Audience of One
Michael Jacobs/USA/2007 | That’s Incredible Cinema
IN TODAY’s Godless world, the claim for divine inspiration as genuine artistic kudos may be a dead limb, but hell... some shit really does write itself. For instance, the story of one Richard Gazowsky, a Pentecostal minister from San Francisco, who, upon receiving the green light from above, embarks on a mission to seed the gospel by way of the box office. In this case, Gazowsky must’ve accidentally channeled Don Simpson, because getting his vision for a Christ-core Star Wars (Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph) off the ground requires a purported $200 million – no doubt to encompass such pointless extravagances as shooting in 70mm, as well as flying the entire production company to Italy.—DL [Column]

Bamako
Abderrahmane Sissako/Mali/2006 | Worlds of Difference
THE US may be heavily criticized in this trial drama where the defendants are no less than Capitalism and Globalisation themselves, but the most vehement excoriation is reserved for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the G8. Debt and endemic corruption have ravaged Africa’s civil services, and the Western solution – especially the privatization of health, education and the railways – is tantamount to homicide on a continental scale, argues the plaintiff. The speeches in the makeshift African courtroom are broken up with scenes of daily life in the Mali town: the production line of spun and dyed cotton, the sick and the dying... the local men smoking and drinking as they gather round speakers to catch all the testimony. The simple and powerful eloquence of righteousness gives a compelling and cathartic voice to years of unspeakable trauma.—JS [Column]

Bell toujours
Manoel de Oliveira/France/Portugal/2006 | Worlds of Difference
YOU HAVE TO wonder what would compel someone to make a sequel to a film forty years later, particularly given that Belle de Jour is one of the most iconic films of the 1960s, and Luis Buńuel one of the greatest directors of all-time. But this distance from the original adds a new dimension to the tale, and Oliveira’s own background infuses the film with a tinge of nostalgia and age-old wisdom. Michel Piccoli, who starred in the original as Husson, spots the former prostitute Séverine in the crowd of a Dvorak concert; he pursues her, wants to meet, but she seems to resist... This will be an infuriating film for many – a seven minute joke drawn out to seventy minutes. No doubt, Buńuel would have approved.—BG [Column]

Black Book**
Paul Verhoeven/The Netherlands/2006 | Worlds of Difference
A BOLD, brawny feminist war epic starring the drop-dead gorgeous Carice van Houten, Verhoeven’s film is essentially Army of Shadows with tits and ass, and trades regularly in nudity and sex. For the Dutchman, neither is complete without the titillation of violence, and there’s something reckless, if not dangerously arousing about his penchant for flesh and blood while dealing in the historical gravity of WWII. But it’s through a treacherous minefield of moral ambiguities and the blurring of friend and foe that Verhoeven manages to deliver truths about the war. It is in fact the kind of movie Spielberg used to make: loud, pulpy, wildly inflated, and utterly gripping. It also understands the decadence of war by simply allowing itself to entertain.—TW [Column A] [B]

The Boss of it All
Lars von Trier/Denmark/Sweden/2006 | Worlds of Difference
PROOF that von Trier has a sense of humour after all (Dogville’s scenes with James Cann do not count) can be found here: a preposterous method comedy of office space, Gambini worship, and passing the buck. Thrown into the deep end of an unorthodox acting gig, Kristoffer (Jens Albinus) must pose – or more precisely, adlib – as the director of an IT company, and the arbitrary nature of his job description is mirrored by the schizophrenic aesthetic of the film (brought to us by the randomised, computer-controlled spectacle of ‘Automavision©’). It’s jarring, consistently hilarious, and ridiculous beyond belief – indeed, there’s only so clowning around a film can take before its backlog of absurdity starts to cancel itself out.—TW [Column]

The Bothersome Man
Jens Lien/Norway/Iceland/2006 | The Way Ahead
THE KITSET paradises of Lego and Ikea come a cropper in this surreal Scandinavian satire. Andreas awakens one morning to the job, woman and life he always wanted, but gradually asks himself what’s the point of this fool’s paradise. Then Kafka passes the pen for Charlie Kaufman to have a crack, when Andreas uncovers a ray of hope, gleaming through a crack in a basement wall, to a life of possibilities beyond. The drained grey and azure palette is a perfect match for a wacky world of interior design and small talk, where the picket fences are so lovely you just want to impale yourself on them. The script is as sharp as a switchblade, the humour brutally deadpan, and the scores from Ginge and Grieg achingly beautiful.—JS [Column]

