THOROUGHLY MIFFED - PART III: THE NQR BRIGADE

Just before we hook into the countdown: I'd like to share a few thoughts with the viewing public since the last blog:

- Go see THE BANK JOB. It's slick, charming, unpredictable and terrific fun.

- After canning DONKEY PUNCH, I checked out its IMDB page and saw that the first review was merely titled "Donkey Pish", which cracked me up. If I were a Scot, that totally would've been my review.

- Are there any more horror films of the 1970s and 80s to remake? I really think they got everybody. Even clunkers like MY BLOODY VALENTINE and MOTHER'S DAY are getting a re-run. Are there really that few new ideas out there? Studios can't claim "brand recognition" on this stuff with a straight face, can they? Wait a minute: I haven't heard anything about a HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME remake...*

*Expect an announcement from Fox Atomic in the coming weeks.

Now, back to the MIFF Madness: these are the noble failures, or the straight sixes -- films which achieved small goals and nothing more -- or the Ritalin-popping ADHD cases, which couldn't quite keep focused enough to deliver on their intentions 100%... starting with:

40th - IDIOTS AND ANGELS (& short HOT DOG)

I've never seen any of Bill Plympton's stuff before, but I'm aware of his status as a big name in animation, and know enough about his work to spot it at ten paces. The synopsis of IDIOTS AND ANGELS -- a horrible, deeply misanthropic man who suddenly sprouts angel wings, which work against his base nature by forcing him to do good deeds -- struck me as intriguing, so I thought it might make an ideal introduction. I'm still not sure if this proved correct, as the program was something of a mixed bag.

Before the feature was a funny Plympton short called HOT DOG, about a puppy whose obsession with joining the Fire Department often gets the better of him. While it may sounds like a fun idea for a Pixar short, it's got a little more of an adult tinge to it. Not heart-stopping brilliance by any stretch, but it is quite entertaining.

By contrast, IDIOTS AND ANGELS contains some fantastic ideas and truly inspired visuals, but shows an unfortunate tendency toward going around in circles. It's got a lot to say about the world we live in today, about man's inhumanity to man, commercial opportunism, taking the low way out even when the high way is the easier option and so forth; even flirting with being a superhero tale at times. It wanders off the reservation somewhere between the second and third acts, however, making all sorts of weird digressions that subtract from the film's narrative thrust and creating a bit of cinematic dead air. There's enough good stuff here to be engaging, and I'm sure Plympton's fans will eat it up, but -- even though it's only 80 minutes long -- it could do with some trimming.

39th - DEAD ON: THE LIFE AND CINEMA OF GEORGE A. ROMERO

I've always been a big fan of Romero's work, so I was looking forward to this documentary in a big way. Now, to be fair, we were warned that this was a "work in progress" -- and, boy, they weren't kidding. Director Rusty Nails rounds up a startling array of Romero's friends and collaborators, as well as seemingly unlimited access to Romero himself, to shed fascinating insight into (and shower much affection upon) the big man and his methods, and thankfully looks at his entire career, not only focusing on his DEAD movies, but giving decent air time to lesser-known flicks like THE CRAZIES, JACK'S WIFE and KNIGHTRIDERS. So what's the problem? It's staggeringly badly shot and lit (the guy can't learn how to compose a damn frame?), ineptly edited (an opening credits montage, which should be no more than a minute long, goes on for four minutes!) and, at 127 minutes, goes on forever. Let's hope Nails hires a decent editor to hammer (oh ZING!) his labour of love into shape, at which point I'd love nothing more than to see it again and be forced to eat this rating.

38th - REVERSE SHOT: REBELLION OF THE FILMMAKERS

In the early 1970s, a seemingly never-ending cabal of German filmmakers -- among them, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and the iconoclastic Rainer Werner Fassbinder -- formed their own socialist-style film production and distribution company, Filmverlag Der Autoren, to make movies which reflected modern Germany warts and all, then pump any profit into achieving total independence. A noble goal, inevitably doomed by the standard personality clashes, money issues and conflicting visions of direction which plague such ventures. It's a fairly standard rise-fall-fragmentation story, and the extremely dry treatment it's given here does it few favours. What's more, there are so many names being thrown around, and even less anyone but the most fervent German film buffs would recognise, that it's tough to remember who's who. Jolts of energy are provided by interviews with the always amusing Herzog, jovial filmmaker Laurens Straub (the docu's co-director, with Domenik Wessely), and archival footage of the magnetic, hilariously egomaniacal Fassbinder. A potential motivational tool for filmmakers, otherwise recommended for film historians only.

