Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)**
Jason Kohn/Brazil/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
IT’D BE fair to say that Kohn is probably not the most popular man in Brazil at the moment. His Sundance-winning film takes a sweeping look at the corruption and inequality rife in Brazil, and makes a cogent and powerful documentary in the process. Employing a broad scope – arguably, a too broad a scope – Kohn surveys various subjects: a frog farmer, the Attorney-General, a kidnapper, a plastic surgeon, a businessman who fears being kidnapped, and a kidnap victim. They are all drawn together, somewhat tenuously it appears initially, but by the end make a strong case for Brazil rotting from within. It’s a dog-eat-dog (or frog-eat-frog) world, where the rich eat the poor, and the poor bicker among themselves for the scraps.—BG [Column]

Manufacturing Dissent
Rick Caine, Debbie Melnyk/Canada/2007 | Framing Reality
MICHAEL MOORE is the most important thing to happen to the world of documentary filmmaking. That’s a fact. But of course, his rise from enfant terrible of the underground to a mainstream celebrity was always going to set him up for the inevitable backlash. Enter Caine and Melnyk. In a manner that is never as self-consciously aping as Morgan Spurlock’s, the pair use documentary techniques, seemingly borrowed from Moore, to track and trace the man of the moment. Theirs is a quiet marvel of even-handed filmmaking. Finally the Michael Moore backlash really has some grunt, for here are two fans of his work doing their best to understand his motives. It is a perfect example of how documentary gold tends to arrive when you’re merely skirting around the edge, kicking a toe in the water, rather than panning away for all your might.—SS [Full Review] [Column]

Manufactured Landscapes
Jennifer Baichwal/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
THE EXPONETIAL growth of the Chinese economy has prompted change on an unprecedented level: thus most of the ground covered in Baichwal’s film is in China. In the voice-overs sprinkled throughout, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky talks of wanting to show the production that is required to fulfil consumption. The enormity of the factories, quarries, cities and toxic wastelands he captures, challenge the limits of comprehension. His photographs are cunningly revealed: a small detail is framed and then zoomed out from. Much like the opening shot, you think that these images will reach their limit well before they do. While avoiding “we have to take responsibility” soundbytes, the film amounts to a trenchant criticism of galloping global consumption. China got legs, who can stop it?—CB [Full Review] [Column]

The Matsugane Potshot Affair
Nobuhiro Yamashita/Japan/2006 | Worlds of Difference
YAMASHITA renews his fascination with social misfits in this quasi-Fargo affair involving a hit-and-run victim, a decapitated head, blackmail, rat poison, gold bullion, and backwater sexual mores. Clearly there’s something in Matsugane’s H20, a snow-covered provincial town whose local hairdresser pimps out her pregnant daughter to customers, and where a dead body on the side of the road is an opportunity for a feel-up. Meanwhile, two lowlife criminals coerce the twin brother of a police officer into helping them retrieve something valuable from beneath a frozen lake. Unlike previous outings, Yamashita’s deadpan manoeuvrings don’t quite achieve the same comic abruptness, but the situations are just as awkward, the mood as always unpredictable, and the spare and observant humour resoundingly unconventional.—TW [Column]

A Mighty Heart**
Michael Winterbottom/UK/USA/2007 | Opening Night
ANGELINA JOLIE (mostly) manages an admirable level of restraint as the beset wife of a kidnapped journalist, while the film does a good job of portraying events and feelings from Mariane Pearl’s point of view, and this is the lens through which Winterbottom informs our picture of Daniel Pearl. Seen mostly through her flashbacks, they do not attempt to speculate on the unknown details of his last days but remain focused on the confusion and chaos surrounding it, with crowded twisting cityscapes used to mirror these feelings. The regularity of an early morning call to prayer juxtaposed with the mad rush of daily life lends weight to the frustrated futility of their task. While certainly not Winterbottom’s crowning glory, this may well be Jolie’s as an actress.—JP [Column]

My Best Friend**
Patrice Leconte/France/2006 | Worlds of Difference
FANS OF Leconte will be pleased to see that he hasn’t stopped filming unlikely relationships. The premise, set up so swiftly you barely get the chance to reflect on how ridiculous it is, sounds like something more up the alley of Francois Veber. In a city where the locals are notoriously rude yet even the most casual acquaintances are greeted with kisses, this comedy of manners meditates on the problems with the tightest social bond – friendship. While some ad hoc details paper over holes in a contrived plot, Dany Boon steals the show as the rubber-faced Everyman who offers a new lease on life to an urbane broker (Daniel Auteuil) who thought he already had everything; meantime, Leconte finds the sophisticated and profound in the simple.—JS [Column]

