By Kate Rodger, Daniel Rutledge, Dylan Moran, Kim Choe and Steve Austin
The 2012 New Zealand International Film Festival has been underway for two weeks and the Film3 team have been cramming in as many sessions as possible.
Listed below are mini reviews of many of the films we have seen over the last few days.
For more information about the film festival including session times and ticket information, visit the official NZIFF website.
West of Memphis
Reviewed by Kate Rodger
Running just shy of two and half hours in length you might expect documentary West of Memphis to be heavy going, especially given the intense subject matter. Testament to the story, and its delivery, this film is no clock-watcher, engaging you from the opening credits and gripping you tighter as it unfolds. Delivered concisely, informatively, with excellent use of archive and of course with all the new evidence, West of Memphis is instead an incredibly compelling, inspirational and a very moving experience. Read full review.
Bully
Reviewed by Dylan Moran
Bully is a film which touches the emotions from the very beginning, watching a father talk about his 17-year-old son commit suicide due to the torment of his school life. It does not over-dramatise what’s going on but presents real accounts from parents who have lost children alongside guerrilla filming onboard school buses and playgrounds. Some specific elements of the film are a little lost in translation, such as the girl who is in a juvenile correctional facility after pulling a gun on her aggressors, but the core message is relevant the world over. This is a very thorough call for social change, whether it succeeds or not is yet to be seen.
V/H/S
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
Being comprised of 'found footage' horror shorts aroused concern among genre fans tired with the format, but others were confident anthology V/H/S would deliver due to the filmmaking talent behind it - somewhat of an A-list of the modern indie scene. I’m happy to report that while it does suffer flaws, V/H/S most certainly delivers. As well as being genuinely scary it's particularly dirty, nasty and often unsettling, in a way that horror fans very rarely get to experience in a cinema. There are classic horror elements for sure, but there’s also a lot of freshness here that makes me excited about a potential new wave of American horror. Read full review.
Death Row: Garcia/Rivas & Skinner
Reviewed by Steve Austin
The last two episodes in Werner Herzog’s exploration of cases of inmates on Death Row in Texas seem much more interesting than the first, mostly because Herzog has access to more data about the cases, the subjects are more eloquent and he allows in a little more of his characteristic existentialist rambling. Jospeh Garcia is caught with blood on his hands after a prison breakout, lead by George Rivas, goes dreadfully wrong. Each have many life sentences stacked against them when Herzog meets them, with no set date for execution. Hank Skinner has been stayed from execution at the zero hour pending forensic investigation into the murder of his girlfriend and two mentally handicapped sons. This is a landmark case in the penal system, as it is the first time a prisoner has been allowed the ability to sue based on the court’s withholding of circumstantial evidence. As before, all parties are allowed to speak for themselves and Herzog presents these episodes as documents, with no semblance of sensationalism. Subjects are allowed to fully express themselves for the short window he has with them. Of all of these (including feature subject Into The Abyss), Skinner seems the most intelligent and personable, but here Herzog lets him spill over personal crackpot theories and associations. The whole series is well worth seeing, if a little dry, especially if you have any sort of interest in the American Justice system and the flaws therein.
Liberal Arts
Reviewed by Kim Choe
Finally, a college film that's worth watching. Liberal Arts taps into the lives of a small group of students, teachers and alumni of a prestigious Ohio university - all highly educated, but none particularly happy. The love story is philosophically minded, but not overbearingly so. The humour gets a little hokey at times, but it still drew plenty of chuckles from the audience in my screening. The majority of the writing is smart, sharp, and conscious of the need not to take itself too seriously. It's hopelessly highbrow, yet utterly relatable - and I think it will coax a smile out of even the most jaded and cynical of you out there. Read full review.
Vulgaria
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
The screening of Vulgaria was shifted from the Civic to Event Cinemas last night and started around 45 minutes late – something that annoyed a fair few patrons. But within the logistical nightmare of the film festival, it was a fairly minor disruption as far as I was concerned. Even the smaller venue wasn’t full, however, and seeing as this is a comedy that didn’t draw a huge amount of laughs, it may have felt pretty cold in the Civic. In Vulgaria, Hong Kong film producer To Wai-cheung educates a class of film students on the outrageous lengths he took to get a film made. There’s a lot of meta-jokes and self-parody, with certain messages directed right at the audience about cinema courtesy and so on. Those offended by implied bestiality or 9/11 jokes should steer clear of Vulgaria as it wears its offensiveness on its sleeve proudly. Die hard fans of Hong Kong cinema will find many of the in-jokes satisfying, and Chinese audience-members at my screening found various cameos and jokes funny that went over my head. Vulgaria is an average comedy, hurt by following the likes of funnier films Sightseers, Moonrise Kingdom and Klown at the this year’s festival. Ho-Cheung Pang’s previous Dream Home and Love in a Puff are both far superior, but I enjoyed the insider’s mocking critique of the Hong Kong film industry that is Vulgaria for the few late night laughs it gave me.
