With the Melbourne International Film Festival in full swing once again, Fliks writers are giving their first impressions on what they’re seeing in the form of bite-sized mini-reviews. This blog will keep updating through the festival, so keep checking back and take the time to share your thoughts with us in the comments – and get out to see some of these films!
Click on a title below to go straight to the review or scroll down to browse through the list.
A BAND CALLED DEATH | A FIELD IN ENGLAND DEATH
A HIJACKING | THE ACT OF KILLING | BEKAS
BLACKFISH | BLUE RUIN | CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915
CHEAP THRILLS | COMPUTER CHESS | THE CRASH REEL
DIRTY WARS | FRANCES HA | ILO ILO | LESSON OF THE EVIL | LEVIATHAN
MISS NIKKI AND THE TIGER GIRLS | MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS
MOOD INDIGO | MUSEUM HOURS | OH BOY | OUTRAGE BEYOND
SHOPPING | THE PAST | PRINCE AVALANCHE | PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER
THE SPECTACULAR NOW | TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM | UPSTREAM COLOR
V/H/S/2 | WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS
WEEKEND OF A CHAMPION | YOU’RE NEXT
A BAND CALLED DEATH
Death is a band whose story is well worth seeking out if you’re not in the know, but this documentary’s going to have to get used to the chill underneath Sugar Man’s shadow. There’s little doubt that you’ll be riveted by the end as hipsterism saves the day for musical talent that almost went unnoticed, but the first hour is so stuffed with filler and repetition that I couldn’t help but feel that I was in the cinema half-an-hour longer than I really needed to be.
LIAM MAGUREN
The story of the band Death is as fascinating as the question posed by their proto-punk rock n roll – what would have happened if they’d put out an album while together in the 70s? The surviving Hackney brothers who made up the band with their songwriting brother make for engaging interview subjects, and there’s a lot to like about their tale of black brothers making a hell of a racket without anyone really paying attention at the time. Sadly though, this doco struggles to the 90 minute mark and feels padded out (I thought I’d been in the cinema for 2 hours) as emotionally and musically engaging as its subject may be.
STEVE NEWALL
A FIELD IN ENGLAND
A psychedelic freakout in black and white, Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England involves magic, mushrooms and the English Civil War. There’s grim humour throughout, but the highlights for me were the hallucinatory sequences, Wheatley combining strobing, rapid editing and the English countryside to create an assault on the eyeballs. It’s wholly original, but the material felt a bit thin for a feature length film, marking this as my first (slight) disappointment of the festival. I’ve come to expect greatness from Wheatley, and this is merely very good.
TONY STAMP
A HIJACKING
Further proof that the Danes really are the European kings of drama. Writer-director Tobias Lindholm’s Somali pirates thriller ratchets up the tension both onboard and back home in the boardroom. Cleverly eschewing the normal focus on the violent boarding itself, it instead hones in on the negotiations between the pirates’ seemingly laid-back negotiator (Abdihakin Asgar) and Soren Malling’s initially cocky corporate man. I found myself absorbed from start to finish. This year’s The Hunt.
JAMES CROOT
THE ACT OF KILLING
Joshua Oppenheimer’s unsettling film utilises real Indonesian murderers re-enacting real murders in the style of Hollywood movie clichés. If you’re concerned it puts an all too human face on mass murderers, then you’re right. That’s the point. In fiction it is demons, ghosts, vampires and zombies who commit evil acts. In reality it’s people… An horrific, fascinating, unpleasant and unparalleled journey into the heart of darkness. If you see only one thing at this year’s film festival – see this. You’ll be thinking on it for weeks.
ADAM FRESCO
Easily the most affecting film of my festival so far and odds-on to stay that way, The Act of Killing offers an insight into the banality of evil and humanity’s propensity for cruelty, but does so in an altogether unique, imaginative way. As Indonesian mass murderers re-enact their atrocities for the cameras through various movie genres, the film, audience and its subjects travel together into uncharted territory. Essential, unmissable viewing.