Brand upon the Brain!
Guy Maddin/Canada/USA/2006 | Worlds of Difference
BLESS Guy Maddin. Without his crazy surreal silent films, contemporary filmmaking would be a whole lot more boring. Claiming his film is 96% autobiographical, I’m not entirely sure if Maddin ever grew up in a lighthouse on a desolate island, or fell in love with a brother/sister duo sent to uncover his mad scientist father’s experiments on an orphanage on the island. No matter. It adopts a similar tone to his equally delirious Cowards Bend the Knee, abound with psychoanalytic imagery, psychosexual concepts; striking black and white images; manic, seemingly unrestrained editing; wildly melodramatic narration by Isabella Rossellini; and the utterly brilliant music by Jason Staczek.—BG [Column]

Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness
Laurin Federlein/UK/2007 | The Way Ahead
THIS UTTER odd-ball gem from Scotland is a beautiful, moving and hilarious work about one Vincent trying to convince locals of a great plan – that the people in the Scottish Highlands are lonely, and are in need of a mobile disco. Ultimately a film about solitude, it becomes less about Vincent trying to solve other people’s loneliness, and more about him trying to use this crazy idea to solve his own emptiness. It’s also a pseudo-musical, and was shot in gloriously over-saturated Hi 8 video. The Highlands become blazingly coloured, a surreal worldview that seems to reflect Vincent’s naďve (but touching) conception of the world. Charming, original, and definitely recommended.—BG [Column A] [B]

A Civilised Society**
Alister Barry/NZ/2007 | Framing Reality
CHARTING the reversal of values in New Zealand’s education system driven by the free market reforms of successive Labour and National governments from 1984, Barry demonstrates and laments the erosion of the right to free education in order to realise one’s fullest potential, and the resulting loss of the values of equal opportunity and community. It is also a film of protest and peaceful, but by no means passive, resistance to the policies of successive governments by teachers and their unions. Barry’s belief that “A high quality universal public education system is a fundamental requirement of an egalitarian society” pervades the documentary, as does a certain optimism and faith. Whether you agree with its politics or not, it is an invaluable resource covering a crucial period in New Zealand’s history.—HS [Feature]

Climates (Iklimler)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan/Turkey/France/2006 | Worlds of Difference
A PAINFUL, unapologetically downbeat film, Ceylan’s fourth feature exaggerates a story – Tarkovsky-like – with lingering shots of barely-moving actors, and trades so heavily in deception and rapid shifts in sympathy that any presumed moral centre is quickly undermined in favour of newer approaches. Ceylan himself takes the film’s lead role as Isa, a rougeish university lecturer in the throes of a painful break-up with his partner Bahar (in turn played by his wife, Ebru Ceylan). Ceylan’s decision to shoot in digital has allowed him to exploit the visuals, his most obvious gift, and there is no doubt that this is an ideal project for his first foray into the format. Although flawed, this is a film that wallows in its own anxiety and there’s a certain thrill in seeing cynicism portrayed with such enthusiastic accuracy and ironic beauty.—SW [Full Review] [Column]

Cocaine Cowboys
Billy Corben/USA/2006 | That’s Incredible Cinema
KICKING off to the unmistakeable tones of Jan Hammer, this documentary bucks and jerks like the brash beast it is. Though it flows in very measured movements, the constituent pieces within these are erratic, with sudden MTV-like cutting between current and archival footage (suggestive of the claim that it was edited on speed). Anchored primarily by interviews with two major players in the 70s/80s Miami coke scene, Corben attempts a broad sketch of Miami’s transformation as a city, and he certainly plays the film in the vein of a Miami Vice episode (keeping it cool and unconnected in its reality) but with a decent coating of irony coming through in the whole experience.—JP [Column]

The Comics Show
Shirley Horrocks/NZ/2007 | Music and the Arts
FROM ITS infancy, with the paper rationing of the 1940s, to the current explosion of indie and mainstream, DIY and Internet, Horrocks’ film concisely captures the amazing breadth and distinctive feel of sequential art in New Zealand. In fifty-odd minutes she sketches half a dozen intriguing potraits, each of which could support their own spotlight: self-taught pulp penciller Eric Resetar, who imagined the first All Black on Mars; the sinuous brushwork of bro’Town illustrator Ant Sang and his magnum opus Dharma Punks; or NZ’s Bob Crumb, Barry Linton, whose brilliant work on counterculture comic Strips and miscellaneous epics scream out for printing.—JS [Column]

Comrades in Dreams
Uli Gaulke/Germany/2006 | Framing Reality
AS THE LANDSCAPE of cinema becomes increasingly miniaturised and digitalized, it’s heart-warming to know that movies in their purest form – on a big screen, projected up large – still have the power to mobilize audiences and exhibitors alike. Documenting the modest-to-fevered trade of four independent theatre owners – from Burkina Faso, to the hoards in India, to small town Wyoming – the film makes no concessions in its valentine to celluloid’s role in globalisation (the proliferation of Titanic, included). Only in North Korea are they immune to the romance of Jack and Rose, where cheesy propaganda films are the pictures of choice. It’s a side of the communist republic we’ve rarely seen before, and Gaulke humanises not only his subject’s enthusiasm for the flickering image, but for country, beloved leader, and indeed life itself.—TW [Column]

