Things to Learn from the MIFF Critics Poll

After all the films and fun of the 60th Melbourne International Film Festival - yes, we're still discussing it! I should hope that the 60+ films I saw shouldn't be immediately deemed "old news" less than a week later - was over, a bunch of us filmy criticy folks submitted grades for every film we watched into a critics poll being hosted by At the Cinema.net. It's a fascinating look at how people respond to certain films and fail to connect with others. Most of the films at the very top of the poll receive unanimous acclaim while, likewise, the bottom rungs of the chart are almost universally negative.



I've included the feature poll here, but click over to this link to see what we all thought of the documentaries and shorts that screened.





Click for documentaries

Click for short films

Of the films that had several grades attributed to them, I can deduce the following facts:

• I am the sole representative to give 5 stars to Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture and the only one to give Markus Schleinzer's Michael 1 star out of 5.
• I appear to be in the minority on Jon Hewitt's X (4 stars from me; average of 2.33/5) and Markus Schleinzer's Michael (1 star from me; average of 3/5).
• Werner Herzog's highly anticipated 3D documentary Cave of the Forgotten Dreams must surely take the title of the festival's biggest disappointment, scoring an average of 2.40 out of five. It was certainly the film that, for me, had the greatest discrepancy between levels of anticipation and end results.
• The King of Comedy, Martin Scorsese's 1983 satire masterpiece, was the festival's best-received title. Who cares that it was a retrospective title when it's able to amass eight 5-star raves from the nine critics who saw it? After The King of Comedy it was a three-way tie between A Separation, Senna and Melancholia, which all received six 5-star raves from the critics polled.
• Of the critics polled, I was the only one to see Ruhr, the Melbourne shorts programs, French child fable On the Sly, African drama Sleeping Sickness and French animation Tales of the Night.
• Three films managed 1 star from three separate critics: Norwegian Wood, Post Mortem and my personal choice for worst of the fest, Innocent Saturday. Another diabolically bad film, Greek import Wasted Youth, ranked equal last with two critics polling it with 1 star. I note that I know of at least one of the other critics here who ditched their later screening of Wasted Young based on the reception greeted to it.
• The lowest ranked film from the most amount of votes was another Greek film, Attenberg. Averaging a score of 3.0/5 from 12 critics.

MIFF Blogathon: Day 1 (Kings of Comedy, Depressed Planets and 1950s Melbourne)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

The King of Comedy
Dir. Martin Scorsese
Running Time: 109mins

Amidst the 250+ feature films at MIFF is a series of retrospective titles from throughout the 60 year history of the festival. It was, perhaps, fitting to start my festival with one I had already seen and loved since it's always great to get a festival off to a good start. Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy may seem like a curious title to screen, but watching it again and it makes perfect sense. This brutal satire on celebrity is as pertinent today as it surely was in 1983 when originally released and remains one of Scorsese's finest works. In fact, I rank it just below Taxi Driver as his best film, so you know I liked it a lot!

That screenplay by Paul Zimmerman - a BAFTA winner for Best Original Screenplay, one of only a few award season wins, further cementing its reputation as a under-cherished gem - is truly a thing of beauty, filled with so many barbs, awkwardness and genius exchanges. It's shocking to realise that Zimmerman would only go on to write one other screenplay (the 1988 Giles Foster comedy Consuming Passions).


Of course, a large part of this film's success rests with the cast. While Jerry Lewis and Diahnne Abbott are wonderful, for me it's all about Robert DeNiro and Sandra Bernhard. DeNiro's Rupert Pupkin is such an uncomfortably character to be around, and yet his goofy innocence remains charming. Even once he's well and truly fallen off the deep end I can't help but still be entertained by him. It's this tricky skill that makes this one of DeNiro's very best performances. Who can't laugh at the whingeing exchanges between Pupkin and his off screen mother? And Sandra Bernhard... Sandra Bernhard! Her borderline insane performance as stalker Masha is one of my all time favourite performances. It's my understanding that a lot of her part was improvised, with her brand of comedy did not endearing Bernhard to co-star Jerry Lewis, but it's exactly this tension that makes those final scenes as well as they do. Such a rich and rewarding film. Isn't it about time this film was finally raised to classic status like Taxi Driver or Raging Bull? A

