MIFF is over for another year and I must now return to the real world, where assignments must be written, dishes washed, floors vacuumed and lightbulbs replaced. I saw some fantastic films and it was a treat as always, but I must confess that I am looking forward to having a social life again and being able to have conversations with my partner in which we're both awake at the same time.
I only made it to 39 films, which is a disappointing total – a winter cold and general exhaustion prevented me from viewing the whole 52 for which I booked. I probably should start now and get my immune system in training before MIFF 2010. It's really difficult to judge these films on any kind of set criteria, because they are all so different and each sets out to achieve a very individual effect, but here are the ones which especially (and very subjectively) impressed me:
my five-star feature films were The Hurt Locker, My Suicide, An Education, Dogtooth, and A Town Called Panic...
...and my five-star documentaries were The Cove, Making Samson & Delilah, Burma VJ, Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, Defamation, and Murch: Walter Murch on Editing.
I look back over my ratings and find that my thoughts on some have changed slightly – for example, Che Part 1 might be a five-star film, while Topp Twins might be a four-star – but I'm going to leave things as they stand, as a measure of how I reacted at the time.
Seeing as I completely ran out of time during MIFF to write a full review for each film, I'm going to go back now and start adding these in over the next couple of weeks, so watch this space. Quite a few of these films will be getting a release in theatres such as Cinema Nova, so keep an eye on what's out there. Thanks for reading, and I hope to be back blogging more MIFF mania next year... That's a wrap!