37th - ACCELERATOR PROGRAM 1

The Melbourne International Film Festival introduced the Accelerator program to support emerging Australian and New Zealand -- now joined by Irish and Singaporean -- short filmmakers, giving them a platform to be seen at a major festival and preparing them for feature filmmaking. The fruits of this year's program, however, suggests the current nature of Australian films may not change in a hurry: highly technically accomplished films with incredibly dull content -- or, at least, relatively dull treatment of interesting themes (or even the other way round) -- at their core. Anthony Chen's thunderously dull, one-note observational piece HAZE looks at a pair of Singaporean teenagers losing their virginity while playing hooky; Aaron Wilson's AHMAD'S GARDEN is a lush, spare, yet strangely unfulfilling tale of a man doing what he can to make life in a detention centre bearable (cute ending though); THIS IS HER, from NZ director Katie Wolfe, is a cuckolded woman's quirky look at her failed marriage and the bitch who stole her husband away, with amusing flashbacks and juxtapositions; John Alsop's HE. SHE. IT. is a lighter-than-air Aussie short about the efforts of a jaded, soon-to-retire schoolteacher (Steve Abbott, otherwise known to fans of Good News Week as "The Sandman") to bring an outcast teenage boy and girl together; THE SKY IS ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL, from Jeremy Cumpston, is a limp and ultimately pointless exercise concerning a bitter taxi driver, a depressed prostitute and a concerned young girl; Dustin Feneley's HAWKER, another mood piece of little consequence about the relentlessly crap life of a door-to-door salesman, boosted only by an excellent central performance from Melbourne actor Syd Brisbane; and my favourite, the shortest, sharpest and funniest of the bunch, Kiwi director Jason Stutter's CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE, a 2 minute gaspfest about a very small boy's fascination with his dad's axe and woodchopping, with a killer climax -- the least self-important here and, therefore, the most fun!

36th - SURVEILLANCE

After a hiatus of 15 years, Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David you-know-who, returns to the director's chair with a fairly standard psychological thriller enlivened by some odd and over-the-top touches -- although, it must be said, not as balls-out weird as one may expect. Namely, the performances of Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond investigating a roadside bloodbath, which may or may not have been initiated by two very creepy redneck cops (Kent Harper and Third Rock From The Sun's French Stewart!), and some wild twists you'll probably see coming from some distance away. If taken too seriously, this will really rub you the wrong way, but have fun with it, enjoy the scenery chewing and you'll have some fun. A fairly minor work which suggests Lynch is slowly dipping her toe back into the pool after the unmitigated disaster of her debut, BOXING HELENA.

35th - IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS

In a nutshell? This is your bog-standard, next-to-no-budget, snappily sardonic, independent black-and-white New York rom-com... except, it's set in Los Angeles. This minor wrinkle doesn't make much of a difference, if any, but I get the feeling this flick isn't out to redefine its genre, rather it's just looking to make for a nice, fun night out... and on that level, it works. For the most part. Once our hero gets caught masturbating over internet porn -- upon which he's photoshopped the head of his housemate's girlfriend -- he thinks it might be time to hook up, so, with New Year's Eve approaching, he places a "misanthrope seeks misanthrope" ad on an internet dating site. Meeting with said misanthrope goes strangely, but well, and soon they're wandering around LA on NYE falling in and out of various stages of apathy/like/dislike/love/hate, until midnight falls and... well, you know. You've been here before, but I'm a big lover of black & white, there are some genuinely funny quips and asides, and writer-director Alex Holdridge has a good sense of what kind of film he's making and to keep it moving. Forgettable? Sure. Fun? You bet.

