Films You've Seen at Film Festivals

[zomgmouse]

I thought I'd start a film festivals thread for all the new films seen in film festivals cause they don't really fit in the non-new thread but probably aren't big enough for their own individual threads - but which would be cool to discuss. (This was prompted by the Melbourne International Film Festival, which has just begun.)

With that in mind:

A Quiet Dream. Light and wandery. Creates an elusive mood. Reminded me a bit of early Jarmusch. People have also compared this to a better-directed version of a Hong Sang-soo film which I can see.

On Body and Soul. Beautifully simple and bizarre premise of two people who work together in an abattoir and discover they are having the same dreams. A very understated sentimentality and a nicely deadpan execution with a couple of pretty shocking moments.

The Untamed. Pretty much a modern-day Possession set in Mexico with a lot more sex. Sexico. It's very slow and takes a while to start unravelling (also it was my fourth film of the day and I was pretty exhausted) but it's well worth the wait. Really well done I thought.

[Namtab]

Saw a short that I thought was ace called The Karman Line at a local festival a few years back, starring Olivia Colman. Of interest to this forum as well, as David Cann turns up as a doctor.

[zomgmouse]

I saw close to forty new films at the Melbourne International Film Festival so I'll be slowly making my way through them in this thread...

Rey - they placed this in the "experimental" section of the festival programme which I can kind of understand. There's a lot of Brakhage-esque or Maddin-esque playing around with the form of film. Scratching, distorting, etc. Some of the imagery here was astounding, especially the several scenes where actors wore surreal masks. Overall a pretty impressive film!

I Am Not a Witch - fantastic debut film about a little girl who's labelled a witch in a remote Zambian community and forced to live with a group of witches who are essentially kept prisoner in an isolated part of the village. The title is haunting and stays with you throughout the entire film, and there's some great interwoven explorations of a whole range of social issues. There's one musical choice towards the end that absolutely shat me to stars of rage when I heard it but otherwise this is a startling and powerful film. The director's from the UK so I expect you'll be hearing a lot more about this in the coming months. Looking forward to seeing what she does next.

Spookers - New Zealand documentary about a haunted house experience and the people who run and perform it. It's on the site of a former mental asylum, so there's a little bit of exploration of issues surrounding mental illness, though I would have liked to have seen more. But there's still some nice footage and interviews of the performers and their personal lives.

The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio - Miike's sequel to 2013's The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji. It's just as bananas and bombastic in its visual style and humour. Perhaps even exceeds the original?

[DukeDeMondo]

I saw close to forty new films at the Melbourne International Film Festival so I'll be slowly making my way through them in this thread...

Rey - they placed this in the "experimental" section of the festival programme which I can kind of understand. There's a lot of Brakhage-esque or Maddin-esque playing around with the form of film. Scratching, distorting, etc. Some of the imagery here was astounding, especially the several scenes where actors wore surreal masks. Overall a pretty impressive film!

I Am Not a Witch - fantastic debut film about a little girl who's labelled a witch in a remote Zambian community and forced to live with a group of witches who are essentially kept prisoner in an isolated part of the village. The title is haunting and stays with you throughout the entire film, and there's some great interwoven explorations of a whole range of social issues. There's one musical choice towards the end that absolutely shat me to stars of rage when I heard it but otherwise this is a startling and powerful film. The director's from the UK so I expect you'll be hearing a lot more about this in the coming months. Looking forward to seeing what she does next.

Spookers - New Zealand documentary about a haunted house experience and the people who run and perform it. It's on the site of a former mental asylum, so there's a little bit of exploration of issues surrounding mental illness, though I would have liked to have seen more. But there's still some nice footage and interviews of the performers and their personal lives.

The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio - Miike's sequel to 2013's The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji. It's just as bananas and bombastic in its visual style and humour. Perhaps even exceeds the original?

All four of those are things I'm going to be chasing, Zomgs, cheers for the write ups. I Am Not A Witch and Spookers in particular sound like the very men for me. I wonder when - or if, in the case of Spookers - they'll make their way over here.

