Award Ceremony NZ International Film Festival 2017

My personal summary of NZIFF 2017. I had few disappointments this year, either the films this year were good or I was good picking the ones I would like.

Themes

Each year has its themes.  This year's themes are:

• Thrillers, which got their own section in the program this year.
• Woman Centred films, a lot of them this year.
• Sex.

There were even 2 films involving poisonous mushrooms.

Best Film

Nominations:

• Abacus: Small Enough to Jail - the fallout of the global financial crisis
• Bad Genius - a teen thriller worth examining
• A Date for Mad Mary - set on the wrong side of the bus shelter
• Jasper Jones - there are lots of secrets in Corrigan
• Lady Macbeth - a Russian tragedy in Yorkshire
• The Nile Hilton Incident - how do corrupt police investigate crime?
• Una - has never come to terms with the end of her first love affair

My pick is Jasper Jones an Australian film about young Charlie Bucktin growing up fast.

Best Documentary

Nominations:

• Abacus: Small Enough to Jail - the fallout of the global financial crisis
• Dina - a love story with physical affection issues
• Kedi - a cute doco about stray cats in Istanbul. Did NZIFF comp Gareth Morgan?
• Risk - a little insight into Julian Assange

My pick is Abacus: Small Enough to Jail a legal battle and family film

Best Thriller

Nominations:

• 6 Days - docu-drama about the Iranian Embassy hostage crisis 1980
• Bad Genius - a teen thriller without any life threatening situations
• Berlin Syndrome - not sponsored by the Berlin Tourist Board or Lonely Planet
• Hostages - docu-drama about 1983 hijack of Aeroflot flight 6833
• Human Traces - Kiwi Sub-Antarctic thriller caused by none communication
• It Comes at Night - post apocalyptic threats in the night 
• Jasper Jones - teen thriller in small town Australia
• The Nile Hilton Incident - noir thriller in Cairo
• Tragedy Girls - girl power, social media and a small town killing spree
• Wind River - you are not in call-for-backup country now, FBI girl

My pick is Wind River, while I enjoyed some of the other thrillers more. I think this one works best as the thriller.

Best Comedy

Nominations:

• Bad Genius - a good dose of humour to leaven the tension 
• A Date for Mad Mary - would your gran say "Even a sniper wouldn't take you out"?
• Kiki, Love to Love - a humorous look at kinky sexual turn-ons 
• The Love Witch - an over the top homage to 1970s sexploitation films
• The Party - when a cocktail party goes bad
• The Teacher - a school blackmail scam
• Tragedy Girls - why fake news, when you can create real news

My pick is Tragedy Girls, though A Date for Mad Mary is a very close second.

Best Horror

Nominations:

• The Evil Within - who or what causes nightmares
• It Comes at Night - nightmares and the unknown
• Tragedy Girls - a serial killer stalks a small town
• The Untamed - what is in the cabin in the woods and why is everyone drawn to it?

My pick is The Evil Within even though it is the most conventional of horror movies

Best Woman Centred Film

Nominations:

• The Beguiled - seven Southern Belles capture an Irish Yankee soldier
• Belle de Jour - frigid Parisian woman's sexual fantasy and liberation
• Berlin Syndrome - Australian girl alone in East Berlin
• A Date for Mad Mary - who needs a +1 for a wedding
• A Gentle Creature - a woman's lot in today's rural Russia
• Lady Macbeth - and a tragedy of miscalculation
• The Love Witch - whose love magic can be fatal
• Sami Blood - a girl's story of changing ethnicity
• Tragedy Girls - girls that blog together can do anything together
• Una - a wronged woman wants answers and revenge

My pick is A Date for Mad Mary, the stroppiest of women on the hunt for a man

Special mentions for the great frocks:

• The Beguiled - long skirts and tight bodices to be ripped, showering buttons 
• Belle de Jour - Yves Saint Laurent elegance, even for prostitutes 
• Lady Macbeth - tightest of corsets and the widest of skirts 
• The Love Witch - dressed up, dishabille or naked but always sexy

Best Sex Film

Nominations:

• Belle de Jour - sex fantasies and sex work in 1967 Paris
• Berlin Syndrome - sex with a stranger leads to trouble
• Kiki, Love to Love - kinky sexual turn-ons and kinky sexual practices
• The Love Witch - love magic leads to sex
• The Untamed - out of this world sex
• Una - was it love or was it sex? Can we separate the two?

