Father Geek here with more from beautiful Hawaii and Albert Lanier. Lots of great films there this year... I've seen several of them that I loved especially STEAMBOY... CUBA LIBRE... and the fantastically violent opera that is SILMIDO, another increadible film from South Korea. So I'll just step aside and let you get to these wonderful films from HIFF 2004...

The 2004 Hawaiian International Film Festival...

by Albert Lanier

SUNDAY OCTOBER 24

So far, so good for HIFF 2004. Saturday was a bit of a madhouse at the Dole Cannery theatres. Found out that several "prime time" screenings throughout the 7 o'clock hour were filled up with ticketbuyers and passholders. Certainly, the screening of JASMINE WOMEN that I attended last night was packed.

Snuck out of Lo-Fi short porgram after seeing one short , 99 SCENTS-directed by Keir Serrie-about a door to door perfume salesman. Cute and amusing throughout its three minutes.

Saw CUBA LIBRE. Autobiographical film directed by first time filmmaker Juan Gerard about growing up in Holguin, Cuba in 1958 just before Castro's revolution. CUBA LIBRE features an entertaining cast of characters including a movie mad 11 year old boy ( esentially the cinematic equivalent of Gerard), the town's resident loony, the boy's grandfather Che, a blond American refugee from Hollywood named Julia and handsome sub rosa revolutionary Ricky.

Gerard crafts a surprisingly entertaining feature that is as much about a ravenous love of movies (the young boy is watching the Doris Day film JULIA at the opening of the film and clips of TRAPEEZE with Tony Curtis and Gina Lolobrigida and THE VIKINGS with Kirk Douglas pop up during the course of the movie) as it is about family and a sense of community.

CUBA LIBRE is sweet but not saccarine, filled with earthy humor and boyish enthusiasm. Effective work here by Harvey Keitel as Che, Iben Hjele as Julia, Georg Sanford Brown as the local crazy man and Gael Garcia Bernal as Ricky. Done with visual pizazz and real photographic style (one shot-a close up of an eye dissolving into another scene reminded me of Zhiga Vertov's THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA) thanks to the sterling work of DP Kramer Morgenthau.

Also viewed U.S. premiere of Katsuhiro Otomo's STEAMBOY. Fans of period anime will probably dig this film. Set largely in England in 1866, STEAMBOY is a film loaded with technology. 19th century technology, actually but what what do you expect? GUNDAM?

Main protagonist is pre-teen Ray Steam who's father and grandfather are both scientists and inventors who have been looking for ways to harness steam power. Ray's grandfather invents a device called the steamball (essentially what looks like a cannonball with a nut and bolt attached at one end) which produce more steam output and thusly more energy. This device actually shows up at the Steam residence in Manchester.

However, two men arrive at Ray's home on the day the steamball arrives. They represent the mysterious O'Hara Foundation in the United States and they try to snatch the steamball away thus inciting a picturesque chase that begins a series of adventures as Ray aims to protect the steamball.

STEAMBOY has the look, the lines, the colors of an animated epic film. Katsuhiro Otomo has crafted an entertaining yarn that probably took considerable time to research and plan ( such as getting the layout of neighborhoods of houses in Manchester and London as well as the Crystal Palace built during the London Exposition). STEAMBOY's script (which Otomo co-wrote with Sadayuki Murai) which sees science in the 19th century as a sort of brugeoning spiritual force that re-animate the world and perhaps remake it anew with technology. Intelligent but gorgeous to look at, STEAMBOY is an ambitious piece of animated cinema that is an equal that is superior to a big-budget live action blockbuster.

BREAKING NEWS was last on my list but is first in my heart. An entirely engrossing if not often humourous thriller dealing with the efforts of the Hong Kong Police to track down and capture a group of criminals who eventually find themselves holed up in an apartment building taking a man and his two children hostage.

The problem for HK's finest is twofold-capture the crooks but also improve their public relations and image in the media with the former colony's general public who distrust the local constabulary. Part of this distrust comes from the seeming ineptness of the police as magnified in nightly newscasts.

BREAKING NEWS is an actioner with some surprising depth. Director Johnnie To crafts a highly watchable action film leavened with considerable amounts of cynicism directed at law enforcement authorities.

Screenwriter Chan Hing Kai and Yip Tin Shing come up with a script that indicts both the lawenforcers and the lawbreakers by addressing the need "to put on a good show" for the media in order to win the hearts and minds of average citizens. Relentlessly entertaining with an opening gunfight on a city street that is shot in one fluid take that lasts for several minutes. BREAKING NEWS is one of the best films screening at HIFF.

