Births, Deaths & Marriages

Dean doesn't show up for his own wedding leaving Sinead pissed off but this is overshadowed by grandma dying later the same day meanwhile, Katherine has had a contraction. Set over 2 days in 1994, Births, Deaths & Marriages is about a mostly female Upper Hutt family coping with these situations. These goings-on are recorded on a home-video camera by Aidan who was originally supposed to film the wedding.

Births, Deaths & Marriages is a bunch of humourous short set-pieces often set in claustrophobic locations such as the bathroom. We also see recognisable Kiwi attitudes and reactions, familiar from our friends, relatives and possibly ourselves. The quality of the humour is highly variable, with some of the exchanges much better than others. The exchanges between the very pregnant Katherine and her husband Ari over Irish wakes versus Maori tangi and a lecture on stages of grief are the standouts. On the other hand, there were a number of scenes and minor characters that could have been eliminated to improve the film. The way the scenes were linked by a blank screen and out of focus bits while the soundtrack continued also got irritating. And it seemed odd that on day 2 the bride was still in the bath.

If I had been trapped in that house with that family, I would have grabbed some of the wedding food, climbed out of the window and headed for Wellington.

Stuff had a more positive review.

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Ian's rating 2/5 Anne's rating 2/5

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is not an imaginative film title, but at least we have a pretty good idea what the film is about. Detective Jung Tae-seok is a tough, cynical cop who has a personal vendetta again powerful gangster Jang Dong-soo. He puts 2 and 2 together when investigating a random killing of guy found stabbed to death in the back of his car. He decides this murder has a similar M.O. to a couple of older crimes in other towns and decides there is a serial murderer to be caught. His wild theory is not taken seriously, even when Jang Dong-soo is attacked when driving home one night. The gangster fights back and survives the attack, thinking he'd been attacked by a hitman sent by a rival starts a gang war and also sends his men out to look for the assassin. The cop notices that both cars had been hit from behind by a white car and realises that Jang Dong-soo is the only person to have seen the serial murderer's face. Eventually, the erstwhile enemies join forces to hunt down the killer who has become more reckless, killing more frequently and not changing location like he used to.

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is a stylish South Korean action crime thriller. The cops are unkept, the police station dingy and crowded, while the gangsters are stylish, impeccably dressed and vicious. While the presentation is stylish, the scenario and plot are as original as the title. It is best to go along for the ride rather than look for novelty or a deeper message. But this is no different from many Hollywood films that do well at the box office. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil stands up well alongside those films.

I think that the downfall in The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is the serial killer - "the Devil". Surely the idea of the uber-villain should be confined to cinematic and TV history. The idea that a single man (and it is almost always a man) who can out-think and outmanoeuvre the cops, often depicted as planning things years in advance, setting up elaborate one-off schemes and having limitless resources as his disposal yet having a secret room where he pins pictures of his victims and future victims to the wall along with newspaper clippings and decorated with his primitive art that lays bare his inner thoughts and as a shrine to his evil crimes is completely ridiculous. The serial killer in The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is a ruthless, knife obsessed loner, whose main defence is his anonymity and that his kills have been in different police districts, with long gaps in time between them. Once he starts to kill more frequently and staying in the same area, he should have ceased to be the formidable opponent he was built up to be.

The best scene is a throwaway scene where we are shown a potential female victim only to have our expectations amusingly upended in a unique insight into the idea that one of the protagonists may have a life outside work.

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Ian rating 3/5

The Art of Self-Defense

You are an American guy that has been mugged.

A) Do you buy a gun?
B) Do you enrol in a self-defence class?

Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) faces this decision on his voyage of self-improvement and recovery. Option A is represented by a gun shop salesman with a disturbingly honest sales pitch.

The risk of accidental death drastically increases with a gun in the home. … In a violent confrontation, an armed victim is much more likely to be killed than an unarmed victim. Suicide is more common with gun owners too.

You’re really going to love owning a gun.

Option B is a small Karate Dojo with rituals, 11 rules and students ranging from small kids to intimidating macho brown belts.

The Art of Self-Defense is a remarkably dry, dark comedy populated by everyday, normal characters who are completely over the top. For those that like their comedies to have a serious message, this is not one of those films. This is a film of absurd situations and deadpan one-liners, with the best delivered with impeccable timing and seriousness by Alessandro Nivola as Sensei of the Karate Dojo, but even Casey's answerphone gets in on the act "No one else left you a message". Eisenberg's face, mask-like one moment and quivering with emotion the next plays well against Nivola's impenetrable seriousness.

