In a future Brazil, a decision was taken that the elderly have finished being useful to society and can be packed off to 'the colony', an obscure synthetic afterlife to which the film tells little. Teresa, just hitting her late 70's and looking forward to a couple more years with her daughter is caught off guard as the qualifying age is dropped from 80 to 75. No longer allowed to buy anything of substance without providing papers and getting content from her daughter, her attempts to flee rely on those willing to risk prosecution in giving her safe passage.
Winning the Silver Bear grand jury prize at Berlin this year, and with similar themes to Calle Málaga, of the dehumanizing effect that the expectations of a younger generation on the elder; a disregarding of the possibility that the wrinkled exterior could hide a still beating heart full of expectation, anger and passion in the twilight years, The Blue Trail gives a voice to frustrations in the senior viewer, and a pause for thought in the rest of us. 7.5/10
And so to the final film. The Love that Remains was thought well enough of to have it playing simultaneously in three of the available screens. A family living in a remote part of Iceland was once happy, but something has split Maggi, who works on an industrial fishing boat, and Anna, an artist struggling to find someone to buy her work. What caused the rift is left as an exercise for the viewer, but sometimes these things just happen. Maggi is clearly not over it, and Anna just wants to move on. Not helping matters, is that Maggi regularly joins the family for meals and outdoor pursuits in the Icelandic countryside, so his heart, not to mention his groin, is constantly reminded of the life they used to have. Anna, however is more annoyed that he thinks of his own woes and not how much work it is to run a house with three unruly kids and one less adult.
The director favours using symbolism over narrative to tell the story, and while this is quite benign at first, it becomes increasingly erratic as the film goes on, and unfortunately, it suffers as a result. Characters seem dead, then living, on boats, then at home. I'm certain there is a cohesive structure to what the director is trying to get across, and sometimes as with Blue Heron, this can work really well, and other times the film fails to provide the signposts for the viewer to navigate their way to a satisfying understanding. For me at least, this film belongs in the latter camp.
This made the final third difficult to pick apart, and assuming you can manage that in your head, I suspect you won't feel like it was worth the effort. None of the characters particularly feel likeable, and things happen too randomly to allow the viewer to develop any sympathy towards them. As the credits went up, I felt an uncomfortable silence in the audience - a perceptible difference that demarcates a group of people processing witness to work of art, from one where people were asking themselves, 'why did I come all the way here to see this?'
I enjoyed some of it; the framing shots highlighted the beautiful Icelandic vistas, along with the family dog, Panda, who made every scene his own, and the genuinely laugh-out-loud fever dream experienced by Maggi after killing a rooster almost made it worth the trip, but unfortunately, not quite. 5/10
Getting an extra screening at LIFF usually means a film has been well received, and since I'd seen it advertised earlier in the festival but didn't manage to see it, I used up my Saturday morning spot.
Brendan Fraser, complete with a mawkish expression he can't seem to shift for the duration of the film, plays Phillip, a down on his luck actor scraping by in central Tokyo playing bit parts in advertisements and whatever else he can scavenge from his agent. Luck, of sorts, comes his way when he lands an unusual job as a 'Sad American', playing a distant relation at a seizensō - an actual funeral for a person not actually dead. Seeing potential, Shinji enlists Phillip in his company, Rental Family Inc, to play bit parts in the lives of those in need, often at the request of their nearest and dearest. So one daughter hires him as a journalist to interview her elderly actor father to make him feel better about his acting legacy, while at the same time he's moonlighting as a found father to help a mother get 'his' daughter into a fancy school.
Predictably, Phillip gets too attached to the parts, and the well-meaning relatives end up getting more than what they wished for. When Phillip is asked to back away and move onto the next job, he goes rogue.
Naturally, I was attracted to the film's location; the director clearly wanted to have the many sights and styles of Japanese culture to be one of the characters, and time was set aside to allow the viewer to appreciate the vibrant Tokyo landscape. As a love letter to the country, it did elevate the film, although it had little in the way of surprises, and one of the two main plot-lines felt disappointing in it's resolution.
It had some bits that skirted around something deep to say about the nature of relationships and the quirkiness of the Japanese way of dealing with mental health, but it didn't quite get to the point of actually having anything interesting to say on that subject. It did however have just enough emotional pull to stop it sliding into the level of mawkishness written on Brendan Frasiers face, 7/10
A Hungarian family with four children move house into a rural community in Vancouver Island, sometime in the nineties. Most of the children seem well adjusted, but there is a source of disquiet. Jeremy, the eldest and the child of a previous relationship, is beginning to show concerning behavioral problems. The other kids are spooked when he does a turn, and the parents are quietly going out of their minds. A lack of mental health support, apparently a feature of the time, means there is little hope for the family, and they clearly haven't acquired the skills from elsewhere.
Told with little exposition, requiring a little patience on the part of the viewer to get on the wavelength of the film. To say much more would spoil the ingenuity in the approach to this film, so I won't. Blue Heron tells a familiar story from two perspectives and time periods in a way I haven't seen before, surprising the audience with a satisfying narrative that expects the viewers attention, and rewards it. A surprisingly satisfactory film.8/10
Maria Angeles, an elderly woman living on her own in the evening of her life, still maintains an active lifestyle in a market town in Tanzania, the street on which she lives gives the film its name. Her daughter many years ago emigrated to Madrid, but suddenly returns after little in the way of contact. Maria's joy is soon turned to devastated fury when she finds out why - Clara is broke from relationship troubles and needs money, and the apartment that Maria has lived in for 40-plus years - which her late father trustingly placed in Clara's name - needs to go up for sale to get her out of the hole. A deep rift opens up between the two, but Maria has little say in the matter. Faced with the choice between a care home and living in Spain with her now-horrible daughter, she opts for the former, though its not long before the bargain basement service provided makes Maria pine for her sumptuous apartment.
Horrible though Maria's situation is, the film is told with warmth and humour, a high point of the film has Maria sharing her woes with an old friend at the local convent. Its message of finding perhaps something better when everything is seemingly lost is a positive one, although the film allows the viewer to decide for themselves what the resolution is, of which I was expecting one of a handful when the credits suddenly ran. This abrupt ending may be a little disappointing for some who would wish for the resolution to be handed to them, but otherwise, it was clear why this got the audience award at Cannes this year. 8/10
A new Werner Herzog documentary is almost a requirement to watch, although the last film of his I managed to catch (Cave of Forgotten Dreams from BIFF 2011) didn't set my hair as alight as I was hoping it would.
Ghost Elephants is a name used by the tribes-people of Angola to describe what may be a previously unrecorded species of Elephant, one which is significantly larger than the usual ones in Africa. Thought to survive in the higher altitudes of the Angolan water tower - which feeds a good chunk of Africa from it's runoff - Dr. Steve Boyes has dedicated his life to finding and recording proof of these animals existence. A single specimen, dubbed 'Henry' was shot in 1955 and brought to the Smithsonian institute where a model of him is on display to this day.
Herzog and crew accompany Boyes, along with a handful of others traveling into Africa, first to Namibia where they take on the talents of some of the last elephant trackers, and then a hundred or so miles into Angola; first with 4x4's, then when the tracks run out and it becomes too impassable, switching to bikes and finally on foot. Along the way they contend with impassable terrain, poisonous snakes and spiders, and prey animals stalking them down.
