The Week in Review - 28/3/10

The offerings at the cinema are so thin at the moment. I did a bit of research and worked out a few films worth seeing at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, but couldn't work any of them into my schedule. Weekends I've been busy with family and weekdays the screenings just haven't been convenient times. So, I've resorted to DVD: three of them this week.

FILMS:

• A Single Man (Tom Ford, USA, 2009)
• Daguerréotypes (Agnès Varda, France/West Germany, 1975)
• Yo también (Me, Too, Alvaro Pastor/Antonio Naharro, Spain, 2009)
  
• How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlouis/Chris Sanders, USA, 2010)

DVD:

• The Terminator (James Cameron, USA/UK, 1984)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, USA/France, 1991)
• Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski, USA, 2002)

A Single Man
I was planning not to see this film, because the trailer gave the impression that Firth was reprising his glum role in Winterbottom's effective though unremarkable Genova. However, reading Lynden Barber's post on the film, I decided to give it a try and wasn't disappointed.

Yes, Firth is reprising that role, more or less. People have raved about his performance, which is perhaps the best I've seen him - not that that's saying much because he normally imitates a door. Too much is made of an actor's ability to induce tears before the camera. It might be impressive, but it sometimes becomes little more than a party trick (and I'm thinking of Penelope Cruz here).

In this film's case, the acting is fine. What makes the film so watchable, however, is all to do with the film's construct and style and less to do with the acting. I kept thinking of Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - the unconventional approach to how the image is framed and how the story is constructed. The visuals all serve to suck you into the emotions of the story. I don't think it's a substantial film, but definitely worth watching for its unconventionality. It could be accused of style over substance, but I'd say the style is the substance.

Link: Audio interview with Tom Ford

Daguerréotypes
Agnès Varda, documentary, need I say more? The micro-level capturing of a local community, of a life-style perhaps long gone is rivetting. It mirrors thousands or perhaps millions of similar experiences world-wide. I love this woman's work and will jump at any opportunity to see more of it on the big screen. It screened at Melbourne Cinémathèque.

Me, Too
This is the opening night film of La Mirada Film Festival, my favourite Melbourne festival after MIFF and the French Film Festival. It's a curious film in its own right, and moreso as an opening night film - in fact, I'd call that gutsy programming. It blends elements of romantic comedy and black comedy, but is mostly social drama made in a manner that is accessible for a relatively mainstream audience.

Me, Too is unashamedly an 'issue' film, championing the cause of those with Down Syndrome. The story largely follows Daniel (Pablo Pineda) who starts his first job at age 34 in a government social services agency having just completed his university degree. The film challenges preconceptions of those with the condition. The actor factually has it and yet is able to effectively portray the intellect, characteristics and abilities of such a person. It's an impressive accomplishment and certainly challenged my notions.

Laura (Lola Dueñas) is a co-worker with issues of her own that form a tangential story. Both characters are social misfits of very different sorts, and very different backgrounds. While their pairing, so to speak, adds a populist slant to the film, it also serves to further challenge the audience, and there's some anticipation where their relationship might or might not go.

I don't think I'm quite the target audience for Me, Too but found it quite enjoyable nonetheless and appreciated the challenging nature of the story. It's quite ambitious, which is a good thing, but leaves the director with quite a number of threads to manage at the end, which gives the film a slightly overlong ending.

Me, Too opens the La Mirada Film Festival on Thursday 1 April at ACMI. The festival runs to 11 April.

How to Train Your Dragon
This is quite a likeable film, if you're part of the target market. My 9 year old son has read five of the books in the series and he thoroughly enjoyed it. It's not completely faithful to the source material, but is true to the spirit (on his say so - I've not read any of them). I like that the film doesn't market itself on any 'name' actors. The voice actors are all thoroughly competent and enjoyable without a single Tom Hanks, Mike Myers, George Clooney, Cameron Diaz or Miley Cyrus among them - thank god. I usually find the use of celebrities for voice actors a distraction.

This is a Dreamworks production, so you know it's going to be fairly conventional and mainstream. It's full of cliches, but that's not a negative. It is aimed at fans of the book and its lovely visuals don't disappoint - some of the scenes are quite reminiscent of Avatar. For what it's worth, my son gives it five out of five stars, but in his words, "dragons are my favourite fantasy creature". I think it's a good film for primary school age children and younger, and parents should find it enjoyable enough.

The Terminator
I first watched this on video in the early 90s and was struck by the power of the story, and still am. Much has dated in the film, but not necessarily to its detriment. The clothing, hair, makeup, music and colloquialisms all reveal a certain period. The film's special effects are the most dated, but I'm inclined to cut some slack here, because the film has to be looked at in context of time. Just like King Kong (1933) - the SFX are a joke by today's standards, but because the story is so good, and the film employs the best technology of its time, there's a certain reverence one may have for it (well, I do).

Arnie and Linda Hamilton are both so young in this flick, and little is done to Arnie to endear him to us. His hair style is terrible and basically he's just an unstoppable killing machine. There's something particularly terrifying about his character, a cyborg that will stop at nothing, neither bullets, fire nor explosions. His is a primal stereotype, the stuff of nightmares, more like the stuff of the horror genre - like say a zombie or vampire, only scarier. Perhaps this is one of the reasons this story works so well - it combines science fiction with drama, action, suspense and its own brand of horror. As Sarah Connor says, you could go crazy thinking about the logic (because ultimately the logic of it fails), but it's a great concept nonetheless.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Perhaps it's my 52" flat screen television, or my improved powers of observation because this film - long my favourite in the genre (action/SFX/sci-fi) - betrayed flaws I hadn't seen previously. Mind you, it's been many years since I saw this last. The technology has dated compared to what's currently available to film-makers, but it still holds up extremely well. Unlike similar types of films today, the SFX are used gratuitously, in a showy manner to showcase the technology without necessarily furthering the narrative. Hollow Man (2000) is a classic example of this.

In T2, Cameron employs the technology sparingly, only when needed. The story is always first and when the SFX appear, they are so organic to the narrative that one can't help but be impressed and absorbed in what's transpiring.

With what's available now, the SFX in T2 are not as impressive now, and one can see the 'seams' that weren't so obvious nearly twenty years ago. Like Arnie's character cutting his arm, or the face damaged by bullets (sometimes it's his face with prosthetics over the top, other times it's actually a mask).

Watching both Terminator films back-to-back (and for me, the franchise ends with the second), the humour stands out in spite of the terror. Both films have parallel trajectories and often parallel incidents. For example, Arnie appears first in both (obviously a trick in the second), getting clothes from punks in the first and bikies in the second. When Arnie throws the bikie onto the stove, it's like the blackest of black humour to see this guy burning himself. Yet when we next see Arnie in his clothes, they're all immaculate, like they're straight off the racks, all to the tune of "Bad to the Bone". It's quite a blast, really.

For the integrity of the franchise, they really should have stopped at 2. I saw 3 and it was just a shadow of the originals, milking blood out of a stone. I didn't even bother with Terminator Salvation. T2 is a very rare example of a sequel bettering the original, though on these viewings, I thought that T1 has bridged some of the gap. When I want to see a blockbuster, this is how I like to see them done.

