Capsule Reviews are by the following: Alexander Bisley (AB), Brannavan Gnanalingam (BG), Catherine Bisley (CB), Caleb Starrenburg (CS), Darren Bevan (DB), David Levinson (DL), Jacob Powell (JP), Joe Sheppard (JS), Kate Blackhurst (KB), Nina Fowler (NF), Roseanne Liang (RL), Thomasin Sleigh (TS), Tim Wong (TW).

Animation Now!**
Various/2008 | Animation Now » [Full Review]
Innovation within a traditional framework is alive and well in this year’s selection, with everything from blue painted blobs to an extraordinary live action/puppet hybrid used to sublime effect in this year’s Oscar-nominated finale piece, Madame Tutli-Putli.—RL

The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins**
Pietra Brettkelly/NZ/2008 | Portrait of the Artist » [Full Review]
Artist Vanessa Beecroft, in Sudan photographing her latest body of work, attempts to adopt Sudanese ‘orphan’ twins. “Intelligently paced and edited... Brettkelly does not try to over-simplify the story but instead manages to show that Beecroft is a complicated person and these are complicated issues... in her opened ended and fluid style she offers the audience the opportunity to give these controversial and pertinent issues the consideration they deserve.”—TS

Bigger, Stronger, Faster***
Christopher Bell/USA/2008 | Framing Reality » [Full Review A] [B]
The game is rigged according to Bell, who airs America’s dirty linen by way of its history in anabolic steroid use and performance enhancing drugs. “Far too overreaching to claim itself as a definitive or even cogent documentary on the subject... Yet as a morality play, this one-man odyssey is an engaging three-act: Bell’s internal conflict a monologue central to the documentary’s lack of surety.”—TW

Boy A
John Crowley/UK/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Crime and punishment figures in Crowley’s (Intermission) sophomore film, about a young man emerging from an entire adolescence spent behind bars. “Well thought out and sensitively played... a meditation on the formation of identity which does a nice job of opening up some dark, uneasy issues that deserve to be thought about.”—JP

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures**
Chris Waitt/UK/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review]
When filmmaker Waitt is dumped with no explanation, he decides to track down and interview his cavalcade of former girlfriends to learn why his romantic-life is so spectacularly unsuccessful. “Too staged to ring entirely true; yet Waitt is such an endearingly self-effacing character it ultimately doesn’t matter. A clever and compelling exercise in humiliation-comedy.”—CS

Derek
Isaac Julien/UK/2008 | Portrait of the Artist » [Full Review]
Tilda Swinton recites passages from her Derek Jarman memorial ‘Letter to an Angel’ in this enlightening artist portrait comprised of extracts from a candid 1991 interview, and clips from the iconoclastic director’s 8mm archive and feature film oeuvre. “Julien’s synthesis of the Jarman legacy benefits from clarity, dignity, and quiet worship... a timely refresher given the re-emergence of Todd Haynes; the gay filmmaker’s breakthrough Poison very much Jarman-esque, and debt owning.”—TW

The Duchess of Langeais
Jacques Rivette/France/2007 | Masters » [Full Review]
Rivette’s (Celine & Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse) latest, an intensely acted Balzac adaptation. “A mischievous film underneath all its intensity – a film that I’d have passed off as lesser Rivette if it hadn’t brooded with me for days afterwards. Even when he moves at a faster pace, the old master knows what he’s doing.”—BG

Eat, for This is My Body
Michelange Quay/Haiti/France/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Conceptual, anachronistic mood piece set in post-colonial Haiti, staged across a series of surreal, strikingly rendered episodes. “Pitched somewhere between anthropology and a Matthew Barney film... Quay’s waking dream occasionally gives rise to the sublime, making the most of its scorched Haitian topography: a landscape claimed by swollen shantytowns and restless human wildlife.”—TW