Whether they find the elephants is less the point than the journey and the subjects covered along the way. Content warning: This is not a film for the squeamish. Lots of animal carcases left from previous expeditions and hunts, and some of the stock footage from days when elephants and similar sized beasts were hunted for sport will not soon leave my mind. If you can stomach it, Ghost Elephants is equal parts entertaining and sobering. 7.5/10
To round out a busy day, here is an unusual one. Therapist Linda is in way over her head. Husband Charles (played randomly by Christian Slater who is for most of the film a disembodied voice on the phone) is not around, her daughter needs nightly care that involves pumping gunk into her stomach by drip tube, and a water leak from the apartment above has just broken through, leaving a massive, ominous hole and lots of damage. Her fellow therapist (played even more randomly by Conan O'Brien) is little use and more interested in his own stories than hers, and a steady stream of half-witted patients darken her door at regular intervals to tell them how bad their life is. At rock bottom, she moves into a motel room while she fights helplessly with the landlord to get things fixed.
A person at absolute rock bottom with the entire world seemingly against them is going to have their perception of reality warped; and we are along for the ride. The endless days melt into one another, the hole begins to take on a life of its own, and how Linda avoids a complete nervous breakdown is beyond me.
A study into the mind of a woman on the edge; getting little or no support from the people in her life, the perils of being a mother to a child in need, and the effect that mental slide into madness, seen from the eyes of a victim. It's an odd, disconcerting film with a dark streak of humour, but with powerful images and a lot to say. 7.5/10
Francois and Julie have been coasting for a while now. Sixteen pretty good years under their belt and two adorable daughters, but somewhere under the calm, day to day waters, dissatisfaction stirs.
The touch paper is lit during a conversation which can only be described as 'frank and liberated' during a dinner with Francoir's younger and less embaggaged friend and his partner. Stirring something within him, he makes a pitch for a more open relationship to try and get back the spark.
But choices are many and varied in this new world, and the rules carefully laid down at the start may end up biting him in the backside, safe word or not.
Follies is not for the faint hearted, sexytime-wise. A lot of bare flesh (and not just in pairs) is on show as these guys explore their kinks, and they're far from alone in what appears to be a super-liberal suburb somewhere in French Canadia. It would seem that North (North) America is quite the hot bed of people getting it on in all sorts of ways behind closed doors through into the small hours.
The film explores this and it's relation to polygamy, and asks the question, if you were to let it all go, to really see what there is out there, so see what it is that got your juices fizzing, would you go for it, and what happens to that which went before? Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go into a darkened room. 7.5/10
Oscar Restrepo is a child, stunted from without and within by his mother's willingness to do everything for him, and Oscar's own inability to do more than the absolute minimum otherwise needed to live. He drinks to a stupor, has no job, and his ex-wife and daughter want nothing to do with him.
Things were not always this way, as his two published poetry books attest, but they were a long time ago, and Oscar is a shadow of the man that wrote them. The rut he comfortably resides in while he perpetually promises the waiting world a third tome is deep, with cushioned edges.
But his sister who puts him up in the spare room has had enough. Use what little talent you have to teach poetry, or find somewhere else.
Reluctantly he accepts, but discovers amongst the disinterested faces a kindred spirit in Yurlady, a quiet young student with an aptitude for poetry. Fired by his discovery, Oscar makes it his goal to nurture the talent, but his immaturity and impulsiveness to skip doing things by the books is about to land him in hot water.
A Poet is a tragedy with a dark comic edge. Amateur actor Ubeimar Rios, seemingly plucked off the street and stuck in front of the camera, is a perfect fit as a man-child barely in control of his existence, bringing a lonely fragility to the part that felt written for him.
It is a bit heavy on subtitles, especially when Oscar is drunkenly arguing his point with anyone who will listen, so it's a good idea not to sit too close to the screen, but beyond that, it's a fascinating portrait of a good man limited by his own inadequacies. 7.5/10
Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition 3
Garan (Tur) - A farmer waits patiently at the border between two bickering states, waiting for his precious cows to be delivered to him, but as the border closes and the trucks depart, his delivery, on which his families livelihood depends, is still missing. Desperately, he scours the dangers of the border in search of answers. 7.5
Malicia (Gra/Col) - In rural Columbia, two youngsters take a bike ride to the scene of a previous shooting, where their friend, El Mono, perished. Death is around each corner and mourning is a luxury. 7
Crumb(Ru) - An orphaned teen with learning difficulties works at a bakery in the hopes of one day breaking into society, but for the moment, his meager wage is spent with friends, buying clothes and trading nudie pictures. A chance encounter with a female co-worker awakes something in him and his innocent attempts to try and woo her can't go unpunished in a cruel world where only crumbs come within reach 7
The End of the World (Peru/UK) - A strange, allegorical tale; the elderly Epifanio buries himself at the foot of the mountain whose avalanche killed so many of his village so many years ago. Suddenly a child and back in the time of his parents, he spends what little time he has been given to reconnect and remember. 6
Honey, My Love, So Sweet (Phi) - Two children begin to explore love, gender and the wider world in the shadow of their parents crumbling cinema. It was a bit too cryptic for me. 5
Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition 4
Blue Heart (Hair/Fra) - While their son chases the American Dream half a world away, his father struggles with the care of his frail wife, who is recovering from a stroke. They await a phone call to pep their spirits, but rarely do they get it. A little abstract, it swings wildly between absurd Avant Garde and the quiet contemplation of love enduring all hurdles. 6
Ali (Ban/Phi) - A singing contest comes to a remote Bangladeshi town, and Ali can sing beautifully, but not in the 'right' way for his mother, whose imposed societal limitations force a perpetuation of in-grained self-persecution. Ali wants to show the world who he is. 7
What if they Bomb Here Tonight? (Leb) - An unsettled night for a family in Lebanon; the father fixates on the glass in the windows above their bed, fearful of the planes overhead and the rolling news reports on the telly. In the midst of this horrible situation, a darkly comedic tale appears. 8
In Between Storms (PR) - Lost to a hurricane a year previous, Camplos lies in a coffin washed away by storms. On the night before a new hurricane is about to hit Puerto Rico, Cheita, makes a desperate bid to retrieve the coffin from the rubble and bring it home safe. A sobering tale of loss and resolution. 8
Cucumber (No/Jp) - A cute tale based upon a real Hikikomori - a term given to someone socially self-withdrawn - who on receiving a simple gift from a neighbour, spirals out of control thinking and overthinking about an appropriate response, armed with precisely zero social skills. 7.5
Dancing Pigeons (Swe/Fra) - Finally, a cautionary tale about a spiritualist, whose cocksure handling of a show at a local village goes out of control when a woman asks about a very specific person she lost. Used to seeding the audience with vague hints to get a match, suddenly he needs to actually connect with a real soul or lose it all. 8
Fanomenon Short Film Competition 3
Grandma is Thirsty (UK) - Clearly channeling that episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, a bullied boy is taken into a house by Bronte and Benny, two creepy kids who promise him they will stop the bullies. I mean, they do... But... Ugh. 8
Em & Selma go Griffin Hunting (US) - Em and her mother live in an alternate America where the Griffin is a real creature, and the women of the community sanctify their womanhood by slaying one. When Em has second thoughts at pulling the trigger, she is forced into a choice between tradition and ostracisation. It was a little heavy handed with its points but nonetheless powerful. 7.5
