The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers is almost worth watching for the super cute elfin Claire (Sara Paxton) who spends most of the movie creeping and running around an old hotel scaring herself to near hysteria by doing all the things that have the audience whispering "don't do that".

Claire and the cooler, geekier Luke are the sole staff on duty on the last weekend the hotel is open. They are so obsessed with ghost hunting that between them they manage to get off side with all the guests. Which also has the audience thinking: "don't do that".

This is an exceedingly slow burning slacker horror movie that waits until its final minutes to deliver its punch.

Ian's rating 2/5

The Forgiveness of Blood

Glibly speaking, The Forgiveness of Blood is about home detention Albanian style. Nik's dad and uncle are in a long running feud with Sokol over a road that runs across land that was once in the family but since the end of communism is now owned by Sokol. In a society of gun and knife wielding, honour obsessed, hot heads such disputes can go from jokes and jibes at the pubs to dead bodies before you can say "Enver Halil Hoxha".

Once Sokol is dead, uncle Zif arrested by the police and dad has vanished, the real blood feud starts. The Sokol's extended family insist that teenage Nik and little brother Dren are valid targets and will be shot on sight if they leave the house. This means no more school for Nik and his brother and sisters. Older sister Rudina has to take over the family horse and cart bread delivery business, and a teacher comes back to give home tuition to the two primary school age kids. Nik's best friend from school visits and reminds him of a kid they used to know who had to stay inside for over 5 years until the feud his family was involved in was solved through mediation.

This concept of blood feud that everyone in the community including the school teachers take seriously is based on Albania's traditional law code called the Kanun (an oral tradition that was first written down in the 20th century). It is not part of Albanian law and was suppressed under communism but is being revived again in the north of the country. The Kanun is based around honour, respect, revenge and the family as a unit. As there is no central enforcement authority it can also be misused by large and powerful families to persecute smaller weaker ones. Luckily in the Kanun the family home is more or less sacrosanct (though theoretically so are women and children).

In a tradition where women and teenagers have no say in what happens and with their father gone, the decisions are in the hands of uncles and more distant male relatives who not living under the same curfew are happy to wait the feud out. By focusing on Nik and Rudina, otherwise normal cellphone wielding teenagers, the film shows how badly this tradition works in the 21st century and how both teenagers try to make the best of the situation. This film is a must see for those people in NZ who clamour for a system of justice that puts the victim's desire for revenge in the driving seat (and is an interesting look at life in a part of Europe few of us will ever go to).

Ian's rating 4/5

Weekend

Weekend is a gay romance which takes place over the course of three days. Russell, a quiet and tidy swimming pool life guard meets Glen, who is off to the USA to study, in a gay bar. Despite Russell thinking Glen is out of his league, they end up having sex at Russell's flat.

In the morning, over cups of coffee in bed, Glen indulges his habit of interviewing the person he's just had sex with about how it went and what they were thinking, recording the conversation on a small dictaphone. He confesses to sharing the recordings with his female flatmate. And so Russell and Glen get to know each other better.

Watching this process is really the guts of the movie, and it's done with some charm. It turns out Russell likes to keep a record of sexual encounters too - he has a diary on his computer, and he reads it to Glen. They talk about coming out, about Russell being a foster child, about public displays of affection and their attitudes to goodbyes. There's drinking, drug taking and more sex, but, crucially, more talking. So, when 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon arrives and Glen has to catch a train as the first stage of traveling to the USA, Russell achieves a personal breakthrough by publicly kissing him goodbye at the station and we feel a potentially great relationship has been formed.

Visually, I found the grainy appearance of this film quite annoying. Perhaps it was supposed to underline the slightly gritty nature of the environment - Russell's flat is in an ugly high rise block in Nottingham. Whatever its purpose, eventually I forgot about it. In contrast, the two leads were visually appealing and the dialogue was great. I don't think this is a film to set the world alight, but it was absorbing and well-acted. I liked how what started as a one-night stand blossomed into something more meaningful and fulfilling, even it was doomed by circumstance not to last.

Anne's rating 3/5.

