Did you miss any films at last year's New Zealand International Film Festival? Here's a handy list of titles that have made it to DVD/Blu-ray which you can rent from us (with a few coming soon):
It's now just over week away before the New Zealand International Film Festival kicks off in Auckland, and as per tradition, time to share a few picks from the programme -- which I might add, is really solid this year. I've done some picks over at Flicks, but here are five more you might not want to miss... SNOWPIERCER
Bong Joon-ho's sci-fi thriller, set on a moving train in a post-apocalyptic future, has been garnering rave reviews and fervent social media support since its recent release in the States. Equally at home doing a monster movie (The Host) or a crime drama (Memories of Murder), Bong is one of South Korea's finest, most effortlessly genre-jumpin' filmmaker, and everything points towards Snowpiercer being another winner.
HOUSEBOUND
When was the last time we had a Kiwi horror film worth celebrating? It appears Housebound might be one for the ages. This debut by writer/director Gerard Johnstone was the sensation of SXSW when it played back in March, and the programme notes suggest at it "could easily be the most energising fun you've ever had at a New Zealand movie." Johnstone will be present to introduce the film.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
One of those textbook must-see classics that somehow I've never got around to seeing, and I imagine this 4K digital restoration of Cocteau's 1946 film will look exceptionally beautiful at the Civic and be the ideal way to see it for the first time.
JODOROWSKY'S DUNE
Alejandro Jodorowsky -- the visionary Chilean madman behind '70s cult mind-melters El Topo and The Holy Mountain -- once came very close to making his version of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel Dune. So what happened? Documentarian Frank Pavich tells the story behind Jod's unrealised vision, and it's kinda heartbreaking for anyone who loves movies.
THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR: SATAN CAME TO EDEN
Wow, this sounds insane. Fans of bizarre true crime tales will get a kick out of this doco, a fascinating whodunit involving "utopian ideals, sexual intrigue and murderous jealousy" on the tiny island of Floreana in the Galapagos. Say no more, I'm there!
Tickets for the New Zealand International Film Festival go on sale tomorrow in Auckland, and if you've just been too busy to even look at the programme, here are a few films which I'm looking forward to... ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA
Some years ago the NZFF screened a great doco on avant-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler which I’ve been trying to see again without much luck. Ayler was one of two musicians John Coltrane said he would like to see play at his funeral. The other was Ornette Coleman. I’m hoping this once-hard-to-see 1985 doco by underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke will offer a similarly fascinating and impressionistic mix of context and perspective on this true genius of seriously out-there sounds. Clarke’s unconventional approach to the format -- supposedly as free as experimental as Coleman’s playing -- should appeal to anyone bored with routine hagiographic portraits.
DIAL M FOR MURDER 3D
Normally I’d wouldn’t make anything 3D a priority, but when you put Alfred Hitchcock into the equation, well, everything changes. I mean how often do you get to see Hitchcock in 3D on the big screen? Word is that Warner did a bang-up job restoring this smart, witty ‘54 suspenser starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly, and the screening at Toronto International Film Festival last year sold out in TEN MINUTES. Reviews of the 3D have been encouraging, stating that Hitch wasn’t just about the gimmick, only employing it sparingly to enhance depth and emotion. Also: retro programming is easily my favourite part of the festival.
LEVIATHAN The New York Times on Leviathan: “a product of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, offers not information but immersion: 90 minutes of wind, water, grinding machinery and piscine agony.” You had me SENSORY ETHNOGRAPHY LAB. The rest is gravy. Critics worldwide have been bowled over by the visceral sensory wallop of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel’s “doco” “about” the commercial fishing industry, which was filmed entirely on tiny cameras more commonly used to shoot extreme sports. From the startling images I’ve seen, Leviathan could be the darkest, most beautiful and terrifying experience of this year’s fest.
