Post-MIFF life resumes

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!

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Four stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

A Town Called Panic

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

The Matilda Candidate

Two-and-a-half stars.

More to come...

Instead of Abracadabra (short film)

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Dogtooth

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Antichrist

Three-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

The Whispering of the Trees

Four stars.

More to come...

Salt (short film)

Five stars.

Watch the trailer here

More to come...

The Sky Crawlers

Three stars.

Watch the trailer here

More to come...

Bluebeard

Two stars.

More to come...

Murch : Walter Murch on Editing

Five stars.

More to come...

Morphia

Three stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Defamation

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Brendan and the Secret of Kells

Four-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Prodigal Sons

Four stars.

See the filmmakers talking about the film here

More to come...

Yuri's Day

Two-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Quel dommage!

It was only a matter of time. A few days ago, due to lack of sleep, too much dashing through the wintry streets and subsisting on a dodgy diet of 7-Eleven food and the odd bit of fruit, I succumbed to the annual MIFF cold and have had to miss some really exciting-looking films: Red Riding 1980, Shadow Play, The Exploding Girl, It Might Get Loud, and The White Ribbon. I'm back in the game now, though, for the last few days of MIFF...

An Education

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Dead Snow

Four-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Double Take

Three-and-a-half stars.

View an excerpt here

More to come...

My Suicide

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Hansel and Gretel

Three stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Che Part 2: The Guerilla

Three-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer for both parts here

More to come...

Che Part 1: The Argentine

Four-and-a-half stars.

Watch the trailer for both parts here

More to come...

Unmade Beds

Two-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

The Hurt Locker

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

I Need That Record!

Three-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Burma VJ

Five stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Making Samson & Delilah

Five stars.

More to come...

Land of Madness

Two stars.

More to come...

Examined Life

Four-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

Outrage

Four-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

The Red Riding Trilogy

Red Riding 1974: Three stars.
Red Riding 1980: Yet to be seen
Red Riding 1983: Yet to be seen

View the trailer for the trilogy here

More to come...

White Night Wedding

Four-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

No One Knows About Persian Cats

Four-and-a-half stars.

See an interview with the director at Cannes here

More to come...

Letter to Anna

Two-and-a-half stars.

View the trailer here

More to come...

All Tomorrow's Parties

As many probably know, All Tomorrow's Parties is a sponsorship-free music festival, in which a band or a musician gets their favourite acts together to play in the one spot, generally an isolated holiday village or summer camp. It is, in the words of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, "the ultimate mixtape". That mixtape sensibility carries over into this documentary, which follows the festival from its inception up until last year's effort. (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' curatorial stint at Mount Buller from January this year didn't make it in. Boo.) Footage was gathered from bands and fans and organisers alike, and so the doco views like a loud, boozy patchwork of bootleg video – and it works. Its haphazardness matches the anti-commercial ethos of the festival, and the energy of the performances comes right off the screen. Standout spots include Grinderman, Grizzly Bear, Seasick Steve, Animal Collective and Patti Smith.

Three-and-a-half stars.

Watch the trailer here

My Neighbor, My Killer

While there have been a number of documentaries and feature films about the Rwandan genocide, few have examined the reality of living in Rwanda today, where surviving Tutsis live alongside the Hutus who killed their families and friends. This documentary, filmed over the course of a decade in one country town, follows the progress of the Gacaca ('justice on the grass') hearings, in which communities decide their own sentences for genocidal crimes committed by their members. It was fascinating – and confronting – to see women coming face to face with the men who had killed their husbands and sons, and to hear their reflections on whether the Gacaca process would bring them peace.

Director Anne Aghion gives her subjects plenty of room to speak, and, in fact, this would be my main criticism of the film: that the narrative could have been better-shaped by the addition of some minimalist narration. I respect the non-interventionist style of the film but feel that it would have benefitted from a little exterior context. There were also interesting moments in the film where it was ambiguous as to who was telling the truth – were the victims calling for blood even though the men they accused had not killed their family members, or were the perpetrators just too afraid to own up to their crimes in the harsh light of day? This was a fascinating dynamic, and, again, it could have benefitted from some outside analysis. It remains to be seen whether the Gacaca hearings will achieve their ends in bringing peace and reconciliation to Rwanda, and this film is a valuable document of this extraordinary process.

Three stars.

All About Actresses

This was a strange exercise. Interesting, but ultimately a bit empty.

