The Captain and His Pirate

In 2009 a German container ship was attacked by Somali pirates. The pirates held the ship for 4 months, while the company tried to wait them out. Once the ship was released the captain, Krzysztof Kotluk, was criticized and lost his job. Andy Wolff interviewed the bitter captain in Germany and travelled to Somalia to find Ahado, the leader of the pirate and hear his side of the story. Wolff interlaces the two strands of interviewing to tell the story of those 4 months concentrating on the relationship between the captain and the leading pirate.

As Ahado explains it is a standard pirate strategy to turn the crew members against each other. In this case the pirates befriended the Tuvaluan crew and they partied and broke into containers together. The relationship also broke down between Captain Kotluk and the other German officers, leaving Krzysztof isolated and lonely. It turns out that the pirate is a better judge (and manipulator) of human relationships that the captain or crew. Ahado recognised what had happened and took pity on Krzysztof and developed a friendship with him.

This film doesn't explore why Somalia is the centre of world piracy. Nor does it explore why convoys with naval protection are not used to counter piracy (last used in a major way in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war). It is a more personal story of two men and how their worlds collided in 2009, and how they learned to respect each other. It raises, but doesn't answer the questions of why one leader failed to maintain leadership while under pressure while the other succeeded (the pressures they were under were obviously not the same). Is leadership a personal skill or a cultural construct (that will fail when the structures of that culture are weakened or removed) or is it a two way relationship between the leader and those being led (where blame for failure is shared)?

Visually The Captain and His Pirate is not a documentary that needs to be seen on the big screen but I suspect your best chance of seeing it, is at a film festival.

Trailer

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Omar

Day two of the festival took me from Saudi Arabia to the West Bank.

Omar, Tarek and Amjad live in the West Bank. Omar is a baker, and he's in love with Tarek's sister Nadja. So far, so ordinary - apart from the feats of athleticism that Omar indulges in to get over the Israeli's security wall to visit his friends. The three men organise the night time shooting of an Israeli soldier -Tarek masterminds,  Omar drives and Amjad shoots. This is where things get less ordinary -when undercover agents come after them, it's Omar that gets caught, tortured and imprisoned. To get out of prison, he undertakes to act as an informant but manages to avoid revealing that Amjad was the assassin. An incredible series of double crosses follows and when the credits roll, the jaws of entire audience were on the floor - not unlike the director's previous film Paradise Now which also takes place in the West Bank. The motivation of the main characters in Paradise Now was religious which contrasts with Omar's more political theme.

Omar and Nadja are beautiful to look at and their habit of writing each other love letters to read when they're apart is completely endearing. In an environment that seems crowded and under constant  surveillance this form of communication seems intensely private.We can't help but be deeply affected by their story

Talking about his film, director Hani Abu-Assad says "At the time I was interested in love stories, particularly tragic love stories, and political thrillers, and I wanted to see if these two genres could merge ". This film is evidence that  they can, and that the merger is totally successful. . The love story is more tragic than Romeo and Juliet's, and the chase scenes would do the Bourne Conspiracy credit. As the characters hurtle through narrow alleys and vault walls, the claustrophobic nature of the West Bank is emphasized. Underlying the whole film is Israel's iron grip on the Palestinian people - it's easy to see which side has the upper hand.

The director says "my job is to let the audience in an entertaining way live in a very difficult situation" . He did his job and you will be more than entertained. Don't miss this one.

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

The Deadly Ponies Gang

Zoe McIntosh does not want you to mistake The Deadly Ponies Gang for a mockumentary. I guess she'll like you to believe that parts of it are true, but you can take you pick about which parts, she isn't telling.

The Deadly Ponies Gang is an ultra low budget film about best mates Clint and Dwayne who ride ponies and try to pick up chicks. While Clint realises his own luck in this endeavour is low, he knows Dwayne is in an even worse position, due to his lack of teeth. The film follows Clint's quest to raise the funds to get Dwayne some false teeth, culminating in a gig staring the Rhymestone Cowboy. Along the way they give out Christmas presents to kids in the park, go to the beach, do some baking and go to the pony club to watch the girls riding their horses. There is also a cute break-dancing kid who apparently wants to join the gang.