Con Man Confidential
Alexander Adolph/Germany/2006 | Framing Reality
NEITHER Hollywood grifters nor smooth-talking David Mamet racketeers, four pathological opportunists form the rotten core of this revealing, infuriating journey into the dangerous minds of real life con men. Often gloating, occasionally remorseful, the documentary’s subjects confess to their crimes of deception with a common disdain for the greedy and bourgeois. They’d make great characters in a Michael Haneke movie if only they weren’t seduced by the colour of money themselves. Ironically, the foursome also try to con us with the rationale that if you’re gullible, you deserve to be cleaned out. This time, they’re fooling nobody.—TW [Column A] [B]

Control**
Anton Corbijn/UK/2007 | Music and the Arts
THIS BIOPIC of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis focuses more intently on the lead singer’s relationship with wife Deborah – hardly surprising, as it is based on her memoirs, Touching From a Distance – but presents a biased and one-dimensional view. Curtis is uncannily embodied by Sam Riley; it is when he is on stage, grasping the microphone like a shield, or dancing with the most memorable moves since Elvis shook his pelvis, that you really feel he is channelling Curtis. The b/w format works perfectly for this milieu, as it is distilled to a tender purity by Corbijn, whose pedigree shows in the reverent but never gauche scenes of the band playing live. The film ends with ‘Walk in Silence’, and the welling up of emotion induced by that song is an incredible thing to take away from a cinema.—KB [Column]

Cowboys and Communists
Jess Feast/NZ/2007 | Framing Reality
JOHN WAYNE and Joe McCarthy have absolutely nothing to do with this film, ‘a modern colonisation story’ about American and German gastronomy. Yes, you read that right – although the two nations are not exactly renowned for their haute cuisine, to Feast the differences between sauerkraut and a sloppy joe symbolises many of the struggles facing Berliners after the wall fell. The opening minutes of the film – an animated explosion of cultural icons that abridges the last fifty years of history in the German capital – really grab hold of the viewer but also highlight the themes of change and continuity that are central to the story.—JS [Feature]

Day Watch**
Timur Bekmambetov/Russia/2006 | Worlds of Difference
BY TURNS turns brilliant and completely bonkers, this quite isn’t in the same league as Night Watch, but Bekmambetov actually sets it apart from its predecessor. Still in place are the eye popping visuals, but this time it’s been thrown together with a degree of pure insanity: there are body swapping segments, and in one of the more memorably nuts instances, a love scene involving two women in a shower somehow ends up in a waterfall. To Bekmambetov’s credit, all of this is in perfect keeping with the ethos of the universe, and more stunning visuals bring on the apocalypse in an astonishing feast for the eyes, even if the film ultimately falls short in its denouement. Suspend your disblief and you will be rewarded.—DB [Column]

Death at a Funeral**
Frank Oz/UK/USA/2007 | Worlds of Difference
HOW WERE Bowfinger and The Muppets to fit into this festival? Oz serves up a clever little situation comedy choc full of laugh-out-loud humour – even if it regularly crosses the border into Stilleresque puerility – with Matthew MacFadyen as a slightly whiney, taken advantage of son, Daniel, who is organising the funeral for his beloved father. All the action takes place in the family home and the majority of the humour derives from the morass of family relationships which would resonate, to some degree, with most viewers. There are plenty of Something About Mary-style moments for those who swing that way, though the British cast and setting somehow make these far more palatable and charming than they might otherwise be. This terribly obvious comedy actually works for what it is – an easy, enjoyable laugh.—JP [Column]

Death of a President**
Gabriel Range/UK/2006 | The Way Ahead
FETED upon release for its controversial content, this faux-documentary looks into the realm of possibility if George W. Bush were to be assassinated. Given how contentious the President’s policies have been both at home and abroad, it’s not a difficult leap to make. On the eve of a speech in downtown Chicago, Bush’s motorcade is met with fierce opposition as thousands of barely controlled protestors take to the streets to vent their fury at his stance on the war in Iraq. Range accurately conveys the mob mentality and the claustrophobia – as well as the simmering hatred – within the protests. It’s no spoiler to reveal the President ends up dying, but the rest of the film concerns itself with the after effects – and how quickly the assassination becomes a focal point for change in Government policy both at home and abroad.—DB [Column]

Death Note + Death Note: The Last Note
Kaneko Shusuke/Japan/2007 | That’s Incredible Cinema
TOUTING a puerile logic and cult factor similar to Battle Royale, this detective story-cum-J-horror chronciles a mischievous Japanese death god, Ryuk, whose magical exercise book is found by our antihero Yagami Light, who soon discovers its power: write anyone’s name on it and they’ll die in forty seconds. Light seeks to use his new ability to free the world of criminals, but attracts the attention of the greatest detective on the planet. The game of chess that unfolds between these two prodigious intellects is leavened by the fanatical reaction of a public that obsesses over the deadly contest, in a way that you hope could really only happen in Japanese pop culture. While the female roles are token, the film has an edge in the technology stakes, and you’re guaranteed a good time one way or another – though you might want to check any adulthood you’re carrying at the door.—JS [Full Review]

