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[FROST/NIXON trailer here.]
It is almost pointless calling Frost/Nixon a Ron Howard film. After The Da Vinci Code, Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind and The Grinch (sigh) “Ron Howard” has come to stand for workman-like MOR Oscar-bait: hardly the makings of a distinctive auteur. Frost/Nixon is really the work of Peter Morgan, the writer of the film’s screenplay and the original stageplay on which the film was based.
Directed by Kenny Ortega
[High School Musical 3: Senior Year trailer here]
A Disney-produced teen movie which is also a musical whose numbers resemble contemporary pop music videos rather than traditional Broadway tunes. It’s hardly the most sophisticated concept. In fact, it’s this initial idea that will likely turn most hardened cinema-goers off from forking over $15. But to see such a perverse idea pulled of in such spectacular style is why this film was so surprisingly and ridiculously entertaining for me.
Directed by Nanette Burnstein
[Trailer here]
It’s uncanny just how much the events that happen at the real life high school in Warsaw, Indiana in American Teen conform to the story elements of The Breakfast Club. American Teen has very obviously marketed itself as a documentary version of The Breakfast Club but I’m not sure that “documentary” is the best word to describe this film.
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
Australia is on its surface outraged at the historical injustices done in the name of cultural assimilation but underneath its glossy sheen is a cinematic white Australia policy. The film opens and closes with big important titles that spell out the tragedy of the Stolen Generations which is all well and good – I’m a fan of nations facing their historical guilt through cultural experience. There’s obviously a good intention here but Luhrmann’s ludicrous film ends up…
Directed by Jonathan Levine
If The Wackness signals the end of the eighties revival era, then I say give Jonathan Levine a freaking Nobel Prize or something because I thought the second eighties would never end. But it’s not the only reason to like this movie. In fact, after seeing the The Wackness I felt like someone had reached into my brain and found all my particular cultural fetishes and created something custom made for me:
Directed by Clark Gregg
Choke is another one of those fraudulent American indie films which pretends to be really “edgy” with Controversial Subject Matter but then turns out to be trite and sentimental. This one is about a sex-addict (Sam Rockwell) who pays the medical bills of his mother (Angelica Houston) who suffers from dymentia by working at a colonial theme park and pretending to choke in restaurants to gain the sympathies of the rich people who save him. He’s doing…
Directed by James Marsh
The French are serious about having fun. Americans, on the other hand, take fun way too seriously. Case in point: In 2001, The producers of Spider-Man released a trailer for their film in which the eponymous hero was shown creating a web across the World Trade Centre and capturing a bunch of villains in a helicopter. Then on September 11, tragedy occurred. When Spider-Man was released in 2002, all traces of the World Trade Centre action sequence…
Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
You can surely credit the Coen brothers for not playing safe. Their last film No Country For Old Men won them Oscar acclaim for what was in essence a grim genre exercise. It was guilty of what the Coen brothers are often criticised for: being style over substance. But the main thing was that it was “serious” style and done impeccably well so it was easy to give that film the rubber stamp of…
Directed by Alan Ball
Alan Ball has made a big name for himself as the writer of American Beauty and the creator of HBO’s Six Feet Under. And in this film, his feature film directing debut, he offers up much of what we have come to expect from his work: biting satire of suburbia, doses of humour and surrealism and a penchant for pushing Controversial hot button topics.
Adapted from Alicia Erian’s novel, Towelhead is about a 13-year old Arab-American girl called…
Directed by Ari Folman
Director Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is a bold reinvention of the documentary. Completely animated, the film is an exploration of war, memory and guilt. It’s also a masterclass in how a filmmaker can help a nation deal with the shame of war atrocities.
The atrocity at the heart of Waltz for Bashir for much of the running time is shrouded in mystery. The film opens with a friend of Ari Folman recounting to him a recurring nightmare…
Directed by Andrew Stanton
WALL-E is proof that Pixar Studios houses some of the most interesting mainstream filmmakers working today. Each film they make shows an effort to push the boundaries of animation in technology, in storytelling and thematically. WALL-E is a relatively ambitious film tackling the way consumerism takes away our ability to engage in the world. The question is: How well can a $180 million film work as a capitalist critique?
