The Congress

The Congress is a savagely funny and surprisingly moving commentary on our increasing reliance on screens and a meta-textual Hollywood satire - according to the Vancouver International Film Festival. Perhaps I saw a different film. Actually I didn't read the small print carefully. In particular the bit where it said "dazzlingly surreal animation". I have a bad history with surreal films. They almost always sound more interesting than they turn out to be.

Scanning Robin Wright

The Congress opens with an interesting concept. Robin Wright (The Princess Bride) is 44 and too old for Hollywood. Her home life is odd, living in a converted hanger at the end of a busy runway with two teenager kids. One of whom has behavioural problems and  is also gradually losing sight and hearing. Miramount Studio has one last contract. They want to scan her and buy the rights to her (in effect a CGI version of her) for ever. She is told that live actors are a thing of the past. Films from now on will be completely computer generated.

So far so good, then the film leaps forward 20 years and almost immediately jumps into dazzlingly surreal animation territory. The CGI version of Robin Wright is staring in her own franchise of sci-fi action films. We are told that now Miramount has moved in to pharmaceuticals and you can eat or drink your favourite actors! While some of the animated crowd love the idea others start a war against Miramount. A new guy turns up to save Robin. I began to lose the plot at this point.

Animated Robin Wright

Obviously a massive amount of effort has gone into the animation and it is certainly dazzling. I wish rather more effort had gone into the script writing, and into making the images on the screen match the story that the exposition sections of the dialogue tell us is happening. Despite Robin Wright being the star of the film she is barely a character. Harvey Keitel as her agent and Danny Huston as a Miramount executive have much better parts.

I surprised afterwards to learn that the film was 2 hours long. It felt much longer.

Ian's rating 2/5

A Cat in Paris

I can't let a Film Festival go by without at least one animated movie. This year it is A Cat in Paris. There weren't many kids in the Saturday morning session, which is a pity as this film is very much at a kids level (though like all the best kids books there is also stuff at an adult level). The style of drawing is a cross between childish and Picasso, which could have been annoying but grew on me, especially the care taken over animating Dino the cat.

The story is simple; Dino has two homes. During the day he is Zoé's cat and at night he is Nico's cat. Zoé is the young daughter of Jeanne, the Paris Police Commissioner, whereas Nico is a successful cat burglar. Zoé hasn't talked since her dad was killed by crime boss Victor Costa. Nico and Dino clash with Costa and his gang drawing Zoé and her mother into a chase across the roofs of Paris. It all ends happily of course though some pesky kids might ask awkward questions about why Jeanne didn't arrest Nico.

Perhaps the kids went to the dubbed version so they wouldn't have to read the sub-titles - I guess younger kids could have trouble reading sub-titles fast enough.

Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

In the Attic: Who Has a Birthday Today?

Every day Buttercup bakes a cake and her three friends toss a die with 5 blank sides and a birthday cake on the sixth side to determine whose birthday it is today.

Stop motion animation has been popularized by Wallace and Gromit, but tends to be the poor cousin to the output of Pixar et al. This Czech film is based on discarded toys and other rubbish left in a capacious attic. Buttercup is a doll and her three friends are a lazy teddy bear, a pompous, windbag marionette soldier and a frenetic plasticine man with a bottle top hat. In fact it is fascinating to try and identify the junk that appears and often re-purposed into machines by Curie (the engineer and radio announcer), or used by the baddies.

Like many good stories for children there are other themes aimed at accompanying adults. In this case the baddies have over tones of a Soviet style regime, led by a talking golden, glasses wearing bust. This authoritarian leader has hots for Buttercup and Soviet style persuasion techniques, but never fear her friends are coming to her rescue (if the cat doesn't get them).

Ian's rating 3/5
Anne's rating 4/5

The Sky Crawlers

The Sky Crawlers is set in an alternate reality when war has been privatized, countries hire corporations to fight their wars. Our hero is a genetically modified teenage ace fighter pilot for the Rostok Iron Works, who has been posted to a new airbase where people are reluctant to answer questions especially about his predecessor. Eventually he hears a rumour that the base commander shot him. He is also troubled by a sense of deja vu. His attempts to uncover the mysteries about himself, his unit and the war don't uncover much until 2 hours later when a female colleague tells him the secrets about his predecessor and why none of them get any older.