Melbourne Shorts (Program 1)
Dir. Various
Running Time: 69mins

This collection of six short films were introduced to the sold out crowd as being a way of exploring Melbourne's past on this 60th anniversary of the festival. What we got was a bit of a mixed bag. Beginning with Darrel Wardle's's weird is-it-a-pisstake-or-not The American (10mins) from 1959, which proposed to look at the ways America's superior manufacturing and invention has changed other cities across the world. It was followed by Douglas White's 1966 dialogue free Life in Australia: Melbourne (19mins), which followed the casual comings and goings of Melburnians as they do everything from go to work, purchase TV Week and go see William Castle's The Busy Body.

By far the corniest of the lot was Melbourne Wedding Belle (10mins), a curiously wannabe technicolour short about various members of a bridal party making there way to the wedding. Colin Dean's short had most of the dialogue narrated and written in a rhyming fashion as if they're lyrics. It was good for a few laughs at how completely silly the whole thing was, especially the strand about the old lady who just needed a new pillbox hat. The final short was David Greig's Sunday in Melbourne (19mins), an incredibly tedious exploration of - you guessed it - Sunday in Melbourne. It's by far too long and generally quite pointless, using the advantages of a short film structure to no effective use whatsoever. Although it does work as a compare and contrast piece if you look at the differences between a Sunday in Melbourne in 1958 and 2011. Perhaps knowing its shortcomings full well, the pompous narrator tells the audience at film's end that most people find Sunday remarkably boring.


The two best shorts, however, were Malcolm Wallhead's The Cleaners (16mins) from 1969 and The Melbourne Concert Hall (19mins) from 1982. The former was a rather gorgeously photographed look at one of the dirtiest of professions. The latter - the most recent of the shorts in both programs - was a rather simple documentary short on the building of The Melbourne Concert Hall in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Much of the information given by the talking heads was rather fascinating and anybody with a love of architecture should try and seek this short film out. I liked the factoid about the building being designed to last for 150 years! Pertinent now since they're remodelling it right now for a 2012 unveiling. My favourite part, however, was the way they mixed construction footage with musical pieces, to provide a rather lovely contrast. Reminded of Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, actually.

Hopefully program 2 towards the end of the festival yields better rewards.

Melancholia
Dir. Lars von Trier
Running Time: 130mins

Lars von Trier announced that there would be "no more happy endings" and, when you think about it, there was really nowhere else for the notorious Danish troublemaker to go than Melancholia. It's a film that takes the debilitating cruelty of depression to it's next logical step. There's little doubt that von Trier's metaphors here are obvious, but it's what he does with them that allows him to remain one of the most fascinating, important and down right excellent filmmakers in the business. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Lars von Trier is the greatest working director in the world right now. Just my own subjective opinion, but if I can't share wildly expressive opinions on my own blog then I might as well just give up.

Opening with a 10 minute prologue that begins with a close-up of Kirsten Dunst's pillowed face that then proceeds into a spectacular visual effects reel that I'm sure Terrence Malick would appreciate, Melancholia then splits into to halves: Justine (Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Justine suffers from depression, this is plainly obvious once she wipes away the cute smile that audiences will recognise from Bring It On. Claire suffers from caring too much and her anxiety towards Justine, the rapidly spiralling wedding she helped organise (with a deliciously ridiculous Udo Kier!) and the lingering mysterious presence in the sky above.

The performances are universally excellent, with Dunst especially proving that von Trier's faith in her was well deserved (something that her lingering fans like myself knew was never a worry). Gainsbourg, the first of von Trier's leading women to return to the Dane's backlot of fun, is also wonderful as this nervous, tightly-wound woman. Manuel Alberto Claro's beautiful cinematography does wonders with shadow and light, using the idea of this foreign light-emanating source to create painterly pictures. The sound work and visual effects are also worth praising to the heavens.