STEVE NEWALL
BEKAS
Sometimes all you need for a heart-warming movie is a road trip that begins with two kids attempting to travel to the US on the back of a donkey named Michael Jackson… At times Bekas (Kurdish for “orphans”) betrays its roots as a short film, now stretched out into a beautifully shot ninety-minute road trip. Aged just seven and nine, Zamand Taha and Sarwar Fazil are superb as young brothers Zana and Dana. It’s testament to Karzan Kader’s direction that what could so easily have tipped into sappy sentimentality retains a hard-edged humanity and humour amidst the despair and depravation. Beautiful cinematography and the natural acting coaxed out of the young leads lend Bekas the quality of a fable akin to Danny Boyle’s overlooked Millions.
ADAM FRESCO
BLACKFISH
Tilikum has killed three people. Yet it’s hard not to sympathise with the killer whale held in captivity in Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s powerful and downright disturbing documentary. It will upset animal lovers. It will make you think twice about keeping animals captive for our entertainment. It won’t surprise you in the least that SeaWorld declined to be part of this documentary that exposes the story of their orca. Gripping, shocking, thought-provoking, opinion-altering stuff.
ADAM FRESCO
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch Free Willy or an aquatic theme park show in the same way again after viewing Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s disturbing investigation into Sea World and other aquatic entertainment venues’ treatment of killer whales. Horrific footage and shocking testimony from former Sea World employees present a compelling case as to why orca should not be kept in captivity.
JAMES CROOT
BLUE RUIN
Why can’t New Zealand make movies like this? It’s easy to imagine intimate revenge tale Blue Ruin set on the East Cape as we follow a mentally-scarred drifter on a long-awaited eye-for-an-eye payback through a semi-rural setting. Macon Blair brings to life the desperation of a man with little left to lose, over his head in violent work he’s not really cut out for. His general uselessness and mumbly delivery lead to tension-relieving chuckles around a dramatic narrative that may not defy convention, but plays out in satisfying, bloody fashion.
STEVE NEWALL
CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915
Bruno Dumont’s casting of a well-known name like Juliette Binoche might suggest a move by the French auteur — who steadfastly employs non-professional actors — towards accessibility, but Camille Claudel, 1915 is as ascetic and austere as anything he’s made. Haggard and frumpy, Binoche is stripped of any star quality, turning in a performance of soul-baring nakedness as Claudel, a sculptor who was confined in a mental asylum in Southern France for the last 29 years of her life. Dumont grounds narrative in clockwork mundanities, creating a monastic timbre that’s more prayer-like than drama, while the unnerving use of real-life mental patients underscores her isolation and aloneness. A welcome cinematic detox.
AARON YAP
CHEAP THRILLS
Sweet baby Jesus; this was a crowd-pleasing load of nastiness. Pat Healy and Ethan Embry demonstrate the disgusting side to desperation (and animalistic competitiveness) as the two fools who are constantly paid to do gradually more disturbing acts to entertain the wife of a manic millionaire (played by David Koechner in one of his best performances). Bravo to director Evan Katz and screenwriters David Chirchirillo and Trent Haaga for pulling off the patient build-up required to squeeze out every bit of shock from this straightforward concept.
LIAM MAGUREN
COMPUTER CHESS
I wasn’t gonna see Andrew Bujalski’s mockumentary, until I read Steve’s review (below). I’m glad he turned me onto it, because this fake 80s-style satire is a real gem. Shot on video in a 4:3 ratio, its nostalgic fun reminded me of cult UK TV comedy Look Around You. Those who don’t get the joke of A carefully crafted faux-doco (from the likes of Forgotten Silver to Best in Show) will find it cheap, annoying and clichéd. But for my taste – that’s half the fun.
ADAM FRESCO
As I’d expected a pastiche period piece, Computer Chess promptly confounded and enthralled me. This black and white feature rudimentally shot on video (complete with comical titles) doesn’t conform to conventional ideas of found footage, rediscovered “lost” films or even the well-trodden competitive tournament movie structure. Instead this tale of nerdy computer scientists sending their computer chess programs into battle with one another is often hilarious, sometimes surreal and wholly original.
