In our final dispatch of the year, we close the book on Telecom 2007 New Zealand International Film Festivals with two constrasting post-festival reports. TIM WONG wonders whether it is “a sign of a benign programme when Paul Verhoeven rocks your boat?”, while JACOB POWELL notes that “[for] fear of being underwhelmed at every turn redundant, I was consistently impressed by the quality of films that, in all honesty, I was expecting to be a little average.” And whereas his fortnight in Auckland consisted of “a whole swag of highlights with only two minor disappointments,” enthusiasm was harder to come by in Wellington: “for all the decorative fixtures at the TNZIFF 2007, movies to marvel at were in shorter supply.”

TIM WONG’s festival favourites included Black Book (“Verhoeven, never one to make concessions or ply the middle ground, insisted we all sit up and take notice: if not for his compulsive flesh and bloodletting, or the sexual artillery of leading lady Carice van Houten, then for the single, revitalising statement that war can be fun”), Inland Empire (“[David] Lynch may be losing his marbles, but there’s such vitality – and indeed, truth – to his filmmaking that he can never be accused of being arbitrary”) and Still Life (“the best in show, and a beacon above what was a significantly weakened Asian selection this year”), while JACOB POWELL’s highlights ranged from Deep Water (“lodged itself inside my brain and wouldn’t shift”), Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness (“a creative watershed turning humour, guilt, lo-fi production, and quasi-doco styling into a tragic and moving piece of cinema”) and The Edge of Heaven (“Fatih Akin takes his various plot strands and orchestrates a beautifully unfolding narrative ballet which unquestionably satisfies whilst subverting the traditional cinematic ‘need’ for tidy closure.”)

Their respective festival reports, Black & Blue and Redeeming Features, conclude The Lumičre Reader’s TNZIFF coverage for 2007. An overview via our TNZIFF 2007 Debrief collates all features, interviews, reviews and festival commentaries published over the past three months. With the festival still touring smaller centres in reduced form until November, coverage can also be summarized by month (June/July/August), browsed via the Form Guide, or recapped by way of these TNZIFF Dispatches.