The Sky Crawlers feels vaguely like a reworked Catch-22 without the humour.

Ian's rating 1/5

Mary and Max

If you like to leave the cinema feeling that you're more well-adjusted than the characters in the movie you've just watched, then this could be the movie for you. You may also leave with the feeling you've been laughing at people with unfortunate disabilities, which might or might not be a good thing. Mary and Max is an oddball movie about oddball characters which does make you laugh but is rather a sad tale overall. Mary is a friendless bespectacled child with an alcholic mother and "eyes the colour of mud and a birthmark the colour of poo" who gets Max's name and address out of the New York telephone directory and begins a correspondence with him, hoping he'll answer her burning questions about life the universe and everything.

Max is overweight, Jewish, anxious and afflicted by Aspergers syndrome. He doesn't have any friends either, which is possibly what inspires him to write back to an Australian child that he's never met. He does his best to answer her questions even though some of them ("where do babies come from?" for example) cause him panic attacks that last for hours.

Based on a true story, the movie follows the correspondence all the way to its end - which is many years later when Mary is an adult. It makes you ponder the meaning and mechanics of friendship and human relationships and is probably quite unlike any movie you've seen for a while.

Anne's rating 3/5

Animation for Kids 2009

OK there is still a kid in me somewhere, and I enjoy a good kid's movie. From past experience the Film Festival's Animation shows can be a mixed bag which I tend to avoid. But this year I was tempted by description of Animation for Kids show. The Paramount was close to full and mostly with kids but for some reason I got a last minute seat in the good block of seats (perhaps there are advantages in going by yourself). Kids are useful, they don't censor their reactions so you can get a good feel for the audience feel for the films.

"Animation for Kids" is a bunch of short animated films ostensibly for kids, but I got the feeling with some of them that they were child-like animation rather than animation for kids. But most of them were good. I figure that the best ones were the ones where lots of kids were asking pertinent questions of their parents ("Why is he doing that?" rather than "When can I have an icecream?")

The 7 Days of the Week is based around a catchy song about the days of the week. The repetitive nature of the song and the animation meant it would appeal best to the youngest kids. The animation looked like someone playing with clip-art.

Bertram this was more fun for me as a boy bored with homework imagined what he would do when he grew up, the things he imagined morphed into other things as his mind hopped from one idea to another.

The Crumblegiant was very beautiful black and white animation but I felt that it was self indulgent. Artists showing off to other artists rather than entertaining kids. The story was obscure and about loss.

Miriam’s Colours got lots of laughs especially for the over helpful bird, that helps the kids repaint the world with colours after it goes black and white.

Hello Antenna is another self indulgent animation, this time a child like animation rather than one to entertain kids

Cello is animation putting animals and insects dancing to classical music. Disney already did this, but this time the style is like a water colour.

The main joke of Roberto the Insect Architect is of a termite that wants to build houses rather than eat wood might be a bit lost on Kiwi kids. It also included jokes for parents such as the establishment architect "Frank Lloyd Ant".

Carrot on the Beach was the funniest film in the show where a snow man dreams of relaxing on a hot sandy beach while a rabbit has designs on his carrot/nose. This is a claymation.

Lost and Found is the longest and most serious animation. A persistent penguin wants to make friends with a little boy. The little boy wants to get rid of the penguin.

Happity was the only Kiwi animation in the show. A simple love story of 2 rabbits in Palmerston North set to a catchy tune.

Ian's rating 3/5 (on average)

Ponyo

This delightful animated Japanese film comes from the same director/writer as Howl's Moving Castle which we both loved so we were seriously motivated to attend it.

