THOROUGHLY MIFFED PART II: CHAPTER 3 - INGLOURIOUS BASTURDS

First, I'd like to thank those of you who read my epic introduction -- membership price bitching, Tarantino fellation and all -- and have waited expectantly for this chapter. What's your reward for your attention, you may ask? A billion (if a billion = fifty-two) reviews!!!

Let's get into it, shall we? Counting down, in order of preference, from 52nd (least favourite) to 1st (favourite):

Dead Stone Motherless Last - HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT'S INFERNO

I am an unashamed, unabated film tragic. As such, I adore 'making-of' documentaries. I'll watch useless on-the-set featurettes to catch any peek behind the creative curtain. I'm even more obsessed with directors; following their careers keenly and will regurgitate their filmographies, on demand, with RAIN MAN-like precision. But one director I'm not an expert on (there are still many) is Henri-Georges Clouzot. I knew he was the man behind the classic French thrillers THE WAGES OF FEAR and DIABOLIQUE, among others, but I've not seen any of them, nor have I read anything about the man. Flush with discovery, I was ready to learn about a complex filmmaker driven by obsession to make a strikingly original picture, and be enraptured.

I was not enraptured. Firstly, the film is shot, cut and delivered without the slightest hint of energy or inspiration. The interview subjects are not garrulous, interesting, inspired or eccentric. In fact, they spend most of their time carping about what a taskmaster Clouzot was, despite most of his methods being commonplace today. (Sample gripe: "He would shoot a scene with three cameras. Who shoots a scene with three cameras??!" I stress, this was uttered sans humour. Another crew member whinged about Clouzot working them for fourteen hour days! God help these dudes if they ever work in independent cinema or major US television.)

Secondly, its portrait of Clouzot is mostly full of cliche: he's your stock standard egotistical hell-driven dictator who pushed his crew to (barely) superhuman levels to achieve some thing new, and drove his actors spare in the process, until everyone broke up the band. *Yawn...* Give us some more interview quotes, or some spirited accounts of what a madman/genius he was.

Thirdly, INFERNO, the lost film itself, looks pretty terrible. The entire story is this: Guy goes on holiday with his wife, gets insanely jealous whenever she's near another man, said jealousy manifests itself as hallucinogenic fugue fantasies of impotence/revenge/retribution, fugue subsides, repeat. So, apparently, the entire INFERNO project was cooked up so Clouzot could play with trippy camera shots that will date by decade's end. Oh, and explore the violence of jealousy in a completely superficial way.

Lastly, what should've been a 45 minute DVD-style featurette is stretched to an endless 100 minute dirge. Knowing exactly where it was headed, and tired of being bored stupid, I tapped out at the 65 minute mark, setting a new milestone: the first MIFF film I've ever walked out of. Because I had better things to do... like, umm, wander the streets aimlessly.

51st - NYMPH

The other most boring film of MIFF 2009 admittedly begins with a rather beautiful, startling opening shot, which sets the film's tone perfectly; as it gives you both an indication of what you're in for (glacial pace, endless shots which give one ample time to work out what'll happen next, huge stretches of time where nothing happens) and what it lacks, as the scene has a nice payoff (which you work out well in advance as the camera takes forever getting there), which you better really enjoy, because director Pen-ak Ranaturang ain't gonna spring for another.

The film is kind of a pseudo-horror ghost story which aims for existentialism and self-discovery by just holding the camera on someone as they look at someone, or something, blankly for two minutes. Then, we cut to a shot of what/whomever they're looking at, and hold that for two minutes. Now, I love a long, languid, thoughtful, gradually revealing shot as much as the next guy, but this isn't that. This is art-wank masquerading as existentialism. I LOATHE this style of filmmaking. There has to be something going on ON THE ACTOR'S FACE during these shots. Or in the background. Or, umm, ANYWHERE.

NYMPH is like someone drained all the humanity, emotional reality, dramatic tension and power out of a Terrence Malick film, leaving us only with two nondescript people in a crap marriage staring at nature and disappearing. As a viewer, I'm happy to work a bit, but as a filmmaker, you've gotta bring something to the table, man. I'm not doing all the heavy lifting. There's only so much one can stand of barely sketched characters (only the program gave me any clue as to what the leads did for a living), interminable blank looks, drawn-out silences, shots of trees and dramatic inertia before an entirely different spectre descends: sleep.