STEVE NEWALL
THE CRASH REEL
Justin Timberlake’s character in Friends With Benefits was right – U.S. Olympic Snowboarder Shaun White really is a douche! That’s the over-riding impression I got from this fascinating tale of snowboarding obsession and tragedy. Some of the footage British documentarian Lucy Walker has captured is disturbing, some heartbreaking, and the rest exhilarating as she not only perfectly captures Kevin Pearce’s desire to get back out on the slopes after a horrific accident but also the toll his determination has on the rest of his family.
JAMES CROOT
DIRTY WARS
Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill does excellent work digging into the 2010 deaths of innocent Afghanis by mysterious American nighttime military raids unlocking a wider story about Joint Security Operations Command (JSOC) – a shadowy arm of the defence force that executes drone attacks and deadly raids in countries not officially at war with the States. It’s a chilling look at “War on Terror” strategies the US is taking that, according to the documentary, are leading to an escalation, not eradication of its enemies. Stylishly and alarmingly presented with a few too many flattering shots of our hero the journalist. It’s a disturbing and important tale, I just wish Scahill would step aside and let it be told.
FRANCES MORTON
FRANCES HA
HBO’s Girls, a few seasons down the track — with added French New Wave flourishes. Perhaps a reductive comparison, but hard not to ignore similarities in its cringey, foot-in-mouth conversations delivered by fickle, self-searching NYC twentysomethings (plus presence of Girls’ Adam Driver). Greta Gerwig is endlessly watchable/infuriating.
AARON YAP
A kind of a cross between a Woody Allen movie and Girls (without the requisite cable channel nudity), I found myself charmed and cringing in equal measure at Greta Gerwig’s hapless “heroine” as she passively-aggressively gets herself into endless scrapes. Think a slimmer yet equally garrulous and gauche New York-version of Miranda. Perfectly captures the universal feeling of being lost in your 20s, while backed by an evocative, and highly ironic, ’80s soundtrack that include Hot Chocolate and David Bowie.
JAMES CROOT
ILO ILO
This Singaporean drama has a pretty simple message: raising a family in a broken economy sucks balls. The family itself are pretty hard to like with the mother who’s prone to jealousy, the father who constantly makes poor financial decisions and a son who lacks a social filter. However, their plight and flaws are understandable, and through the growing relationship between the child and the Filipino maid-for-hire, this well-made slice-of-life foreign film kept me invested.
LIAM MAGUREN
In many ways the film I’ve always wanted to see: an eerily accurate representation of my childhood. Even when viewed through a veil of misty-eyed nostalgia, Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s autobiographical Ilo Ilo is a remarkably assured, nuanced debut, encapsulating the 1997 Asian financial crisis through the prickly bond between Jiale, a mischievous 10-year-old boy and his Filipino maid Teresa. Every beat is true-to-life, enriched by organic humour, affecting, naturalistic performances and a decided lack of sentimentality that recognises the cruelly transient nature of Teresa’s surrogate-mother role.
AARON YAP
LESSON OF THE EVIL
Far from Takashi Miike’s best work, this high school drama turned serial killer rampage does feature an truly nihilistic last half hour that kept my jaw dropping with its unrelenting violence. I stopped trying to latch onto any subtext (I think Miike is making a point about American school shootings) and just went with it. One thing’s for sure: nothing like this would ever, EVER get made in the USA.
TONY STAMP
Japanese horror maestro Takashi Miike is back in Ichi the Killer and Crows Zero territory with this mad-as-a-badger-on-crack high school massacre movie. If like me you loved the gore-soaked, dark-as-Johnny-Cash-in-a-graveyard-at-midnight humour of movies like Battle Royale, this will be right up your sluice gate. Beginning with the song “Mack the Knife” and introducing a popular teacher at a school with serious social issues, nothing can prepare you for the batshit crazy remorseless mayhem of the film’s second half – except maybe two words: Takashi Miike. A brutal, violent, relentless visit to the dark side with oodles of arterial spray, buckets of bonkers, a Norse god’s ravens, and a talking gun. All this and an ending that promises more carnage to come. Miike fans rejoice. Guardians of good taste avoid. Seriously. Stay away. Don’t even read this… You have been warned.
