Film Fest Day 8

With this ushering shift, I was venturing into foreign territory. I had never heard of any of these films, which was kind of exciting. It's rare in this day and age of internet leaks and spoilers to be genuinely surprised. 

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

I love this movie.

The women's liberation movement has done so much for us, and yet today it so often reduced to, at best, a redundant cause, or, at worst, a boogeyman of a bygone era.

Finally, someone has gathered all of the key figures, the middle class housewives, the radicals, the lefties, the minority advocates, the lesbians, the academics, the activists, and let them give their own views and stories on the change they helped create.

What I most loved about this was how it used the story of one part of the movement as a springboard into another. Hence we get to go from Betty Friedan and the creation of NOW in the mid 60s to the rise of specific sub-sects, like black women, pro-choice activists, lesbians and a host of others. Rather than reduce this story to a few people, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry really gives a sense of the scope of its impact in the early 70s. The ripples that begin with Friedan's The Feminine Mystique move out to influence a vast body of scholarship, activism and agit-pop. 

This film is filled with such energy and hard-won wisdom that it makes you optimistic about the future. Sure, they were angry and confrontational. But without them, domestic abuse and rape would not have been criminalised in the public conscience, abortion legalised and faulty contraceptives replaced with safe alternatives. Women's health would not even be a concept. This documentary is a powerful tribute to their work.

Man or woman, check it out.

Wrinkles

This movie bummed me out. It is really good, don't get me wrong. But it does its job too well.

Wrinkles tells the story of Emilio (Martin Sheen), an elderly man in the early stages of Alzheimers. His family move him to an old folks home where he makes friends with Miguel (the late George Coe). Miguel is a free spirit, who has no family and is not above fleecing the more addled members of the community. However, as Emilio gradually deteriorates, Miguel is forced to confront his own selfishness.

A simple story well told, with an unsentimental but empathetic view of its characters, Wrinkles is often achingly sad. It confronts the inevitability of age and death with a maturity you would not find in a hundred live-action dramas.

Bring plenty of tissues.

Film Fest Day 7

Yesterday is the reason why I keep volunteering at the film festival - not the free tickets, although those are nice. What the film festival offers is a chance to see movies I would never see otherwise. Today's post was going to feature reviews for End of the Tour and Love 3D - however circumstances changed, and I had to usher a completely different set of movies. Movies I would have never seen...

Women He's Undressed

This is a docudrama by Australian director Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career) about the life and career of Orry-Kelly, the famous Hollywood costume designer. Who the hell is Orry-Kelly? Here's a brief list of just some of his credits: 42nd Street, Now Voyager, Casablanca, An American in Paris, Oklahoma and Some Like It Hot.

Incarnated onscreen by actor Darren Gilshenan, Orry-Kelly acts as a guide and commentator as Armstrong's film charts his journey from the back of nowhere, Australia to the glamour of Hollywood. A series of talking heads, from critic Leonard Maltin to Jane Fonda,  offer their own insight and stories.

There are two major strands to the film, which make Orry-Kelly's life so fascinating. The first is  Orry-Kelly's contentious relationship with Hollywood star Cary Grant. Questions about Grant's personal life have lingered for decades, and this film blows the closet wide open. The one-time lovers were forced apart by Grant's desire for stardom and (in 1934) the sudden imposition of a new, repressive morality in Hollywood (embodied onscreen by the Production Code).

The other thing the film is very successful at, is pinpointing Orry-Kelly's genius for designing clothes that both flattered the sometimes unconventional body-types of his leading ladies, while augmenting their portrayals of their characters. The stories of his collaborations with Bette Davis, and his work on turning Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis into Daphne and Josephine is truly worth the price of admission.

I believe it is going to have a wider release in arthouses, so look out for it. It's great!

Red Amnesia

A mix of surrealism and social realism, this Chinese thriller is a fascinating story. It is rare that you see a movie featuring an OAP as protagonist - even more so that the OAP is a woman.