The Art of Self-Defense has been my favourite film of the 2019 film festival so far and the audience reaction in the Embassy suggests that I wasn't the only person to enjoy it.

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Ian's rating 5/5

God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya

In Macedonia, on 19 January they celebrate the Baptism of Jesus Christ (Vodici or Epiphany), priests throw a cross into a river or lake and the person who gets it first is blessed. In Stip in 2014 a woman got to the cross first, it was grabbed from her by a male contestant and the police were called. This was the inspiration for God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya.

Unfortunately, due to writing the wrong time on the calendar, I missed the first 25 minutes of the film and arrived at the point where Petrunya is in the river having had the cross snatched off her. While filmed by a TV crew the priest intervenes and she gets the cross back from the crowd of angry young men who think it is wrong for a woman to have participated and more importantly got to the cross first. Petrunya takes the cross home, has a fight with her mother and locks herself in her room to gloat over her victory (perhaps her first since graduating with a first-class history degree 10 years earlier). The police arrive and take her to the police station to "sort things out" - which takes the rest of the film.

The priest is there, insisting that Petrunya has broken "the rules", privately the police chief points out that the priest's "rules" aren't the same thing as the Law. The police chief attempts to brow-beat Petrunya about breaking "the rules" anyway while admitting that she is not under arrest but at the same time insisting that she has to stay. The arguments (or lack of them) go round and round, with Petrunya taking a passive but defiant stance and gaining in self-confidence. Outside a mob of angry young men and a TV reporter are trying to get into the police station.

Unfortunately having reached an interesting intersection of girl power, patriarchy, secular power, tradition, religion and angry youth (youth unemployment is over 40% in Macedonia) God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya can't find a satisfactory way forward, ending anticlimactically - which may be the point.

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Ian's rating 2.5/5

Take Me Somewhere Nice

Where does Alma keep her cellphone? In Take Me Somewhere Nice, we often see her making calls, but we never see her put it away. She has no pockets or bag (or at least not one she can open) and she doesn't carry it in her hand. Take Me Somewhere Nice is not a fast-paced film so there is plenty of time to think about relevant and irrelevant questions like this. It is not a plot driven film, but road trip movie and depiction of teenage life. So periods of boredom punctuated by brief periods of action and emotion is entirely appropriate.

Alma was born in Bosnia but raised by her mother in the Netherlands. Hearing that her dad is in hospital, Alma decides to take a solo trip to Bosnia to visit him. She arrives in Sarajevo to stay initially with her grumpy, dodgy, unhelpful and mostly absent cousin Emir. On the other hand, Emir's more talkative friend Denis perks up Alma's stay in Sarajevo and prods Emir into some belated assistance. Despite being unfamiliar with Bosnia, Alma has the confidence to strike out on her own across the country without the skills to avoid trouble and with her little blue dress serving to emphasizes that she is a damsel-in-distress (or soon to be in distress). She gets rescued by knights in shining armour of both genders and varying motives. Alma's luggage problems and the consequent need to wash, dry and wear the same clothes all the time become a running gag in the film. Similarly, Alma's technique for dealing with guys is simple, effective and repetitive. Bosnia is depicted as a place where somethings don't seem to have changed since communist times.

The camera in Take Me Somewhere Nice always seems to arrive shortly after the action starts and often cuts away before it finishes. This coupled with some of the odd plot twists and scenes lends the film an absurdist vibe. Nothing special to see here, but nothing bad either. There is plenty of dry humour and a few moments of tension.

Not only does Alma have a cellphone that is invisible when not in use, unlike real teenagers she only uses it for phone calls. Like kids from the 1970s, Alma, Emir and Denis are more fixated by Bosnian TV than by their cellphones.

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Ian's rating 2.5/5

The Nightingale

Jennifer Kent is best known for her controversial horror film The Babadook. Her latest film is set in Tasmania during the convict era and centres around Clare an Irish convict who has served her time, got married to another Irish ex-convict, had a baby but can't leave the tiny settlement she lives in until the lieutenant in charge writes her release letter. She works as a servant and singer and the whole garrison, from Lt Hawkins down, openly lusts after her. Clare is near the bottom of the social pecking order, constantly at risk of harm to her and her family, while trying to insist on her right to be treated as a free person. A visit from a more senior officer starts the chain of events that brings down an avalanche of violence on Clare. With nothing left to lose except her life, Clare sets out to into the bush with Billy (a reluctant Aboriginal tracker) to get revenge on the Lieutenant (who left with a small contingent a few hours earlier). The film follows the two groups through the bush to Launceston. While initially a backdrop to Clare's story, the war against Aboriginal Tasmanians becomes the second theme of the film and Clare's initial attitude to Billy is no different to the soldiers' attitude. As Billy explains his history, Clare slowly begins to see him as a fellow victim.

