Mandy

I'm a lumberjack and I'm Okay. Until the night some drug-crazed biker, hippy, Jesus-freaks showed up at my cabin in the woods and killed my woman.

Given how little dialogue or plot there is in this film, there are some details writer and director Panos Cosmatos thinks it is important that we know such as the character's names and that it is set in 1983. But the only name you need to know is Nicolas Cage, whose revenge rampage is what this film is all about. His transformation from a mild-mannered lumberjack living blissfully with Mandy, a new age artist/shopkeeper, to raging homicidal maniac is what we paid to see.

Mandy is a self indulgent visual orgy of 1970s and 80s imagery with an incessant soundtrack of fog horn and bass guitar. Each scene (and this film rarely moves smoothly from one scene to the next) is lit in an appropriate colour: green woods, yellows and oranges for the interior of the happy couple's cabin, blue as they sleep, red for the sky filled with oversized planets borrowed from the front cover of a science fiction novel. In addition to the occasional CGI, there are some old-fashioned animation clips to "link" things together and remind us of the dead Mandy. This film certainly qualifies for the Incredibly Strange section of the NZIFF. It seems like Panos Cosmatos was trying to create a movie for a cult following and so far he has wowed the critics.

Mandy is not without humour. The chainsaw duel with its nod to India Jones is my favourite set piece in the film.

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Ian's rating 1.5/5

High-Rise

Dr Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moves into his 25th floor apartment as a successful man on the way up in life. Three months later he is barbecuing a dog on the balcony. High-Rise attempts to explain this by telling us that our physical environment (the apartment building in this case) affects our behaviour, which in turn determines the structure of our society. This doesn't quite ring true as everyone has arrived in the building with a clearly recognisable place in the British class system, and the building just amplifies that class system to a ridiculous extent. It is like an adult version of Lord of the Flies. As one of the characters puts it: "What has happened when someone can fall from the 39th floor and not a single policeman turns up. Where are the sirens?" ABBA's SOS plays a prominent part in the sound track.

High-Rise is a visual riot of a film, with the apartment building in question surrounded by a sea of 1970s British cars. The building in question is post-war brutalist in and out, though some apartment dwellers have managed to recreate other interiors to try and disguise where they are living.

High-Rise has enough components (interesting premise and characters, amazing visuals, good actors, a risk taking director and a political message) to deliver a great film but it doesn't achieve its potential. Instead of an overarching plot there is an overarching idea and bunch of little sub-plots. Instead we get a surreal mishmash with recognisable bits of the 1970s presented in a (bad) dream like fashion.

Ian's rating 2.5/5

The Brand New Testament

The Brand New Testament is billed as a surrealist film, which should have put me off it. I have found surrealist films polarising, I love them or am very bored and confused by them. Mostly the latter.

God is alive and well and living in an apartment in Brussels with his wife and daughter, Éa. He controls events that happen (those events outside human control) with his PC from a filing cabinet lined room. To his daughter's frustration there is no door between the apartment and the world outside. Éa is keen to escape the apartment and her father's corporal punishment like her her better known older brother JC. Once she does escape she sets out to recruit six disciples and leave behind a written account of their adventures together, hence the name of the film.

Knowledge of Christianity is probably a disadvantage when it comes to watching this film. Apart from the concept that a child could confuse an overbearing parent with an adult's explanation of an omnipotent God, plus some pop culture ideas on God's responsibility for what is wrong with the world, it doesn't pay to try and dig too deeply into the premise behind this film. Just enjoy this quirky film about a girl's rebellion against her dad and her surreal adventure with a bunch of more or less abnormal people and a gorilla.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Borgman

I don't have much luck with surreal films. Most of them turn out to be much worse to watch than to read about. Luckily Borgman is a rare exception. Borgman himself is a vagrant. The film starts with him on the run from armed hunters, he warns confederates, Pascal and Ludwig, before hitching a ride to an affluent leafy suburb. There he tries to beg a bath and gets beaten up for his troubles. Sympathy from Marina (his attacker's wife) is his key into their house.

Much of the surrealism comes from the abnormal, unexplained and anti-social behaviour of Borgman and his accomplices. Though unusual and unexplained coincidences abound (why do whippets keep popping up?). The shifting relationship between Borgman and Marina is the core of the film. Marina moves from sympathy, to curiosity, to longing, while Borgman alternates effortlessly between victim and aggressor.

Our society works to a huge extent because in any given circumstance almost everyone behaves in one of a limited number of ways. This gives someone who is willing to ignore these strictures on behaviour the opportunity to get away with doing the most outrageous things (though perhaps only once). Borgman plays with this characteristic of society just enough to shock us from time to time while making most of the film seem plausible.

The humour in Borgman is dark and motivations of Borgman and his pals are obscure. None of the characters, not even the children, are innocent. There is a plot to this film even though some aspects are unexplained (and probably unexplainable). The balance between the 'real' and the surreal was just right for my literalist tastes.

Ian's rating 4/5

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