My pick is Kiki, Love to Love credits to credits sex in more variety than you'd admit to knowing.

Strangest Film

Nominations:

• The Evil Within - what is behind the sunglasses?
• The Love Witch - love, magic, sex, Victoria high tea, a renaissance fair and dead bodies
• The Untamed - an alien in a movie that is not centre of attention

My pick is The Untamed a Mexican modern relationship drama with an alien in the supporting cast

Special Mentions

I saw one Kiwi feature film (Human Traces) and 6 Kiwi short films (New Zealand's Best 2017).

A Gentle Creature was long of the longest films and it could have been shortened by more than 2 hours and still got its message across.

And remember, be careful of who cooked those mushrooms.

Award Ceremony NZ International Film Festival 2011

This year we saw about 40 feature films and 8 shorts between us. I was disappointed at missing out on seeing Incendies and Sleeping Beauty, but Bill Gosden et al jam far too many films into 16 days. The Festival really needs to be stretched over four weeks. For me this year's Film Festival was the year of slacker movies, French films and thrillers.

I shall put my ten-cents worth in italics - Anne

Best Film
I can't decide on a best film and rank three films (all thrillers) as equally good:

• The Man from Nowhere - Tarantino's flair for stylish violence meets Spielberg flair for pathos and humour.
• Point Blank - Underground, overground, on the run in Paris.
• Viva Riva! - Où est Riva? Everyone wants a piece of this man.
  
  I didn't see many thrillers (which was probably unfortunate, given Ian's ratings) but I think The Trip deserves best film with The First Grader as runner up.

Best Documentary
Nominations:

• Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D - Werner Herzog, an acquired taste?
• Hot Coffee - Hoodwinking the public about frivolous lawsuit.
• Guilty Pleasures - Mills and Boon, the inside story.
• Sons of Perdition - The down side of polygamy.
• Project Nim - Chimps belong with chimps.
• Tabloid - How not to date a Mormon.
• Windfall - How not to introduce wind energy.
• Page One: Inside the NY Times - Will journalism be missed?
• Moving - From South Korea to Christchurch.

My pick is Tabloid, a mind-boggling documentary about an obsessive woman who goes the extra 5000 miles to get what she wants.

My award would go to Hot Coffee

Best Drama
Nominations:

• Weekend - A gay romance.
• The Forgiveness of Blood - Home detention Albanian style.
• Submarine - Dysfunctional in Wales.
• Tomboy - Laure is Mikael today.
• Footnote - The Professors Schkolnik, father and son.
• She Monkeys - "Sexually power play and small-town emotional austerity".
• Love Like Poison - Girl comes of age.
• Terri - The picked-on kid.
• Meek's Cutoff - Does the guide know the way?
• The First Grader - 84 year old Kenyan, Maruge, takes the government at its word when it promises free education for all.
• Taxi Driver - Being driven mad by New York.

My pick is Meek's Cutoff, a study of the dynamics in small group leadership and decision making.

For me The First Grader was way out in front.

Best Comedy
Nominations:

• Let the Bullets Fly - A Chinese shaggy dog story.
• Happy, Happy - Misbehaving in the snow.
• Romantics Anonymous - The emotionally challenged find ... each other.
• The Salt of Life - The power of women over men.
• The Trip - Two comedians, one car.
• Nothing to Declare - Franco-Belgian customs.
• The Women on the 6th Floor - Finding out how the other half live.
• A Cat in Paris - Is Dino Zoé's cat or Nico's cat?
• The Guard - The Irish Garda and CIA "work together".
• Troll Hunter - The Norwegian Blair Witch Project.
• Love Story - Woman on subway with cake.

My pick is Let the Bullets Fly but if that is too violent for you, my next pick is Romantics Anonymous.
I loved Romantics Anonymous but The Trip has to be best comedy as well as best film.

Best Thriller
Nominations:

• Point Blank - Run Samuel Run.
• Elite Squad: The Enemy Within - What happens if you kill all the baddies in town?
• The Guard - Not a recruitment advert for the Irish police.
• Viva Riva! - A hot time Kinshasa.
• The Man from Nowhere - Don't mess with the mild mannered pawnbroker.
• A Cat in Paris - Will Zoé escape the evil Victor Costa?

