Kedi

Sometimes you just need a bit of fluff. That's especially true when you've seen a lot of  shootings, abductions and general unkindness. So what better fluff is there than a cat movie? And not just any cat movie, an exotic cat movie, filmed in beautiful Istanbul.

Kedi is a documentary which follows a bunch of cats and meets their owners and minders. None of the cats are completely domesticated  - they live in workshops, at the fish market, on the wharf and in a dress shop. Some the humans mind just one cat (and its offspring) in their workplace and some feed and care for whole communities of feral cats.

My favourite cat was Sari the first cat, a particularly charming ginger cat who we follow through the streets where she scavenges food for her four very cute ginger kitten. She walks ( jogs, really) long distances and her hunting ability is impressive. My favourite cat minder was the man who had a running tab at the vets for treating sick and injured cats.

It seems that Istanbul has had a significant semi-feral cat population for hundred of years but that modern development may put that in peril. It's much harder for cats to live in and around large modern buildings and big road than it is for them to to live in small old buildings and alleyways. So it could be, that in watching this movie you're watching a disappearing phenomenon. And speaking of disappearing phenomena, you may find your angst evaporating as well.

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

Wind River

Wind River is a thriller, a western set in the snow, a detective story, a morality tale, a slice of life on an Indian reservation and an examination of life and death. It packs a huge emotional punch. It's the best film of the festival so far, but it does involve a rape which is not only unpleasant but does have terrible consequences and the contrast between how the victim's evening started and how it ended is particularly stark.

Set on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, the story revolves around Cory Lambert, a local hunter, who discovers a  young native american woman's body in the snow and Jane Banner, the FBI agent who is called in from Nevada to investigate. It's quickly  apparent that the woman was raped not long before her death. Aided only by one of the reservation police, Jane asks Cory to help investigate, and he does.

The process of solving the case showcases life on the reservation. We meet the victim's family, we see the local drug culture and we see the oil rig that her boyfriend worked on. We meet Cory's ex-wife  (also a Native American)  and we learn that they had a daughter who died in her teens. We learn about surviving  harsh weather,   a violent culture and grief.

Like a good Western, there are some impressive and shocking gun battles. And like in a good Western, the baddies get their come-uppances delivered with panache, but not with malice. The survivors are scarred emotionally and physically but they remember to be kind.  The relationship between the hunter and the FBI agent is positive and generous. And as the credits roll, we're reminded that many native american woman aren't even reported missing, let alone have the crimes committed against them investigated and punished.

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

Coup de torchon (Clean Slate)

Coup de torchon (or Clean Slate) is based on the Jim Thompson novel Pop. 1280. Last year I watched The Killer Inside Me also adapted from a Jim Thompson novel. I haven’t read any of Jim Thompson’s novels, but if these two films are anything to go by he favours dark psychological crime stories told from the perpetrator’s point of view.

The novel Pop. 1280 is set in Texas circa 1917, but French director Bertrand Tavernier has moved the setting to French West Africa in 1938, and has made the highly stratified and racist white society the antagonist to protagonist Lucien Cordier. Lucien Cordier is the sole policeman in a small town. He is apparently stupid, lazy and ineffective (he prides himself on never having made an arrest), a man who knows his place in society (looked down on by almost all the white people in town but superior to all the black people) and understanding the injustice of the situation but feeling powerless to openly oppose it. His pathetic attitude is underlined by his wife's apparently open affair with her live-in "brother" and by a Laurel and Hardy like scene where he gets his butt kicked.

Cordier gets his revenge by using his reputation and the "system" against itself. From childish revenge plots to murder of the town's undesirable elements - including his mistress's husband. Cordier sees himself on a self appointed crusade to clean up the trash. Finally he moves from murder to arranging situations where other people kill each other to his satisfaction. This is the ultimate manifestation of God-like powers - the situation has come full circle (as does the film).

Coup de torchon was filmed in Senegal. A climate that affects the white women into wearing very little, and the casual female nudity marks this as very definitely a French film.

