This is page 2 of Flicks’ NZIFF mini-reviews…
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Nowhere to Hide
Now that human beings are armed with smartphone cameras, we’re in the beginning of a guerrilla doco-making boom with Oscar nominee Netflix’s Winter on Fire doing a hell of a job capturing the recent Ukrainian conflict. This film does that with the people of central Iraq in focus, from 2011 to 2016. It’s as raw, bleak, humane, confusing, gut-wrenching as you think it is – except you really don’t know it in depth until you experience a film as personal and grounded as this.
LIAM MAGUREN
On Body & Soul
Given how uniquely bonkers the concept is (two random meat factory workers share a dream where they are wild deer), it was really disappointing to see this film only dip its toes into an idea that begged for deeper exploration. Géza Morcsányi does a fine job in his role, though his character has very little going on. Alexandra Borbély is the standout as an incredibly convincing autistic woman looking for affection – she’s easily the film’s strongest quality.
LIAM MAGUREN
The Other Side of Hope
Director Aki Kaurismäki might be getting a grumpy phone call from the Finnish tourism board shortly, as The Other Side of Hope paints a glib but amusing picture of Finland; all sardines and boiled potatoes, and hospitality with a lower case ‘h’. If an oddball Roy Andersson-esque comedy about a Syrian refugee desperate for work sounds like a bit of you, you’re in for a dour but delightful treat.
MATTHEW CRAWLEY
The Party
With searing dialogue and darkly smarting comic timings throughout this climactic one-act wonder/pandemonium, Sally Potter wickedly installs a queue of A-list UK actors into a cozy London home setting and choreographs a political workshop under the guise of a get-together: it’s a celebration, it’s terminal, it’s sexting, it’s a break-up, it’s old news, it’s all new as rotting stinking secrets spew forth (as do characters, causing somewhat of a rush-hour in the bathroom). Brexit-panic brilliance, this is a seriously superb theatrical chef-d’oeuvre.
MARIA WALLS
The Party is pretty much the total antithesis to Beatriz at Dinner. Its performances and script put theatrical comedy ahead of realism, the cinematography keeps it simple, and the ending puts a satisfying cap on all the subplots. It’s short, sharp, savoury entertainment where all the actors get juicy parts – though none are juicier than Patricia Clarkson’s viciously awesome role.
LIAM MAGUREN
Patti Cake$
Geremy Jasper’s fictional story of plus-sized, New Jersey rapper Killer P (Australia’s Danielle Macdonald), is a clichéd crowd-pleaser that’s so energetic, the “been-there, seen-that” cynic in me surrendered to its gritty simplicity. 8 Mile with a smile and a poor, white, female rapper, Patti Cake$ delivers a big, bold, anti-body-shaming, never-judge-a-book-by-its-cover, rap morality tale about family, friendship, and young people born on the wrong side of the tracks daring to dream big.
ADAM FRESCO
A Prayer Before Dawn
Among hard-hitting modern prison dramas, this is the knee to the face that follows the one-two punch of A Prophet and Starred Up. A relentless onslaught of rough life and prize fights within Thailand’s notorious Klong Prem prison, A Prayer Before Dawn is a true story told mostly without words, going instead for a visceral fly-on-the-wall experience that works brilliantly thanks to its tight cinematography and intense sound design.
DANIEL RUTLEDGE
Quest
A thought- and feels-provoking document of one North Philadelphia family and the every-day but extraordinary ups and downs they live through. Filmed with intimate access to family moments across the years, during what we now forlornly refer back to as “the Obama years”, Quest is a healthy but heartbreaking antidote to the Kardashian-soaked reality entertainment epidemic.
MATTHEW CRAWLEY
Risk
Laura Poitras’ five-year chronicle of Julian Assange is striking for its apparent freedom of access to the Wikileaks chief but doesn’t provide much new information to anyone who’s casually followed him over the years. Exceedingly paranoid, often inscrutable, Assange is at his worst when addressing the accusations against him of sexual assault, revealing himself to be a complete creep. Unfortunately, Poitras’ access had ended by the time Wikileaks started meddling in the 2016 American election, but what’s here is a pretty gripping account of espionage in the info era.
TONY STAMP
Secret Screening – The Belko Experiment
A slick, schlocky take on the Battle Royale / Hunger Games -type amateur kill fest, smartly confined to one building, The Belko Experiment is a lot of fun. Some of the comedy was miles off the mark for me, especially the ridiculous stoner character, while the more villainous characters were bang on. The high body count and penchant for graphic head trauma were delightful and the whole audience going in knowing zero made it all the more enjoyable.
DANIEL RUTLEDGE
The theme of The Belko Experiment is Don’t Fuck Around. The movie takes that attitude with its story, spending the minimum amount of time with its characters before hell flips a table filled with knives and guns. What you get isn’t a world-shifting genre pic; it’s an immediate dose of visualised violence pumped straight into the veins and flushed out the morning after.