See the Best Film above.

French Film
In order from best to worst:

1. Point Blank - Underground, overground, on the run in Paris.
2. Romantics Anonymous - The emotionally challenged find ... each other.
3. Nothing to Declare - Franco-Belgian customs.
4. The Women on the 6th Floor - Finding out how the other half live.
5. A Cat in Paris - Is Dino Zoé's cat or Nico's cat?
6. Tomboy - Laure is Mikael today.
7. Love Like Poison - Girl comes of age.
8. Le Havre - An unrealistic film.
   
   I thought Romantics Anonymous and Nothing to Declare were equally good.

Slacker Movies
A slacker is someone who tries their best not to work. In slacker movies not much happens. The film that gave its name to the genre was Richard Linklater's 1991 film Slacker. But filmakers were making slacker movies before the term was coined. This year we saw an extra-ordinary number of these films (and I am too slack to pick the best, or worst):

• Terri - Kids go to school.
• Submarine - Dysfunctional in Wales.
• Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro's 1970's slacker movie.
• The Innkeepers - Slacker ghost hunters get scared.
• The Salt of Life - Slacker looks for love.
• She Monkeys - Girly power-play.
• Love Like Poison - A girl's summer hols.
• Happy, Happy - Misbehaving in the snow.
• Meek's Cutoff - Mucking about in Oregon.
  
  .........Yawn.....

Odds and ends

• A Cat in Paris - The animation.
• Space Battleship Yamato - The sci-fi film.
• 13 Assassins - The samurai movie.
• Love Story - Mockumentary love story.
• Troll Hunter - Mockumentary horror/comedy.
• The Innkeepers - The ghost story.
• Le Havre - Somewhat strange.
• The Last Circus - Incredibly strange.

Disappointments

• Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D - Werner Herzog gets distracted.
• Le Havre - Doesn't know what it is.
• The Last Circus - Not quite comedy or horror or serious.
• She Monkeys - Silent teenage mind games.

Best Actors
In order:

1. Brendan Gleeson (Sgt Gerry Boyle) in The Guard
2. Robert DeNiro (Travis Bickle) in Taxi Driver
3. Agnes Kittelsen (Kaja) in Happy, Happy
4. Hoji Fortuna (César) in Viva Riva!
5. Manie Malone (Nora) in Viva Riva!

Benoit Poelvoorde deserves a special mention - he starred in both Nothing to Declare and Romantics Anonymous.

Best Child Actors
In order:

1. Zoé Héran (Laure/Michaël) in Tomboy
2. Kim Sae-ron (So-mi) in The Man from Nowhere
3. Camille Gigot and Jean-Charles Deval (Bertrand and Olivier Joubert) in The Women on the 6th Floor

Award Ceremony NZ International Film Festival 2010

This is really just a personal summary of this year's Film Festival, in a style I have used before.

This was a year of political films. A year when directors couldn't help themselves from playing with time lines, and they often couldn't be bothered with the traditional cinematic conventions to signal flashbacks. It was also a year of superfluous final scenes.

In summary, this year's...
Best Film: Cell 211
French Farce: The Concert
Classic Film: Once Upon a Time in the West
Special Mention: A Prophet - educating us on how prison educates


Best Comedy
Nominations:

• Predicament - the beginners guide to blackmail.
• The Concert - have conect booking, need orchestra.
• A Somewhat Gentle Man - adjusting to the madness of life on the outside
• Cyrus - the perils of dating a solo mum
• Four Lions - don't shoot the Wookie

All good, but The Concert just beats Four Lions, but I wouldn't like to pick a third place getter from the other three.


Best Thriller
Nominations:

• Predicament - blackmail is such a dirty word.
• Animal Kingdom - you can trust granny, can't you?
• Cell 211 - let me tell you about my first day on the job.
• Farewell - how the French won the Cold War.
• The Ghost Writer - ghost writers are kittens, don't know.
• How I Ended the Summer - two men, one mistake, one short fuse.
• The Killer Inside Me - stylish, but flawed.

My pick is Cell 211 - tense from beginning to end.