34th - ASHES OF TIME REDUX

I was frankly shocked to hear that Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong's chronicler of too-cool-for-school tortured lovers, had written and directed an historical martial arts film in the early 1990s. So, being familiar with his work, I tried to imagine how it would play out: it'd probably substitute his usual blasts of urban neon for vibrant feudal cloths, and ultimately focus upon ancient warriors more obsessed with lost or unrequited loves than slaying scores of bandits. Turns out I wasn't far from the truth: the story concerns a killer-for-hire living a reclusive life (nursing the pain of a lost love, natch) in the middle of the desert, as a jaded, self-proclaimed "solver of problems". As various characters cross his path, he proves rubbish at this, solving nothing and often trying to convince each of them to solve the others' for him. It's a visually beautiful film, pregnant with sorrow and mourning, but it's just as often confusing and the battle scenes are shot and cut with little care for coherence. Naturally, the film succeeds best when Kar-Wai plays to his forehand; namely, sad-eyed jilted lovers wandering a wasteland, searching to fill an unquenchable vacuum of the soul.

33rd - NIGHTWATCHING

Peter Greenaway lends his lush, eccentric eye to Rembrandt and, specifically, the creation of his work The Night Watch. Very theatrical in tone, with every scene shot in the idiom of a Rembrandt painting, it's visually spectacular to behold. Equally eye-catching is his casting of Martin Freeman (Tim from Gervais' The Office, or Arthur Dent from HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE) as Rembrandt -- what seems monumentally unlikely is possibly the most successful aspect of the picture, as Freeman is fantastic, imbuing Rembrandt with an everyman charm and, dare I say it, lust for life which immediately puts us in his corner. However, the film is way too leisurely paced for its own good, and tacks on a terribly extraneous, largely insignificant plotline onto the end of the film, padding an already lengthy film by another 20 minutes. The picture works best when it's focused on the artwork; Greenaway works like a detective, drawing historical theory and artistic instinct to analyse what the Dutch Master poured into his masterwork from every angle, and it's dazzling to watch him lay it all out. Overall, while it may have lost me from time to time, it's a mostly intriguing, and always attractive, film.

32nd - SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO

Anyone familiar with the work of Japanese cult auteur Takashi Miike won't need me to tell them he's insane, and this spaghetti western mash-up does nothing to prove otherwise. Opening with the first scene in an extended cameo from another certain American cult auteur (surname starts with T, ends with "arantino"), speaking near-gibberish against a deliberately fake-looking painted matte background, before bursting into an improbable gunfight, you know you've booked a two hour ticket to whackjob country... The plot, such as it is, kicks off like A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, with a crack gunman wandering into town between two warring gangs, and finding them both vying for his services. The legends of how these gangs came to be, how they conduct themselves, and the shenanigans which occur henceforth are pure Miike, meaning it's a total paradox: visually spectacular yet often (intentionally) ramshackle, stunningly original yet rather derivative, and philosophical yet utterly, deeply, profoundly nonsensical. Awful and brilliant in equal measure -- often in the same scene! -- SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO is, without a doubt, like no other spaghetti western you'll ever see. Yet, like every spaghetti western you've ever seen. Hell, it's Miike! Got it? Good.

31st - ACCELERATED FICTION SHORTS

The Accelerator program strikes back, with shorts directed by former Accelerator alumni, who obviously didn't grasp the whole "prepare them for feature filmmaking" part of the brief. I only saw the first three of the six shorts on offer, but I think I saw the best of the bunch. The first, DIRECTIONS, was not it. The story of a childlike man who befriends a wonky shopping trolley and takes it (or does it take him?) on an adventure attempts to be Keatonesque in its feats of near-silent physical comedy whimsy, but somebody needed to tell director Kasimir Burgess that hiring an actor who just looks funny ain't a done deal: they need to actually be able to, y'know, do physical comedy. One can only imagine how cool this could've been in the hands of, say, a Frank Woodley. The second short, Erin White's FOUR, is a colourful comedy of swinging neighbours in 1970s Australia and the unlikely union they form. It has an awesome 70s look -- where did they find all those wallpapers and fittings??? If nothing else, the film is a marvel of production design -- and the story, initially a parade of cliches, really deepens and grows on you; it's a cool little film. Thirdly, and most triumphantly (as Bill and Ted would say), is THE FUNK, a black-and-white, semi-animated (with digital live-action stills) visual stunner about a man who wakes up in the titular mood and just can't shake it, and can only watch from within as it begins to dominate his life. It's a beautiful, weird, sad story told with stunning economy and unique vision and, to top it all off, is narrated by the ever-excellent Jacek Koman. THE FUNK is one of those rare shorts which demands to be seen, early and often.

Next: more imperfect gems (of sorts) and we get closer to the good stuff... seeya soon!

TSIK