No matter how much I was liking Melancholia, however, no matter how much it had impressed me, nothing prepared me for the gut punch that is the final scene. As von Trier's vision of a truly apocalyptic portrayal of the burden of depression comes to its natural, yet poetic, conclusion, there was something so deeply effecting that I found myself unable to breath. The final shot is certainly one for the all time lists in its brave, devastating imagery. Much like the rest of the film it will be something that lingers with me for quite some time and that is why I cherish Lars von Trier so much. A-

The Melbourne International Film Festival: The List

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

And so it begins.

My mission to see 60 films at the 60th annual Melbourne International Film Festival has begun. Well, not exactly. The films themselves don't start until opening night on the 21st of July with The Fairy from directors Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy and conclude on the 7th of August (the big "closing night" film is Winding Refn's Drive, but it screens on the Saturday night so as to allow partying long into the night for those who don't actually have more movies to see the next morning! Here's hoping for a surprise screening of it on Sunday!)

If you're attending the festival then this programmer from @danshep79 is a wonder because it allows you to see who is attending the same session as you. Great for knowing which of those Twitterers and bloggers you've never put a face to before are "in the house". Anyway, let's take a look at what films I will be seeing at this year's fest.

My festival begins not with some big Cannes title or world premiere. No, it begins with Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy from 1982, which is screening as a part of the festival's retrospective program. There was no way I could give up the chance to see my #2 Scorsese film on the big screen. There's something about Sandra Bernhard's performance that was made to be projected on a huge screen, don't you think? Other retro titles I selected in my program are Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, which I've never seen, Giorgio Mangiamele's Clay and Carol Reed's The Third Man. Why not, yeah? The other films I have selected are a mix of features, documentaries and shorts - which is rare given my aversion to them, but the Melbourne Shorts programs of rare short films about Melbourne, including what sounds like a few really fascinating titles like Loop and The American, sounded too good to pass up given my love for this city of mine. I also added a selection of "experimental" shorts because I figure they'll be more interesting than regular shorts. And if they not? Sleepy time.

Unfortunately there were several high profile casualties, as there always are when programming a festival lineup. Another Earth and Elena were two titles I was most disappointed about having to give the flick due to screening at the same time as titles less likely to get a release post-festival. Scheduling conflicts also brought about the end of my seeing Black Venus, 3D French animation Tales of the Night, Face to Face, Exporting Raymond, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, Aussie documentary The Curse of the Gothic Symphony, 280 minute The Mysteries of Lisbon and The Mill and the Cross. Take Shelter, the high profile Cannes title starring Michael Shannon, had to be cut due to its run time cutting into the late night screening of The Innkeepers with director Ti West in the house. Considering West's last film, the chilling The House of the Devil, got the barest of obscure film festival releases long after it premiered in America so I thought that I'd see that one before it gets lost in niche horror distribution hell. I replaced Take Shelter with Kill List, so I don't think I'll be going all depressed at the thought of missing it. La Havre and A Seperation, too, were victims of the dreaded "you'll be getting a release anyway so I'd rather see something else" syndrome.

Meanwhile, there are still two sessions that I am unsure about. I have booked myself in for Errol Morris' Tabloid and the Canadian exploitation homage Hobo with a Shotgun, but I find myself wishing to swap them out for Ruhr and The Turin Horse respectively. We'll see how that goes. As for a film I'd rather die than see? How about that documentary about Elmo. Christ, hasn't that nostalgia hipster fad ended yet? Note: I chose The Turin Horse and Ruhr. Those two are far less likely to receive a release of any kind so, ya know, why not?