Best Mystery Film
Nominations:

• Once Upon a Time in the West - why are they killing each other?
• Kawasaki's Rose - is Pavel Josek a hero or a traitor?
• The Ghost Writer - who is pulling whose the strings?
• The Double Hour - noises off.
• Triangle - why didn't they go straight to the bridge?

The best told, yet simplest mystery was The Double Hour.
Triangle was the most mind bending,
while The Ghost Writer was the 3rd most entertaining mystery.


Best Political Film
There were plenty of films with a political theme or drama based on political conflict this year.

Nominations:

• Kawasaki's Rose - who chooses the heros and the traitors?
• Four Lions - more dangerous to themselves than the public?
• Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story - is everything political in Egypt?
• The Time that Remains - are Palestinian Israelis frozen in time?
• The Ghost Writer - who pulled the strings?
• Agora - Christianity behaving badly.
• Lebanon - mummy I want to come home!
• Ajami - collision courses in Israel.
• White Material - can you be a white African?
• Russian Lessons - pawns in The Great Game.

Four Lions was the most irreverant, Russian Lessons was the most thought provoking, Kawasaki's Rose and Agora also made me think, while White Material, Ajami and Scherezade did a good job of presenting consequences of political conflicts.


Best Horror
Nominations:

• The Loved Ones - does for outback folk what Hitchcock did for shower curtains.
• Dream Home - an apartment to die for.
• The Human Centipede - mad doctor has it all sewn up.
• Wound - the angry by-product of being bored by the utterly predictable banality of our mainstream movies.
• Triangle - didn't I kill you five minutes ago?
• Splice - Picaso meets genetic engineering.

My pick is Triangle. Usually people take a cruise to escape, but these people want to escape from the cruise. Stylish Splice was my next pick, with The Loved Ones as the best of the splatter movies.


New Zealand Films
In order from best to worst:

1. Predicament - what did you do in the school holidays?
2. The Hopes & Dreams of Gazza Snell - come crashing down.
3. Wound - love it or hate it.

The acting in the Kiwi films was often better than the films. In particlar Kate O’Rourke and William McInnes were outstanding and Jemaine Clement was delightfully spooky.


Disappointments

• Wound - too surreal for my poor brain
• The Myth of the American Sleepover - I'm not the target audience

Time Travel
This was a year where directors used non-traditional techniques jumping around in time.

• White Material - is it yesterday or tomorrow?
• Ajami - isn't he dead?
• Dream Home - 3 timelines, with subtle hints
• Triangle - its is meant to be tricky to understand
• Wound - surreal, 'nuff said

Superfluous Final Scenes

• The Housemaid - what's with that final birthday scene dubbed into English?
• The Loved Ones - should have stopped in reverse.

In addition Splice ran out of inspiration near end. The Time that Remains had superfluous scenes in 2nd half even though the final scene was great. While the final scene of The Killer Inside Me was full of problems.


Best Actors
In order

1. Kate O’Rourke acts her heart out in Wound
2. Luis Tosar was mesmerising as Malamadre in Cell 211
3. Everyone knows a Gazza like William McInnes
4. Casey Affleck was The Killer Inside Me

Eye-candy
Previously I have noted the unrealistic or unjustified use of a sexy actress. I didn't notice any blatant eye candy this year. Even Kim Cattrall and Rachel Weisz were looking restrained and aren't all female violin soloists beautiful?

But I have it on good authority that there were two pretty boys in The Hopes & Dreams of Gazza Snell.


One offs
Western: Once Upon a Time in the West - the best of the West?
Animation: In the Attic - junk having fun
Documentary: Russian Lessons - eye openning
Science Fiction: Splice - shock and humour
Surreal: Wound - amazing acting, pity about the film
Silent: Marvellous Corricks - weird and wonderful pre-1910 silent films

Award Ceremony 37th Wellington Film Festival

I did a summary last year and as people keep asking which was the best film I'm doing it again. While Anne and I have only seen one film each that we classified as "must see" there are many films we would recommend.

Last year I noticed a theme of family problems. This year the theme was rain. I have never been so cold and wet, I almost wore my raincoat out and probably ended up smelling of oilskins. It wasn't until half way through the second week that I started to notice a theme of bullying, particularly in: Ben X, CJ7 and Let the Right One In. Since the festival finished I have noticed another theme of illegal immigration with: Lorna's Silence, It's a Free World and The Visitor.