Funny Ha Ha
This Bujalski film is reputedly the first of what is now known as mumblecore, a so-called movement of independent film-making. It seems to borrow heavily from the aesthetics, narrative style and low-budgets of John Cassavetes' work as well as the so-called Dogme school (without the rules). I can't say I'm a big fan of some Dogme but I do love Cassavetes' films. Unsurprisingly, the elements of the film that seem to borrow more from Dogme bother me while the strengths of the film have more in common with Cassavetes.

The devices that initially gave me reservations are the deliberate camera shake, the sometimes poor sound and the unusual framing characters often have part or all of their heads cut off. These were initially distracting but as the story and character development unfolded, I developed some empathy and emotional engagement and the distraction reduced. It didn't go away completely, but I started thinking about what is Bujalski trying to achieve.

Is it a variation of cinéma vérité, where we're taking a fly-on-the-wall perspective, as if we're present but obscured to the characters in some way? Or is Bujalski skewing the camera, in a sense like what Hal Hartley does with his camera rotations, albeit differently - in this case pointing the camera down slightly? Is he challenging the audience, and its conventional expectations of how a picture should look? Or just being different, to differentiate himself? Or trying to create a different aesthetic, consciously emulating Dogme? Maybe it's a bit of all of the above. I reserve my judgements for now and would like more exposure to mumblecore in general and Bujalski in particular.

I find it hard to believe that the sound could not have been better, without too much cost or effort. This appears to be an example of true guerilla film-making (ie, making it as cheaply and quickly as possible) and/or it's deliberately compromising (ie, reducing) the quality at times to disguise the genuine flaws.

The grainy 16mm film has a nice grungy aesthetic, and despite the high level of emotional honesty and social realism, some care has gone into the visuals with the use of colour and frame composition that I found enjoyable to watch. The story itself is well told. We follow Marnie, a 24 year old who loses her job, pines for someone who seems just out of reach and basically is struggling to find her place in an adult world. She parties and hangs out with her friends but, despite her attractiveness (think Natalie Portman), appears onely and confused. I don't think its fair to call this a slacker film, partly because the characters are not true slackers and partly because of the degree of realism is so Cassavetes-esque (think of the part that alcohol plays in his films).

I like that such an engaging film can be made on clearly a very low budget - perhaps some will find it too much like a student film. I also like that it addresses the very real and contemporary concerns of a particular demographic, which unsurprisingly is the demographic of the director (who plays a not insignificant role in the film, as a potential love interest), namely the early to mid twenties. In this sense, it serves as a kind of document, a documentary-like film very much unlike anything typically made about or for this demographic.

The film has a chastity you mightn't expect. Love and yearning are a strong theme, and mixed with excesses in alcohol, one wouldn't be too surprised where this could leave. There is no explicit sex or sexuality and little more than a kiss on-screen. The use of profanity is also very minimal, an element that is all the more noticeable when it occasionally occurs. This is much more representative of the middle-America it depicts than the populist Hollywood cinema that wildly exaggerates profanity. While we in Australia think we know American culture through TV and cinema, the real America does not engage in public cussing and sex as depicted in the media.

I did watch Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation on the (very) big screen at the Astor a while ago, but didn't appreciate it at the time (pun not intended) - perhaps my consequent discovery of Cassavetes helps me to better understand his work now. I thought this film might be a bit raw (aesthetically) for the missus, but she also likes it. For now, I hold on to my above-mentioned reservations about mumblecore and look forward to discovering more. Funny Ha Ha seems like a good place to start. It offers hope that a new generation of 'indie' film-makers is emerging.

The Week in Review - 21/3/10

FILMS:

• Roma (Federico Fellini, Italy/France, 1972)
• À l’origine (In The Beginning, Xavier Giannoli, France, 2009)
• Je suis heureux que ma mère soit vivante (I'm Glad My Mother is Alive, Claude Miller & Nathan Miller, France, 2009)

BLU-RAY:

• Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, USA, 1968)
  

Roma
Reading the Cinémathèque Annotations on Film from Senses of Cinema has aided me in understanding the work of the idiosyncratic Fellini. For what it's worth, as a Melbourne Cinémathèque committee member, I'm the one who prints these out and takes them to ACMI for the weekly screenings - it's a humble job, but someone's got to do it.

Fellini reminds me a little of Almodóvar. They both grew up in rural villages, they have similar senses of humour, their work is camp and fixates on big-breasted and big-assed women. Fellini's work is more autobiographical and less conventionally structured while Almodóvar gravitates towards melodrama of a soap opera nature, but mixes his genres. Fellini, despite his carnivalesque imagery (a cliche, I know) and fondness for the grotesque, seems to have a more serious underlying intent. But as I wrote about Amarcord last week, I still don't connect with his work.

This week, I had a more positive outlook on his work and enjoyed the start of the film. There's no doubt that Fellini has a wicked sense of humour. The child pissing in the theatre is an amusing incident that I presume is an example of the director's recollections. The various sexual allusions also lighten the screen. The film also serves as a fascinating document, such as the underground scenes.

As the film progresses, however, it feels like it drags on much more than necessary. The vaudeville scene, for example, just goes on and on. There's no sense of economy in the film, especially in terms of the audience's time. With various vignettes (skits, if you like), there's little to hold the film together emotionally. It has a run time over two hours, but it feels like it should finish before 90 minutes. I found myself uncomfortable in my seat and eager for it to finish for about 45 minutes.

Planet of the Apes
I was a mere eight years old when this film first released and I've always had the fondest of memories of it. I never saw any of the sequels, nor the remake, but the TV series was essential viewing in its during throughout the 1970s. With the passage of time, the film has well and truly dated, especially the technology, the outfits and the sets. The film's key strength is an abundance of ideas that capture another era. Released in the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey, these two films would make excellent companion pieces for their questioning of the nature of civilisation - who and what we are, and where we come from.

Planet of the Apes is clearly allegorical, taking aim at society and two of its most corrupt pillars: politics and religion. It's two thousand years in the future and human civilisation has clearly all but destroyed itself, allowing another species to dominate. The apes have developed their own societies, seemingly barbaric but strikingly similar to our own. Justice is replaced by the rationale of convenience and spirituality is replaced by lies and dogma. There's even an indirect dig at the Joseph McCarthy, HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities) and it's Hollywood blacklisting.

The film looks crude compared to my recollections of it and it's full of Charlton Heston cornball. He was one of my heroes of the 1970s, in films like Earthquake, Poseidon Adventure and Omega Man. But damn he looks charming and it's a joy to see him again in action. I really enjoyed watching this and plan to catch up on the sequels.

Castaway with David Stratton

Last night I attended ACMI's Desert Island Flicks with David Stratton. I'm really enjoying this new ACMI regular event, where a film personality discusses the five films they'd want to have if marooned on a desert island.

First thing, DS apologised for cheating. His selection was five that affected him so deeply that they had changed his life in some way. This is, for me, what film is largely about - part of a larger dialogue about life and life issues.