The Night of the Sunflowers (aka Angosto)
Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo/Spain/2006 | Worlds of Difference
FURTHER tales of rape-revenge are relayed by Sánchez-Cabezudo, whose feature debut takes its thematic cue from the notorious but necessary Irreversible. Unfurling a series of unfortunate events in the aftermath of a traumatic sexual assault, the film considers not only the blindness of revenge, but also the unending domino effect that violence invariably spurs. Off-putting material aside, this a consummate thriller by any standard, propelling its portioned narrative like an incremental chain reaction, with various doomed characters providing the links in a tiered murder plot of mistaken identity. It is, however, much less of a neo-noir than its criminal element insinuates: blessed with an idyllic Spanish rural setting, there’s little ominous or shadowy to be drawn from a small provincial village bathed in golden European sun.—TW [Column]

No Mercy for the Rude
Park Chulhee/Korea/2006 | Worlds of Difference
ATTEMPTING to breath life back into Korea’s criminal underworld is this mixed gangster spoof that occasionally straddles an artful line between humour and seriousness, but is mostly restricted to absurd caricatures: a ballet-dancing contract killer for one, while the film’s doomed lead, a mute hitman saving money for a speech-correcting operation, is played by none other than Shin Hakyun. Whether a lazy typecast or an admirer’s nod to Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Park has a certain duality in mind, but never quite finds the right balance: the black comedy a second thought rather than the impetus behind a film that concedes ultimately, if ruefully, to the final image of a dying man, flailing in blood, cradled in the arms of his lover to the sorrow of orchestra strings.—TW [Column]

Paprika**
Satoshi Kon/Japan/2006 | Animation
THE LATEST love-letter to cinema from Kon cements his reputation as the most versatile and intelligent auteur in anime today. His take on an anime staple – the devastating effects the intrusion of science has on the natural order – requires multiple viewings, to make sense of a brain-bending plot but also to soak in the exquisite details of a richly rendered deluge of imagery and to play spot-the-allusion. Kon’s mastery of genre covers the detective story, spy film, oddball romance, pyschological thriller and sci-fi epic, and a heady host of homages range from the traditionally Japanese to Hollywood. While the eXistenZial subject matter has been well covered before, Kon’s strength is bringing serious psychological and philosophical questions to bear, without intruding on a really fun story.—JS [Column]

Old Joy
Kelly Reichardt/USA/2006 | The Way Ahead
BUSH’s AMERICA has never vegetated so much green in this spiritual roadtrip of two old yet fading friends en route to a mountain hot springs. With not a duelling banjo in sight, the mates get reacquainted on a weekend camping excursion of lost trails, roadside diners, campfire confessions, and ecological tranquillity. What’s startling about the film is how its sympathy for the American landscape frames an otherwise prevailing discord, where escape into the wilderness is quietly unsettled by an Antonioni-esque sense of estrangement. But these are also un-macho men seeking to bond with their environment, and Reichardt turns their solitude into a leisurely meditation that recalls Ceylan, Malick and Blissfully Yours. Economical, gloriously sparse, and ever so closely observed.—TW [Full Review] [Column]

Once**
John Carney/Ireland/2006 | Worlds of Difference
A LOVE STORY: lonely boy meets lonely girl, but as things always seem to be, they’re a lot more complicated than that. What unites the two is the music – this is a rather unconventional musical. It’s part kitchen-sink, part escapism (a kind of Dancer in the Dark without the mindcrushing depression of that film). Lead actor Glen Hansard is also the lead singer of the Frames, while the film is written and directed by Carney, formerly a member of the group. The real star, however, is Markéta Irglová as the girl. Her character is an absolute ripper – sexy, vulnerable, confident, shy, moving, funny – basically, it was no problem to see why “the guy” was after her. A wee crowd-pleaser, with Irglová’s performance one of the most engaging and sweetest in years.—BG [Column]

Paranoid Park
Gus Van Sant/USA/2007 | Worlds of Difference
VAN SANT’s latest film – about a skateboarder who accidentally kills a guard in a railway yard, and goes through a harrowing time trying to keep the tragedy a secret – does not disturb as much as Elephant in its questions of why seemingly harmless, dull and uninspiring youngsters suddenly turn hostile and brutal, but still makes one a trifle uneasy. Exploring the psyche of an introverted teenage boy, shaken by a broken home, a sexually aggressive girlfriend and the guilt of having killed an innocent man, he narrates the story in a non-linear form that is often dramatic enough to push us to the edge of our seats, and is free of socio-political agenda.—GB [Column]