Best Documentary
Nominations:

• Waltz with Bashir - remembering Israel's 1982 attack on Lebanon
• Standard Operating Procedure - what happened at Abu Ghraib?
• Terror's Advocate - who defends the undefendable?
• Trouble Is My Business - student management in Papatoetoe
• Donkey in Lahore - an Australian / Pakistani romance
• Taxi to the Dark Side - before Abu Ghraib there was Bagram
• Night - Australia at night

My pick is Taxi to the Dark Side and Anne's pick is Trouble Is My Business. While Waltz with Bashir was the most innovative with its use of animation.

Best Comedy
We enjoy comedies, the best of this year's bunch are:

• Empties - old man behaving badly in Prague
• Welcome to the Sticks - this year's French farce
• In Bruges - gangsters behaving badly in Belgium
• Married Life - keeping up appearances
• CJ7 - get in touch with your inner child
  

My pick is In Bruges, but if you prefer a non-violent comedy then Welcome to the Sticks is a nose ahead of Empties.

Best Drama
The best dramas this festival include:

• The Counterfeiters - do you help your enemy in order to live longer?
• Ben X - the world from an autistic point of view
• Lorna's Silence - her dreams or her conscience?
• I Just Didn't Do It - don't get arrested in Japan
• It's a Free World - Angie's dreams or her conscience?
• The Visitor - safety first or care a little?

Ben X was the most original film, mixing PC gaming CGI with live action and tackling a tough issue in a fresh way.

Political Dramas
The best to worst of this sub-category:

1. I Just Didn't Do It
2. It's a Free World
3. The Wave

Strangest Film
Well not really, rather the best of the Incredibly Strange section:

• Cargo 200 - The Good, the Bad and Ugly back in the USSR
• King of the Hill - Last one standing in the Spanish countryside
• Teeth - Sex with a bite
• Frontier(s) - French splatter, keep away from those creepy motels

No contest here. Teeth is destined to be come cult movie.

Best Short
Nominations (all NZ films):

• Take 3 - "Can you be a bit more Asian?"
• Noise Control - Rooster shooting at Raumati
• Cargo - People trafficking in Eastern Europe
  

Winner: Noise Control

Most Disappointing
Nominations:

• The Duchess of Langeais - drawn out sado-masochistic courtship
• Be Kind Rewind - an overdose of Jack Black
• The Wave - not plausible enough to be as chilling
• The Band's Visit - too many missed opportunities
  

Loser: The Duchess of Langeais

Best Actor / Actress
Nominations:

• Chris Cooper playing Harry in Married Life
  
• Colin Farrell playing Ray in In Bruges
• Brendan Gleeson playing Ken in In Bruges
• Greg Timmermans playing Ben in Ben X
  
• Arta Dobroshi playing Lorna in Lorna's Silence
  
• Xu Jiao playing Dicky in CJ7
  
• Scott Wills playing Barry in Apron Strings
  
• Kierston Wareing playing Angie in It's a Free World
• Richard Jenkins playing Walter Vale in The Visitor

Winner: Greg Timmermans
Runners Up: Scott Wills and Kierston Wareing

Best Eye Candy
Unrealistic or unjustified use of a sexy actress (think of typical US sitcom slobby husband with impossibly pretty wife).

Nominations:

• Like the Americans, the French like to partner up average guys with gorgeous chicks - twice in Welcome to the Sticks
• Boys would never leave primary school if their primary school teachers looked liked the three in CJ7
• Even Harry's best friend can't believe the perfect Kay belongs with boring Harry in Married Life
• Beautiful women visit beauty parlours but I'm still going to classify the repeat customer in Caramel as eye candy
  

(Other possibilities: Vexille, Lorna's Silence, King of the Hill, It's a Free World)

Winner: Rachel McAdams as Kay in Married Life

Best Energizer Bunny
Where a woman spends the whole film running around trying to achieve something (think Run Lola Run).

Nominations:

• Lorna fights for her dreams and her conscience in Lorna's Silence
• Angie fights to make it in a dodgy business in It's a Free World
• Aicha fights her heritage to learn kung fu in Fighter

Winner: Kierston Wareing playing Angie in It's a Free World

Grossest Moment
Nominations:

• Eye ball eating in Jar City.
• There are times when you don't want to let the dog into your bedroom in Teeth.
  