LIAM MAGUREN
Spookers
The legitimately haunting thing here (muddled with paint, crazy eyes and pointed teeth) is the sensitivity, vulnerability and beauty of the humans with their united empathy for each other. They’re performing an idea of the scare. Together. Shadow sides and puppets are delightfully created by Teresa Peters. Like some hybrid between circus mayhem and Television New Zealand’s 1980s Friday Night Horrors, the wild credit sequence by Jon Baxter is a synch. Florian Habicht has yet again delivered a delicate eccentric extravaganza.
MARIA WALLS
Given its subject matter, Spookers was always going to be entertaining – there’s a lot of milage to be had from the horrific visages on display here contrasted with the broad kiwi accents coming out of them. Florian Habichts’ victory is getting to know each member of the Spookers staff intimately enough that they reveal their own personal demons – in fact, they’re so engaging a bit more time spent with them would have been appreciated. Despite that, it’s a very human documentary about people who pretend to be monsters.
TONY STAMP
The Square
The 2017 Cannes Palme d’Or winner, directed by Ruben Ostlund, is best described as a Swedish take on Luis Buñuel’s darkly funny social satire, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, only set in a museum and with a human gorilla impersonator. By turns wildly funny, provocative and chilling, this is modern metaphorical surrealism that fans of Ostlund’s Force Majeure will love – lengthy runtime, sprawling concepts, intellectual conceits and all.
ADAM FRESCO
Less focussed than Ruben Östlund’s superb Force Majeure but just as deliciously awkward, The Square applies his post-cringe-comedy schtick to the art world, focusing again on the way men’s egos get them into trouble when real life doesn’t match their expectations. Ultimately, it’s a bit too loose in its second half to pack a much satirical punch and some characters end up feeling slightly wasted, but plenty of scenes are excruciating in the best possible way, and Östlund’s measured pace and sense of style are perfect for his dry-as-a-bone wit.
TONY STAMP
There’s an element of shooting fish in a barrel by taking a sarcastic swipe at the art world, but alongside the easier laughs, The Square prods its own audience too – with the smugness of some festival-goers mirrored on screen by its characters. Less focused and direct than Ruben Östlund’s previous film Force Majeure, The Square does mine some similar territory as it repeatedly pushes its characters, and the viewer, towards deciding where the line is drawn in a variety of scenarios – over-enthusiastic performance art, marketing meetings, dishonesty, sexual encounters, shit art and more besides. A great way to start the festival – frequently hilarious, with plenty to talk about afterwards, and marking a breakout English-language performance by lead Claes Bang.
STEVE NEWALL
This movie messed with me. Not in a decoding-Inception sort of way, not in a what-the-fuck-was-Holy-Motors-even-about sort of way, but in a “What am I even doing here?” sort of way. With its pretentious art world setting, it shows just how far up our own asses we can go to where the sound of real world problems cannot register, giving me plenty of laughs in the moment of watching it but also a creeping epiphany long after it ended.
LIAM MAGUREN
Stalker
I can see why people love this: it’s shot beautifully, the sci-fi-ness is economically presented, the acting is mighty, and drops a dump truck of truth at the end. But I was often bludgeoned to total boredom by the knee-scraping pace – and this is coming from a guy who loved the slow progression of Martin Scorsese’s Silence.
LIAM MAGUREN
Super Dark Times
This has all the makings of a brilliant modern third companion to River’s Edge and Stand by Me, albeit with the obscene, sex-obsessed dialogue of Superbad and some harder-edged violence thrown in. But despite how suitably dark and bloody it all gets, Super Dark Times suffers from a few unfortunate missteps in the third act. It’s a hugely promising debut feature for Kevin Phillips and will definitely strike a chord with some viewers, for whom it’ll be an instant classic – I’m painfully close to being one of them.
DANIEL RUTLEDGE
Swagger of Thieves
A touch overlong (but what would you cut?), this doco on Head Like a Hole sensibly avoids turning in a chronological recounting of the band’s inglorious past, if glorious cacophony. Unrelentingly honest, to the point of probably being Aotearoa’s most insightful music doco, Swagger of Thieves captures what it means to be a band with a rep in NZ – juggling notoriety and nostalgia in the present day alongside a feeling of “we fucked things up a bit, but how come we didn’t get what we deserve?”. The pairing of Nigels Beazley and Regan turns out to be one of NZIFF’s most engrossing relationship portrayals (the former’s a relentlessly charismatic quote machine) and embittered APRA royalty analysis has never sounded so true to life on screen.
STEVE NEWALL
Swallows and Amazons
It’s 2017 and Summer in 1935, or is it? Swallows and Amazons has been reconstituted. Its Brexit-timed re-release and refurb includes snappishly high-definition cinematography revealing contemporary fabrics, textures and hipster ye olde typography posing as, well, old times. Arthur Ransome’s wholesome novel adapted to screen still features: The Children, boats, the deferent Mother, the arrival of authorising, cryptic telegrams from Father, Summer Hols, the Lake District, pirates, spies, naming rights, colonization, wars, the Amazons and, of course, a fruitcake.
MARIA WALLS
Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present
Wow, La Monte Young was a giant fuckhole. Fine, loving, unpretentious tribute to Conrad, a true authority-bucking, avant iconoclast who just seemed like a genuinely rad dude as well. A real delight seeing/hearing footage of his searing live violin-drone performances. RIP.
