By Daniel Rutledge, Dylan Moran, Kate Rodger, Michael Quartly-Kelly and Steve Austin
The 2012 New Zealand International Film Festival has been underway for over a week and the Film3 team have been cramming in as many sessions as possible.
Listed below are mini reviews for several of the films we have seen over the last few days.
For more information about the film festival, visit the official NZIFF website.
The Hunt
Reviewed by Kate Rodger
It’s early in the festival I know, but my watch of the fest so far must be The Hunt. Anchored by the stunningly raw award-winning performance of Mads Mikkelsen, this Danish film was a compelling, frightening and emotional exploration of a small town’s persecution of an innocent man. Mikkelsen is Lucas, a recently divorced kindergarten teacher, struggling for the custody of his own teenage son, and trying to move on with his life in a small Danish town. But that struggle becomes immediately dwarfed by the horrific unravelling of his existence, when a false accusation from one of the children sees the town, and his friends, turn on him, believing he has sexually abused the child. The taut yet intimate telling of this story with Mikkelsen at its heart makes the entire experience as terrifying as it is moving, small moments leave you gasping, and in the most thought-provoking and enduring of ways. Stunning, and a must-see.
Rebellion
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
Rebellion is a superb film and I’m happy to say my favourite of the 2012 NZ International Film Festival so far. It is a dramatic re-telling of the 1988 Ouvéa cave hostage taking incident in New Caledonia. Told from the perspective of French special forces captain Philippe Legorjus, Rebellion is the tragic tale of his efforts to peacefully negotiate with the hostage takers being thwarted by the army and government in favour of an inevitable bloodbath. I found Rebellion to be so impeccably filmed that it was almost distracting. If the story hadn’t have been so captivating, this could easily have been a problem. But fortunately, it’s a deeply moving, engaging true story I knew little about told expertly well. The plight of a people colonized by a powerful military force ruthlessly stamping out dissent is universally moving and with New Caledonia being one of our close Pacific cousins, it is especially so for Kiwis. Read full review.
My Brother the Devil
Reviewed by Steve Austin
There is a very clean asymmetrical visual style to this rather realist coming-of-age drama about Arab brothers surviving on the tough ‘hood of East London. Where most directors would choose to shoot a feature like this with shaky handheld cameras and get right into the middle of the action, director Sally al Hosaini locks off the camera and observes the action, almost coldly, to give us an even-handed view of both of the brothers and their relationship with the world at large. There’s a casual bigotry under-cutting most of the characters, even the protagonist Mo (excellent newcomer Fady Elsayed), which is unnerving but entirely effective in provoking a strong response. As Rashid, the brother/antagonist of the title, James Floyd has a hefty role to take on and tackles it excellently, managing several seeming contradictory moments with just the right amount of early-twenty-something self-awareness. Where this film falls down is in its sense of self entitlement of both the characters and the filmmaking; perhaps it would have been better if much of the approach were at a lower rung on the socio-economic ladder to keep it more believable and the character development more urgent.
Room 237
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is one of my favourite films and I was looking forward to this documentary on its hidden meanings. Unfortunately, I was fairly disappointed with it. Although there are some continuity errors and interesting oddities pointed out, the majority of theories explored are about the film being subliminally about the holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans or an admission by Kubrick that he filmed the ‘faked’ US moon landing. Revelations include seeing the director's face in clouds (only if you use photoshop on it), pausing at a certain point to see a vaguely phallic object and the word 'Moon' sharing the same letters as 'Room No. 237'. Seeing as the director of Room 237 opts to focus on the crazier of the theories and edits footage to the interview dialogue for comic effect, I think that this is largely intended to be a comedy. For a lot of the film, that works and the ridiculousness of the interviewees is amusing, but it's also frequently tiresome.
Crazy Horse
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
A documentary about a fancy nude joint in Paris, Crazy Horse features constant naked women usually with only a tiny merkin hiding their modesty. The high-falutin' crowd at festival screenings are markedly different from the types you’d brush shoulders with in Auckland’s Show Girls or the White House, so it makes for an interesting cinema experience. Over half of the film is comprised of the nude dance routines themselves, and while the interludes do include some informative looks at how the show is put together, they also feature a number of uninteresting and tedious scenes. Despite being often surprisingly boring, Crazy Horse is a fine document of what is regarded by many as the best live nude entertainment venue in the world and a highly erotic portrayal of the seductive power of female beauty. Read full review.