COMPUTER CHESS
Andrew Bujalski hasn’t put a foot wrong yet. I still think his debut, 2002’s Funny Ha Ha is one of the best indies of the last decade, even if it spawned a movement with a much-maligned name (“mumblecore”) which he’s ever since been eager to sever ties with. It’s always heartening to see a filmmaker grow with each film, and with Computer Chess, Bujalski seems to be transitioning into a new promising phase of I’m not exactly quite sure what yet. Already a festival favourite stateside, its singular, retro-nerd-core video-vision of chess software programmers in the ‘80s sounds endearing and speaks to the geek inside me -- who also likes the fact that it was shot in the rarely used and unfashionably boxy Academy ratio.
Some others I've penciled in: Ilo Ilo, Camille Claudel 1915, Post Tenebras Lux, Blue Ruin, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, The Dance of Reality, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, The Strange Little Cat... there'll be more to come no doubt!
Holy. Shit. That's the only reaction any self-respecting horror fan can have to this mind-blowing announcement by the NZIFF last night. I for one did not see this coming. Let's put it this way: it's basically a night where we'll be treated to legendary musicians playing the legendary score to a legendary film! Have a listen to the Suspiria theme here and imagine it cranked up and played LIVE at the Civic Theatre:
THE event of the year of any kind.
Only a few sleeps to go now before the 26-chapter horror omnibus The ABCs of Death finally makes its appearance on NZ soil. Described as an "anthology that showcases death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty", it'll screen at the mighty Civic Theatre in Auckland this Saturday as part of NZFF's Autumn Events programme. I did a bit of backtracking to find previous mentions of this film here, and it was first announced way back in May 2011! So yeah, it's been a long time coming. Here are a few things to get you up to speed for all you need to know about it:
The Red Band trailer (squeamish/sensitive viewers can skip it):
Interviews with producer Ant Timpson (Incredibly Strange): NZ Herald, Flicks.
And if you're thinking, "I wonder if Fatso has any of these anthology things for rent?" Why, yes we do! I did some digging into our library and came up with these horror anthos - most of them available for Get Now now:
A brief word of praise for Room 237, Rodney Ascher's doco exploring some incredible, out-there meanings and theories hidden in Stanley Kubrick's enigmatic 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. Some of it definitely gets you thinking (continuity errors or is Kubrick playing tricks on us?), some of it will make you spit-take in great WTF fashion, but one thing they all have in common is the utter obsessiveness of it all. This is the perfect companion piece to The Shining (alas no double feature pairing at the fest), and if you love the movie, Kubrick or unpacking puzzles and symbols etc, head on down to the Rialto Cinemas in Newmarket at 8:30 tonight for the final screening of the doco. Last night's session sold out, so get in there quick!
The 2012 New Zealand International Film Festival starts today in Auckland, and if you've been too busy to keep up with what's playing and what might be good, here's a quick list of picks from each section of the programme to help you out:
ANIMATION From Up on Poppy Hill - This wistful-looking new feature from Studio Ghibli master Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro looks about 100% better than this first film (Tales from Earthsea, ughh). Always a treat to catch Japanese animation on the big screen.
AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND How To Meet Girls from a Distance - I can imagine a future when there's a bigger budget, star-studded remake of this but for now let's just see how the winner of last year's Make My Movie competition turned out.
BIG NIGHTS & SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS The Shining / Holy Motors - If you're a horror fan and you're not even going to entertain the thought of catching The Shining at the Civic...I can't even. And Holy Motors? Leos Carax's mind-bender seems to be the festival's hot ticket to WTF City.
CHAMPIONS Undefeated - This year's Oscar winner for Best Documentary feature. Inspirational sports doc. FRAMING REALITY The Imposter - Totally can't wait for this "mesmerizing psychological thriller bulging with twists, turns, nasty insinuations and shocking revelations" (Hollywood Reporter). PS. It's a doco.
GO SLOW In the Fog - The most challenging section of the festival but sometimes the most rewarding. Any film you pick here will not be like any other film in the festival. I spun the wheel and landed on In the Fog, which looks perfectly ponderous.