Here are a couple of other opinions.

Ian's rating 3/5

The Road

For a change the Wellington Film Society got a scoop on a new film due for general release on 18 March (courtesy of the Paramount). The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a father protecting his son in a post-apocalyptic world. Post-apocalyptic films are almost genre of their own. Usually they are either a sub-genre of SciFi or Horror, but in this case it is more of a human interest drama.

The lead characters in The Road don't have names, they refer to each other as Papa and Son. The film centres around Viggo Mortensen's character's all consuming goal of keeping his son and himself alive after his wife has committed suicide in despair that civilization will never return and humanity will inevitably starve to death. It is unusually bleak for an American film. Things start badly and you are left in no doubt that they will not get better.

The future is not a nice place and you have to be prepared to put aside niceties to survive, but will that turn you into a bad person?

Father and son are travelling somewhere ("south to the coast") but it doesn't matter as the father knows it is a futile exercise. The question is: how selfish and inhuman do you have to be to survive in a world where they will be no new food? As the father is driven to more and more extreme acts to survive, his distance on the moral spectrum from the cannibals at the other end is getting shorter and shorter, and his son's questions become his conscience. The latter is an interesting device. Which doesn't entirely make sense, given that the boy (a foetus when the catastrophe happened) has never known our pre-apocalyptic society and moral values.

I am in two minds about the ending as to whether it is a cop-out or a useful shock to underline message of the film and possibly undermine the inevitability of the moral journey. Either way iI think it was clumsily done. This may seem vague and hand-wavy but I don't want to give away too much about the ending in case you go and see it.

Like Where the Wild Things Are the plot is a light for a full length feature film but given that this film has to take you on an emotional and moral journey into the despair of its characters it probably needs most of the 11o minutes to get the audience there. The scenery, lighting and weather and other CGI effects all work to get you there. Winter in this film - grey, cold and muddy - is properly miserable.

Viggo Mortensen dominates the film and even Kodi Smit-McPhee (playing his son and constant companion) is effectively in a supporting role. There are cameo roles for Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall - the former representing a romanticised past (i.e. civilization).

Some of the filming was done on the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike which I'd never heard of before, but looks like a useful place for film makers.

Ian's rating 3/5

The Lodger

Jack the Ripper is a popular subject for film makers and The Lodger (1944) is billed the Wellington Film Society as the third filming of Marie Belloc Lowndes's novel about the Ripper. The film stars the large, soft spoken Laird Cregar as "Slade" who arrives carry a small black bag and inquiring about rooms for rent on the night of the fourth murder. The audience is left in no doubt that Slade is the Ripper and the suspense surrounds how long it'll take the family of the house to figure out what we already know. And will Slade kill Kitty the showgirl or will her sympathetic personality win her a reprieve?

Apparently filmmakers of the time were squeamish about mentioning the word "prostitute" so this Ripper kills female entertainers, because some beautiful "woman of the stage" had led his artist brother astray, which in turn led to his early death.

While Laird Cregar is very watchable as the menacing but sometimes naive Ripper, the best line goes to George Sanders who plays the inspector from Scotland Yard who has invited Kitty for a private tour of the Black Museum and asks her to come to tea with his mother. Kitty ignores his question and asks a series of questions about various artifacts, when she gets to a large poker the inspector tells her a man used it beat his fiancee to death. Kitty asks why and the inspector replies "Probably because she wouldn't answer a perfectly reasonable question". Not the sort of pickup line you hear every day.

(According to Wikipedia the Black Museum was established four years after this film was made!)

Ian's rating: 3.5/5

Via Satellite

Carol Dunn is swimming for NZ at the Olympics and doing unexpectedly well. The TV is talking of her as a medal hope, and are starting to take an interest in the Dunn family. Identical twin sister Chrissy (both played by Danielle Cormack) is happy enough to be recognised as Carol's sister especially if recognition comes with a free beer, but she is embarrassed by the idea that the rest of the family will be seen on national TV in all its looser glory.

