BIFF Reviews: My Persona is a Tyrannosaur

Tyrannosaur: This is the kind of film which I quite enjoy while watching it but which doesn’t tend to stick with me or demand that I write about it. It’s a well observed, superbly acted slice of lower class, kitchen sink drama. The kind of film that tugs relentlessly at your heartstrings but, despite a surfeit of anguish and hard won deliverance shot in close-up, is well enough balanced by a believable milieu and rounded characters to avoid being shamelessly manipulative. Still, one can’t help but feel that while all three stories in Tyrannosaur might be believable enough on their own they feel a little forced when taken together.

BIFF Reviews: Policing Israel

Policeman: Hot on the heels of my current festival low point comes a new contender for my BIFF favourite. Policeman, structured like a diptych­­­­, contains my two favourite things in film: bold, nuanced politics and strong direction tailored to the subject matter at hand.

BIFF Reviews: Taking Shelter under Las Acacias

Take Shelter: Serious spoilers to follow; you really don’t want to read this if you have any intention whatsoever of seeing Take Shelter. Spoilers can really suck, I know, but this is one of those films which is simply impossible to discuss without talking about the ending.

BIFF Reviews: The New Batch

Mysteries of Lisbon: I went into Mysteries excitedly anticipating a gorgeously mounted, twist-filled melodrama and that’s exactly what I got. Yet even as you cheer for me – you are cheering for me, right? – shed a few tears for the poor soul who didn’t realise he was making a four hour commitment. Still he didn’t have it so bad: Mysteries is an entrancing film.

15 Films, 7 Days and 1 Boy

1. Mysteries of Lisbon dir: Raoul Ruiz
2. Le Havre dir: Aki Kaurismaeki
3. Mystery Fantastic Film!
4. Take Shelter dir: Jeff Nichols
5. Las Acacias dir: Pablo Giorgelli & Blue dir: Stephen Kang
6. Policeman dir: Nadav Lapid
7. Tyrannosaur dir: Paddy Considine
8. Persona dir: Ingmar Bergman
9. I Wish dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda
10. Good Bye dir: Mohammad Rasoulof
11. Another Earth dir: Mike Cahill
12. The Kid with a Bike dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
13. Even the Rain dir: Iciar Bollain
14. Elena dir: Andrei Zvyagintsev
15. The Yelllow Sea dir: Hong-jin Na

Notes: While I'm not going to be able to catch 25 films this time around I'm still insanely excited about this year's festival. Particularly given that I've received a late breaking reprieve from some work I was expecting to have to do which has allowed me to expand from 7 films to 15, and include the much anticipated Mysteries of Lisbon.

Aside from what promises to be 4 and 1/2 hours of twisty, fluidly directed period drama I'm also looking forward to Kore-eda's latest (I'm a pretty rabid fan of the Japanese master of low key, gentle character studies) even if its premise seems to be less ambitious than usual. Andrei Zvyagintsev has had my attention too, ever since I saw his gorgeously lensed, genuinely haunting The Return and by all accounts this one could be even better. Ingmar Bergman completes the top tier of my most anticipated films - I've never seen anything by him before (I know!) so seeing one projected in all its glory seems to be the right way to investigate.

My prospective list this time around is probably less adventurous then last time as I'd heard of, and had been anticipating, most of these films for quite a while now - although Policeman was a late breaking addition based on some emerging buzz out of NYFF. Still, the only thing that's causing me any trepidation this time around is the secret screening but that's mixed with equal parts excitement at seeing a real mystery film (ie one where you have no idea what the thing is until it begins to unspool rather than one where you find out a couple of days before). To some extent this is a bit of a shame - it's not good to feel safe with every film you walk into and Caterpillar turned out to be a really nice, albeit bracing, surprise last year.

Remaking Films Across Langauge Lines

When I saw Infernal Affairs it was the first time I'd seen a non-English language film knowing that there was a remake and thinking that if I was only going to see one it might have been a better idea to see Hollywood's version (Scorsese's The Departed). There's no doubt that Infernal Affairs effectively milks its ostensibly ludicrous premise for enough tension to give you hypertension and that Tony Leung Chiu-Wai is as terrific as ever. However the dialogue is rarely more than functional (or, at least, the subs are), the women are never more than plot/thematic devices (an issue somewhat fixed by the sequal) and the slow-mo black and white flashbacks are often either cloying or unnecessary. These are all areas in which it is often said that the Scorsese version excels: there's a lot of talk about its colourful Boston slang, Vera Farmiga is apparently given a chance to shine and well, Scorsese is Scorsese.

A Wildly Over-Ambitious and Under-Thought Post on Pina

The question that is often asked of performance films is why people shouldn't just trundle along to the live show. Notwithstanding the difficulties of seeing one of Pina Bausche's routines live, unless one lives in the right cities or has some cash to burn, the answers given by Wender's Pina is that cameras offer you a multitude of perspectives that you would never have from a static seat in a theatre, that you can experience radical, astonishing violations of space and time, and that he can build fluid, nested narratives.