Red Amnesia tells the story of Deng, an elderly widow who becomes the victim of a series of prank calls and other harassment. Slowly, the mystery is unravelled - taking in Deng's past during the Cultural Revolution, her relationship with her gay son, and the mountain hamlet where she used to live.

I'm not going to spoil it. This is a very quiet, understated film. There are no obvious genre tropes or plot turns here, and yet it remains (largely) involving. There are a few dull patches in the middle, but the story and central character are so interesting that I was able to remain invested.

Lu Zhong is terrific in the lead. The character manages to be both incredibly sympathetic and unsympathetic, often simultaneously. It's a hard balance to strike, and it takes an incredible lack of arrogance to take on a role like Deng. She's really the selling point of this film, and the main reason to check it out.

A Poem Is A Naked Person

A rarely seen look at 70s music legend Leon Russell, this documentary was shot by Les Blank over the course of 1972-1974 but never released. 

Finally available, this is a fascinating time capsule of early 70s America, specifically the South and youth culture, and the music business. With no guiding voice-over, this is a vaguely coherent assemblage of various scenes: Russell rehearsing and performing; various band members discussing the meaning of life; pranks; locals and various scenery.

I enjoyed this, although I was not able to see the first 20 minutes or so because I was helping latecomers into the theatre. What I saw, I enjoyed. As a fan of this particular period in American Rock, it's good. As a sample of the atmosphere of the times, it's really great.

Film Fest Day 6: It's DOPE!

This was a late addition. I heard good things, noted that Zoë Kravitz looked very cute in corn rows and so BOOM. Instant review!

Malcolm is a nerd in his final year of high school. He and his friends are obsessed with early 90s hiphop culture, to the extent of wearing the clothes and, in Malcolm's case, the hair associated with the era. He lives in Inglewood, California and dreams of going to Harvard. After falling for a drug dealer's squeeze (Kravitz), Malcolm and his friends end up at the drug dealer's birthday party. Events take a turn for the worse, and Malcolm inadvertently ends up with a backpack full of high grade dope. Now he has to find a way to get rid of the drugs, ace his university entrance exams and help the drug dealer's girlfriend pass her GED (it's better than it sounds).

This movie is a lot of fun. Probably the most flat out enjoyable movie of the festival. In a way, it feels like a throwback to the teen movies of the 80s and early 90s. Like Ex Machina, it may not be wholly original in terms of its genre, but the perspective and presentation here elevate it above whatever cliches and conventions it uses.

It features strong performances from the central trio, particularly from lead Shameik Moore. I've never seen him before, and he really has presence here. Hopefully, he can follow Nate Parker and Michael B. Jordan into bigger roles. 

The movie is at its best in the first half, when it is more about the characters than plot twists. Not that the second half is bad, but it does feel a little ragged at times. But that's just nitpicking -- this movie is really good. What I really liked was how the movie managed to avoid softening the harshness of the characters' milieu, and still make you laugh. Dope has a darkness to it which gives it a vibrancy and realism lacking from similar movies like The Wackness. 

I highly recommend this. Hopefully, it gets a wider release outside the festival. It's that good. 

Film Fest Day 5

Philip Dadson: Sonics from Scratch

Like I said a couple posts ago, one of the benefits of ushering is you get to see films you would not normally go out of your way to see. 

This documentary is about Philip Dadson, the creator of From Scratch and the Scratch Orchestra. For laymen such as myself, he creates music out of sounds that he finds -- from old pipes to a pair of rocks he finds on a beach. He works like a sculptor, building a collection of sounds out of collections of found objects, which he and his collaborators use to shape into unique musical pieces.