**As a tip for future ticket buyers, I would suggest not bothering with Red Dog, Beginners, The Guard, Senna or Jane Eyre due to their release so soon after (or even during) the festival. I'd suggest you not bother with Norwegian Wood because it so insufferably bad. While a lot of the films I will be seeing will get a release some point in the future, I don't see much point in going to see films that are of little interest just because they won't get a cinema release and Martha Marcy May Marlene will, ya know?**

Friday 22, July
13.30 - The King of Comedy (USA, dir. Martin Scorsese)
18.30 - Melbourne on Film Shorts Program 1 (Australia, dir. Various)
21.00 - Melancholia (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany, dir. Lars von Trier)

Saturday 23, July
13.00 - Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Canada/USA/France/Germany/UK, dir. Werner Herzog)
16.00 - Living on Love Alone (France, dir. Isabelle Czajka)
18.30 - Submarine (UK, dir. Richard Ayoade)
21.00 - Kill List (UK, dir. Ben Wheatley)
23.00 - The Innkeepers (USA, dir. Ti West)


Sunday 24, July
18.30 - Martha Marcy May Marlene (USA, dir. Sean Durkin)
21.00 - 13 Assassins (Japan, dir. Takeshi Miike)

Monday 25, July
11.00 - Armadillo (Denmark, dir. Janus Metz)
13.30 - LennoNYC (USA, dir. Michael Epstein)
16.00 - Post Mortem (Chile, dir. Pablo Larraín)
21.00 - Swerve (Australia, dir. Craig Lahiff)

Tuesday 26, July
13.30 - The Piano in a Factory (China, dir. Meng Zhang)
16.00 - Little Rock (USA, dir. Mike Ott)
18.30 - Bobby Fischer Against the World (USA, dir. Liz Garbus)
21.00 - Michael (Austria, dir. Markus Schleinzer)

Wednesday 27, July
12.00 - The Third Man (UK, dir. Carol Reed)
16.00 - I Wish I Knew (China, dir. Zhang ke jia)
18.30 - How to Die in Oregon (USA, dir. Peter D Richardson)
21.00 - Tomboy (France, dir. Céline Sciamma)

Thursday 28, July
11.00 - The Ugly Duckling (Russia, dir. Garri Bardin)
14.30 - Winter's Daughter (Germany/Poland, dir. Johannes Schmid)
18.30 - Tiny Furniture (USA, dir. Lena Dunham)
21.00 - Beauty and the Beast (France, dir. Jean Cocteau)


Friday 29, July
11.00 - On the Sly (Belgium/France, dir. Olivier Ringer)
13.30 - Top Floor Left Wing (France/Luxembourg, dir. Angelo Cianc)
16.00 - Experimental Shorts 1 (USA, Australia, UK)
18.30 - Brother Number One (New Zealand, dir. Annie Goldson)
21.00 - The Black Power Mix Tape 1967 - 1975 (Sweden, dir. Goran Olsson)

Saturday 30, July
11.00 - Ruhr (Germany, dir. James Benning)
13.30 - Pool Party (USA, dir. Beth Aala)
16.00 - Toomelah (Australia, dir. Ivan Sen)
18.30 - The Forgiveness of Blood (USA/Albania/Denmark/Italy, dir. Joshua Marston)
21. 00 - Bullhead (Belgium, dir. Michaël R. Roskam)

Sunday 31, July
18.30 - Detroit Wild City (France, dir. Florent Tillon)
inc. The Future Will Not Be Capitalist (Austria, dir. Sasha Pirker)
21.00 - The Turin Horse (Hungary, dir. Béla Tarr)

Monday 1, August
18.30 - The Future (USA, dir. Miranda July)
21.00 - NEDS (UK, dir. Peter Mullan)

Tuesday 2, August
11.00 - Falling for Sahara (Australia, dir. Khoa Do)
16.00 - Natural Selection (USA, dir. Robbie Pickering)
18.30 - Wasted Youth (Greece, dir. Argyris Papadimitropoulos & Jan Vogel)
21.00 - Tatsumi (Singapore/Indonedia, dir. Eric Khoo)