AARON YAP
Top of the Lake: China Girl
Intelligent, adult drama, beautifully shot and acted, it’s a direct sequel to series one, with the new setting of Sydney providing the seedy underbelly of sex, crime and vile goings on, beneath the middle-class veneer of respectability. True, many of the male characters come off as two-dimensional stereotypical arseholes, but then they’re no worse served than most female characters in decades of male-centric tales. Whilst far from free of imperfections (the narrative coincidences are way, way too numerous, and character motivations are often questionable), it sure is ambitious, entertaining, thought-provoking and downright binge-worthy TV, that looked great on the big screen.
ADAM FRESCO
Tragedy Girls
Tyler MacIntyre’s splatter comedy delights in bad taste, subversion and buckets of blood. Sadie and McKayla, are high-school sociopaths, fixated on a serial killer loose in their dull-arse, mid-west US town. Social media satire, horror genre pastiche and teen movie takedown, Tragedy Girls is a gore-drenched, practical FX blast, especially when seen on the big screen amongst a bunch of bawdy horror-comedy fans.
ADAM FRESCO
The Untamed
Gruelling social realism meets alien tentacle-sex in this weirdly moving (and straight up weird) film from director Amat Escalante. Where his last effort Heli used an explicit torture scene as its centrepiece, here the milieu of working class life in Mexico is broken up by encounters with the titular space-squid, a creepily well-realised creature that serves as a handy metaphor for addiction. The real triumph of The Untamed is grafting something so otherworldly onto a naturalistic family drama. The result is very icky.
TONY STAMP
Incredibly strange, Mexican, sci-fi, sex drama and kinky critique of macho posturing and the liberating power of unbridled passion… with a randy, many tentacled, squid-like creature. Weird, thought-provoking, gritty, art-house stuff, Amat Escalante’s latest contains some entertainingly oddball scenes and far out ideas, but never quite comes together as a unified whole. Which may be the point. Or not. Did I mention the sex squid-thingy?
ADAM FRESCO
Low-key regional slice-of-lifer about abuse, pleasure and homophobia, featuring the best Carlo Rambaldi worship ever. Hats off to whoever thought to pair this up with The Beguiled at the Civic. Repressed, bodice-clinging maiden sensuality segueing into the orgiastic bestial catharsis of something that looks like a next-gen Fleshlight prototype. Kinda perfect.
AARON YAP
The Mexican cousin of Sam Neill classic Possession, this tentacled alien sex tale is stunningly original. It’s tamer than that description makes it sound, despite moments of intense explicitness, with more emphasis on inter-person love than inter-species sex. Unnerving throughout with well-placed jabs of humour, this is the most interesting film I’ve seen since Raw.
DANIEL RUTLEDGE
Waru
When I was a film-hungry teenager looking for unique and different approaches to filmmaking, I latched onto 2005 film Nine Lives which linked nine short films all done in one take. Waru takes the same approach but has even greater things to say about our people, our land, our culture, and our problems. If I was that teenager today, I would have fallen harder for this film than for Nine Lives. But to think there could be Kiwi teens today with that same thirst for films makes Waru a treasure that needs exposure.
LIAM MAGUREN
Eight shorts taking place at the same time in a small town make up this feature-length effort, each helmed by a Māori wahine filmmaker. It’s a winning device to showcase directorial and writing prowess, in which Waru resolutely succeeds. In eschewing overly interlinking the tales, or showing the same events from various perspectives, each story is left to follow its own path, and as they continue to unfold, so the feeling of a tangible, thriving, creative filmmaking community is built upon the characters depicted in the film’s grieving town and their varying Māori experiences.
STEVE NEWALL
We Don’t Need a Map
A frenzied, impulsive response to the stars from the sky being appropriated as a simplistic symbol by racists with no cultural identity, Warwick Thornton’s documentary about the relevance of the Southern Cross to indigenous Australia pulses with vitality and a punk rock, fuck you, spirit. Irreverent at times, deeply respectful at others, We Don’t Need a Map is courageously creative, bloody hilarious, and a contemporary counterpoint to clueless Aussie colonialism.
STEVE NEWALL
Wind River
Taylor Sheridan may not have the directing power of David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) or Denis Villeneuve (Sicario), but good lord he does a hell of a job clenching tension in a grim setting with this ice-cold western. It highlights the best and absolute worst qualities of traditional masculinity with a lean plot and an eye for the environment that makes the threat of the chill feel even deadlier than The Revenant did.
LIAM MAGUREN
Wùlu
An African crime drama that emphasises the drama rather than action, critics are calling this Mali’s answer to Scarface – but that’s not very accurate. Yes, it’s about a young man’s rise from nothing to owning a huge fortune through the drug trade; but Wùlu is a more nuanced, less entertaining, but interesting examination of corruption. It doesn’t work as well as a straight genre film as I’d like, but as a broader comment on the political situation in Mali and corruption in general, it’s excellent.
DANIEL RUTLEDGE
