Revelation Film Festival 2020 - Wrap up (plus podcast summary)

Right, that was a fun four days. I'm going to run through the nine films I saw with some brief notes and a rating on each. Here goes.

My Rembrandt

This documentary is a bit of a love letter to Rembrandt with the makings of a controversy bubbling underneath. The director, Oeke Hoogendijk, introduces us to Jan Six (pictured left) and his possible new discovery of a hitherto unknown Rembrandt. The story flicks around various eccentric collectors and it all looks fantastic but the film could have been a bit more focussed on the central issue - namely the veracity of the 'new' painting. For more on this film, see the longer review here.

Desert One

This documentary, by esteemed filmmaker Barbara Kopple, tells the story of the failed attempt to rescue American hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran after the Iranian revolution in 1979. There are some good moments here (notably interviews with U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his Vice-President, Walter Mondale) and the animation is pretty good. The issues I had are more to do with the way Kopple glorifies the cock-up and vilifies almost anyone not in a U.S. forces uniform. It also got fairly boring, which should have been easy to avoid with such a gripping real life tale.

iHuman

There's a lot to recommend in this doco about the future of AI. It starts with Jürgen Schmidhuber, an absolute bellend who is supposed to be the 'father of modern AI' and jumps about to other talking head geniuses expounding on the possibilities of where the world is heading. Some highlights (?) include the Chinese cities that use massive levels of surveillance and Project Maven, Google's hush-hush military connection. The visual effects are brilliant, as is the moment when a data analyst talks about managing our lives in the 'post-privacy age'.

The Trouble with Being Born

This is the film that was booed in Berlin and banned in Melbourne but I struggled to find why people would be so agitated by it. It's the story of an android built to replace a lost daughter, and the film leaves so much out that it's almost anti-exposition. It has some scenes that are slightly questionable (suggestive posing, erotic moaning) but these are handled in a sensitive, even otherworldly way. It's a film choc-filled with grief and loneliness, sewn together with mysterious time shifts and odd people and places. It's how I imagine Spielberg's AI would have turned out were it any good.

Atlantis

Well, this was a hard slog. Ukraine have won a war with Russia but things are still bleak, and this film revels in the misery, in theme AND form. Most of the shots are locked off wides with vehicles or people appearing in the foreground and then departing. Some of these feel like they go on for north of ten minutes, but surely that can't be. I wonder if it's the film I've seen with the fewest cuts. It reminded me of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, but that film had more style and humour and it took me along with it. This one seemed to challenge the viewer to enjoy it. There's one scene of a mortician reporting on a corpse that was mind-numbing. Strangely, I'm glad I saw Atlantis.

Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan

This is a great documentary on the life of legendary Pogue's singer/songwriter, Shane MacGowan. As more of an appreciator than a fan, I wasn't really super-psyched to see it, but it's one of the best of its kind. It's edited like a fairground ride with found footage, film from MacGowan's youth, TV spots, live gigs, even clips of old films (I noticed James Mason in Odd Man Out in there) and different styles of animation. Director Julian Temple is very much at home with this stuff. MacGowan is just past 60 but he's seen better days and, sure, it's a cautionary tale of the effects of booze and drugs but it also celebrates MacGowan and his Irish heritage. For the 'few rounds', he's joined by his wife Victoria, Pogue's biographer, Ann Scanlon, Johnny Depp and former Sinn Fin President, Gerry Adams.

The Jump ★★★½

Here's a well-tuned doco about a Lithuanian sailor in the Soviet fishing fleet and his attempt to defect one day in November 1970. The film's success is primarily down to the central character of Simas Kudirka - he's an extremely watchable old geezer, who has clearly been through a lot of shit, yet still manages to be positive. The director, Giedre Kickyte, has balanced his film well (a lesson to Desert One) by finding nuance in all parties, even the KGB interrogator. For a more detailed write-up, check this out.

[Here's where I ran into trouble patching in the star ratings, hence the change in style☺]

Collective ★★★★

What an excellent film. A nightclub fire in Bucharest kicks off a spiral of deceit and malignant corruption. We begin by hearing that, though the number of immediate deaths was terrible, many other young people died in the days and weeks following, due to bacteria filled hospitals. The way the dominoes fall here is astounding and the structure is just as good as the story. It plays out like a 70s political thriller from Alan J. Pakula. The film switches focus around half way through, from a no-nonsense journalist to the new Minister for Health and both these guys find the levels of ingrained villainy disheartening. Their final moments on screen are proper kicks in the bread basket. Highly recommended.