ADAM FRESCO
LEVIATHAN
Absolutely staggering, immersive experience fills you with awe and reinforces the cinematic power of image and sound over narrative. Leviathan is as close as you’ll get to being on a commercial fishing trawler without actually being on one. The images engulf the viewer in their grainy, tenebrous abstraction and unsettling, almost painterly beauty. A queasy, brutal ethnographic monster.
AARON YAP
I’m all for experimental artistic expression in documentary form (the Hitchcock-themed Double Take was an eye-opener for me), but I struggled with Leviathan. It does a hell of a job in amplifying the sombre mood it wanted to portray, successfully personifying the fishing vessel into some sort of dark beast. It presents a type of immersion that’s impossible to replicate through interviews, but despite the tremendous sound design and some truly PHENOMENAL-looking shots, the over-reliance on repetition deafened my attention span. It’s a film I respect more in hindsight, but my fascination brewed too closely with my frustration.
LIAM MAGUREN
MISS NIKKI AND THE TIGER GIRLS
Politics and pop music collide in this poignant, entertaining doco about Burma’s first all-girl pop group. Filmmaker Juliet Lamont followed the group from 2010-2012, capturing the warped ideals of the country’s military dictatorship and its galling effects on the nation’s youth. Despite their naïve, insular music, the band has irrefutable appeal. But what’s really telling is their fear of change once Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest begins to move the country towards democracy. Leading their charge for freedom through stardom is the passionate, hard-headed and outspoken Aussie expat Miss Nikki, a documentary-maker’s dream. The only thing missing was an update on how the girls are faring.
REBECCA BARRY HILL
MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS
How do you make an interesting documentary about a band with zero personality? Mistaken For Strangers solves that problem by making Tom Berninger, little brother of The National lead singer Matt Berninger, its subject as he struggles to make a film about the band while on tour with them. Amusing as it chronicles Tom’s unorthodox attempts to be a filmmaker, and his inability to perform basic road crew tasks or get his head around touring, it’s a light, enjoyable film set in the world of musicians while offering a tangential take on a familiar subject.
STEVE NEWALL
MOOD INDIGO
If you found Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind pretentious, artsy-fartsy, self indulgent bullpoop – then you’re gonna hate his adaptation of Boris Vian’s novel, ‘Froth on the Daydream.’ Like Terry Gilliam at full tilt, it’s an eye-poppingly imaginative trip in which stars Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris excel. You can accuse it of style over substance, but dig deeper than the froth and visual fireworks and this is a love story by way of tragedy in which Death looms large and conventional cohesion takes a leap off a tall building as Gondry embraces film as dream rather than dull old reality.
ADAM FRESCO
MUSEUM HOURS
Mumblecore for the gold card set. Sweetly dippy Anne goes to Vienna from Montreal when her relative falls into a coma. She breaks up her hospital bedside vigil with visits to the art museum where she befriends kindly security guard Johann. The film’s allure creeps slowly so that between the lingering shots of grey streetscapes and close ups of oil paintings you suddenly find yourself contemplating the big life questions. A serene musing on loneliness, friendship and life with a diaphanous narrative that leaves a deep impact.
FRANCES MORTON
OH BOY
Fans of last year’s Holy Motors and Jim Jarmusch movies will particularly enjoy this German black and white slice-of-life tale. James McAvoy-esque lead actor Tom Schilling is an engaging and entertaining guide as his day seems to get progressively worse (and he just can’t seem to get the one thing he desperately wants) to hilarious effect. Proof that Germans really do have a sense of humour about themselves.