MUSICIANS! DANCERS! Searching for Sugar Man - Crowd-pleasing music doco about the search for long lost Mexican/American singer-songwriter who did this catchy little number. Early word has been very positive.
NEW DIRECTIONS Compliance - This one is going to turn heads. Best to go in cold apparently and be completely horrified by what happens.
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present - Doco on amazing performance artist whose most famous piece involves sitting silently for 3 months in a gallery and allowing the public to encounter her.
WORLDS OF DIFFERENCE The Sun Beaten Path - I love a good otherworldy ethnographic flick and this Tibetan movie ticks all the boxes. Landscapes, spirituality, completely foreign place and people, etc.
By now all of Auckland's self-respecting film geeks will probably have in their hands the programme for the 2012 New Zealand International Film Festival and be keenly scrutinising it with a mix of awe and excitement at the cinematic treats that await them from July 19 - August 5. A few notes:
The launch last night at Rialto was maybe the most packed one I've ever attended. A choice of two films were screened: Searching for Sugar Man, Monsieur Lazhar. Couldn't stay for them, but have heard some positive words about Sugar Man.
Nearly all films at this year's festival will screen in the DCP format (RIP 35mm). In his speech NZFF director Bill Gosden mentioned this year is a turning point for the fest.
If the Incredibly Strange section feels a bit slight, it's 'cos several films were yanked, beyond programmer Ant Timpson's control, at the last minute. Still... The Cabin in the Woods at the CIVIC!
Peter Jackson will be attending the West of Memphis screening, along with Damien Echols! There's only 1 screening for this so get your tickets early to avoid missing out.
Auckland Art Gallery has come on board as a venue, but where art thou Academy Cinemas?
No Cosmopolis?
Film most excited about: The Imposter. I've deliberately tried to read as little about it as possible. Gonna go into this one blind. Have not even seen the trailer.
So far on my schedule: a meagre 12 films. Not a reflection on the festival itself, but just me having to fit around more commitments than usual this year.
The Auckland Film Fest has wrapped, and as usual, the saddest realisation for me is thinking "damn, that'll be the last time I'll be at the Civic for another year". But I'm pleased my last session there ended mind-blowingly well with Lars von Trier's Melancholia. It was one of those weird synergies where time (the festival's end), location (Civic's starry dome) and content (the film's apocalyptic themes) worked towards creating an utterly memorable cinema-going experience that probably can't be replicated. The film itself is a beautiful work by von Trier, maybe his most polished and 'friendly' in a while, but still unmistakably his (what would a LVT film be without a few walkouts?).
Other last films seen: Julia Leigh's much-ballyhooed Sleeping Beauty, a pretentious, sophomoric bore of a film - not aesthetically uninteresting, and Emily Browning is good, but just felt like an empty (s)exercise in arthouse provocation; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a Turkish police procedural which took its sweeeet time in getting anywhere (it lingers better in memory); Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog's doco of the Chauvet Caves where some 32,000-year-old (!) cave paintings are housed (not top Herz, but fascinating all the same; the 3D wasn't all that).
Best film? That award goes to Wild River, Elia Kazan's glorious 1960 Depression-era romance about the Tennesee Valley Authority's attempts to relocate rural folk to build dams around the flood-stricken region. Wonderful performances by Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet, a poignant, sensitively told story, and the Technicolor print looked ravishing and otherworldly. The sort of movie that reminds you why 35mm FILM still = BOSS.
I haven't been too many films this week but the ones I saw were worthwhile:
Martha Marcy May Marlene - found this disturbing indie drama effectively grueling. If nothing else, it boasts an amazing performance from Elizabeth Olsen, the younger sis of the Olsen Twins, that'll definitely put her on the One-To-Watch-in-the-Future map. She plays a former member of a creepy cult who leaves the compound and tries to get her life back on track living with her older sister, but yeah, it's not easy, seeing as she's pretty pretty screwed up. The Blue Valentine-style flashback-vs-present day structure maybe a bit too studied at times for my liking, but director Sean Durkin has made an impressively assured debut feature that knows how to unsettle the viewer without being too in-your-face about it. Also, John Hawkes (Deadwood, Winter's Bone): skin-crawling.