Night Whispers (UK) - A man gets more than he bargained for when the woman he beds suddenly starts acting posessed. A quick kip in the afterglow of a conquest starts to go horribly wrong. 7.5
Stomach Bug (UK) - A Cambodian father tries to stay connected to his distant daughter, whilst having to contend with a seriously distended stomach. The docs seem disinterested, and then things start moving inside. A bit of an icky one but very well done 7.5
Checkout (UK) - Agnes just wants a quiet life but her neighbour likes Martine McCutcheon just a bit too much for her thin walls to take. But his music tastes will soon be the least of her problems when a trip to the shops turns into a fight for her life. 7.5
Plastic Surgery (UK) - Heavily pregnant surgeon Dr. Terra is seeing out her last days in the hospital before maternity leave, but a series of increasingly bizarre 'foreign object' emergencies, each involving plastic embedded in the body, spirals out of control. A tense, uncomfortable thriller with a powerful message underneath. 8
Crowded Out (USA) - Stressed from work and trying to find a parking space remotely close to home, Owen ends up picking up a hitch-hiker who wastes no time picking apart his imperfections. More and more hitch-hikers appear and things just turn into the weirdest way to die. 7
Leeds Music Video Competition
Despite the name, it contained videos from across the globe. A quick rundown of the ones I managed to catch:
Check your Face - Okay Kaya - Smooth, sensual vocals overlay a very odd film depicting a body warped by film and cut in half. 7
A Little More Action - Yoann Roussin - A french version of the Elvis Presley classic, playing to an animated clash between rival police gangs, seeing who can abuse the most protesters, as the rest of us look the other way. 8
Heute Ist Mein Tag - Hanningbarna - A company mandated training course accompanied by some angry screaming metal went better than you might think. 7
Julie - Horsegirl - A really nice indie song using animated scenes of nature, let down a little by the repetitiveness of the visuals. 7.5
Avalanche - Monolink - Two revellers retrieve their clothing on their separate walks home after what was clearly a wild night. 6
Buddha Was a Rich Boy - That Handsome Devil - madness and anarchy await a pair of young children as they gatecrash a gig in a pub toilet helmed by a madman. Over the top but fun. 7
Lost in Space - Foster the People - My personal favourite, a very 80's feel with elements of The Human League and Bryan Ferry to it. Gonna find out more about these guys. 8
GOD SAVE THE PONY - BIG SPECIAL - The band members are ponies in an office space setting, which predictably descends into chaos. 7
At Dawn - Pit Pony - Irish rockers Pit Pony give us a fast-paced ballad about being the odd one out in a relationship. 7
Ruth - Nick Leng - A nice, slow ode to a love of a life with a nostalgic feel. I can find the tune, but not the video. 7.5
Panic Shack - Girl Band Starter Pack - The band swap with a quartet of drag queens for a romp around the city streets. 7
Invincibility - Alabaster DePlume - Bit of a weepie as a dog is fatally injured and both mum and distraught daughter take it to the vet for the last time. A melancholy tune accompanies the sad event. 7
ITS JUST LIFE - GANS - The humdrum of the daily work trudge. Wake, work, repeat, played as a trippy hallucination and a nod to the post-punk of the early 80's. 7
Company Culture - Lambrini Girls - As with GANS, the Labbrini Girls are channeling The Divine Comedy's Office Politics, but with more chaos and destruction. The girls let loose with anger at the abuse and perpetual glass ceilings all too familiar to women up and down the country. 7
The Deep Blue Okay - Self Esteem - Done in a single take, one woman describes passionately what it is to be a complicated, stressed, overworked woman in todays society, and how she manages to try again the next day. Powerful. 8
My only full-length film of the day. Blandine, a thirty-something has taken time out from her quiet, seaside setting in Normandy, to travel to bustling, noisy Paris. Bustlingier and noisier than usual, she is here to see the 2024 Olympics. The plan was to see it with her girlfriend, but they split up just before, and she didn't want to waste the ticket, so here she is, with an oversized backpack for company.
It wouldn't be a film about finding ones self if there wasn't a cluster of mishaps, and poor Blandine can't catch a break. Barred from using her swimming ticket due to her backpack, and kicked out of her 18-30 hostel for being a day too old, she finds herself at the doorstep of Julie, her half-sister. They haven't seen each other for a long time, before their father died in fact, but taking pity on Blandine, Julie allows her to kip on the sofa rather than leave home early.
The film tells a warm-hearted story of one person's personal discovery about themselves, but not in the ways you might expect from such a film, which I found refreshing. Blandine finds not companionship, but an understanding of herself and where she wants to be in the lives of others; an angle to this sort of film I haven't really seen before, and I found it satisfying that Blandine found what made her content. 7.5/10
The subject matter of Our Land is not something I had paid much attention to. There is a movement in the England called Right to Roam, and it concerns the rights, or lack thereof, in this country for people to basically walk anywhere in the countryside, with a focus on the massive country estates, the properties owned for generations by families whose ancestors paid for the land using the wealth generated by colonial acquisitions centuries prior. When the film began, this main argument I found a little weak - we have public footpaths, bridleways and rights of way criss-crossing the countryside; you can barely go five minutes down a road without seeing a public footpath sign - so why do we need to be able to tramp across bramble filled fields deep inside country estates risking being shot when we're 'mistaken' for a pheasant?
But the beauty of this film is that it has a slow, persuasive push towards a change of mind, or at least an openness to see the argument. A tiny fraction - 8% - of land is publicly accessible in England and Wales, and 1% of the population owns a staggering half of the land. This has been brewing for a thousand years or more, going back to William the Conqueror times, when the common land was carved up and attributed to the wealthier parts of society, giving us the patchwork quilt of walled property we have today. But why does property ownership mean a right to exclude people from that land? From experiencing the beauty and the calm, the nature and the restorative qualities therein that a single person owning many hectares has decided it is for his enjoyment alone?
I did not know for instance that in Scotland, the 2003 Land Reform Act among other things underlined the basic right for people to not be excluded from the land. This right goes hand in hand with the requirement that people do so responsibly - close gates, pick up litter, dogs on leads etc as you might expect, and Right to Roam has campaigned for the same in England and Wales.
Our Land provides both sides with the opportunity to make their points, and I found myself sympathising with aspects of both the right to roam movement, and the owners of the estates that commendably agreed to be part of the film. One in particular was almost comical in his caricature of an upper class twit looking down his nose at the prolls, coming onto his land and dropping litter, but even he was given the room to show a side for which I had some sympathy; indeed the landowners generally made a sensible enough point that some middle ground can be achieved. However you interpret the argument, Our Land leaves the camera on the subjects to make, or fail to make their point, and the audience is left largely to decide. If nothing else, it is a celebration of something this country still can be proud of - it's beauty. 8/10
Out on a lonely council estate somewhere in Yorkshire, widowed pensioner Elsie (played by Brenda Blethyn, gaining a BAFTA for her part) sits quietly as the nurses come and go to her bungalow. Next door, Colleen (a seriously chavved-up Andrea Riseborough) sits aimlessly watching the TV. Jobless and on benefits, her oversized dog brings her what little meaning her life has, as she scours the internet for images of a better life.
Spotting an in, Colleen sees an opening to get closer to Elsie, who is less than attached to the rolling carousel of faces that come to make her tea and give her a shower; Colleen, once only a noise next door becomes a much needed constant in Elsie's life, perhaps even a replacement for her distant son. But is Colleen purely there to lend a hand and be a good neighbour?