50th - DEAD SNOW

While I guess it's more engaging than CLOUZOT'S INFERNO, DEAD SNOW just edges it out as the biggest disappointment of MIFF 2009. I looked forward to this film with massive enthusiasm: It's Nazi Zombies, fer chrissakes, and the trailer was highly entertaining. Unfortunately, "Nazi Zombies" seems to be where the filmmakers' production conference ended. Presumably, the writer/director uttered those two words, pushed his chair out from the table and spent the rest of the day watching EVIL DEAD, SCREAM and SHAUN OF THE DEAD. Because said auteur, Tommy Wirkola, rips those movies off wholesale. Now, as a movie buff turned developing filmmaker, I'm not one who throws the term "rips off" around easily. We all know that very little- if anything- is original anymore, everyone is influenced by somebody and, as one of the SWINGERS boys says, "everybody steals from everybody". But there is an entire character in this flick who's a gross bastardisation of Ed from SHAUN. It rips off shots from Raimi's zombie classics and SHAUN not just here and there, but constantly.

Wirkola isn't adding anything of himself to this concoction, nor is he mixing it all into his own unique tune, as Tarantino or PT Anderson would. All this fanboy adulation would be charming if the story took any interesting turns, or if the characters were funny and relatable, or if the script went to any dark and inspired places besides the hacking of limbs. It's also technically shoddy; all the money went into the makeup and uniforms, because this film boasts some of the most cringingly obvious blue/green screen work since STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Most deporably, though, Wirkola does nothing with the Nazi Zombie conceit. Do they march, fight, plan, act in the least bit like Nazis? Apparently not, as Wirkola probably couldn't track down a copy of SHOCK WAVES or ZOMBIE LAKE to rip off. Nup, these are just your average flesh-eating zombies, who just happen to be wearing Nazi uniforms and have a thing for Nazi gold. It's fine to be trashy, guys and gals, but for fuck's sake... be creative.

49th - DOUBLE TAKE

The MIFF program guide pitched this as being one of the most original and thrilling films of the festival. They lied about the thrilling. Using news grabs, clips from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show and advertisements from the 1950s, along with newly filmed footage, Argentinian director Johan Grimonprez attempts to fashion a narrative involving Alfred Hitchcock becoming aware he has a doppelganger, against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis. What relates these two subjects is fuzzy and tenuous at best... and, as the film drags on, we find there's a lot of that.

One minute we're treated to one of Hitch's awesome AHP intros, then we cut to a coffee commercial, then we cut to poorly matched and cut together shots of Alfred Hitchcock on AFP passing Alfred Hitchcock in one of his big screen cameos, then we segue to a Nikita Kruschev-Richard Nixon press conference, before hearing a modern-day Hitch (sort of-) lookalike regaling us with anecdotes of meeting Tippi Hedren. And it's like that for 80 minutes. The "plot" makes no sense (Yo Hitch: *why* does one have to kill one's double, anyway?), the links between all the threads are shaky, all the gear with the Hitch impersonator is pointless and anything the director wants to say about identity and duality gets swallowed up by baffling -- and, it must be said, often shoddy -- technique. The only bright spots in this entire film are those AFPresents introductions, which are gorgeous, and the Kruschev-Nixon chat, which is amazing footage... which I'm sure you could find on DVD or YouTube. Still, I'm glad they showed up here, or I'd have been forced to commit my own perfect murder out of boredom.

48th - MARTYRS

Much has been ranted about the so-called "torture porn" genre this decade, and I'm not sure where I stand on it. If there's a story, I'm more likely to go with it. Sometimes you've gotta increase the stakes and push boundaries, but don't be clumsy or sledgehammer about it... unless, of course, sledgehammer works. It's a fine line. Horror has to be a tough genre. You can't pussy out. You have to take people where they don't want to go. Horror shouldn't be safe. Sometimes off-camera works, sometimes it doesn't. Then you have films like HOSTEL, which are competently made and come with a genuinely fearsome concept, but just hit the "this is a movie!" switch too often, which sells out the reality and the true horror of the piece.

To MARTYRS' credit, it never hits the laugh button. It never reminds you it's a movie... unless you've seen its many French siblings. See, France has been a hotbed for what some may term "torture porn" of late: HAUTE TENSION, INSIDE, FRONTIERE(S), SHEITAN... and many of these films share all-too-apparent DNA with MARTYRS. Washed-out colours? Check. High-speed shutter? Check. Dark creeping around houses? Check. Random slashing attacks? Check. Dark, twitchy, grey demon visions? Check. High-energy set pieces which wouldn't look out of place in an action film? Check. All of which is perfect if you've got a terrific and/or cohesive story and, well, a point. Sadly, this is what MARTYRS seems to be missing.

