Revelation Film Festival 2023

Revelation Film Festival 2023 - Wrap up

Just the lazy six for this year's Rev festival but it was a fun time all round (my balding ginger scone sneaks into the far left of the pic above). Here are the films I saw, descending in order of least to most liked.

Dùthchas ★½

A found 8mm footage doco from the island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. The approach could have been better, it's bit dull - just talking heads interspersed with said footage from the 60s & 70s. The idea of a culture and language on the brink of extinction has merit but it just takes to long to get to the nub. There's a film in here somewhere but the execution needed more oomph and less chat.

Holy Shit! ★★

This is a scatological German porta-loo thriller (words I've never said or written in that order before). A dude wakes up in a dunny with a metal rod stuck through one arm, trapping him in this enclosed filth. This is a more disgusting, less claustro version of that Ryan Reynolds flick, Buried. It sets up the story well enough, with some minor political intrigue but can't keep pace with its high concept idea.

Frank and Frank ★★★

Albany set drama about two fellas called Frank (Myles Pollard and Trevor Jamieson) who bond when one of them can't start a fire. Fine performances (esp. Jamieson) and some clever writing but one or two things didn't quite sit right for me. Minor grumbles aside, there's a lot of good stuff here - the camel monologue was pure class, the Great Southern region scrubs up nicely, and most of the jokes played well in the screening too. More to come from director Adam Morris and his crew, shooting around Albany - they plan to make one or two a year in the area.

Devil's Peak ★★★

This is a taut little thriller set in the southern US about a crime overlord and his unfortunate dependents. Billy Bob Thornton is excellent as the patriarch Charlie, Hopper Penn, less so as his son Jacob. It plays a bit like a redneck Animal Kingdom and Perth director Ben Young had some fascinating things to say at the Q & A afterwards. Considering its low budget, it's a credit to the technical folk that it looks so good and the final 20 minutes or so really cranks up the near-Shakespearean drama. Robin Wright and Jackie Earl Haley add some heft to the cast, and Young seems to be one of the good guys re: wanting to deliver character films rather than template streamer fare.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline ★★★½

Here's an environmental message piece dressed up as a clever thriller, complete with separated character 'chapters' in flashback and effective cross-cutting of the preparations and execution. Strong performances from a handful of semi-familiar faces fill this timely, noodle-provoking film. Whatever you may think about the politics of this film, there's no denying it's sharply shot and edited. Director Daniel Goldhaber hasn't made much up to now but I reckon that's due to change soon - he seems to know his way around a script.

Citizen Sleuth ★★★★

This is an intriguing backhander to true crime podcasts with a really engaging central character, Emily Nestor. She's a young West Virginian woman curious enough about a local girl's death to start the 'Mile Marker 181' podcast, but was it an accident or was it murder? The first half of the film shows an energetic, almost manic Emily, excitedly explaining the problems with the 'accident', but then it swings on a pivot when someone explains something that she had previously assumed about the tragedy, and from then on, the director, Chris Kasick takes things into his own hands, thereby diminishing Emily's role in her own film. Sounds odd, but it works in that this action gives her the impetus to face some hard truths (at least, that's how I read it). Like any doco about current events, there are multiple viewpoints from many concerned parties but I found this to be pretty balanced and entertaining to boot.

*Special mention must go to a great short film I saw before one of the main features. It's called Bald Future and it's a fucking hoot. Set in an awful office with an unhinged boss, it shows the trouble us chrome domes have to endure daily:) A cracker.

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Resident Evil

This latest Resident Evil is a slight zombie viscera flick that doesn't really say much but is a bit of fun anyway. Director Zach Cregger impressed with Weapons , and folk have good things to say about his film before that, Barbarian , too (I'm yet to watch). His latest is a reboot, retool, reimagining, however you'd like to put it, of the film series spawned from the game in 2002, that eventually mutated to six entries, all gamely starring Milla Jovovich. Now before this new iteration, I'd only seen that first one, but quite possibly one or two more (like the creatures in the film, I'm guessing they all meld together). My gaming credentials are even more paltry - I seem to remember playing a version once years ago, but it could have been any zombie shooting game. So drawing a long bow, I'm going to say this one aims more for the shits and giggles than the others, borrowing from Cregger's previous life as a comedy actor/writer/director. Austin Abrams plays ...