DS is probably most well-known as the co-host of TV's At The Movies and it's previous SBS incarnation, The Movie Show, for the last twenty-four years. He helmed the Sydney Film Festival for 18 years from 1966 to 1983, during which time he championed the 'last New Wave' of Australian cinema and fought against parochial film censorship. As a precursor to his weekly time slot with Margaret Pomeranz, DS also championed world cinema on SBS with presentations on SBS of World Cinema and Movie Classic selections. During this time, he had unusual freedom to present a treaure-house of films that introduced many to a different world of cinema, and he mentioned during the evening that some of these were technically banned in this country.

The evening was introduced and moderated by the very informed and informative Deb Verhoeven. She mentioned that DS was born in 1939 and came to Australia in 1963 at age 24 as a '£10 pom' (ie in receipt of assisted passage).

DS's selections are basically a short autobiography. He mentioned that five is an arbitrary number - he could have just as easily selected 10, 20 or 100, but that we'd be there until after midnight. Here then is his selection:

1. Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, USA, 1946)
As a young child during the war, DS grew up with his father absent. Living in Andover, Hampshire, he developed a love of cinema from his grandmother, who took him to the movies four or five times a week. Much to his mother's disapproval, the grandmother had no sense of censorship and would take him to anything. This film left a powerful impact on the 6 year old Stratton mind, with it's melodrama full of immoral characters, and left him "mildly traumatised".

2. Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1955)
As a 16 or 17 year old living in Birmingham, DS was aghast to realise that, despite no shortage of cinemas in the city, he'd seen everything screening. By this time he had become consumed with cinema and pretty much lived to see the next film. It was at this time that he discovered film societies and crossed town to see Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). He joined up for the monthly screenings and the next month he discovered foreign language films with Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night.

As a "lusty teenager", DS was taken by the overt sensuality and consequently had a crush one of the beautiful actresses (whose name I don't recall). Most importantly, he was introduced to a whole other world of film that has had a profound influence in his life.

3. Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965)
It was 1966 and DS was the director of the Sydney Film Festival. The nature of censorship in this country at that time meant that virtually every film for public exhibition had cuts, even innocuous films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This continued until 1971 when Don Chipp became the Minister for Customs. According to DS, the two preceding ministers were idiots.

The nature of censorship meant that quite often, the first time DS would see a film was in the less than ideal environment of the censor's office as they would comment on various scenes to be cut. The censor demanded about 20 cuts to Loves of a Blonde. DS wrote an intemperate letter to the censor, effectively calling him an arsehole, that he had a hideous point-of-view that insinuated a dirty perspective of the film.

The next day, DS received a phone call (I think) from the censor's assistant who said the censor was extremely insulted and that if the film was to be shown, the cuts must be made. DS complied but decided to never again screen a film with any censor's cuts. While screening a clip from the film, DS commented on where cuts were made, and really, they showed how prudish and unnecessary the censors were.

4. Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Konen/Gene Kelly, 1952)
It is well known that Singin' in the Rain is DS's favourite film. At the time, he was living in Chelsea and was immersing himself in MGM musicals. This one struck him for its being highly cinematic and has stayed with him. He estimates that he's seen it some 50-60 times. An element that is important to him is that it is about the transition from the silent era to sound, and that silent films are an art form that is not much understood by contemporary audiences. He spoke at some length on this subject.

DS also mentioned his awe of Gene Kelly and how he met him in Australia and he hadn't appeared to age at all - especially his hair colour had remained unchanged over the decades. He later interviewed Kelly at his home in Beverly Hills and when a short bald man answered the door, he realied that Kelly had previously been wearing a wig. DS's admiration for the man was not just due to his great on-screen talent but also because he was a very genuine man whose politics DS respected. Kelly's wife had been black-listed during the dark McCarthy era and Kelly had been active in supporting those artists.

5. The Last Wave (Peter Weir, 1977)
During his directorship of the Sydney Film Festival, DS championed the works of many Australian directors, including Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong and Paul Cox. He became friends with several of them, including Weir, who allowed him on the set during the making of The Last Wave. In one kitchen scene, filmed in an actual house, there was not enough room for the cast and crew for DS to sit in, and so he crouched under the table at David Gulpilil's feet.

The night's proceedings then turned to a Q&A session. Some of what transpired is as follows:

• In reponse to a question about the relevance of film criticism, DS mentioned the recent sacking of Todd McCarthy from Variety magazine after 31 years and that he (himself having written for the magazine for 20 years), wrote an intemperate letter of complaint.
• It was revealed that as of 2008, DS had seen some 125,000 films (it's well-known that he records every film he's ever seen, even as a child - something I do myself, though I started my list in 1995).
• DS is hoping to make it to 25 years with Margaret Pomeranz, which will make them the longest on-screen film criticism partnership. This will be sometime next year. Later I asked if he had anything planned beyond that to which he replied that he's 70 years old and on his last legs. I suggested maybe he could go back to his roots and champion the films he loves rather than what he clearly finds a chore at times, having to see the latest Sandra Bullock or queasy-cam (his term) Paul Greengrass film. DS went into some length about his early days at SBS and the unparalleled freedom he enjoyed in those days. He didn't think that freedom was possible today, and certainly not at the ABC. Without going into details, he was clearly unhappy with how he and Margaret were treated at the end of their stay at SBS.
  
• In answer to a question DS mentioned that bad films have always been made, but that decades ago, the bad films were better than most of what is produced today. It's hard to argue against that, in my opinion.
• In answer to a question about the onscreen chemistry with his co-host, DS mentioned that only twice did the show have to be stopped because their arguing got out of hand. Both times it was Margaret getting out of hand - surprise, surprise!
• DS mentioned that hand-held camera work evolved from TV but that's it out of control and caters to a young audience. He described it as a video game style and that Paul Greengrass had made a living out of it (I can't watch his films). The Hurt Locker was mentioned as a film where the hand-held work wasn't too distracting and that modern directors should look at cinematographers like Haskell Wexler to see how hand-held should be done.
• He wondered whether viewers get bored with his complaints about hand-held camera. I called out that it's always appreciated and others in the audience nodded in agreement.
  
• The big film festivals like Sydney and Melbourne now show too many films - half of them aren't worth seeing (which I've written on before, and agree with). Previously, Sydney would screen about 50 films, and nearly half of them would get a theatrical release.
• For DS, much of the magic of cinema has gone. Partly that's a reflection of himself (as I've often said, some kinds of magic can only happen once), and partly it's because films aren't as good as they used to be. What once received general wide release, can't even garner an arthouse release - this has of course been mentioned in multiple spheres in recent times, a lament many of us share.
• The best fun DS has had in his professional life has been the ten-year course he's run at the University of Sydney, covering the history of cinema, with about 100 attendees. He's started a second ten-year course, and about 30% of the students are repeats from his first course. He loves the personal interaction and the research he does to present the course. Unfortunately, he hasn't yet worked out how to clone himself for us Melbournians.