Clint is one of the best exponents of inarticulate vernacular Noozild to grace the big screen. He makes Billy T. James look like he spent far too much time at toastmasters. Dwayne is the more bashful part of this duo. This pair are a reminder of what is lurking out there in provincial New Zealand if you can drag yourself away from your McCafe latte long enough to leave the safety of the CBD and inner suburbs. Look for the "Pony Poo $2" signs on the side of the road.

But you are better off waiting for Zoe (and Clint) to bring you this cultural gem to a film festival near you.

No animals were hurt in the making of this film but some ponies were made to look foolish.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3.5/5

North by Northwest

Over the years I have read about, seen stills from and possibly film clips of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and so I wasn't sure going into the Embassy whether I had seen it before or not. If you think about the plot, not much of it makes sense. Luckily Hitchcock doesn't give you much time to make sense of it, throwing Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) from one outrageous encounter to another. Starting with a simple case of mistaken identity, Thornhill doesn't have time to change his yellow boxers from when his ordinary day at the office goes haywire until he is sliding down the monument at Mt Rushmore in the penultimate scene. In 1959 Cary Grant was the equivalent of George Clooney today.

Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself "slightly" killed.

From a film makers point of view North by Northwest is a series of thriller set pieces joined together by an espionage plot. There is an escalation of danger and violence about each set piece, starting with a simple abduction, followed by an elaborate con job, the potentially fatal but ultimately comic drunk driving scene and so on, including the famous crop-duster chase. Phillip Vandamm (James Mason at his cool, condescending best) like the later Bond villains comes up with various elaborate schemes to deal with George Kaplan / Roger Thornhill, which the equally cool Cary Grant naively survives. Eva Marie Saint (as Eve Kendall) possibly has the most demanding role. Part girl-next-door, part femme fatale, with ambiguous loyalties she dominates Cary Grant more effectively than James Mason.

When I was a little boy, I wouldn't even let my mother undress me.

Well, you're a big boy now.

The three lead characters would not be half so cool if it wasn't for Ernest Lehman's script that keeps the audience interested and off the more absurd bits, even during the throw away lines.

I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.

It turns out that I hadn't seen the film before. But even 54 years later it has the same theme of betrayal and explores how intelligence agencies exploit the people that come within their grasp as this year's Omar.

You're police, aren't you? Or is it FBI?

FBI, CIA, ONI... we're all in the same alphabet soup.

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

Antarctica: A Year on Ice

Getting to Antarctica is tricky and expensive and probably most of us won't manage it. All is not lost, however,  because Anthony Powell, a New Zealander who has spent a long time working there, has become fantastically good at time-lapse photography and has kindly made a film so we can  all share in the experience. If you're thinking a documentary about Antarctica sounds worthy and dull, and that you've seen plenty of footage of this kind of thing already, you are just plain wrong. One of the best things about this film is that you get new perspectives on the icy continent.

The film features stunning  time-lapse sequences of weather, ice, sky, the passage of the sun around the sky, the stars and  the Aurora Australis. One of the new perspectives is how much more interesting the winter is than you expect. Although the sun doesn't shine for four months or so, that doesn't mean it's completely dark. There's the moon, the most stunning stars you've ever seen (light pollution being nil) and the amazing auroras.

A Year on Ice's other main facet is  life-in-Antarctica footage and quite a lot of talking heads. It's a  very personal story- Anthony and his wife reveal a lot about themselves and their lives and so do the other workers from McMurdo Base who feature. They are all personable and engaging and their enthusiasm for their location is palpable. They are the source of the new perspectives I gained which include how windy it is, how stinky a penguin colony is and how if you're going to work in the Antarctic and you're hoping to make the most of the scenery you should choose your job carefully.

If you're a fan of nature docos which are mostly just beautiful to look at there's plenty to satisfy you here - and you should be interested to know that Anthony contributed to the Frozen Planet series but saved his best footage for his own film! If you're more into human interest you'll be equally satisfied. If you'd just categorize yourself as a film enthusiast you should come and see what might be one of the few New Zealand documentaries that has wide public appeal and will do well on general release.

