Film Fest: Day Seventeen

Alright. This is it. I made it. The final day of Film Festival. Thank the fucking gods. After battling through the worst of a hangover (and missing In the Attic because of said hangover), we managed to get through town in the driving wind and rain for our first film of the last day.

The Red Shoes
I actually had absolutely no intention of seeing this when I first heard it was playing. I'm rather glad I reversed that decision. This is a sweepingly big romantic melodrama that just isn't made anymore, and I'm glad I got to catch this Technicolor classic on the big screen.
The main thrust is a love triangle - between Vicky Parker the talented ballerina who lives to dance, the precocious young composer Julian... and the ballet, in the form of the obsessively controlling Lermontov. There is love, laughter, tragedy and dance. With a film like this you just have to let yourself go with the melodrama and the romance and not get caught up in minor niggling details.

Under the Southern Cross
I guess this was the closest we had to a Live Cinema event this year. The Live Cinema event – where a classic silent film is shown at the Embassy with live orchestra accompaniment – is one of my favourite parts of the Festival. This year, for reasons I’m not sure I can go into, we didn’t have the usual Live Cinema down in Wellington. Especially gutting as Auckland had Sherlock Jr. – a Buster Keaton classic.
Instead we had this film from 1928, shot in New Zealand with an all Maori cast. The score was a new thing worked up by three prominent Wellington musicians, notably Warren Maxwell of Trinity Roots, Fat Freddy’s Drop and Little Bushman. The film was due to start at 6:30pm. But as the musicians were still setting up and fiddling about (and fair enough, there should’ve been more time between this and the previous session) the doors didn’t open until 6:40pm. There were cries from the crowd beyond of “Hurry up!” and “Supposed to have started by now!” Yeah, no duh. Perhaps there’s a reason the doors haven’t opened yet? Because that’s what I wanted to deal with when I had a hangover: an angry audience.
Anyway! You’re maybe wondering about the film. The film itself was pretty standard guff: two warring tribes, two star-crossed lovers, a nefarious prince, battle, death and love. Nothing particularly exciting or new there. As for the live music… when it was there it was interesting and bold, melding new sounds to this incredibly old film. But that was the main issue – when it was there. There were long spells of no score. And always in an odd place; in a part of the film that could’ve, and should’ve, worked with a score of some sort. Somewhat disappointing, especially when what score there was there was so intriguing.
It’s a great idea to have contemporary scores to classic films, and maybe something we can begin to see more of. But the film nerd in me really does enjoy these silent classics up on the big screen with their original score. So, a return of the “classic” Live Cinema please.

Amer
Oh, this really wasn’t the film I wanted to end the final (severely hungover) day of Festival on. It’s a psychedelic head-trip of a film, an homage to Italian giallos of old. I’ve never really seen any of the giallos though so I have no idea how true to them this intensely cut, largely dialogue free film with a slim to not-there narrative, is.
I’m slightly ashamed to say, I nodded off for quite a fair bit of it. What I did see… well, I had no idea what the hell was going on. Properly freaky scary in places and intensely sexualised in others and with a killer soundtrack, ripped from films of the era I was left with impressions more than anything. Which, from talking to people afterward, would’ve been the same had I actually seen the whole thing. There are scores of quick cuts, notably on extreme blurry close-ups and use of outrageous colours. Perhaps if I was not so hungover and tired I could've soaked into the experience of it all more.

And that's that. The Film Festival over for another year. But don't worry, I'm not quite done with it yet. There's still my Festival Wrap to come and an In Appreciation Of... for Once Upon a Time in the West. It's been a crazy hectic couple of weeks, and I hope you've been reading and enjoying what I've had to say about the various films I've seen.

We will return to our irregular scheduled programming soon.

Film Fest: Day Sixteen

Ok. The penultimate day of Festival. Nearly there. Nearly finished. Just had to get through this day and to the Festival Party that night. Ahhh... it's what I've been looking forward to. Drinking, dancing and generally blowing off steam. It was a damn good night, with plenty of moves busted and beers drunk. And boy howdy, I felt it the next day. But before we get to that...

Melody for a Street Organ
There is no way I would have chosen to see this film. I was rostered on to Usher it though, so I had to. To me, it looked to be a depressing Eastern European "art" film that would be a slog. I wasn't disappointed.
The film concerns two little tykes on their way to Moscow (from somewhere in the Ukraine I think) to find their dads. They're all alone and are quickly booted off the train and robbed. I think we're supposed to care for them, but the poor performances and the fact the characters don't seem to be like real people at all, inhibits this. In fact, no-one in the film acts like a real person. Everyone encountered is some sort of cipher, meant to symbolise some belaboured point. At one point, the two kids wander into a part of the station full of people on phones. No-one has anytime for them. Everyone gestures wildly, with their hands, their face and their bodies as if they were drama school dropouts asked to act being on the telephone. It's a scene that drags on and on. And we get the point very, very quickly. The whole film is like this.
Thus, when we finally reach the obviously tragic end my only emotional response to the whole thing was: thank fuck that's over. My brain felt like it had been relentlessly pummeled with a hammer. The Symbolism and Meaning Hammer.