Flight of the Red Balloon**
Hou Hsiao-hsien/France/Taiwan/2007 | Masters » [Full Review]
Simply majestic. Commissioned by Paris’ Musée D’Orsay and an homage to Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon, Hou’s first picture in Europe centres on a chaotic, confused, charming Juliette Binoche, her young son, and Taiwanese film student nanny. “One of those rare films... a masterpiece by one of cinema’s great filmmakers... the intricate rhythms of daily life captured in a way that leaves you speechless.”—BG

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson**
Alex Gibney/USA/2007 | Portrait of the Artist » [Full Review]
Examining the bull-in-China-shop literary output of a mythical and rabble-rousing American journalist, Gibney forms a fractured overview of Thompson’s enigmatic life – and like his writing looks between the lines to sort fact from fiction. “Watching Gonzo, it’s hard to like Thompson much: an eternally drunk, abusive and self-indulgent caricature. It’s even harder not to be dazzled by the insight and beauty of his genre-defining journalism.”—CS

Homegrown**
Various/NZ/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review]
The NZIFF’s annual short film programme. “2008 proves to be another year stock full of promising shorts from New Zealand directors. This year’s programme maintains the high level of work which 2007 saw come through, with perhaps a broader spread thematic coverage and production style.”—JP

The Hollow Men**
Alister Barry/NZ/2008 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
One part comedy, two parts horror, Nicky Hager’s controversial expose takes to the big screen. “Viewers who have developed an allergy to the political documentary genre in recent years need not fear: veteran documentary maker Alister Barry (Someone Else’s Country, In a Land of Plenty) has created a visually stimulating adaptation of Hager’s book without lapsing into sensationalism a la Michael Moore.”—NF

Hunger**
Steve McQueen/UK/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Lending a savage intimacy to the spirit of Bobby Sands – the IRA radical who spearheaded the Irish prison-strikes of 1981 – McQueen’s Camera d’Or winner displays a fearless commitment to the verité of prison life. “A no-holds-barred immersion in human suffering.”—DL

I Just Didn’t Do It
Masayuki Suo/Japan/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
A nightmarish scenario about a wrongly accused man subjected to Japan’s draconian legal system, Suo’s allegorical black hole is described as “Kafkaesque”, though has more in commong with the dysfunctional institutions of David Simon’s The Wire. “An airtight courtroom drama austerely photographed and fastidiously edited, the film is sophisticated in its genre routine. Riveting... somber, and deeply critical.”—TW

In Search of a Midnight Kiss*
Alex Holdridge/USA/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
A romantic comedy light on production gloss and heavy on naturalistic dialogue, Holdridge’s third feature, about a hapless twenty-something’s blind date on New Year’s Eve, pushes most of the right buttons. “A low-fi character drama set firmly in the everyday, with believable but affecting romance.”—JP

In the City of Sylvia
José Luis Guerin/Spain/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
In a fantasy Euro-locale – all sun-glinted cobblestone and historic facades – a dreary-eyed bohemian pursues a beautiful woman through the unmarked streets. “While hardly the first to twin the creative impulse with the libidinous one, there’s a method to Guerín’s horniness that rises above hat-tipping the ‘gaze’ in order to scope out girls: Striking an impossible balance between irony and wonder, he transmutes the raw base of his lead’s quest into a meditation on the act of creation.”—DL

Jar City**
Baltasar Kormákur/Iceland/2006 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Bleak, forboding Reykjavik thriller, based on a controversial crime novel about the sharing of genomic and medical data, paired in this film with the grim mundanities of detective work. “A welcome addition to the more intelligent crime dramas we’ve seen recently, and one with plot twists you’ll have to pay attention to throughout.”—DB

The King of Kong**
Seth Gordon/USA/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review A] [B]
Two wizards of coin-op classic Donkey Kong battle for high score glory. “Sure enough, the documentary manipulates its footage to exaggerate the rivalry... yet in the finest sporting tradition, compels you to root for the underdog cliché – a nothing if not entertaining conceit.”—TW

La France*
Serge Bozon/France/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
The androgynous, unorthodox Sylvie Testud poses as man to join a legion of inglorious French troops in this subversive left-of-field war musical. “A strange delicacy among war movies... its willowy night-time sequences some of the most entrancing ever lit.”—TW