Meek's Cutoff

Three families with their covered wagons follow their guide Stephen Meek on a route through Oregon that he told them would take two weeks. Five weeks later they are running short of food and even shorter of water and are having doubts about Mr Meek. Is he lost, did he never know the way, is he mad or is he out to kill settlers? More importantly do they continue to follow him south west or strike north to try and find the main trail (who knows how far north)?

Their dilemma is further complicated when a third option arises bringing with it some hope but even more unknowns. Meek's Cutoff is a very slow paced film and it is a long time before the dialogue starts. But that pacing bring with it the rising tension of the life or death situation the three families are in, once past the point of no return. The camera generally stays with the three wives as they become aware of the problem the men have tried to keep to themselves. Eventually a power struggle emerges and Meek himself finally admits that power has already transferred to the new leader of the expedition.

The film is a study of the dynamics in small group leadership and decision making. How many of the apparent choices really exist when faced with a decision? How and why does power transfer itself from one person to another?

The camera work is very nice as is the attention to detail of trail life so you won't be impatient with the slow pace of the film. This is one of those films that will have you thinking and talking after you leave the cinema and might end up on some feminist top 10 list.

The real Stephen Meek led 200 wagons and 1000 people into the Oregon Desert in 1845.

Ian's rating 4/5

The Man from Nowhere

I've generally had a good experiences with South Korean films, and The Man from Nowhere is no exception. While there is a tendency towards the violent end of the spectrum in South Korean cinema, there is also focus on the human element of story telling.

In The Man from Nowhere the core of the story is the relationship between a lonely little girl and a reclusive young pawnbroker living next door. So-mi is bullied at school and ignored by her stripper, drug addict solo mother. She is much cuter than but just as stubborn as Marcus in About a Boy. As in that film the relationship between the lonely child and the reluctant man ends up involving him in the complications of the mother's life. And those complications involve a drug deal gone wrong and two warring gangs, with the police closing in.

In many violent thrillers the baddies mostly exist to charge towards the protagonist and die in a flailing of arms and legs and fountains of blood. Lee Jeong-beom (who wrote and directed The Man from Nowhere) has made the effort to give his baddies personalities, albeit relatively thin ones; with varying attitudes to our hero ranging from fear to contempt to admiration. But of course it is the audience attitude to the hero that matters. It is difficult to get the audience on side when the hero is a silent loner, hence the crucial importance of So-mi.

Overall this is a film with Quentin Tarantino's flair for violence and Steven Spielberg flair for pathos, with a sprinkling of humour. If you want to see a crime thriller done well and packing an emotional punch this should be on your must-see list. That said there is a lot of violence and the crimes go beyond drug dealing and kidnapping.

Ian's rating 5/5

Happy Happy

Happy Happy is billed as a comdey in the Film Festival program, but this is stretching the definition of comedy even by Scandinavian standards. There are some blackly comic scenes to smile over as you recover from cringing at other scenes. Elisabeth, Sigve and their adopted son Noa arrive from urban Denmark to rent the house next door to Kaja, Eirik and son Theodor out in the middle of snowy rural Norway. Chirpy, annoyingly talkative, overly outgoing Kaja has an inferiority complex to end all inferiority complexes, and is obviously mismatched to her silent, gruff, hunting fishing husband. The new couple seem urban sophisticated and perfect in her eyes.

But nothing is right in either relationship and Kaja's need to reach out to people cause skeletons to come out of closets in both households. In the background the boys are also forcing by circumstances into an unhealthy unequal relationship. All six characters misbehave, to remind you that no-one is perfect, regardless of how it looks on the surface. It is also arguable that through hurting each other they facilitated resolving issues as far as such issues can be resolved.

This film reminded me of last years Cyrus, both films dealing with serious relationship issues in a darkly funny way.

Ian's rating 3/5

Let the Bullets Fly

You know you are not in Kansas now when someone on horseback stops a train by throwing a couple of axes which embed thmeselves into the rails. From the outrageous opening scene Let the Bullets Fly attempts to out do itself in an orgy of stunts and plot twists. Set in anarchic 1920's China when a lack of strong central government left opportunities for local governers to enrich themselves, and when such governerships could be bought and sold. The story follows 3 protagonists on the wrong side of the almost non-existant law as they strive to be top dog of a small town.