American: The Bill Hicks Story
This was the film I was actually looking forward to seeing today. A documentary on Bill Hicks, his life and comedy. An interesting choice was made in not showing the people talking for the majority of the run-time. Interviews with Hicks' family, friends and fellow comedians are overlayed with animated photographs, old footage of Hicks and various filmed stand-up gigs. It was hard to tell who was talking at times and it occasionally took you out of the flow of the story.
The story of Hicks' life is engaging enough, and I see what they were going for with the use of photographs. As for Hicks himself, he's one of those brilliant comics you either get or you don't. As he died way back when, I've only known of him posthumously and loved his angry, intelligent humour. He seemed to truly want to change the world. To make people laugh and really get them thinking. Of course, he wasn't amazing popular in the States. So while all of this, and the details of his life, were new to me I don't know how new it would be to true Hicks fans in the audience (like the guy sat in my room who heaved and giggled at just about every utterance from Hicks). But the footage of Hicks's first gigs, shot on home video when he was still in high school, is something to treasure. As well as home video footage of his last ever gig.
The real sadness in the Bill Hicks story is that we lost him. Like so many other great minds, we lost him early and we lost him young. Dead at 32 from pancreatic cancer, he was really beginning to become a stand-up superstar (especially in the UK, surprisingly).
If you know Hicks, if you know his comedy, you'll get a kick out of this. If you don't know Bill Hicks... please, take a listen sometime.

Film Fest: Day Fifteen

Wow. Just typing out that title "Film Fest: Day Fifteen" was a little scary. Fifteen days of constant movie watching?! Insanity. Yet here I am, still with a coupla days to go. So what was on the cinematic menu for today? A brutal noir, an uncomfortably funny comedy and a disappointing sci-fi.

The Killer Inside Me
This was one of my most anticipated films of the Festival. I've been liking what Affleck has been doing the past few years, and Winterbottom is always an interesting director to watch. Of course, when the film premiered at Sundance there was much hue and cry raised about the violence, particularly towards women. One woman calling shame down on the film, and shame down on Sundance for showing it. What a blinkered view.
Winterbottom certainly doesn't shy away from the violence. But seeing as how this is a film, based on the book of the same name, that follows a cold killer of a man would you expect the blow to be softened?
This is a brave central performance by Casey Affleck, not shying away from the cold darkness inherent to the character. He brings that smarmy style of charm so associated with his older brother, but with a dark edge to it. But we cannot forget Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, both giving brave performances in their own way. It's not usual for Hollywood starlets to allow their characters to be treated this way. They are absolutely fearless, the both of them. There are scenes, particularly with them, that are extraordinarily difficult to watch. The ending is, however, is somehow beautiful. In a twisted sort of way.
It's a brutal 50's Texas set film noir, and the obvious companion piece to it would be American Psycho.

Cyrus
I was not expecting to like this as much as I did. I feared some sort of hipster style comedy. I was pleasantly surprised as this is one of the best, funniest and most real romantic comedies I've ever seen.
John C. Reilly is a schlub, divorced the past seven years and still not over it. At a party he meets Marisa Tomei. And they hit it off. And things seem to be going great between them and you get the sense that this is the first happiness either of them have had for a long time. And then he meets her son. Her hyper-intelligent, passive-aggressive obsessive son, played by Jonah Hill. You remember when Robin Williams first went creepy for One Hour Photo? That's what Hill seems to be channeling here as he appears from the shadows with a blank face and false friendship to Reilly.
Unsurprisingly, given that Reilly and Hill are the male leads, the comedy is informed by the Apatow/McKay school of improvisation. Thankfully, the directors keep a rein on things becoming too absurd. They have a keen eye for relationships, and how real (and adult) relationships work and can get screwed up by the people in an around them. The similarities between John C. Reilly's character (unable to completely let go of his ex-wife) and Jonah Hill's Cyrus (unable to let go of his mum) are noted without being overplayed. The only time this very realness, this naturalness, becomes distracting is in the camera-work. The "documentary" feel to it can be distracting at times. I understand wanting to keep the camera fluid, like the scenes, but there a few too many obvious zooms for it to totally work.
However, that's a minor gripe to an overall wonderful film. It's funny, sweet, real and more than a little awkward.

Splice
Oh. Oh dear. Oh how very disappointed I was with this. From the director of Cube Vincenzo Natali and produced by Guillermo del Toro? With Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley creating an horrific abomination of nature and a crime against nature?! How could I not dig this groove? Well, it turns out... throw a bunch of cool stuff together and sometimes you get a big, cheesy disappointment. Like microwave macaroni.
Brody and Polley are cutting-edge geneticists; they're rock-star scientists, part of the geek-chic. They wear crazy-cool clothes and have a punk rock attitude to science and morals. They push the boundaries, man. So they end up creating a animal-human collage like creature before their funding gets pulled. And from there... well, every beat is pretty predictable. An anonymous female donor is mentioned and, guess what? It turns out to be Polley! With the running (more brisk walking) and hiding there's no real sense of tension or horror. Their quickly growing (and maturing) creation/daughter Dren tends to just... hang out.
The interplay between the three of them and the shift in dynamics is largely handled well; Polley first protecting Dren and then clashing with her and Brody at first wanting to destroy her and then... well, this is where the film lost me actually. You see, Brody and Dren... get it on. Down'n'dirty in the hideout: the scientist and the creation. The audience lapped it up, whooping with laughter at the pure ridiculousness of it.
There were quite a few moments of that: unintentional laughter. Splice was a very serious-faced B-movie that didn't pull it off. Which is a real shame because I love genre films, I love sci-fi and I love the potential of a great idea. It just didn't happen here.