Dragonfly keeps things purposefully ambiguous, subverting the expectations we place on the character of Colleen and playing on the viewers' preconceptions of someone who 'looks like that'. Colleen is no angel for sure, but is her malevolent intention clear cut? The strength of the film is in this ambiguity which lasts in the mind long past the credits, leaving the viewer with questions of their own about how they see others. 8/10
As we join Dad, an unnamed father to two young boys, he has returned from the cremation of his wife, who died suddenly and without warning. It quickly becomes clear that while he was an artist and author, she was the mother and took care of the house. Predictably, this results in a deterioration of the family routine.
But Dad also starts experiencing strange, malevolent things; crows crashing into the window, ominous messages on his phone. Someone out there does not take pity on him, and wants him to know.
This film had me pretty much from the start. Having two sons of my own made me realize what I have and how much could be lost in an instant; and as a study in grief, despair and eventual acceptance, The Thing With Feathers takes you on an emotional hollowing out and reconstruction with some of the best film-making I've seen in a long time. Benedict Cumberbatch (who plays Dad) should be on for some awards here, as he embodies the part of the troubled father struggling with the breakdown of his own mind, the viewer never quite sure where the reality ends and the hallucinations begin.
Hands down the best film of the festival so far. 8.5/10
Lille, France is the location of an unassuming little building. Inside, a handful of volunteers from disparate backgrounds help with the asylum claims of LGBT people, fleeing persecution in any one of the many countries that still, explicitly or not, permit and even endorse the persecution and even execution of such people.
Gaining asylum isn't easy. First you need to apply to OFPRA (the Office for Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons), telling them via interview your experiences of persecution, the consequences you would face if you returned, and to prove to them, somehow, that your sexuality is what you claim it to be. Should they be unconvinced, a second chance appeal with the CNDA (National Court of Asylum) provides a lifeline. But all this is a challenge to someone who has just arrived often with minimal possessions and sometimes unable to speak French, which the application must be in. These volunteers help to coach the applicants to give them the best chance at passing these tests. As the film shows, they also provide a place of solace and safety, perhaps hitherto missing from their life.
Watching silently, this documentary follows several brave applicants who, after fleeing persecution and making it to France, agree to have their experiences laid out, not just for the OFPRA examiner, but for the film as well, many in the hope that they will help others by doing so. Not all are successful in their application.
In an ideal world, this sort of film should be accessible to show people on the fence about asylum seekers, or gay people, to watch, and see, and put a human face to the faceless numbers we see in the news. This film could do an awful lot of good if the right eyes saw it. 7.5/10
Dead Lover (CA/US) (wiki)
In a strange, dark nether-verse, a lonely gravedigger shovels the soil, and since she picks up the stink of every body she buries, she ain't so hot with the guys. That is until a poet with a bit of a kink for that sort of thing comes along, and they fall in love; one that is tragically cut short by his drowning at sea, leaving her with only a severed finger to remember him by. Cue a comedic variation on the Frankenstein story, where she uses her knowledge of plants and bodies to bring him back to life, of a sort.
By coincidence, the two main leads of this ultra low-budget film are Grace Glowicki and Ben Petri, who also starred in Honey Bunch, a much more enjoyable experience which benefits from the extra time and money clearly missing from this one. All parts are played by four actors, and everything is shot as if it were a Hammer knock-off from fifty years ago. Garth Meringhi did it 20 years ago, and better.
That feels cruel. The players put their all into the film, and it is clearly a passion project, albeit existing as it does on a shoestring that uses whatever props they could find (the moon is a piece of paper that retains the crease from where it was clearly folded to cut a semicircle for heavens sake). I wanted to like it, and I did chuckle in a couple of places - Glowicki stands out with a committed if not especially funny turn as the gravedigger - but it just seemed to run out of steam as the third act kicked off and it kind of stumbled with little sense towards an unsatisfying conclusion. Its a shame that the day that was full of cracking films, ended on one that was so fair-to-middling. 6/10
The first far-eastern film of the festival is from China. Though I enjoy films from the far east enormously, there are some pronounced differences in the way that a story is told in Chinese culture, compared to say, Japanese. Since most of my experience of such output is from the latter, Chinese films can have elements that are a little jarring, culturally or otherwise. This film is such an example.
The Girl Who Stole Time is, as the name would suggest, a time travel caper; Qian Xiao, a young girl gets mixed up in a search for the 'time dial', a macguffin that grants the wearer the ability to stop time. Gaining the upper hand against Seventeen, a young gang member tasked with retrieving it, she can keep him at bay simply by stopping time and getting out of the way. On agreement that she will give it back after a day, Seventeen plays along to help her have an unforgettable day in the city she's just rocked up on.
Though the core of the film sort of made sense, there were several instances where things were introduced, and then just abandoned. For example, when Qiax Xiao stops time and moves something, the physicality of pushing an object 'stuck in time' means that when time is set in motion once more, a massive force is suddenly applied all at once to the object, which is then either significantly damaged, or goes flying across the room - delete as the plot requires. But after the first altercation - a pretty cool double chase scene - this is pretty much forgotten about entirely.
The third act attempts to tie a lot of loose ends and explain some of the stranger goings on earlier, but its too saggy and gets bogged down in its own complexity, and trying desperately to suddenly change the dynamic between the leads from a germinating romance, to a full-on time-spanning romance. It feels like we lost about 10 minutes of exposition somewhere.
It was good; although not the animation marvel we were led to believe it was. Some goofy animation slip ups here and there, and while the character models were quite well detailed, they looked to inhabit a world of cookie-cutter low-detail buildings. It could have been worse, but there was a lot to improve on here. 6/10
From a refreshingly simple concept came a very enjoyable film with a sci-fi twist. In a universe where humanity has discovered multiverse travel, albeit manifesting in a black market trade, Irene travels between multiverse s in a seeming neverending search for one where her daughter wasn't kidnapped and brutally murdered. So far, she hasn't found one, and while she is there, murders, again and again, the bastard that did it, again and again.
In one universe, she encounters Mia, another kidnap victim who by chance hadn't yet been murdered. Mia is a vagrant child, her parents dead and now batted between adoption centres, she was picked up on the run. Distrusting and lashing out, she is initially a liability for an amateur assassin, but as Mia learns of the wider situation, it becomes clear they could both be each others saviour.
A tense and brooding film, shot on a shoestring budget, but able to hit well above its weight, Redux Redux was a satisfying watch and a nice take on the multiverse concept. 8/10
The title of this documentary from new filmmakers Helena Berndl and Francesco Maria Gallo has been 8 years in the making, initially the germ of an idea when someone asked Helena about Aspartame, the sugar substitute used in foods. As she looked further, Helena had more questions than answers about why such a substance ended up in our foods.
Food programs and films tend to be dizzying. No sooner so we try and cut one thing from our diet (red meat, palm oil, ultra processed foods...) than another view comes along vilifying some other staple of our diets. And In Symbiosis does this yet more, throwing its wide net around the practice of intensive farming, the way it does more harm than good, and the way it appears to be failing, due to a number of reasons, including the monocultures removing the diversity from the soil and environment, and removing the grounds ability to store nutrients and moisture, something that more organic farming methods are not suffering from.
In Symbiosis covers a lot of ground, and I mean, a lot. It will take at least 2 viewings to get a good digestion of the subjects at hand here, and its deep dive into the subject, plus touching on various adjacent ones, may work against it when it comes to bringing the film to a wider, less detail tolerant audience. But there is no doubt that this is one of the more urgent films to experience on the documentary circuit. 8/10
A girl wakes up in a moving trailer home, pulled through the night along bumpy, unfamiliar roads. A bandage on her arm points to a mysterious injury, and it seems to be spreading something around her body. The man at the wheel tells her via jerry rigged speaker to be calm; they will be at the hospital soon, he knows just who can treat her. So far, so typical creepy kidnap movie.