Unlike many Chinese and Hong Kong movies I've seen the plot is completely coherent and no expense has been spared on the special effects, sets and the expected over the top fight scenes. You might go to this film for the fight scenes but it is the plot which twists and turns for 132 minutes which will keep you entertained.

One or two of the more sadisticly violent scenes seemed unnecessary to me. But overall Let the Bullets Fly is an amazing entertaining Chinese shaggy dog story.

Ian's rating 4/5

13 Assassins

Are 13 Assassins, six assassins too many?

The more characters one has in a film the greater the difficulty in giving enough screen time to each character to make them memorable, especially when they are part of a gang and hence not differentiated by role. One way to deal with this problem is to make the various characters look different (a tall one, a short one, a fat one etc). This is one area where 13 Assassins falls down, despite the long build-up the most memorable characters are the 13th assassin and Naritsugu (the bad guy).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The plot of this Japanese samurai movie is simply summed up as "Naritsugu must die". From the start we are left in no doubt that Matsudaira Naritsugu is a blood thirsty sadistic bastard with no redeeming qualities. The wrinkle is that not only is he the half brother of the Shogun, and hence above the law, but he is about to be appointed senior advisor to his brother. A secret assassination attempt is arranged to give the government plausible deniability of the murder. Twelve samurai, unemployed or bored with peace, set out from Edo (Tokyo) to ambush Naritsugu. An ad hoc bunch of samurai choosing to fight against the odds for little or no reward, does this sound like another more famous Japanese film?

The attention to detail, the classy camera work, the slow build up, the tension, the flashes of humour and finally the climactic battle. The 13 Assassins matches the Seven Samurai and in terms of colour photography betters it. There is also social commentary (the lead assassin shocks his old classmate by claiming to be fighting for the the people rather than his lord) and a really bad baddie. But it lacks novelty and in the end it is just a very well made samurai movie. If you haven't seen the Seven Samurai then see this film but only fanatics need to see both.

Ian's rating 3/5

Page One: Inside the New York Times

Page One: Inside the New York Times initially bills itself as the 'daily fight to get on A1' (the front page). But if you were expecting a no holds barred dirty office fight between journalists and editors you'd be disappointed.

The New York Times likes to think of itself as America's premier newspaper. For years it has been aided and abetted by other American newspapers and TV networks taking their daily cue for what is news by what is printed in the New York Times. In the internet age this continues with online news publishers and aggregators (such as Huffington Post, Druge Report and Google News), bloggers and tweeters taking their cues, republishing and feeding off, commenting on and linking to NYT content. But there are two big trends that are killing newspapers around the world. Fewer and fewer advertisers interested in running adverts in newspapers. While simultaneously readers are moving to the internet where they expect to read stuff for free.

Websites like craigslist and Ebay have killed the classified adverts section. Companies large and small now have their own websites and feel less need to put adverts into newspapers. The concept that everything on the internet is free and the difficult in setting up internet pay-per-view websites has reinforced this idea.

Page One: Inside the New York Times is a documentary that gets inside the NYT and sees how it is trying to cope with this new reality. It concentrates on the Media Desk, the department where journalists report on the media itself, and in particular on David Carr, a most unlikely senior reporter.

Some of the older journalists at the Times think that the NYT is different and what has happened to other papers couldn't happen here. But ultimately there are two main views of the future. The optomistic view is that there is a technology driven change here and that traditional paper newspapers are on the way out, and that new internet media will take over the written media space. Then there is the pessimistic view that most (or all) the internet news media is parasitic. It can only exist because it feeds off traditional media. During a TV debate one NYT journalist illustrates this with two pictures of the front page of the news aggregator news site. One unaltered and the other with all the connect that came from traditional media removed. The fear is that if the internet kills the newspaper industry (and the TV news networks too) then they will have killed the golden goose that they depend on.