Deep Water**
Jerry Rothwell, Louise Osmond/UK/2006 | Framing Reality
NOT ANOTHER tall tale of survival, but a quiet revelation of human fallibility, fraudulence, and compelling oceanic adventure, Donald Crowhurst’s solo round the world circumnavigation is embarked upon with little hands-on experience or rational thought. Trouble strikes. Unlike Touching the Void though, this documentary acknowledges just how fishy a person’s recollection of the ‘one that got away’ can be: in Crowhurst’s case, the stubborn sailor has grown a nose long enough for a spare mast by the voyage’s end. To reveal the extent of his skulduggery would be to spoil the film’s many unexpected shifts; needless to say, several unforeseen plot twists make this the stuff of movies. A story of burdered dreams, one can only imagine what Werner Herzog would’ve made of all of this.—TW [Column]

Destricted
Various/USA/UK/2007 | Music and the Arts
IT’S ODD that sex, something that is so natural and crucial to human existence, gets such bizarre treatment in cinema. On the one hand, there are the art films that scream and shout out their exploration of sexual taboos, and consequently only serve to perpetuate those very taboos. Suddenly sex moves from the enjoyable to the painstakingly depressing. Or, on the other hand, you get the bump and grind variety that manages to reduce sex to something rigorously unsexy, (and frequently exploitative), and yet is still a taboo – hidden away in curtained video rooms, and dark alleyways. So it’s potentially refreshing when a film challenges well known artists and filmmakers to reclaim sex on film, make some short films that can be intellectually challenging, yet also interesting (and perhaps even fun) to watch.—BG [Column]

A Dirty Carnival
Yoo Ha/Korea/2006 | That’s Incredible Cinema
PROPELLED by one extraordinarily brutal scene of turf war, this Korean crime story revels in the opportunity to choreograph as much flagrant violence into its dog-eared story of a gangster’s rise through the underworld ranks. Twenty minutes in, and the film seemingly peaks with a sustained sequence that can only be described as Braveheart with baseball bats meets The Firm. Though never quite reinjecting the same testosterone of his opening pseudo-Old Boy melee, Yoo applies the genre’s requisite components (the girl, the double-cross, the inevitable showdown and tragic denouement) with impressive urgency, and the film rarely strays from riveting.—TW [Column]

Dong
Jia Zhang-ke/China/Hong Kong/2006 | Music and the Arts
STILL LIFE’s companion piece converges on many similar instances of cultural shock and global craving: cellphones, Kylie Minogue, and the country’s insatiable appetite for change, symbolised in the Three Gorges Dam, an engineering behemoth scheduled to displace over one million citizens adjacent to the Yangtze River. As a documentary, it is ultimately less about artist Liu Ziao-dong than it is about the milieu he paints: firstly, more semi-naked men in the foreground of a disintegrating concrete-wilderness malaise; secondly, Thai models in confined, but equally artificial surroundings. Reprising passages from Lim Giong’s hypnotic scoring of The World, Jia’s film is otherwise indistinguishable from Still Life, and an indispensable third act at that.—TW [Column]

Eagle vs Shark**
Taika Waititi/NZ/2006 | Special Presentation
FONDNESS is hard to contain for this lionhearted comedy of irresistible geekery and inherent New Zealandness. As well as transcending the cringe factor of provincial Kiwi vernacular, Waititi cushions the oft-told whimsy of an awkward romance with a higher appreciation of the lowbrow, and a weakness for all things Wellington. Jemaine Clement is quite obviously at home playing a candlestick-making dweeb, but it’s Loren Horsley as The Girl who surprises and surpasses with an improbably infectious performance; at once gentle and exaggerated, it’s the stuff of an unfathomable crush. Though Waititi appears to be grafting the skin of a Michel Gondry concoction onto Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, the film’s soft-spoken modesty underlines it culturally. As for anyone seeking an antidote to the buffoonery of Sione’s Wedding, its appeal will be immense.—TW [Column]

The Edge of Heaven**
Fatih Akin/Germany/Turkey/2007 | Closing Night
AKIN’s film – winner of the Best Screenplay at the Cannes this year – bridges two extremely different cultures, two diametrically varied races, and even countries. It travels between Germany, European in every sense, and Turkey, whose Islamic tradition and culture is something of a hurdle in Istanbul’s fight to become part of the European Union. Akin’s work amply underlines this divide between what is essentially European and what is perceived – or, better still, fancied – by some as Continental, and like Head-On explores factors that segregate, but treads beyond to show us how chasms can be actually bridged. Precise, smooth, and shot with a refreshing economy of words, the picture’s near flawless performances add to its overall appeal.—GB [Full Review]