Ponyo is a love story about a five year old (Sosuke, pronounced Sosski) and a goldfish (named Brunhilde but renamed Ponyo). Sosuke lives in an exotic cliff-top house with his nurse-aide Mum, Lisa, while his father works at sea. Ponyo lives in the nearby ocean and her parents are a bit more exotic - her father is a kind of magician with long hair and stripy trousers reminiscent of Uncle Sam, who was once human but now embraces everything oceanic and wants to engulf the planet in water, and her mother is a kind of goddess. Unsurprisingly, Ponyo has inherited a few magic powers.

Sosuke finds Ponyo in the sea below his house and carries her home in a bucket. A friendship is formed and Ponyo decides she'd like to become human and the film is the story of how that happens which makes an engrossing and enchanting story. It's very pretty to look at - the scenery is more like painting than cartoon and the storm scenes are just amazing. Ponyo herself is completely cute and I particularly liked the fish which morphed into waves and vice versa.

We weren't sitting close enough to any kids (there were plenty since it was the last afternoon of the school holidays but we were in a child-free row) to know how they felt about the movie but it's colourful, fun, imaginative, life-affirming and a little bit frightening - what more could a child of any age want?

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

Waltz with Bashir

10-20 years ago documentaries were programs we watched on TV, but things changed and documentaries became gradually rarer on TV and people wrung their hands. But unpredicted documentaries reappeared, this time at the cinema, even occasionally at cinemas run by Hoyts and Reading. Not only have they reappeared but they have become more innovative and even been imitated as mockumentaries (Forgotten Silver, Dark Side of the Moon, Strictly Ballroom and Razzle Dazzle). Using reconstruction is relatively common in documentaries but Waltz with Bashir takes this further by using animation for its reconstructed scenes (including people's dreams and memories) and also for its interviews (Noise Control turns this approach into a mockumentary).

Director Ali Folman (who co-directed the X-files like comedy Saint Clara) served in the Israel Army during the Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon (at age 19) and had trouble remembering some parts of what happened. After being rung by a friend who was troubled by nightmares of being chased by 26 dogs, he hunts down former army colleagues in an effort to fill in the gaps. This film documents that process.

Some of the men have more accurate memories and some have less . More interesting than the filling in the gaps is the general impression one is left with of how the Israel Army conducted its operations and apparently how little the average Israeli soldier understood of where they were and what they were doing there. Also some of the surreal experiences, such as walking through the terminal at Beirut airport.

The film climaxes with the infamous massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. The film steers clear of the controversy over how many Palestinians were killed (700-3500) but comes down with a clear statement of who was responsible. Namely Israel's allies, the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia, who, angry after the assassination of their leader Bashir Gemayel, were sent into the camps with the cooperation of the Israelis and did the killing, until stopped by an Israeli general (the film suggests that the order to stop came the next day, Wikipedia states that the massacre and body disposal took 2½ days). It exonerates the Israeli soldiers but implicates their commanders all the way up to Minister of Defence Arial Sharon, in knowing that the massacre was under way and doing nothing to stop it, while continuing to provide military support to the Phalangist militia during the massacre.

The angular style of animation, with bold, red/orange, colours and black shadows are very effective for a war movie. The moment at which the film breaks out of animation into "live action" footage was very well chosen.

Ian's rating 4/5
Anne's rating 4/5

Noise Control

Before Welcome to the Sticks we had a short film and before the short we had a couple of speeches. A long gushing thank-you speech from the producer (during which I wondered if the speeches would take longer than the film) and a shorter and far more interesting one from the director on the relationship between the late cockerel and his son's band practises.

Those of you who have longer memories than I have might remember that a noisy cock was shot by an animal control officer in Raumati in 2001, it died the next day at the kindergarten where it had been a pet. The incident apparently made the TV news in NZ and the papers overseas.

The film is quirky mix of interviews with the Mayor, the animal control man, a kindergarten teacher etc merging into animation of same, plus an animation interview with the rooster himself as a guy with a band whose practise sessions annoy the neighbours.

Said band (a guy with 3 girls doing backing vocals -- which seems strangely appropriate) featured in the film and also in the Blondie cafe afterwards.