The film seems to change plots every 15 minutes: it's about an abused girl seeking revenge - no, it's about said abused girl's best friend, who has to deal with her vengeance-seeking besty (which is actually the best idea in the film, for mine) - no, it's about the vengeance seeker fighting a demon - no, it's about the friend being captured and tortured - and so on. These may sound like standard plot twists, but no: they're all distinct threads. Characters and concepts which seem meaningful exit the movie. The film asks questions and abandons them a couple scenes later. Then, about halfway through, we're finally introduced to the central theme of the film... and, as themes go, it doesn't really stand up. If I'm gonna watch a teenage girl get chained, force-fed gruel and slapped around for 20-30 minutes at a stretch -- I'm not kidding -- I demand a stronger, more meaningful reason than the film gives me.

I've heard some internet pundits say MARTYRS is an examination, a deconstruction, even the apogee, of the "torture porn" sub-genre, of the central horror conceit of suffering young women, of the "final girl" concept. I'm only willing to agree this is what director Pascal Laugier may have been going for, but he's wallowing in it, with a wrongheaded script that's both sloppy and spare. And I'm not even mentioning gaping plot holes or ridiculous character motivations (the girl is tied by the world's longest fucking chain and she never once thinks to hide in the shadows of the cavernous basement to wrap it around someone's neck? Where's your survival instinct?!). The ending attempts a mordant cleverness, but rather just underlines the pointlessness of it all. What's more, our protagonist is never a "martyr" of any sort. She's a guinea pig, stumbling through the ordeal with the barest notion of why she's there. The one thing, the only thing a martyr never lacks, is a purpose. Perhaps Laugier should've reevaluated his.

47th - HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN

Upon seeing two minutes of pure insanity passing itself off as a trailer for this at the MIFF launch, my interest in this flick soared skyward. There was cackling, bad makeup, cackling, hyperbolic Japanese title cards, cackling, waves crashing upon beaches, cackling, Dr Moreau-style ani-men... I love me some crazy nutty bugfuck Asian cinema and this was from the age of psychedelia, forming a powerful combination I found impossible to resist... So why did I fall asleep halfway through? Sure, it didn't make a lick of sense, but one expects that. It may have something to do with the incredibly slow-moving first act, which sure brings the hokey melodrama, but sits on the crazy for a while, and more's the pity.

There's lots of our lead dude following women around compounds and pining for lost loves, which was all, strangely for a film like this, a bit dull. After some 40 minutes of this, I began trading five minute bursts of melodrama with five minute microsleeps, which persisted for a good half hour... until the uproarious final act, which finally gave up the good stuff. (Only the Japanese would make a film which ends in a crescendo of exploding superimposed floating heads. As ever, I'm not making this up.)

A friend I saw this with made the point that this film seemed all too aware of how nutty it is, and that diminished the experience for him. I can see his point to an extent, but this is based on traditional Japanese Rampo stories, which are traditionally insane, so I don't know how much more licence they could've taken. Was the conviction there? Perhaps. Did I really care? Not really. I came away with the feeling there were Japanese horror films both nuttier and more extreme, both of the time and since, and what promised to be a singular experience didn't quite deliver. Still... that last act is a pisser.

46th - ZIFT

Another MIFF launch trailer which rocked me, only to massively disappoint. Shot in gorgeously stark black and white, this period Bulgarian noir with a rather unhinged, dark-humoured sensibility should’ve knocked me for six. And the opening few scenes are encouraging: handsome, sharp, irreverent and violent, as we see our title character in prison, then departing to restart his life anew. It’s about half an hour in when the problem starts to emerge. Once you remove the, well, Bulgarian-ness of it, it’s really just the same post-QT neo-noir the Yanks and Brits have been pumping out for fifteen years.

Gradually, all the oxygen drains from the film, and, to mix metaphors, it just treads water from there. Full disclosure: the second act sent me to sleep. Sure, it was the third film I saw that day, but I’d stayed awake through many other similar situations this and prior MIFFs. I awoke at the commencement of the final act to find nothing much else had changed: preposterous plot twists and rainswept burials and attempted assassinations, all of which felt tainted by the stain of over-familiarity. I so wish this was a better film.