Exiled**
Johnnie To/Hong Kong/2006 | That’s Incredible Cinema
HONG KONG gun-ballet meets spaghetti Western in To’s epic, bragging an all-star cast, a superb score, and set-pieces that are destined to become classics. With a three-way duel, a vengeful widow, an underground surgeon, a desert trek, a gold heist, and even a little Italian, it’s as if To dug up Sergio Leone when he conceived his quixotic tale of four hard-boiled antiheroes. With the Portuguese colony about to return to Chinese sovereignty, the Triads have a license to print money, but To’s posse of triggerhappy rebels shows there can be honour, as well as duty and friendship, among thieves. There’s a lot of humour, but for the most part To ratchets up the tension before releasing it in a preposterously beautiful volley of bullets that John Woo or Quentin Tarantino would be envious of.—JS [Column]

Explorations of Folded Time: Leighton Pierce
Leighton Pierce/USA/2000 | The Way Ahead
LEIGHTON Pierce is a former musician who has been making avant-garde shorts on 16mm and digital for some time now. Pierce’s films are very sensory, and capture little fragmentary moments in life. He also maintains a strong focus on the elements, water, air, fire, wind and earth all make appearances and form a major backbone of his imagery. This is particularly evident in the opening film ‘Wood’, where fire and water intermingle to renew life by the final image, yet also according to Pierce, seeks to maintain “an overlapping acoustic environment”.—BG [Column]

Eye in the Sky (Gun chong)
Yau Nai-hoi/Hong Kong/2007 | The Way Ahead
THE CITY of Hong Kong comes under close scrutiny in Yau’s debut film, though he’s less concerned with the politics of privacy and surveillance than you might think. The former British colony’s bustling streets provide ample cover for a special division stakeout unit trailing an elusive crew of jewelry thieves in this efficient, tersely orchestrated policier which borrows liberally from 24’s mission control management of crack field teams – minus the gun-toting posturing and Kevlar vests. There are no grey areas in this black and white thriller – it is genre executed with ease – though cisually earns bonus points for its rather complex mise-en-scene of inconspicuous camera angles choreographed across a labyrinth of urban terrain.—TW [Column]

Falkenberg Farewell
Jesper Ganslandt/Sweden/2006 | The Way Ahead
THIS IS a movie about man-love. Or is it boy-love? Either way, this quietly beautiful film captures that limbo between youth and adulthood, a time of no direction, promise, confusion, loss, and dreams. It follows the last summer of five youths growing up in small-town Falkenberg, Sweden, and draws real power from its relationship to ‘real-life’. The five friends are played by the friends themselves, re-living this period and its memories as the film builds towards tragedy; symbolically and in reality, life will never be the same. There’s a nagging sense that these are real memories, the diaries and the tragic conclusion are actually real, and the film’s emotional pull becomes even greater and far more pronounced as a result. A moving and haunting film that captures this crucial moment of life so well.—BG [Full Review] [Column]

A Few Days in September**
Santiago Amigorena/France/Italy/2006 | Worlds of Difference
WHAT SEEMS like a rather coy title for a spy film begins to look like a pompous gesture – Amigorena’s film unravels a certain conspiracy in 2001 that will have shattering economic effects on stateside investments – but ultimately contributes to an interesting reflection on the different attitudes either side of the Atlantic. Juliette Binoche is outstanding as canny French spy Irčne, but it is the poetry-spouting polyglot assassin William Pound, played brilliantly by John Turturro, who steals the show. You’d never know the Cold War was over watching these secret agents operate in a rather old-fashioned game of cat and mouse, but Amigorena’s exploration of family dynamics and willingness to innovate ensure that there’s more to this than the inspired performances from Binoche and Turturro.—JS [Column] [Feature] (Film Reader)

Forever
Heddy Honigmann/The Netherlands/2006 | Framing Reality
THERE’s something majestic, something foolhardy, something particular vain about the human condition that gets represented in cemeteries. It’s an attempt to reverse the mutability of life with an ever-lasting monument. Dutch documentary maker Honigmann seems to share similar view, and wanders Paris’ Pčre-Lachaise – which houses many of the world’s greatest artists – capturing moments of life and transcendence. It’s a beautiful work that aims to show that by looking at death, we can also find traces of life. However, Honigmann doesn’t only focus on the great artistic figures. She looks at people who visit their loved ones, deceased spouses or parents. In this way, she also suggests love is a way of transcending death. A moving tribute to life, art and love through death.—BG [Column]