Le Quattro Volte - The most relaxing film of the fest yet, this endearing, calming little pic looks at the cycle of life-and-death in various forms (human, animal, mineral) in a rural Italian village. Standout scene featuring a dog being a bit of a jerk is one of the most incredible things I've seen in cinema all year. Oh and the goats... SO MANY GOATS. And their trance-inducing ringing bells. Contemplative, beautiful.
The Turin Horse - Taking its inspiration from a moment in German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's life that apparently caused his mental breakdown, revered Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr's last film sent at least 12 people walking out of the theatre, and unsurprisingly so, as it's easily one of the more difficult works screening at NZFF this year (appropriately, in the "Go Slow" section). If you're not familiar with Tarr's works, it's torturous - the slowest, most depressing and desolate cinema you can imagine where nothing happens for 2.5 hours. But get into "the zone" - as you would with a Tarkovsky film or something - and the thing just works away at your soul and mind with its searing, bleak imagery and grinding, repetitive score, and when the lights come up and you sorta see everything in a different light... The awesomely minimalist trailer:
Stray stuff:
How about dem coughers? Out in full force as usual.
The focus during Le Quattro Volte at the Civic was particularly shonky. In fact there've reportedly been a lot of tech issues this year, which is a shame.
Check out the daily diary reviews by our very own Steve at 3 News Entertainment.
Still to see: Sleeping Beauty, Melancholia, Wild River, Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
Heading over to Melbourne next Wednesday so will catch a few festival films there too.
The NZFF kicked off about a week ago - here's a quick report of what I've seen:
Submarine - I can't fully review this Quirky Coming-of-Age Indie since it's been embargoed so I'm just gonna say it didn't really do it for me and was a bit of deflating way to start off the festival. It does have its ardent fans though.
The Tree of Life - it's been a looong wait for this, and while I can't say regretted seeing this at the Civic, Terrence Malick's latest opus failed to connect with me on most levels. It's as beautiful to look at as they come, and I'm generally a fan of his previous films, but something about The Tree of Life felt off to me, like the work of a director who's too close to his material to see it for what it is: a gigantic mess that only he can make sense of. I had a good nap...
The Last Circus - this nutty, completely over-the-top black comedy from Alex de la Iglesia is nothing like Sam Fuller's The Big Red One as described in the write-up (sorry Ant), though it does share some of the carny wildness of Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre. But Iglesia isn't so much an "artiste" in the sense that Jodorowsky is, he's looser and aesthetically rougher around the edges and more interested in going for our jugular. The last act falls apart - you start caring less and less about the characters - but until then, it's demented pulpy fun.
Take Shelter - if you've seen Bug, you know Michael Shannon really knows how BUG THE HELL OUT. He's the best in the biz at this kinda thing, and in Jeff Nichols' unnerving psychological drama, he's utterly riveting to watch. Performance of the year, maybe. Felt like a horror film to me in the same way Todd Haynes' Safe or Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven and Keane are: uncompromising, bone-chilling portraits of human anxieties and madness. Loved how restrained Nichols handles all the weird stuff.
Meek's Cutoff - Kelly Reichardt's western is very much in same minimalist, meandering vein as her other films like Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. Very, very little happens, but the grueling passage of these 19th century settlers sticks with ya as it goes along (and long after too). Beautifully shot in Academy ratio, it's the vibe-out movie I've been waiting for all year. Reichardt sure loves her campfire scenes.
Stray observations/thoughts/complaints about things:
There was a big reel change fail at Meek's Cutoff where we could pretty much see the film soundtrack strip slipping out of the gate. Also at the screening: a lady who said "You go, girl!" or "good girl!" when Michelle Williams pulled out a rifle (cringe), and the guy who sat in the very centre front row (the theatre was fairly empty)... what the hell dude. Are you really enjoying the view?
