anymore. Don’t think we’re quite there yet, so I give this one ranking amongst my favourites of the festival so far. Best bit is the creation of this into the greater public consciousness: ))((. Oh! and big ups for using a great Spiritualized song in the soundtrack 🙂

A WORLD WITHOUT THIEVES
7/10
Yeah. So, key point of the day is that my mind begins to numb and I get tired after being in the city for 12 hours, even if only 8 of it was watching films.. This was actually quite enjoyable for the most part, centring around two thieves (mostly) protecting a naive guy with truckloads of cash from a gang of other professional thieves. It was great really until the last 20 mins or so where it seemed to go off the rails a bit (pun intended, haw). They spent a reasonable time creating a relationship between Dumbo (the naive guy) and the Wangs, but all of that is virtually forgotten at the end as the story twists into a cops vs thieves story. Admittedly I began to get a bit tired towards the end so maybe my lack of satisfaction rests on missing some subtitles…

GUNNER PALACE
5/10
Gunner Palace was a documentary which sounded like it had a lot of potential – the filmmaker spent a couple of months over two trips to Iraq with American soldiers after major combat was finished to see what was going on over there. Unfortunately, I walked out not really feeling like I’d seen a good representation of what it actually does feel like to be there. Instead, I saw American soldiers being very American; enjoying the swimming pool, making rude/lewd comments, writing and performing rap music throughout, and talking about how much they love ‘real food’ like Burger King… I suppose I was hoping to see a little more about what the Iraqis thought about the war, and their interaction with the forces there. A little disappointing.

KUNG FU HUSTLE
7/10
Anyone who liked Shaolin Soccer when they saw it at MIFF a couple of years ago (or before or after it) will pretty much be happy with this film. It’s heavy on the special effects and has plenty of humour and some great fight scenes. The opening scenes promised more style to the film than it actually offered, but I thought it was great fun. I particularly liked the ‘capone-era chicago-esque’ feel. Definitely worth seeing if you like kung fu/action films. I’m only giving it a 7/10 rather than a higher score because it didn’t really feel like it broke any new ground… I suppose one can’t expect too much more than what it offers. If you are a fan, the Director/Writer/Producer/Actor (phew), Stephen Chow, will actually be at the next showing and will be doing a Q&A type thing at the festival club on Sunday July 31 at 9:15pm.

LITTLE FISH
7.5/10
I liked this film, which showed the various ways that drugs have affected a family living in Sydney – the relationships between the different members was also interesting. And, of course, it starred Dustin Nguyen who I last saw in 21 Jump Street :-). I think I liked this film because it didn’t push edges too hard – it wasn’t depicting utter human waste stages of addiction, it wasn’t overly soppy/emotional and didn’t have particularly sensationalised over-dramatisations, which would probably be easy in a film like this. Of particular note though, was the description of Vancouver by Jonny, which I found a little ironic – in the film, he describes Vancouver as a city where people work or sleep, and that they don’t get much sleep. (or something along those lines). Having lived in Vancouver, Melbourne and Sydney, I don’t believe this to be true – Vancouver’s the closest city to Melbourne that I’ve been to. Sydney on the other hand *is* a city where careers seem to be the ‘guiding light’ and quality of life outside one’s career is generally more lacking. Again, my opinion, which I’d say is worth about this much in the greater scheme of things; –>

On another note, the Film Buff’s Forecast folks plugged this blog on their weekly mail out, so cheers to them! They’ll be doing their radio show live from the festival club on Sat 23 July from noon till 2pm.

FROZEN
not rated
I was really looking forward to this one – unfortunately it started about 15 minutes late, and I ended up having to leave before it finished, so I don’t feel that it’s fair to give it a score. I’ve been told that the last 20 mins or so of the film does tie up a lot of what’s been going on which is good to hear ;-). The first chunk was very nicely shot and I did enjoy its lazy pace, but after over an hour of watching a woman who was obviously very much still in mourning for her missing (presumed dead?) sister wander somewhat aimlessly through her existence, I did begin to yawn a bit. Given I didn’t see it all, I can’t suggest whether it’s worth going to the cinema for if it gets a local release, but I’d certainly recommend it as a DVD rental.

DARK HORSE
8/10
I really liked this one and I suspect it will eventuate into one of my faves of the festival. Shot in Black and White, it has a great sense of humour with some laugh out loud moments during the first ‘chapters’ of the film (of which there are 12). It did tend to drag towards the end, but redeemed itself by the closing credits. Highly recommended!

HIDDEN
7/10
A french film starring Juliette Binoche is difficult for me to pass up. This was a soft thriller/stalker/drama, and I doubt that you’ll see a ‘No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of this Picture’ line in the credits… Was certainly watchable, and had a cryptic enough ending that had everyone looking at each other when it was over to see if they missed something or not. (Well at least our group did that anyway). Would be interested to hear what others thought though. I never claimed to be a brainiac when it comes to cinema, so subtleties go over my head on many an occasion :-). It certainly wasn’t an awful film by any stretch, but it didn’t really give me enough satisfaction to say it was anything better than okay to good.

If you’ve seen any of the above films, please feel free to add your thoughts or comments. Or, if you’ve seen something else or have other comments, that you’d like to contribute to me, please feel free to get in touch by emailing me.

BROTHERS
7.5/10
I liked this film – it had some humour to it, but also had some quite dark tones and violent scenes that I didn’t really expect. It’s an interesting Danish film about two brothers who lead very different lives, and how after a particular event, they begin to switch roles. Makes you question how much a ‘good’ or ‘evil’ person is decided on the circumstances you’re dealt.

Showed a couple of people the blog now and, well, I kind of expected to be ridiculed a little more than I have been. Really, is seeing this many films that normal? Anyway, I’ve made some changes tonight to the side-bar, which lists all the sessions I plan to see, as well as highlighting those that I’m most looking forward to, and I’ve added links for each film to the MIFF website so you can see what they’re about… Now do you think I’m sad? Good. It’s about time.

Some other random musings/tips I’ve thought about as I picked films this year, which others may find handy (or not) – these are my opinions based on what I like in a film. So, keep in mind that other people’s tastes may very easily be different to mine;

– If it’s showing at ACMI, the ‘film’ quality is quite possibly not going to be great – last year they showed a lot of movies shot with video rather than film. I tend to treat anything at ACMI with a bit of apprehension.

– If you can see something at the Capitol Theatre, choose it over any other. Even if the film sucks you can still check out the ceiling which is absolutely amazing. My brain begins to melt every time I look at it and try and imagine how anyone sat down to design it in a pre-computer era…

– If the film is from South Korea, it’s likely to be amazingly good, or incredibly bad. How to tell a bad one? Well, if the description of the plot doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s possible that it’s actually and accurate description of a film that doesn’t make sense… Be warned!

– If the film is scandanavian and sounds like it might be humourous, (even if it’s with a dark edge) it will probably be good.

– If the words “experimental” “dreamlike” “surreal” etc are used, be warned you may be watching a super 8 film that is less interesting than the part of the credits of Lord of the Rings – extended edition where they thank all the members of the Lord of the Rings fan club…. One film this year is described as having an “evocative, dreamlike visual code”… and that it “traces the physical and metaphysical journeys that Louis must undertake in his existential quest”. I’m sure this stuff is great to a fan, but I’m going to be running in the opposite direction.

😉
mark