Ultimately the questions are:

• Is journalism independent of the technology and hence can it survive in the internet age, if so how will it be funded?
• Is journalism necessary to modern democracy and if so does it need protection of some sort to survive in a post-newspaper world? Will the death of journalism mean the death of democracy? (No one asked the next question: with the death of journalism will anyone notice the death of democracy?)

There was a diversion into a red herring argument that what is hurting the NYT is a couple of scandals. First the Jayson Blair plagiarism and fabrication scandal, and secondly Judith Miller's articles that lead to the US invasion of Iraq through a feedback circle. She quoted the US government as saying that Iraq was making or attempting to make WMDs and was in turn quoted by Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld using the NYT as authority. She later wrote that WMDs had been found in Iraq. As damaging as these scandals are they are not the real reason why newspapers are on the way out.

Technically this is a well crafted documentary with articulate talking heads that covers the subject well, leaving the audience in no doubt of the trends for newspapers while resisting the temptation to predict the future.

It is difficult to beat The Onion's headline on the subject.

Ian's rating 3/5

Guilty Pleasures

Mills and Boon romance novels are big business and are enduringly popular. Why is that and who reads them? Guilty Pleasures explores those questions by making a film that meets three readers (all women) and an author and a cover photo model (both men) and examines them and their relationships in a gentle and good-humoured way.

Hiroko, the first of our readers, lives in Japan with her husband and two young sons.Her husband seems like a perfectly nice guy who admits to not being that demonstrative or romantic and seems comfortable with his wife reading novels as compensation. Hiroko moves on from reading and takes ballroom dancing lessons to increase the romance and glamour levels in her life.

Shumita lives in Delhi and she separated from her husband five years ago, but seems unable to let go. This is a pity, because he's clearly a self-centred bastard and she should move on.

Shirley lives in Blackpool and her husband is the most romantic of the three, (and a definite improvement on her previous abusive partner) but he's bipolar and so she has to live with his regular periods of gloom. He, too, is unperturbed by his wife reading romance novels.

Stephen the cover model is included (I think) to remind readers and watchers to be careful what they wish for. Beautiful men with perfectly sculpted bodies don't get that way without hard work and this probably means that they're obsessed diet, exercise and themselves which is not really ideal romantic hero.

And then we have Roger the author, who prefers his own company. We learn that most Mills and Boon authors are older people and that writing romance novels is a learned craft and not a reflection of the writer's views or experience.

Now, in case you're thinking this all sounds rather dysfunctional, Hiroko and her husband come to the rescue. Hiroko wants to move onto competitive ballroom dnacing and finds that having her dance teacher as a partner will be very expensive. So she persuades her husband to learn to dance. He is surprisingly enthusiastic and they go on to win a competition. And if that's not a dream come true, I'm not sure what is.

I'm not sure if Guilty Pleasures is really trying to make a point or just give us an interesting overview of the genre. The featured characters are interesting enough for that not to matter particularly.

The last word should go to Hiroko's husband; "I have to be careful not to polish myself too much, otherwise I'll become attractive to other women and my wife will suffer. So I have to aim for just the right level of improvement" Very considerate!

Anne's rating 3/5

Hot Coffee

This talking heads doco looks at the influence of big business on the civil justice system in the US, and the lengths that big business will go to to erode individual rights, and to influence both the nation's politicians and the judiciary.

This is New Zealand, not America, but even here we buy into the concept that Americans sue big companies at the drop of a hat and for the flimsiest of excuses. Once you've watched this documentary, you won't be so sure. Hot Coffee will ensure you never use the phrase "frivolous lawsuit" unthinkingly again. And you'll reflect that if you received a dollar for every time a republican politician used that phrase, you'd be quite rich by now.

Hot Coffee is named after a world-famous-in-America case where an elderly lady in New Mexico named Stella Liebeck sued Macdonalds after being burned by their coffee. Stella has become a poster girl for the ultimate in frivolous lawsuits, but only because spin doctors have made her so. Hot Coffee the movie examines this case and three others and shows how the concept of the frivolous lawsuit has been used to sanitize some outrageous miscarriages of justice. You'll learn about tort reform, big business "buying" the outcomes of judicial state elections, mandatory arbitration clauses in contracts (and what's wrong with that) and about how republican politicians have been lobbied so effectively that they'll parrot the Chamber of Commerce's line on tort reform over and over again. And the best part is, you'll be engrossed, educated and probably outraged so your time in the theatre will fly by.