What's up with who people who bring books into the theatre to read before the film starts? Is the book so good you can't put it down until after the film? The light's so dim in there you're going to ruin your eyes.
I was told off by an usher for walking too loudly down the steps of the Civic in the Stalls area. "Shhh, they can hear you inside", she snapped. Seriously...
Since it's film fest season, I thought it'd be apt spotlight three terrific titles from last year's NZFF that are coming to DVD from Madman next month. Check out the trailers and click on the titles to add to your queue:
Carlos the Jackal (Mini-series; Shorter Theatrical cut) - Édgar RamÃrez stars as Ilich RamÃrez Sánchez -- aka Carlos the Jackal -- an elusive Venezuelan terrorist who executed scores of assassination plots, abductions and bombings across Europe and the Middle East. This Golden Globe-winning biopic follows Sanchez from 1973 to 1994 as he and his cohorts wreak havoc on the Left Bank in Paris, storm OPEC headquarters in Vienna and carry out other devastating acts of politically motivated violence.
Certified Copy - Renowned Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami serves up an elegant rumination about art and love in this story about British writer James Miller (William Shimell), who meets an art dealer named Elle (Juliette Binoche) in Tuscany and begins -- or possibly continues -- a romance with her. As James and Elle wander through a small town, their playful conversations reveal an intimacy that leads locals to suspect that they are actually longtime spouses.
The Housemaid - A wealthy family's new maid, Eun-yi (Do-yeon Jeon), attracts the attention of Hoon (Jung-Jae Lee), the man of the house, and a fiery affair develops between them. But although Hoon signs Eun-yi's checks, he's not the one controlling the relationship. One secret leads to another, until Eun-yi threatens to destroy the entire family. This update of the 1960 chiller was an Official Selection of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
Not long now before the New Zealand Film Festival unleash their full programme for 2011; they've just announced on facebook that the online version will be available from 6 tonight, and the printed programme out tomorrow. Currently their website has a smattering of tasty announcements, including the gonzo Rutger Hauer grindhouse flick Hobo with a Shotgun, Kelly Reichardt's highly regarded revisionist western Meek's Cutoff and the brutal Aussie crime thriller Snowtown.
In case you missed them, three very cool announcements in the last week or so:
The ABCs of Death - incredibly genius idea for horror anthology. 26 directors, 26 different short stories about death. Local filmhead Ant Timpson is one of the producers.
Jodorowky's Dune - the story behind Alejandro Jodorowsky's legendary adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune that was never made. Check out the promo video here - sounds like Jodorowsky was really looking to blow minds, which is saying something, coming from the guy who gave us The Holy Mountain.
So Roman Polanski was declared a free man yesterday... without getting into the thorny moral/ethical issues that come up every time he gets mentioned, I'm just relieved this whole circus over. To echo Anne Thompson's sentiments, I'm a fan of his films, I'm not a fan of what he did. I want to see the guy make more films before he croaks it. Does that make me an "apologist"? I don't think so. Anyway, this is all kind of a long-winded way to say you should go see his latest thriller The Ghost Writer which is playing the New Zealand Film Festival tonight at the Civic in Auckland. It's a sleek, elegantly made, and surprisingly witty old-school political thriller that shows Polanski, at his ripe old age, still has what it takes to deliver a solid paranoid suspenser. Here's the trailer:
Paper Soldier - Anyone expecting cool retro space travel stuff from this look at the Soviet's role in the '60s Space Race would've been disappointed, possibly like I was. I wanted geekier stuff, maybe training sequences or something, or at least some sense of wonder in watching astronauts prepare for a trip to the moon. But instead it left me cold (possibly intentionally so?). Plodding, dramatically uninvolving viewing, but some nice widescreen lensing of the dreary Kazakhstan locations kept me watching.