[Gulftastic]

Philip's Flashing Finger at Leeds Film Festival in 1996, entirely due to a mate being in the cast. He only had a small roll, and he's not listed in the IMDB cast list.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411752/

He had some amusing stories about how hopeless Jim Bowen was.

[zomgmouse]

I wonder when - or if, in the case of Spookers - they'll make their way over here.

I know that the filmmaker behind this regularly posts his films up on his website for free, but this one has a bigger company behind it so that might not happen - but at least it's more likely to be out on DVD. It's getting a short run here in Melbourne in what is the very loose equivalent of our BFI type cinema but I think that's about it unless I've missed something.

I Am Not a Witch is playing the London Film Festival if that helps at all.

[zomgmouse]

Slowly continuing these write-ups...

Let the Sunshine In aka Bright Sunshine In - the latest by Claire Denis. Despite being really into her previous film Bastards and also White Material, I kind of failed to connect with this. It's been labelled as a comedy and a satirical romance but it just felt flat and repetitive. I wasn't a fan of the acting, either. Not sure.

Thousand Cuts aka The Snake with a Thousand Cuts - slick, pulpy thriller. Kind of empty and vaguely characterised but it's very well-made and breezes by.

Faces Places - Agnès Varda's latest, a documentary she co-directed with street artist JR (whom I hadn't heard of previously). This easily jumped to my top spot after I watched it. It's so full of joy and love, and is one of those films that reminds me why I want to make art. There's a lovely chemistry between the two and the project itself is very interesting. I loved this immensely.

Ghost in the Mountains - first flop of the festival. Unnecessarily slow and dull.

[thugler]

Going to a few LFF films in a week or so so I'll join in then

[zomgmouse]

Going to a few LFF films in a week or so so I'll join in then

Nice! There's quite a few on that programme I've seen and yet more I'd like to see if I could. Keen to hear your thoughts.

[Dex Sawash]

From today's cinema email alert

Fish, chips, tomato soup and a brownie

[zomgmouse]

From today's cinema email alert

Fish, chips, tomato soup and a brownie

Ah yes, the traditional James Bond meal set.

[thugler]

So I ended up going to a few LFF films, chosen fairly randomly  based on when I could make it.

'The Cakemaker'
Israei-German drama, first feature from Ofir Raul Grazier. Enjoyed this, starts off as a fairy conventional low key gay relationship drama but quickly went in an unexpected direction and steadily built tension along with some nice baking/cooking scenes. Strong performances from the small cast of unknowns (to me).

'Manifesto'
This apparently started as a multi screen art installation, but it's now been shown in linear fashion in cinemas. Kate Blanchett doing another one of her leftfield role choices, playing a variety of characters in various scenarios in some beautiful and unusual locations, each one involving her performing parts of a related manifestos from across the 20th century. I knew nothing going in but found this quite a fun experiment. The whole thing rested on Blanchett and the locations, some of the vignettes were more successful than others but it managed to squeeze quite a bit of humour and a little commentary by the juxtaposition of the manifestos and the situations depicted. The audience seemed to be very receptive to it too which always helps.

'You were never really here'
New Lynne Ramsey film with Joaquin Phoenix, who I can really take or leave usually. But this was pretty great! A really intense, brutal film in the vein of taxi driver or a history of violence, both of which I love. The soundtrack by Johnny greenwood was phenomenal and he's a great fit with Ramsey since her films are quite reliant on good sound design. Like a lot of her films, a lot of things are left slightly unclear and just alluded to, which really worked well when a lot of filmmakers wouldn't be able to resist explaining the basis for everything. Really tight film I think it was just under 90 minutes but seemed to whip by extremely quickly. Oh and Phoenix was great, amazing portrayal of a very damaged character. Probably won't convince any non Ramsey-heads though.

'Here to be heard -the story of the slits'
A rather slight and slightly limited documentary about the Slits, who I knew very little of previously. The most interesting part of the film was the fact that it all seemed to go a bit wrong for them and they kind of flopped and fell apart. The problem was the singer and most interesting character in the band was both absent (dead) and seemed to have lost touch with the rest of the band and contributers for long periods so there wasn't much explanation as to what had happened to her. The first third of the film with lots of early footage of the young group was great though, I had no idea they had gone in such an unusual direction with their music following beginnings as a scrappy punk group barely able to play, it would've been interesting to have focused more on how this change came about. The coda of the film about a fairly crappy looking late semi reunion was far less interesting and even felt a bit sad.