But hellcat has surprises in store and not everything is as it seems. Shot almost entirely in the claustrophobic, dirty interior of the trailer, the situation becomes darker and more obfuscated, as the horrors within its grimy walls are slowly discovered.
Hellcat is a grimy, uncomfortable thriller with great lead performances and a toe-curling third act, marred only slightly with an ending which lost credibility with me just a touch. However it wasn't enough to stop it being a strong recommendation, even if horror thrillers aren't your thing. 7.5/10
My third Day of the Dead screening for the day sees Daisy Ridley - not the first person you think of for this sort of thing - star in a variant on the Zombie apocalypse genre. Eva wed her beau Mitch just before he went to a conference in Tasmania, which by unfortunate coincidence fell victim to a fatal accident where a US military base just offshore let loose an experimental weapon, annihilating the residents of the eastern half of the island with an electromagnetic pulse, killing everything that breathed.
Trying in desperation to get to her husband she volunteers as part of the body identification and cleanup routine, but quite quickly it becomes clear that not everyone is dead, or at least, some have reanimated themselves. Breaking clear of the controlled zone border, she hitches a ride with Clay, a wayward fellow volunteer with few scruples who relishes the chance to give the bike he just liberated a test drive.
We Bury the Dead is gristly, nasty horror, if only for the zombies themselves who are largely in the shadows and dormant, but their tendency to grind their teeth until they crack give me serious ick, and if you come to a horror film to feel ick, then this is the one for you.
It did everything it should have done; creeped you out, kept you on edge and fearful of the next fright, but also with a grounding of humanity, the film careful not to stray away from the fact that days earlier, these were people, and families. I'm no fan of horror films generally, but this was cerebral enough to keep me both fearful and entertained, and I'm glad I put it on the list. 7.5/10
A young man makes his way across the Mexican border. Nearly perishing in a crowded container truck as it sits in the baking sun, he makes a break for it as the smugglers return to take their passengers on the next leg of their journey to the land of the free.
Somehow he makes it back to his lover; and older woman by the name of Jennifer. The heat of the relationship radiates from the screen and it becomes clear they are inseparable.
But complications creep in; Jennifer keeps Fernando hidden from her high flying friends and her brother and father, who between the three run a philanthropic foundation to help young people find themselves both sides of the border. Fernando, with a clear talent and passion for ballet, becomes frustrated at the situation and breaks contact, leaving a devastated Jennifer with an unquenchable fire still in her soul for him.
Dreams explores the nature of both male and female desire when things get out of hand, through the lens of the complications and the tinder box subject of both legal and illegal immigration in the US, although it stays well away from any recent political escalations in the area, this is nonetheless timely. 7.5/10
The title is a reference to the Bridge of Sirāt - a mythical bridge separating paradise from hell. And our protagonist - Luis - a middle-aged father desperately trying to find his daughter after months of searching, is about to cross it.
Acting on a lead suggesting that she may have gone to an illegal rave in the middle of the Moroccan desert, Luis - with young son Esteban in tow - takes his thoroughly unsuitable people carrier across the rough and rocky desert, trying his best to keep up with a group of ravers off to their next gig - and a possible new place to look for his daughter. Not wanting to spoil things, but the title very much hints at the events to come, as the group become closer, but also more imperiled.
Refreshingly, the portrayal of the rave community is much more positive than you would often see on film. Yes they are off their arses with drugs, a necessity it seems to fully lose yourself in the pounding beats some may call music, but they are also caring and good people, if a little on the rough side, who welcome Luis in and come to help him in his time of need.
Sirāt is a film to experience on the big screen, and is one that despite its trippy, hallucinatory shell, has a genuinely emotional roller coaster inside. It's not forgotten in a hurry and no surprise it won the Grand Jury prize at Cannes this year. 8/10
After a mysterious accident, Diana and her devoted beau Homer head to a retreat way into the sticks for a course of radical post-coma treatment to restore her memories. A fabled doctor dabbling with experimental procedures can bring a person back to their past selves for the right price. Sure enough after the first few days of pills and strobe lights, memories begin to return, but they're a bit off, and they're accompanied by some distressing hallucinations of a woman - looking suspiciously like one in a painting - receiving some unconventional treatments of her own. So descends Diana into the spiraling horror of this story.
The time period is the 70's, and there are a number of cinematic nods to the period as well, including shonky zooms in on distant window panels, which may or may not frame a ghostly apparition, which gives it an appeal as entertaining as it is authentic. And it's fun too. The twists and turns are as mystifying to the viewer as they are to poor Diana until the final few revelations, which is just how these things should be; you want to be a passenger to the mystery, but to leave satisfied that most of it made sense on your way out of the theatre, and Honey Bunch - complete with a title which makes sense at that point - does all of that. 8/10
Its a long time since we could scoff at Robert Pattinson for his part in inflicting the Twilight films on a world that had enough on it's plate already; these days he's considered much more and actor with chops, and after last year's distinctly off-kilter Mickey 17, Pattinson is here again in the indie quadrant, and he's brought Jennifer Lawrence with him.
They play Jackson and Grace, a young couple who clearly started out with a passionate and energetic relationship. Whatever piece of flat furniture happened to be within shagging distance, it was required to have a good wipe down shortly afterwards. But now abruptly and way too early it seems, a baby has appeared, Jackson works long hours away and sleeps when he returns, and now they have moved into Jacksons' late fathers' tired old house, containing little more than bad memories for one, and an out of place feeling for the other. The seeds of destruction have been sown.
The two main leads give their all, in particular Lawrence, who is the focus of the film as the woman struggling with the myriad stresses of new motherhood alone, sliding helplessly into a post natal depressive state. Parents of any persuasion will see elements of their own experience peppered throughout, and its not always easy viewing, with Grace sometimes almost revelling in her descent, such is her state of mind.
Though Die, My Love gives the viewer little genuine hope of a better tomorrow for these young parents it does leave the ending sufficiently open (though potentially devastating) for the audience to decide whether this particular family will make it through. 7.5/10
Another year of non-blogging, another film festival. This one will be a little different though. Why? Ive got a 30 film pass and by god am I gonna use it.
My very first 2025 festival film is taking a slight risk as it is a French film; Don't get me wrong, I have had some excellent experiences with French cinema, but they also have tendency to be a bit up themselves. While A Private Life cannot lay claim to hitting the pretentious highs of, say ... The Pandrogeny Manifesto, I did get a feeling a couple of times that things might be heading in that direction. The line however stayed uncrossed.
Jodie Foster, who we don't see so much these days, plays Lilian, a middle-aged psychoanalyst. American but fully naturalised in France, she is distant from her son Julien, and her estranged husband Gaby. She works robotically through her client list without joy or interest, recording her patients woes whilst recording them onto Mini-disc for her records, a technologically averse tic that belies deeper issues.
One day, Paula - a patient many sessions absent - is found dead, and at the funeral, Lilian finds herself accosted by both Paula's husband and daughter, both distraught for their own reasons at her inclusion on the guest list. Mystified by the incident. Lilian plays amateur sleuth following a chain of mysteries to learn the truth of Paula's disappearance.