Wednesday 3, August
11.00 - Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey/Bosnia Herzegovina, dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
18.30 - A Useful Life (Uruguay, dir. Federico Veiroj)
inc. The Little Tailor (France, dir. Louis Garrel)
21.00 - Beauty (South Africa/France, dir. Oliver Hermanus)


Thursday 4, August
13.30 - Innocent Saturday (Germany/Russia/Ukraine, dir. Alexander Mindadze)
16.45 - The Triangle Wars (Australia, dir. Rosie Jones)
18.30 - Tyrannosaur (UK, dir. Paddy Considine)
21.00 - X (Australia, dir. Jon Hewitt)

Friday 5, August
13.30 - Bi, Don't Be Afraid (Vietnam/Germany/France, dir. Phan Đăng)
16.00 - Sleeping Sickness (Germany/France/Netherlands, dir. Ulrich Köhler)
18.30 - Melbourne on Film Shorts Program 2 (Australia, dir. Various)
21.00 - Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (USA, dir. Michael Rapaport)

Saturday 6, August
11.00 - Page One: Inside the New York Times (USA, dir. Andrew Rossi)

Sunday 7, August
11.00 - "Surprise Screening 1"
13.30 - Atteberg (Greece, dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari)
16.00 - Clay (Australia, Giorgio Mangiamele)
18.30 - Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Japan, dir. David Melb)

And that's that, folks. I'm sure some of these will change if there are screening troubles or some other life happening that must take precedence. As it stands, however, this is what I plan to spend 17 days of life devoted too. There will (hopefully, but not guaranteed) daily updates and reviews.

By the Numbers:
Number of Films: 58
Number of Days: 17
Number of Documentaries: 15
Number of Shorts: 14
Number of Aussie Films: 8
Number of Classic Films: 4
Number of 5 Film Days: 3
Number of 3D Films: 1
Number of Times I Will Say "JIRO!!!": Infinite

It Might Get Loud*

It's hard to watch a movie like Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz with a critical eye. If I was to look at it purely on an entertainment level then it would flirt with an A because The Band and their music are so genuinely brilliant and amongst the best ever committed to cinema. Yet, then again, Scorsese's handling of the interview material interspersed throughout is rather weak and inconsequential, unlike Madonna: Truth or Dare, and I couldn't give it much higher than a C+. However, if I'm looking at the film from a technical standpoint then I'd probably go with a B because it's certainly more inventive than Neil Young: Heart of Gold but lacks the stripped back yet inventive energy of Stop Making Sense (both directed by Jonathan Demme for what it's worth). What am I to do?

Beginning with that wonderful title card that you see up top (am I crazy for feeling like I've seen it before at the start of another movie?), Martin Scorsese's documentation of the final ever concert by The Band is a joy to watch because, as I've said, the music is simply glorious. Featuring guest performances by Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond (free of irony), Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, The Staple Sisters, Muddy Waters and even Bob Dylan, The Last Waltz is veritable treasure trove for music fans. Scorsese doesn't do much with the footage, which is both a blessing and a curse, although I do wish we were able to see more than the 117 minutes (it's my understanding that the actual concert went much longer). In the end I'm going to slice the difference and give it a B+.

I'm unable to embed my favourite performance, but I would have to go with "Stage Fright", how about you?


*Yes, this is probably the only time you will see me willingly reference a Davis Guggenheim documentary. Savour it if you'd like.

Jane Russell Would've Enjoyed Burlesque!

In my review of Burlesque a month or so back I referenced Howard Hawks' classic 1953 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in my defense that just because a movie is camp doesn't mean it's instantly bad. I questioned what audiences would make of that film, which starred Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, who passed away today at age 89, in 2011. I mean, there were some people who reacted so negatively to the camp nature of Burlesque that I can't even fathom how they'd react to Blondes, what with it's musical number titled "Ain't There Anyone Here For Love" wherein Russell parades herself around surrounded by near naked men performing gymnastic routines. The closest Burlesque came to anything like that is when Cam Gigandet strips down to a box of Famous Amos cookies.