Last Days Here
Reviewed by Michael Quartly-Kelly
For more than 40 years, Bobby Liebling has been the front man of the commercially overlooked, yet hugely influential heavy rock legends - Pentagram. These days he lives in his parent’s basement, sketched out on crack cocaine, picking scabs and railing against the parasites that live under his skin. When consummate Pentagram fan Sean Pellet befriends Bobby, he provides through share faith in both man and music, the impetus for change. Last Days Here provides an unflinching and fascinating look into the life of dependency, a man struggling with addiction and an over-abundance of raw talent, hopelessly searching for validation and self worth in those around him. Read full review.
Far Out Far East
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
Of the films in the Incredibly Strange section at this year's festival,
this is the first that was actually incredibly strange. The double feature
kicked off with Henge, an ultra
low-budget Japanese joy that evokes both classic Godzilla
films and Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo.
A strange love story that develops from a body-horror flick into a monster
movie with lovably crappy effects, Henge
is director Ohata Hajime's debut, making him one to keep an eye on. Korean
time-travel action thriller Young
Gun in the Time was not quite as fun, despite
bursting at the seams with youthful exuberance. Leaping back and forth through
time, a young private detective is on a mission to save a
mysterious and beautiful woman from a number of sinister types intent on taking
the time-travel device for their own means. There’s a load of enjoyable fight
and chase scenes, but the film is unevenly paced and takes a while to find its rhythm.
Far Out Far East is far
from the greatest festival outing you could make this year, but it'll certainly
do wonders to the diversity of your selection. I commend the festival
programmers for putting this rare oddity on.
Himizu
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
Director Sion Sono has previously featured at festivals in New Zealand with Love Exposure, Cold Fish and Suicide Circle, setting his Kiwi fans expectations pretty high. I have to say Himizu is his first disappointment, while still being one of the more unusual, shocking, interesting and funny films at this year's festival. Set in a tsunami-ravaged Japanese town, the film is the story of two young people with incredibly abusive and neglectful parents falling in love and overcoming the adversities facing them. For roughly the first two thirds of this film, I was loving it and couldn't wait to see how it all came together. Unfortunately things fall apart toward the end of the film and the wonderful building blocks put together earlier don't work up to anything too great. While some plotlines are resolved well, others don't really go anywhere and the conclusion is fairly anti-climactic. The incorporation of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami into the story is questionable. While there are certain themes it lends itself to in the film, the juxtaposition of real-life tragedy with Sono's extreme film style didn't go down well with some Japanese audience members in the screening I was at.
Wish You Were Here
Reviewed by Kate Rodger
Sundance audiences went crazy for this slow-burning Aussie thriller and it’s a treat to get to see why. Kiwi actor Ant Starr plays the missing man Jeremy, whose mysterious disappearance will change the lives of each of the other three in the most traumatic of ways. Like all good mysteries, not everything nor everyone is what or who they seem, but in this case, it’s the events of one night out in Cambodia which send lives spiralling out of control. It’s another accessible and really rewarding watch in this festival’s schedule and I heartily recommend it. Read full review.
Undefeated
Reviewed by Dylan Moran
Unlike many sports documentaries, this is a film about people. The season’s progression swiftly takes a back seat as it instead focuses on the ups and downs of Courtney and the two kids for whom this will be their final season as a Tiger, Montrail ‘Money’ Brown and O.C. Brown (no relation to one another). I fear this film will be dismissed by a number of New Zealanders since it’s about American sports but it offers an incredible insight into a number of levels of American life. Undefeated’s conclusion is equal parts heart-warming and heartbreaking. Read full review.
Death Row: Barnes & Carty
Reviewed by Steve Austin
In the Death Row series, Werner Herzog brings to light cases in the American justice system within a maximum security prison in Texas that have question marks hanging over their veracity. Meeting Death Row inmates James Barnes and Linda Anita Carty, Herzog gets truly involved and brings such humanity to the prisoners, lawyers, accomplices, friends and family as well as to all areas of both cases. We are left with lots to puzzle over and something of an indictment of the American penal system in its swift, functionally generalised, clearing of cases in the courts. While the approach certainly exposes the cases and the flaws in US law, it also leaves many questions of ethics, moral impunity and human nature. Sparsely presented, so the subjects really speak for themselves and leave us to make up our own minds. It was disappointing the presentation was less than top-notch at this screening. Poor aspect ratios throughout and a lot of discoluored flickering to picture early in the first episode were rather distracting. Read full review.
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For session times and more information, visit the official New Zealand Film Festival website.
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