• Meat hooks, circular saws and steam rooms and other messy ways to die in Frontier(s).
  
• Sharing a bed with too many dead bodies in Cargo 200.
  

Winner: final bedroom scene in Teeth

Special Mentions

• Impeccable cross gender acting - Xu Jiao playing Dicky in CJ7
• Best Bang for Buck - the remarkably restrained and lo-tech Teeth
• Only arty film I saw - Ashes of Time Redux
• The R16 kids film - Let the Right One In
• Worst seats - Paramount H22 & H23

Coming Back
Each year I try to predict which films will come back on general release. Here are my guesses for this year.

No Brainers
In Bruges, Apron Strings, The Counterfeiters

Art House
Empties, Married Life, Welcome to the Sticks, Ben X, Lorna's Silence, The Visitor, The Wave

Might come back
Teeth, Be Kind Rewind, The Band's Visit

Would come back if I had my way
Let the Right One In, Noise Control, Waltz with Bashir, Terror's Advocate, Taxi to the Dark Side

Award Ceremony 36th Wellington Film Festival

Actually my personal assessment of the 36th Wellington Film Festival. Overall I thought that there were fewer outstanding films but lots of good films, and I seemed to be better at avoiding the clunkers this year. There seemed to a theme running through the festival of family problems (or "intergenerational nastiness" as Annie puts it).

Like most festivals most of the films will never be seen again. This is especially true of documentaries and all but the most popular foreign language films. It could be argued that there is little point in writing about most of these films. That said, here is my pick of the good, the bad and the ugly in the 2007 Film Festival.

Best Documentary
Nominations:

• These Girls - Cairo girl gang
• The Devil Came on Horseback - genocide and ethnic cleansing in Dafur
• Jesus Camp - love Jesus, hate Muslims
• Manufacturing Dissent - trying to interview Michael Moore
• The Great Happiness Space - women paying for men

There are no duds here. The winner is The Devil Came on Horseback by a nose over These Girls.

Comedy
I saw eleven comedies (or films with a strong comedy element). The top 3 were:

• My Best Friend - a semi serious French comedy
  
• Priceless - the festival's French farce
  
• Death at a Funeral - a British farce
  

And the "must see winner" is Death at a Funeral

Horror
Nominations:

• Retribution - a ghost movie
• Severance - a last-person-standing killing spree
• The Signal - a splatter movie of the "everyone's out to kill us" sort
  
• Perfect Creature - a vampire movie with alternate history pretensions
  

Winner: Retribution - the only one to make my hair stand on end

Thriller
Nominations:

• A Few Days in September - plenty style but no substance
• Black Book - sleeping with the enemy and other double dealing
• The Night of the Sunflowers - retribution and cover-up
• Death of a President - not as controversial as Hilary Clinton said
• Red Road - who is behind the CCTV
• The Long Goodbye - classic 70s private eye movie

Winner: Black Book

Drama
Of the dozen or so films I saw in this category the best three (all focused on women) are:

• Vanaja - plucky teen versus the caste system
  
• Lady Chatterly - period sex movie
• The Home Song Stories - Chinese solo mum versus Australia in the 60s
  

Winner: Vanaja

Note: while I loved this movie, Anne didn't like it, so it is a controversial choice

Oddest Movie
Since the wonderful Incredibly Strange Film Festival merged with the Wellington Film Festival our annual "fix" of odd films has to be fitted into 2 weeks along with everything else.

Nominations:

• The Journals of Knud Rasmussen - a normal Inuit film but its odd story telling style gets it included here
• I Served the King of England - intended as a comedy but the effect is odd rather than funny
• The Matsugane Potshot Affair - played very dead pan, spiced with non-PC humour
• No Mercy for the Rude - dark comedy with film noir style and dash of slapstick
• The Bothersome Man - have I wandered into someone else's IKEA nightmare?
  