Anne's rating 4.5/5

Blue Ruin

Blue Ruin centres around Dwight, who lives rough in a seaside town, but gets some news that suddenly triggers a sense of purpose and he sets off on a mission to rural Virginia which stirs up a hornets nest of trouble. While Dwight turns out to be resourceful under pressure, he is not as gun happy as his enemies and he can't always think his way out of danger.

There is a sense of mystery in Blue Ruin because all the character know the back story so there is no reason for them to explain anything to each other, leaving the audience eager to interpret any scraps of information about the past to make sense of what they are watching. This is a refreshing change from most films where plots tend to be over explained or signalled.

This is very much a solo piece. Dwight is effectively in every scene with other characters arriving to help or hurt him. As a homeless man Dwight is an unusual choice for an everyman hero, but as we see him struggling against the odds and with various moral dilemmas that are usually glossed over in thrillers he becomes someone we can identify with. All the loose ends are very neatly tied up in the final scene as if to say to the audience - keep your soft city ways this is how we do things in Virginia.

It looks like Blue Ruin was partially crowd funded.

Ian's rating 3/5

The East

The East stars Brit Marling as Sarah, an ex-FBI agent, now working for upmarket security company Hiller Brood when her boss (Patricia Clarkson - looking suitably evil) sends her undercover to infiltrate an eco-terrorist group that have been attacking Hiller Brood clients. Displaying admirable field craft she tracks down the group and convinces them to accept her, though only the alpha female (Ellen Page) is suspicious of the wounded blonde new comer. The small bunch of 20 somethings live a somewhat idyllic life in an abandoned house in the woods. Between bonding experiences drawn from college life and new age cults the group plans jams (flamboyant eco-terrorist attacks) for which they are never short of resources.

The surprises and plot twists are effective, though the potential triangle between Sarah, Izzy and eco hunk, Benji (Alexander Skarsgård), is not fully explored. As an intelligent thriller this is in the same company as Edge of Darkness, though it suffers from being too black and white, it could have been improved with some more moral ambiguity. For some reason Brit Marling starts the film looking far too young (say 19) for someone on their second career but ends the film a few weeks later looking like she has aged 10-15 years. Despite this long list of failings the pacing of the film is good and most of these faults are only noticeable retrospectively. The main fault with The East is the wimp-out ending as the credits roll.

Ian's rating 3/5

The Best Offer

Perfect clothes, perfect furnishings, perfect make-up, perfect looking extras, in other words perfect mise-en-scène. Populated by bunch of off-beat to downright weird characters. Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) is Italy's premier art auctioneer, always dines at the same restaurant, sitting alone facing the wall while wearing gloves. He is completely confident of his superior knowledge of art, and is not above exploiting that fact to his financial advantage from time to time. One of his two friends is an electro-mechanical genius who can repair or rebuild anything and is a babe magnet. The woman at the centre of the film, Claire Ibbetson, is an agoraphobic who no-one has seen for 10 years. She draws Oldman out of his routine with a bizarre series of phone calls and outrageous requests that no-one else would tolerate. Even some of the minor characters are outlandish.

Actually none of these characters or their situation would be possible in real world and that should cause the penny to start dropping. If they were more realistic I would class The Best Offer as a rom-com, mystery thriller. But given the combination of a magically perfect setting with larger-than-life characters I'm going out on a limb and classifying this as a modern fairytale. It is pity that there isn't a bit more humour.

Even though the film is set in Italy the cast is all English speaking. It is as if the population of Italy has been replaced by British people, though with Italian tastes and Italian clothes! Like art itself there is more style than substance here.

Ian's rating 3/5

In The House

Even if you were a discontented middle age school teacher saddled with the worst class you have had the misfortune to timetabled for, being married to Kristin Scott Thomas should cheer you up n'est-ce pas?