Priceless**
Pierre Salvadori/France/2006 | Worlds of Difference
OWING the basis of its fairly clever plot to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Salvadori’s new movie follows the story of gold digger Irene (Audrey Tautou) and a smitten, but out of her league, admirer Jean (Gad Elmaleh) through various expensive hotels and exclusive stores as they live off the loneliness of wealthy older ‘patrons’. As Jean throws all he has, materially and emotionally, into bottomless pit that is Irene, each is slowly transformed by the opposite qualities in the other. Falling just a little north of bland the film plays pretty much as an Audrey Tautou vehicle, which, if you are like me, will still be fairly hard to resist. And pretty up the screen she does, but without leaving much of an impression.—JP [Column A] [B]

Private Property (Nue propriété)
Joachim Lafosse/Belguim/France/2006 | Worlds of Difference
ISABELLE HUPPERT, a festival staple, plays another parent refusing to adhere to obedient, motherly standards; her adult boys, hormonal and unmotivated, are of the lethargic generation, content to freeload and lay about at home. A routine domestic case study, perhaps, yet appearances can be deceiving: Lafosses’ film not only interrogates the fallibility of the parent/child/sibling nucleus, but also realistically demonstrates how families so often become estranged. How else the film unfurls its mounting tensions over property, divorce, and the resulting cycles of emotional and inevitable physical violence, is all down to performance: in slowly suffocating each other, the actors wring the material into a claustrophobic chamber piece buried somewhere deep in pastoral France.—TW [Column]

Red Road**
Andrea Arnold/UK/Denmark/2006 | The Way Ahead
NOT QUITE the Orwellian proxy it’s made out to be, this nevertheless transfers some of 1984’s high anxiety to the present day. In Glasgow, Scotland, a lonely surveillance operator happens upon a man from her past, first staking him out via a network of cameras at her disposal, before pursuing him directly in a confrontation that turns every rape-revenge movie on its head. Bracketed with the likes of Hidden and Peeping Tom, the film sure enough investigates leads in voyeurism, Big Brother-ism, and spectatorship, but is less concrete about its findings than suggested. Rather, Arnold’s CCTV conceit is a high-concept launch pad for a new kind of stalker movie: unnerved with the cunning of an Atom Egoyan reveal; elevated by a floating, hard-edged fidelity that draws out an unsightly beauty.—TW [Column A] [B] [C]

Rescue Dawn**
Werner Herzog/USA/2006 | Worlds of Difference
A DRAMATISED retelling of Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Herzog retreads the path of many a Vietnam War POW story – albeit one imbued with the director’s inimitable love for, and masterful grasp of, aural and visual details. Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale) is a German-born man who emigrated to America to become a pilot. In his first military action in this role we see him shot down over Laos; later, from the confines of a primitive jungle prison, he leads a daring escape. Beautifully shot by Peter Zeitlinger, Herzog delivers the audience right into the oppressive jungle heat and the awful monotony versus fear of incarcerated life. Though he might gloss up some of the elements of the original story, he doesn’t unnecessarily add to them either, and his style is so artistically sure that you can’t walk away disappointed.—JP [Column A] [B]

Retribution
Kiyoshi Kurosawa/Japan/2006 | That’s Incredible Cinema
IN THE LATEST from Kurosawa, J-horror is given a detective-story twist (or is it the other way around?). A Jane Doe in a stunning red dress is found facedown in a puddle at a riverside landfill, and when loner Yoshioka Noboru (Yakusho Koji) is assigned to the case, he is startled to find that the evidence seems to implicate himself. Kurosawa never flinches from Yoshioka’s desperate spiral into doubt and confusion, wisely ratcheting up the tension with slow psychological traps rather than cutting straight to the freaky fx. The upheaval of mental terrain unfolds with damaging consequences, as inexorable and pitiless as the rapid industrialisation and seismic activity of the Tokyo landscape. Recommended, as long as you don’t mind the usual ghost-story logic.—JS [Column]