Four Minutes
Chris Kraus/Germany/2006 | Worlds of Difference
MONICA Bleibtreu plays Frau Traude Krüger; her wry, brusque manner is possibly conducive to a sixty year long career at the prison, teaching criminals of all cut and creed to play the piano. Hannah Herzsprung snarlingly, scowlingly, heaves life into convicted murderer Jenny. If Kruger can prune Jenny’s wild unharnessed musical genius, and Jenny can let herself be taken under Kruger’s tutelage, both could find redemption, of sorts, at an upcoming Young Pianist Competition. So the story is a classic coach and protégé piece, where starkly opposite but bound together – first by love of the game, then by tenderness towards each other – teacher and student confront demons and make revelations about their pasts as they hurtle towards the final tournament.—MM [Column]

Freedom’s Fury**
Colin Gray/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
A LOOK into the so-called bloodiest game in Olympic history, a mere sporting encounter at what was the “Friendly Games” in Melbourne during the height of global conflict – the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. Leading up to the fateful events of October/November 1956, the Hungarian waterpolo team was the most successful team in the sport’s history. But as the Revolution took place, and high numbers of their countrymen were being killed by the Soviets, it meant the Olympics suddenly paled in significance to many in the team. However, when they did play in the Olympics, events conspired to force a highly dramatic semi-final encounter with the Soviets themselves.—BG [Column]

The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief
Jake Clennell/UK/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
FORTY YEARS ON, and Japan’s “water trade” has evolved once more: catering exclusively for female clientele, somewhere deep within Osaka resides a club occupied by an elite brethren of ‘host boys’, and their magnetic, if ultimately tragic leader, Issei. Though the job description remains the same, cultural change has given birth to a new monster entirely, and this film gets under the skin of what on the surface appears to be just another throwaway leisure pursuit. And while the crushing irony needn’t be divulged, what’s plain to see is the vicious cycle imposed, with Issei’s hosts operating with all the guile of Nigerian fraudsters. Clennell insists his documentary is of the nonjudgmental variety, but its final verdict is damning yet sour tasting: the victims unchanged despite the reversal of roles.—TW [Column A] [B]

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints**
Dito Montiel/USA/2005 | Worlds of Difference
THE REMARKABLE genre of Montiel’s film – an adaptation of the rookie writer-director’s memoirs – reflects its major theme: real growth and progress can only come through re-experiencing the destructive youth Montiel left behind. Perhaps such public and audacious therapy could only come from America, but as Montiel sees his friends destroyed by the ethnic pressure cooker that is 1980s Queens, escape is the only sane way out, even if it means forsaking a family and community that can’t comprehend change. Robert Downey Jr. and Shia LaBeouf both excel as Montiel, but Channing Tatum’s portrayal of Dito’s stubborn, brutish pal Antonio, who spirals out of control as he struggles to figure out where he belongs a world that has only shown him violence, is as terrifying and compelling as a four-car pileup.—JS [Column]

Half Nelson**
Ryan Fleck/USA/2006 | The Way Ahead
THOUGH focusing on the inspirational teacher motivates dispossessed student relationship, this is no Dangerous Minds – the characters are believable, the acting decent, and the moral muted. Daniel Dunne (Ryan Gosling) teaches basketball and history in a Brooklyn school. At home he does drugs. When his student, 13-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps), finds him tripping in the toilets, she becomes his new best friend – an insubstantial basis for a friendship perhaps, but the acting is so good that it works; Gosling is perfectly understated and Epps is the best child actor I’ve seen in a long time without a hint of cutesy precociousness. Devoid of big bang moments but extremely well-crafted, nothing is accidental in Fleck’s thought provoking film, the memory of which remained long after.—KB [Column]

Hand Painted Under Camera
Various/2006 | Animation
A COLLECTION of pain-stakingly animated shorts with enough ideas, styles and voices in 69 minutes to sustain a whole festival. When every frame is hand-painted, you’d think everything would be streamlined as economically as possible, but the lyrical centerpiece Alexander Petrov’s of ‘My Love’ unfolded with all the richness and decadence of a dozen Russian Empires. Weaving an oneiric tale of upstairs-downstairs passions, Petrov has lovingly painted a gallery of impressionistic landscapes and portraits but never forgotten the real focus on depth of theme and character. Well worth the admission price on its own. Also deserving mention: Martha Colburn’s ‘Destiny Manifesto’, which connects the twitchy Wild West and the moribund Middle East with red ribbons of guilty post-colonial blood.—JS [Column]

Homegrown: Works on Film**
Various/NZ/2006/07 | The Way Ahead
PLAYING early in this year’s festival programme, 2007’s Homegrown selection (presented c/o the wonderful crew at MIC Toi Rerehiko) is quite inspiring. Last year there were a few good little pieces amongst some so-so ones; this year there were some really moving examples amongst a stable full of starters. No newbies this year, but a couple of second-time directors, including a return by 2006 entrant Tearepa Kahi with his new short Taua. Raising the bar further on an already impressive standard, this is not a year to miss out on our NZ short film catalogue.—JP [Column A] [B]