The evening was very different to the previous debut event with Adam Elliot (I plan to write on that - I was preoccupied with other things at the time). That's a reflection of the individuals being highlighted as much as the different vocations. With Adam Elliot, it was fascinating to see how his selections were a reflection of his work (or rather, vice versa) whereas with David Stratton, his selections were more about the path his life had taken.

The next Desert Island Flicks sessions will be with journalist Chris Masters, followed by indigenous elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin and then director Tim Burton. I highly recommend them, and with a limit of 80 seats per session, you need to get in early.

The Week in Review - 29/11/09

Yeah, yeah, time flies and I still don't have my new PC set up right. Maybe if my contract isn't extended at the end of the year I'll have time for some catch up. It should be a dream desktop when I'm finished.

Meanwhile, it's been a fascinating week of film and I just had to post a little on what I've seen.

FILMS

• Prime Mover (David Caesar, Australia, 2009)
• Moonrise (Frank Borzage, USA, 1948)
• Until They Get Me (Frank Borzage, USA, 1917)
• Antichrist (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland, 2009)

DVD

• Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, USA, 1969)

Prime Mover
I saw this with reasonably low expectations, and well, I got what I expected. David Caesar ain't a bad film-maker; he's competent enough, but his films never really get beyond mildly entertaining. I actually like Mullet more than most, but this one feels like it's just going through the motions, and has that traditional flatness that most of our films of the last five years or so have suffered.

I've always found Ben Mendelsohn irritating, and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe his acting is too theatrical, but it never convinces. His role in this is pretty silly but it's really the writing of the film that lets it down. It never fully commits to full-on genre or full-on small-scale drama, trying to have a bit both ways. Speaking of which, Sarah Watts was on board as producer, and her influence with the animation is overtly reminiscent of Look Both Ways. In short, OK as a time-filler.

Moonrise
I can't say I've seen a lot of film noir, but this I really liked. It's unconventional (part-melodrama), looks great and has some pretty wild characterisations.

Until They Get Me
Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my experience of silent era film was limited to Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Kops. This Borzage film displays much more complexity and drama, with themes similar to Moonrise, which screened prior. Both are about men who have killed, and are pursued by the law. The endings also have much in common, seemingly conventional, but with happiness in adversity. They make good companion pieces and demonstrate some of the breadth of Borzage's work.

Antichrist
This is a difficult film for me to write about, and a difficult film to watch. I can understand anyone hating this film or finding it offensive. I can also understand criticisms of the film being deliberately provocative. It certainly is the latter (and offensive, too, for that matter), but gratuitously? I don't know. It's not a film one enjoys and it really is horror, almost torture porn. I neither like nor dislike the film. I respect the effort and I also respect the so-called anti-female message, particularly for being anti-politically correct. But I dispute that that makes von Trier misogynistic.

For me, it's a film to be experienced but I don't think it will have much of a lasting impression. It's as disturbing as Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, which I think leaves a stronger impression than Antichrist. The hand-held camera is distracting at times but otherwise the visuals are mostly quite stunning. I love the opening and closing black and white. I also love the symbolism of the animals and the women, though I understand neither. Maybe others know or have researched the meaning. I don't care if I don't know, because the mystery is alluring. One senses there is meaning, even if one doesn't get it.

Easy Rider
Having really dug the Hopper exhibition at ACMI (do go see it if you haven't), I'm really looking forward to the Focus on Hopper's America. Getting into the groove, I checked out his seminal and ground-breaking Easy Rider, which has been newly restored and is getting a long play at ACMI. I have very fond memories of seeing this at the Clayton drive-in in the early 70s, and it left me with a lasting impression. Of course, at that time, I knew nothing of Hopper, who both stars in the film and directs it.

The film is credited as heralding in a new - but short-lived - golden era of Hollywood, the first of a number of independent films that were distributed by the big studios, and allowed for the rise of luminaries like Francis Ford Coppola and others. Looking at it now, on one level it doesn't seem like a 'great' film, and yet it was so revolutionary, so confronting and so encapsulated an era. I've often been critical of contemporary films that paint the 60s and 70s - the hippy era - as stylised, hip, flower power as if it was some kind of commercial fad. The rawness of this Hopper film shows it as I remember it, rough, crude and unsophisticated.

The characterisations by Hopper, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson are just terrific. There's an experimental element to the film that I'd forgotten, that might be considered a bit crude now, but reflect emerging styles of the period. The film is a blast and I've really got to see it on ACMI's big screen when it opens for two weeks from Boxing Day. And the Focus on Hopper's America starts this week (3 - 13 December).

Dennis Hopper & the New Hollywood

Yeah, I've been absent from the blogosphere longer than intended. I'm still having problems getting my PC set-up and life also intrudes on occasions. Health-wise, I'm getting back on track. I commuted by bicycle twice this week, more than I have since July, and both days were in mid-30s weather, which I've never done before. I'm feeling pretty good about that.

Another thing I'm feeling pretty good about is attending a preview of ACMI's latest exhibition, Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood. Hopper is a person I've always found intriguing. From his early ground-breaking film, Easy Rider (which I saw on the big screen as a teenager) to his memorable performance as Frank Booth, the ultimate psychopath in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Hopper has always stood out.

In the last year, ACMI has screened a couple of films that I made a point of seeing because of Hopper's involvement: Mad Dog Morgan and Night Tide, and I thoroughly enjoyed both (and they both feature in ACMI's exhibition).

What I never realised is how voluminous and varied Hopper's career has been. Not only has he acted, directed and written for the screen but, for some five decades he's been photographing, creating art, sculpture, and collaborating with others. Selections of his work, curated by the French Cinémathèque's Matthieu Orleán are on show, along with pieces by other artists from Hopper's private collection.

I was surprised at the depth and breadth of Hopper's work. It's so varied in scale, style and media. There's a huge sculpture, an over-sized bomb-release. There's massive realist painting, smaller works, abstract, collage, photography of celebrities, friends and the seemingly mundane. There's information posted that puts Hopper's work in context with what was happening at the time, and in context to his life's work.

What stands out is that Hopper is an individualst, an outsider who has always carved his own path and seems not to be particularly motivated by fame or fortune, but rather by the creative process, surrounding himself with like-minded people, and collaborating with them.

The exhibition includes numerous clips and short films, and ACMI's screenings of Easy Rider and the Focus on Hopper's America should really enhance this exhibition. I highly recommend it.

The Week in Review - 25/10/09

Ah, my first week in review in a while. I still don't find I have the time to write as much as I'd like. And, for what it's worth, I installed Windows 7 today, so you can be sure that everything in my world will change for the better.

FILMS:

• The Box (Richard Kelly, USA, 2009)
• ... A Valparaíso (Joris Ivens, France, 1962)
• Les statues meurent assi (Statues Also Die, Chris Marker & Alain Resnais, France, 1953)
• La jetée (Chris Marker, France, 1962)
• Dimanche à Pekin (Sunday in Peking, Chris Marker, France, 1956)
• The Boys Are Back (Scott Hicks, Australia, 2009)
• Sonnensucher (Sun Seekers, Konrad Wolf, East Germany, 1958)

The Box
All of Richard Kelly's films have been ambitious. Donnie Darko was pretty much flawless for me. Southland Tales was admirable for its ambitiousness and I really enjoyed the quirkiness though it obviously wasn't as well received as Kelly's previous film. The Box puts Kelly back on track and is sure to be better received than Southland Tales, though it's also sure to confound some critics and audiences.