This movie was interesting, but not that illuminating. The movie tries to jam in his entire career, but it felt like an outline rather than an in-depth examination of the man and his music. This movie reminded me of a documentary on the sound artist Trimpin I saw at the festival a few years back (The Sound of Invention). That documentary felt far more in-depth, mainly because it managed to develop a portrait of the man and his work by focusing it around his plans for a new art installation. If this documentary had a similar narrative spine, it would have resonated more. As is, it covers too much ground in too short a running time.

However, if you are interested in one of New Zealand's less well known artists, it is worth a look -- if only for an overview.

If you are keeping score:

Girlhood: Good
Clouds of Sils Maria: Very good
'71: Great
The Lobster: Very good
I Am Thor: Good
Peggy Guggenheim - Art Addict: Very good
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night: Good
Jauja: Bad
The Assassin: Poor
Ex Machina: Great

Film Fest Day 4

Ugh, this day was exhausting. First I had two films to usher, and then a couple I had to wedge in during the evening because I could not go to their other showings.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

This movie is the intersection where an arthouse film meets a silent horror and a 50s drive-in flick. The plot is pretty simple: A small group of characters (a drug dealer, a prostitute, a gangster, a kid) find their lives seriously affected (or ended) by the mysterious appearance of a vampire. While it won't win any prizes in terms of story, the look, locale and performances make this a rather compelling watch.

It's really the incidental details which provide the real pleasures. The gangster's costume and posturing is an obvious highlight. The film has an offbeat sense of humour and a great soundtrack of Iranian pop songs I've never heard of. This is also the only film to my knowledge which features a skate-boarding vampire, and includes a cat in the role of comic relief. 

While it's not the masterpiece people have been making it out to be, it is a lot of fun.

Jauja

Sigh. I had to hit a pot hole eventually.

This stars Viggo Mortensen as a European mercenary in Central or South America who is hunting for his runaway daughter. That about does it for plot. 

This movie was boring. The aspect ratio was much smaller than the screen -- I'm not sure what the intent here was. The movie makes a series of surrealistic turns which feel inexplicable, but are not compelling enough to make the movie worth watching.

On the plus side, the photography is the strongest aspect here with several beautiful compositions. As an art installation it might pass muster - as a cinematic experience it's a chore. 

The Assassin

The drought continues. 

Like Jauja, this is beautifully photographed, especially the location shots. The action sequences come in short, lyrical bursts. However, the movie is a confusing, over-complicated mess without interesting characters or dramatic tension.  

Ex Machina

I have been looking forward to this for so long. The internet machine said the movie was coming out on March 5. That turned out not to be. Then I heard it was coming out at the film festival, and booked for its first showing last Wednesday. Work intervened so I sacrificed sleep to see a last, late showing.  

This is the best movie I've seen this year. It won't hold the spot for long, but this is a damn good piece of work. Alex Garland has become the master of the small-scale, high concept genre film. This is one of the best films he's been involved with (I still have not seen Sunshine).

I'm sure you are familiar with the premise by now. A young computer programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a contest to spend a week with his boss, a reclusive genius (Oscar Isaac) who wants him to perform a modified version of the Turing Test to determine whether Ava, a humanoid machine he has created (Alicia Vikander) has artificial intelligence. And then things get really dark.

This is a smart film that not only has a lot of meaty ideas, but knows how to convey them with economy, imagination and (most importantly) a deliciously dark sense of humour. Beyond the musings on AI, the movie works as a sharply observed satire on the role of public performance in an age where cameras are everywhere -- specifically the performance of gender.

This focus on performing for an audience is highlighted by the main location: Nathan (Issac)'s residence, where the bulk of the film takes place, is a beautifully designed but claustrophobic bunker, a Panopticon-like structure filled with opaque windows and surveillance technology. In this place, everyone is playing for the cameras.

The performances from Isaac and Vikander are superlative (probably the only time I can use that word). Isaac is his usual reliably unpredictable self, while Vikander cements her growing It-Girl status after similarly great performances in A Royal Affair and Testament of Youth. She has about 572 other movies coming out this year, so I'm sure we'll hear about her again come award season. Gleeson is fine as the protagonist, but he comes across as a little vanilla compared to his co-stars' showier roles. That's always one of the pitfalls with a three-hander -- someone has to get the straight man role, and Gleeson falls into it adequately.