Archive ★★★★

Going in not knowing too much about this film was a good idea. It's pretty much a two-hander, an AI designer and his prototype, alone in a high security facility. The themes of grief, loss & loneliness aren't too heavy handed and hints of a war, maybe intergalactic (?), keep things obtuse. A kind of deadline from the corporation for the AI fella (Theo James) lends a degree of peril to proceedings. I don't want to say too much here, only that there are rubbings of Metropolis, Ghost in the Shell, Moon and a Nicole Kidman film that would be a giveaway if I mentioned it. First time director Gavin Rothery nails this one. Catch it if you get a chance.

A FEW SPOILERS IN PODCAST!

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Nosferatu

The best looking film of the year, this has a gorgeous array of visuals that elicited a number of quiet 'wows' and intakes of breath from yours truly. Big praise to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, production designer Craig Lathrop, art director Robert Cowper, set decorator Beatrice Brentnerova, and of course, director Robert Eggers for getting this crew together - he seems to use a lot of the same folk for his films, and fair enough, when this is the final product. Eggers has adapted the script from Henrik Galeen's original for F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, itself none too subtly ripped off from Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula . This is Eggers' fourth feature after The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman and while I haven't yet seen the first two, I didn't care much for The Northman , typically wondrous images aside. He flirts with the pomposity that affected his previous film but here it matches the gothic tones and source text, that is until Aaron Tayl...

Best of 2024 - End of Year Report

Ho ho, yo yos. Here's my rundown of films in 2024. By my best count I saw 124 films last year, 115 of them new watches (though not necessarily made or released in 2024), and 61 of them at the cinema. Of those cinema trips, 28 were at Luna Leederville , 14 at Palace Raine Square and 10 at the Backlot Perth , with 6 other cinemas making up the numbers. So here are my 10 favourite films from 2024, with a top 5 pod down the bottom... [Click on the titles for links to full reviews] 10. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) George Miller's follow-up to Fury Road tells us the story of how Furiosa got to where that film started. I reckon this was the best blockbuster of the year, certainly the most entertaining, with one epic action sequence and a couple of fine performances from Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. Great fun. 9. The Taste of Things (2023) Don't go in hungry! This is a foodie's shan-grill-ah, the high culinary masterwork of the last decade or more. Juliette Binoch...

Anora

Sean Baker has been making low budget, grungy-looking films for a while now, so it was probably a bit of a surprise when he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Anora . The first third of this stripper/sex worker story pings along at a nice pace. It begins to go slightly baggy in the middle third but recomposes itself for the home straight. Mikey Madison plays Anora (or Ani), an erotic dancer in a club where it looks like the majority of the dosh comes from private lap-dances - she has issues with her boss not paying health insurance and holiday benefits. Madison is a natural in this medium (my notes for this say "Is she an actual stripper? Check.") One night, Ani is requested to translate and maybe dance for, a young Russian guy, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), who immediately takes a shine to her and invites her to come to his place the next day. Ani realises she's hit pay dirt when she arrives at his mansion, and his goofy, sweet nature endears him to her even more. Post-sha...

Audrey

This Perth Fest entry is a very black comedy with a large splosh of Muriel's Wedding about it. Ronnie Lipsick (Jackie Van Beek) has high hopes for her daughter Audrey (Josephine Blazier) to succeed as an actress. Ronnie had some of her own fame years before in Australian TV and is now stage-mothering Audrey to within an inch of her life. But Audrey is a proper arsehole to everyone, including her sister with cerebral palsy, Norah (Hannah Diviney), and her romantically conflicted father, Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), so when Audrey's melodramatic antics see her slide off the roof of the house and into a coma, the family have mixed feelings about the situation. Ronnie incongruously decides to pose as Audrey in order to be accepted onto the acting course she had her signed up for. Nobody seems to notice, Norah begins to be more accepted by Audrey's friends (and boyfriend), and Cormack turns his meekness around, reinvigorating his sex life with Ronnie. The family feel guilty...

The Monk and the Gun

This Bhutanese comedy drama is part of the Perth Festival and it follows the country's attempts to move from a monarchy to a democracy in 2006. In the small town of Ura, a novice monk, Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk) is tasked with finding two guns for his Lama, played by real life monk Kelsang Choejay. He's not told why but he gets on with the job. At the same time, a 'fixer/tour guide' from Thimphu, Benji (Tandim Sonam) gets a gig driving a newly arrived American, Ronald (Harry Einhorn) around the country in search of a particularly valuable US Civil War rifle. You might be able to see where this is going... This is satire in deep cover. It might even be satire adjacent, such is its mildness. This is not a bad thing. At times I felt like I was experiencing an old Ealing comedy, or maybe a low-key Ken Loach. The government sends officers around the country to run a mock election to show people how to vote, and one of them, Tshering Yangden (Pema Zangmo Sherpa) wanders through...