Think Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, X-Files, The Invaders and others I can't think of, all rolled into one, and you get an idea of what The Box is about. It's a blend of science fiction, thriller and fantasy, in many respects like Donnie Darko, ramped up with suspense, strange but not quirky like Southland Tales. The use of music is excellent and the score keeps the tension just right throught. It's 110 minutes long but it's engaging every step of the way.

The film cuts to different scenarios that create a rich tapestry of events but strangeness permeates them all. Something is not quite right and you wonder where this is going. I don't want to give anything away, so will just finish by saying I found the film very enjoyable and satisfying. I noticed that the film was shot in digital, though others I spoke to afterwards didn't notice. It's one of the best-looking examples of digital that I've seen, in fact, probably the best. Richard Kelly is a man with ideas.

Chris Marker season at Melbourne Cinémathèque
I was surprised at how effected I was by these simple films that were written and/or directed by Chris Marker. ... A Valparaíso is an amazing document of a unique port town in Chile. Life there at the time was amazing and I wonder how it is faring today. On paper, Statues Also Die has little to say and yet is strangely compelling, largely because of the clever narration. Marker clearly has a warped sense of humour, entwining irony and sarcasm, particularly evident in Sunday in Peking. La jetée is, of course, the film that inspired Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. That the film consists almost entirely of still images is a fascinating testament to the power of Marker's story-telling abilities. The dystopian imagery is still borrowed by science fiction today.

The Boys Are Back
I have a soft spot for Scott Hicks and, for many years, Shine was one of my favourite Australian films (perhaps it still is; I don't know without seeing it again). There's no doubt that he makes fine looking films but there's something about this latest one, competent that it is, just doesn't quite work for me. Maybe it's a bit flat dramatically, or just a bit too cliched. In general it's quite OK but it never really soars or breaks free from the ceiling it boxes itself into.

I've never really been a fan of Clive Owen. I've always found his acting wooden and unconvincing. It worked well in Children of Men where this was required, much like Keanu Reeves' role as Neo in Matrix. But while Owen's character in The Boys are Back similarly requires an emotionally stunted male, I find my old prejudices returning and thus Owen unconvincing. Maybe it's because he's too much of a 'star', too well-known. Maybe this makes it a plus for others and will draw them to the film. Maybe they will like it more than me. It's definitely a cut or two above the mediocre suburban dramas we've all grown to hate and criticise in recent years, and should be well-received by audiences both here and abroad (most likely the UK, because of the English element, and the BBC co-produced it). It's also adds positively to what is an exceptional year in local cinema (from a broader perspective). But it doesn't particular affect me or drag me into its world.

Sun Seekers
This is quite an extraordinary film for both its time and place. While we normally associate the Iron Curtain and film with images of smiling proletariat and beneficent leaders, this film is gutsy even by Hollywood standards of the day. Wolf shows how life was, pretty much in a matter-of-fact way, and no wonder it was banned. The film is amazing for its honest depictions of social depravity, political shenanigans and the friction that existed between the Germans and the Russians. The print was excellent quality and I look forward to seeing more of these films screening as part of ACMI's Focus on East German Cinema.

Dennis Hopper at ACMI

After the screening of Sun Seekers this evening, I had a short chat with Peter Krausz, the chair of the Australian Film Critics Association - who gave an insightful introduction to the film - and James Nolan, who curated the Focus on East German Cinema. In passing, the subject of Dennis Hopper came up and James mentioned that tickets to the David Stratton in Conversation with Dennis Hopper session (on Friday 13 November, 7.30 - 9pm) are selling fast.

I've just secured my place by booking online and while I was at it, purchased a ticket for the following day's Masterclass with Dennis Hopper hosted by Matthieu Orléan from La cinémathèque française.

By the way, if you're a francophone, Matthieu Orléan will also be delivering a public lecture (in French) at Alliance Française next Thursday 29 October at 7pm, on the influence of the New Wave on modern French cinema. Check out the AF website.

The Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood exhibition at ACMI runs from Thurday 12 November 2009 to Sunday 25th April 2010. I'm looking forward to catching up on Easy Rider, which I haven't seen since its inital release over 30 years ago. James mentioned that the Focus on Dennis Hopper will include not just Hopper films, but films that reflect 'the New Hollywood' of that era. That reminds me of the François Ozon season, in which films that influenced Ozon films were matched to those specific screenings. This should be interesting, to say the least.

And while I was on the ACMI website, I noted that following the very long Hopper exhibition, is another long exhibition: Tim Burton, running from 24 June to 10 October 2010. Tim Burton will also be appearing.

MIFF 2009 Day 15 - 7/8/09

Today I had the pleasure of having lunch with Lynden Barber from Eyes Wired Open who has braved the southern climes to interview MIFF director Richard Moore for SBS, visit the Len Lye exhibition at ACMI (his article) and cram as many films into the weekend that he can. It was the first time we'd met other than online and I I took him on a little walking tour of Melbourne's laneways before catching Fassbinder's Chinese Roulette. I highly recommend his Eyes Wired Open as one of the best Australian film blogs.

• Chinesisches Roulette (Chinese Roulette, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany/France, 1976)
• Best of the MIFF Shorts
  
• Un lac (A Lake, Philippe Grandrieux, France, 2008)

Chinese Roulette
In some respects, I feel similarly towards Fassbinder as I do towards Godard. Other than Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, little of Fassbinder's work touches me and - like Godard's films - feels designed to remain distant. Chinese Roulette is unmistakably Fassbinder: the melodrama, the score, the sexual innuendo, the camp undertones.

Anna Karina's role demands little of her. She plays the husband's mistress and speaks a few words of German here and there. As in Godard's films, it appears her role is little more than window-dressing, pretty as she is.

The film encapsulates an era, and is fascinating in that context. The story is a bit of a romp and enjoyable enough. Like Godard, I don't feel I know enough about Fassbinder's intent to discuss the film further, but am happy to be enlightened by others. I enjoyed the film, but it was nothing special.

Best of the MIFF Shorts
I didn't realise that this session was largely taken up by the awards ceremony, so we only got to see six shorts:

• Instead of Abracadabra
  A Swedish comedy (with a zany sense of humour guaranteed to appeal to Australian audiences) about a young layabout whose amateur magic shows sometimes put relatives in hospital.
  
• Next Floor
  The silent era styeled credits preface a film without dialogue. The visuals recall any number of gothic horror films and the style is almost Greenaway.
• Two Men
  A simple premise is explored in a novel fashion, a kind of what-if, indigenous style.
• Necessary Games
  I can't say I'm a big fan for experimental cinema, though this one is intriguing.
• The Cat Piano
  Inventive, entertaining, film noir with a voiceover by Nick Cave - how could you go wrong?
• Slaves
  The animation does an excellent job of making a dark subject accessible. Who'd have thought that the terrible things described are taking place today?
  