Rampart
Reviewed by Dylan Moran
Set in post-Rampart scandal Los Angeles, Rampart is quite possibly the best dark horse prospect for Oscar season. Woody Harrelson absolutely takes over the screen as LAPD Detective Dave ‘Date Rape’ Brown, a man who lets the old school ideals control his policing despite the changing landscape of American culture. There are touches of Quentin Tarantino and Steve McQueen in Rampart. It’s not an action flick but more of a prolonged character study into an awful excuse for a man, conveyed in such a way the audience may not care about him, but are definitely intrigued. The scripting is superb as believable characters take part in believable conversations and brief appearances from the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi and Ice Cube further enhance this incredible film. Read full review.
Klown
Reviewed by Steve Austin
The comparisons to both Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Hangover bandied around by most critics merely sum up the practical scenarios of this movie, without really revealing that contained within are some of the best written characters, ferocious bravery in performances and an excellently made film the leaves an audience almost sore with laughter. It’s a series of physical comedy set-pieces, misunderstandings, slapstick and verbal gymnastics that catapult this feature well beyond its seemingly mundane set-up. Fair warning though: just when you think it’s going to go as far as it can with ridiculous offensiveness, it steps over that line, dances on it and wees all over it. Pure, sublime, scatalogical everyman comedy for a very grown-up audience who think they’ve seen it all. This absolutely tore the roof off The Civic and is one of my highlights of the festival so far. Read full review.
5 Broken Cameras
Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
Grassroots documentary 5 Broken Cameras – made by a farmer in the West Bank village of Bil’n – is an extremely well-made film and the most moving documentary I’ve seen at the festival. The film covers five years of Emad Burnat’s life in which five of his cameras are broken by Israeli soldiers or settlers. The footage is shown in chronological order, but the brutality also escalates steadily over the film. And there sure is brutality on display. At times outrage boiled up inside me over the injustices that take place in 5 Broken Cameras. I was reminded of a thought I often get while watching documentaries on Israeli brutality - why did we all scream and shout about South Africa's Apartheid, but are much quieter about these atrocities? It’s easy not to think about such issues, but forcing yourself to watch a film as personal and well-made as this one is an excruciating but much-needed reminder of one of the saddest situations on Earth. Read full review.
Step Up to the Plate
Reviewed by Kim Choe
Step Up to the Plate takes us into the chefs’ homes where we see how their love of cooking has been passed through the generations. But strangely, we see precious little inside their restaurants – a gnawing hunger that is only satisfied towards the film’s end when Sébastien plates up three of his signature dishes. The precise, art-like process is shot so simply and sublimely it drew audible gasps of pleasure from the audience. The film festival guide likens this film to last year’s excellent Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It’s a fair comparison as far as subject matter and charm go, but the current offering does lack some of the momentum and structure of its Japanese counterpart. Read full review.
This Ain’t California
Reviewed by Dylan Moran
A documentary which takes a rare peek behind the Berlin Wall to document skateboarding’s rise through three childhood friends; Denis, Dirk and Nico. The trio are presented as the Z-Boys of East Germany, but where the Z-Boys were almost obsessed with professionalism and popularity, the Berlin boys were more concerned with how to get their hands on more equipment, even coming up with a smuggling scheme. It’s obvious they are years ahead of the anti-establishment movement which eventually brought down the Berlin Wall, even if politics play no part in their actions (or at least the film doesn’t mention them at all). This Ain’t California is an incredibly moving tale and a stunning narrative. It is one of the best skateboarding documentaries I’ve seen, because at its heart it captures what the sport is all about. Freedom. Read full review.
The Angel’s Share
Reviewed by Kate Rodger
A tale of redemption, of friendship, and of whiskey, this film entirely charmed me. The central character of Robbie has a history of teenage violence fuelled by a less than savoury upbringing, drugs and alcohol - Robbie’s future look bleakly obvious. But with a baby on the way and a girlfriend determined to change the course of his life, Robbie gets an even bigger boost under the guidance and friendship of his supervisor Harry, who introduces him to a mystical love affair with whiskey. Director Ken Loach keeps us hanging the way through, as we cheer for Robbie never really knowing whether he’s going to make it. That combination of emotions worked a treat for me and The Angels’ Share completely won me over. Read full review.
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