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
Stephen Kijak/UK/USA/2006 | Music and the Arts
SCOTT WALKER was a giant pop star in the 1960s. He was a member of The Walker Brothers – a manufactured band that featured three young men who were, briefly, bigger than The Beatles. The most talented of the Walkers, Scott began to make solo albums; his fourth – Scott 4 – was a flop. He disappeared – only to surface every half-decade or so for the occasional cash-cow-flogging Walker Brothers reunion. Last year he released The Drift – and after years of hiding away, doing his thing far from the public eye, he invited cameras to record and document the making of his first in over a decade. That is the basis for this documentary – and we get to hear from many of the people who have been blown away by Scott’s work: Bowie, Sting, Marc Almond, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker... the list is long and impressive.—SS [Full Review]

The Secret Life of Words**
Isabel Coixet/Spain/2005 | Worlds of Difference
PARTIALLY deaf girl, Hanna (the luminous Sarah Polley), lives a life of monotonous and comforting routine. She works at a local plastic wrap factory, she lives alone, she never takes a day of leave, and most of all, she never really connects with anyone. Using her hearing aid to help serve this latter purpose, she regularly turns it off, thereby causing the unheeded world around her to fade away into the background. Into this muted realm of detachment Coixet takes us; tentative intruders looking through a one way mirror and not understanding the beautiful and disparate elements before us. A slow-burn, bittersweet story with an aesthetic depth to easily immerse oneself in, this is one of the sleeper films of the Festival.—JP [Full Review]

Sherrybaby
Laurie Collyer/USA/2006 | The Way Ahead
SOMEWHERE between Straight Time and Clean, Collyer’s film treads familiar ground: a junkie, fresh out of jail, resolves to turn over a new leaf, make good with her young daughter, fend off a whip-cracking parole officer, and win back the trust of her brother and sister-in-law. It also wagers heavily on the gravitas of its lead performance, and Maggie Gyllenhaal delivers, at least so much in painfully wearing the skin of a white trash whore. Her turn as a mother on the rebound is a dirty, desperate act in maternal affairs, at once swollen, naked, angelic and foul. Even after the intolerable Requiem for a Dream, movies about addiction ironically won’t go away, and while this film’s drug posturing is the equivalent of a ‘Holocaust’ vehicle (see: Kate Winslet in Extras) for its gutsy Hollywood star, it remains purposefully down-to-earth, allowing its hard knock drama to evolve and follow a natural course.—TW

Stephanie Daley
Hilary Brougher/USA/2006 | The Way Ahead
STEPHANIE (Amber Tamblyn) is a sheltered Christian teenager who is accused of killing her baby after giving birth to it, and then burying it, while on a school ski trip. However, she insists she had no idea she was pregnant, and it falls to psychologist Lydie (Tilda Swinton) to determine whether or not she’s telling the truth. Swinton and Tamblyn deliver muted but extremely effective performances; in particular, Tamblyn’s portrayal of an innocent young girl giving birth in a public toilet makes for particularly harrowing cinema. It’s not an easy watch, but Brougher has crafted such a compelling story that it’s impossible not to let yourself be drawn into this darker side of suburban America.—KC [Column]

Still Life
Jia Zhang-ke/China/Hong Kong/2006 | Worlds of Difference
CHINA’s colossal Three Gorges Dam is the extraterrestrial setting for Jia’s latest foray into the socio-economic surreal; a perverse dreamscape of industrial wasteland, scenic splendor, and frightening architectural feats. Despite having to contend with a perpetual polluted haze, Jia’s fifth feature is another work of astonishing clarity on the effects of a nation’s insatiable appetite for growth. Negating the still waters of the rising Yangtze River are two lost souls: a mainlander seeking his ex-wife, and a city dweller determined to confront her absentee husband. As the parallel search parties meander, the classic Jia landmarks are mapped out with acute familiarity: the polarity of old and new, the scars of unremitting change, and the human debris of those left in its wake.—TW [Full Review]

Syndromes and a Century
Apichatpong Weerasethakul/Thailand/2006 | Worlds of Difference
WEERASETHAKUL’s most breathtaking work to date is a striking tableaux of virtually motionless interior setups that gleam with the authority of Asian contemporaries Tsai Ming-liang and Hou Hsiao-hsien. A singular, spellbinding duplex of urban and tropical harmonies that merge, conflict, and eventually become one, the film observes the daily routine of a rural hospital on the fringes of Thailand’s luscious jungle overgrowth, only to double around and reboot from the beginning, albeit in a more sterile, urbanised setting. To make sense of it all seems beside the point when sound, image, and aura are made to converge with such miraculous synchronicity. Weerasethakul also fills his timescape with moments and memories of bliss and transcendence; bound to produce a smile, if not a refreshed appreciation of cinema’s possible worlds.—TW [Column]