The Nightingale doesn't shy away from violence and the body count here rivals a Quentin Tarantino film. The film is a rollercoaster with each rise in fortune followed by a crashing fall. This isn't a happy story, it is one that asks us to understand the use of violence and whether violent revenge puts an end to the original violence or just creates a cycle and an excuse to continue with violence.

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Ian's rating 4/5

A white white day

When someone you're close to dies, maybe you go through a "process",  or the seven stages of grief, or maybe grief is different for everyone. A white, white day is a depiction of a grief-stricken man named Ingimundur. He's an retired policeman (or maybe he's on extended bereavement leave - it's hard to tell), and he's recently widowed. On the surface, he's doing everything right.  He has a project  (converting a rural building into a house), he spends meaningful time with his grand-daughter, he catches up with his old colleagues, sees his friends and his brother and plays football. He goes to weekly grief-counselling, organised by the police.

Unfortunately, he discovers that his wife was being unfaithful, and this leads to,  firstly, a period of detective work, and secondly to a period of madness where he attempts to deal with the discovery.

During the period of madness, Ingimundur attacks his old work colleagues and puts them in the cells which has to be one of the most amazing fight scenes I've watched. And he kidnaps the man he thinks his wife was having sex with , and makes him confess at gunpoint. He reduces his eight-year old grand-daughter to tears more than once. By the end of the film, there's been true catharsis but surprisingly,  I was left with the sense that Ingimundur will be ok, and that no-one will hold his madness against him.

Ingimundur is on the screen practically every moment, and his grand-daughter Salka is on it about eighty percent of the time. They're both completely convincing and compelling. The film is a great watch, and there's an incredible tension,  created by wondering how far over the edge Ingimundur is going to go.

An added bonus is seeing cute Icelandic ponies, and some completely dreadful Icelandic children's TV.

Anne's rating 4.5/5 Ian's rating 3.5/5

Monos

Phrases such as "Like Lord of the Flies", "Apocalypse Now on shrooms", "In the place of warfare are bizarre rituals, horny hook-ups and campfire raves", and "a tense, off-kilter deep dive into corrupted innocence that never quite goes where you think it will" lowered my expectation of Monos.

Monos has the most diverse set of actors I have seen in a long time. Which is handy in an ensemble film, where 8 to 10 characters are sharing the spotlight and dialogue is sometimes sparse. Eight child soldiers are left on a bare mountain top to guard an American hostage by their roving commander (who is shorter than some of his young soldiers). The teens belong to a rebel group whose ideology and aims are never explained. The views from this vantage point above the clouds are spectacular. But there is not a lot of soldiering to do, so plenty of time bored teenage mischief. But in the second half of the film, things change gear. The soldiers and their hostage move down into the rain forest. We only get vistas from drone footage, the characters inhabit a much more damp and claustrophobic world where you can rarely see more than 2 or 3 metres in any direction. Group dynamics change when their prisoner makes a break for freedom. Loyalties are challenged and the body count mounts.

We are tempted to take sides but is anyone on the side of the angels? Director Alejandro Landes keeps us guessing and keeps reminding us that these are both kids and killers. While not a great film it was better than I expected when I found my seat. Visually interesting, thrilling, twisted and morally ambiguous.

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Ian's rating 3/5

Aniara

Are two sci-fi films about people travelling for a long time on spaceships in the same film festival a coincidence?

Aniara is a Swedish film based on an epic poem from 1956 about a huge spaceship carrying people from a dying Earth to Mars but after an accident it goes way off course. While High Life has a small functional spaceship, Aniara is like a combination of hotel and shopping mall (like a cruise ship but much larger). The passengers are mostly white, middle-class families. The protagonist, calling herself MR, is a Mimarobe, a crew member in charge of a machine called the Mima that reads minds and replays favourite memories to the passengers to relieve anxiety.

Aniara (the film) is divided into titled chapters that chart the stages that the passengers and crew go through in response to the vastly extended voyage. Each stage is illustrated by a subplot or some scenes mostly involving MR and others such as her roommates or the captain. This dystopian progression takes precedence over plot or characters so we don't know them or feel any more attached to them than we do to Star Trek's redshirts. The glossy surroundings also distance us from their predicament. Though there is plenty to think about with the various stages and strategies that the crew and passengers use to cope with the situation, which is an analogy for the fate of our planet.

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Ian's rating 2.5/5