Memo to self: next year, include at least one shorts session in my program.

A Lake
"It's like sticking knitting needles into your eyes" is how one walk-out described this film to me, though I found it captivating. I just had to capture that response, which I find amusing, and fair enough. I noticed quite a number of walk-outs and I don't blame any of them.

A Lake is a difficult film: the hand-held camera has a tendency at times to replicate the experience of the epileptic protagonist. There's not a whole lot happening. Our man cuts down trees in the snow. The visuals are staggeringly beautiful. His fits are increasing in frequency, which he reveals to his sister (with whom he has a sexual fixation), but not his mother.

The film is dark, brooding and again, difficult. Yet somehow compelling.

Other than MIFF

With a full-on schedule booked for MIFF (some 40 films), it's easy to forget that there's other things on (all film-related, of course). I had booked myself in for United Red Army at the Forum this morning but, at 190 minutes, figured I'd take some time out, and hence this post.

Having given Balibo a whopping 5 stars (and I don't know how that's justified), I'm a little bemused by Jim Schembri's 1/2 star for Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control and, furthermore, his description of the film in today's Age as a 'blockbuster':

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince enjoyed a second weekend at No.1 with a massive haul of $6.46 million across 510 screens for a total of $29.6 million. This was despite the opening of the new Jim Jarmusch blockbuster The Limits of Control, which managed $28,999 on five screens.

[p.18 in the Arts section under 'Box office' - as yet not online; emphasis is mine]

Now, though I loved The Limits of Control (which you may have gleaned from my review), I'd hardly call it a blockbuster. It really is a niche film and Jarmusch is a niche director. That the film is showing on a measly five screen pretty much confirms that. And how can a film screening on five arthouse screens take a dent out of a mainstream blockbuster screening on over one hundred times the number of screens, largely the big multiplexes?

Opening on the eve of MIFF was always going to hurt the film's box office in Melbourne, because the target audience is largely focused on the mega-circus that is MIFF. It's a pity, because it's a better film than anything I've seen yet at MIFF (13 films to date).

...

Cedar Boys
This new Australian film by Serhat Caradee opens on limited release today and my preoccupation with MIFF has prevented me from reviewing it in more detail. It depicts the struggle of immigrant families in contemporary society. I often connect with this subject, though Australian films tackling these themes in recent years have usually failed to have the authenticity and dramatic tension that Cedar Boys achieves.

The film is nicely photographed and well-acted. The dialogue in particular is excellent, very real. Hopefully Cedar Boys will find an audience. The lack of marketing and the timing (mid-MIFF) isn't working in its favour, so if you're steering clear of the MIFF crowds, this is one to look out for - just be quick; it may not be around for long. Check out the official website.

...

Lake Mungo, another Australian film, opens today. There's a Q&A session with the cast and crew 6.30pm tonight at the George cinema.

...

Post-MIFF
For your post-MIFF fix, you may want to put the following into your calendars:

• 16 August: Gruber's Journey at ACMI
  
• 18 - 20 August: Indonesian Film Festival at ACMI
  
• 19 - 26 August: Russian Resurrection Film Festival at the Como
• 21 - 30 August: Melbourne Writer's Festival at ACMI
  
• 25 - 30 August: Israeli Film Festival at Como and Brighton Bay cinemas
• 27 - 30 August: Anna May Wong on Film at ACMI
  
• 3 - 30 September: AFI Professional Members' screenings at ACMI
  
• 4 September & 2 October: Red Hot Shorts at ACMI
  
• 10 - 15 September: The Bicycle Thief at ACMI
  
• 16 September - 5 October: Italian Film Festival
• 17 - 27 September: Focus on Australian Noir at ACMI
  

ACMI Focus on Australian Noir

OK, I know it's hard to look that far ahead, but here's something to look forward to after MIFF. ACMI is presenting a focus on 'Australian noir' to coincide with the opening of a new permanent exhibition (ah, so that's what all those construction works were about!).

I've seen a few of these films and can vouch for them, such as The Magician, Wake in Fright, Boxing Day (my favourite local film of 2007), The Square (my second favourite local film of 2008), Pure Shit and Dark City.

I'll be looking to catch the other titles that I haven't seen: The Horseman, Goodbye Paradise and Heatwave. The season runs from 17 - 27 September. You can put these dates in your calendar, or subscribe to mine.

[Image: Richard Green in Kriv Stenders' Boxing Day]

ACMI Cinemas Presents
Focus on Australian Noir
Thursday 17th September – Sunday 27th September
Curated by Richard Sowada and Spiro Economopoulos

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will present a season of gritty, stripped-back Aussie realism when Focus on Australian Noir opens this September.

Curated by ACMIs Head of Film Programs Richard Sowada and Film Programmer Spiro Economopoulos, the program features nine films playing over ten days, all inspired by the noir genre, each one dark in style and subject matter.

“We’ve taken this great selection of films and looked at them through the lens of film noir. Each of them has at their heart the great traditions of the genre, but there's a real sense of playfulness and experimentation with the style, giving a unique spin to classic film noir conventions,” Richard said.

“The film noir elements turn up in surprising places – the glaring sun of the outback in Wake In Fright, the maze of sky-less Melbourne laneways in The Magician, or the confines of a house in Boxing Day – all have locations which are characters in themselves,” he said. “The willingness among these filmmakers to challenge and spin these customs, either by choice or necessity, makes for invigorating viewing.”

The season will open with the hit of last years Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), The Horseman (2008), where it won both Best Film and Best Director. Steven Kastrissios’ gritty revenge film rewrites the book in its unrelenting vision of a grieving father who will stop at nothing to get back at the men that killed his daughter.

The season continues with another film applauded at MUFF, winner of Best Film, Director and Actor categories in 2003, The Magician (2005). Director and star Scott Ryan turns in a scorching film trailing the life of a hitman, whose twisted code of ethics is, in equal parts, loathsome and likable.

Regarded as an Australian classic, Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) plays on the fear of the unknown invoked by the outback and often leveraged in Australian films, particularly those of the 1970s. This controversial film takes uptight teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) into the outback, where one night turns into a shattering hallucination of gambling, drinking and brutality. Adapted from the novel of the same name, but simply known as Outback beyond Australian shores, Wake in Fright draws a brilliant early-career performance from Jack Thompson.

The ‘bread and butter’ for Australian noir filmmakers lies in ever-popular stories of crime and corruption. Carl Schultz’s Goodbye Paradise (1982), is set around the years of Joh Bjelke-Peterson's National Party Government. Queensland is depicted as a cesspool of corruption and vice, as a booze-addled ex-cop attempts to solve a murder and in the process uncovers a plot for a military coup. Goodbye Paradise was recognised with two AFI Awards; Best Screenplay for Australian screenwriting legend Bob Ellis and co-writer Denny Lawrence, as well as Best Actor in a Lead Role for Ray Barrett.