French actress Maïwenn writes, directs and stars in this mockumentary about the inner lives of some other prominent and upcoming actresses, including Charlotte Rampling, Julie Depardieu and Karin Viard. Although the content is scripted and not candid, Maïwenn uses the film as an opportunity to explore the anxieties and vulnerabilities of life in the spotlight. Aside from the director following the actresses around in their daily lives, each subject is also given a musical number in which they explain their greatest fear or dream. During the course of the film, Maïwenn becomes infatuated with one of the other actresses – a section which is pretty unconvincing and seems to be an excuse for some woman-on-woman pashing action – and is devastated when she is rejected. The other actresses, attending an advance screening of the film, are dismayed that Maïwenn has become the centre of the "documentary".

While this film did somewhat illuminate the off-camera lives of actresses, I still came away with the impression that most of them are pretty vacuous characters and not really worth the examination devoted to them in this work. After all, they are at their best when they're performing the words of others! The musical numbers were an unusual touch and really well-choreographed, and were arguably the best element of the film.

Two stars.

View the trailer here (the link is pretty screwy, sorry)

The Cove

Wow. Only way to describe this film, really. This is not just a piece of entertainment – it's a call to action. I don't want to describe this film in too much detail, because it is getting a cinema release here (starts August 20th at the Nova) and I'm hoping that everyone will go and see it.

When dolphin expert and activist Ric O'Barry discovered what was going on the small town of Taiji, Japan, he knew he would need help to get the story out. His friend photographer and environmentalist Louie Psihoyos made this documentary to expose the dark and bloody secret which Taiji goes to great lengths to hide from the world. In an operation resembling something out of Mission Impossible, Psihoyos assembles a crack team of army surveillance experts, special effects gurus, adrenaline junkies and free divers to get into the Taiji cove and capture this secret on film. What they uncovered was more horrifying than anything they could have imagined.

In terms of objective analysis of this film, I thought it was really well put-together: the structure was logical and dramatic, it was informative, well-edited, and it was as compelling as the best Hollywood thriller. Emotionally, it was a sucker punch. I cried and actually shook with rage throughout this film. I have strong reaction to anything involving cruelty to animals – I am a vegetarian and care deeply about animals rights issues – but I defy anyone to watch this film and not be profoundly moved and outraged. PLEASE SEE THIS FILM!

Five stars.

Visit the film's website to watch the trailer and take action!

Silent Wedding

As my first film of the 2009 festival, this was the perfect opener and a great example of why I go to MIFF. It was in turn funny, absurd, moving, dramatic and is likely to never hit any other screens in Australia, ever.

Romania, 1953. A small village – which sits spiritually somewhere between Bruegel's Netherlandish Proverbs and Twin Peaks – prepares for the much-anticipated wedding of two of its young-folk. A feast is prepared, alcohol and lamp oil stockpiled, and gypsy musicians commandeered, when suddenly Communist officials march into town and announce the death of the glorious leader Stalin, decreeing that there can be no celebrations of any kind for the next seven days. Even smiling is prohibited. Not to be thwarted, the townspeople find their own way to observe the festivities...

Director Horatiu Malaele, well-versed in the language of visual comedy, creates a beautiful sense of bottled-up joy, particularly in the epynomous silent banquet scene. But, even more skillfully, he carries us with him on hairpin turns from high comedy to pitch-black tragedy. This is a great addition to the pantheon of films which celebrate the endurance of the human spirit amidst the terror of political oppression.

Four stars.

View the trailer here

MIFF09 Begins!

I really wasn't going to get a MIFF Festival Passport this year. The lack of sleep, the celluloid eyes syndrome, snatching moments of contact with my boyfriend – proverbial ships passing in the night, the questioning of reality after the sixth film of the day... I just wasn't going to do it again. And then the MIFF Program arrived curled up tightly in my Saturday Age a few weeks ago, and as I unfurled it and cast my eyes over the cornucopia of delights within, my resistance crumbled like stray popcorn underfoot.

I spent the next week slavishly narrowing down my schedule, negotiating clashes and work and uni commitments, sweating over which films to choose over others, and came up with a program of 52 films to be spread over the two weeks of MIFF. And so it begins...

Every year I get asked by friends about the films I've been seeing: which was the best film? Which will get a general release? Which was the most pretentious? There are also films that I always wish I got a chance to tell people about, in hopes that they might seek them out in some way, shape or form. This year I'm attempting to shape up and put my thoughts to paper (screen?) on this blog, although my good intentions may come to naught amidst a lack of time and general pervasive laziness. Apologies in advance. So welcome to my MIFF blog, and thanks for reading. Even better, buy yourself some tickets and join me. Here goes nothin'!