I'm going to stop waffling. The movie is not being given a theatrical release outside of the festival, so catch it when it comes out on a streaming platform. Watch it, love it. Good night. 

Film Fest Day 3: Thoughts from the back row

One of the benefits of ushering at the film festival is that I get to see a variety of movies I would have never seen on my own. While Day 2 was all my picks, yesterday was completely out of my control. To make the experience more interesting, I did not bother to read up on these movies beforehand.

I Am Thor

This as something else. A fly on the wall documentary about underground rock non-star Thor, a nude waiter/bodybuilder-turned-rock star, I Am Thor feels like a spiritual brother to Anvil!, the documentary from a few years back about the veteran Canadian metal act.

Constantly on the cusp of breaking out in the 70s and the 80s, Thor's rise was stymied by a series of  mishaps (at one point during contract negotiations before his first US tour, he was kidnapped and held for ransom by one of the parties involved). A nervous breakdown in the late 80s was the final nail in the coffin, and Thor left music for 10 years.

The documentary follows Thor through his 11 year comeback as the ageing rocker goes through band members, shitty venues and a series of health issues to a reunion with his original band in a Scandinanian tour.

Picture and sound quality are occasionally variable, and the opening 20 minutes are a bit too brief, speeding through his heyday with little context (I could have used a few more dates). However, the movie's strength lies in its portrayal of the central character, a relentlessly positive music fan who continues to chase his dream despite the naysayers, lack of money and his own physical struggles.

Peggy Guggenheim - Art Addict

Shot in a more conventional expository mode, combining stills, archive footage, Guggenheim's voice and various talking heads, Art Addict is a biographical piece about the eccentric art collector and her effect on the history of 20th century art.

Even for a layman, it is a fascinating journey through the giants of modern art (Max Ernst, Salvadore Dali, Jackson Pollock are among the many luminaries) decorated with spicy anecdotes and Guggenheim's witty asides.

Film fest viewing notes, Day 2

Clouds of Sils Maria 

I've never understood the rabid hatred for Kristen Stewart. But then again, my introduction to her work was not Twilight. The first time I remember registering Stewart was in a little indie called Speak, in which she played a shy teenager who is rendered-near mute after she is raped. She is amazing that movie, and ever since I've been waiting for her to show off her chops again. Clouds of Sils Maria is that movie.

Truth be told, Stewart and Juliette Binoche are both great. Their double act, as a veteran actress and her young assistant/confidant, is the engine of the movie. The movie itself is an interesting variation on the old 'veteran actress vs. young ingenue' premise.

Binoche plays celebrated actress Maria Enders, who is about to begin working on a new production of the play which made her a star back when she was 18. The play involves the relationship between an older woman and a young secretary who brings her down. Now playing the role of the older woman, Enders experiences a serious crisis of confidence as she finds herself unable to shake off her perception of the role from back when she played the younger role. Stewart plays her increasingly unsettled assistant, who finds it increasingly difficult to keep up with her employer/friend's process. Chloe Grace Moretz pops in as the up-and-coming Hollywood train wreck (think Lindsay Lohan) who has been cast in Enders' old role.

There are a lot of themes bouncing around here, relating to age, creative processes, public and private performance, reconnecting with (or being imprisoned by) the past, and most importantly, the subjectivity of the audience. All juicy stuff, which becomes the foundation for some great tête-à-têtes between Binoche and Stewart as they run lines ahead of rehearsals.

If I have any gripes, the first is that some of these arguments come off a little forced. Some of the dialogue clunks as the characters start to work over themes which should be subtext, but which just become text. My other gripe is Chloe Grace Moretz. This is a personal peeve, but I have never really been able to take her seriously. She always comes off as simultaneously too young and too mature for her years. It's the same thing I had with Dakota Fanning and Natalie Portman. Moretz just comes off as too intelligent and in control to convince as a Hollywood party animal.