It is a pity that some of these short films don't get more time at the mainstream cinema or on mainstream TV, after all this one is only 11 minutes long and was very funny. Though a certain ex-Mayor might not think so!

Ian's rating 4/5

Vexille

The idea of a Japanese animation depicting a dark view of the future and negative relationship between Japan and the rest of the world (especially the USA) doesn't surprise me any more. In Vexille, Japan has dominated the world market for robots and having run foul of the UN over limits on robotic technology cuts itself off from the rest of the world. An American special forces team called SWORD gives itself the mission to penetrate the Japanese defences and find out what is going on there. Vexille, herself, is a member of the SWORD team along with her boyfriend, who was the last foreigner out of Japan 10 years before.

I expected something dark and confusing like Ghost in the Shell but in fact apart from the long opening sequence there is plenty of explanation about what is going on. It is a straightforward story with one big twist. The film is CGI style animation and has lots of explosions and wizz-bang stuff to entertain you with a thumping sound track to go along with it. Very stylish and entertaining. Who needs George Lucas?

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Ratatouille

What is the difference between a squirrel and a rat?

Marketing

Ratatouille is a film that goes a long way to rehabilitate the reputation of rats. It is the latest Pixar / Walt Disney animation. So it should come as no surprise that the story is animal driven. In this case a rat, 'cursed' with a superior sense of smell, decides that he has had enough of stealing and eating garbage. He wants to eat good food. In fact not only eat good food, but learn to cook it too.

Ignoring his father's advice to "stay away from the humans", Remy ventures into the kitchen to try real food, watch TV cooking programs and read a cookbook left open on the bench. Naturally dad was right, catastrophe strikes and the rat family has to leave (via the sewer) chased by an angry shotgun wielding old woman.

Our hero finds himself outside the restaurant of his TV chef hero on the day that a new boy (Linguini) starts working in the kitchen. With way more enthusiasm than talent Linguini starts by screwing things up and Remy comes to his rescue. Once Linguini realises that Remy isn't vermin the two new comers join forces in the hostile environment of the restaurant kitchen. First they have to overcome the language barrier. Remy can understand what humans say but humans can't understand rats. The animators make great mileage out of how they do this. Then the pair have to overcome the jealousy of the boss.

Judging by the squeals and excited explanations of what was on the screen the film was a hit with the kids sitting further down our row at Hoyts last week. The film is packed with lots of good old fashioned morals: don't steal, don't judge by appearances, value loyalty, value teamwork and don’t let being the odd one out get you down. Plus some more complex ones like "who comes first: family or friends?” I have no idea if any of that stuff makes the desired impression on kids, but this film has it by the truck load.

It is longish (almost 2 hours) and the plot is pretty predictable but for kids I doubt if that matters and there are enough jokes and fun visuals to keep the adults amused. I think the animators have done well with making the rats move in a rat-like way. Even the final credits are fun to watch.

Not quite as good as Finding Nemo but definitely recommended.

Ian's rating: 4/5

Tales from Earthsea

This an animated movie from Studio Ghibli who were responsible for Howl's Moving Castle, a highlight of last year's festival. The director is the son of Howl's director; his characters look similar but the landscapes are more like paintings so I was more conscious of the art work. There is a particularly beautiful night sky which looks like a van Gogh painting.

Tales from Earthsea is the third novel in a trilogy for children by Ursula Le Guin, but I wouldn't call this a children's movie. There's excitement aplenty - fire-breathing dragons, wizards, sword fights and storms at sea and there's a great sound track. Christine says it doesn't follow the book especially closely but I doubt that this is important. My major criticism is that the pace was a little slow at times for what's essentially an adventure story.

Anne's rating 3/5.