Purposefully wrong-footing the viewer, A Private Life has a narrative that is pretty difficult to pin down, taking in the hallucinatory dreams whilst under hypnosis, seemingly revealing a past life of the main players, perhaps revealing the next link in the mystery, or perhaps not - the movie doesn't seem to care all that much, rather concentrating on the stream of experiences of varying levels of believability as we move to a conclusion. Thats not to say that A Private Life is unwatchable; both Foster and Daniel Auteuil, who plays her clumsy but amiable ex-husband Gaby have a strong chemistry, and Mathieu Amalric, the unhinged widower, burns a hole for himself into the celluloid. I enjoyed the film - not as much as I'd hoped, as it was easy to get lost in the sometimes haphazard logic and untied loose ends - and looking at that more positively, its the sort of film that would reward a second viewing, after which some of its mysteries would become clearer. 7/10
I didn't manage to see Yorgos Lanthimos' last film-but-one Poor Things when it was playing at Leeds last year, but I was very glad to see it in the cinemas a month or so later. A very divisive film for many; I found it to be an example of pure cinema; taking you places where you had genuinely never been before, full of unforgettable scenes and emotions. Ms Plants, however, after being persuaded to come along for a second viewing, was significantly less impressed. I think some of the best films are able to do this; to incite such strong emotion and it is either loved or hated. I loved it.
So to grab one of the last seats on opening night was a goal of this festival; one I can confidently say I will be able to enjoy more films than probably the last three festivals combined. Kids, eh?
Bugonia is a loose remake of Save the Green Planet, a Korean film from about 20 years ago. Repeat Lanthimos collaborators Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone play opposing sides in a battle of wills between Stone's corporate speaking, high flying business woman Michelle, and Plemons conspiracy addled maniac Teddy who is convinced - not unreasonably - that the unintended consequences of some of Michelle's business output is responsible for the coma state of her mother. But also that she is an alien, come to execute a plan to cleanse the world of humans, Aided by Don, a trusting and overly dependent friend who was probably dropped on his head a few too many times throughout his life, they pull off the improbable and land the kidnap. A battle of wits ensues, but how can Michelle win when chained to the floor, trying to reason someone out of their delirium, armed only with things she learned in diversity training?
Though I loved Poor Things a lot, even I could accept there were elements of filler that could have been trimmed, and the same is true here; there are some protracted scenes that could have lost a couple of pounds, but for every minute of that, there are five more pushing things along, with a couple memorable scenes in particular creating audible gasps around me. As for the ending, you can kind of guess what is gonna happen, but the ending might stick with you longer than you think. 8/10
A companion piece to Good One, Julie Keeps Quiet explores the theme of trust and boundaries between youngsters and the adults that they trust to take care of them. Julie is promising student in a Belgian school with a passion for tennis - and is good at it too. Her long-time coach, Jeremy is suddenly suspended for unknown reasons, but rumours abound it is for inappropriate behaviour around one of the players. Julie, clearly tightly bonded to her coach, seeing him as getting her to the star player status she currently holds, finds herself deeply conflicted between her loyalty to the person she idolizes and her own experiences with him which she now begins to question. As investigations begin and testimonies are requested from all involved, Julie's inner conflict begins to affect her work and her training; just how much can and should she be not speaking up about.
Though it handles the subject matter deftly and with a sensitive hand, Julie Keeps Quiet could have been tightened up a little; we see many many shots of Julie just practicing tennis, with the investigation happening almost as a secondary thing in the background - which I suppose from Julie's point of view is both her focus in life and exactly how she wants it to be. Still, there are only so many times you can see tennis practice before you start to think it's padding the runtime a bit.
But that's my only complaint about the film; it is otherwise a contemplative examination of what can - and probably does - happen many times over, and how that can set up a young life on the back foot, hesitant to trust where adults have previously let them down. 8
To round things off, we have an anthology film, made up of four segments by different Korean directors, around the short story by Ernest Hemingway of the same name, and the Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks.
Metamorphosis follows a low-level gangster who does wrong by his boss, and is earmarked for execution only to get away by the skin of his teeth. Wounded from the confrontation and with his ex-team on his trail he collapses at the door of a high-class drinks bar, only to wake up shortly afterwards bolt upright awaiting his first drink. The unassuming lady behind the bar is not all she seems and things begin to get weirder as other patrons arrive.
Contractors takes the ghoulish act of contract killing and gives it an absurd comedic twist, as the initial hit costing millions is subcontracted out further and further down the food chain (with the intermediaries taking a generous cut) until the bottom-feeders - a trio of not especially bright hustlers just trying to make some money until their real jobs come around - get some vague facsimile of the details of the hit, and a few hundred yuan each for their troubles. Naturally, the wrong wrong things happen to the wrong people.
Everyone is Waiting for the Man is a dark thriller perhaps closest to the original text; a pair of cops on a stakeout are convinced that a murderer will appear at the doors of a drinkery at the dead of midnight, but it seems there are others out there after his head. Who amongst the assembled crowd is the real killer?
Diaspora City, for me the weakest of the bunch is more of a bonus film where the filmmakers threw out the rules and just decided to have a bit of a laugh. Again the theme of two assassins awaiting a man at the door of a drinking establishment is explored; but through the lens mixing film-noir and Tarantino-like artsy fight sequences, and an absurdist, almost childlike acting by the bartender and her clownish employees. This juxtaposition between the deadly and the silly creates tension as the clock hits six, but it was just too out there and so jarring compared to the others.
As a whole, The Killers is a slick and enjoyable piece of cinema and there was definitely something there for everyone from the supernatural to comedy to thriller to the abstract and absurd, and didn't require any knowledge of the source material to appreciate (in fact, from other reviews I have read, familiarity of the original text may be a disadvantage). I enjoyed it a lot although I would have moved Diaspora City to somewhere in the middle so the anthology could have ended on a higher note. 8
The crossing of lines seems to be a theme of many films recently especially from a female perspective, perhaps encouraged by the highlighting in recent years of the daily crap that many women face just as part of their normal daily lives. Good One is a good example of such a film. Taking place in the Mountainous Catskills outside New York, Daughter Sam and her dad, Chris take what appears to be the latest of numerous trips from their downtown home to get away from it all. As a teen, her mobile phone being well out of range causes anxiety but its clear that though she might not say it, Sam enjoys the father-daughter time enough to tear herself away from other relationships for a few days.
Along for the ride is Matt, Chris's longtime friend. Similarly aged but not nearly so successful with the important things in life, his son keffled at the last minute leaving the three of them on their own and Sam without a chat buddy for the duration of the holiday, which means she's relegated to listening to the two old men bickering about how to pack a backpack.
For the most part, Good One is just a buddy movie - two friends, and father and daughter spend a bit of time away from it all to bond and mend a few fences. But you know there is something coming on the horizon, and the film injects a few red herrings along the way to keep you interested. When it finally comes, it is muted in it's execution such that many people might wonder what the fuss is about, although many of those I suspect would be male.
This is a film that tries to centre in on a single, stupid but seemingly small incident and asks the viewer to think, discuss and ruminate on it's effect for a while. 7.5
You might conclude, given the horrendous situation that the Ukraine has been in for the last couple of years, that their cultural output may be affected. Perhaps in a similar way to how Japan processed the fallout of World War II by creating stories around the theme of annihilation, so too may this film be seen as the product of potentially being wiped from the face of the earth in the still escalating conflict.
We are introduced to Andriy, a low-key grunt worker ferrying nuclear waste to one of the moons of Jupiter, when the earth - packed solid with nuclear waste until someone realized that might have something to do with all the new earthquakes - catastrophically explodes, killing everyone instantly - except Andriy and his overly attentive robot companion Maxim.
