Revelation Film Festival 2024

Revelation Film Festival 2024 - Wrap up

Well, that brings an end to a fantastic edition of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival. I managed fewer films than I'd hoped due to a rough cold, but still got to see nine (plus one at the Programme Launch back in May). Spoilt for choice this year - I'll briefly run through my least to most liked:

The Primevals ★½

The story behind this film is more interesting than the film itself. Devised in the 70s, with principal photography done in Romania and Italy in 1994, it was finally released in 2023. A bonkers story about Yetis being genetically modified by lizard aliens (I think), this feels like a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion film from the 60s. It's really a vehicle for David Allen's puppet mastery, the bloke has some serious visual effects cred, but he doesn't cut it as a writer/director. I guess if it can produce a line like this - "The eyes of a dying giraffe can change a man." - then it can't be all bad.

Hundreds of Beavers ★★½

Very inventive, uber stupid animated reality about a guy who aims to win a woman's hand in marriage by killing loads of beavers (not real ones). It starts slowly, picks up about halfway through, but wears out its welcome soon enough. The absolute commitment to Road Runner style slapstick is to be commended. I just couldn't maintain the watching rhythm.

We Were Dangerous ★★★

1950s set drama about a group of 'incorrigible delinquent girls' in New Zealand who are sent to an island to prepare them for marriage and keep them out of trouble. There are some fine performances from the girls (Erana James, Manaia Hall and Nathalie Morris) and an OTT one from the matron (Rima Te Wiata). Nothing groundbreaking but it's a nice kick at old-fashioned conservatism.

So Unreal ★★★

This is a fun video essay on how technology is treated in film. Debbie Harry gives us a ripe voice over that probably does more harm than good. Most of the expected films are there but also some intrigues like Mindwarp, The Lawnmower Man and Looker. One for the film nerds.

The Man I Left Behind ★★★

Larry Towell is an experienced photojournalist from Canada with stints in Central America and the Middle East. This documentary, mainly shot by Towell himself, depicts his press gigs, sandwiched between his home life. Some of the footage is horrific, the landmines victims' prosthetic 'maintenance' sequence particularly shocking. A pretty important doco that just lagged a bit in its delivery.

Kid Snow ★★★½

Some traditional film making with this boxing drama about a pair of brothers touring the Aussie bush with a tent fighting troupe and a girl who gets stuck in the middle. Phoebe Tonkin is excellent as Sunny, the brothers Kid (Billy Howle) and Rory (Tom Bateman) are solid too. This flips the traditional sports movie trope of the underdog prevailing, and director Paul Goldman knows how to hit all the right beats. Shot mostly in Kalgoorlie, and the outback looks suitably dusty, if that's your thing.

Power Alley ★★★★

This is an extremely well made debut drama from writer/director Lillah Halla about abortion in Brazil. Fine performances from the young cast, who apparently improvised much of their dialogue, with special mention for the lead, Ayomi Domenica. The volleyball coach Sol (Grace Passô) is a standout too. Engaging and enraging cinema.

Hesitation Wound ★★★★

See separate review here.

Kinds of Kindness ★★★★

Great triptych from Yorgos Lanthimos with a clutch of actors (Jesse Plemmons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley) playing different characters over the three stories. I don't usually dig these composite films but this was an off-the-wall joy, especially the third part. Not many filmmakers have the power to provoke the sort of open-mouthed disbelief in the audience, not shock as such, more like a snort and a shake of the head, usually followed by a satisfied grin (in my case, anyway). Must complete the Lanthimos set one of these days.

Birdeater ★★★★½

The best film at Rev was the last one I saw. This Aussie drama about a young guy, Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) who invites his fiancé, Irene (Shabana Azeez) to his buck's party weekend is a modern gem. Co-writer/directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir have tooled something special in their feature debut. It has echoes of Wake in Fright and Phantom Thread, and the exploration of toxic dependency is scathing and unsettling. The performances are mint with an especially fantastic turn from Ben Hunter as psycho mate Dylan. Atmospheric and assured, a very exciting career launch for these guys. Filmmakers to keep an eye on.

I also caught a couple of shorts before the features - Bottleneck, Kindling, Broono and Max Pam: The Freddie Incident, the last being the pick. All in all, this was a cracking Rev, one of the best I've been to. Long may it continue.

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Top twenty WWII films

The Guardian recently ran an article on the ten best World War II films, as voted by respondents to a Deltapoll for The War Movie Theatre podcast (see their list and link at the end of this piece). As this year is 80 years since the end of hostilities, I thought it might be interesting to run down my top twenty World War II films. Here we go: 20. Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg - 1987) This China-set drama of expats during the war in the Pacific theatre was Christian Bale's first big role at the age of 13. He's pretty bloody good too, as are most of the cast, including John Malkovich and Nigel Havers. Spielberg saw this J.G. Ballard story as a chance to make a comparatively 'darker' film about the loss of innocence and it turned out to be one of his very best. 19. The English Patient (Anthony Minghella - 1996) All the press for this film was the love story angle between dreamy Ralph Fiennes (pre-Voldemort, of course) and elegantly icy Kristin Sc...

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

This eighth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise feels like a good place to end things. The series is rapidly ripening and it's possible that any more and we might be getting into the fruit fly stage. It's not going out on a limb to say they will probably continue until Tom Cruise is in traction but, by the looks of this warlock, he'll outlast us all. The Final Reckoning is many things to many people. On the one hand, it's great fun, packed with tension and brilliantly edited to within an inch of its celluloid life (kudos to the editor with a name like a British snooker player, Eddie Hamilton). On the other hand, it reeks with honking dialogue and convoluted exposition that wastes an awful lot of its lengthy run-time (170 mins, no thanks Mr. Bladder). One character actually says, "It's the end of the world as we know it." At this stage, I didn't feel fine. And for your bingo card, make a cross in the square for 'characters saying the name o...

The Tasters

My final tilt at the 2025 German Film Festival turned out to be a Swiss/Belgian/Italian co-production, directed by Silvio Soldini. It's based on a book by Rosella Postorino called At the Wolf's Table , about a year or so in the life of Margot Wölk. This luckless woman was one of 15 official food tasters for Hitler when he was staying at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia (current day Poland). Rosa Sauer (Elisa Schlott) arrives at her parents-in-law's house in the town of Parcz to await the return of her husband from the Eastern Front. Not long after, she is co-opted into a perverse gig at the military compound just outside the town - Rosa and several other young, healthy women must taste the Fuhrer's food before he eats it, in case it's poisoned. The dynamic between the women is well played. Some are suspicious of Rosa, due to the fact that she's from Berlin; one is young and naive; one is blindly loyal to the Reich; one is staunchly discreet. All are bricking ...

Münter and Kandinsky - The Blue Rider

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Thunderbolts*

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F1: The Movie

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Sinners

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The Surfer

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Two to One

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80s Movies and their Songs

So I was driving back from down south and we decided to fiddle with the radio. A generic FM station appeared and my Gen X ears knew most of the tracks, some ok, some dire. But the thing that prompted me to start this post was that a couple of the songs were clearly linked to films from the 1980s. I began thinking that, as much as it doesn't really happen now (or even much after the end of that decade, with some notable exceptions), this 'movie/song tie-in' was a huge pop culture phenomenon back then. As a massive time-wasting technique, I decided to do a bit of research and try to find the film and song pairing that was the most popular of the era. Box Office Mojo helped with the film's takings, but how to discern a song's popularity? I've had a look at the US Billboard charts and the UK top 40, so we'll see if this goes some way to covering it. Ultimately, the song that YOU heard on the radio all the time, or watched on MTV (often with the film's actor...

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