The Wolves Always Come at Night

My first taste of the Perth Festival schedule for the coming season was a 'hybrid' film called The Wolves Always Come at Night , directed by Gabrielle Brady. The term 'hybrid' really just seems to mean tweaking the traditional methods of documentary production, in this case, adding some clearly set-up shots and situations, but also, calling on the subjects to help in the writing process. This film is about a family of goat farmers in Mongolia whose difficult existence is made even harder by an unforeseen event that forces them to relocate to the city. The family are led by mother, Zaya Dashzeveg and father, Davaa Dagvasuren, and Brady made the film with their input in mind. She says; Our intention was that Davaa and Zaya have agency within the making of their own story. So, in working together as co-writers, we were able to shape the story together. They would share ideas for what could be filmed and I would translate this into the cinematic language for the film. It...

Ghost Cat Anzu (Me & Kid)

Here's a nice surprise. I find Japanese anime to be hit and miss, and the first look at this boof-headed feline didn't promise too much, but Ghost Cat Anzu knocked the bails off. It riffs on the Ghibli theme of children being forced to grow up quicker than they should, with 11 year-old Karin (Noa Gotô) as our focus. Her dad's a bit of a scally and he does a runner while visiting his father at his temple home in a sleepy town, leaving Karin alone with kindly grandad and huge, anthropomorphic cat, Anzu, voiced by Mirai Moriyama. Karin wanders the town, waiting for dad to return and meeting various locals, while being casually monitored by Anzu. The pace is a little pedestrian but the shenanigans make up for this. Anzu is pulled over by the police and told he needs a license to ride a scooter, though he protests that he's not actually a human, so surely these rules don't apply. He works as a masseur but also takes a gig to scare birds away from the river, roping Karin...

Bird

This is such a fine film and going in blind might just be the best way to see it. It's not that it's a twisty, spoilery mystery, just that sometimes knowing nowt about a film is the best way to appreciate it. Zero expectations and all. So if you want the same groundwork that I had, read no more. . . . . Ok. If you're still reading, let's kick off. This is Andrea Arnold's sixth feature and I really have to see more of her work. It's set in the Kent town of Gravesend, and boy, is that a suitable name for this place. Not far from London, on the river Thames, seems like it's wall to wall chavs out there. Bailey (Nykiya Adams) lives with her dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), and half-brother, Hunter (Jason Buda) in a graffiti covered squat. Pissed off that Bug wants to get married to newish girlfriend, Kayleigh (Frankie Box), Bailey rebels and follows her brother and his mates on a small-time vigilante mission. Things get messy, she does a runner and ends up sleeping in...

Merchant Ivory

Here's the first of a few films I'm planning to catch at the British Film Festival so I'll attempt to keep the reviews relatively brief. This a documentary directed by Stephen Soucy about the legendary filmmaking team, Merchant Ivory Productions. The formidable ensemble consisted of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins. After meeting in 1961, Ivory and Merchant started a fruitful partnership, both professionally and romantically. The film shows us their somewhat ramshackle early films, made in India, moving on to marginally more assured productions in the US, and finally to the English period dramas they became known for in the 80s and onwards. Together, they made over 40 films, some absolute gems among them. A Room with a View , Howard's End , and The Remains of the Day are probably their best, though you could throw in Heat and Dust , Maurice , and The Golden Bowl as very strong examples of their...

Emilia Pérez

Jacques Audiard makes a feature film roughly every three or four years, and at the age of 72, at this rate, he may not have too many left. For me, this is one of the tragedies of modern cinema. This bloke can do almost no wrong (his first film, See How They Fall was his only misstep). So here he is with his tenth (!) feature, Emilia Pérez . It's a pretty bonkers story about a Mexican drug cartel boss who hires a young, marginalised lawyer to help him transition to a woman. The film tackles some important themes - the transitioning element, but also racism and the disappeared population of Mexico. The twist is that it's all performed as a musical, and the balance between fantastic and ludicrous is stretched throughout. Most musicals live or die by the music and luckily, there are some great numbers in this (one of them, El Mal , just took out best song at the Golden Globbies). On the other end of the scale is a song about the details of transition surgery, where a doctor warbl...

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