Similarly crooked characters make up Philip Noyce’s Heatwave (1982). Partly based on the real life disappearance of Sydney activist and journalist Juanita Nielson, Heatwave depicts a complex web of corruption that surrounds the proposed redevelopment of a poor inner-city Sydney neighbourhood and the fight that ensues between the residents and the all-powerful property developers.

A recent Australian noir hit at film festivals across the globe, The Square (2008), premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2008 to critical acclaim. Written by one of the films’ lead actors, Joel Edgerton, and Garage Days writer Matthew Dabner, The Square is the debut feature offering from promising local director Nash Edgerton and has been reviewed as a “terrific, satisfying, full-bodied Australian crime film” by The Age.

Also screening is Kriv Stenders’ Boxing Day (2007), a real-time drama about a family gathering the day after Christmas. As parolee Chris prepares lunch for his fragmented family, old tensions are ignited and dark secrets unearthed with explosive consequences as a good day spirals out of control.

Filmed in Australia, Alex Proyas’ dystopic sci-fi noir Dark City (1998) is a burgeoning cult-classic set in a city run by a group of creepy beings called ‘The Strangers’. Dark City tells the story of a John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewell) who wakes up in a strange hotel with amnesia and discovers that he is wanted for a series of brutal murders he has no memory of committing. A Hollywood cast is peppered with top Australian acting talents including Colin Friels, David Wenham and Melissa George.

Naturally, a noir film needs material that lends itself perfectly to the genre so what noir season would be complete without delving into the seedy world of drugs? Drugs and drug taking are portrayed in all their brutal honesty in the ground breaking fictional film, Pure Shit (1975), about four junkies who traverse the city in pursuit of drugs and action. Director Bert Deling challenged more than audiences when he unleashed his second low budget film onto the Australian public. At the time of its release, The Herald deemed it “the most evil film ever made”, no doubt referring to its no holds barred look into Melbourne drug culture.

Focus on Australian Noir draws links with ACMI’s new permanent exhibition, Screen Worlds: The Story of Film, Television and Digital Culture, opening in September. The exhibition will spotlight Australia’s film history and talent. Many of the films in this season feature directorial or acting talent featured in the exhibition. “We very much wanted to time this season for the opening of the exhibition to give visitors a holistic experience while at ACMI,” said Richard. “Whether you’re learning about Australian film history for the first time, or simply wanting to expand your knowledge, the film program and exhibition are great companion experiences to one another.”

Focus on Australian Noir invites you to melt into a gritty world inhabited by grifters, misfits and antiheros, where the innocent become the guilty and the guilty – well, they get what they deserve – when this season comes alive at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image from Thursday 17th – Sunday 27th September, 2009.

And here's the complete program:

Thu 17 Sep 7pm, Fri 25 Sep 7pm
The Horseman unclassified 18+, Steven Kastrissios, 110 mins, Australia, 2008, HD Cam
Steven Kastrissios’ gritty revenge film rewrites the book in its unrelenting vision of a grieving father who will stop at nothing to get back at the men that killed his daughter. The film’s breathless pace and no holds barred approach creates a visceral punch with enormous power and resonance.

Thu 17 Sep 9.30pm, Sat 26 Sep 7pm
The Magician MA15+, Scott Ryan, 85 mins, Australia, 2005, 35mm
Director and star Scott Ryan turns in a scorching film trailing the life of a hitman. Low-fi and lean, this ‘documentary’ of the world of small-time gun-for-hire Ray Shoesmith is all sinew. Ryan brings a lovely depth to Ray’s character, whose twisted code of ethics is, in equal parts, loathsome and likable.

Fri 18 Sep 7pm
Pure Shit R18+, Bert Deling, 85 mins, Australia, 35mm
Four junkies traverse the city in pursuit of drugs and action. A film for and about outsiders, Bert Deling’s outlaw classic has a thrilling sense of danger in both style and story – even 30 years later. Dark, dingy and known to the law, it’s the kind of delinquent kid you don’t want your child to play with.

Sat 19 Sep 7pm
Wake in Fright M, Ted Kotcheff, 114 mins, Australia, 1971, 35mm
Pushing the bush myth as far south as it can go, this controversial and gritty classic follows the increasingly off-kilter journey of very proper and uptight British teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) whose one night in the outback turns into a shattering hallucination of gambling, drinking and brutality.

Sat 19 Sep 9.30pm
Boxing Day MA15+, Kriv Stenders, 81 mins, Australia, 2007
In Kriv Stenders’ devastating real-time drama, a family gathering the day after Christmas ignites old tensions and unearths dark secrets as parolee Chris prepares lunch for his fragmented family. As the day progresses, crime and innocence collide with explosive consequences as a good day spirals out of control for our fractured antihero.

Sun 20 Sep 3pm, Sun 27 Sep 5.30pm
Heatwave M, Philip Noyce, 92 mins, Australia, 1982, 35mm
Partly based on the real life disappearance of Sydney activist and journalist Juanita Nielsen, Heatwave depicts a complex web of corruption that surrounds the proposed redevelopment of a poor inner-city Sydney neighbourhood and the fight that ensues between the residents and the all-powerful property developers.

Sun 20 Sep 5pm
Dark City M, Alex Proyas, 100 mins, Australia, 1998, 35mm
Alex Proyas’ dystopic sci-fi noir centres on a city run by a group of creepy beings called ‘The Strangers’. Rufus Sewell plays John Murdoch, a man who wakes up in a strange hotel with amnesia and discovers that he’s wanted for a series of brutal murders he has no memory of committing.

Thu 24 Sep 7pm, Sun 27 Sep 3pm
Goodbye Paradise M, Carl Schultz, 119 mins, Australia, 1982, 35mm
An underrated classic, Goodbye Paradise is set around the years of Joh Bjelke-Peterson's National Party Government. Queensland is depicted as a cesspool of corruption and vice, as a booze-addled ex-cop attempts to solve a murder and in the process uncovers a plot for a military coup.

Sat 26 Sep 9pm
The Square MA15+, Nash Edgerton, 101 mins, Australia, 2008
A hapless everyman falls for a younger woman with a dodgy boyfriend and an even dodgier stash of money. In classic noir style, love (and everything else for that matter) doesn’t run smoothly as a plot is hatched to take the money and run. With great respect to the noir form, The Square is a “terrific, satisfying, full-bodied Australian crime film” The Age

The Week in Review - 5/7/09

Circumstances conspired to enable me to see more films than usual this week. First, there's been an abundance of films worth seeing: Melbourne Cinémathèque, of course, but also ACMI's Focus on Girls 24/7 and advance screenings that I didn't want to miss. Also, it's school holidays, which means I have a two-week break from my Alliance Française classes and on top of that, with conflict in the home, what better to avoid stress than sit in a dark cinema? Don't worry, it's a long story. A very long story.