My new fact for the week is that the American Medical Association is a member the Chamber of Commerce. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - Medicine is big business after all.

Anne's rating 4/5

Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese's 1976 film Taxi Driver is one of those films I was aware of without knowing anything about it. A film that appears in people's top ten film lists. A film that writers drop into articles without explanation, in expectation that the reader is already familiar with it. It is the first film I saw at this year's International Film Festival.

Taxi Driver stars Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle an inarticulate, contradictory, angry young Vietnam veteran who takes a job as a night time taxi driver in New York to cope with insomnia. Apparently from a small town, Travis is both repulsed and fascinated by prostitution, pornography and homosexuality. Ranting (mostly in his diary) about the need to clean up the filth, he watches porn during the day. Travis becomes obsessed by two women: romantically by Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) a political campaign worker and Iris a child prostitute (played by then 13 year old Jodie Foster) who he wants to rescue. Neither is keen to fit in with Travis's ideas for them.

Taxi Driver is a slacker film for the most part, with a violent end that is clearly signalled during the long slow build up. We know he wants to kill someone but it is not clear that he knows who or why. Robert DeNiro is in virtually every scene, and there an obvious contrast between the to-the-audience narration by his character which comes across as moderately articulate (albeit somewhat vague and rambling) and his often tongue tied conversations with co-workers, clients and others where he comes across as a throwback from another time and place. The ending was a bit odd, the police were on the scene extremely quickly, but for reasons not explained it seems that they chose not to prosecute Travis.

The film is more about an idea than a character or events. The alienation of people from each other caused both by living in a big city and by serving in a war like Vietnam. You could substitute the Iraq War and both the US and USSR's wars with Afghanistan, but I am not sure that current day New York is quite as exciting and menacing as 1976 New York.

I particularly liked Harvey Kietel's performance as a long haired pimp, while the late Peter Boyle looked almost the same in 1976 as he did in the almost current Everybody loves Raymond.

Ian's rating 3/5

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (3D)

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Chauvet Cave) is in Southern France. It houses wonderful 32000 year old animal sketches, pristine stalagmites and stalactites, animal bones, cave bear and wolf paw prints, all undisturbed since a rockfall closed the cave some 20000 years ago. Access to the cave is tightly controlled so unless you're a French archaeologist or the German film maker Werner Herzog you'll never get to see the real thing. Viewing the cave on the big screen in 3D seemed like the next best option although I was slightly worried by the fact that the film was written, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog. (I suffered through his Aguirre:Wrath of God at a film society showing a few years back). Foolishly, I thought a documentary about a cave shouldn't go too badly.

Unfortunately, it did go badly. It was too loud (probably not Mr Herzog's fault), the music was discordant, the narration was slow and condescending and there were far too many talking heads. Ricky Gervais or the Monthy Python team could have had a field day with the experts talking in this film, who included an pony-tailed ex-juggler, an aging archaeologist demonstrating throwing a spear to kill a horse without there being a horse, and a younger one clad in reindeer skin playing "The Star Spangled Banner" on a bone flute. Talking heads in 3D seemed a technology overkill. I'm wondering why Werner Herzog got to visit the cave and make a film - why not the French equivalent of the BBC natural history unit?

And what of the cave itself? It was certainly worth seeing. The drawings were lovely and seeing the animal's heads emerging through openings in the rock was charming. However, rather than subject yourself to this very peculiar film I'd recommend getting a book out of the library and admiring the pictures while playing music you actually like.

Anne's rating 2/5,

The First Grader

The First Grader was my first watch of this year's NZIFF and it was a great start. A big landscape, an engrossing story, a minor history lesson, great acting and cute kids - what's not to like? And in case you think that all sounds a bit saccharine, there are some hefty doses of brutality - this is Africa, after all, and you don't have to look far to uncover injustice and bloodshed.