Homegrown: Works on Video**
Various/NZ/2006/07 | The Way Ahead
THIS YEAR’s Homegrown digital programme presents somewhat of a mixed bag, replete with shorts that take you from contemplative musing to shock and anger, heart-warming smiles to several minutes of cringefest. Themes and genres are also widespread, covering comedy, horror-western, shockumentary, experimental and stylised drama-cum-mystery. Overall, the standard was reasonably high – complementing the trend in Works on Film. Offering disturbing but interesting subject matter, clever visual presentation, and strong message of motivation and support, The Butcher’s Wife is a deserved standout in this year’s selection, while another highlight has to be Kirsten Green’s charming little romance short, Fish’n’Chip Shop.—JP [Column]

How is Your Fish Today?
Xiaolu Guo/China/UK/2007 | The Way Ahead
WITH AN oddball title, and a premise that plays between fiction and reality, this might be seen as a Chinese riff on Charlie Kaufmann, or could just as easily be tarred with that reductive label ‘quirky’. However, this would be to ignore the film’s thematic concerns, meditative mood, and subversive streak. It looks at a struggling scriptwriter, Rao Hui, who gets a commission to write a story about Lin Hao, a man who in the fictional story murdered his wife. His first script is rubbished, and consequently Rao draws himself into the proceedings more and more as he writes again. Eventually the film becomes a blur of make-believe and real, and ultimately, what images are shown cannot be trusted as being true. In this respect, it questions the veracity of propaganda, and exults in the disrepute of images.—BG [Column]

I Served the King of England**
Jirí Menzel/Czech Republic/Slovakia/2006 | Worlds of Difference
COMEDIES from the Czech Republic come with high expectations nowadays, and this period class-farce didn’t disappoint. The whimsical humour has a charming and timeless appeal to it, and the wistful philosophy provides amusing diversion rather than real distraction. Celebrating life’s pleasures and the appreciation of food, women, money and Pilsner, Menzel’s film is realised gorgeously in a series of staggeringly opulent visual feasts. Ivan Barnev is impossibly likeable as the crafty but clueless young Díte, who manages to turn an unlikely profit even during Nazi occupation. The Germans in particular are pilloried so mercilessly that even the stiffest salutes and purest eugenics – particularly from the excellent Julia Jentsch – are only laughable to the merry, indomitable Czechs.—JS [Column A] [B]

Inland Empire**
David Lynch/USA/2006 | Worlds of Difference
BY TURNS infuriating and exhilarating: whereas cinema’s dream curator struck gold with the relatively logical narrative capsizing of Mulholland Drive, his latest plunges deeper in search of Hollywood’s back entrances and dark portals, and rarely if ever resurfaces for air. While bewilderment is synonymous with Lynch movies, this is so far removed neurologically from anything else in the director’s oeuvre that Lost Highway comes across as unfurnished and comparatively sane; thus, in achieving singularity, it approaches the very edge of insanity. Laura Dern, magnificent, stars as an actress cast in a promising melodrama – a Polack folktale which just happens to be a remake of a cursed screenplay. There are also phantom prostitutes, musical numbers, sitcom rabbits, copious cameos, and ever-present signs of lurking evil to contend with.—TW [Column]

Jesus Camp**
Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
A FREQUENTLY hilarious, often frightening look at evangelical followers of the Christian faith who believe that the future of religion is their children; where kids are being groomed to believe in God and to follow blindly as a soldier in his army. Grady and Ewing’s film is captivating; rather than inserting themselves into the film, they sit back and let the evangelists do the talking (that which they do best, regardless of whether it makes complete sense or not). It also deals with a wider issue, that the extreme religious right is promulgating the ignorance and war-mongering of the current American government, but the movie never mires itself in this murky polemic, while brilliantly allowing the audience to choose a side of the fence, and sit and observe from there.—SS [Column A] [B]

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten**
Julien Temple/Ireland/UK/2006 | Music and the Arts
TEMPLE’s documentary on deceased Clash frontman Joe Strummer isn’t quite the hagiography that it could be. It manages to be an honest and sincere portrait of the man born John Mellor. And there is, of course, reason to rave. The Clash were brilliant – still are. Strummer was a man who loved life and a musician who loved all kinds of music – it sounds like the most terrible cliché, but it’s true, and this is the ultimate testimony to that fact, bringing with it a dynamite soundtrack that traverses the reggae and rockabilly roots of punk – on through the challenging metal and new-wave angles that pushed against and pulled away from punk.—SS [Full Review] [Column]