Digger

Including this new film, Alejandro González Iñárritu has directed only eight features, and his resume has its ups ( Amores Perros , The Revenant ) and downs ( Birdman ). But I make Digger his best. He shares a writing credit with a number of other folk (sounds like too many cooks but they get away with it), and it's shot by the ever brilliant Emmanuel Lubezki. Kudos firstly must go to the trailer editor to sell it the way they did - it's a really eyebrow-raising subterfuge. I was expecting Dr. Strangelove , with climate as the nuclear bombs, instead we get a blend of films like Synecdoche New York , Beau is Afraid , and Birdman , and it's superior and more accessible than all of those. Colour me gobsmacked. From the start, Digger was heading one way and, had it continued that way, this would be a very different review. Luckily, it pulled a terrific gear change. In a nutshell, the Cruiser plays Digger Rockwell, a mega rich oil man who ignores all warnings of an impending d...

Life is Life

Here's another serving from the Italian Film Festival , this one set mostly in the fictional town of Bellesammama in Southern Sardinia, the beautiful Spiaggia di Tuerredda standing in for the beach paradise. The recognisable story goes that a rich company wants to buy up the land on the beach to build a resort, promising to create jobs and bring untold wealth to the struggling area. Everyone is confident things will be done and dusted in no time until the real estate company runs up against an immovable object, old farmer Efisio (Giuseppe Loi). Offered ever increasing sums of Lira, then as time goes on, Euros, he rejects all. This is his home, he doesn't need anything else. The townsfolk cajole Efisio and chivvy his daughter Francesca (Virginia Raffaele), hoping they'll see reason. The head of the Milanese real estate firm, Giacomo (Diego Abatantuono), sends a foreman, Mariano (Aldo Baglio) to sort things out, and even enlists the local mayor and police. No dice. Althoug...

Queen: Budapest

Pure class. A Hungarian director, János Zsombolyai, and his crew filmed Queen's concert at Népstadion in Budapest in 1986 with a fair number of 35mm cameras. It's recently been finessed for IMAX and the result is a bloody ripping concert film. There's a short preview promo featuring sit-down interviews with Brian May and Roger Taylor and then the concert begins. The band played this unprecedented gig at the end of July, just a couple of weeks after their Wembley sets, and as part of the Magic Tour. It was one of the first stadium concerts played behind the Iron Curtain by a 'Western' band, and apparently around 80,000 punters turned up, with more than half that number listening from outside the stadium. The band run through a typical set list of favourites, starting with One Vision , Tie Your Mother Down , and (my favourite from the gig) Seven Seas of Rhye . Other belting highlights include Under Pressure , Now I'm Here , Hammer to Fall , and Radio Ga Ga . Watch...

Dune

Denis Villeneuve's long-awaited Dune finally arrives in Australian cinemas and it's a technical marvel. To start with, there's the amazing production design by Patrice Vermette. A lot of the sets and machinery have been physically created, to add weight to the visual effects. A highlight is the appearance of the 'ornithopter', a clunky, dragonfly of metal, that flaps its wings to fly. The scale of the buildings and cities is mammoth, many of them made on a studio lot in Budapest (see this Architectural Digest article for more). The cinematography, by Melburnian, Greig Fraser, is suitably magic, in keeping with Villeneuve's stylistic requirements, For example, desert scenes have a tendency to go all wind-whipped and blurry, but even when a dragonfly enters a storm, acuity is admirably maintained. The visuals are just a part of Villeneuve's signature language - the almost ethereal long shots across vast rooms and landscapes; the measured, even slow paci...