JAMES CROOT
OUTRAGE BEYOND
Beat Takeshi returns to the Yakuza genre, directing and starring as Otomo, a Yakuza sprung from jail by a corrupt cop to stir up a gang war. The follow-up to Takeshi’s Outrage is a slow-burn drama that might not be a gangster classic but sure is classic gangster. Old enemies unite to take down former friends turned traitors. In true third-act-of-The Godfather fashion, the killings take a while a-coming, but once they arrive they don’t let up. Takeshi’s character may bemoan: “I’m getting too old for this shit,” but – judging by the assured direction, tight script and palpable tension delivered in this tale of violence begetting more violence – no matter how old he is, you can’t ‘Beat’ Takeshi when it comes to classy slow-burn existential gangster fare. Old school Yakuza flick cool.
ADAM FRESCO
SHOPPING
Set with impeccable art direction in New Zealand 1981, the film starts off feeling like an extended short film. It’s grim with a slice-of-life quality and while Ginny Loane’s cinematography captures a raw beauty in the Kapiti township, the historic setting and understated approach make the action feel distant. It takes the arrival of a beguiling visitor to inject the film with both expanse and immediacy. Bennie (Polish/Australian actor Jacek Koman) is the mischievous gypsy king of a wandering criminal gang and it’s easy to see why listless Willie falls under his spell. It’s a slow burn that will test some audiences’ patience but ultimately Shopping unwraps to explore the big ideas – identity, growing up and familial ties – with beauty, quiet humour, and a big Kiwi dollop of bleakness.
FRANCES MORTON
THE PAST
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) heads to France for this tightly-wound drama about a broken love triangle and its ripple effects on a modern-day imperfect blended family. The story is restricted to a few key characters with excellent Oscar nominee Bérénice Bejo and magnetic Ali Mosaffa, playing Bejo’s ex, at its centre. The film runs well over two hours yet is expertly paced with enough push and pull and twists and turns to captivate. Farhadi is a master at unpicking human relationships, revealing that in the end everyone, and no one, is blameless.
FRANCES MORTON
PRINCE AVALANCHE
More loser comedy than bromance, I found myself constantly chuckling at the near-silent antics of Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch (here clearly channelling Jack Black) in what is essentially a two-hander. Wes Anderson would be proud of this offbeat tale, which boasts its share of unexpected turns and sharp observational humour reflecting the Icelandic original this is loosely based on.
JAMES CROOT
PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER
Mike Lerner and Martin Pozdorovkin’s film may be preaching to the choir – but it’s a message that needs to be heard. If you’re interested in feminism, freedom, modern Russian politics, political censorship or why church and state should be separate, check out this by turns entertaining, riveting and shocking documentary. It’s enough to make any cat riot…
ADAM FRESCO
Three young women go up against the might of the Russian state in a tale played out across the news, but seldom given the exposure seen here. Supportive of the Pussy Riot members whose history it charts and who it follows through their trial, A Punk Prayer is careful to not demonise establishment Russia. Instead we’re offered insight beyond that which news bulletins can offer, the whole saga painted more a system driving itself to an inevitable result more than a malicious persecution.
STEVE NEWALL
THE SPECTACULAR NOW
Not as genre-defining great as the Sundance praise made it out to be, but a solid, well-acted coming-of-age pic with two terrific leads who aren’t your traditionally pretty H-wood up-and-comers. Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley’s moments together, often shot in long takes, bristle with impressive intimacy.
AARON YAP
TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM
Another contender for this year’s Searching for Sugar Man is a sizzling, fascinating and ceaselessly entertaining documentary. Shining a light on the unsung heroines of the music biz, such as Darlene Love (the uncredited voice of The Crystals) and the stupendous Merry Clayton (the female vocalist on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”). With contributions from the likes of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Sheryl Crow and Stevie Wonder, this is cracking, insightful top-notch, not-to-be-missed fare for music fans, students of civil rights and would-be documentary makers.