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen
Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn/Canada/Denmark/2007 | Worlds of Difference
KUNUK’s and Cohn’s follow-up to Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is based on the journals of a Danish-Inuit anthropologist who documented Inuit folklore, culture, and history during the 1920s. The overall perspective of their film, however, skews towards Rasmussen’s subjects, especially the respected shaman Avva, and explores the ebbs and flows, moods and rhythms of these intermittent encounters, which have been distilled to fascinating conversations within the cramped spaces of Avva’s warmly-lit sod-hut, interrupted only when the camera ventures outside in the snow-covered landscape to observe daily life in the colony, usually accompanied by Avva’s fantastic narrations of his experiences as a shaman, a position which now nears extinction due to encroaching Christianity.—MA [Full Review]

Killer of Sheep
Charles Burnett/USA/1977 | Out of the Past
A DIRECT response to blaxploitation and the limited portrayals of blacks in Hollywood, Burnett released his film in 1977 – which has never had a distribution deal or been made available on video or DVD – but its initial run, while highly important to a new generation including Spike Lee, was limited. It was a film more talked about than seen. A valuable document in itself, it tells the life of a family and assorted hanger-ons in South-Central Los Angeles. Broadly drawn but intimate in scope, it’s populated by miniature moments, authenticity, and is highly political in effect and tone. But even more, it’s a rare privilege to see such a piece of filmmaking that shows real-life as bleak, funny, high-spirited, crushing, happy and angry. In essence, as life really is.—BG [Full Review] [Feature]

La vie en rose**
Olivier Dahan/France/2007 | Centrepiece
A STUNNING, dramatic and at times brutal film. Marion Cottilard plays Piaf like a confused, wounded bird – her wide blue eyes are what stay with you. The film is not so much interested with the details of Piaf’s professional life, although her rise to fame is charted, but with her personal life – a stream of tragedies that lead to her drug abuse and early death. Although she emerges a triumphant French heroine, her background and coarse private persona are thoroughly (and at some points scathingly) exposed. This is what makes this biopic rise above the rest – it truly interrogates its subject. This ethic, coupled with Cottilard’s dedicated performance and Piaf’s amazing songs makes Dahan’s film an excellent centrepiece for the Festival and illuminating viewing for anyone interested in Piaf and her music.—HS

Lady Chatterley
Pascale Ferran/France/Belgium/2006 | Worlds of Difference
THIS adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s seminal novel fails to capture much the essence of discovery and release the book so powerfully conveys. The film’s moments of contemplative nature footage, and a retro outfitting of handheld camerawork are aesthetically pleasurable but ultimately plodding, surface level and without spirit. Marina Hands is indeed a sublime looking Lady Chatterley, but under Ferran’s direction, plays her as a sexy, naďve and innocently alluring girl; rather than as a young, sheltered woman repressed by social roles. In depicting her so the focus of the film shifts from Chatterley’s important, vital emancipation into a study in female beauty; and the contentious, moving and challenging heart of the novel becomes sadly lost amongst a film of bare breasts and meaningless autumn colours.—MN [Column]

Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man
Lian Lunson/USA/2005 | Music and the Arts
BASED AROUND the 2005 70th birthday tribute concerts, this is essentially a live concert show with some talking-head interview slots fleshing it out just enough to justify it as a documentary. Nonetheless it’s a great glimpse in to the world of Leonard Cohen. As a confessional writer, Cohen has always allowed plenty of his psyche in to his work, but only measured amounts of his actual life, so anyone disappointed at the fact that this music doco doesn’t quite dish the dirt is missing the point – to celebrate the man’s work, something Cohen seems incapable of doing himself, hardly touring, recording only sporadically and never, as he basically says himself, looking back.—SS [Full Review] [Column]

The Lost
Chris Sivertson/USA/2005 | That’s Incredible Cinema
LIKE A Gregg Araki film, but without any humour, Sivertson revels in the nihilism of youth. The resulting picture is, among other things, reprehensible, misogynistic, and utterly abhorrent. Ray Pye is a small town stud who guns down two ‘lezzies’ in the bush one night, bullies his terrified friends into disposing of the bodies, and returns home to live out his bottomless Norman Bates existence – though this is much less Hitchcock worship than it is wholesale American Psycho. A narcissistic, stovepipe-suffocated proxy for Patrick Bateman (complete with sociopathic smirk), he lures several women into his web, before acting out an obscene emo-fantasy against the world.—TW [Feature]

Love Story
Mike Kerry/Chris Hall/UK/2006 | Music and the Arts
THE TALE of cult L.A band, Love. First time directors Kerry and Hall tell the band’s story via talking head interview snippets, mixing in some great archival footage. The era is beautifully evoked, hazy and dreamy – with John Densmore (drummer for The Doors) adding an outside-but-related perspective. It’s not quite as personal as The Devil And Daniel Johnston or the splendid Roky Erikson film from last year – but it’s a similar story; one of a musical act falling apart at the seams. Its British filmmakers, however, do not really get at the dissipation of the band – the drug issue is raised – and though this never falls into total hagiography it is intended to be a loving portrait of an important, but overlooked band.—SS [Full Review]

* Also screening in Christchurch
** Also screening in Christchurch and Dunedin