MONDAY OCTOBER 25

I guess I'm having fun at HIFF this year. The films have been surprisingly enjoyable. Maybe I expected some slow, long art films this early in the game but I haven't seen any self-consciously "arty" films yet.

Ran into the entourage for the locally made PUBLIC ACCESS EPISODE 4 OF 5 at the Meet the Filmakers reception at Gordon Biersch at Aloha Tower Marketplace. I've heard this film is blood and guts city which is interesting for local cinema (and I use that term loosely). Sounds interesting. Got to check this film out.

Watched an hour of the South Korean drama SILMIDO. Intense, violent film based on the real life story of unit 684, a 31 man army unit filled with death row inmates, murderers and other assorted scum who are viciously trained for an important mission: to sneak into Pyongyang and kill North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Directed with lockstep style by Kang Woo Suk, SILMIDO examines the intense fanaticism planted in these men by their brutal training but also the consequences of blowback when secret missions like these don't go off as expected.

Went to reception at the Governor's mansion and then went to see PRIMER afterwards. Well-worth the hype. A first rate science-fiction film that actually has some fidelity to real science as opposed to the so-called science found in many sci-fi films.

PRIMER focuses on two engineers who spend their off hours working on a machine. They appropriate different parts such as a catalytic converter and a refrigerator (in fact there is talk about siphoning off the freon from the appliance) for use in their project. The fact that a couple of white collar working stiffs are moonlighting on the side by tinkering on their own personal project doesn't seem out of the ordinary but then again their invention is anything but ordinary.

PRIMER is a persistently intelligent feature that grounds its characters thoroughly in the real world. First time writer/ director Shane Carruth allows his actors to speak in overlapping dialogue giving many scenes a fresh verbal flow and a sense of spontaneity and improvisation.

Perhaps most important, Carruth wisely uses scientific processes and knowledge not just to provide cheap "logical" explanations but to actually provide a rational core for the steps taken to design and then build the machines by the film's protagonists. At this stage, PRIMER is one of finest films shown at HIFF this year and perhaps one of the best films of the year.

Min Byung Chun's NATURAL CITY ended my slate of films on Monday. Set in a futuristic Korean metropolis, NATURAL CITY's story revolves around pain-in- the-ass, anti-authoritarian cop R who is a member of a police squad that hunts down and kills dangerous cyborgs.

Ironically, R is in love with a female cyborg who is slowly dying due to robotic planned obsolescence (cyborgs in this part of the 21st century lastfor only three years after which their Artificial Intelligence chip stored in semi-robotic brains have to be removed or destroyed) and R is looking to extend her life span by turning to oddball Doctor Goro (who looks like Peter Lorre with a bad haircut and skin problems). It turns out another cyborg is also looking to live past his sell-by date by breaking into a medical facility to access DNA records to seek the ideal human he can siphon cognitive functions from in order to keep surviving. Eventually R must face this cyborg in a final showdown.

NATURAL CITY is a visually splendid but dramatically insipid feature that is a pale fascimile of Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER with sets reminiscent of ALIEN. The film's central love story is barely of interest while the film's action sequence are mildly of interest. NATURAL CITY just seems so derivitive and so cold and sterile that is hard to warm up to it.

The real strength of this film lies its special effects and CGI work, costumes, sets and props. These designers and crew members certainly have my respect. Too bad they weren't given a top notch story and characters to help flesh out.

AMUSING AUSTRALIAN COMEDY PREMIERES AT HIFF

There's an early scene in the Australian crime comedy GETTIN' SQUARE-which had its U.S. premiere recently at the Hawaii International Film Festival-that speaks to the tone of the picture and the attitudes evinced by some of its characters.

A prisoner is sitting in front of a parole board with intent of seeking release from confinement. 99% of prisoners would be on their best behavior-polite, mild, humble, calm-in front of such board. Not this guy. He loudly hectors the parole board, arrogantly demanding to be set free, constantly verbally pummeling them like a boxer who's got his opponents on the ropes. "What is there to talk about?" he yells at one point. This is a small but hilarious scene because the character has no contrition, sone sense of guilt and more importantly, no shame.

There is a thread of shamelessness that runs through GETTIN SQUARE which was screened as a HIFF gala on Tuesday, October 26 at the Hawaii Theater in Downtown Honolulu.