Kirikou and the Sorceress

Kirikou is an African baby boy who can talk, run like road runner and an indefatigable problem solver. The story feels African; a village is being terrorised for unknown reasons (because no-one before Kirikou has bothered to find out why) by an all powerful sorceress and her robotic fetishes. The men have disappeared, the water dried up and the sorceress is demanding the village women’s gold jewelry and trying to kidnap the kids. Kirikou sets out on his self appointed task to solve the village’s problems, running from place to place only stopping long enough to ask a barrage of questions and solve the up-to-now insolvable problems. The film has a happy ending which will take you by surprise.

The style of the drawings and story telling is largely African (though some squirrels owe more to Disney than Dahomey). The audience is intended to be children and the showing I went to on a Sunday lunchtime at the Pent House was almost 50% children, who, I assume from the lack of noise, must have enjoyed it. But like good children’s books, adults can enjoy it on both the child’s level and from an adults point of view. But if you are the sort of person who is uncomfortable looking at drawings of naked breasts and naked baby boys then avoid this film.

There is a sequel called ‘Kirikou and the Wild Beasts’.

Ian’s Rating: 4/5

A Scanner Darkly

Society (in southern California) is being destroyed by a drug called D (not to be confused with P). Authorities are using intensive surveillance using hidden cameras and secret agents to track users and suppliers and a big corporation is running the only successful rehabilitation clinic, but drug use is still on the rise. The story is about a secret agent (Keanu Reeves), his work and his friends and flatmates (Robert Downey Jt, Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder). Everyone from the drug users to the authorities are paranoid and both are victims of the real enemy.

Visually this film varies from being obviously drawn (animation) to being almost indistinguishable from photography (due to the way they have done the Rotoscoping). I found this disconcerting. The amusement comes from the paranoid but laid back, mind altered story telling and in the humour (especially the Robert Downey Jr character) rather than the plot.

Ian’s Rating: 3.5/5

Ghost in the Shell

There are two ways to watch Ghost in the Shell. One is to follow the story, work out who is doing what to who and why, which ones are the good guys and which ones the bad. To do this it helps to understand that "ghost" is used to mean "soul" or "consciousness" rather than "scary dead thing". The heroine, Kusanagi, and her colleagues are a special semi-secret all powerful police division that is part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Most of these special agents have had body modifications, in some cases whole new bodies. Between operations Kusanagi worries whether, with all her body modifications, she is still human. The division’s top priority becomes the "Puppet Master" and via an escalatingly violent series of operation Kusanagi comes face to face with the "Puppet Master" and the metaphorical mirror image of her own situation and her worries are turned on their head by the "Puppet Master's" request.

The other way to watch this is to allow the experience to wash over you. It is a vision of ultimate high-tech domination of nature. Man totally manufacturing his own environment. But it is also tinged with paranoia and uncertainty. Twentieth century buildings are abandoned or are slums. Its a teenage boy’s dream world where the best secret cop is more curvaceous than a centrefold and her job requires her to eschew the flack jackets or long coats of her male counterparts in favour of getting naked during every ambush and fire fight! A world where technology is all powerful, is used to solve every problem and is concentrated in the hands of a few.

Ian’s Rating 4/5

Howl's Moving Castle

Steam trams, airships, Victorian fashion, Flemish architecture, English street signs, colourful uniforms, witches, wizards and everyone speaking Japanese. Obviously we are in the world of Miyazaki Hayao animation.
It is actually more about Sophie the hat-maker than Howl the wizard. Sophie falls foul of the Witch of the Waste, and as is traditional is put under a nasty spell. Howl is a powerful wizard, gradually falling under side-effects of the magic he is using. You can probably guess where this plot is heading, though the knowing doesn’t spoil the ride. There is a rich array of side-kicks, baddies and others to entertain and frighten you along the way, in particular the witch’s gloopious minions and Calcifer the loquacious fire demon and the moving castle itself. Magic is mixed seamlessly with technology, human good and evil contrasted with magical good and evil. A visual feast for both kids and adults coupled with both adult and child messages.
If you want a movie for your kids, that you won’t find boring yourself, or you are an adult who wants something different, or are a closet Walt Disney or Finding Nemo fan or a Japanese anime cultist this is your movie. I think this is the best film of the festival.
We both rate it 5/5