Winner: The Bothersome Man


Worst Film
I try not to see bad films but sometimes the festival blurb fools me or I take a punt and get it wrong.
Nominations:

• Times and Winds - intergenerational nastiness with few redeeming features
• Wolfsbergen - a film about people who don't talk to each other with dull camera work
• Kissy Kissy - an embarrassing local offering

Winner: Kissy Kissy

Best Actor / Actress
Nominations:

• Joan Chen playing Rose in The Home Song Stories
• Joel Lok playing Tom in The Home Song Stories
• Jean-Pierre Darroussin playing Gardener in Conversations with my Gardener
• Mamatha Bhukya playing Vanaja in Vanaja
• Sebastian Koch playing Ludwig Muntze in Black Book
• Tim Robins playing Joseph in The Secret Life of Words
• Peter O'Toole playing Maurice in Venus
• Shin Hakyun playing Killa in No Mercy for the Rude
• Maggie Gyllenhaal playing Sherry in Sherrybaby
  

Winner: Peter O'Toole

Worst Family
As I have mentioned before there seemed to be a theme of family problems running through this festival. I saw seven films centred around family problems and another eight or so where family problems played a part!
Nominations:
The Home Song Stories - the filmmaker's troubled childhood
After the Wedding - who's the daddy?
The Matsugane Potshot Affair - has anyone got a nice word to say about anyone else?
Wolfsbergen - will anyone talk to anyone else?
Times and Winds - fathers take it out on their sons
Death at a Funeral - family skeletons belong in the closet or coffin or somewhere, don't they?
Children - mothers and sons behaving badly
Winner: Wolfsbergen is long slow motion family train wreck
Second: Children more violent but also more watchable

Coming Back
Each year I try to predict which films will come back on general release. I get the feeling that more come back each year, though sometimes it takes almost a whole year for the return to happen. Here are my guesses for this year.

No Brainers
Death at a Funeral
Black Book
A Mighty Heart (I didn't see this one)

Art House
Lady Chatterly
The Home Song Stories
My Best Friend
Priceless
Venus
The Secret Life of Words
Conversations with my Gardener
I Served the King of England (not my cup of tea!)
Romulus, My Father (I didn't see this one)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (I didn't see this one)


NZ Connection
Perfect Creature
Eagle vs Shark (already on in London)

Might come back
Death of a President
Day Watch (sequel to Night Watch)

Would come back if I had my way
Sherrybaby
No Mercy for the Rude
Any of the documentaries I saw

36th Wellington Film Festival

I'm taking a couple weeks off work again to enjoy the Film Festival in 2007.

The films I'm looking forward to are:

• Eagle vs Shark
• I Served the King of England
• Death at a Funeral
• Black Book
• My Best Friend
• Times and Winds
• Perfect Creature
• Brand upon the Brain!
• The Home Song Stories
• The Bothersome Man
• Kissy Kissy
• Drama / Mex

I'm also looking forward to:

• After the Wedding
• A Few Days in September
• The Devil Came on Horseback
• Death of a President
• Priceless
• The Matsugane Potshot Affair
• Venus
• Bamako
• The Boss of it All
• The Secret Life of Words
• The Signal
• The Lost
• Animation Now!
• Wolfsbergen
• Retribution
• Severance
• The Night of the Sunflowers
• Lady Chatterley
• Inland Empire
• No Mercy for the Rude
• Them
• Romulus, My Father
• Climates
• The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

On top of this there are quite a few I am sort of interested in! So I expect to be having a busy two weeks.

Ian

World Cinema Showcase 2007

The films I saw at the World Cinema Showcase were:

Pierrepoint -- if you want to over dose on Timothy Spall (3/5)
Black Snake Moan -- if you want to over dose on blues and white trash (4/5)
Hula Girls -- Japanese feel good movie; hula your way out of the coal mine (2.5/5)
Suburban Mayhem -- the girl you wouldn't want living next door, or even in the same suburb! (5/5)
Go for Zucker -- German comedy about Jews!! (3.5/5)
Heartbreak Hotel -- 2 40+ year old Swedish divorcees at a singles bar (2/5)
Little Children -- modern surburban fairytale (for adults) (2.5/5)
Sabah -- belly dancing makes you happy when you have an overbearing brother (2.5/5)
Razzle Dazzle -- funny Ozzie comedy mock-documentary about dance schools and competitions (3.5/5)
Lemming -- a french film that is odder than finding a lemming in your U trap (2/5)

Of these I would recommend:

Suburban Mayhem and Razzle Dazzle as the best of the comedies -- go Australia!
Pierrepoint if you are a Timothy Spall fan
Black Snake Moan if you like blues and a movie that will make you wonder what the heck?