45th - VAN DIEMEN'S LAND

Let me start off by saying: this is quite possibly the best looking and sounding Australian film I’ve ever seen. No kidding. Debut feature director Jonathan auf der Heide and his veteran cinematographer Ellery Ryan shoot the ever-loving shit out of this notorious tale of Tasmanian convict and eventual-cannibal Alexander Pierce, evoking the exquisite man-as-affront-to-glorious-nature landscapes of Terrence Malick… and losing absolutely nothing in the comparison. Peter Palankay’s sound design is also a thing of haunting, harrowing beauty, just world-class work. Some of the performances are terrific too, most notably a very charismatic Mark Leonard Winter.

You may have noticed I’ve front-loaded this review a little. I wanted to get the positives up front. I want to state that auf der Heide has pulled off a stunning physical effort for a debut feature filmmaker, particularly as he’s still under 30. It’s hard enough to get a film up and made, but rarely are they this handsome. Thing is… the director’s attempts to sustain menace are so endlessly protracted that it winds up almost devoid of it. It’s not particularly scary, just kind of slow and grotty. The characters, aside from Pierce (Oscar Redding) and Winter’s Dalton, are pretty much interchangeable in look and attitude for the first half of the film – and Pierce is so inside himself -- it’s difficult to get a bead on anyone aside from Dalton.

auf der Heide seems to believe that moody sideways glances and endless shots of people staring at campfires passes for character development and narrative tension… and I’m here to tell him, it doesn’t. One or two of the murders have impact, but this is one of the rare pictures which could’ve done with a little more blood. It seems to be a bit too hung up on its own artistic pretension to present the harsh reality of these murders, or cannibalism in itself – which is odd, considering the rest of the picture just bursts with verisimilitude. So the only logical conclusion is, the filmmakers, for all of their ambition, pussied out. Held back. I know this isn’t meant to be a horror picture, but something this ripe with treachery, paranoia and cannibalism should’ve been much more frightening than this.

44th - THE BASTARDS (LOS BASTARDOS)

This Mexican home invasion thriller takes the term “slow burn” and stretches it to snapping point. Two labourers cross the border for a day’s work in LA before heading home and waiting to do the whole thing again the next day. Except on the day we join them, they have nasty plans in mind. There’s plenty of tension at first, as these two edge closer to violence, only to pull back, as the music dramatically smash rises then falls – a pattern which repeats several times in the film, to the point of exhaustion. They’ve been paid to take a housewife (who isn’t what she seems, either) hostage in her home and whack her. However, they’re going spend the night quietly living it up while tormenting her.

I won’t reveal what happens, but it’s safe to say that the picture is 85-ish minutes of tension leading to a – frankly – ridiculously violent denouement, which seems calculated for shock value more than anything else. There’s plenty of social context here though, with the labourers clearly enjoying the perceived fruits of middle-class American life unavailable to them, throughout the evening. Despite moments of genuine menace and style, the whole affair just seems like a lot of time expended on very little.

43rd - PARDON MY FRENCH (UN CHAT UN CHAT)

This French comedy is packed with terrific ideas, fresh concepts, amusing scenes and a cracker of a lead in Italian actress Chiara Mastroianni (Marcello’s daughter, who manages to look scarily like him while being absolutely gorgeous)… but director Sophie Fillières seems to have no feel for the material whatsoever.

The comic tale of a writer and newly-single mother, lamenting both her broken marriage and writer’s block, being latched onto by an aggressively helpful young woman who, as it emerges, is her self-appointed stalker, should’ve been a breezy, bouncy, pacy romp. Instead, it is paced like an Alain Reinais drama, which makes the thing seem ponderous and flabby when what’s going on is actually pretty clever and inspired, and would’ve been massively entertaining with a more understanding treatment.

However, the cast are terrific, but Mastroianni steals the show as the cynical, hard-smoking, neurotic sleepwalking writer who loves her son like crazy (her banter with the kid is one of the film’s highlights.) This is by no means a terrible movie, or even a bad one, simply mis-directed. It’s far too drawn-out and grey for the type of picture it should’ve been, to get the maximum impact out of likeable performances and a witty script. Ripe for an English-language remake, perhaps? So long as they retain Chiara’s services and hire a director with a yen for the material, it just might work.

Next: Mini reviews / rankings of the middle 32!

TSIK