Apparently not if you are the perpetually dour Germain, whose already low opinion of French teenagers is lowered further by marking essays on the topic of "what I did this weekend". Except an intriguing effort by Claude Garcia, where he describes visiting his new friend Rapha with particular attention to Rapha's mother and finishing with "to be continued". Claude is as good as his word and further episodes are forth coming and Germain starts giving extra tuition and ambiguous messages which Claude rightly interprets as encouragement to continue his voyeuristic invasion of Rapha's home and his infatuation with "the most bored woman in France". This is not going to end well as Claude takes advantage of Germain's eagerness for more episodes and with the amoral Claude in charge Germain's job and life are in jeopardy.

I'm sure school teachers will identify with the detail of school life from a teacher's point of view in the first half of In the House. The second half with conflict between pupil and teacher and between Claude and Rapha's family is part comedy and part psychological mystery. The ending is the weakest part where after the dust has settled Claude and Germain meet up again.

Trailer

Ian's rating 4/5  Anne's rating 2.5/5

The Act of Killing

A more efficient way to kill Communists

It is ambitious to try to get unconvicted mass murderers to talk on camera about killing people. Who would incriminate themselves like that?

Actually it seems that in Indonesia it is not too difficult. Early on in the documentary The Act of Killing, Anwar Congo admits that he killed lots of "communists" in 1965/6, other people interviewed either admit to their part in the massacre, or if younger they openly admire the killers.

The killings of 1965/6 were carried out on the initiative of the Indonesian Army and General Suharto who would then run the country until 1998. In their narrative the killings were necessary to 'save' Indonesia and hence the killers are heroes rather than criminals. Since 1998, the army, paramilitaries and many of the leaders from the Suharto period survive, along with that narrative. No-one has been put on trial.

Outside Indonesia the killings were initially seen as a 'good thing' by Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt in 1966 when he told The New York Times "With 500,000 to a million communist sympathisers knocked off...I think it's safe to assume a reorientation has taken place". But the West changed, it was no longer popular to view mass killing of people for their political views as a 'good thing' and the killings became lost in a guilt driven collective amnesia (a similar collective amnesia existed for decades about the 1918/9 Influenza Epidemic that killed far more people in one year than died in World War I).

In this environment Joshua Oppenheimer was faced with an unusual problem for a documentary film maker. It was easy to get his subjects to admit to the killings, in fact they almost gloated about it and certainly gloated about the power it brought them. The tricky bit was to get them to understand that what they did was wrong. While there are occasional attempts at self censorship, these usually occur after an enthusiastic outburst.

The Act of Killing is also a film about making a film. Before the killings Anwar and his pals in Medan were very minor gangsters scalping movie tickets because they were obsessed with American films. Joshua Oppenheimer encourages his subjects to re-enact their killings, in fact to help him make a film about themselves. Anwar Congo, his younger friend Herman Koto and members of the Pemuda Pancasila paramilitary group led by a cabinet minister enthusiastically join the project. Some of the scenes are dream sequences (both nightmares and happy musical / dance scenes) where Anwar and Herman play out the emotional consequences from their point of view (and we can see influences from film genres they've enjoyed). For reasons that are not explained Herman plays many of these scenes in drag.

A commonly repeated mantra in the Pemuda Pancasila is that the word "gangster" means "free man" in English. Where "free" implies free from the restraints of the law. And that Indonesia needs such "free men" to "get things done". It certainly seems that the culture of intimidation and corruption that came to power in 1965 is alive and well in modern Indonesia. It also means that Anwar et al are surrounded by people who steeped in knowledge that the killers of 1965 are heroes, a ready made support network.

The Act of Killing is a Jacksonishly long (159 minutes), somewhat repetitive and jumps back and forth (possibly over several years of filming). But eventually we reach the point moment that Oppenheimer was waiting for.

In my view The Act of Killing reinforces the ideas that a) normal (or close to normal) people are completely capable of evil and b) if you have a support network telling you what you did was justified then you probably will not recognise what you did was wrong.

Trailer

Ian's rating 4/5

My Sweet Pepper Land

An independent Kurdistan is one of the more intriguing possibilities that arose out of 20 years of conflict between Iraq and the USA. While that possibility is looking less likely than it did in say 2006, it has produced an autonomous region which in turn has led to Kurds doing things that they wouldn't otherwise be allowed to do. Such as producing feature films.