Dogtooth - Greek flick caused many to flee from the cinema with its creepy, morbidly comic story of children who've grown up completely shut away from society by their parents. Goes to places that few films would dare. Brilliantly shot, edited and acted. Utterly demented. The real surprise of the fest, the kind of movie you walk in expecting nothing and walk out totally blown away.
Spies - I wished I was more awake* through Fritz Lang's 1928 silent classic (it's often considered "the granddaddy of all spy films") because what I saw of it was thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Neil Brand was on hand to provide the live piano soundtrack and he was amazing; as great as the film was, I found myself veering away from the screen just to watch this virtuoso play (which he did non-stop for nearly 3 hours). There was also another guy on the side of the stage doing a voice-over translation of all the intertitles, a bit of a clumsy move I think - the monotone heavily-Kiwi-accented reading made things seem hokier than it ought to be. Ideally, they should have got someone with a European (German!) accent to do it!
[*I should add that I've been nodding off through a lot of these films mainly due to exhaustion]
Love Exposure - Totally wild Japanese film was FOUR HOURS LONG, but not a dull moment. Somehow combines Catholic guilt and upskirt pornography into a funny, moving, original, just simply entertaining movie unlike any other. Hopefully Madman or someone will pick this up for a DVD release. Surprise of the fest #2. Here's the trailer:
Antichrist - Ok, this was the one I - hell, most of everyone I know - was waiting for all fest long. Lars von Trier's arthouse shocker probably equally spooked and amused a lot of people (apparently a woman ran out, visibly disturbed, from the SkyCity Theatre screening I attended, while at the Civic screening the following night, a man let out an angry rant outside the theatre lobby). I'm still not quite sure to make of it except that I admire the hell out of him for making it even though it didn't always work for me. Charlotte Gainsbourg was incredible in a psycho-batshit grieving-mother performance that forces her do some pretty heinous things - both to herself and hubbie Willem Dafoe - which I shall not divulge here. The end shot has really stayed with me.
Unmade Beds - Gahhh. Boring, undistinguished New Wavey indie navel-gazing was a bit of a snoozer to the end the fest on. Director Alexis Santos did a Q&A after, and his reedy, nervous/jittery, disheveled appearance was quite hilarious.
Anyway, that's it for another year. Click here to see some Top 5 picks!
Sorry for the lack of film fest udpates, haven't had the time to blog about them in detail, so here's a brief round-up of what I've seen in the last week or so (though if you're following fatso on twitter you might have been enlightened by the occasional NZFF-related tweet):
Winnebago Man - Funny, very touching documentary, truly one of the highlights of the festival so far. Almost left me in tears. Director Ben Steinbauer and producer Joel Heller were in attendance and did a great Q&A after the screening where they called Jack Rebney! Amazing.
Goodbye Solo - Ramin Bahrani's intimate, bracing two-character drama contains some of the finely nuanced writing and acting in a film this year. Kind of like Happy-Go-Lucky by way of Taste of Cherry. Depressing subject matter, but not depressing at all. And it doesn't cop out.
Embodiment of Evil - Brailizian horror maestro Jose Mojica Marins returns to the character that made him famous, Coffin Joe. Third film in the series which began in the '60s; lots of midnight movie yucks in this one, including skin-munching and meat hook-hanging and rats crawling into vaginas, but I fell asleep through most of it (mainly due to the late hour/fatigue).
Birdsong - Still not sure what to make of this piece of IMMENSELY slow cinema from Albert Serra, a minimalist re-telling of the nativity story, but there's something about its mix of the absurd and the spiritual I found quite hypnotic and beautiful. I counted two or three walkouts.
Mother - Bong Joon-Ho's new darkly comic mystery-drama isn't as great as The Host and Memories of Murder, but it's still pretty solid work from a master storyteller whose films I'll always look forward to. Awesome main character and lead performance. Opening and final shots are killer.