Let the Right One In**
Tomas Alfredson/Sweden/2008 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Could this be the best vampire movie since Near Dark or Werner Herzog’s remake of the classic Noseferatu? Directed by Sweden’s Alfredson, Let the Right One In defies simple genre description, combing vampire horror with strong elements of social realist drama, coming-of-age romance, and psychological thriller to create a film that is complex, layered, and broader in range than its “vampire movie” trappings might at first suggest.—JP

The Man From London
Béla Tarr/Hungary/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
A dockside noir concerning a suitcase of money, and the Englishman hot on its trail, Béla Tarr’s first film since Werckmeister Harmonies is a masterclass in slow-burn formalism, dense with “opaque images, prowling tracking shots, and eventful scene cuts.”—TW

Man on Wire**
James Marsh/UK/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
Philippe Petit recalls his “artistic crime of the century”, an illegal tightrope walk between New York’s Twin Towers in 1974. “The film’s lack of context... might jar a little too for the cynics... That said, this is entertaining stuff, the build-up works like a thriller, and it’s hard not to savour Petit’s enthusiasm in recounting the day he reached the peak of his craft.”—BG

Max & Co
Samuel & Frédéric Guillaume/Switzerland/2007 | Animation Now » [Full Review]
Max, a stop-motion animated fox, sets out to find his father, a famous troubador by the name of Jonny Bigoude, in this lively, gothic Swiss animation. “Directors Frederic and Samuel... have really brought this fable of greed and identity alive with the puppetry of all the main characters... while the details of the background are intricate and beautifully capture the raison d’etre of so many French towns and villages.”—DB

My Winnipeg
Guy Maddin/Canada/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review A] [B]
An impassioned, unauthorized history of Winnipeg, Guy Maddin’s hometown phantasmagoria is a documentary within inverted commas. “Hilarious... an outrageous documentary tease, the Canadian’s most hysterical film to date.”—TW

Night and Day
Hong Sang-soo/Korea/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Male/female relations are sized up brilliantly in Hong’s Parisian sojourn. “Truly wonderful, a sharp, hilarious take on relationships and loneliness... a deceptively “small” masterpiece that is much more complex than it looks.”—BG

The Order of Myths
Margaret Brown/USA/2008 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
Documentarian Brown (Be Here To Love Me) heads further south to her ancestral home in Mobile, Alabama, for the 2007 Mardi Gras, where a fortnight of parades, debutante balls, and ‘Mystic Societies’ are racially segregated, culminating in dual carnivals and twin coronations.—JS

Paris**
Cédric Klapisch/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Klapisch’s (The Spanish Apartment) cinematic tourist brochure, a heart-warming exploration of the lives, loves and neighbourhoods of Paris. “Duris is there to act as the film’s glue, pulling the picture back together whenever it threatens to fall apart. Admittedly lighthearted... none-the-less an engaging and satisfying ode to the City of Lights and Love.”—CS

Patti Smith: Dream of Life**
Steven Sebring/USA/2008 | Music » [Full Review]
The poet princess is extolled through an eclectic and contemplative assemblage of events, revealing more about Smith’s life and music than a usual chronological portrayal often does. “Dream of Life doesn’t attempt to... draw any heavy-handed conclusions, but instead depicts Smith as a complicated and introspective person wandering through her life and attempting to make sense of it.”—TS

Persepolis**
Satrapi/Paronnaud/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes last year, Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of life between France and Tehran is an engaging animated memoir. “An accomplished, accessible and utterly unique film... at its heart a story so simple and familiar to any audience that it’s easy to forget all about its formal innovation or ambitious scope and just have a blast.”—JS

The Return
Kathy Dudding/NZ/2008 | New Directions » [Interview]
A lovely evocation, shot through the memories of Dudding’s grandmother who arrived on a boat from England at the age of three, archival footage of the city, and her own searching eye that gleans for the quirky and too often-ignored parts of Wellington. “It’s a beautiful wee film, a very personal and moving ode to a city, and an intimate memory cache.”—BG