Tales From Earthsea**
Goro Miyazaki/Japan/2006 | Animation
ANOTHER stunningly designed and magical milieu has sprung perfectly formed from the fertile and original minds at Studio Ghibli, as Miyazaki Goro dons his dad’s enormous shoes to give Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea narrative the anime treatment. The Legend of Zelda meets Celtic song, classical architecture and every fantasy world going in another morally charged but strangely Japanese story of young heroes, transforming dragons, and evil warlocks. Though an ideal babysitter for two whole hours, parents shouldn’t feel guilty if they hoard this treasure all for themselves!—JS [Column A] [B]

Taxidermia
György Pálfi/Hungary/2006 | That’s Incredible Cinema
EATING competitions at the Communist Spartakiad are only one of the bizarre settings that this film manages to milk for maximum offensiveness. But athletic vomiting is tame compared to the rest of the shock set-pieces Pálfi unleashes. The story appears written backwards: we have a taxidermist, now what are some truly appalling things he can stuff, and why? There are macabre glimpses of philosophy to be found deep among the guts and autoerotic fireworks over three generations of a disfigured and dysfunctional family, and I hope Damien Hirst doesn’t get any funny ideas if he sees the statement on high art in the final scene. Pálfi injects real imagination, élan and black humour into his exploration of the taboos of bodily experiences, so as long as you have a strong stomach and a bit of patience, there are plenty of batty ideas to chew over.—JS [Column]

Tekkonkinkreet
Michael Arias/Japan/2006 | Animation
PROOF that you don’t have to be Japanese to make good anime, American director Arias creates a stunning, haphazard world that at once owns, and is owned by, the two young boys. As their names suggest, they represent two of the opposing forces in the film, a classic good vs. evil tale that will be familiar to anime fans. The film is much darker than other well-known releases like Howl’s Moving Castle – dangerously too dark. Its fantasy sequences, while dramatic, slow the narrative down too much, while its story and message could have been delivered far more effectively. It’s a shame, because it’s so textured with symbolism and allegory that it would easily stand up to multiple viewings otherwise.—KC [Column A] [B]

Two-Lane Blacktop
Monte Hellman/USA/1971 | Out of the Past
A STANDOUT cult classic which emerged from beneath the 70s New Hollywood era, this is the definitive road movie all others try to approximate. Lacking the pretension present in much existential cinematic exposition, this is movie-making as accessible as it is enigmatic. Hellman’s mastery is in his economy: of dialogue, of colour and action, of people and place. He uses physical location as a character, building mood and flow essential to the movie as purposefully and effectively as he does with the actors. Open skies, unending roads, dusty towns, parochial roadside diners, and fume-filled racetracks all work on the contrasting psyches of our quartet of protagonists and Hellman captures this without having to verbally explain it. By these means he directs our thoughts toward our grasp on our own (everyday) lives.—JP [Column]

TV Junkie
Michael Cain, Matt Radecki/USA/2005 | That’s Incredible Cinema
IN A YEAR abound with bad dads, it’s ex-crack-addict Rick Kirkham who steals the show. As a billowy-haired reporter for Inside Edition during the ‘80s, Kirkham was first introduced to crack cocaine by officers on drug busts, and in light of his jetset excess and needy glamour he was hooked before you could say bad-career-move. But even as he eventually traded the glitz for married life, he couldn’t shake his love for the white lady. What ultimately saves Kirkham’s story from the glossy endzone of a million other wreck stories like it, is his chronic self-chronicling, having captured on home video the before, during and after of years’ worth of highs; totalling 3000 hours worth of footage, filmmakers Cain and Radecki, in an endurance test of editing, have streamlined this mountain of avowal down into the hellish-but-laboured 90 minutes.—DL [Column]

The Unpolished**
Pia Marais/Germany/2006 | The Way Ahead
BIROL ÜNEL (Head-On) again plays a hot-headed, self-destructive boho bum as well as second fiddle to a younger woman. This time round it’s the freckled Stevie (Ceci Schmitz-Chuh), who tries to live a normal teenager’s life despite her parents’ criminal proclivities and laissez-faire approach to raising their child. With a dual life in Portugal and a life on the run, it might look on paper like The State I Am In, but in exposing the selfishness and hypocrisy that lies behind free love and moral creativity, Marais’s debut film shares more in common with The Edukators. Life passes woozily in an abandoned house in the country, spent hooking up deals, hiding drugs and loafing about with slackers, but Stevie makes the real journey towards maturity and independence that her parents ought to have made decades ago.—JS [Column]