Classmates

This solid, if not super original, slice of high school life in gritty Euro-environs looks to be a change of tack for director Umberto Riccioni Carteni. Much of his back catalogue appears to be on the frothy end of the spectrum, and oddly, Classmates is listed as a 'Drama, Comedy' in the festival programme. It's not all that heavy but it's a stretch to call it a comedy. It starts with English teacher, credited as Professoressa (Anna Ferzetti) arriving at her new school in a rough-ish area of north-east Rome called Rebibbia. The final year students of this class are generally downheartened nihilists, all carrying problems related to poverty, drugs or family. A more difficult start might have been expected for the Prof but most of her students respond well to her, due to a policy of treating them like humans, not the garbage they (and other teachers) believe they are. A familiar trope of students shouting at each other, insulting and threatening, soon shows itself to be...

The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan is one of the few active directors who can entice punters to the cinema (along with Denis Villeneuve), and they've come out in droves for his latest, a retelling of Homer's The Odyssey . Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who is co-opted to join his overlord, Agamemnon, in his attack on Troy. After near 10 years of siege, culminating in the Trojan Horse event, the silly bastard then decides to take the scenic route home, and gets plumb lost. What follows is a technically brilliant rendering of mythical nonsense made to feel real. Odysseus's mini-fleet of three ships and maybe 100 (?) men run into several hardships, notably the Cyclops; a small army of huge men called the Laestrygonians; the sorceress, Circe; and some salacious sea nymphs. These set pieces are fantastic, especially the Cyclops (played by TARS voice from Interstellar , Bill Irwin), and Circe's cottage, where she has a way with greedy menfolk. Samantha Morton is almost best...

Coyote vs. Acme

While there have been loads of Looney Tunes feature films, this is the fourth to mix live action with the animated favourites. There are two Space Jam films, but if you can remember 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action , you're doing better than me. This new hybrid, directed by Dave Green, stars Will Forte and John Cena as opposing lawyers in a case brought against Acme by Wile E. Coyote. Oddly, this film is actually based on an article for the New Yorker magazine, written by Ian Frazier, about the downtrodden desert dog and his annoyance with Acme Corporation and their faulty products. I realise that some younger crew will have no idea of the content of the Looney Tunes Road Runner cartoons, so to sum it up: "Road Runner, the Coyote's after you. Road Runner, if he catches you, you're through." Yep, it's a classic, constant chase, and as this film posits, maybe the chase is the point. Logically, and in nature, the coyote would probably eat the bird, if i...

Best of 2021 - End of Year Report

Well, film made it through 2021, mostly intact. There were more cinema closures around the world but a couple of delayed films from 2020 were finally released, though there's still a bit of a lag for others. A gall bladder removal in February meant no trips to the cinema for that month, but I managed to get to the big screen 68 times in all. So from a total of 125 films watched this year (112 first time viewings), here are the top ten films I saw in 2021. [Click on the titles for links to full reviews for all but number 10] 10. The Wicker Man (1973) This is the Edward Woodward original from the 70s, not the Cage remake (though I'm keeping an open mind to that one). I shamefully hadn't seen this and I'm sorry I left it so long. It's a clever, moody, very bloody odd look at the perils of faith and conversely, curiosity. Christopher Lee is imperious, Britt Ekland stunning - her seduction of Woodward FROM A DIFFERENT ROOM has to be seen to be believed. A real cult cla...

Migration (Me) (Kids)

A whole family trip to the cinema for this animated duck movie, written by Mike White (of The White Lotus fame) and directed and co-written by Benjamin Renner. It's a fairly simple storyline - mum and ducklings fancy a trip to Jamaica, risk-averse dad is reluctant. Of course, for the sake of the plot, dad comes around. The journey is physical as well as offering a chance to experience personal (duckal?) growth - the spirit of adventure is enhanced, and the kids, mainly the older lad, transition from childhood to adulthood. There are numerous POV flying scenes - through clouds, between buildings in New York, in a nightmarish kitchen, down water slides, through a jungle - seriously, it's enough to make an adult dizzy. Admittedly though, it feels kind of reductive to even talk about all this as a grown up human. The colours, sounds, Looney Tunes style sight gags, are all mechanically tooled for little grommets to lap up, let's face it, this type of film isn't for the lik...

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