It's the story (based on fact) of an 84 year old Kenyan, Maruge, who takes the Kenyan Government at its word when it promises free education for all. He's illiterate, and he wants to change that, so he fronts up at his local primary school and asks to be admitted. There's resistance to this idea from both the teachers and the parents of the current pupils parents but eventually Jane the headteacher relents and lets him in. It's not all plain sailing once he's in - Jane's boss has a particular objection to him being there and insists he should be at adult education classes in Nairobi and not taking up valuable space in an overcrowded rural school. Jane gets round this problem by appointing Maruge as a teacher aide.

Meanwhile, we get Maruge's (and Kenya's) past in flashback. He was part of the Maumau uprising in the 1950s and his wife and children were murdered. He was imprisoned and tortured by the British. There's particularly poignant scene in the classroom when Maruge has a meltdown at the pencil sharpener as he flashes back to being stabbed in the eardrum with a sharpened pencil by a British Officer.

In addition we get to find out the effect that going out on a limb has on Jane's career, her personal safety and her relationship with her husband.

I particularly enjoyed the pupils rioting when the education board tried to impose a new headteacher on them, having banished Jane to another school 300 kilometres away. I also enjoyed Maruge interacting with the children and him paying his minibus fare to Nairobi with a goat (who came along in the minibus since there was nowhere else to put him). The happy ending completes a very satisfying film.

Anne's rating 4/5

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

I saw this 2002 documentary on Monday night about Garry Kasparov's second match with IBM's Deep Blue in 1997. The film follows Kasparov's view of the match and the related conspiracy theories. Unfortunately apart from some interviews with 3 of the Deep Blue team it doesn't seek the views of computer chess experts, so the naive views of computer chess by Kasparov and others are not challenged. The film is punctuated with shots of "The Turk" (actually a replica), which clearly signal where the film maker's sympathies lie. That said it is an interesting film.

For those of us who can't tell one Russian world chess champion from another the film gives us a background on Garry Kasparov's rise and his challenge to the reigning world chess champion, Anatoly Karpov (with those amazing ^ ^ eyebrows).

Garry Kasparov had beaten Deep Blue in their first match in 1996, winning 4-2 in a 6 game match (Kasparov winning 3 and drawing 2 games). But before the rematch in 1997 Deep Blue's hardware was upgraded to make it twice as fast and it's software had been improved and tuned by a team including 4 grand masters.

The six game 1997 rematch was played at an IBM building in New York. Kasparov won the first game easily and was surprised at how differently Deep Blue played in the second game. He offered a sacrifice and was taken aback when the computer ignored the offer. He went on to resign. He accused IBM of cheating, claiming that a human must have intervened during a 15 minute move. He publicly demanded to see Deep Blue's logs from the match (a demand he repeated before and after every game for the rest of the match). That night another grand master suggested that Garry could have forced a draw if he had continued.

Kasparov was convinced that computers were stupid and thought that all computer programs couldn't resist sacrifice offers and accused Deep Blue of not playing like a chess program. The next three games were draws but Garry was unsettled by losing game 2 to a computer that didn't play like a computer, by IBM's refusal to hand over the logs and the general attitude of a public relations conscious corporation. IBM may or may not have deliberately played on his nerves, but ultimately it looks like he was psyched out by game 6, which he lost hence losing the match.

Unfortunately the film doesn't talk to independent computer chess experts about the match. They might have pointed out that there is nothing implicit in chess programs that mean that they have to take offered sacrifices. It is just that comparing material is about the easiest calculation to put in a chess position evaluation function, and hence the tendency for chess programs to prefer to take pieces.

IBM retired Deep Blue after the match. The other conspiracy theory in the doco was that IBM's share price rose 15% because Deep Blue beat the world chess champion and IBM didn't want to risk someone beating Deep Blue.

Note that the 1984 Karpov Kasparov match lasted 48 games before being called off, they played 4 other matches each lasting 24 games over the next 6 years, so the 6 game match against Deep Blue was unusually short by comparison.

Here IBM's description of Deep Blue and of the match including log files.

Ian's rating 2/5