Unsure how to come to terms with this sudden rise in the human rankings - to the top no less - he hits the several stages of acceptance pretty hard, before his crashing down is met with a distress call from across the galaxy - another person - a mysterious woman - has also survived but needs rescuing.
Equal parts deadpan end of the world humour and a genuine exploration of the best and worst of human spirit, U Are the Universe is surprisingly both entertaining and touching, and I found myself affected somewhat by it's ending which brings quite the lump to the throat Another example - if one were needed where my lowish expectation of a film going in was pleasantly surpassed. 8
Sadly my time at Leeds this year was curtailed by home and work commitments so my time at the cinema this year is less than I had hoped. The prices have also skyrocketed which doesn't help. Back around 2008 when I first started going a bit silly and watching as many films as I could, there would be LIFF passes available for something around £70. These days a full pass will knock you back £340, and that's before 2 weeks of train travel on top.
And one of my £10 purchased tickets was wasted anyway due to a run of traffic jams, delayed trains and missed connections making me over an hour late for the first film on my list, Stranger Eyes. I keffled and had a bowl of hot ramen instead at the nearby Bento Box.
LIFF Shorts - Winning Films
So I coseyed down in Everyman for a curated selection of the supposed best short films of the festival, as voted on by the judges.
Utilizing an orchestra as a backing track, The Rider shows the Doma India technique of bonding with horses; a man skilled in the art gets very up close and personal to a pack of wild horses, taming them completely and then leading them on a gallop into the sunset. It moved from abstract to wierd to really quite touching in the course of five minutes. 7
This Madness of Loving - Leb
Abstract and overly-long, a simple film animating the dance moves of a man in a darkened room somewhere, occasionally lighting up the drab with traced chalk lines. It didn't move me much. 4
Beso de Lengua - Mex
Two young gay men hit it off just a bit too much on their first date, somehow ending up in hospital from making too many facial clicking sounds, or perhaps just sucking each other's faces off. Its difficult to tell. 7
Paula Says Hi - UK
Paula - or Paul when not in her alter-ego form lives quietly and alone in a care-worn flat. Seemingly with little contact to the outside world and living with cerebral palsy, they show us a glimpse of the thing that brings passion to their life. Sometimes Paul and Paula appear side by side as two people discussing their love of cosplaying, and how it helps them bring meaning to their lives. Heartwarming cinema. 8
At that very moment - Arg
An intriguing experimental film where a young Argantinian girl is trusted with a video camera and so uses it to narrate the small but growing world around her; brother and parents, toys, bedrooms, house, and the little village where it resides. A nice way to see what is important to you when you are that age. 7
Following some of the most important developmental years of her life, Rae can't get out of bed. Not due to teenage sulkiness but a mystery chronic illness that renders her with no energy. As it worsens and she imagines her useless doctors in a variety of gruesome endings, she finds out who she can really rely on in the world. 8
Shadows - Jor
A scruffy but no less beautiful animation about a young girl negotiating the maze-like structure of an airport as she flees her arranged marriage and uncaring in-laws, wrestling with her conscience at the heartache of leaving her baby behind. 8
An Orange from Jaffa - Fra
Nice little film about a chance meeting of strangers. Mohammed, a young Palestinian man with a Polish passport is making his way through Gaza (the film seems to have been made pre-war but in an unsettled region) towards Israel, where he has to pick his checkpoints wisely. After several failed requests, Farouk. an ageing taxi driver agrees to take him where he needs to go. But attempts to get through border checks, manned by young, bored and heavily armed soldiers blessed with a crumb of power leads to an escalating situation where they could both lose their liveilihoods. 8
Yes its the film festival again, no I haven't posted in the year since the last one. Don't you know how busy my days are? I made a wall, if thats an excuse. It's probably not.
Anyway, desperate not to miss a LIFF for one year and slightly buoyed by the news that the dried and picked clean bones of the Bradford Film Festival has actually rattled back into life again - albeit in a much leaner, low-budget form - gives me hope that maybe after several years of general decline things may be looking up.
I started with my kids 10th birthday party, which we used as an excuse to take him and some similarly noisy friends to the newly refurbished Hyde Park Picture House to see Flow, the quite lovely new film from Latvia about a cat in a world strangely vacated by humans but still showing signs of their footprints on the world. Cat the cat lives happily in what appears to be his owners old house, experiencing daily hi-jinx with the similarly feral animals living nearby, until a flood of water takes him on a journey across the waves in a handily passing boat occupied by a capybara. As capybaras do, he's pretty relaxed about the new passenger but as they journey together through the echoes of the past, new animals appear that aren't so easy to get on with.
Flow is the project of Gints Zilbalodis over several years after pricking up ears with his debut film Away, which he created pretty much by himself. Flow has a similar look that shows its not from a big budget animation house, yet still looks pretty gorgeous, doing the best it has with a perhaps limited pool of object models. Refreshingly, it sidesteps the goofy route taken by many other films of its type by retaining as much 'animal-ness' to the creatures as possible, minimizing any anthropomorphic behaviour that would lead to, say a pigeon wearing shades that acted like an Italian mafia don. Its hard to remove entirely or there would be little story here other than some animals tearing each other apart for food, but it's pleasingly kept on a tight leash.
This in itself is refreshing and should be applauded. Many has been the animated film in recent times that have just been [american] people but they're animals because kids love animals and theyre wacky because kids love wacky - I'm looking in your general direction, Under the Boardwalk. So to see the animals of Flow acting for the most part like animals would feels like there's a different direction being explored in how filmmakers approach storytelling for a younger audience.
Flow does take a couple of small leaps of faith by the viewer; quite how a cat understands the finer points of how to steer a sailboat after only a few hours onboard is a bit of a stretch; and the biblical levels of water does require a bit of boxing away at the back of your mind just where it came from and how it goes away just as mysteriously. But as a visual spectacle to wow the kids it kept a group of them quiet and agog for a good 90 minutes, and I enjoyed it too. 8
Rita is an ageing and lowly cleaning lady in her local chapel in a
backwater village somewhere in Argentina. Jealous of the local pack of
ladies who always seem to have something interesting to do and the attentions of the local father, she happens
upon an old statue of a saint, supposedly the town's 'Santa Rita', missing for decades. Corralling her meek and simple husband, who loves her dearly but wants nothing more than a quiet last few years, they sneak it back home and hatch a plan to make Rita be centre stage when the statue miraculously reappears.
There's something quite arresting with this film, it is gentle but with a playful mischief lurking just behind the screen. Nothing shows this more than the viewer experiencing the unusual situation of an abrupt false ending midway through (with a minute or two of credits to dumbfound the audience), after which the hapless Rita has her perspective completely changed, along with the rest of us. It turns from a quiet caper reminiscent of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, into something deeper and more affecting. It was a genuine surprise. 8/10
Strange as it may seem, Bhutan has only had access to the internet and TV since they were given a democratic system in 2006. Since then, filmmakers from the region have slowly started to make their presence felt. Here is one of them.
Set in 2006, just as the newly formed government pushed for democratic engagement with it's people, who viewed this new way of thinking with suspicion and confusion. In a remote village of Ura, the elderly local Lama listened on the crackling radio thrust into his personal space as mock elections were announced, sighed, and instructed his monk assistant, Tashi, to acquire two guns. He was going to sort this out once and for all.
Coincidentally, Ron, an American rifle collector appears on the scene. He has heard of an old man in the village with a very rare rifle, and might be willing to part with it for the right words. He hires local villager Benji as his guide to the area and they arrange for the swap. Problem is, a local Lama's wishes takes precedence in these situations, snatching ritches from Ron's grasp.