Aussie actor David Wenham- who served on this year's HIFF jury and stars in the film-was on hand to introduce the feature that night. Barry Wirth, a handsome young bloke who has 8 years on a 12 year sentence for murdering an elderly man, seeks to be paroled in the early stages of GETTIN' SQUARE but has trouble convincing the parole board that he is really innocent. Barry's prison buddy Johnny Spitieri whom everyone calls Johnny Spit has been more successful-Spit is scheduled to be released soon. Then, a stroke of good fortune (or bad fortune occurs) for Barry. His mother dies and as there are no other relatives, Barry is paroled in order to look after his younger brother. Unfortunately, Barry's brother has been working for local hoodlum Chicka Martin and Barry now has to steer his brother away from Chicka whom he loathes.

In the meantime, restauranteur and ex-con Darren Barrington has been presiding over his faux-western themed restaurant Texas Rose which attacts as many patrons as Afganistan attracts tourists during the summer months. Barrington nicknamed "Dabba" soon gets into hot water with the government. It seems that Dabba's accountant Warren Halliwell was caught banging his secretary by his wife.

Halliwell's wife goes to the Criminal Investigation Commission to spill the beans on hidden moneys squirreled away with Halliwell by some of his clients. Haliwell comes under investigation by the CIC and the commission then comes knocking on Dabba's door with a search warrant looking for hidden moneys. During their raid, the CIC investigators dig up over 61,000 Australian dollars in Dabba's yard. The CIC is looking to stick Dabba with a couple of charges including money laundering.

Then, Barry gets a job cooking at Dabba's restaurant using Johnny Spit as a reference. As if the government's investigation weren't enough, Chicka wants to muscle in on the Texas Rose "suggesting" they co-own the restaurant which Chicka admittedly calls a "white elephant". Dabba says no thanks. Barry's got troubles of his own as well. A cocky cop Senior Sargeant DeVeers who put Barry in prison occasionally shows up to try to put the fear of god in Barry. Barry has long believed that DeVeers set him up to take the murder rap and he is corrupt.

Then we have Johnny Spit, a longtime junkie who has been trying to kick a heroin habit though unsuccessfully. Caught trying to sell drugs by the police, Johnny Spit is offered a chance by the CIC to work with them to void a possible drug possession conviction if he testies about what he knows about moneys hidden away by Halliwell. Dabba is also worried because Johnny served as a courier for funds sequestered by Halliwell.

The bulk of GETTIN' SQUARE focuses on how Johnny, Dabba and even Barry are going to extricate themselves from the clutches of the government and Chicka Martin. GETTIN SQUARE is an entertaining, by the numbers comic crime film. This kind of film usually has a three step process:

1) Introduce the main characters some of whom are either colorful, eccentric, ballsy or all of the above.

2) Place them in difficult or at least uncomfortable situations from which they need some aid or help.

3) Provide a solution through a plan or scheme that will usually involve a twist or two thus leaving a couple of parties involved out of the loop.

This three step process is executed fairly well by director Jonathan Teplisky who does a fine job helming this feature wisely relying heavily on drawing fine performances from his talented cast which includes leads Sam Worthington as Barry and British actor Timothy Spall as Dabba as well as Gary Sweet as Chicka Martin and David Field as DeVeers.

The real star of GETTIN' SQUARE is David Wenham as Johnny Spit. Wenham who won the Australian Film Institute award for Best Actor gves a scene-stealing performance here, playing Spit as man who is obliviously pathetic and nonchalant about seeming a fool so long as he gets what he wants.

Take the film's best scene, Spit's court testimony as part of the Halliwell investgation. Wenham turns in comic gem of acting in this scene as he shamelessly disrupts the cross-examination by blatantly asking for bus fare back home and turning simple questions into hilariously elaborate conversations which seem to confuse him. Again the motif of shamelessness pops up perhaps because of the film's script written by real-life criminal defense attorney Chris Nyst. Nyst takes the three step process I mentioned earlier and make it work here but he also seems to be channeling his experience representing crooks but showing an utter lack of propriety and polite behavior on the part of some of the cons and ex-cons in this film.

GETTIN' SQUARE is simply fun. It aims to please. The title refers to a phrase that means going straight, not getting in trouble that would land you in prison again. Barry might actually turn out to be an upstanding citizen but as for some of these other crooks, I don't know. Some of them have a better chance of getting three square meals a day then gettin' square. END... Albert Lanier