Only Suburban Mayhem is a must see, but nothing I regretted seeing.

Lemming was probably the worst and it wasn't too bad. It was pretty clever in that it probably most of the way through the film before I figured out what was going on. What put me off was that none of the characters really grabbed me.

Little Children also suffered from unlikable characters in an interesting film.

Ian

Summary 2006 Film Festival

Film	Brief description	Ian’s Rating	Anne’s Rating
Last Train to Freo	perils of public transport	4	5
Brick	teen film noir	5	3
The Method	Spanish executive job interview	5	3
The Host Updated	old fashioned monster movie	5
How much do you love me?	Semi-surreal sex comedy	3.5	4.5
The Road to Guantánamo	UK documentary	4	4
Avenge but one of my two eyes	Masada & Samson documentary	4	4
Thank you for smoking	life of a MOD squad PR man	3.5	4
The Valet	French farce	4	3
Water	Indian widows	4
The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang	nerdy teen film	4
Kirikou and the Sorceress	French animation of West Africa	4
China Blue	Chinese jeans factory	4
The White Planet	arctic nature film		4
C.R.A.Z.Y.	Gay boy grows up Canadian		4
Ten Canoes	The worlds' most exotically located soap-opera		4
Close to Home	Israeli teen girl bonding	3	3.5
A Scanner Darkly	animation about paranoia	3.5
Shortbus	cast driven sex film	3	3
5 Days Updated	settlers leave Gaza	2.5	3
The White Masai Updated	Swiss blonde goes bush	2.5	3
Heading South	white women in Haiti	3
Iraq in Fragments	3 part documentary	3
Bad Blood	Stanley Graham man-hunt	3
Event 16	low budget NZ sci-fi	2.5
Abduction: The Medumi Yokota story	documentary	2.5
Jindabyne	Australian PC film	2	2
The Passenger	identity change and road trip	2	2
Three Times	3 Taiwanese loves stories	2
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu	pensioner gets terrible treatment by health system and then dies		2
The New World	overly long first contact film	1	1
Worldly Desires	out of focus Thai film fragments	0

2006 Film Festival Explained

In case you haven't worked this out yet, the current flurry of blogging is because its film festival time again. This year the festival runs from July 21st to August 6th, so right now we're a week in. Ian is realising a long-held ambition to take the film festival fortnight off work, so he is going to more films than I am and has more time to blog, but we are going to a dozen or so together and the blog is still a joint effort.

For anyone who is new to this blog, or has forgotten, the explanation of the ratings system appears in the archives for July 2005.

The Ratings System Explained

Responding to Rachel's request for a rating system, here it is.

5/5 Drop Everything and go! This is a great movie.

4/5. A good movie. Worth the effort of going, and you should tell other people to go.

3/5. Reasonable movie,didn't regret going.

2/5. OK movie. Could have waited until it showed on TV.

1/5. Poor movie. Conscious that there were better ways to spend 2 hours than watching this.

0/5. Terrible movie. Should have stayed at home and cleaned the oven, which would have been more fun.

Intro and Hotel Rwanda

The Wellington film festival opens tonight, and since I'm going to 17 films and Ian is going to 18 (there are 13 movies which we'll be viewing together) I thought we could share our thoughts on the movies in case people are interested, AND give our normal email correspondants something to read while we're too busy watching movies to write to them personally. What's more, I like to think we could be providing handy reference material to our friends and relatives who, due to their child-minding commitments, don't make it out to the movies all that often, and when faced with a trip to the movies or the video-store can't decide what they should watch.

Ian has been in festival training mode for several months by going to the Film Society's weekly offering on Monday nights.Until last Sunday I hadn't been to the movies since the Sercombe and Matheson staff outing to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy , so to get into the swing of things we went to Hotel Rwanda at the Paramount. The seats there are still dreadful but the movie is to be recommended as long as you don't find the sight of dead bodies too disturbing.The story is engrossing,and the acting convincing.

This evening we're off to Dumplings at the Paramount at 10.15pm. This is from the "that's incredible" section of the festival programme and is directed by someone called Fruit Chan. Man or woman? Don't know. The programme says " Chan has concocted a sneakily spiced banquet for connossieurs of bad taste and political incorrectness". We will keep you posted.