Shadow of the Holy Book
Arto Halonen/Finland/2007 | Framing Reality
Shadow of the Holy Book takes Turkmenistan to task. The repulsive regime, whose absurdity no doubt inspired Sacha Baron Cohen, provides plenty to criticise. And the lefty docomakers hit some solid jabs. Wants to be a Mooreish cherrybomb, it’s a more of a middling sparkler. Mildly diverting, but finally fading.—AB

Secret Sunshine
Lee Chang-dong/Korea/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
A Korean vanguard returns – 2002’s remarkable Oasis, Lee’s last outing prior to becoming Minister of Culture, remains among the best films of the decade. Jeon Do-yeon, who claimed Best Actress at Cannes for her exhausting performance, hits all the right notes as a tragedy-striken widow, with the splendid Song Kang-ho in intriguing support. “Anything but muted... possesses a violent, anguished soul. Like all Lee Chang-dong films... it emits light in the strangest of places, and is grounded in a hopeful, human reality.”—TW

Somers Town**
Shane Meadows/UK/2008 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Delightful, casual buddy movie couched in Shane Meadows’ fondness for adolescent relations, centred on This is England’s Thomas Turgoose as a midlands runaway who befriends a lonely Polish teen in North London. “Just when you think Meadows is about to lurch the story towards violence, he refrains, forgoing tragic consequence for ecstatic wish fulfillment. Shot in unobtrusive black and white, the film’s modesty is its biggest charm.”—TW

Sukiyaki Western Django
Takashi Miike/Japan/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review]
East-meets-West genre-bender sees Miike combine Django, El Topo, and a Yojimbo-Fist Full of Dollars-esque plot about a mysterious gunslinger caught in the middle of a small town’s battle over a gold-mine. “The maverick director’s latest entry... might easily be his most accessible to date... not least of which because it features a delightfully unconvincing cameo by Quentin Tarantino, and a Japanese cast delivering lines in phonetically pronounced (although mostly unintelligible) English.”—CS

To Each His Own Cinema**
Various/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Commissioned by Cannes, thirty-six auteurs reflect on cinema and cinema going. “You’ll come away from the experience feeling invigorated about movie going.”—JP

Up the Yangtze**
Yung Chang/Canada/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review] [Interview]
Following the path of the Yangtze “farewell tour” boat cruises, Chang humanises the impossible-to-comprehend numbers with his cast of polite and sometimes patronising Western tourists, and two young cruise staff recruits – spoilt uber-capitalist-in-training “Jerry” Chen Bo Yu, and impoverished middle-school graduate, “Cindy” Yu Shui. “In the shadow of one of China’s greatest triumphs, it is enduring humanity – both of the filmmaker, and the family who came to call him ‘big brother’ – that outclasses it.”—RL

Useless
Jia Zhang-ke/China/Hong Kong/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
“China’s industrialisation-on-steroids throws up such a rich and complex tangle of issues that it could fill an entire festival of documentaries... Useless continues in that vein, with fly-on-the-wall observations of three varied corners of China’s garment industry: workers in a large-scale production line factory; a designer who rallies against the mass-machine-production of clothes...; and finally the simple life of increasingly out-of-work tailors in small town Fengdang.”—RL

Vexille**
Sori/Japan/2007 | Animation Now » [Full Review]
The animators behind Appleseed conjure an exhaustive collection of science-fiction plots, scrambled through the mind of a robot, and spat out the other side onto a Paul Okenfold soundtrack. “This is film that seeks to push the boundaries of animation... striving for a highly stylised vision of the future.”—CS

Vogelfrei
Various/Latvia/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Centred on a single character at different stages in his life, this portmanteau film by four young Latvian directors demonstrates that a unified approach and carefully plotted narrative can allow a multi-directed project to work structurally and thematically. “Beautiful filmmaking, each story told with a compelling visual and narrative sense.”—BG

* Auckland only
** Also screening in Christchurch and/or Dunedin