ADAM FRESCO
UPSTREAM COLOR
With a similar sense of dislocated reality as Primer but a stronger emotional throughline, Shane Carruth’s second feature continues his technique of eliding certain details from the viewer. This leaves you feeling like the film is always slightly out of reach, and that it’s more complex than it actually is. The specificities of the story might be fuzzy, but the images are always beautiful, and the characters’ struggles always relatable. I’m not sure this will stay with me like Primer has, but it’s another masterwork from a brilliantly unique director.
TONY STAMP
Nine years after Primer, director Shane Carruth is back with this by turns bizarre, beautiful, imaginative, impenetrable, confusing, colourful, interesting and enigmatic, near silent movie entry into the American art house indie school of filmmaking. Terrence Malick fans of visual poetry as opposed to traditional Hollywood-style three-act structure narrative will love it. Whether you find it tedious or tenacious, pretentious or poetic is up to you, but with its tendency to drift up its own well-crafted butt, Upstream Color will infuriate just as many as it inspires.
ADAM FRESCO
V/H/S/2
If horror’s your bag then this pick ‘n’ mix has something for all (bad) tastes, from a to z (aliens to zombies). Following the same portmanteau approach as its predecessor, this second helping of seven horror shorts is a far more cohesive affair. The Raid director Gareth Evans is hands-down horror winner for me. You’re Next helmer Adam Wingard provides some pretty cool moments. By no means perfect, but there’s less dross, better directors, tighter scripts and higher production values than the original – and V/H/S/2‘s a darn sight more bloody fun too.
ADAM FRESCO
A big step up from its predecessor, horror anthology V/H/S/2 and its 7 directors keep finding new ways to employ the found footage technique, with pleasingly diverse results. Blair Witch affiliates Greg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez go for black comedy with their winning zombie tale, but it’s Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto’s story of an Indonesian cult that truly goes off the deep end into pure, nightmarish terror. A real pleasure to witness at The Civic with an appreciative crowd.
TONY STAMP
The first V/H/S left me cold with its uninspired efforts at grimy, “shocking” horror, but in a truly unconventional horror development, it is surpassed by this sequel. The found footage anthology packs in some claustrophobia-inducing home intruders, a fresh take on a horror staple, chilling cult craziness and evil invaders – all wrapped up in a familiar framing device. The directors of The Raid, Hobo with a Shotgun, You’re Next and The Blair Witch Project(!) don’t shirk from gore or shocks, but rather than trying to out-bleak each other like V/H/S, instead seem hellbent on creating fun, if frequently disturbing, segments.
STEVE NEWALL
WEEKEND OF A CHAMPION
Roman Polanski heads to the 1971 Monaco Grand Prix with his mate Jackie Stewart in this fascinating look at the period (Cars! Fashion! Babes! Sideburns! Wallpaper!). Rich in personal insights from world Formula One champion Stewart thanks to his easy friendship with Polanski, their chats run the gamut from serious to lighthearted. Newly-restored, Weekend of a Champion captures Stewart’s charisma and the thrill of his sport while appealing to more than just petrolheads.
STEVE NEWALL
YOU’RE NEXT
Taking a step into more broadly-accessible horror hasn’t stopped Adam Wingard from bringing his friends along for the ride, fellow directors Ti West and Joe Swanberg joining a cast headed by Home and Away‘s Sharni Vinson (and including 80s horror babe Barbara Crampton). In this funny, frequently gruesome home invasion tale, Vinson gets to present a rare spin on the ‘final girl’, proving more capable of dispatching her masked aggressors than they would have hoped. In making her a competent survival expert, You’re Next subverts audience expectations (and advice) without going too far down the post-modern, self-referential route.
STEVE NEWALL
If NZIFF gave awards to the films screening during the fest, I’d nominate You’re Next for the following: Best Slasher. Best Crowd-Pleaser. Best Heroine. Best Table Flip. Best Use of an Apostrophe. Best Use of Unexpectedly Placed Humour. Best Use of a Kitchen Appliance.
LIAM MAGUREN