Venus**
Roger Michell/UK/2006 | Worlds of Difference
A GERIATRIC male fantasy, with a majestic Peter O’Toole transcending the genial late-life appearance of the film through plenty of f-words, c-words, and a youthful taste for pussy. In what is something of a twilight sequel to My Favourite Year, the veteran plays another revered actor on the outer who finds a foil – and much-needed companionship – in the barely legal houseguest of old chum Ian (Leslie Phillips). It’s Harold and Maude with a sexual understanding, and Maurice isn’t ashamed to tickle his 70-year-old libido – if Jessie (Jodie Whittaker, delightfully incorrigible) will let him. Prefabricated charms aside, O’Toole, who refuses to retire, can rest in peace knowing he got to live a little before signing off for good.—TW [Column]

The Violin (El Violín)
Francisco Vargas/Mexico/2006 | The Way Ahead
A POETIC, slow-burning film set during the peasant revolts in the 1970s, this deals with a brutal period of repression in Mexico’s history. Three generations of the Plutarco family are affected when the government move in, and each of the three are forced to act in different ways. Angel Tavira, as the elderly head, is magnificent, his downcast and impassive face hiding his revolutionary streak; he offers a wonderfully moving performance as a violinist who sells his art to the occupying military force in order to smuggle weapons to guerilla forces behind the military’s back. Formally constructed, expressionist black and white images complement a stark storyline while building a tension and drama all of their own.—BG [Column]

A Walk into the Sea
Esther Robinson/USA/2007 | Music and the Arts
A DOCUMENTARY unearthing the uncertain memory of Danny Williams, Robinson seeks to build a picture of the uncle she never knew. Her enlightening film leads us backwards from his mysterious disappearance in his twenties to his life in the midst of one of New York’s most well-known artistic hubs – Andy Warhol’s Factory. Backgrounded by swathes of Williams’ little-seen black and white film footage, various members of Warhol’s inner circle wax ponderously upon Danny’s place and person within The Factory scene. Robinson skilfully crafts together this multitude of spoken threads into a cohesive story of a talented and vulnerable young man. Highlighting the imperfect mechanism of human memory, her film simultaneously showcases the enigmatic cinematic work of a man ahead of his time.—JP [Column]

Wolfsbergen
Nanouk Leopold/The Netherlands/Belgium/2007 | Worlds of Difference
QUIETLY announcing its intended pace and tone, Leopold’s third feature slowly begins to set up a series of moments and micro-events involving a quadri-generational family in the midst of a crisis. As we move through this initially seemingly convoluted network of relationships, we come to know of a letter that has been sent by the hermitic family patriarch to his daughter and one of two granddaughters informing them of his planned suicide. This vaguely soap-operatic material is given a highly formal treatment: working with Cinemascope, Leopold frames her characters mostly in static tableaux; the empty spaces that press upon the characters married to the film’s distinctive use of long silences and the restrained, zombie-like performances an expression of impending death. Indeed, if anything, death is what the film seems to be about, both in its literal and figurative forms.—MA [Full Review]

A World of Shorts... from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival
Various/2006 | The Way Ahead
SHORT FILMS are an exceedingly difficult medium to do well. Not that short stories are easy to write (on the contrary), but short stories can capture wider issues and themes a lot easier than a short film. So to see this art-form done well is certainly pleasurable. Perhaps there is also an added element that few filmmakers once they’ve started making features, return back to the short form – consequently, it’s frequently young and vibrant filmmakers out to make a point who utilise the shorter form. And that seems to be the general trend here with this enjoyable collection of short films: among them, a trio of American shorts touting indieness in full blare; and three individually compelling films from Europe.—BG [Column]

You, the Living
Roy Andersson/Sweden/2007 | Worlds of Difference
DOGS, DREAMS and all things brass crop up around every pallid corner in this surreal twist on human life in all its depressing glory from Swedish writer/director Andersson. A series of nutty vignettes – all of which may or may not have something to do with the bass drummer and tuba player of the Louisiana Brass Band – uncovers the lighter side of neuroses and finds anxieties in everyday communication. The long, artfully composed shots and the spare dialogue mean the film feels a little like a chain of comic sketches, but the catastrophic weather, fascist imagery, unwavering irony and impossibly wan faces ensure that the greasy, filthy core beneath never remains hidden for too long.—JS [Column]

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