'The endless'
The 2 directors of weird horror movie 'Spring' from a few years ago return, and star in a low key comedy horror/sci-fi about 2 ex cult members returning to visit the cultists they left behind after a decade away. It's somewhat in the vein of Tucker and Dale vs evil but with a complicated time loop concept with some decent if cheap cgi effects. Much more comedy than their previous work and they largely manager to carry it off despite this being their first time in front of camera. The humour is quite broad, almost like trailer park boys at moments. but it just about works. It was okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of Spring either, which is probably superior.

[zomgmouse]

'The endless'
The 2 directors of weird horror movie 'Spring' from a few years ago return, and star in a low key comedy horror/sci-fi about 2 ex cult members returning to visit the cultists they left behind after a decade away. It's somewhat in the vein of Tucker and Dale vs evil but with a complicated time loop concept with some decent if cheap cgi effects. Much more comedy than their previous work and they largely manager to carry it off despite this being their first time in front of camera. The humour is quite broad, almost like trailer park boys at moments. but it just about works. It was okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of Spring either, which is probably superior.

I was gonna start a separate thread for this actually. I loved it. One of my films of the year. Have you seen Resolution? While probably not required viewing it is heavily linked and works as a sort of prequel to this.

[thugler]

I was gonna start a separate thread for this actually. I loved it. One of my films of the year. Have you seen Resolution? While probably not required viewing it is heavily linked and works as a sort of prequel to this.

Ha! Actually as I was exciting I heard a guy say something like that. I've not, but may try to dig it out, they're a likeable pair and I suspect they may have the potential to make a great film eventually. They definitely have some original ideas within typical genre movie fare

[zomgmouse]

Ha! Actually as I was exciting I heard a guy say something like that. I've not, but may try to dig it out, they're a likeable pair and I suspect they may have the potential to make a great film eventually. They definitely have some original ideas within typical genre movie fare

It's very cool and links to those guys in the house, in fact they're the protagonists of Resolution.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Went to the 25th French Film Festival UK and saw Corporate by Nicolas Silhol, a first time director. Thought it was really effective and tense, with a brilliant central performance from Céline Sallette as someone wrestling with their own accountability. Kind of an unambiguously scathing portrait of what the corporate world does to people's inner functioning. Not the most original subject matter, but really well done. Worth seeing for Sallette's performance alone.

[zomgmouse]

Still lagging in my write-up of MIFF but here's some other films from other festivals I saw quite recently:

From the Latino Film Festival: Woodpeckers, a film from the Dominican Republic about a romance that develops in a prison. One of its main points of interest is its use/depiction of a particular kind of sign language used in the prisons. I also enjoyed at least at the beginning a certain level of realism and intrigue - though as the film went on it tended to go a bit more overly melodramatic. Still enjoyable though.

From the Japanese Film Festival: Antiporno by Sion Sono, someone whose films I'd never seen but would definitely like to. This was made as a result of a Japanese film studio (Nikkatsu) giving some directors some money to do some "reboots" of their "roman porno" series of yore. Sono took this and created a fiercly radical commentary on porn filming and female sexuality using meta narratives and some super abstract set pieces. Surreal and quite confronting at times, I really liked this.

[garbed_attic]

From the Japanese Film Festival: Antiporno by Sion Sono, someone whose films I'd never seen but would definitely like to. This was made as a result of a Japanese film studio (Nikkatsu) giving some directors some money to do some "reboots" of their "roman porno" series of yore. Sono took this and created a fiercly radical commentary on porn filming and female sexuality using meta narratives and some super abstract set pieces. Surreal and quite confronting at times, I really liked this.

Love Exposure is great fun! A real deranged, life-affirming, pervy epic!

[zomgmouse]

Love Exposure is great fun! A real deranged, life-affirming, pervy epic!

So I've heard! I'll be adding it to my list for certain.