What does the Lama want with the guns? Will Ron catch up with the monk and do a deal, and what over the police on Ron and Benji's tail who have been alerted to a suspicious 'arms dealer' on their patch? Reminiscent of the setup from a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, each faction descends on the final confrontation and the (western, at least) viewer is kept guessing as to the outcome. If you were hoping the Lama would go ape and spend the last third of the film creating a bloodbath, I have to inform you that you will be disappointed in the final scenes, but most should see a satisfying, if unspectacular resolution to things. 7/10
As is usual these days, my dusty blog comes briefly to life once again around November, and once again I promise myself and anyone still listening that I'll post more in the following year. It probably won't happen. Hey look, this year and the 2020's have been pretty crap so far and my optimism tank is running pretty low.
At the turn of the 20th Century, a ragged group of mercenaries from a bunch of countries including the Spanish, American and British are busy colonizing the outer skirts of Chile and Argentina, and somewhere near the border of the two we find 'Lieutenant' Alexander MacLenan, a Scottish soldier in charge of a lot of other bored soldiers as they force slaves of varying colours to erect cattle fences around their newly 'acquired' land. Trouble is, the pesky Indians who seem to think that they own the place keep messing things up, and so MacLenan is tasked by his landgrabbing bossJosé Menéndez to finda safe route out to the Atlantic with which to transport their livestock. Taking sharp-shooting half-Chilean Segundo with him, self-assured and bloodthirsty Texan 'Bill' is brought along for the ride at Menéndez' recommendation, given that those indians will shoot you given the slightest chance.
What you expect to be perhaps an awakening of the morality of an embittered man doesn't work out that way, and my first reaction to that was disappointment. But this is not a nicely tied up story about how a bad white man saw that he could be a good white man, but a reflection of the barbarity on the colonized by the colonizers.
It's dark and unrelenting in this depiction of the period if Chilean history, and even when the third act takes a step back, you are still reminded that for most people of the land at the time, this was a period where many never saw justice other than the convenient interpretation of the word decided on by the settlers themselves. 7.5/10
I had to give La Palisiada a lot of slack to get anything good out of it. In the beginning, which can be roughly described as a prologue, we appear to be in the Ukraine around 2010, as two families and their children spend some time together. After a number of disjointed scenes, a throwaway line uttered by teenage son Kiril as he wanders around the flat he has managed to newly acquire, filled with his dad's 'horrible' paintings, he refers to some of them as 'the worst things he has ever done', a clue as to where the film is making it's way towards.
Kiril is a spoilt, opinionated and unlikable floppy haired little git. Somehow in a relationship with Ayasel, things come to a head during an argument and thankfully we don't have to put up with him any more in the film.
Rewind to 1996 in newly liberated Ukraine, and the parents of the couple are now the focus. At this point the purpose of the film begins to coalesce, as we are shown through deliberately gritty and grainy 4:3 format the past lives of people who in the present are known only as loving fathers, taking part in what passed for justice in the newly liberated Ukraine of the mid 90's, where the habits of soviet influence still meant that so long as someone paid for a crime, that was the main thing. Someone shot one of their comrades and Bohdan, a young offender with some mental problems seemed guilty looking enough to do. Only at this point do we reflectively get some appreciation of the prologue, showing the cleaner, high-definition and relatively carefree lives of their children who, were it not for the actions of the past, may not have a tragedy of their own to deal with. If you can be patient during the first 15 or so minutes and put up with the numerous errors in the subtitles, you can find something of worth here but this new director would do well to tighten things up a bit in their next film. 6/10
Eking out a living in one of Brazil's poorer areas, single mother Suellen sits in the toll booth day after day to put food on the table for her 'maybe' new boyfriend who seems to be taking some liberties, and her son Antonio, who has taken to posting Instagram videos singing along to campy classics in his disco-lit bedroom. What should be an escape from Antonio's dull existence and an exercise in finding out who he is and where his passions lay, Suellen sees as an illness robbing his child of a 'normal' existence.
When an opportunity arises to send her son to an expensive 'gay conversion' centre, she takes it without a second thought for the danger that she is putting her family in. With great performances particularly by the two leads, the film gives a view into the difficult waters of a culture steeped in religion and religious beliefs dictating who and what a person should be to be happy, and the hypocrisies we use to make them fit our actual lives. 8/10
In a visual style I can best describe as a Pigeon Street with modern technology, this inventive short toys with the idea that light can travel slowly through certain substances, and how at extremes, this might affect how someone sees their world. Nice but you have to leave your logic muscles at the door. 6.5
Alice is very bored and very, very horny. With colourful and flyaway imagery, we follow her through a typical day of annoying little brothers and unfulfilled fantasies, where even there the drudgery of the realities of life seem to encroach. Energetic, free-spirited and vibrant animation succeeds, often explicitly to convey the creature desperate to come out. 7.5
Remember How I Used to Ride a White Horse (Cro) (preview)
Very much one of those shorts that either pings with you based on your life experiences, or will completely go over your head. For me, it was very much the latter. A coffee shop worker, fashioned it seems from sweaty wax into a form resembling a brunette Lisa Jones from Team America, flumps around while some guy sits with his headphones on and distorted noise coming out. He does nothing, even when another man appears, lies on the floor, and then is gone again. Then there are some piles of salt, and a horse. And also a robot wood chopper chopping infinite wood. And the coffee shop is called White Horse so ... she originally rode it? Also, the actual horse was not white. The animation was wooden, the scenes abstract and nonsensical, the characters annoying and without purpose, and any message of some life unfulfilled was hidden too far behind it all for me to give a fig, and I disliked almost every part of it. 2
Suffering from a similar level of message obscurity, Suruaika did at least have some good animation. In a noir world of cats where some cats are people and some cats are just cats, one taxi-driver cat avoids the strays on the street as he ferries his clients to and fro. After running one down he feels compelled to take in the strange looking orphan kitten that remains, only for it to get larger with every day, connected somehow with the exponential growth of cat cats on the roads, that he now seems to have no problems in mowing down in their thousands. Something something something rampant consumerism? I really don't know and it makes me feel old. 4
Well. If anything was going to get us back on track it's a far-out, far-eastern parody of various western and eastern animations, as GMAN, a He-Man anime type, confronts in DBZ style, his reluctant nemesis, GHEAD, who is basically a cyclops with a tin can for a head. In super smooth but increasingly batshit fight scenes, the traditions of an anime good-evil fight are subverted as GHEAD tries to come to terms with just being sick and tired of it all. Mad. Mad as hell and I loved it. 8
A tale of childlike woodland sprites, those who exist in the sun-dappled daytime who have the power to make the ingredients of the forest floor dance and sing, and those of the darkness who covet them. When the two worlds come together, a sprite finds himself in the darkness with no way back. Beautiful, magical and with themes reminiscent of Majoras Mask. 7.5
As two conjoined beings eke out an existence next to what appears to be the river Styx, we see just how poisoned their unequal relationship is. Wracked by nightmares brought on by her hopeless existence, the sub-servant half is given a chance to break free but at a terrible price. The use of cloth and textile to create visceral flesh and bone is gruesomely effective, and puts a shiver down the spine. 7.5
Finally, a short and humorous look at how recycling could maybe go a bit too far. Cloth character models much tidier and less gruesome than in Skinned, but with the most amusingly mundane death in animation history, it provided us with an amusingly abrupt finish to our animation journey. 7.5