There is prissy big sister Jen (Rima Te Wiata) trying to get pregnant and jellous of pregnant, flirty, but unattached, middle sister Lyn. In the middle trying ineffectually to make her daughters play nice, is slightly ditsy Mum -- who treats the TV people like royalty, bemusing the TV host with a curtsey! Rounding out the family is Jen's severely henpecked husband Ken (Tim Balme) is an electrician whose incompetence is matched by his over confidence.

Little wonder that Chissy has got it into her head that she and Carol were adopted -- they couldn't possibly be related to this mad bunch. Set in Wellington, there is plenty of the city to see as Crissy spends half the film running away from situations she can't handle; starting with the previous night's one-night stand with a guy (Karl Urban) who turns out to be the TV cameraman.

The plot is surprisingly complicated for a comedy and comes with an excellent twist at the end that Rima Te Wiata brings off very well. In fact all the cast throw themselves into their parts with relish, while being completely believable.

In the 1990s sport and television were dear to the hearts of most Kiwis. Given how we react when we caught by a TV camera scanning a stadium crowd they still are today. But in other ways Via Satellite is blast from the past, even though 1998 was only 9 years ago, some of the suburban interiors, clothes and attitudes would be more at home in the Telethon era than the latte era. But this distance in time makes it easier for us to laugh at ourselves.

Did I mention that there is some excellent pre-1980's suburban decore? It is worth hunting this film down on DVD and renting it.

Ian's rating: 4/5

Pickup on South Street

The camera flicks from face to face in a crowded subway car. It doesn't take long to decide which two out of the four faces belong to the stars of this film, namely Richard Widmark and Jean Peters. This 1953 noir thriller has more holes in its plot than a James Bond movie and like a good Bond movie, its panache carries it through. Only a noir hero can pick a girl's handbag when they first meet, punch her out and ransack her handbag on their next encounter, relieve her of $500 on their third and then walk into the credits with her on his arm.

The Feds know Joey is passing secrets to the Commies but want to catch the guy he is passing it to. Joey uses ex-girlfriend Candy (looking like a movie star on the way to the Oscars rather than a unobtrusive courier on the Subway, but hey this is the movies). The Feds are watching Candy when the film is lifted from her handbag by pickpocket, Skip McCoy (looking every inch the filmstar). Skip, who's profession relies on being unobtrusive, is now centre of attention. Everyone wants the film. Offers from Joey (via Candy) go up from $50 to $25,000. The police offer a clean rap-sheet. And Candy offers herself. Skip plays them off against each other and its the women, Candy and Moe (the police informer), who get shot.

This film was made at a time when people were looking for reds under every bed, and Communists were as unquestionably the enemy as 'Terrorists' are today. So director Samuel Fuller contrasts the treachery of passing US secrets to the Communists with the treachery of a police informer, and the trust governments expect from their citizens to the lack of trust when the citizen is a habitual criminal and the government is represented by the police. Watching this film in the George W Bush era adds an extra layer of irony that Sam Fuller couldn't have anticipated.

Ian's rating: 3/5

I Wake Up Screaming

I Wake Up Screaming was last night's Film Society film. Apparently this is an early example (made in 1941) of film noir. A newly discovered model is found dead in her apartment by her flatmate / sister. In true noir style suspicion falls on an innocent man (her promoter). While being pursued by the police, it is up to him to prove his innocence by finding the real murderer. In another cliché, he is helped by a plucky woman (the sister -- played by Betty Grable).

What made this old film worth mentioning is the menacing detective played superbly by Laird Cregar and made more sinister by some great camera work and clever sound effects (squeaky floorboards follow him). I notice on the web that it has been released on DVD and I'll look out for it, as there were some good one-liners in the dialog. Someone who probably watched the DVD has posted some nice pictures that give you an idea of the ambiance.

Ian's rating 3.5/5