The Horseman - Low-budget, DV-lensed Aussie revenge thriller might be the most violent and brutal thing I've seen this year. Father goes on a rampage to knock off porn-peddlin' baddies who killed his daughter. I love a good B-movie revenge flick, but the violence here gets numbing and repetitive after a while.
Blind Loves -A wonderful Slovakian film which follows the lives of four blind people and their relationships. Droll, moving doco with fictionalised elements, another festival winner.
Yes, Madam Sir - Megan Doneman spent 6 years documenting India's first policewoman Kiran Bedi and the result is this stunning, inspiring, illuminating portrait of one woman's resilience and determination to forge ahead in a bureaucratic system that wishes nothing more than to crush her. Must-see.
In the last week of the festival now, and only 5 films to go!
As an aficionado of so-called "slow cinema", I'm particularly amused by and grateful for NZFF's new 'In Praise of Slow Cinema' section. It's probably the section most geared towards hardcore-arthouse-with-a-capital-A cinephiles, patient viewers who worship the films of Bela Tarr or Andrei Tarkovsky, and don't mind long, long takes and languorous, lulling pacing. With that in mind, I trotted along to Phillipe Grandrieux's A Lake expecting an austere, beautifully hypnotic entry in the slow cinema canon, and it more than delivered that vibe.
It's a minimally plotted (so minimal, that I hesitate to even use the word 'plotted') tale set in some undefined snowy, woodsy landscape and centering on a handful of characters whose motivations and dynamics are deliberately obscure. There's a little cottage, an epileptic young man named Alexi, his sister, his mum, and then there's the arrival of a stranger, then later the father. Dialogue is sparse, elliptical, rarely revealing much about what's going on. But from the very first shot - the camera shuddering with each breath of Alexi cutting down a tree - it's clear Grandrieux's out to express his vision and ideas solely through means of subjective, experimental audio-visual textures, not standard narrative storytelling.
Two people walked out during the screening I attended, so if you don't know what you're in for, there's a high chance it'll be one of the most painfully boring movie you'll ever see. But If you need something to zone out to at the fest, this hermetic, chilly, intense and deeply atmospeheric work will certainly do the trick.
The first weekend of NZFF's just been and all in all it was a solid, albeit exhausting, start to the fest. I used to be able to sit through 50+ films in two weeks, now seeing 8 in the space of two-three days has become a bit of a slog (chalk it up to age? burnout? This kind of thing is bound to happen when you're in the business of watching movies 24-7, 365 days a year). The snooze factor sunk in during Bright Star and Double Take, but I stayed very much awake through the likes of Troll 2 (funnest screening yet), Still Walking, Red Cliff, Ponyo, Drag Me To Hell, and especially The Cove - which I want to plug a little here.
If you love animals - heck, LIFE - and are free tomorrow at 6:15pm, I urge you to go catch The Cove at the Civic Theatre. I saw this doco on Saturday morning - with a disappointingly small crowd - and it packed a tremendous wallop. Directed by top National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, this riveting work of activism exposes the heart-breaking, though little-known atrocity of dolphin killing in the small seaside village of Taiji, Japan. Ok, so you might be thinking "I'm squeamish, I don't want to see dolphins being killed on film" - and rightly so: when the massacre unfolds, it's as upsetting and disturbing as anything you'll see in a theatre this year. But why The Cove is so effective is that it's not just about that; it's not only about Man's inhumanity to Nature, it's also about Man's inhumanity to Man (dolphin meat made toxic by mercury knowingly being sold to school children for lunch - how wrong can you get?).
And despite the heavy-duty subject matter, Psihoyos has also made a film that's thoroughly accessible and ultimately hopeful. It works as a spry Mission: Impossible-style thriller - the stuff with the crew gearing up to infiltrate the cove is riveting - and the concluding message instills optimism in the viewer, suggesting individuals have the power to bring about change. So go see it, and spread the word! Follow The Cove on twitter here and check out their website here.
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