I do love Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - I even feature it alongside Burlesque in the blog's banner up the top there - and, as far as pure filmmaking skill goes, I don't think anybody, not even I, could say Steve Antin, director of Glass House: The Good Mother, can come close to the masterful Howard Hawks. And yet I do find it curious how many won't bat an eye at a scene like "Ain't Anyone Here for Love", or anything else in Blondes that is excessively girly. People like to pick and choose, I suppose, with the passing of time.

It was sad to learn of Russell's passing, but hardly surprising being she was 89 years old at the time. Of course, apart from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Russell was probably best known as Howard Hughes' cause célèbre with his risque marketing of The Outlaw that placed Russell - and her cleavage - at front and centre. The story was humourously mentioned in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator if you remember that. What I didn't know, but have since discovered, is that she was a fierce advocate of adoption, having adopted three children of her own in the 1950s. That was nice to learn. RIP, Jane Russell.

Black & White Friday: Shutter Island

Perhaps an obvious choice, but even though I didn't like the movie I still thought there would be enough within it to sustain a Black & White Friday entry. I was surprised by how modern the film felt and, perhaps, I might have liked it more if it had surrendered to the classicism of it all (not that I would expect Martin Scorsese to go there, but this tale was begging for a big ol' noir-tinged camp telling, don't you think?) I just could not buy Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as characters from the 1950s and with so many modern filmmaking flourished from Scorsese mixed with the obvious gothicism of it all and Shutter Island felt confused and really quite boring.


Interesting, I found the art direction of Shutter Island quite bothersome. The exterior scenes were great, but the interior ones were just too over the top in 1950s insane asylum decor. And yet when the colour is gone I feel that the interior scenes looked better. Strange, that. Whoever scouted this location, however, deserves a special cheque from Marty.


I quite liked Ben Kingsley here. Not in any particular "wow, his acting is superb" kind of way, but I thought he totally fit into the vibe of the movie. I can see him slotting right into the same role had this movie been made in 1954 (er, if he'd been alive and all that jazz of course) with his propensity to overact and be a bit larger than life. It's just a shame that Martin didn't really frame him in any particularly interesting ways.


The skies of this movie always looked so manufactured (and not in a matte kinda way like they would've been in the past), just so much CGI! gah! In black and white they look excellent, though.


See what I mean? Lovely shot by any means.


This is what I was talking about before. In the movie, this scene is just quite putrid and unappealing, but in black and white it feels so much more classical and less like I'm gonna get tetanus.





The women of Shutter Island. Scorsese can work miracles with actresses so it is always a shame when he doesn't just knuckle down and make a movie with a female lead role. He went there with The Age of Innocence and it's one of Marty's very best and just thinking of the performances from the likes of Sandra Bernhard, Lorraine Bracco, Cate Blanchett, Sharon Stone and the women of After Hours makes me shudder in delight. My favourite of the women in Shutter Island was Patricia Clarkson (and I love the shot I captured of her, actually looking quite old fashioned) because she was just so "on" and focused. Her role is thankless, really, but she does good stuff with it. Same goes for underrated actress Robin Bartlett (at the top). Emily Mortimer is good in her prison cell scene, too, although I admit I was very wrong about predicting her Oscar win.

And that leaves Michelle Williams, the weakest of the four. She doesn't really get much to do, does she? Despite having the most screen time of them all she basically just has to stand around and look a little bit sick, a little big ethereal and a little bit like there's not much going on upstairs. I chose this shot, however, because it reminded me of a similar moment in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive which, let's face it, Scorsese was clearly inspired by in some respects.


I really liked this scene. It had compelling actors actually doing good acting, advancing the story (and not just needless plodding like so much of the rest of the movie) and it was one of the very few moments that fully embraced the concept of this kinda noir, kinda camp, kinda artificial world (notice how it actually does look like an old kinda movie that it's halfheartedly trying to be).


This moment very much looks like a shot from an old movie, I reckon. Perhaps that's because we can't see the faces of any of the very modern actors? Perhaps.