My Sweet Pepper Land follows our two protagonists as they each run away from family pressure to meet at the end of the earth, namely tiny an Iraqi Kurdish village near the borders with Iran and Turkey. The village has been cut off from the rest of Iraq since Turkish war-planes bombed a bridge 2 hours walk away. The main industries are smuggling alcohol into Iran, guns into Turkey and expired medicines back again all on horse back.

Baran was a hero in the peshmerga during the war and has since found it difficult to adjust to peace. Neither a job as a city police officer nor living with his mother appeal, so he requests a transfer. Meanwhile Govend's horde of brothers want to her to get married, but she wants to return to her teaching job at the remote village school. Both soon clash with the local chieftain Aziz Aga. Aziz Aga doesn't want an independent single woman in the village and neither does he want anyone interfering with his self appointed position as local enforcer and chief smuggler. Baran announces his intention to enforce the law impartially rather than just collect his pay cheque but rethinks this ideal once he meets the women's branch of the PKK.

My Sweet Pepper Land could all too easily be a political film, but the status of women is the only political issue addressed. With a local tough man and his henchmen, a straight-up new-in-town sheriff and a plucky independent woman; with guns, horses and wild countryside; with everyone's honour at stake and a sound track that in places is suspiciously close to Ennio Morricone's in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly we are in no doubt as to the genre. The western is dead in America but it still works in this corner of the world where the rule of law hasn't quite arrived.

Everyone knows what to expect from a western, so we get taken by surprise when My Sweet Pepper Land deviates from our preconceptions of the genre. The seriousness of the subject matter is liberally punctuated by deadpan humour which contrasts with the serious personalities of the protagonists.

Govend's prize possession is her Hang, a modern Swiss musical instrument that features liberally in the soundtrack.

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

Like Someone in Love

Like Someone in Love is a lopsided triangle of a movie. The base of the triangle is Akiko, a perpetually tired and badgered call girl / university student. She wants to study or sleep and hence escape her troubles, but finds herself cornered by the expectations of her pimp, her grandmother, her boyfriend, her client and his nosy neighbour. These expectations of her are ones that she is at least partly responsible for creating. All but one of these characters are desperate for love in various ways that impact on Akiko over 24 hours.

In contract to Akiko's passive role, her client Takashi, a retired professor, steals the show; metamorphosing from lonely old man, through reluctant agony aunt to knight in shining Volvo. Ironically Akiko's volatile boyfriend, the shortest side of this triangle, has the most honest intentions of the three but also poses the most danger.

In Like Someone in Love we are watching ordinary people doing ordinary things while trying to cope with their own and each other's desires. Everything is laid back and taken at a measured pace. The very ordinary interiors are beautifully shot. While some reviewers didn't like the ending I preferred it to some of the more drawn out endings I've seen lately. I left the movie unwinding it back looking for a point at which Akiko could have avoided the tragedy to see if it was inevitable or not.

Ian's rating 3/5

Blancanieves

Why would someone want to see a silent movie in 2013?

The novelty factor? Curiosity? Masochism? Ludditism?

Actually the masochism was entirely due to sitting in row M at the Paramount (rows M and beyond are not suitable for people with legs). It was curiosity to see a modern "silent" movie, and to see a Spanish take on the fairytale of Snow White, that got me to part with my money. As I hinted with the quote marks, Blancanieves is not entirely silent. It has sound track of music and sound effects but no spoken dialogue. It follows the original silent movie techniques in terms of its almost square aspect ratio, black-and-white photography, over acting and intertitles. The intertitles were in English in the version shown at the Film Festival. The almost square aspect ratio and the 1920's setting sells this film as a silent movie and the over acting meshes well with the fairytale script.