The film opens with an earth that has become…
Directed by Wong Kar-wai
My Blueberry Nights is both a step forward for Wong Kar-wai and revisitation of the past. A step forward because it is his first feature in the English language and a step into the past because in spirit this film resembles his early work such as Chungking Express. This is definitely not In The Mood for Love. When critics praised In the Mood for Love they made it sound like an Ang Lee film with different clothes.…
Directed by Michael Haneke
I actually hadn’t seen the original Funny Games before I saw this film at the Melbourne International Film Festival but the only thing that critics seem to care about is that Michael Haneke has made an almost shot for shot remake of his 1997 original, this time in English. He hasn’t revised his ideas and neither is this film a commentary on auteur theory and remakes like Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho. This is a film…
Directed by Garth Jennings
Garth Jennings is a destined for greatness but he just hasn’t quite got there yet. As part of the creative duo, Hammer and Tongs, he’s been responsible for such brilliant clips as R.E.M’s ‘Imitation of Life’, Blur’s ‘Coffee and TV’, Travis’ ‘Driftwood’ and Vampire Weekend’s ‘A-Punk’. His first feature was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which was ultimately a disappointment but had occasional moments of coolness: the opening musical number, the casting, the puppets. The problem was…
Directed by Guillermo Del Toro
Debate gay marriage with a dumb bigot (hey it’s one of my favourite past-times) and the bigot will often argue that if you let a man marry another man, you might as well let a man marry an animal. There is a moment in Hellboy II where you realise that Guillermo Del Toro is saying, well why the hell not let man marry an animal? Because that is essentially what the romance between Hellboy (Ron Perlman)…
I’m afraid I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Anyways, here continues my summary of my MIFF experience…
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (dir. George A Romero)
Trailer here.
This played as part of the George Romero retrospective and Romero himself was in attendance. I loved that he is still bemused by the critical attention given to this film. Despite what he thinks, it is pretty great if only for the scene in which the main protagonist bitchslaps the annoying chick who…
And so continues my ultra-concise commentary on the films I saw at the Melbourne Film Festival. The header picture I’m using in this series of posts should give you an indication of my favourite films of the festival. Anyone, continuing in the order in which I saw them…
FUNNY GAMES (dir. Michael Haneke)
Trailer here.
This is Michael Haneke remaking one of his films shot for shot. If you speak English and not German, why not see this one? It’s about two teenagers…
Another year, another MIFF. It’s a week out and more than anything I’m surprised that I managed to see more than fifty films in 2 weeks. Now is as good a time as any to do an overview of my experience at this year’s MIFF. I’m going to get through all the films I saw and finish with a top ten of highlights and duds.
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (dir. Mark Hartley)
Trailer here.
Frenetically edited doco on Australian exploitation films ranging from ocker…
Directed by Christopher Nolan
2008
Heath Ledger’s Joker is most probably the greatest comic-book villain we’ve seen on the big screen. He’s downright scary to the extent that I breathed a sigh of relief every moment that the Joker is not onscreen. Yet he is a lot of fun to watch. Everyone seems to want to talk about whether Heath Ledger will get an Oscar, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure he would be getting one if he was…
Directed by Anthony Hayes
2008
When certain themes crop up time and time again in a nation’s cinema, should we look at this repetition of themes from a sociological point of view or should we dismiss them as simply cliches? In Australia we seem to be stuck time and time again with stories about outsiders visiting country towns or outer suburbs and discovering them to be vortexes of desperation and struggle. This person is either a complete outsider (like in, say Somersault)…
Directed by Errol Morris
2008
Errol Morris is always searching for the truth and he gets closer to it than most by showing just how elusive it really is. Standard Operating Procedure is about the images that came out of Abu Ghraib and challenges the assumptions that we originally held about what the photos really reveal. While most think of the photos in terms of uncovering a human rights scandal, Errol Morris reveals that the photos were able to be used to…
Directed by Eran Kolirin
2007
The Band’s Visit is designed to warm your heart. It’s a quietly humourous fish-out-of-water comedy where people spontaneously burst into a group singalong of Gershwin’s “Summertime” over the dinnertable. The only thing stopping The Band’s Visit from successfully warming your heart is that it’s not believable. In fact, when you summarise the movie after seeing it you realise just how trite the whole affair is.
The plot: An Egyptian band arrives in Israel to play at the inaugural…