FILMS:

• Coco avant Chanel (Anne Fontaine, France, 2009)
• Cztery noce z Anna (Four Nights With Anna, Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/France, 2008)
• Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, UK/West Germany, 1971)
• Winged Creatures + Q&A (Rowan Woods, USA, 2008)
• Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo From 5 to 7, Agnès Varda, France/Italy, 1962)
• Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Jeanne Dielman, Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France, 1975)
• Balibo (Robert Connolly, Australia, 2009)
• Wanda (Barbara Loden, Barbara Loden, USA, 1970)
  

Coco avant Chanel
I'm loathe to cricitice a film like this. It's like many I see that are well-made, technically proficient and yet do nothing for me. I'm simply not part of the more mainstream target audience that will revel in the drama, the period and the background to this iconic character. I don't find that her life is that interesting and that she never married is no great accomplishment.

Four Nights With Anna
This film does so well what I love about Eastern European cinema: it looks absolutely beautiful (in a decaying sort of way - check out my profile, urban decay is one of my interests) and its minimalist story-telling leaves one guessing. The film does have Hitchcockian elements and you feel that the director is messing with your expectations. This is my first experience of Skolimowski, so I'm interested to see the other Cinémathèque screenings to get a sense of what he's about.

Deep End
Having discussed this elsewhere, I don't really feel like regurgitating much of this. I liked it, it's historically fascinating, a kind of document of its time. As I was discussing with someone last night, it seemed to do for 1970s London (by a Pole) what Wake in Fright did for outback Australia (by a Canadian). Both films seem very frank and truthful analyses of their respective settings by so-called outsiders.

Winged Creatures
I don't care what Rowan Woods produces; anyone that can make a The Boys has won my respect. For me, the uncompromising brilliance and edge-of-your-seat suburban terror of that film indicates unusual talent. I took the opportunity of telling him after the Q&A that The Boys is a film that he can probably never equal. I know a director is focused on the current and upcoming projects, but the truth has to be said.

It can be easy to fault Winged Creatures and Matt Ravier has done an excellent job of pointing them out, though I don't feel the faults are as fatal as he. During the Q&A, Woods seemed to acknowledge some of the flaws himself, and knew that an ensemble film is inherently difficult.

As much as I would love Rowan Woods to make films like The Boys, I suppose every director wants his or her films to be seen, to make money and to make work for future work. Maybe Woods doesn't see a future in uncompromising bleak social dramas. So what we have now are compromised bleak social dramas.

Winged Creatures is a more ambitious project than his previous endeavour, Little Fish. First, it was made in Los Angeles with a fairly high-profile cast that includes Forest Whitaker, Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Hudson, Guy Pearce, Jeanne Tripplehorn and others. It's visually a nicer film to look at and the themes are also more interesting. So, I feel it's an improvement on Little Fish.

The film is clearly looking for an audience, and compromises have been made to succeed in that direction. As Matt Ravier points out, there is little subtlety and little is left to chance that the audience won't understand the narrative each step of the way. It makes the film accessible to a wider audience but, as with Coco avant Chanel, this is not what I look for in cinema.

I liked the themes the film explores. Various survivors of a random shooting in a diner try to come to terms with their trauma, each in their own way. Dakota is chilling as a born-again Christian and her final transformation is very moving. But her initial transformation is just too over-the-top. I was surprised how gripping the film starts out. Unfortunately, the ensemble structure diffuses the opening dynamics and the film gradually loses momentum.

Cleo From 5 to 7
I found this rivetting. At first, it seemed to have the frivolity (sans the experimental nature) of Daisies, also screening as part of the ACMI Focus on Girls 24/7 and which I saw at Melbourne Cinémathèque a year or two ago as part of the Czech New Wave program. Clèo is a young female singer with a sort of princess bitch syndrome a la Daisies. As she wanders the streets of Paris, with concerns other than the latest hat or shoes (she may have cancer), the film takes on an element that strongly recalles Louis Malle's Le feu follet. Like Malle's film, the protagonist's journey takes us on a walking tour of the back-streets of Paris, but without anywhere near the level of bleakness of Le feu follet's Alain Leroy. Interestingly, these films were made about a year apart (Clèo was made first).

The 5 to 7 refers to two hours in an evening of Clèo's life, depicted in real-time, as she worries about her hospital test results, interacting with various people.

Jeanne Dielman
Is this the film that inspired Van Sant's Gerry? Two very different films, different scenarios and aesthetics, yet strangely parallel. Sure, one is set in mountain and desert regions as two Gerrys try to find their way; the other about a widow/housewife/mother-cum-prostitute who is trying to find her way.

This film is an amazing and confident accomplishment for the young Akerman (she was 25 when this was made). Like Gerry, it demands much of an audience. You must submit to it, to its pace, to its rhythm. You have to get into another mode of experiencing cinema. In Akerman's film, the camera is static virtually the whole time, and the subject is banal beyond belief. We view Jeanne as she cooks, cleans, tidies and receives clients. Takes are long, no detail is left unseen. The story takes place over three days, and each day seems superficially much like the previous.

Yet there's change we can't help noticing. We are not privy to Jeanne's inside world, which is clearly conflicted, but we can deduce this by the slight ripples in her daily rituals. She has decent middle-class standards and yet a pragmatic need to survive financially, which she achieves through prostitution. This film rewards the patient and I was surprised to see only one walk-out during its 200 minute run-time.

Balibo
This is the film that opens MIFF in a couple of week's time and I was lucky to attend a media preview, introduced by the director. I was thinking it was the closing film and I mentioned to someone that it would make a good opening night film, which of course it is - silly me! The buzz coming out of the screening was palpable, with some saying it's not just another good Australian film, but one of the best films of the year. Refer to my comments about Chanel.

I like the film, in fact parts of the film I like a lot. Firstly, Australian films rarely touch political issues, but this is one political issue - a tumour in the nation's psyche - that has festered for way too long and needs to come out into the open. In a sense, the film confirms that which we always knew, or at least suspected. It demands questions, but doesn't necessarily ask them, if you get my drift. It leads us to water but doesn't make us drink, trusting an audience to understand the issues, without ramming them down our throats.

The performances are generally good, especially Oscar Isaac as a young and charismatic José Ramos-Horta (now the president of East Timor). The film has a couple of problems, the main one being coherency. There are different narrative threads, taking place in different time frames and the film's effectiveness is, as I mentioned with Winged Creatures, diffused by the parallel handling of the threads. Despite this, the film manages to rise above the flaws, and present what feels not just worthy, but important. It involves us in events that are historic and relevant, in an authentic way. The film is particularly effective in its bringing the story to a climax; it's very moving without cheap sentimentality.

For a more positive and extensive response to the film, check out Matt Ravier's review.

Wanda
What a remarkable piece of film-making - they don't make 'em like this any more! With grainy 16mm film and an aesthetic that strongly recalls Cassavetes, we just don't see enough of films like this. Barbara Loden directed and played the main role, a raw depiction of a woman with not a lot going for her. Divorced as an irresponsible mother with no regard for her children, she takes up with a thief and finds her situation going into downward spiral. The revelation of characters, in particular the thief, is both clever and funny. There is a truthfulness to the depictions that is chilling and awesome.