In terms of 21st century mores, Snow White is one of the kinkiest of fairytales. In today's terms explain why it is OK for a teenage girl to move in with seven older men, or why it is OK to put a (presumably dead) girl's body on public display in a glass coffin, or let a random guy sexually molest her? This sort of behaviour is only acceptable in fairytales. In Blancanieves we are in 1920's Spain and Carmencita is the daughter of a widowed matador who marries the scheming Encarna (whose sexual proclivities normalise the kinkiness of the Grimm Bros plot). Carmencita's childhood and Encarna's torment of her take up rather more of the film than they should but the pace picks up a bit once the dwarves come on the scene. Here we feel we are on familiar territory but we should realise that this version of Snow White has not been following the Grimm Bros (or Disney) plots particularly closely and while Encarma's demise is satisfying, Blancanieves' fate deviates from expectation to remind us that this version of the story is for adults.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Outrage Beyond

In case you didn't know yakuza usually wear black and always drive black cars. Or at least that is how Takeshi Kitano portraits yakuza. Middle aged, senior yakuza look and act like successful businessmen. Young upstarts look like successful rap-stars in suits and the footsoldiers look like secret service agents escaped from a Hollywood film. The cops dress like they got their clothes from a Salvation Army store. This is important because clothing implies status within your organisation and status is important in Outrage Beyond, as is the power of the organisation you belong to. Even the two most important yakuza clans acknowledge that the police, as part of the government, are more powerful than they are and so the detectives are accorded more respect than their dress sense would suggest. In particular this allows the ever smiling Detective Kataoka access to the top yakuza executives whenever he feels like it.

Detective Kataoka of the Tokyo organised crime squad doesn't seem have much reason to smile, the film starts with a double murder with the potential to become a political scandal and his bosses want revenge on the Sanno clan. Kataoka's strategy is to provoke a clan war between the Sanno clan and the Osaka based Hanabishi clan. This proves unsuccessful as does his attempt to stir up trouble with the soon to be released from prison Otomo (played by Takeshi Kitano). Despite the disapproval and bleak assessments of his more junior partner, Kataoka is an energizer bunny and eventually his attempts to stir up trouble pay off and we get to see a series of set-piece yakuza fights punctuated by negotiating and double crossing.

While you could watch Outrage Beyond for the stylish violent set pieces, it is a better experience to try and follow all the plot lines and plot twists. There is more plot and more characters to keep track off than in two or three Hollywood crime films.  Even a few unexplained bits of plot that might imply a sequel.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3/5

Wadjda

Wadjda is a ten year old girl who is an only child and she's a little different from her schoolmates. Her best friend is the (younger) boy who lives next door. They socialize on the trip to their respective schools - she walks and he rides his bike. She's not supposed to ride a bike because she's a girl but at least her trip to school is pretty carefree compared to her schoolteacher mother's trip to work. (Women aren't allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia,  so her mother and her colleagues are picked up and driven to school by an employed male driver. And if the driver is a tosser, your choices are limited by the fact you can't drive yourself). Wadjda desperately wants her own bike and is saving to buy the one in the local store - and she's pretty enterprising. She makes bracelets to sell to her schoolmates and delivering illicit messages from her schoolmates to boys also provides income. When she finds that a school contest involving reciting the Koran has a monetary prize big enough to buy the bike, she signs up - surprising the head teacher who has her categorised as a rebel

Wadjda  was a great way to kick off the film festival.  It's the first feature directed by a Saudi woman and the first full length feature to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and as I was being entertained I was pleased to feel that a local was telling me "so this is how it is for women in Saudi Arabia". It made me think of Pride and Prejudice - a thoroughly entertaining story, encapsulating life for women in a particular place and time, told by someone who was there. And like Britain in the early 19th Century, life for women in Saudi Arabia in the twenty-first century is heavily dependent on men  and they really need to be married to one. Life has a  bizarre focus on what random men are doing -for example, all the girls in the school playground are supposed to go inside if a man happens to be within viewing distance.

Wadjda's mum is an interesting mix of progressive and deeply socially conservative. She allows her daughter to listen to pop music, wear jeans and sneakers and hang out with her male neighbour, and yet she's horrified when one of her own friends dares to talk to a man with her face uncovered.There's a nice contrast between how she'd like the world to be and being deeply conscious of the price of inviting society's disapproval.

A great cast, a good script, an exotic location and gender issues addressed with humour make for a great watch,

Anne's rating: 4/5  Ian's rating 4/5