Overall however, I enjoyed this movie a great deal. It feels like a good bet for a re-watch, and I might give it another look when it comes out for home viewing. Definitely worth a look.

'71

I love a good John Carpenter movie. Since he's too busy watching gridiron to make movies, it's good that a generation of up-and-coming filmmakers have adopted his style and themes for their own works: films like Attack The Block, The Raid, and my own favourite, Dredd, have taken Carpenter's lo-fi, urban claustrophobia and made it relevant again.

'71 shares a number of Carpenter tropes -- sustained takes; wide angles of darkened rooms and hallways; a pulsating electronic score -- but has the intelligence and imagination to use them in a way that serves the story and does not feel like mere homage.

The premise is simple: a green British squadie (Jack O'Connell, great) arrives in Belfast in the middle of the 'Troubles.' He is separated from his unit during a riot and has to make his way back to barracks through the city's backstreets, while dodging the provisional IRA, ordinary citizens and ostensible allies, the Ulster militia.

Unlike Carpenter, who reduces his antagonists to pure images of evil, the makers of '71 go to great pains to colour everyone in shades of grey, reinforcing the confusing, complicated alliances, deals and grievances underpinning the situation in the city. This historical realism serves to increase the tension, as O'Connell finds that friends can be as dangerous as the supposed enemy. In the end, '71 is less one 'good guy's' triumph over adversity, and more like a drowning sailor being tossed and turned by forces outside his control.

It's early days yet, but as it stands, '71 is one of the best films I've seen this year, and definitely the highlight of my Festival experience thus far. Catch it when it comes out on home video and streaming services. It is amazing.

The Lobster

Going in, I had no idea what this was about. I read the synopsis, saw the above picture of Lea Seydoux scowling at a pig, became wonderfully confused and immediately booked a ticket.

I am still wonderfully confused. I mean, I think I get what this film is about -- I can follow the plot, I can tease out a theme or two, I enjoy the performances -- but I cannot really grasp what it is I have just seen.

The plot goes something like this: In the future(?), society has undergone a transformation of some kind(?). Oh Christ. Uh, so basically you have to be in a couple if you want to be a part of society (hetero or gay, doesn't matter as long as you got a ring on it). Colin Farrell's wife has left him for another man, so he has to go to this hotel in the country where he has 30 days to find a new 'partner' or he will be transformed into an animal of his own choosing (i.e. a lobster). His other option is to hide out in the woods with Seydoux's quasi-Colonel Kurtz and her un-merry band of 'loners', who let you do whatever you want as long as you do not pair off with anyone. Great options all round!

There is something off about this movie. It has a really dark sense of humour that I liked, but there are certain bits where the deadpan does not quite land. Most of problems have to do with the voice-over by Rachel Weisz -- her performance in the movie is great, but her narration is so flat and over-explanatory that it kind of bogged down the early part of the movie.

Apart from that, I liked the performances. Colin Farrell does well as a mild-mannered milquetoast, Ben Winshaw is his usual reliable self and Seydoux makes for a surprisingly effective antagonist (to be honest, most of the characters in the movie are terrible people, but her character takes it up a notch or 10). I have always found Seydoux's gloomy countenance somewhat unsettling (whether it's a Woody Allen movie or Mission: Impossible, she always looks like she's about to stab somebody for killing her cat) and it is put to good use here.

Overall, I recommend it just on the basis of it being both really weird and oddly watchable. I don't know if it succeeds at what it is trying to achieve, but it is pretty enjoyable. If you are in the mood for watching familiar faces (Ashley Jensen, Olivia Coleman and John C. Reilly turn up) doing weird stuff, or just want to watch something a bit different, maybe you will like this. I certainly won't forget it.